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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

#301

Post by skrause »

xxs wrote: post #268
davidw wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you Yeah. I live in Italy, but grew up in the US. I'm happy with the metric system and wished we had it in the US too, but for certain kinds of measurements, it still doesn't feel quite as natural to me. It depends entirely on how much I use something - temperatures in metric are second nature, because you feel that on your skin every day. Things like people's…

Oddly enough the SI unit is Pascal (Pa) or N/m2, not atmosphere. The technical atmosphere is: around 98KPa, it's not really metric.

The most used unit for pressure used in Germany is bar (= 100 kPa) so that you don't have to deal with really big numbers all the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(unit)

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

#302

Post by StuffMaster »

shmerl wrote: post #281
shakethemonkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>relevant for common matters

Put it this way: 0 degrees is really cold for a human and 100 is really hot for a human. Water doesn't care if it's cold.

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

#303

Post by sbuk »

bronson wrote: post #170
phaemon wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(replying to the wish for a name for 2.4m; edited out): Why for the 2.4m, but not the 1.8m or the 3.6m? Surely it makes just as much sense to refer to it as the "two point four" as anything else?

Oops, I'm sorry for the edit. You & I had the same thought: singling out 2.4 was just muddying things. Calling the unit the "2.4" sounds great. But that doesn't sound very metric to me...

A piece of 2" x 4" timber is still referred to as "2 by 4" in the UK, except it now measures 50mm x 100mm (actual conversion is 50.8mm x 101.6mm, the difference being moot when building scale is taken into account)

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

#304

Post by NickNameNick »

bronson wrote: post #232
phaemon wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not to you, but most folk I know (in the UK) aren't quite so hung up about it. I'll sometimes refer to a half-liter as a pint, or a liter as a "couple of pints", or a meter as a yard. Though the pint is by far the stupidest unit. Why on earth wasn't it standardised at 500ml? It would have fixed pints, quarts and gallons all in one go! I know, you can think up immediate objections, but having 568ml to the pint…

Nah, I just couldn't picture anyone doing woodwork in hundreds or thousands of units (now, where did I get that idea...?), or dividing base 10 units. Since it sounds like wood is sold and worked in base 12, I'd use metric no problem. But that makes the difference between imperial and metric pretty arbitrary, doesn't it?

I've actually worked in the construction industry in New Zealand, which was thoroughly metric when I was building houses ~10 years ago.

And we did everything in mm, standardised timber was "100x50" - mm was assumed, which was close to 2x4 Inches. (Actually, I think the finished standardised timber is smaller than 100mmx50mm, but for some reason was still called 100x50) sheets of Gib plaster (Drywall?) were 1200x3600,(possibly 1600x.. I don't remember) sometimes bigger. rooms had 2400mm or 3600mm stud heights. 90mm nails were used to assemble the house frames, and 50mm nails were used when the 90mm nails would have been excessive.

We only really used Meters when we were being vague - "Go about a meter further out!" and usually converted to mm when we were actually cutting or fastening something. I never poured any concrete myself, but I'm pretty sure the foundation boxing would have been measured out to the mm, even over 10s of meters of distance.

If I ever gave someone a measurement in cm I'd get told "Only Dressmakers user centimeters!" I don't think I ever used feet, and I only ever used inches when discussing lumber, and would always be told to use metric.

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

#305

Post by rantanplan »

Eleutheria wrote: post #152
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.

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.

50C summer time???

Where do you live? The sahara desert?

BTW you seem to have a greek name but you definitely don't live in Greece! We do have some hot weather here, but definitely not in the range you described.

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

#306

Post by NickNameNick »

Taniwha wrote: post #284
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)

It was 50x100 when I was building in Chch ~10 years ago.

It was explained to me that the rough cut timber was closer to the stated size, and that the finished timber we used for framing was named after the unfinished dimensions. Of course, I don't know how true that actually is. Certainly the unfinished 75x50 we used for roofing purlins (spelling?) was noticeably thicker than the finished structural 100x50s

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

#307

Post by ygra »

xxs wrote: post #280
ygra wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kPa. Otherwise it'd be Kelvinpascals. And while pressure is often said to be x atmospheres, they usually use bar, which is an SI-derived unit (equal to 10⁵ Pa), which is close enough to the old usage of atmospheres. There seem to have been two different atmospheres that were pretty close anyway. One being defined as air pressure at sea level, the other being defined as the pressure of 10 meters of water.

>>kPa. Otherwise it'd be Kelvinpascals. Great observation! I guess I am way too used to KB and in that very case KPa would be 1024Pa which is even worse. Have an upvote.

That'd be KiPa, then (kibipascals) ;)

Standardised since 1999, I think. But no one really uses it. Kilobytes would technically be kB as well.

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

#308

Post by raldi »

xxs wrote: post #274
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…

Fahrenheit is absolutely bizarre outside US, scaling is so arbitrary it's not funny.

Could you explain what you mean? I think my comment does a pretty good job of demonstrating that the scalig is nicely suited to the temperatures a human being experiences over the course of each year.

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

#309

Post by kuschku »

StuffMaster wrote: post #302
shmerl wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>relevant for common matters Put it this way: 0 degrees is really cold for a human and 100 is really hot for a human. Water doesn't care if it's cold.

And in Siberia you sometimes encounter -70°C and in Dubai you measure 50°C (Both of which would be off the 0-100F scale).

Internationally Celsius make more sense.

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

#310

Post by 0x006A »

chrismcb wrote: post #134
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…

F was designed for humans, while C is apparently designed for water. Half of your list talks about what water does, or are fairly meaningless numbers to humans. While pretty much every number on the GPs list is relevant to humans. That is the big difference. In day to day life, the average human doesn't really need to know what temp water changes state. They want to know how comfortable they will be.

Humans are 80% Water.
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