181–190 of 210 posts
I wonder if a successful TTIP agreement would be the catalyst for this? It's inexplicable that the EU/ EEA would allow for non-metric goods to freely flow into the market.
Should it also be illegal for the UK to teach Imperial units? I find the European attitude that government should ban everything they don't like perplexing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not proportional, but the equation for going from one to another is that of a line. I would think this would be called linear, but that mean something more specific?
In engineering, linearity refers to having two properties: a) f(x+y) = f(x) + f(y) where x, y, are two values, and f is a linear transform/function b) af(x) = f(ax) where a is constant In this case, the transform is the conversion between C and F. Since there is +/32 in there depending on direction, neither of these properties hold. For example, yards to meters is a linear transform. 3 yards converted to meters + 2 y…
I challenge you all to make two changes today with regard to this. First, switch your phone to give you the weather in Celsius. It gets super simple fast: 0 and below - Freezing. Wear a warm jacket and closed toe shoes or boots. 1 - 10 - Cold. Wear an overcoat (a light one if you are used to colder weather) 10-15 - Early spring time. Long sleeves are probably in order, maybe even a sweater. 15-20 - Late spring. Wear…
You do know that Fahrenheit was designed with humans in mind, while Celsius was designed with water in mind. The average person really doesn't care at what point water boils or freezes. They care about hot and cold, something F does better for humans than C.
Fahrenheit actually makes sense if you consider it from a weather perspective. The only way to use the Fahrenheit scale is to look at it as percentage of body temperature. Now, I know that the body temperature isn't 100 but 98.4. If you keep that part aside for a minute, it's very easy to explain the Fahrenheit scale. 50 degrees is 50% of your body temperature. 32 degrees is 32% of your body temperature. 100 degrees means that weather is equal to your body temperature. That means things like if the weather is hot or cold is just percent of body temperature. Also, 0 degrees is the temperature at which brine freezes. So, no matter how much salt you add, ice will not melt.
Historically, when the Fahrenheit scale was invented, body temperature was supposed to be at 100. It was later realized that the body temperature is slightly less but no correction to the scale was made.
Every other scale makes no sense to me. I convert pounds to kgs, miles to kms, gallons to litres etc.. all the time just to get a sense of measure. But for the weather, Fahrenheit is really good.
Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…
So that would be 914.4mm and 1219.2mm respectively (or 1.2192m I guess).
The wisdom of this was explained to me by my builder father that metres and millimetres are orders of magnitude far enough apart that you can usually figure out which is which without too much difficulty in a specification even if they are not annotated properly. Centimetres fall close enough to inbetween that it can be confusing. Plus only using two standard units of measure (one for small stuff, another for large) is less potential confusion then using three.
---
In Australia we started metrication in 1971[1] with 1974 being the effective tipping point when all road signs were changed.
Being born in the early 70's, I have a rough understanding of imperial measurement units. I can roughly understand if something is a few inches or a few feet, but can never remember how many inches in a foot, and have no concept of relation between feet and miles. Miles I understand as a bit over 1.5kms. The only length measurements we tend to still give in imperial is a person's height in feet and inches. The concept that over six foot is tall, and under five is getting to be short (for men at least) has such utility that it's stuck. Official documents will use metric though, usually centimetres.
Weight is similar. Kilograms rule, except when talking about the weight of newborns which will still often be given in pounds and ounces informally. But give me anything else in pounds and I have no idea (very frustrating when that happens in movies.)
Similarly Celsius rules. I know 100°F is a hot day, but wont boil an egg, and 0°F is colder than a mother-in-law's kiss, but those are rough approximations, and anything between those two I have to convert.
Gallons is a foreign language.
However all the colloquialisms such as giving an inch and taking a mile are still common.
And yet somehow despite all this, the world continued to spin.
Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…
But it shouldn't be all or nothing. For example, although most of the world uses the metric system, I think in aeronautics they still use feet to measure altitude. US could migrate to metric independently of the aeronautic standards. Additionally, I don't think that changing tooling should be a priority. Even in the countries that use metric system, we use nuts and screws measured in inches. They are usually called 1…
We don't come across them quite as much in the Antipodes. :-)
It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.
I disagree. When I'm working with computers, I find 24-hour time more convenient. It was a little difficult for the first few months, but now I really am ready to think only in 24-hour time. Unfortunately, my brain won't fully switch over because everything else in my life is 12-hour time. Having both means I can't help but stick to the old way. When my computer clock says 17, I know people will start leaving the off…
In Australia we use 12 hour am/pm almost all the time, even on official documents. We've been metric since the early 70's. I still have to pause and convert when I see a time greater than 12 (or, sadly, less than 1.)
It seems much more a cultural thing, that one.
Now if we could only stop anybody using m/d/y date formats...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure, if the paper sizes (A4, ...) are belonging to the metric system ... but of course, here a standardization would be nice. At least software producers seem to know (most of them) now, that there are also other formats as the "standard US formats".
They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it. The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely, and the other series are such that an Ax sheet fits nicely into a Cx envelope, and a Cx sheet fits nicely into a Bx envelope.
At some level you could say that the U.S. measurements are "based on metric" since almost all of them are defined in terms of metric units. You just have to apply the proper factor (which is a decimal, but a terminating one --- unlike the sqrt(2) business).
The US already uses the metric system. It is taught to every child in school. Engineers and scientists use it as their default. What the soi-disant pro-metric faction really wants is to stamp out the English system from the culture. Why can't they tolerate people measuring themselves, their recipes, their temperatures, and their vehicle speeds in their preferred units?
http://www.metric.org.uk/myths/imperial#imperial-was-invente...
I think there has already been significant discussion here about what the advantages (and disadvantages) are.
The US rarely uses metric in it's popular culture. Weather reports are in Fahrenheit, movies almost always use miles and pounds. By any measure of cultural output that you export that I've seen (and Australia is a huge consumer of your popular culture) you do not use metric.
I've heard the argument that the US already uses the metric system before by people who are resistant to the US using the metric system. It always sounds disingenuous.
But I may be wrong. I have not walked one point six one kilometres in your shoes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it. The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely, and the other series are such that an Ax sheet fits nicely into a Cx envelope, and a Cx sheet fits nicely into a Bx envelope.
How are factors of 2 and sqrt(2) "based on metric"? At some level you could say that the U.S. measurements are "based on metric" since almost all of them are defined in terms of metric units. You just have to apply the proper factor (which is a decimal, but a terminating one --- unlike the sqrt(2) business).