Like the article says, we machine parts with tolerances in thousandths of an inch, but certain specifications like paint thickness are specified in “mils” which is also thousandths of an inch.
Another really common one is plastic sheeting. That's probably the item I most often personally come into contact with that is measured in mils. (that is, things I need to know the thickness of, which excludes the paint all around me)
Disposable gloves are also measured in mils. When I bought a micrometer one of the first things I measured was a disposable glove and I was concerned that the measurement was really wrong. Then I searched online and found that the specified thickness is only on the finger pad area of the glove. Measuring there was dead on.
Ounce / fluid ounce is roughly the same as gram / milliliter. A fluid ounce of water weighs about one ounce (1.04 oz/fl oz or something), like a milliliter of water weighs about one gram (0.997 g/mL or something).
The US customary units are pretty logical, they're just not powers of 10.
> Ounce / fluid ounce is roughly the same as gram / milliliter.
That's how it's used, but the units don't measure the same thing. It's like measuring an engine's power output in square meters, because a kilowatt is about a square meter of sunlight.
> That's how it's used, but the units don't measure the same thing.
I'm having some real trouble parsing this sentence right here. You're saying that the two DIFFERENT UNITS "fluid ounce" and "ounce (weight)" measure DIFFERENT things? Yes, different units measure different things. Or maybe I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
If I said "kilogram force", you'd know exactly what that is.
You are also not confused when I say that water boils at 100 degrees centigrade, and a right angle is 90 degrees.
And don't even get me started on the number of people who argue that 1024 bytes is called a "kilobyte".
I think the GP's point was that "fluid ounce" is a measure of volume, not mass or weight. If you're measuring a liquid whose density is different from water, a fluid ounce won't weigh anywhere near an ounce.
"degrees" is an interesting one, as it's really just another word for "amounts" or "units" or "subdivisions". 100 degrees centigrade is 100 amounts of centigrade. Or actually Celsius, as "centigrade" means "100 subivisions". The name of the unit is just "Celsius".
Really, degrees of arc should probably have been given a "proper" name too, but it's too late for that. Or you could switch to radians ;-p
Language is fuzzy. People know what you mean when you say "degrees centigrade" or "fluid ounces", so it's fulfilled its purpose. But that doesn't mean that some "proper" terms for measurements aren't weirder than others. "Celsius" is straightforward and unambiguous. "fluid ounces" is kinda weird. And yes, "degrees (of arc)" is a poor choice of unit name, worse than "fluid ounces". That still doesn't make "fluid ounces" good though.
> I think the GP's point was that "fluid ounce" is a measure of volume, not mass or weight. If you're measuring a liquid whose density is different from water, a fluid ounce won't weigh anywhere near an ounce.
Yes, and equally so, if you are measuring a substance other than water, the milliliter will have a different mass than a gram.
The US uses the US customary units and metric, not the imperial units.
Not that it matters much, since the US customary ounce and the imperial ounce are the same mass. Maybe you're thinking of the fact that an imperial pint is different from a US customary pint?