Talk:Smoot
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The proposed merger of this page with list of strange units of measurement does not make sense. The two pages are not duplicates; i.e. they are not two separate articles on the same topic. The existence of a page that lists strange units of measurement is no reason why there should not be separate articles on those strange units. To regard the smoot as something of interests merely because it is a strange unit of measurement misses the point. It is of interest because it is a part of MIT lore, not because it is a strange unit of measurement. No one looking for MIT lore who is unfamiliar with this unit is going to think of looking at list of strange units of measurement. Michael Hardy 20:01, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Point taken, and mine withdrawn. I saw the LSUM page including smoot on it, and elsewhere, I saw the Smoot page, and figured the two had been made independently, but there is in fact a link on LSUM to Smoot. So I am a shmuck, and removing the merge tag now. Jonpin 23:06, Oct 18, 2004 (UTC)
Lambda Chi Alpha no longer has pledge classes. The are offically called 'Associate Member' (AM) classes. I changed the comment 'The marks are repainted each year by the incoming pledge class of Lambda Chi Alpha.' to reflect this. BeastRHIT
Has anyone verified that the police actually use Smoot measurements to indicate locations of accidents? That seems unlikely to me. Josebove 12:00, Nov 08, 2005 (EST)
1. FIJI is no longer a Fraternity at MIT, and while they used to paint over the smoot marks, obviously don't anymore. I changed the tense to reflect this. 2. Added reference to the Harvard Bridge itself being normalized to smoots, with the sidewalk scored at 5'7" intervals instead of the conventional 6' 3. The police using smoots to indicate accidents is actually attributed directly to the Cambridge Police, who requested the markings remain after the renovations in the 1980s. (Radiomanlaughs 16:32, 19 December 2005 (UTC))
[edit] later career in standards and measurement
- This was only the beginning of Smoot's career in standards and measurement; he later became Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Wait, am I reading Wikipedia or Uncyclopedia? this is hardly factual.
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- It's strange but true. I added references. --Fagles 15:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Unsourced: Smoots may only be used in horizontal measurement, as they must be taken lying down.
[edit] Head over heels?
According to several of the references cited, including the NPR interview with Smoot himself, the original measurements were not made by rolling Smoot "head over heels" as the article states. Rather, he laboriously got up and lay down again at each Smoot interval, eventually tiring so much that his fraternity brothers started carrying him from position to position. PavelCurtis 18:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
