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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

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Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#341

Post by sterna »

Kylekramer wrote: post #281
acangiano wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much better visual evidence: http://signword.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/423399_101506340...

Pretty weak argument for Celsius. Why should people care that the boiling and freezing points are simple? That is almost irrelevant for the most common uses of temperature reporting. People care about the ambient outside temperature (which Fahrenheit seems optimized for), not the effect it has on the state of one particular compound.

Please be aware that Celsius is not a SI unit, Kelvin is used in stead as the standard temperature unit. The only reason why many people use Celsius is because it makes sense in their daily lives. The melting and boiling point of water are both important in cooking and the freezing point is also important for the weather. Therefore it makes a lot of practical sense to use Celsius and people have stuck to it even though it is not an SI unit.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#342

Post by lancefisher »

Svip wrote: post #219
vibrunazo wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren't things like road signs in mph defined by law?

My understanding of speed limits in the US is that each state defines it. There is no national speed limits (hence why Montana is famous for its high speed limits on motorways, but not much else). But I doubt that Washington D.C. uses kph on its speed signs, though.

In 1995 - 1999, our speed limit on the Interstate in Montana was "Reasonable and Prudent". The federal government set a national speed limit in 1974, and it was repealed in 1995. When that happened the speed limit reverted to what it was in '74.

I was in high school for a couple of those years. I drove 120 MPH frequently. I probably would have got pulled over for that. I had a friend who got pulled over for going 90 MPH. Ultimately, I think the ambiguity of "reasonable and prudent" led to the state enacting a 75 MPH speed limit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Stat...

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#343

Post by yakiv »

kriro wrote: post #263
DanBC wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there are no advantages to easy divisibility? 16 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. 24 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24 10 just has 1, 2, 5, 10

We have 10 fingers and that's probably why base10 is somewhat naturally wired into our brains. I'd like to remove 2 fingers and go to base8 but can't quite settle on the right ones. Thumb is out of the question because it's what sets us apart, lets us use tools and so forth. Next finger up is usefull for pointing, not getting interrupted while on the phone and most importantly pulling triggers...seems valuable enough…

I'm not sure that base 10 is wired into our brains. It's probably the case that we're just used to base 10. The reason why it's can be so hard to read numbers in base 8 or some other base out loud is that you have to convert it to base 10 to say it because we use . . . base 10. (Though you can get around this by reading the numbers as though they were in written base 10---I had a professor who did this with hexadecimal.)

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#344

Post by DannyBee »

jacquesm wrote: post #323
blhack wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been inside of a hardware store? Every hardware store I've ever been to has a section for metric. Our lab, for instance, keeps a supply of bolts, and as far as I remember /only/ has metric. Also every socket set I've ever used has a metric and standard set. Why would you care about road signs? And why would you care about a tape measure that is /only/ in metric? The second one seems kindof silly. The on…

> Have you ever been inside of a hardware store? I believe so. Maybe a couple of times. Or maybe I practically lived in one for a couple of years. Would this do for you? http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/trips/jansvisit/?g2_page=6 Yes, there is a section for metric in the hardware store. It's the bit at the back with about 1/2 the sizes missing and only the stuff that you don't need in stock. I've had a machine shop in Ca…

Outside of cars, roughly every power tool, piece of electronics, cabinet (35mm), etc needs metric sockets or hex keys.

I have built plenty of complex machinery. It's actually significantly easier for me to source 50mm flywheels/pulleys, or v-belts, or whatever, than it is to try to get someone to give me reasonable tolerances on imperial.

While it's true machining is done to thousandths of an inch in the US, most of those machining tools are using chucks/collets/etc whose sizes/TIR/etc is all actually metric.

(IE the 1/2" chuck/collet/whatever is really machined to 12.7mm)

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#345

Post by xxpor »

frogpelt wrote: post #183
harshreality wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentiment is not a good justification in the science/engineering world.

Is there a large contingency of people in the science and engineering world not using metric? Like a previous commenter said, all my science labs in high school and college used metric. I imagine legitimate research and engineering labs in America are also using metric.

Civil and a lot of Mechanical still use standard. Especially for machining and such. We also used kips (kilopounds) in my Statics class.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#346

Post by Gmo »

frogpelt wrote: post #183
harshreality wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentiment is not a good justification in the science/engineering world.

Is there a large contingency of people in the science and engineering world not using metric? Like a previous commenter said, all my science labs in high school and college used metric. I imagine legitimate research and engineering labs in America are also using metric.

Well, it seems that NASA, at least a few years ago, did not consistently use metric ...

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#347

Post by jlgreco »

kevinh wrote: post #335
jlgreco wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were time conversions as common or necessary as other unit conversions, you can bet your ass decimal time would have more takers. Even so, varying units does restrict how we can express time. Even if someone tells you something as simple as "half a week", you have to ask for clarification. And while "a week from now" translates to a date, forget about "a month from now." That could mean half a dozen different things.

A 60 minute hour is more evenly divisible than a 100 or 10 minute hour.

Does anybody use "hour" in anything other that whole multiples, halfs, and quarters? This divisiblity of 60 seems nothing more than a curiosity; minutes are used for everything else, even 3/4ths ("forty five minutes").

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#348

Post by jacquesm »

DannyBee wrote: post #344
jacquesm wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever been inside of a hardware store? I believe so. Maybe a couple of times. Or maybe I practically lived in one for a couple of years. Would this do for you? http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/trips/jansvisit/?g2_page=6 Yes, there is a section for metric in the hardware store. It's the bit at the back with about 1/2 the sizes missing and only the stuff that you don't need in stock. I've had a machine shop in Ca…

Outside of cars, roughly every power tool, piece of electronics, cabinet (35mm), etc needs metric sockets or hex keys. I have built plenty of complex machinery. It's actually significantly easier for me to source 50mm flywheels/pulleys, or v-belts, or whatever, than it is to try to get someone to give me reasonable tolerances on imperial. While it's true machining is done to thousandths of an inch in the US, most of…

Good to see that the situation is improving. The more the US imports the more stuff will be in metric, it's unavoidable.

But I'll believe it when the construction industry let's go of the foot and the inch.

A 12.7 mm collet is not a metric collet. A metric collet would be a 12 or 13 mm.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#349

Post by astrodust »

xefer wrote: post #51
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

To be honest, although I know the obvious benefits of metric, I still prefer imperial simply because of its messiness. I realize the system is archaic, etc., but I still like that connection, as attenuated as it may be, to our ancient past. Use metric for all scientific purposes, etc., but keep that connection to the natural world. I suppose I like it in the same way I prefer natural languages to some artificial lang…

Have you seen the people on Mythbusters flail about while trying to convert using units like inch-pounds and miles per hour and fluid ounces to cubic feet? There's a reason science insists on using the metric system.

The metric system is relatively ancient, dating from the late 1700s.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#350

Post by achy »

mosburger wrote: post #184
sterna wrote: post #107

Regionalized units have the same damaging effect to manufacturing as closed software ecosystems has to software development. The only reason most US citizens do not feel the pain of this fragmentation is that they do not have to buy anything that is not adapted to the US market. Again, this is because the US is the biggest market on the planet and thus it is profitable for big companies to adapt their products to US…

This is actually an argument, for some people in the U.S., to keep using imperial units. The use of imperial units acts as sort of an "artificial trade barrier" to foreign competition - it's like a tariff that international trade agreements can't touch.

That is a ridiculous argument for a country that is already so heavily reliant on foreign manufacturing. If anything, at this point, the imperial standard is a barrier to having the US become a manufacturing nation once again - because so much industrial technology has been developed without a thought to the archaic measurements.
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