Unit Confusion: Difference between revisions
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** That's one of the reasons why until Lev Gumilev who knew about chakrym participated, no one could pinpoint the exact location of Khazaria despite many references. Say, there's a letter from Khazarian Kagan Joseph to Hasdai ibn Shafrut with distances from his capital city Itil to the borders: 20 parasangs to the East is Caspian Sea, 30 and 20 to North and South are rivers (the names of which were not readily identifiable). Looks easy — we only need to cut a triangle and see where it fits on the map, and even if the value of parasang changed a bit, we'll be close, right? Well, no. This would place a big city in the middle of nowhere, rather than on the Volga, where it was known to be. One, the parasang as "learned" by Europeans is the average value for Iranian plateau, but in the flat Steppes it's of course longer. Two, the inner sea's level was much lower (it was known to raise shortly before the Khazaria's end, then more, then drop a bit). Which places Itil in the delta of Volga as it was back then, and now under water and alluvium.
* [//www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI9w8g4UT2I This video] shows more examples of units with the same names but different values (e.g. short tons vs. long tons, statute miles vs. nautical miles vs. imperial nautical miles, etc.).
* Some of the more '''pretentious''' electric heaters (overpriced opportunistic scams basically, since ''all'' resistance heaters – and resistors in general – convert electricity to heat at a 1:1 ratio<ref>See the Law of Conservation of Energy; where else would the heat ''go'', other than the room the heater's in? (Fuel-burning heaters lose some heat through the flue/chimney, except of course for unflued gas heaters which however are somewhat unsafe; but electric heaters don't ''produce'' any combustion fumes to dispose of, apart from externally at combustion-based power plants where used.)</ref> and '''nothing''' can be done to change that) claim to “use less energy than a coffee machine” (or whatever).<br>First of all, the figures they're comparing are '''power''' (which only ''directly'' matters as far as circuit loading is concerned); second (and '''importantly''') the coffee machine operates its heating elements only for the short time necessary to get the water hot, while a room heater (or radiator, where targeting the heat gives enough benefit to outweigh their fire hazard) can work at its full power as long as it's switched on (decent heaters can anyway; some cheap or incompetent '''junk''' may cut-out after a short time on high).
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