A little fresh perspective on common terms
Since the turn of this century, and probably a while before that, certain terms not heard before were being used daily by people in their early 20s (and now by toddlers).
Now, we glibly speak about bytes and watts and WiFi, but do most of us know what these are?
Just in case some of us (probably the older generation) are ignorant in this respect, herewith some explanation of modern terminology in daily use by your grandchildren.
Bytes, of which the abbreviation should be a capital B but which is mostly shown in lower case b, are units of data used in computers.
Most computer systems require the use of 4 bytes for a word (I guess of average length) and the bandwidth of a computer service, the capacity at which data is delivered to computer equipment, is given in either Mega Bytes per second (MBps or Mbps) which is in millions, or Giga Bytes per second (Gbps) which is thousands of millions.
How this is achieved and controlled, I have not yet discovered.
This article (unedited) will amount to about 8kB.
The average 600-page book will comprise about 5MB.
The term streaming refers to any media content that is delivered to computer equipment via the internet.
A two-hour American made movie averages 14GB in size, needing at least 30MBps to download and view without interruptions.
Phishing is not what grandpa does since he retired — well, I hope not since it is an illegal activity, where a person or business masquerades as a legitimate and/or reputable body in order to fraudulently acquire your sensitive and/or personal information via email or a website.
“Free WiFi” is a sign often seen in shop or restaurant windows.
Asking for one of those free WiFis will get you a “what are you on about?” look.
WiFi is the abbreviation of wireless fidelity — the guarantee that you will not need any wiring to obtain information from the internet.
When it is free you can simply log onto the shop’s system via a password and you will get data via their system.
Our municipal account gives the water usage in kilolitres.
That’s an easy one — the number of thousands of litres of water used in that month.
In our drought-stricken area this number is very important.
A family of four, practising water saving measures, would use about 12kl/month.
Without water saving this could easily be 30kl/month.
This same account also gives the electricity usage in watt-hours.
A watt is a unit of power, speed if you like, of the production and/or consumption of electric power — how fast it used or produced.
As an example, a 60W globe burning for an hour would consume 0,06kWh (kilowatt hours).
The hour figure therefore gives distance, if you like — how long.
If you use a 1,000W kettle to boil water it will take twice as long as when using a 2,000W kettle, but both kettles will have used the same amount of kWh to achieve this.
To give another perspective on watts, and more useless information — a 1m² of flat surface close to the equator will receive about 1kW of sunlight power per cloudless day.
We are being advised to convert our lighting elements at home to LEDs — light-emitting diodes.
Ja, well, no fine! What is a diode to start with?
It is a one-way switch for electric current — you cannot run electricity backwards through it.
Big deal, but what has this to do with things?
When it is charged up there is an energy release creating electroluminescence and with diodes made of varying amounts of compounds made from aluminium, gallium and indium this luminescence (light) can give off different colours.
LEDs are made with holes in their construction allowing the light thus generated to be emitted.
They use about one quarter of the energy for providing a similar lighting level to normal incandescent globes.
If you average 6 x 60W globes burning for three hours per night, that equates to 1kWh/day or 30kWh/month.
Converting to LED would only cost you 7kWh/month. The lights in cellphones and so on are all LEDs.
That brings us to the recent floods in the Free State and other parts of SA.
One report had the Orange River flowing at 5,000 cusecs past Prieska.
What did that actually convey to most people not employed in the hydrology industry?
It sounds impressive because of the large number.
A cusec is a measurement of flow volume, and actually a relic of the Imperial weights and measures days.
Remember the pounds and ounces; gallons, quarts and pints; pounds, shillings and pence; miles, yards, feet and inches?
Well, the cusec is actually a leftover from those days — cubic feet per second, with a cubic foot being just over 28 litres in volume.
5,000 cusecs equates to 140kl/sec — about as much as the household above would use in a year.
Quite a lot of water therefore, and a good reason to have been impressed!
Why this measure has not been metricated is not known.