OK, hold the fucking phone here. This video is just a disaster. It is flippant and glossing over the facts of what actually happened. This story is a favorite of mine, so I have done a lot a reading on it.

This happened in 1983 (36 years ago).

>> Do planes seriously not have a fuel gauge?

There is specifically a digital fuel gauge processor on that plane, and it was malfunctioning. There was an inductor coil that wasn't properly soldered onto the circuit board. At that time, planes were allowed to fly without a functioning digital fuel gauge as long as there was a manual check of the fuel in tanks and the computer was told the starting fuel.

The problem is that fuel trucks pump by volume and planes measure fuel by weight. The fueling truck converted the volume to kilograms and then converted to pounds. He should not have used both. In 1983 ground crews were used to converting volume to pounds. The 767 was the first plane in Air Canada's fleet to have metric fuel gauges.

The line in the video "the flight crew approved of the fuel without noticing the error" glosses over how it is actually done. The pilot was passed a form that contained the numbers and calculations from the ground crew that stated that 22,300 kg of fuel was loaded on the plane. The math was wrong, but unless the pilots re-did the numbers by hand, there wouldn't be anything to jump out at them. He accepted the form and punched those numbers in to the computer.

The 767 was one of the first planes to eliminate the Flight Engineer position and replace it with a computer. There was no clear owner as to who does the fuel calc in this situation. In this case, it fell to the ground crew.

>> I would hope there is a nit more of a warning system than the engines shutting off.

If there was a functional digital fuel gauge, it would have showed them missing half their fuel from the start, and the error would have been caught. Because there wasn't, the computer was calculating and displaying the amount of fuel based on an incorrect start value.

That is another problem with this video. It states that "they didn't even think about it until ... and an alarm went off signalling that their left engine had quit working."

Fuck you, narrator asshole.

In this case, low fuel pump pressure warnings were firing off before the engines shut down. They were investigating why they would be getting these low pressure warnings when their calculated fuel values (based on the original error) showed that they had enough fuel.

>> I can't believe the pilot's were given an award for causing an avoidable accident.

The pilots did not cause it. They followed all the proper procedures applicable at that time, 1983. It was only due to their skill and quick thinking that the pilots landed the plane without any serious injuries to passengers.

They ran simulations in Vancouver of this exact fuel and flight situation and all the crews that ran this simulation crashed their planes.

"Bad math can kill you." Flippant, correct, but still not quite applicable to this situation. Air Canada did not provide any conversion training for dealing with kilograms and the 767. Not the ground crew, nor the pilots, were trained how to handle it. They were expected to "figure it out". That, and the elimination of the Flight Engineer position, set these situations up for disaster.

Its a cute prototype that stretches the imagination but is a wholly improbable design to find its way to Mars.

The weight and dimensions alone would make it very, very difficult to de-orbit onto the surface of mars. This thing weighs: 5,500 lbs. (2,500 kilograms).

Its not going to be very economical to get it out of earths gravity and into orbit just to start, forget about the energy it will require to get it moving towards Mars.

Pounds? Feet?

Jesus America, get your shit together.

Kilograms. Metres.

Hell, you're measuring Newtons which are Kg/m/s^2 .... do you see lb or f in that equation?

This is why things crash into mars.

Sciency stuff about the American kilogram - Veritasium has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

Fascinating stuff.

Also see Veritasiums last video about the measuring of the Kilogram https://videosift.com/video/America-Kilogram-Veritasium

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First comment on Youtube:
"It all began with the forging of the Great Kilograms. Three were given to the French; immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Seven, to the Germans, great miners and craftsmen of the mountain halls. And two, Kilograms were gifted to the United States, who above all else desire power."

I get what you're saying, but just to be clear, the value of a Newton doesn't change. It would be pretty useless as an SI unit if it did.

"One newton is the force needed to accelerate one kilogram of mass at the rate of one metre per second squared in direction of the applied force."

