Translating Measurements

Yesterday I gave a temperature in degrees Celsius and then in "American." Yesterday was also the 25th anniversary of a famous incident (that could have been a horrific accident) caused by a mistake of measurements: the Gimli Glider. Look here for a picture and another telling of the story.

On July 23, 1983, a Boeing 767 took off from Montreal, taking 61 passengers to Edmonton. (Nowadays they'd cancel that flight for lack of passengers.) It ran out of fuel over Red Lake, Ontario.

Completely.

Ran out.

Of fuel.

Talk about a nightmare: Runnin' on empty at 41,000 feet is right up there.

The pilot managed to glide the aircraft to a safe landing on an abandoned runway at a former airbase in Gimli, Manitoba.

In the process, he narrowly avoided running over several teenaged boys who were goofing around, riding their bikes on the tarmac. Why didn't they get miles out of the way, you ask? Answer: they couldn't hear anything. The plane was gliding. Apparently 767's don't have a horn to honk. The kids did turn around and see this plane coming. Nobody got hurt.

The problem, apparently, was two-fold. The gauge indicators weren't working well. And the plane had been filled in the metric system's liters, though it was built for the U.S. gallon system.

So when I translate degrees celsius into "American" or mention the difficulty in figuring out how much our cost per liter translates into cost per gallon, just remember that bad stuff happens when you mis-translate. Our two countries may be separated by an invisible line, but some differences have huge consequences.