<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 2013-05-25, at 9:58 AM, John Straube wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">BTU and kilowatts are directly connected to a physical event. You would need to take a physics course to understand how, or do a wiki search on BTU.</span></blockquote></div><br><div>Really John? Wow!!!!, :)</div><div><br></div><div>However, the physical event to which you allude is not a 'natural' event because it involves arbitrary human input and/or quantification. Human's 'decided' that a Btu is the amount of energy required to heat W WEIGHT of water by X number of degrees FAHRENHEIT. Nature did not create this. We might just as arbitrarily have decided that a Btu was infact the amount of energy required to heat Y VOLUME of water by Z number of degrees CELSIUS. (don't you just LOVE wikipedia!!)</div><div><br></div><div>I would be interested to know which units of measurement - beyond the Sidereal - are based on the observation of 'natural' events (or phenomena)? And by natural event I mean those that have not had any form of human intervention?</div><div><br></div><div>Seconds or Minutes or Hours are not recorded observations of natural phenomena. They are based on devices constructed for the purpose of quantifying time. A one-meter pendulum 'ticks' once every second but it's a human construct.</div><div>The Kilo and Litre are, similarly, human concepts.</div><div>Same goes for KWs and Btus.</div><div>The list goes on…</div><div><br></div><div>Steve.</div><div><br></div></body></html>