Convenience of the metric system

[bill352]

Originally Posted by Canibul

and nobody has even dared approach the subject of iambic pentameter.

Oh, great. Now there's another kind of foot.

(How's that for showing I know what it means?)

[Coops]

Originally Posted by bill352

Oh, great. Now there's another kind of foot.

(How's that for showing I know what it means?)

Now I can put that one in my mouth as well then.

Coops.

[Sand crab]

Originally Posted by avb3

But, how is the elk season going is the real question.

Slow right now I figure. It warmed up to 6 F but a beautiful day. Hunters are hating it and elk don't give a s%#t. Tonite is supposed to be cold again but then warming a touch and snow for Saturday.

[twoblocktom]

Both ways have there purpose. Example: if my friend in the Midwest says "it's only 12*F here." I can reply "it's 81*F here!" Or I can pause, think of his feelings, do a quick conversion, and reply "I know, it's only 27 here." And not cause him to question the decisions he has made for his life.


Sent from my iPhone using Cruisers Sailing Forum

[Benz]

Originally Posted by K_V_B

But the acceptance of the suitability of the nautical mile does imply that relating a unit of measurement to the size of the earth is not such a silly notion as you like to make it out to be.
anyway, it's pretty much moot nowadays, as all navigation is now done in meters, and then converted to whatever the user wants it to be displayed in.

I have never proclaimed that statute miles have any usefulness, since they are based on goodness-knows-what. But a nautical mile is based on a fraction of the earth's circumference at the equator, or rather, in an admission to the earth's bumpiness, an theoretical mean equator. So my favorite system DOES relate a unit of measurement to the size of the earth. The colossal joke of the metric system is that they based a unit on a mistaken notion of the earth's circumference, then had to adjust their meaning of the term a few times to get it where they wanted it. The nautical mile continues being a part of the arc of a circle of 360 degrees.

In what way are fathoms and feet more compatible with nautical miles then meters?

I navigate with a nautical mile comfortably rounded to 6000 feet. always found my way around just fine, and fathoms, yards and feet are a comfy fraction of that.



Oh. You can. You just have to start with an ephemeris in the right units.

No, you can't. It's obvious you have never practiced celestial navigation. Maybe it's silly to do so in this age of handheld GPS, but some of us still enjoy it, and we who have done it know that it cannot be done in Meters and radiand and gons. And if it could, we already have the tables, and nautical almanacs, and Bowditch, and maps (with which we can navigate [I]accurately[I] over areas larger than each UTM grid section without distortion). But I must recant my earlier statement about UTM: it is not, a you say, less accurate away from the equator; worse it is just as innacurate at the equator as everywhere else, if you stray from some fixed point. Lame.

And that good, logical reason is?

Can't believe I have to explain this: If you divide a circle into two equal parts with a line, then divide it again into quarters with a line at right angles to the first, then wish to divide it evenly again, you must use TWO lines. Next even division requires four lines, and so on and so forth. If you keep dividing it so you end up with 180 lines across the diameters. Each line, taken as a radius, represents one degree. The next logical division would end up with a number of degrees that was completely unwieldly, so they stopped at 360. However, without that even division, each line (if trying to use 400, or 500 or 3 radiuses), has no whole reciprocal: the opposite radius is skewed slightly. Anyone who has done any celestial navigating knows that reciprocals are absolutely necessary to plotting positions.

So you know that the T stands for Transverse, but obviously don't know what it means, or you'd know that the deformation increases as you go away from the central meridian of your UTM zone, not as you get away from the equator. Anyway, the amount of distortion remains under 1/1000 within each zone. For the purposes the UTM system was designed for this is sufficient. Being able to easily calculate distance and bearing if you have two coordinate pairs, without needing complex formula, makes a lot of sense to me.



So you'd have a nautical mile that is completely arbitrary set to a particular length. And this is more useful because?
Because it is Useful in the art of navigating a boat without the crutch of electronic devices.

And if one was going to change, changing to what the rest of the world uses makes sense. Just like the French are now even learning English, because that is what the world uses...

No it doesn't necessarily. While learning English can only be beneficial to all the rest of you, not everything EVERYONE else is doing is good, simply because they're doing it. I think I showed this earlier with my account of the first recorded boatbuilder.

All navigating is NOT done in meters and later converted by the user; all my non-electronic navigation has been conducted without the use of a single mm (whatever that is). I care not what inward processes my little GPS uses, as long as I get the results in deg/min/sec.

