First time out in Utility Kilt

General discussion of skirt and kilt-based fashion for men, and stuff that goes with skirts and kilts.
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Kirbstone
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by Kirbstone »

Tonic, no; Soda, perhaps; but Burn-water, for sure! And if Bertino did visit Bonnay Sco'land in Summer the mosquitoes would feast on him, and how!

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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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Kirbstone wrote:Tonic, no; Soda, perhaps; but Burn-water, for sure! And if Bertino did visit Bonnay Sco'land in Summer the mosquitoes would feast on him, and how!
Yes, soda, not tonic. I must've been under the influence.

But this reminds me of the scotch and soda diet.

One evening I was resting in my easy chair sipping a scotch and soda. While letting my mind wander, I noted that the drink was about 100 cc in volume, and that because it contained ice and water it's temperature was 0° C, and that before expelling it my body would heat it to 30° C. And that amount of heating would require 100 x 30 = 3000 calories.

Now, the ice and the soda obviously contained no calories. And upon research, I found that the scotch only contained 100 Calories. So each scotch and soda I drank would actually save me 2900 calories! If I could only down enough of those things I could lose all the weight I wanted!

What's wrong with this picture?
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by geron »

What's wrong is a factor of 1000 :-) You're counting in ordinary calories, but the calories dieticians use are actually kilocalories. Sorry to pour cold water on a nice daydream....
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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geron wrote:What's wrong is a factor of 1000 :-) You're counting in ordinary calories, but the calories dieticians use are actually kilocalories. Sorry to pour cold water on a nice daydream....
Congratulations! It takes most people a lot longer to figure this out.

Was the capital C in, "the scotch only contained 100 Calories," the giveaway?
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by geron »

Caultron wrote:Was the capital C in, "the scotch only contained 100 Calories," the giveaway?
It ought to have been. But this kind of business would all be a great deal easier if we all used joules, which are much more sanitary :-)
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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geron wrote:...But this kind of business would all be a great deal easier if we all used joules, which are much more sanitary.
1 calorie = 4.1858 joules. How is that more sanitary?
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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Caultron wrote:1 calorie = 4.1858 joules. How is that more sanitary?
A common unit -- not obfuscated with a usually-missing prefix -- puts precisely how much energy it actually takes to run a human in a pretty good light.

I've heard a variant of the tale above, but with ice-cream, and even before I cottoned on to the missing "k" prefix (shouldn't that be "K"?) smelt a rat.
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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crfriend wrote:I've heard a variant of the tale above, but with ice-cream, and even before I cottoned on to the missing "k" prefix (shouldn't that be "K"?) smelt a rat.
Hmph. Supposedly, the scotch and soda version appeared on the, "unsolved puzzles," page of the Mensa monthly magazine for a record number of months before being solved. But I suppose no one had heard of it yet then. Or maybe it was too easy.

Oh, and mea culpa, I should have told the story with me in a utility kilt drinking and thinking in a local, uh, local. Just to keep it on-topic, you know.
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by geron »

crfriend wrote:
Caultron wrote:1 calorie = 4.1858 joules. How is that more sanitary?
A common unit -- not obfuscated with a usually-missing prefix -- puts precisely how much energy it actually takes to run a human in a pretty good light.

I've heard a variant of the tale above, but with ice-cream, and even before I cottoned on to the missing "k" prefix (shouldn't that be "K"?) smelt a rat.
No, always lower-case k for kilo in SI, because K means the Kelvin, the unit of absolute temperature. But computer people like to use K to mean 1024.

A joule is equal to one watt playing for one second, which convenIently ties it in with electrical units, power, etc.

And now, back to utility kilts....
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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But ordinary mortals haven't the foggiest how much a joule is, even if they have heard of them. Trying to tell someone the energy content in joules is worse than using kilogrammes and metres in ordinary conversation, at least people have heard of them and are vaguely familiar with them. I'm not sure how familiar people are with the unit watt either.
Last edited by Sinned on Sun Nov 12, 2017 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by geron »

Not sure about that. Don't you check the rating in watts when you buy or fit a light bulb? Or do you prefer the novelty of random light levels?
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by greenboots »

These days light levels are in lumens. Even with my background in optics, I'm only just getting the hang of them :?
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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I don't relish the thought that to lose weight I have to cut back on my joules.
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

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geron, yes the units is given in watts but it's just a number and there's nothing in people's experience to know what a watt feels like. In looking at the power figure we just look for a low number without an appreciation as to what it means. I work in a store that sells light bulbs and the packaging on the bulbs gives to watts figures - one for the electrical power consumed and one for the equivalent light output. There's also a brightness figure given in lumens and I just tell customers that the bigger the number the brighter the bulb is. So I do have a fair bit of experience of people's reactions when trying to choose a bulb and there's a lot of confusion out there. If a customer is able to choose a bulb correctly then I joke with them that they have just passed their O Level in Bulb Selection. :lol:
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Re: First time out in Utility Kilt

Post by geron »

Sinned wrote: So I do have a fair bit of experience of people's reactions when trying to choose a bulb and there's a lot of confusion out there. If a customer is able to choose a bulb correctly then I joke with them that they have just passed their O Level in Bulb Selection. :lol:
You're right in that the water had been muddied by new technologies, though I think most householders used to be aware of the difference between a 40W light bulb and 100W. As to whether this is general knowledge, I cite clue 21 Down in today's Sunday Times general knowledge crossword puzzle: "Approximately 4.18 joules" (7 letters). I rest my case ;-)
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