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goboatingnow · 10-11-2014, 02:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by nimblemotors

Fractions are just as simple as meters, it is just they don't express them conveniently, if they used 64 as the denominator, then 1/2 is '32', and 5/8 is '40' and wrenches and bolts can be specified with a single number, not a fraction, like how sheet metal gauges are specified, or "AN" fittings.

We could have a base 8 number system, if you just use fingers and not thumbs, and then kids could count to 24 with 8 fingers and 2 thumbs..

OK ask an average joe to add 3/32 nds + 7/64 +1 /8

now ask him him to say add 1.25 + 1.5 + 1.3, see who gets the answer correct

IN fact in the US, decimal fractions of inches are the most common of measurements in engineering etc, in essence a pseudo metrification

Fractions are not as simple.

**Wotname** · 10-11-2014, 02:41

OK ask an average joe to add 3/32 nds + 7/64 +1 /8

So that's 6 + 7 + 8

Hmm... 21/64

Make it harder next time

Benz · 10-11-2014, 03:03

Wow, far too many replies to tackle individually before work. Just a few things:
I disagree that anyone has proven that the whole world is right about this one. See the Noah story.
Speaking of Noah, I didn't make that up. You can read all about it in God's Word, where we also get the notion of the seven day week and the 24-hour day.
No, I wasn't being silly about what the length of a meter is. How many people have the equipment to measure the wavelength of whatever it is in a vaccuum ready-to-hand? How many colleges or scientific institutions have it? It's a really hard thing to measure, but without it how are all their balls-accurate metric rulers calibrated? The same way as a yardstick. So there is no more accuracy there than anywhere else.
It matters not that someone made the "official" measurement of a mile or inch or foot some string of metrical numbers--they existed long before that; it was probably done so that the people who refuse to think in anything BUT metric could do their conversions more easily. I have NEVER needed to convert a mile to kilometers, or an inch to cm.
It's good to hear the French were the first to ban Metrics. Too bad they jumped back on the bandwagon. As for the space race--without offence to the Native Americans, most technology in this country can be traced back to European roots--many of us came from there, after all. So you can't say that the moon race was accomplished by Germans, though someone of German descent worked on the program. It was an American rocket which made it to the moon, sent from a country who had not yet given themselves over wholesale to the metric system, while Russia, which had, lost.
Lots of replies, again, but no one has addressed the measurement of days, nor celestial navigation, or UTM grids.

Canibul · 10-11-2014, 03:15

So....by your reckoning after "The Flood" only Noah's family was left alive, huh?

So.....why are we all different colors? Mrs. Noah messing around with the livestock?

Sand crab · 10-11-2014, 03:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinworswick

i'm a carpenter,english and know both systems,give me millimetres over fractions anyday-and ask american tradesman who regularly use add/divide/subtract fractions what they do and a lot will pull out the app on the smartphone.

Actually us old school guys have used a Constuction Master calculator for years.
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They have been made for about 30 years and make feet inches and fractions easy. And just press that M key and it converts to metric. You can get a CM phone app but I'd rather use the CM itself because it's way cheaper to replace after construction abuse than my phone.

So what size is a 4'X8' sheet of plywood over there? And a 2X4?

Sand crab · 10-11-2014, 03:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canibul

So....by your reckoning after "The Flood" only Noah's family was left alive, huh?

So.....why are we all different colors? Mrs. Noah messing around with the livestock?

Your bible states that your god was going to destroy all humanity but took an exception with Noah. The bible couldn't possibly be wrong? It rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the flood waters covered the highest mountains on earth. Only Noah and his family survived. Then his sons were commanded to repopulate the earth but was the only woman left Noah's wife? Incest. Eeewwww.

Or the more logical approach is that the species evolved through evolution and the darker skinned people developed a natural pigment to safeguard the skin from the sun. As humans migrated from these tropics to colder lands they lost the darker pigment because they wore more clothes.

And by the way the ark was alleged to be 300 cubits long. A cubit is the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger or about a foot and a half so the ark was 450' long and 75' wide and 3 stories high. Now that's a lot of wood!

**StuM** · 10-11-2014, 04:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by nimblemotors

We could have a base 8 number system, if you just use fingers and not thumbs, and then kids could count to 24 with 8 fingers and 2 thumbs..