Oops, my reply is interlined with the quote--please read the whole thing as well as the additional comments at the bottom

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Benz

But a nautical mile is based on a fraction of the earth's circumference at the equator, or rather, in an admission to the earth's bumpiness, an theoretical mean equator. So my favorite system DOES relate a unit of measurement to the size of the earth. The colossal joke of the metric system is that they based a unit on a mistaken notion of the earth's circumference, then had to adjust their meaning of the term a few times to get it where they wanted it. The nautical mile continues being a part of the arc of a circle of 360 degrees.

Why is basing a dimension on the length of the theoretical mean equator somehow not silly, but basing it on the length of the theoretical mean prime meridian is?
Anyway the definition of the nautical mile ran in exactly the same problem as the meter did. The length fo the "theoretical mean equator" isn't know to a suffcient accuracy.
That is why the current definition of the nautical mile is simple stated as 1853m.
So the nautical mile is not defined as a part of the arc of a circle...

No, you can't. It's obvious you have never practiced celestial navigation

I once had to derive the formulas for celestial navigation from spherical trigonometry primitives as an exercise on an exam. That's a long time ago though.
The units used don't matter. As long as you use them consistently. You could do it in radians just fine. That was the whole purpose of the exercise...

I'm quite willing to elaborate, if you want...

But I must recant my earlier statement about UTM: it is not, a you say, less accurate away from the equator; worse it is just as innacurate at the equator as everywhere else, if you stray from some fixed point. Lame

It is accurate enough, and very convenient for its intended uses.
All surveying is done in a grid system.

No it doesn't necessarily. While learning English can only be beneficial to all the rest of you, not everything EVERYONE else is doing is good, simply because they're doing it. I think I showed this earlier with my account of the first recorded boatbuilder.

Your "account of the first recorded boatbuilder" doesn't show anything. It's a story, and I assume that for every story where someone does the right thing by not doing what everyone else does, there is a story where someone does the wrong thing by not doing what everyone else does.

All navigating is NOT done in meters and later converted by the user; all my non-electronic navigation has been conducted without the use of a single mm (whatever that is). I care not what inward processes my little GPS uses, as long as I get the results in deg/min/sec.

That is what I was refering too. The GPS uses metric internally. In fact, it will first just calculate your coordinates in a XYZ system.
Maps are metric too.

[HappyMdRSailor]

Originally Posted by carstenb

or is it +2.23? Oh damn - that's pounds to kilograms

hmmm - +3.3 - no that's feet to meters (approximate)

+3,7854... no that's liters to gallons US

Wait, wait I've got it - 4.54... Oh hell, that's liters to imperial gallons

1.2? not that's US galllons to Imperial Gallons

how about +10 (lbs)? No wait - that's pounds of water to Gallons Imperial

I'm lost.................................

NICE Carsten!
The most important conversion I learned in my youth was 0.62 ... Criss crossing all over Baja with spotty fuel sources... I called them "Dog Miles"...

Originally Posted by Charlie

a metric six pack is 42 beers according to Bob and Doug McKenzie. sounds like a good reason to convert.

On a more serious note. Del Marrey explained this one to me. In the imperial system thread pitch is explained by threads per inch. so if you need to move something a specific distance in a machine you can choose a bolt with a 20 thread per inch pattern whether it is a 1/4 or q1/2" bolt. You cant do this in metrics because the thread pitch is designed on the distance of the threads.

By that logic, the metric pitch does the same thing???
A 1.5 pitch moves the bolt head 1.5mm whether it's a M10 or M14???
Of course the pitch ranges are more diverse in metric. i.e. less overlap...

Originally Posted by Blue Stocking

What happens to distance when we go to "warp speed". Met. or Imp. ?

Reminds me of something that happened the other day... One of the kids had a grammar paper with the statement of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier at 1650 mph...???......???......???...

I said... That's not even close! Not ft/s, m/s, km/hr... not a typo... I grabbed a big red marker, circled it and put down a big red F!!! to turn back in...

Originally Posted by Coops

Honestly, you give somebody an inch and they take a kilometre.

Coops.

Good one Coops!!!

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by HappyMdRSailor

NICE Carsten!
The most important conversion I learned in my youth was 0.62 ... Criss crossing all over Baja with spotty fuel sources... I called them "Dog Miles"...



