Practical Use
People walking across the bridge today can see painted markings indicating how many smoots there are from where the sidewalk begins on the Boston river bank. The marks are repainted each semester by the incoming associate member class (similar to pledge class) of Lambda Chi Alpha.
Markings typically appear every 10 smoots, but additional marks appear at other numbers in between. For example, the 70-smoot mark is omitted in favor of a mark for 69. The 182.2-smoot mark is accompanied by the words "Halfway to Hell" and an arrow pointing towards MIT. Each class also paints a special mark for their graduating year.
The markings have become well-accepted by the public, to the degree that during the bridge renovations that occurred in the 1980s, the Cambridge Police department requested that the markings be maintained, since they had become useful for identifying the location of accidents on the bridge. The renovators went one better, by scoring the concrete surface of the sidewalk on the bridge at 5 foot 7 inch intervals, instead of the conventional six feet.
Google Calculator also incorporates smoots, which it reckons at exactly 67 inches (1.7018 meters). Google also uses the smoot as an optional unit of measurement in their Google Earth software and Google Maps distance measurement tool.
Read more about this topic: Smoot
Famous quotes containing the word practical:
“The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For ... things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.”
—Woodrow Wilson (18561924)
“Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.”
—Robert Nozick (b. 1938)