Other

This page covers various odd topics that don't seem to fit anywhere else.

Shoes Clothes Numbers Mohs scale

Shoe Measures and Clothes Sizes

While on the subject of shoes, here are standard shoe sizes for britain, Europe and USA. Note that the Americans have different shoe sizes for men and women, although boys and girls seem to be the same.

British	European	American (men/boys)	American (women)	American (girls)
8	26			8.5
8.5	26.5			9
9	27			9.5
9.5	27.5			10
10	28			10.5
10.5	28.5			11
11	29	11.5		11.5
11.5	30	12		12
12	30.5	12.5		13.5
12.5	31	13		13
13	31.5	13.5		13.5
13.5	32.2	1		1
1	33	1.5		1.5
1.5	33.5	2		2
2	34	2.5	4.5	2.5
2.5	35	3	5	3
3	35.5	3.5	5.5
3.5	36	4	6
4	37	4.5	6.5
4.5	37.5	5	7
5	38	5.5	7.5
5.5	39	6	8
6	39.5	6.5	8.5
6.5	40	7	9
7	40.5	7.5	9.5
7.5	41	8	10
8	42	8.5	10.5
8.5	42.5	9
9	43	9.5
9.5	44	10
10	44.5	10.5
10.5	45	11
11	46	11.5
11.5	46.5	12
12	47	12.5

Here is a description of the internal logic behind the shoe systems!

A correspondent claims that a British size nine boot is very close to being a foot long.

Clothes Sizes

I've always admired men for their ability to buy clothes by collar size!

I refuse to supply sizes lower than a size 10 for women. These are UK women's sizes. I believe that the US sizes are 2 less, so a UK size 10 is a US size 8, and the infamous US size 00 is a UK size 2.

Numbers

This website used to have a section on strange number systems. I have since moved this to my Numbers website. This covers number systems from ancient cultures, such as Egyptian, Babylonian, Chinese, Greek, Roman and Mayan, and modern Binary and other number bases. It also covers Arabic numbers (our current system), going into such delights as long division (yukk!) It gives French and German words for numbers, and how you count sheep (under Numbers as Words). It even has an interactive abacus, slide rule and Napier's Bones. (Never heard of them? Well, go and find out, then!) Finally there is an introduction to more mathematical concepts such as pi, e, i and so on. If you like units of measure, you may find this website a lot more interesting than you would have thought. Except for long division, of course!

Mohs scale

Another 'plug' for another of my websites!

The Mohs scale of hardness of minerals is an elegant method of working out how hard a mineral is. Mohs chose ten minerals of different hardness, and assigned to each a number from 1 to 10. A lower number mineral is scratched by a higher mineral. So you can work out how hard a mineral is on the Mohs scale by trying to scratch it with the different standard minerals. There are more sophisticated methods of measuring hardness nowadays, but the Mohr scale is widely quoted in all mineral books, and can be used by anyone to help to identify minerals (since a given mineral usually has a Mohr number). All you need is the standard minerals (which are quite easily available unless you want gem quality) and not mind scracthing your specimen!