.split() Qeustion

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 16 August 2013 10:27:36 Dave Angel did opine:

> Roy Smith wrote:
> > In article <520da6d1$0$30000$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
> > 
> >  Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 15 Aug 2013 16:43:41 +0100, Chris Angelico wrote:
> >> > A mole is as much a number (6e23) as the light year is a number
> >> > (9.5e15).
> >> 
> >> Not quite. A mole (abbreviation: mol) is a name for a specific
> >> number, like couple (2) or dozen (12) or gross (144), only much
> >> bigger: 6.02e23. And I can't believe I still remember that value :-)
> > 
> > I remember it as 6.022e23 :-)
> > 
> > In my high school chemistry class, there was a wooden cube, about 1/2
> > meter on a side, sitting on the lecture desk in the front of the room.
> > The only writing on it was "6.022 x 10^23".  It sat there all year.
> > 
> > The volume of the cube was that of 1 mole of an ideal gas at STP.
> > 
> >> A light-year, on the other hand, is a dimensional quantity. Whereas
> >> mole is dimensionless, light-year has dimensions of Length, and
> >> therefore the value depends on the units you measure in:
> >> 
> >> 1 light-year:
> >> 
> >> = 3.724697e+17 inches
> >> = 0.30660139 parsec
> >> = 9.4607305e+12 kilometres
> > 
> > Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing towards each other,
> > one shoulder-width apart.  That distance is about one
> > light-nanosecond.
> 
> Narrow shoulders.
> 
> I figure it just under a foot.  I once attended a lecture by Grace
> Hopper where she handed out "nanoseconds," pieces of wire about a foot
> long.  She said that the beaurocrats were always asking how much is a
> nanosecond, and couldn't imagine what a billionth was like.  So she gave
> them something physical.

Chuckle.  I always figured Grace Hopper had to have been a stand up comic 
in some previous life.  She sure could translate the problem into something  
the paper pushers could grok.

Cheers, Gene
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