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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

#281

Post by shmerl »

shakethemonkey wrote: post #277
shmerl wrote: post #259

> Customary measures make a lot more sense to us. Did they make any less sense in UK where they originated? Yet UK pushed through with switching to metric and went way further than US did. So this excuse isn't really valid. The real answer is, that in US politicians were too weak to push this through, because all kind of manufacturers and unions were pressuring them to stop the effort. In UK they just ignored the pre…

Like the other Imperial units, Fahrenheit is also one designed to be pragmatic -- it is scaled so that most temperatures are two digits. 100°F is approximately body temperature, and 0°F is a temperature about as low as one might expect the weather to naturally exhibit.

0°F is quite a pointless border. Brine freezing? Why would you care about that event to make the scale based on it? Water freezing on the other hand is way more relevant for common matters. So lower border of the 0-100 scale was chosen quite poorly from pragmatic standpoint. And natural temperatures can go above 100°F, so the upper border wasn't chosen conveniently as well. It's not as uncomfortable as Kelvin, but it's still way less pragmatical than Celsius.

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

#284

Post by Taniwha »

jwecker wrote: post #89

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 di…

I lived through the change in ZN a long time ago - really only two comments to make:

- for most things a saw cut is ~1mm wide - measuring in mm is good enough for most things, it's a great unit for carpentry

- a 2x4 (or 4x2 anywhere other than the US) isn't really 2x4, but then neither is a 5x10 (the exact same thing after you go metric)

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

#285

Post by tacticus »

jwecker wrote: post #115
Havoc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a rational practical reason for sticking in some cases to Imperial units That to me is the worst of both worlds. The optimal solution is to use one consistent system and the winner is pretty clear. >carpentry Certainly. The future is full of 3D printers though.

I would love to hear from someone who does carpentry (or some craft-like equivalent) with the metric system- specifically what kind of ruler/tape they use and whether it has a special 1/3 and 2/3 mark on it (since you don't want to have to eyeball 0.33333....) or if they just avoid dividing things by three altogether. Because the truth is, your perspective is a political one more than a practical one. The whole idea…

When i was building stuff out of timber i would typically only work in mm (or metres for longer lengths (timber is sold in full lenths of 6 metres or shorter bits at various lengths (at least in .au)) and don't need any further precision.

a 334 mm length will quite happily go in a 333mm gap. though again i'm not a professional carpenter i just worked with my father a lot.

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

#286

Post by tacticus »

merrua wrote: post #139
nabla9 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All natural extremes fit within +100 and -100 beautifully. 110 - sauna is too hot 100 - water boils in one atmosphere 50 - desert hot (record is 56.7 °C (134.1 °F) Death Valley, California, U.S.A. 10 July 1913) 30 - hot (for a finn) 25 - nice hot 20 - use more clothes below this 0 - water freezes, ice forms on roads, lakes etc. -10 - cold but OK with good clothes -20 - this starts to be so cold were you need to prepa…

This pretty good. I'd put in 40, so hot you forget it gets this hot (for northern europeans).

i should move to northern europe :\

40 (as a max) was a not overly bad summer day

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

#287

Post by eru »

TheMiller wrote: post #162
jwecker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the real issue is which units get names. Yes, you can do with 12cm exactly what you can do with 12in- but the latter gets its own named unit. The Imperial system has a preference for scaling its units by some slightly more practical number of sub-units- 12, 60, etc. I can imagine someone saying, for example, "why name 1000 centimeters as another unit? Can't I say 'thousands' using the same number of syllables…

Actually, I can remember at least one commonly used alternative name from my time in a German-speaking country. The term "Pfund" (literally, pound) was frequently used to refer to a half-kilogram. I remember it being particularly used in reference to a loaf of bread, by both bakers and customers. (That was a long time ago, don't know if it's still common.)

Still common in Germany.

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

#289

Post by rmc »

jahewson wrote: post #111
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"

There are costs to sticking with the imperial system. Non-US buyers want metric products which fit with their existing tooling. The factories of the world want all-metric manufacturing, which reduces costs. Error from unit conversion is a real problem. Designing new products in metric wouldn't require old products to be replaced with imperial. Each product line has it's own special repair kit, spare parts, already. I…

Ireland also went metric. We switched road speed limits in 2006ish, so all the signs say "km/hr" so you don't forget (it's also helpful to tell when you cross the border unto hr uk). Beer is sold in 568ml (1 pint), but milk is sold in litres.

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

#290

Post by rmc »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #85
keithpeter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

 (I'd even want to see km/h so it is consistent with continental europe).

Or even, consistent with the country the UK has a land border with.

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