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The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

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Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#271

Post by fragmede »

wffurr wrote: post #198
master_crab wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was there again in the 90s after the wall fell. Fukuyama was boldly proclaiming the “end of history.” Newt started to kick at the edges with his combative policies but the inertia continued until the dotcom crash and 9/11 came along, and fully ended with the Great Recession.* * (From my viewpoint as a millennial. Gen Z might think the golden years were during Obama, or just pre-COVID. To some extent every generati…

>> It was there again in the 90s after the wall fell. Don't forget that connecting everyone to the internet was going to produce world peace, utopia, universal education and understanding. Instead of creating a conduit for memetic viruses to infect the world at unprecedented speed.

What we failed to see through our hope-colored glasses, is that the same Internet that lets a gay teenager in rural Arkansas or Iran, also lets the fascists connect to one another.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#272

Post by adrian_b »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #207
rickydroll wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get even more divisive, try converting people to metric baking measurements. Baking bread and cakes is much more repeatable if you use mass rather than volume to measure ingredients. The results from this recipe were never consistent when I used volume measurements. I converted to mass in metric and now I get consistent results. adapted from: [ https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594 ]( https://ww…

I use volume measurements for baking and I get consistent results all the time. Perhaps your recipe is especially gnarly, but that isn't true of all recipes.

Volume measurements work acceptably in cooking only when you use some volumetric spoons for quantities corresponding to a completely filled spoon.

Otherwise, if you use a vessel with markings for various volumes, you waste a lot of time to ensure that the quantity in the vessel lines precisely to a marking and its surface is perfectly level, in comparison with weighing the same ingredient. Moreover, you have one more vessel to wash.

I eat only food that I cook myself and I use only 2 kinds of volume measurements. I use a set of volumetric spoons for measuring various kinds of powders used in small quantities, e.g. salt and spices. I also use a graded beaker for water. For any other ingredients, it is much faster to put the vessel in which they will be cooked on digital weighing scales, and pour there each ingredient until the right weight is reached. Besides being faster, this also avoids the need to use additional vessels, which would need washing. The graded beaker is better for water only because it must be taken from the tap, where I cannot put the weighing scales.

For example, this includes making bread, when I pour water in a bowl that will be used for kneading with a graded beaker, then I pour the flour while weighing until the desired weight is reached, then salt is added with a small volumetric spoon.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#273

Post by samus »

ghkbrew wrote: post #168
btbuilder wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0C = Frozen!

Only if you're made of pure water at standard pressure. Which I'm not.

You better take precautions against frostbite below that temperature though. And a lot of things need to be watched as they could be frozen then.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#274

Post by samus »

RandallBrown wrote: post #239
ddellacosta wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pretty experienced American home baker I don't understand how you can assert that it's faster to measure volume with cups or etc. than to put a bowl on a scale and simply pour stuff in, measuring everything in grams. It's not even close in terms of speed, convenience, _and_ accuracy.

Maybe it's my skill with a scale, but it's much faster for me to scoop a measuring cup or spoon into a container and scrape off the top than it is to go back and forth adding/removing stuff on a scale.

So one just needs a conveniently sized measurement cup then.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#275

Post by AlotOfReading »

briffle wrote: post #190
AlotOfReading wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in construction, feet/inches/yards kinda sucks. 1:10 scale drawings are painful to do manually, division by 2 is a bit erratic, and bolt sizing is a horrible mess. Metric bolts are nice and consistent. With you on temperature though.

My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot. It is just so weird to see. Forcing decimal on a measurement that does not normally have it just makes me uncomfortable. https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...

I was an archaeologist, but use a similar tape measure. It's fantastic. It also works very well with GIS systems, since decimal degrees almost perfectly correspond to metric powers of 10 at tropical latitudes.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#276

Post by tzs »

buildsjets wrote: post #237

If you specify all your bolt heads as 19mm and 13mm, then a 3/4" wrench or a 1/2" wrench is usually good enough to get the job done. Similarly, a 1/4-20 bolt will fit in a M6 tapped hole if you use a large enough hammer. A hazardous aspect of US threadforms is that #10-32 machine screws and #8-32 machine screws have the same pitch. So you can fit #8 bolts in a #10 hole and sometimes, they FEEL like they made good tor…

> Reference the British Airways flight 5390 accident where the pilot got sucked 3/4 the way out the cockpit window and slammed against the side of the fuselage while a flight attendant clung to his feet and the co-pilot safely landed.

