Convenience of the metric system

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by clockwork orange

On a similar theme, I learned in imperial in school growing up in NZ, but like Canada we switched to metrics somewhere in the mid 70s, as I remember it, we didn't dick around like some countries trying to phase it in but just switched, which i think is why it stuck. In 1979 i was brought to the US along with 3 other Kiwi boatbuilders to build a 64ft ketch that was designed in NZ in metrics. We had a team of workers who came from all over the country to work on the project and learn the trade. After watching them waste all kinds of time trying to convert back to the imperial we had to confiscate all measuring implements and give them metric only tapes and rulers and then everything went smooth. I also find it much easier lofting out hulls designed in metric even though i learned in imperial and have spent much more of my life working in imperial. I really don't understand why we have not change to be in line with the rest of the world, massive national ego maybe. Most of our industry works in metric and have for decades.

Steve.

The problem with "just switching" is a small project typically starts a year or two out and big projects can be in the works for 5 or more years (I'm working on the initial stages of a major urban freeway project that's not projected to be complete until 2025). All those projects started before the change would have to be redone. The entire system would have ground to a halt, so they made it all new projects going forward. Not to mention all the existing infrastructure (much of it with a 20-50yr life ahead of it) was all based on english units, so any project that wasn't a total from the ground up reconstruction had to accomodate the english units anyway.

They did make it to full conversion but after a year of that with everyone still converting back and forth to meet the letter of the law and lots of mistakes (several costly ones) and complaints from everyone, they gave up and came to thier senses and went back.

In the end, it was change for the sake of change.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by jeepbluetj

As a 'merican, I wish we would have metricized in the 70s. Water freezes at 32? Boils at 2whatever? That's kinda silly. And, I wouldn't need two sets of every wrench and socket in my toolkit.

Water doesn't neccessarily freeze or boil at 0degC or 100degc. They only do that at a specific pressure.

Actually 0deg F is very logical. It was the coldest temperature that he could produce in the lab. It turns out it wasn't the coldest possible temp but for the time it was a good improvement.

If you don't care about intuitive, deg K make more sense as it's tied to absolute zero but I'd have to look up the freezing and boiling point because while it is more logical from a scientific perspective, it's not very intuitive.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by K_V_B

No, defining a unit in a way that does not require the existence of a physical object is superior to one that does. As the Brits found out when a fire in the house of parliament destroyed their standards. De US has defined their customary units in function of metric units since then.


The foot is not intuitive at all. Not to me. But then "intuitive" is highly subjective. When the foot was a common unit in Europe it's length varied from 250mm to 370mm. That's how intuitive it was...
The metric was designed by the French in order to facilitate trade, as up to then every town in Europe had it's own definition of "foot".
(Btw, royal body parts never played a role in the definition of the length of a foot)

It's only since the mid 20ieth century that the US foot is officially the same length as the UK foot! (A feat that was achieved by defining the Yard as being 0.9144m)

Where metric is very useful is when cooking. When a recipe is all g and ml all I need is a scale. When "cups" and "tablespoons" and "ounces" come in it gets awfully complicated.

You are confusing standardization with the original intent.

The intent of the meter never changed. It is intended to be a fraction of the radius of the earth. Because the average Joe had no intuitive clue what the radius of the earth was or how the meter related to that, they created a standard bar. Then later as accuracy became more important and they found out that the earth wasn't round, they came up with the light wave definition to correct that.

All of that can be (and has been) done with the foot. No one is saying standardization is a bad thing. I suppose if you have no feet and see no people with feet...it wouldn't be intuitive. Other than saying a meter is a little longer than a yard...there is nothing intuitive about a meter but that's really more saying a yard is intuitive and you can do a rough conversion of meters to get to yards to get a feel for a length.

[clockwork orange]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

The problem with "just switching" is a small project typically starts a year or two out and big projects can be in the works for 5 or more years (I'm working on the initial stages of a major urban freeway project that's not projected to be complete until 2025). All those projects started before the change would have to be redone. The entire system would have ground to a halt, so they made it all new projects going forward. Not to mention all the existing infrastructure (much of it with a 20-50yr life ahead of it) was all based on english units, so any project that wasn't a total from the ground up reconstruction had to accomodate the english units anyway.

They did make it to full conversion but after a year of that with everyone still converting back and forth to meet the letter of the law and lots of mistakes (several costly ones) and complaints from everyone, they gave up and came to thier senses and went back.

In the end, it was change for the sake of change.

Obviously projects that are underway would continue to completion without changing the measurement units, it would be silly to over complicate things. I think people try to make things more complicated than they need to be. One of the problems with the imperial system is measuring with fractions, while it is not a problem for those of us that measure things every day i have found that a lot of the population does not, so that even though they learned to measure in school they can not measure accurately with fractions and in fact do a better job using mm. I make a portlight lens replacement product that requires the customer supply me with accurate measurements and i have them do it in mm for the above reason. Too many people were supplying bad measurements in fractions.

Steve.

[Canibul]

Originally Posted by jongleur

I have a 12 ton jack and a 6 ton jack. How
do they fit in?

I was thinking about 101 proof Jack. and I'm confused. If proof is a percentage, then it's by definition metric, right? Per centage means 'per hundred". Pure metric.

And if there's a hundred and one of them, and it's metric, then there has to be a thousand of them. Correct? 100 proof equals 50 percent, but that causes other issues so I'm ignoring it for now.

