[tlhIngan Hol] cheb

[Felix Malmenbeck]

>From the wording "around five pounds (2.25 kg or so)", I get the feeling that we shouldn't take the specificity of "2.25 kg" too seriously; I get the feeling it is there as a rough conversion of "five pounds" (2.268 kg), rather than as a conversation of 1 cheb, so we can't deduce too much from the number of significant figures.

Thus, I take this to mean: 4,5 lb < 1 cheb < 5,5 lb
or, in metric units: 2,04 kg < 1 cheb < 2,49 kg        

A while back, somebody pointed out that Marc Okrand was probably using short tons (2000 lb; 907,2 kg), rather than metric tons (1000 kg), when translating 8,7 KT to 375000 cheb'a'. This makes the conversion much more reasonable, assuming that 1 cheb'a' = 9 cheb (which I don't believe we know for sure; seems worth asking Okrand about).

With metric tons:
1 cheb ≈ 8700000 kg / (9 * 375000) ≈ 2,578 kg ≈ 5,578 lb
so this should be "about six pounds" rather than "about five pounds".

With short tons:
1 cheb = 8700 * 2000 lb / (9 * 375000) ≈ 5,156 lb ≈ 2,339 kg
which matches the description of "about five pounds" quite well.

Now, the question is how close this approximation is. If we assume that the measurement of 375000 cheb'a' is accurate down to 1000 cheb'a', then we can get the upper and lower bounds of a cheb by substituting 375000 in our calculation with 374500 and 375500, respectively.

1 cheb < 8700 * 2000 lb / (9 * 374500) ≈ 5,162 lb ≈ 2,342 kg
1 cheb > 8700 * 2000 lb / (9 * 375500) ≈ 5,149 lb ≈ 2,335 kg

All in all, 1 cheb ≈ 2,34 kg seems a decent rule of thumb.

________________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2017 17:00
To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org; seruq
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] cheb

Seruq:
> Back in '99 we had difficulty trying to calculate how much a cheb is.  MO
> was quoted as saying it was about 2.25 kg; then the BoP posted implied
> something closer to 2.578.

(Okrand, st.k 10/22/1997):  A common unit of weight is {cheb}, which is around five pounds (2.25 kg or so).

The {cheb'a'} is a unit of weight equal to 9 times a {cheb} (charghwI', interview with Okrand in HolQeD).

  wejvatlh SochmaH vagh SaD cheb'a'mey ngI' Duj
  Mass: 8.7 KT. (KBoP Poster)

See the entries at http://klingonska.org/dict/?q=cheb

> Since then, have we received any additional canon that would help to
> calculate a cheb?  Does the Monopoly game have any clues?

Nope, and neither does the paq'batlh AFAIK.


--
Voragh
tlhIngan ghantoH pIn'a'
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons


_______________________________________________
tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org