Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Tele man
...the ancient Mesopotamians used base-60 (the basis for our 'minutes' and degrees).
...not many people that I know have ten fingers on one hand and six on the other (wink,wink).
|
But it is still a fully logical system using the fingers-counting methods, you just have to count each hand in a different method - a higher level concept. One hand has 6 states (closed fist, plus each of five digits), while the other has ten (five digits raised, then lowered). Difficult to explain, but I can see how it would work.
Splitting materials evenly is best done not by multiplying their widths by a fraction, but by placing a ruler diagonally across the material to a dimension easily divisible into a whole number by the number of pieces you want to wind up with. Your 96" sheet goes into thirds at 32". I don't know what metric-unit plywood sheets are produced at, but I would venture to guess it isn't an inch measurement. Probably either 2 or 2.5m. Splitting it has little to do with how easily or evenly the number divides as you can force it to divide evenly. If you have a 2.5m sheet to go into thirds is 833.33mm, but if you tilt the measure diagonally until it measures 2550mm and mark it at 850 and 1700 and strike a line across your marks using a square you have divided it into thirds nice and evenly.