Weighty Units

• Acre: An acre describes an area of  land and comes from the Old English word aecer, meaning a ploughed field. It was the area a team oxen could plough in one day. In the UK in 1824, an acre was set as 4840 square yards.
• Celsius: A temperature scale invented in 1742 by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius. A Celsius degree is 1/100 of difference between the freezing and boiling points of water (0-100)
• Metre: The metre was introduced in France in June 1799. It was first set as one ten- millionth of the circumference of  the earth. it was later set as the distance between two lines on a metal bar which was kept in serves, France. The distance is now more precise. It is distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458th of a second. A centimeter is 1/100th of a metre. A millimetre is 1/1000th of a metre and a kilo mere is 1000 meters.
• Gram/Kilo gram: Gram comes from the same ancient Greek word that gave us grammar, and means a marked-off division. A kilogram is 1000 grams. Kilo comes from the Greek chili oi, meaning one thousand.
• Foot: Foot originally meant the average length of an adult foot, and has been used since ancient times. Before France invented the metric system, the French foot was based on length of the Emperor Charlemagne's foot.
• Hectare: This is used for measuring land areas and comes from the ancient Greek hekaton, meaning one hundred. One hectare is equivalent to 10000 square meters or 2.4711 acres.
• Hundred weight / ton: A hundred weights is 1/20th of a Ton. A British or long Hundred weight is 112 pounds, and a long ton is 2240 pounds. An American or short ton is 2000 pounds.

Posted in: Measuring Units