by slracer » Wed Dec 10, 2008 12:57 pm
Mopar, I'm not sure where you got .015, but I saw that Rick says "tap water" is actually about .985 SG. DOT 5 is .958 so the correction is .044 in/in. but you have it right in principle. The tube rise/well drop question is true only for ratiometric scales (% flow), not vertical scales or inclines reading in inches.
John (et al), I have been thinking about the "subtraction" vs division question and I MAY have an answer. I just couldn't put it down so had to figure something out! In advanced design engineering (my field) we have a lot of quick and easy number crunching approximations (also called sanity checks). One of them is, FOR SMALL NUMBERS (those close to 1.00), the difference (subtraction) is nearly the same as the reciprocal (division). If I was looking at a .99 specific gravity, the difference would be .01 while the recip would be .0101. At .95, the numbers would be .05 vs .0526 while at .9 they become .1 vs .1111. The further you get from 1, the less accurate the approximation becomes. At 1%, the error is about 1%, at 5% the error is a little over 5% and at 10%, the error is 11+%, but at a .5 SG, the error is 100% (.5 vs 1.0). How far you go depends on how much error you can live with. Could be what the other thread was doing? -- Doug
I choose NOT to be an ordinary man because it is my right to be uncommon if I can! - unknown