Thursday, November 15, 2007

We need a web page of unit conversion disasters

Someone needs to put together a web page of metric/english unit conversion disasters. This was only one of many:
Damn Interesting » The Gimli Glider

...Pearson and Quintal had determined the fuel weight by multiplying the the number of dripsticked liters by 1.77, as indicated by the documentation. However, unbeknownst to the pilots and the fuel crew, this multiplier provided the weight in imperial pounds; the new, all-metric 767 was based on kilograms, and required a multiplier of 0.8. As a consequence of this documentation disconnect, Flight 143 had left Montreal with roughly half the necessary fuel...

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