[tlhIngan Hol] weight of cheb

[De'vID]

On Thu, 29 Oct 2020 at 07:34, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

>
> > If you use an American "short" ton and assume a factor of 9, you get:
>
> Thanks for calculating this for me. I had tried all of those ways and
> came to the same result, but my "internal Sheldon" did not accept such a
> large difference.
>

In fact, in an earlier discussion on this mailing list, I'd computed the
values for six possible ways of interpreting the evidence:
https://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2012/March/msg00137.html

Here's what I wrote then:


> Assuming KT = kiloton = 1000 tons, there's still the problem of
> whether a "ton" is:
>
> (1) "long" (or "imperial") ton: 2240 lb / 1016.047 kg
> (2) "short" ton: 2000 lb / 907.185 kg
> (3) metric ton: (or "tonne"): 2204.62 lb / 1000 kg
>
> There's also the question of whether a {cheb'a'} is (A) 9 {cheb} or
> (B) 10 {cheb} (or maybe even some other multiple).
>
> The possibilities are:
> (A1) 5.774 lb / 2.619 kg
> (A2) 5.156 lb / 2.339 kg
> (A3) 5.683 lb / 2.578 kg
> (B1) 5.197 lb / 2.357 kg
> (B2) 4.64 lb / 2.105 kg
> (B3) 5.115 lb / 2.32 kg
>
> None of these are particularly close to the state value of around 5 lb
> / 2.25 kg.


The interpretation that gets the closest value to "about five pounds (2.25
kg)" is in fact (B3): a {cheb'a'} is 10 {cheb} and a "KT" is a metric
kiloton (one million kilograms). So it could be the case that
"international" standards were indeed used on that BoP poster, and that
Klingons have adopted (or have always had) a factor of 10 to convert
between a {cheb} and a {cheb'a'}. Or it could be using a factor of 9 and
imperial (American) tons. Since a pound is within 10% (i.e., the
approximate percentage difference between 9 and 10) of 2 kg, either
interpretation could be made to work with the stated values.

Until Dr. Okrand explicitly states that a {cheb'a'} is 9 (or 10) {cheb},
either interpretation could be correct.

-- 
De'vID
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