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Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

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Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#81

Post by peteretep »

raldi wrote: post #20
kybernetyk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I have the same intuitive feeling with Celsius. I guess it depend on which temperature system you grew up with.

As I suggested on a parallel reply, could you say a bit more about why you feel it makes sense, perhaps with a chart like the one I wrote up?

For the British:

100 - Boiling water, cuppa tea

50 - Lawrence of Arabia

25 - The Great British Summer! Won't last, anyway

12.5 - Wear a jumper

6.25 - Wear a parka

0 - water freezes

-6.25 - Heathrow shuts down

-12.5 - Daily Mail reports weather causes cancer

-25 - Coldest reported weather in the UK

-50 - "I am just going outside and may be some time"

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#83

Post by dalke »

dghughes wrote: post #46
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is it just more familiar? We all like what we're accustomed to. Is there some reason Celsius 'makes sense'? Why does it make sense that 22 is comfortable but 40 is miserably hot? It doesn't make any more sense than 72 and 100.

The familiar part has changed for Canadians. I grew up during the transition period I was too young to know Fahrenheit, I had just entered school when the switch was occurring. My parents are pretty well used to Celsius now but still may occasionally use Fahrenheit such as some electronic device that allows F or C they choose F. It's still a but messed up though since Canada borders the US. The old joke being weather…

I was born and raised in Florida. I now live in Sweden. Because of experience, I understand C pretty well between -15 and +10, and between +80 and +100 (Swedish sauna temperatures).

Between +20 and +50 I'm still more comfortable with 70F-120F. I also spent some time in Illinois, where I learned to understand the subzero range from -15F to 0F.

At LOX temperatures of 90K and below, I'm most comfortable in Kelvin. ;)

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#84

Post by allegory »

jwecker wrote: post #77
allegory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this akin to the reddit meme of showing everything next to a banana "for scale" comparing body parts? I.e. non-deterministic and from a scientific perspective, total horse shit.

Totally. "Science" requires precision because science in many ways is the mechanism by which we learn truths with greater and greater precision. That doesn't mean though that science naturally abhors imprecise "for-scale" measurements though- they just reserve them for illustration and avoid using them for the actual science. (e.g., http://imgur.com/gallery/ESp2j - marianas trench scale)

Yep can understand that. Its important to visualise values and comparing to reference points is fine.

This comes to mind for unit conversions: http://www.weirdconverter.com

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#85

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

keithpeter wrote: post #30
dalke wrote: post #3

I have some difficulties with the issues described in the piece. "A yard is the distance from your sternum to the tip of your outstretched hand." According to folk belief, it's the distance from the tip of Henry I's nose to the end of his thumb. According to an early definition, "It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard." Who here has an idea of t…

UK: we work in Imperial but things are officially priced in metric, except for beer. Petrol is in pence/litre. So you get price per lb and per kg. Lengths are in millimetres on builders plans (to avoid mistakes with decimal points) but road signs are in miles. Makes teaching basic maths to adults a bit more fun... http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/maths_market-metric-proportion... You would be surprised how many people h…

It depends a huge amount on age. Younger people in the UK use metric except where imperial is already the de-facto standard (pints, MpH, etc).

It is really just older generations who continue to use imperial and to push it all over the place (often inappropriately).

At least all food labeling has been standardised on metric (which honestly for cooking and monitoring food intake is a huge improvement). I can like with other areas remaining oddly imperial for now.

I just hope as the older generation disappear we start moving closer and closer to true metrification (I'd even want to see km/h so it is consistent with continental europe).

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#86

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

harshpotatoes wrote: post #53

Could you imagine Boeing/lockheed/GM/some some oil company or any other manufacturer going up to their stockholders and saying: "This next year, profits will be significantly reduced as we replace every piece of equipment we own, replace every 1/4-20 screw with an M5, and redesign every aircraft/automobile/widget to meet new metric specifications"

As opposed to losing money BECAUSE they're using imperial as happened here: http://metricviews.org.uk/2007/11/boeing787-grounded/

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#87

Post by alayne »

melling wrote: post #8

Everyone seems to be missing the most obvious reason to convert. http://gizmodo.com/5786004/these-are-the-three-countries-who... We're a global economy. By the ends of the century, India and China will have pushed us down to at least #3.

The U.S. uses the metric system and the customary system.

Even many countries that are primarily metric use non-metric units like stones for body weight or feet for airplane elevation.

I agree that metric would be a better system, but your implication that we can't compete in the global economy with our mixed unit system seems hyperbolic since we have already been competing just fine.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#88

Post by walshemj »

Natsu wrote: post #74
vpeters25 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author is full of it. Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you This is true to at least my case: grew up under the metric system and after 15 years living in the US, still have to mentally convert dimensions to metric in order to make sense of them: - If you point at something and ask me how far it is, the first number that comes to my mind is in meters, then I say that number and add "yards"…

Just FYI, "feets" isn't a word. The plural of feet is feet :) Similarly, "softwares" isn't a word either, but I hear it a lot. There's only software. I say this because it's a common mistake among people who speak well, otherwise.

And "codes" !!

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#89

Post by jwecker »

I am not anti-metric by any means, but having done carpentry a lot in the past it always strikes me when this comes up that one of the central arguments for (a limited use-case of) the imperial system is usually glossed over: the fact that in many crafts (especially historically), using base-12 makes certain things much easier. It divides into 3rds far more easily, divides into 4ths slightly more easily, and still divides into 5ths with only one digit after the decimal.

Just like computer programmers have no problem immediately recognizing that 256 is 2^8, it became intuitive when working with the Imperial system (at limited scales) that 48 inches is the same as 4-feet but that it is also 3-stud-distances long (studs in walls are often placed 16 inches apart).

Even if you don't work in crafts where dividing things by 3 is more frequent than dividing by 5 it is easy to imagine how certain things might be more difficult if we used base-10 for time (as, it has been pointed out, has been attempted)- and thereby using the ability to easily divide an hour into 3 parts (for example).

Consistent base-10 and international standardization has advantages that far outweigh these minor things- but I think it's important to recognize that there is, surprise, a rational practical reason for sticking in some cases to Imperial units- it's not purely tradition or politics or their "organic-ness" (anymore).

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#90

Post by walshemj »

keithpeter wrote: post #30
dalke wrote: post #3

I have some difficulties with the issues described in the piece. "A yard is the distance from your sternum to the tip of your outstretched hand." According to folk belief, it's the distance from the tip of Henry I's nose to the end of his thumb. According to an early definition, "It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard." Who here has an idea of t…

UK: we work in Imperial but things are officially priced in metric, except for beer. Petrol is in pence/litre. So you get price per lb and per kg. Lengths are in millimetres on builders plans (to avoid mistakes with decimal points) but road signs are in miles. Makes teaching basic maths to adults a bit more fun... http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/maths_market-metric-proportion... You would be surprised how many people h…

I think for "work" the UK has switched to metric as Imperial is just such a PITA for anything technical.

For social/general use it still pretty much Imperial

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