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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

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Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#441

Post by tadfisher »

wyclif wrote: post #437
tadfisher wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you aren't a surveyor, that is... that industry has stuck with the previous American standard of 1/39.37 meters, for obvious reasons.

Land surveyor here. I understand the issues in play here deeply. Field calcs, just to name one thing, would be greatly eased by metric. But here's the thing: you can't make an old surveyor think in metric. The way I visualise distance is Imperial. This is deeply ingrained.

Well, that, and it would be a monumental task to update historical metes & bounds measurements for most of the eastern states. Or so I assume.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#442

Post by tedunangst »

jlgreco wrote: post #438
tedunangst wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One third quart = 2/3 cup. I have a 2/3 measuring cup in my kitchen. I've never heard anyone say a third gallon, but just convert to ounces. 128 / 3 = 48. That's 3 pints, btw. Of all the "math is hard" arguments, I think the kitchen measures are the least convincing. Everything is a power of two. You can halve or double a recipe without even thinking.

All of these conversations, even with special cases already marked on kitchen equipment, are all more complicated than the stupidly simple equivalents. Why in the world would you choose imperial over metric, unless you are just an old curmudgeon? You can think the arguments for metric are weak (most of the world disagrees...), but the arguments against it are nonexistent. (Dividing by two is just easy in a decimal nu…

The cost of switching is non zero. I'm not bothered by metric, I can deal with it just fine. I'm just not bothered by standard units. I would never propose switching to standard from metric, but I just don't see what all the fuss is about.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#443

Post by cygx »

tedunangst wrote: post #415
lutorm wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's "better" because it's just an offset Kelvin scale. So when you're doing delta calculations, there's no difference. And really, most temperature calculations are relative.

Fahrenheit is just an offset Rankine scale.

Does anyone actually use the Rankine scale?

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#444

Post by tadfisher »

ahlatimer wrote: post #318
blhack wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been inside of a hardware store? Every hardware store I've ever been to has a section for metric. Our lab, for instance, keeps a supply of bolts, and as far as I remember /only/ has metric. Also every socket set I've ever used has a metric and standard set. Why would you care about road signs? And why would you care about a tape measure that is /only/ in metric? The second one seems kindof silly. The on…

Or if you happen to ask anyone who works on a vehicle that isn't from one of the American manufacturers. My Toyota used all metric, AFAIK, and all of my motorcycles have used metric. I can't say I've ever even used the standard set of tools that came with my toolset (which had both metric and standard).

Toyota is weird, in that all of the nuts & bolts on their cars are metric, but their tolerances in the factory service manual are listed in thousandths of an inch. I did a double-take when I saw the deck flatness tolerance of ".002" for my car, for example.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#445

Post by acomjean »

I've Given up.

BUT, the metric system in the US has ben usurped by base 10 US units. As a civil engineer the measuring tape was in feet and "tenths of feet". A "mil" is a thousandth of an inch. I worked for the US government civil engineers in the 1990's. They were going to issue contracts in metric years ago. I don't think they ever did.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#446

Post by Nitramp »

lhnn wrote: post #399
acangiano wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better visual evidence: http://signword.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/423399_101506340...

mm/dd/yy makes sense to those who use it, given our cultural adjustment. My father's argument for imperial is how easy it is to divide measurements. In woodworking, especially. 10 is divisible by 2 and 5. Powers of two are more flexible for division.

