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This is the Conversation Forum for Units of Measurement << The French Yard Arcane note about old bytes >> Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted Apr 19, 2003 by Son of Roj Blake - Greetings Donkey Kong!   Posting 1 So named because the SI unit of radioactivity, the Becquerel, while numerically sensible (1 disintegration per second), is absolutely, stupidly TINY for anything approaching real world application. The very slightest, least dangerous detectable sorts of emissions you'd ever measure would be measured in GIGAbecquerels, and terabecquerels are common enough in the nuclear industry. Hence the slang name for the becquerel - the "bugger all". Also, the "baud" isn't *quite* 1 bit per second, it takes into account some other complicated stuff that I'd be lying if I said I remembered... H. Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted Apr 19, 2003 by Cefpret This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 2 My father hates Pascal because it's so small. And Farad is too big. But for every unit you find applications that are forced to use extreme prefixes. BTW the old unit, Curie, was a rubber unit with different definitions over the decades. The definition of Becquerel is simple and absolutely unambiguous. That the important thing. (Many don't like that organisations like Greenpeace can give huge numbers for contamination which can manipulate some people. ) And the Hertz -- related with Becquerel in a very subtle way -- is also way to small for most applications. But nobody complains. The Baud thing has been pointed out to me already. I think the stop and parity bits are included into Mbits/s but not into Baud. I think. Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted Apr 19, 2003 by Son of Roj Blake - Greetings Donkey Kong! This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 3 Re: pascals, I tend to use bar (10^5 Pa) most of the time at work. I say most... Re: Greenpeace - tell me about it. I used to work for BNFL. Re: Baud. Yeah. That was what I meant. Exactly that. Honest. H. Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted Apr 19, 2003 by Son of Roj Blake - Greetings Donkey Kong! This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 4 OOh! Ooh! That reminds me of one of my favourite geek jokes: What goes "pieces of seven, pieces of seven"? H. Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted May 13, 2003 by thenerd This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 5 I don't know, what ? Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted May 13, 2003 by Son of Roj Blake - Greetings Donkey Kong! This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 6 A parroty error. Ay theng yo. H. (I thought nobody would ever ask...) Read the First Reply to this Posting Subject: Becquerel = bugger all Posted Jun 7, 2003 by Nick Fel This is a reply to this Posting   Posting 7 <groans> One of my computing teachers had a parrot/parity joke, which I forget right nowl. He also likes to say "this is a local variable, for local people" lol Conversation list Most of the content on h2g2 is created by h2g2's Researchers, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the BBC. The BBC is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click on the relevant button to alert our Moderation Team. Conversation list

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