So what I want to know is, where's the thousand proof Jack Daniels being kept?

[bill352]

Originally Posted by Canibul

So what I want to know is, where's the thousand proof Jack Daniels being kept?

I keep mine hidden in the garage behind a bucket of propwash and a large box of spark plug gaps.

[Andrew B.]

Press #1 for SAE, press#2 for metric, press #3 for both, press #4 for I don't
know, press 0 for a cookie and info on how to win a free tricycle...

[Canibul]

Oh man, be careful admitting that on the internet. You KNOW what those out of control feds might think about thousand proof ethanol and spark plug gaps in the same location.
Highly suspicious.
It would be safe in Davy Jones' locker, I suppose. Might have to weight it with suspicion.

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Actually 0deg F is very logical. It was the coldest temperature that he could produce in the lab. It turns out it wasn't the coldest possible temp but for the time it was a good improvement.

If you don't care about intuitive, deg K make more sense as it's tied to absolute zero but I'd have to look up the freezing and boiling point because while it is more logical from a scientific perspective, it's not very intuitive.

I like Fahrenheit. 100 is really f'ing hot and 0 is really f'ing cold. It's supposed to be 8 below tonite and I'm gonna have to figure out new cuss words for that one.

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

You are confusing standardization with the original intent.

The intent of the meter never changed. It is intended to be a fraction of the radius of the earth.

You are making an assumption about the original intent which is wrong.
The original intent of the meter was standardization. It was doing away with 100s of systems of measurement and replacing them with one that was more logical and better.
Jefferson had a similar idea. He wanted to use the foot, and base 10, but this had the problem that the next unit up from a foot would end up to large to be practical.
The French revolution was inspired by the American one, and Jefferson's ideas were well known. So it was decided that the new system would use base ten, and would have a base unit of a similar size as the yard.
Now they could have gone about it in several ways. They could have for example averaged all the values of the foot in existence, made that the standard, and declared 3 foot the new official yard. Or they could have used the foot as it was in use in Paris.
You know what they would have ended up with if they'd done that?
More or less the meter. As the foot in Paris was about 330cm. Later Napoleon would reintroduce the foot, as exactly 1/3 of a meter....

Now, the scientists tasked with the definition of a new system of measures thought it was a neat idea to relate the unit to the physical dimension of the earth. They were unaware of the issues that would bring, and ultimately failed, but its still an interesting story. End we ended up with a new unit, which nowadays is the basis of all measurement systems in the world.

Because the average Joe had no intuitive clue what the radius of the earth was or how the meter related to that, they created a standard bar. Then later as accuracy became more important and they found out that the earth wasn't round, they came up with the light wave definition to correct that.

All of that can be (and has been) done with the foot. No one is saying standardization is a bad thing. I suppose if you have no feet and see no people with feet...it wouldn't be intuitive. Other than saying a meter is a little longer than a yard...there is nothing intuitive about a meter but that's really more saying a yard is intuitive and you can do a rough conversion of meters to get to yards to get a feel for a length.

There is nothing intuitive about a foot either. Where I grew up the "foot" was 274mm, (but hadn't been in use for over two centuries). That makes that the meter is closer to the length of my pace, then the local "foot" is to the length of my foot.
I still don't see why a yard would be more intuitive.
Or why this would matter...
The average Joe in continental Europe has absolutely no problem whatsoever with the metric system.

[mikeguyver]

This sounds more like one of those "my penis is bigger than yours" arguments. I am an AMERICAN, and I refuse to be dictated by European dogma. You go ahead with your metric system, it's ok. If you don't like the Imperial system, don't use or learn it....simple.
Freedom, Liberty and Justice foster creative minds. And that is why so many love this country and ignore criticism of those who don't. So, go ahead and criticize my post because "frankly Charlotte I don't give a damn".

[Andrew B.]

What is your mental reference for dimming your headlights ?

Originally Posted by Lars_L

I have 0.15 mile to my busstop. If you measure in imperial units, how do you say? 0.15 mi or 264 yd? (I shall admit that I used the computer for the convertsion).
I would say it's about one block to my bus stop.


I fully understand way the engeneers use the metrick system and use there brain for the construction and let the PR department take care of the conversion.

[Lars_L]

Once upon a time, in the begging of time (at least the begging of measuring time) monks measured the time it took for the sun to have come fully up until it came to the horizon again. Then the divided that time in 10 equal parts. Then they did the same when the sun has gone under the horizon and came up again. I done know if they did it on equinox or they took a mean value over the year. The result is the same. After a while it was concluded that there also needs a time for the sunrise and sunset, and they set that time to one fifth of the day, and that way we got 12 hours for a day. But notice that they began with 10 but they did a little mistake.

[Normanby]

I read an article once by a navigator (I forget the name) who was lamenting the fact that a day is 24 hours. He reckoned it should be 36, to better reflect a circle (360 degrees) saying that that would make longitude easier to figure out.


Matt
Compass 28

[Lars_L]

Originally Posted by Andrew B.

What is your mental reference for dimming your headlights ?

I think that the imperial system is stupid, and it may be shining through in my headline. I was interested if there was any good defense for the system, and so far I have not seen anything. The best thing is that you're used to it, but I'm also at the metric. It is a comfort that you in science has gone over to the metric. They need their brain to other things than, for example, convert miles to yards.