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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

#151

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

You know, there's about 25 millimeters to the inch, and I've never seen anyone measure anything with more than 16th-inch precision for any construction job - maybe for very high-end cabinetmaking people use 32nds, but generally millimeters will give you more precision than you need, certainly if you're using a carpenter's pencil, which makes marks thicker than the smallest scale on a ruler.

I have no problem dividing things by 3 in metric. Rounding up to the next millimeter is going to result in an error equivalent to a couple of human hairs. If I'm working with wood and I need a perfect fit I'm going to be using sandpaper long before that.

Seriously, do you imagine that construction workers and craftsmen in Europe, Japan and the rest of the world spend their days ina state of helpless anxiety because of their inability to divide things with sufficient precision, or do you think they just get on with it and make buildings and furniture as good as any you can find in the US? The construction industry didn't collapse in the UK, Ireland, or Australia when they adopted the metric system.

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

#152

Post by Eleutheria »

kybernetyk wrote: post #14
raldi wrote: post #6

I wish the article had touched on temperature systems; I feel like Celsius is metric at its weakest. Farenheit has beautiful bands: 0's: So cold you have trouble doing anything and just want to warm up immediately 10's: Wear a ski jacket with hat and scarf and gloves 20's: Wear a ski jacket and hat 30's: Wear a ski jacket but leave it open 40's: Wear a wool overcoat 50's: Wear a heavy jacket 60's: Wear a light jacket…

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

From where I live, in C:

50 Summer time

40 Average hot day

30 Average cool day

20 WTF is going on? Did hell freeze over?

It never goes below twenty.

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

#153

Post by phaemon »

jwecker wrote: post #143
phaemon wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's really only one unit for length: the meter. Centimeters aren't a different unit, they're "hundredths of a meter".

You can call your lengths of timber "frobs" if you want, even in public! You could have people order them that way and sell them that way. The only requirement most places have is that you also specify what that is in meters so that people who don't know what a frob is, know what they're buying.

It just makes sense that your frobs should be a useful number of meters so that they can be divided or handled easily and don't require 15 decimal places to express.

Edit: I have a question for you: would you support changing your currency away from 100 cents to the Dollar to something like the old Pound with 240 pennies to the Pound?

After all, if you're talking about measurements everyone uses and need to divide up, it's far more commonly required for cash in people's everyday lives than length or volume or anything else!

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

#154

Post by guscost »

langarto wrote: post #40
upofadown wrote: post #17

Since our civilization seems to have moved to binary for actual computations I wonder if we will someday go back to thinking in terms of halves, quarters, eighths, etc. of some standard unit. Then people would mock the metric system for being implicitly based on the biological accident of ten fingers...

We should abandon base 10 and use base 16.

Base 12 is more useful. We should teach kids to count in binary (and convert it to base 12) then standardize all units around that.

And if some country refuses to go along with the plan, we should bomb them until they capitulate.

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

#155

Post by bluecalm »

acd wrote: post #79

We should all use the metric system and UTC time.

UTC time would make it convenient for internet sites and international travel but would suck for things like talking/writing about daily activities, schedules, times of the day. Now "a jog at 5:30am was pleasant experience because there was barely a soul on the streets" wouldn't allow you to imagine what the experience was (was it before sunrise or maybe late evening, or maybe middle of the night?).

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

#156

Post by guscost »

nice_uname_nerd wrote: post #117
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 strongly disagree. Using the right tool for the right job is worth far more than enforcing arbitrary universal consistency. In a math course, you'd measure angles in radians so you're dealing with nice small multiples of pi. I think it'd be downright dangerous to use radians in a fighter jet, say, when the precision you need is much better provided by degrees. Imagine if we enforced only one programming paradigm, s…

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

#157

Post by arethuza »

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.

Also, wood is beautiful.

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

#158

Post by arethuza »

walshemj wrote: post #90
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…

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

Anyone into walking/climbing is probably used to metric for heights and distances as OS maps have been metric for ages.

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

#159

Post by arethuza »

sliverstorm wrote: post #126
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.

The present is full of CNC machines, and yet cars are not milled out of billet aluminum. It's rarely worthwhile to fabricate something, when you can readily produce it from bulk forms like lumber or bar stock.

With the awesome exception of the Pagani Huayra:

http://www.pagani.com/huayra/partners/aspa.aspx

"Even the car's name tag positioned on the rear bumper, is carved in a 24 hour process from a solid block of aluminium. It is the Pagani way of reassuring its customers that their cars are built to their own standards exceeding the highest in the industry."

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

#160

Post by bronson »

phaemon wrote: post #135
bronson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but it would be a little harder, a little more to keep track of. More precision than necessary. People prefer to use dollars and not cents, don't they?

They're usually referred to as 2.4m and 3.6m if that makes it easier for you to track. I converted them to cm as I thought that would be simpler for people.

Now THAT makes sense to me. I can picture being on a team using those units to build a house.
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