Actually, they would count to 30

**HappyMdRSailor** · 10-11-2014, 04:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by bgallinger

Who needs metric when America can send a B-52 bomber up to 35,000 ft., fly at 500 mph with a payload of 24,500 pounds, then drop a 750 Lb. bomb through a 3 ft. x 3ft. window!
Nuff said.

Damn straight Skippy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by dpddj

I have an engineer's tape measure that I love to pull out for others to use. It is in tenths of feet. You want to watch someone scratch their head?
But then ....I love RPN, too.

I use one of these too... and LOVE it...
AND...
RPN!!!

twoblocktom · 10-11-2014, 04:55

If you have trouble with fractions, try working with a dry waller! 9/16= half inch strong, 11/16= 5/8 strong, give me that damn tape!

**HappyMdRSailor** · 10-11-2014, 05:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by twoblocktom

If you have trouble with fractions, try working with a dry waller! 9/16= half inch strong, 11/16= 5/8 strong, give me that damn tape!

HA HA!

Good one!

valhalla360 · 10-11-2014, 05:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by K_V_B

No, the meter is 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.
Before that it was the length of a bar kept somewhere in Paris.
Before that they indeed took 1/10000000 of the distance from the equator to the pole, because that ended up a good size, about the length of a pace...
Incidentally the nautical mile is defined in a similar way, as the length of one arc minute measured on the equator. This gives all kinds of advantages when doing astronomical navigation. For the same reason surveyors in metric countries will measure angles in "gon", of which 400 go in a circle...

The bar and the wavelength are just attempts to correct a faulty unit. It didn't change where intent of the definition. It was faulty in that it had no intuitive value to humans and the earth is not a perfect sphere.

The foot has only one of those faults. It's intuitive but had to be standardized since not everyones feet are exactly the same length (I'm lucky, with shoes on I'm usually within 1/4")

A meter is actually not very close to a pace. Based on the original definition of a mile, a step is around 2.64' A meter is 3.281' (24% error). You could argue that romans were shorter than modern people but I have to occasionally pace out distances for work so I have a specific pace I use to be consistent. I'm 6'2" with fairly long legs and use a pace that is a bit longer than my normal walking pace. It's actually really close to 3'. For most of the guys in my surveying class, were pretty close to 2.7' (2% variance from the standard roman army pace)

I'm in engineering and deal with surveyors. I'm comfortable moving back and forth between systems but never have I heard of a "gon". Maybe it's similar to a Smoot.

Don't get me wrong. Metric has it's uses.
- If there are a lot of unit conversions involved and I'm doing hand calculations, metric is nice because the calculations are simpler. The downside is I often don't have an intuitive sense of what the answer should be so it doesn't provide a backcheck. I have to convert the answer to english units and then see if it makes sense.
- If there are few unit conversions or I'm doing them with a computer that could care less if it's base 10, I prefer english as it's not any harder to calculate and I usually have a good intuitive sense of what the answer should be.

valhalla360 · 10-11-2014, 05:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by avb3

My uncle was a civil engineer who emigrated to Canada in the mid-50's from Germany.

Of course, he was not used to the Imperial system used then in Canada. One of his first jobs was to estimate concrete requirements for a large public works program.

Back in the day of the slide rule (which I now have), he converted the specifications to metric, did whatever magic engineers do, and once he had he result, converted that end result back to Imperial measurements.

His company won the bid. He often talked about that before he passed away.

Oddly, I spent the first 5yrs of my engineering career doing the exact opposite in the late 90's.

barnakiel · 10-11-2014, 07:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benz

Because they based it on 10, which as has been pointed out is far less versatile than base 12. (...)

But 12 is a decimal notation number, and in decimal notation 10 is the base.

In other words, what you doing is trying to tell me, in English, that English is not a good base for this Forum, because French is more versatile.

Ille est*.

Now what?

(*)- Google translate.

(Google translate is a web based translation service based on English)

Back to square one. You need bigger guns, or else your guns are aimed the wrong way.

b.

Canibul · 10-11-2014, 07:40

One nice convenience of the metric system is that my 41 foot yacht when I'm bragging boat becomes only 12M or 39 ft. when I'm quoting length to a marina for dockage fees. Things seem to change around 40 ft.

**David M** · 10-11-2014, 07:57

I learned both systems pretty well. If I was king I would have the Metric system in the USA. With the Metric system everything divides by 10...which is usually easy math to do in your head. We did though send a man to the Moon using the Imperial system and nobody else has done that yet.

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