That's why plywood in Europe is usually sold in sheets of 240 cms, i.e. 2.4 m, which seems easier to calculate with, in particular when adding lengths.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#447

Post by jacquesm »

DannyBee wrote: post #429
jacquesm wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. So that's the source of your confusion then. I'm glad we got that cleared up. Since the Inch is specified as 25.4 mm you can convert any measurement in Inches into an exact equivalent in metric. But that does not make it a metric size. Inches: 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1" etc and various measures in between (5/32nd for instance). Metric: 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, etc. and various measures in between (5.5 mm for i…

Uh, if something is milled to a metric size and tolerances in metric, it is in fact, a metric size, regardless if it happens to match some imperial sizes. There is no requirement that metric sizes be only integer whole numbers, and if you are going to claim that, for example, all lumber purchases outside of the US are done to exact integer metric sizes, that's just false. It may be the construction industry purchases…

Lumber isn't 'weird' the sizes make perfect sense, if you're constructing something beyond a picknick table you'll see the logic immediately. Nobody said anything about integer whole numbers.

But I can't seem to get around your mental block that the system you are working in is Imperial, not metric so I'll leave it at this.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#448

Post by VLM »

jacquesm wrote: post #333
VLM wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else on HN work on their own car? My ancient unbreakable domestic mfgr '97 GM car is all metric. Right off the top of my head the oil drain plug is a M12-1.75 bolt. I just replaced the battery two weeks ago, all metric (I think they were M10 bolts? I was in a huge hurry). Seemingly everything on my GM car is metric, and it was built 15 years ago, I can only imagine how metric everything in auto-land is no…

That would make good sense. What about things like wheel nuts, hitch attachements and so on? The ford I had had a surprising amount of imperial on it about a decade ago. Presumably under the hood and inside the engine it was all metric though.

"What about things like wheel nuts"

I can verify its 30 mm with my wheels/hubs on my car. Supposedly that's "unusual" and most cars that size are 28mm or 32mm so people end up mystified why their 28 doesn't fit something that looks visually at a distance like a 28, or they use a way too big 32 and neatly round off the corners of the nut when it slips. I imagine using an imperial impact wrench is an effective way to round off the wheel nuts on a Saturn.

I would imagine if you bought aftermarket wheels/studs alloy or steel you could have most any size within a narrow range that's compatible with the hub.

"hitch"

LOL at the idea of my tiny little 2-door subcompact towing anything like those giant RV trailers. I do know standard american trailer hitch on pickup trucks has been 2 inch square for a century or something like that. Kind of like how we're not going to change every piece of railroad track and rolling stock in the USA to a metric equivalent rail gauge any time soon, until the end of time we'll be stuck with 50.8mm trailer hitches. I bet you could slam a european 50mm in the hole within manufacturing/rust tolerances.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#449

Post by tadfisher »

jacquesm wrote: post #333
VLM wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else on HN work on their own car? My ancient unbreakable domestic mfgr '97 GM car is all metric. Right off the top of my head the oil drain plug is a M12-1.75 bolt. I just replaced the battery two weeks ago, all metric (I think they were M10 bolts? I was in a huge hurry). Seemingly everything on my GM car is metric, and it was built 15 years ago, I can only imagine how metric everything in auto-land is no…

That would make good sense. What about things like wheel nuts, hitch attachements and so on? The ford I had had a surprising amount of imperial on it about a decade ago. Presumably under the hood and inside the engine it was all metric though.

I daily-drive a 1997 Ford Ranger pickup. The engine was produced in Cologne, Germany, and thus everything under the hood is metric. The body & chassis was built in Dearborn, Michigan, and thus everything not under the hood is SAE.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#450

Post by VLM »

alayne wrote: post #402
brudgers wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bunch of fictions. Americans with wrenches tend to have both SAE and metric sizes. The thread pitches of metric bolts differs from SAE standards, and drain pipes are sized on inside diameter not outside because ID is relevant to capacity. Tape measures have standard units because they're standard where tape measures are used - in construction. Where it makes sense, metric is common, e.g. soft drink bottles.

Two liter bottles are an anomaly. Every other pop container is in ounces. Cans are 16 ounces and bottles are usually 20 ounces. I can't think of a situation where "metric is common" for consumer items.

California wine 750mL bottles. Obviously the imported stuff is in mL but so are the domestics.

Every OTC pharmaceutical I've ever seen, pretty much.

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