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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

#331

Post by BrandonM »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #192
Pxtl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inches to cm and back are actually an easy conversion so thinking in both isn't hard - 2.5cm/in, 30cm/ft. 1.6km/mi and 2.2 lbs/kg are a bit more annoying, and Fahrenheit are a freaking abomination.

C is roughly (F - 30)/2, not too bad. To make my life easier I also measure lb as 1/2 kg and driving distances as time.

> C is roughly (F - 30)/2, not too bad.

A few months ago, I was concerned about the inaccuracy of this rough conversion. It's actually accurate to within ±3°F for all temperatures -5°C to 25°C (23°F to 77°F). If you're OK with ±5°F, it works for -15°C to 35°C (5°F to 95°F).

So the conversion works pretty well for the vast majority of environmental conditions. C = (F - 30) / 2 and F = C * 2 + 30 are great approximations.

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

#332

Post by xxs »

raldi wrote: post #308
xxs wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main problem comes with negative Celsius temperature (basically 32F) as freezing point is quite important traffic wise. Driving on ice/snow is quite a change and basically occurs around 33F-32F, in Celsius it that's zero, much easier to remember.

Then you have 100F which is supposed to be the normal body temperature, but actually it means having fever.

There is only one case you might wish to use a tenth of Celsius in every day life and that's reporting body temperature around 37C-39C.

Like I've said, scaling is weird, it doesn't make much sense when firstly introduced. I have a friend who graduated MIT (PhD in aerospace engineering), living in the US for over 10 years and he is comfortable doing calculations and every day estimations in imperial units, except for temperature.

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

#333

Post by jarek »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #250
phaemon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

I actually would support changing the divisions of the dollar to a non-base-ten standard. Specifically I would make it dollars and quarters and dispense with anything smaller. We used to have a half-penny coin. We got rid of it when a penny was the same value as a quarter today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-2-5_series#1-2-5_series and start at 10c or 20c.

Actually, arguments advanced to support the American penny are interestingly similar to those advanced to support the American customary measures.

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

#334

Post by jpindar »

yutah wrote: post #190
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…

Carpentry is a bad example... 1/4 inch vs 6mm or 7mm doesn't make any difference in this low precision craft... it is far from being precise to the millimeter... Even if you were doing higher precision wood working, you could make your box-joint 6mm wide instead of 1/4" and it would still be a perfect fit.... Also, try dividing an inch into tenths using a ruler?

In fields where precision does matter - such as machining or PCB design - decimal inches are used. Calipers work in decimal inches and steel rules are often marked in tenths. PCB layout programs typically allow you to use either millimeters or mils.

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

#335

Post by jarek »

stephen_g wrote: post #320
ajuc wrote: post #291

Centimeter is about 2 grids in a school "checked" notebook. Everybody know after using these notebooks fot the whole education how long exactly that is. No problems with eyeballing. I have problems eyeballing an inch (only used in 5.25 or 3.14 disk sizes and in monitors' sizes). Milimeter is close to smallest unit useful in human scale - when you try to draw 0.5 milimeter scale with a regular pen, for example, the li…

> Food stuff is bought in "dekos" (dekagrams). Where? I've lived my whole life in a metric-using country and I'm fairly sure I have literally never heard of that unit until just now... Our food here is all in grams (i.e. a 100g packet of chips, 300g steak) or kilograms (1.5 kilo bag of rice).

ajuc's examples are for Poland

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

#336

Post by jarek »

stephen_g wrote: post #322
rmc wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's quite interesting in Australia that you buy a pint of beer if it's in a glass (or a pot, which is much smaller or schooner, pronounced 'skooner', which is a bit smaller), but bottles are never sold as imperial are generally 375mL.

In England cans of cider are 500 mL. Honestly I don't really think a pint is a unit (except for old people buying milk?), it's a descriptor like "a glass" or "a pitcher" that just happens to have a legally required size. I have an idea roughly how much a pint is but I wouldn't requisition three pints of hydrofluoric acid.

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

#337

Post by kiiski »

Taniwha wrote: post #208

If I visit Starbucks they sell something called a "Venti" it's part of Starbucks attempt to change the language of coffee so that their regular customers can't order elsewhere. "Venti" is of course Italian for 20, let's ignore the fact that Starbucks appear to invalidly trademarked a number, when I find myself stuck with a Starbucks in an American airport I love to ask "that's Italian for twenty, twenty what?" the us…

> ... it must be litres or millilitres...

Why would it have to be one of those? Obviously it's centilitres; at least here in Finland that's the size of a regular drinking glass (although usually it's called "2 desilitres").

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

#338

Post by mmagin »

I've wanted the USA to finish going over to the metric system for about as long as I can remember. It annoys the heck out of me that I have to have two sets of tools at hand, have to determine if fasteners are one or the other (both in their threading and drive mechanism), etc.

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

#339

Post by shmerl »

tsotha wrote: post #314
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…

>Yet UK pushed through with switching to metric and went way further than US did. So this excuse isn't really valid. And yet they didn't switch over completely . People in the UK measure some things in metric and some things in the old Imperial units, which is the worst of both worlds. Pick up some random thing and its weight is measured in kg, but if you're weighing a person it's "stones". From here to the wall may…

> In the US the people didn't want to convert to metric

Manufacturers aren't all people. Overall acceptance of the change by the public wasn't the main driver in stopping this effort. Corporate lobbying was however, as usual.

In UK since they trade with the rest of Europe, lobbyists were not so eager to sabotage it. In US they are more isolated so they were more negative.

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

#340

Post by shmerl »

wtbob wrote: post #297
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…

> 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. No, the real answer is that US politicians were too weak to push this through, because the people wouldn't have it. The people spoke.

Not people. Lobbying groups. I wouldn't equate the two. Don't tell me in UK people suddenly spoke the opposite. No, most were not comfortable with the change either, but it was a necessary change. The difference is that in UK unions and lobbying groups were less inclined to fight it, because they are more involved in global European market which uses the metric system. It wasn't about people, it was about politicians losing or not losing lobbying support.
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