By that logic, the metric pitch does the same thing???
A 1.5 pitch moves the bolt head 1.5mm whether it's a M10 or M14???
Of course the pitch ranges are more diverse in metric. i.e. less overlap...



Reminds me of something that happened the other day... One of the kids had a grammar paper with the statement of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier at 1650 mph...???......???......???...

I said... That's not even close! Not ft/s, m/s, km/hr... not a typo... I grabbed a big red marker, circled it and put down a big red F!!! to turn back in...



Good one Coops!!!

Well chuck yeagar broke the sound barrier at a relatively high altitude (I don't remember how high), but since the speed of sound is dependent on temperature (not pressure or density) then his acutal speed at hdigth would have been less than what is necessary at sea level

Wiki:
The speed of sound in an ideal gas is independent of frequency, but does vary slightly with frequency in a real gas. It is proportional to the square root of the absolute temperature, but is independent of pressure or density for a given ideal gas. Sound speed in air varies slightly with pressure only because air is not quite an ideal gas.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by HappyMdRSailor

... Reminds me of something that happened the other day... One of the kids had a grammar paper with the statement of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier at 1650 mph...???......???......???...

I said... That's not even close! Not ft/s, m/s, km/hr... not a typo... I grabbed a big red marker, circled it and put down a big red F!!! to turn back in...

Although Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in October of 1947, achieving a speed of Mach 1.06 (662 mph) ; he also became the first to exceed Mach 2, achieving Mach 2.4 (1650 mph) in December of 1953, flying the Bell X-1A .

[Sand crab]

Some things just make more sense our way.

Can you imagine an inchworm being called a centimeterworm?
Or footsteps being called metersteps?
Or being a member of the mile high club? Kilometer club is kinda catchy though.

[Canibul]

How do you pronounce kilometers? I had a geology professor at Univ. of Texas who would interrupt whatever was going on to make a correction everytime he heard it pronounced 'kill OM' ature". He had this pet peeve, that it had to be pronounced "KEE' loh meter" Like the word kilo with meter on the end. Not killing a lommiter.

Of course since then I've circled the world a few times and heard it pronounced a couple other ways, too. Just curious as to what others say.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by Canibul

How do you pronounce kilometers? I had a geology professor at Univ. of Texas who would interrupt whatever was going on to make a correction everytime he heard it pronounced 'kill OM' ature". He had this pet peeve, that it had to be pronounced "KEE' loh meter" Like the word kilo with meter on the end. Not killing a lommiter.

Of course since then I've circled the world a few times and heard it pronounced a couple other ways, too. Just curious as to what others say.

well centimeter is not pronounced cent a lommiter. It is pronounced centi meter, so in that spirit kilometer is pronounced kilo meter (meaning 1000 meters)

[HappyMdRSailor]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Although Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in October of 1947, achieving a speed of Mach 1.06 (662 mph) ; he also became the first to exceed Mach 2, achieving Mach 2.4 (1650 mph) in December of 1953, flying the Bell X-1A .

Like my own personal GoogleGord.... This is why we love you so much...

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Some things just make more sense our way.

Can you imagine an inchworm being called a centimeterworm?
Or footsteps being called metersteps?
Or being a member of the mile high club? Kilometer club is kinda catchy though.

I was a member of the "kilo high" club as a youth... (well...not really, but it was fun to say...)

Originally Posted by Canibul

How do you pronounce kilometers? I had a geology professor at Univ. of Texas who would interrupt whatever was going on to make a correction everytime he heard it pronounced 'kill OM' ature". He had this pet peeve, that it had to be pronounced "KEE' loh meter" Like the word kilo with meter on the end. Not killing a lommiter.

Of course since then I've circled the world a few times and heard it pronounced a couple other ways, too. Just curious as to what others say.

Kill...
OM...
Mutter...

But then again... I am slightly uncouth in other facets...

[bill352]

Originally Posted by Canibul

How do you pronounce kilometers?

Clicks. It bypasses the problem and makes you sound like you've been there before.

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

Some things just make more sense our way.

Can you imagine an inchworm being called a centimeterworm?
Or footsteps being called metersteps?
Or being a member of the mile high club? Kilometer club is kinda catchy though.

You don't have to change your language. You can still walk in to a butchershop in Amsterdam and ask for a pound of ground beef. You'll get 1/2 Kg...