1 newton is 1 newton if you're on earth, in space or at the centre of a sun.

1kg on earth will exert approx 9.8N (1 kg * 9.8m/s^2) towards the centre of the earth, where as 1kg in orbit will exert almost 0N towards the centre of the earth.

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He said an average of 150 times larger. That seems ... unlikely. 150 percent, maybe -- and still a statistically significant increase.

A quick google search suggests yellowfin tuna commonly range from 40-150cm long, and up to 70kg in weight/mass. If they are close to the "average" of 150 (times? or percent?) larger, the species would have started out at about a half kilogram MAX (more like a small trout) if "size" is determined by mass. Or about 1/4 to 1 cm long (like half a guppy) if determined by length.

Both of those make more sense if it was 150% -- that would be early tuna in the range of 50kg (by mass) or 26-100cm (by length).


And then there was the "maximum size increased by 100,000 times" line. By mass, that is like the trout evolving into a blue whale. Yeah, I am guessing that is a percent again. Still means 1000 times bigger, which is massive.


I tried searching YouTube comments to see if anyone else brought this up, but they are YouTube comments. Hah! Silly me, thinking that YouTube comments on something like SciSchow might be at least partially exempt from the "sanity free zone" that pervades YT.

Don't you weigh yourselves in stones rather than lbs?

I have English friends who are vet nurses, they weigh themselves in stones, but animals in kilograms

Well... it is. In 2001 a grocer was convicted for using scales which only showed imperial weights, but that doesn't mean that the people have wholeheartedly adopted the system (see this article from BBC News Magazine for example).

I visited in 2002, and found that it was metric enough to make it comfortable for an Australian We were visiting a friend who is a vet nurse... who would weigh animals at work in kilograms, but herself in stones. If you've watched Gav and Dan in the slowmo guys videos, they measure distances in centimetres, inches, metres, kilometres, and miles.

Might I also point out that the U.S. is also officially a metric country, and has been for 148 years, after an act of congress was passed authorising the use of metric weights and measures in 1866 (ref http://science.howstuffworks.com/why-us-not-on-metric-system2.htm), and having been the only English speaking country to become a signatory to the Metre Convention (in 1875).

Chows are listed on most top-ten lists for violent behavious...

8. Chow-Chow
"Somewhat surprising due to their small frame and stature, the Chow-Chow was reported to have been responsible for 8 fatalities in the journal’s study. With an average Chow-Chow weighing about 60 pounds (28 kilograms) and only growing as large as about 20 inches (52 centimeters) the Chow-Chow is unfortunately known to have a very aggressive personality, especially around strangers.

They are usually held as pets, and due to their size they can be kept in apartments. The danger rests when they lack exercise or are just generally bored, and will sometimes lash out at strangers and even owners due to boredom."

Largest bird? Sort of. According to wikipedia:

Steller's Sea-eagle is the biggest bird in the genus Haliaeetus and is one of the largest raptors overall. Females typically weigh from 6.8 to 9 kilograms (15 to 20 lb; 1.07 to 1.4 st), while males are rather lighter with a weight range from 4.9 to 6 kilograms (11 to 13 lb; 0.77 to 0.94 st).[3] At its average weight, the Steller's outweighs both the average Harpy and the average Philippine Eagles by over 0.5 kilograms (1.1 lb; 0.079 st).[3]
...
The Steller's sea eagle has the second largest median wingspan of any eagle.[3] Both the wing chord and wingspan, at an average of 2.13 m (7.0 ft), are similar or slightly smaller than to those of the Steller's close relative, the White-tailed Eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), which is rather smaller in both weight and total length.[3]
...
The bill is very large. In fact, the skull (at around 14.6 cm (5.7 in)) and the culmen (at around 7 cm (2.8 in)) of the Steller's Sea Eagle are the largest of any eagle and are comparable in size to those of the largest accipitrids, the Old World vultures.[7][8]

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