That incident led to a major change in how aircraft windows were designed. Instead of being fitted from the outside they were changed to being fitted from the inside.

When fitted from the outside the job of the fasteners is to keep the cabin pressure from blowing the window out when the plane is high up and the outside pressure is low. When the plane is on the ground gravity will keep the window in place and the fastener isn't doing much.

Botch installing the fasteners and you don't find out about until the window blows out at high altitude, like on that flight.

When fitted from the inside the job of the fasteners is to keep the window from falling in due to gravity when the plane is on the ground or at low altitude. At higher altitudes the cabin pressure pushes the window firmly into the frame and the fasteners aren't doing much.

Botch installing the fasteners and the window falls in on the ground or at low altitude which is a lot easier to deal with then a window blowing out at high altitude.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#277

Post by samus »

consp wrote: post #151
gonzalohm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. As an European living in the US. The only US units that I find useful are cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. And that's only for cooking. It's way faster to measure volume than weight (although less accurate)

It used to be based on relative size, so if you have a set of spoons and cups and use the same for all measurements they are ballpark right for your recipe (and some minor difference accounting for user error). These day's it's defined anyway in both metric and imperial. As soon as you start weighing something from the recipe it goes out of the window as that defines the rest of the relative measurements. For that re…

The validity of relative measurements in recipes starts to break down as soon as eggs are in play, which are not easily subdivided. On the other hand, that rarely matters and most recipes are fine with up to one more or less egg.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#278

Post by frankus »

consp wrote: post #163
walthamstow wrote: post #134

You can keep your fahrenheit, your feet and your gallons, for all I care, but one thing I will never abide is bolts and nuts and drill bits coming in fractions of an inch.

Everybody still loses the 10mm socket anyway, even in the US.

There's now a product for that: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-1-4-in-to-1-2-in-Drive-Metri...

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#279

Post by Someone »

nayuki wrote: post #233
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy the warmth of the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, or as me and my friends call it: a Meter.

For those who don't know: The original definition of a metre is 1/40 000 000th of a full circle of longitude of Earth. That was considered not accurate enough, so it was redefined as the length of a certain metallic bar kept in Paris. Then it was defined in terms of wavelengths of krypton light. Finally, it was redefined in relation to the speed of light. But each time the metre was redefined, the new definition was…

> For those who don't know: The original definition of a metre is 1/40 000 000th of a full circle of longitude of Earth.

That’s incorrect. It’s “one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle through Paris” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre). Different fraction, and much better defined (different circles of longitude may have different lengths)

> That was considered not accurate enough, so it was redefined as the length of a certain metallic bar kept in Paris.

I can’t find a reference, but I think it at least partially was a matter of practicality, not of accuracy. It’s not simple to measure that 10,000 km distance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_measurement_of_Delambre_an...: The arc measurement of Delambre and Méchain was a geodetic survey carried out by Jean-Baptiste Delambre and Pierre Méchain in 1792–1798 to measure an arc section of the Paris meridian between Dunkirk and Barcelona. This arc measurement served as the basis for the original definition of the metre.)

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#280

Post by kurthr »

briffle wrote: post #190
AlotOfReading wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in construction, feet/inches/yards kinda sucks. 1:10 scale drawings are painful to do manually, division by 2 is a bit erratic, and bolt sizing is a horrible mess. Metric bolts are nice and consistent. With you on temperature though.

My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot. It is just so weird to see. Forcing decimal on a measurement that does not normally have it just makes me uncomfortable. https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...

Note that ft/100 is almost exactly 1/8", which is also the most standard resolution used in construction. I love decimal feet (it's worth noting that there used to be a survey foot, but it has been deprecated).
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