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Originally both the Greeks and the Romans subdivided the foot into 16 digits, but in later years, the Romans also subdivided the foot into 12 unciae (from which both the English words "inch" and "ounce" are derived). After the fall of the Roman Empire, some Roman traditions were continued but others fell into disuse.
Subdivisions of an inch are typically written using dyadic fractions with odd number numerators; for example, two and three-eighths of an inch would be written as 2 + 3 / 8 ″ and not as 2.375″ nor as 2 + 6 / 16 ″. However, for engineering purposes fractions are commonly given to three or four places of decimals and have been ...
Copper tubing, however, is measured in nominal size, 1 ⁄ 8 inch less than the outside diameter. The Schedule system is used for standard pipe thicknesses. Alcohol content is frequently given in proof, 2 × percent alcohol by volume; The cord is used for volume of firewood. The square is used to mean 100 square feet in construction.
The informal public imperial measurement standards erected at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, in the 19th century: 1 British yard, 2 feet, 1 foot, 6 inches, and 3 inches. The inexact monument was designed to permit rods of the correct measure to fit snugly into its pins at an ambient temperature of 62 °F (16.66 °C).
The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada [1].It equals the volume of a board that is one foot (30.5 cm) in length, one foot in width, and one inch (2.54 cm) in thickness, or exactly 2.359 737 216 liters.
Miners also use it as a unit of area equal to 6 feet square (3.34 m 2) in the plane of a vein. [2] In Britain, it can mean the quantity of wood in a pile of any length measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) square in cross section. [2] In Central Europe, the klafter was the corresponding unit of comparable length, as was the toise in France.
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As the name suggests, an acre-foot is defined as the volume of one acre of surface area to a depth of one foot.. Since an acre is defined as a chain by a furlong (i.e. 66 ft × 660 ft or 20.12 m × 201.17 m), an acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet (1,233.5 m 3).