Michel
Joined: 10 Jan 2006
Posts: 966
Location: Norway
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 Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:10 am Post subject: SV: Metric |
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| Quote: | From: kurt schrader [smokey_bear_40220(at)yahoo.com]
What is this "knots" thing? Ha ha Revenge from Michel the sailorman?
Revenge? From a sweet, innocent and candid guy like me? Never! 
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As you know, the knot is the ancien method of streaming a line with knots, overboard, while taking time with a timeglass. Today, it is standardize as one nautical mile per hour. So the question is: Why the nautical mile? Well, as seafarers still use Mercator maps, you can easily measure a distance using the minutes of latitude as a scale. And for as long as we divide the circle in 360 degrees, the nautical mile makes sense. Even in the air.
| Quote: | Wind in mph, speed in knots, height in feet or meters,
and in our weather reports mist is "BR" thanks to the
French. (We call it barely raining)
Noooo, is that true? That's funny, Kurt, because when I learnt to read a metar, I got easily the mnemonics: RA is rain, etc. But when mist was written BR, it didn't make sense in English, so I memorized it, using the French word: Bruine. I thought it was just a coincidence, now you confirm that it is, indeed, the origin of the two-letters code. Amazing!
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Cheers,
Michel
do not archive
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