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International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

npl.co.uk

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Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#471

Post by kiriakasis »

thrower123 wrote: post #396
kderbyma wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....

Clearly, people do think in 12s, because it's been a common thread in mathematics and measurement and calendaring through many different cultures going back to the Sumerians.

Let me clear something: how do you count? Can you multiply 63895 by 12? By 6? By 3? By 10? This is an standard, there have been coltures where the base was 60 and they could multiply 63895 by 60 easily. But now the whole world counts in 10.

I would be happy if that number was 12 but the simple fact that we write in base ten makes it not the case (also mathematically speaking 12 is divided by a square which causes weird things)

There is nothing wrong with 12 but as long as you cannot do 63895*12 easily 10 is better

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#472

Post by kiriakasis »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #311
naikrovek wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are definitely (and thankfully) not the norm. Imperial units are awful. They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. Those are literally the only redeemable qualities about imperial units, and they have nothin…

Imperial units are good for describing small items in 'feets' length, and for cooking measures. I don't think miles have an advantage over kilometers. In Canada, people have trouble understanding the various measures if '10ml' of this, or '10mg' of that. They do understand 'a teaspoon' or a 'large spoon'. I think we need some kind of colloquial measure for food.

Recipes in cups are one thing I cannot understand, I do have a scale, I can measure everything with that

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#473

Post by kiriakasis »

eslaught wrote: post #320
yedpodtrzitko wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divisibility by 12 could have benefits when working with small numbers, but on the other hand multiplying by 12 doesnt sound like operation you can do easily from top of your head...

Presumably, you'd also adopt a base 12 number system, so that decimal 12 becomes 10, and decimal 36 becomes 30, etc.

Good luck with that

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#474

Post by kiriakasis »

autokad wrote: post #416
quantum_magpie wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not! My foot is 25cm, far from '1 foot'. My thumb is 1.5 cm wide, far from an inch. The metric system is actually much more human for me. And I never needed to measure 1/3rds to 0.02mm precision without a precise measurement instrument. And if exact precision doesn't matter then all these arguments about fractions are moot, too!

considering your foot is 2 standard deviations from the mean foot length, that hardly proves anything

Well it proves a lot in my opinion. Feet are really non uniform in length by a lot.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#475

Post by kiriakasis »

stephen_g wrote: post #427
bnjms wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the right answer for Americans. The reason I prefer Fahrenheit is because it is the one I know what degrees feel like and because Celsius isn’t reported in enough resolution. If it was always reported to the half point I think we would be able to relate to Celsius better. And if I was making a population wide change I’d ensure reporting was always to the half degree.

We just report it to the degree (high of 34 tomorrow, 32 the next day). That's really plenty of resolution for non-scientific measurement.

And is also more resolution than the error warrants

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#476

Post by sonnyblarney »

kiriakasis wrote: post #472
sonnyblarney wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial units are good for describing small items in 'feets' length, and for cooking measures. I don't think miles have an advantage over kilometers. In Canada, people have trouble understanding the various measures if '10ml' of this, or '10mg' of that. They do understand 'a teaspoon' or a 'large spoon'. I think we need some kind of colloquial measure for food.

Recipes in cups are one thing I cannot understand, I do have a scale, I can measure everything with that

"Recipes in cups are one thing I cannot understand"

??

You drink out of cups every day; this is what humans, even you understand.

'A scale' is inapplicable while you're buying food or reading labels.

Why use a scale when everyone knows what a cup and teaspoon are? They are human measurements.

But it doesn't matter what you use, what matters is what people understand, and they don't understand grams and millilitres.

It's been identified as a health problem: people don't have an intuition for the units on labels - there should be imperial units to help them understand.

As for litre/gallon or pound/kg I don't think it matters ... but consider for a moment that everyone in Canada that I know still uses pounds. And feet/inches for height.

I don't know a single person that can tell you their weight in Kg, maybe heir height in meters but they'd have to think about it.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#478

Post by gnud »

unepipe wrote: post #394
Just_Smith wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point if you don't see the problem of an infinitely repeating measurement. That doesn't translate to a tangible action. You can't cut 1/3 of a meter, and there's no subunit to roll down to that can express the right number. It's not like Imperial system exists for uneducated people - it exists for trades people. Metric is the "simple" system, because it ties back to 10, a number we're all used to.…

I have a project where I need 3 wooden blocks, each perfect squares, to fit width wise in a 10” wide gap. I don’t want any space between these blocks sides of the gap they fit in. It’s an important project to me and I’m willing to pay a substantial sum of money. But from what I am reading it sounds like you’re not able to do the job, the blocks need to be 3 1/3” wide each. It’s a no-go if I see someone try to cut the…

I bet you that if I cut the blocks to 84.7 mm they would do just fine. If they don't, you take a file to one of them. And you have to do it like this with wood, anyway - because of imprecise saws, and moisture changes.

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#479

Post by kiriakasis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #382
int_19h wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new definition of mole is exactly that - it's just 6.02214076×10^23 items of whatever, and no longer depends on kilogram.

That's not a base unit, or a unit of any kind. What's it doing in a list of SI base units?

It is a base unit, a unit for lots of stuff, and it is not dimensionless it is 6*10^23/mol

Re: International System of Units overhauled in historic vote

#480

Post by jetzzz »

blhack wrote: post #232
kibwen wrote: post #188

See, the US wasn't being stubborn in not adopting metric, it was just waiting patiently for it to progress from beta to 1.0. :) (Fun fact: all the US customary units have been officially defined in terms of their metric counterparts since 1893: https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/documents/pml/wmd/m... )

I'm one of the weird people that actually really likes imperial units. For instance: 1 foot -- base 12. This is a superior base to 10. It can be easily divided into 4ths, 3rd, and 2nds. Base 10 can only easily be divided into 2nds. 1 inch -- an easily identifiable unit of measure for smallish things. About the width of my thumb. A pretty good unit. For low precision, inches become 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/6, 1/64, etc. Each…

> I also think that F is seriously superior to C.

Both are not metric though. Metric unit for temperature is kelvin.

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