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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

#141

Post by mgkimsal »

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…

"Who here has an idea of the size of a grain of barley dry and round?"

It's about a third of an inch.

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

#142

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

My house is 100 years old, and having some construction experience myself I take care of small maintenance issues. I'm European but I grew up with both imperial and metric systems side-by-side, so it was easy for me to pick up American standards on things like stud distances and so on. It is convenient to have some things like that standardized, although the particular standardized measures themselves are highly arbitrary.

However, because my house is old nothing is perfectly standard any more - all the angles are off by a degree or two, different parts of the house have slightly stretched or compressed over the course of a century, and so on. So whenever I measure something I end up noting both metric and imperial - imperial because I am going to be forced to deal with it at the store/supply depot, metric because I want to get the numbers right and I would way rather work in base 10 that mirrors my 10 fingers than juggling fractions of an inch (a unit which is divided into 16ths instead of 12ths because...er...um...).

Unfortunately, I don't expect this change any time soon.

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

#143

Post by jwecker »

phaemon wrote: post #131
jwecker wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give 240cm or 360cm a name (like STL for "standard-timber-length", 1 stl = 240 cm) and you're effectively doing the exact same thing as the imperial system. Then it's just a popularity contest (which is fine and appropriate and metric wins except for wrt time) but at least conceding the fact that base-10 scaling of units is not intrinsically superior for all units & situations. Edit: If the argument is that metric is…

I'm afraid your argument is circular. You're claiming that the ability to divide evenly is an intrinsic quality of Imperial, and then when I point out that actually it can be done in any measurement system (including metric), you claim that this makes metric like Imperial, because...well, because dividing evenly is a property of Imperial. Unless you're suggesting that timber should only be available by 1 inch, 1 foot…

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? What's worth naming a different unit is 240cm since that's used a lot with timber..."

Someone strictly advocating the metric system would say "that's the point, kilo is another way of saying 1000 no matter where you live in the world or what you're measuring. Feel free to call 240cm a 'frob' if you like, but please, only do so in private- don't order 14 frobs of lumber, order 33.6 meters." (edit: which is a perfectly valid point. It's the slow accumulation of frobs that made the imperial system untenable. We trade a little bit of efficiency at a local level for greater global efficiency when we adopt metric.)

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

#144

Post by harshpotatoes »

rakoo wrote: post #100
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"

It's not like the metric system was invented yesterday and will vanish tommorrow. Change doesn't have to be instantaneous, it can be gradual over the years (and, as the article pointed out, already is)

I agree that things won't change instantaneously, but I also don't think change will happen or even could happen as quickly as most of the talk on the internet thinks it should.

These articles make the rounds on the internet every few months, which gives the impression change should happen quickly. But, given the enormous costs that exist to switch over, I think it's more likely we'll see a gradual change over our lifetime.

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

#145

Post by alayne »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #138
chrismcb wrote: post #136

One of the biggest arguments for metric (other than the rest of the world uses it) has been that it is easy to convert from liters to kilometers. In your day to day life, how often do you need to convert from one thing to another? For most people, the answer is they don't. Occasionally in cooking you need to convert, other than that you rarely need to convert. So don't go and switch the system just because something…

Converting liters to kilometers? I need to know how to do this! How many beers is a kilometer? Gonna get my jog on.

A liter of water weighs a kilogram and is 1000 cm^3 (.001 m^3). These units are easily related. That's what GP is referring to.

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

#146

Post by fennecfoxen »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #138
chrismcb wrote: post #136

One of the biggest arguments for metric (other than the rest of the world uses it) has been that it is easy to convert from liters to kilometers. In your day to day life, how often do you need to convert from one thing to another? For most people, the answer is they don't. Occasionally in cooking you need to convert, other than that you rarely need to convert. So don't go and switch the system just because something…

Converting liters to kilometers? I need to know how to do this! How many beers is a kilometer? Gonna get my jog on.

Assuming a 500ml beer... (500ml / 1 km) = 0.5 square millimeters.

For interpretation advice, see also: xkcd. https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/

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

#147

Post by spiritplumber »

gilrain wrote: post #104
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.

Wood is an easily workable, relatively inexpensive, and, importantly, renewable resource. We'll be seeing more of 3D printing for sure, but you're kidding yourself if you think it'll replace carpentry.

I want a 3d printer / wood router hybrid. All I've managed to do so far is a 3d printer / laser cutter hybrid, but it takes forever for it to cut wood.

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

#148

Post by spiritplumber »

kalleboo wrote: post #107
rakoo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like the metric system was invented yesterday and will vanish tommorrow. Change doesn't have to be instantaneous, it can be gradual over the years (and, as the article pointed out, already is)

> Change doesn't have to be instantaneous, it can be gradual over the years As an example, NASA is partially-metric, partially-imperial. Of course, they have that famous failure attributed to mixing units...

I did a bit of work at NASA a couple years back, they wanted everything in millimeters (possibly to deal with the aftermath of that incident). Everything. Even antenna lengths.

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

#149

Post by JoshTriplett »

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…

> 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).

To some extent that's an artifact of the units we use. We could just as easily put studs 40cm apart, which is approximately the same distance, or 50cm (0.5m) apart, which would be particularly convenient.

From Wikipedia: "In the United States [...] typically placed 16 inches (406 mm) from each other's center, but sometimes also at 12 inches (305 mm) or 24 inches (610 mm)." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_stud)

A quick search suggests that 400mm is common in metric-using countries.

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