Petition to make USA Metric

[randomrogue]

At it's most basic level, if I go to the web and look up the metro schedule for me to out tonight I'll be given a number of choices.

A: 27 minutes, walk 1500 meters
B: 32 minutes, walk 300 meters
C: 40 minutes, walk 10 meters.

I made these up but do you see the 1500 meters up there? There's where the conversion comes in really handy.

If this was in the states it would say 266 feet, 3492 feet and 1.5 miles. The relationship is broken.

 

[pmv]

yards to miles is something you simply wouldnt see. Look at any of the million map apps, they use decimal miles. Google maps doesn't say "20 miles 450 yars to your destination, it simply says 20.3 miles to you destination"

meters to miles maybe, as a runner I have competed in both metric (400, 800, 1500, 1600, 3200, "5k", 10k") races and imperial (1 mile, 5 mile, 10 mile, marathon)


Like I said above, you would use decimal miles. No one says, "I ran 2 miles and 880 yards today!" they say "I ran 2 and a half miles"

If you were in the fully metric mindset, you wouldnt say "I ran 5 kilometers and 250 meters", you would say "I ran 5 and a quarter kilometers", or "5 point two five k"

This is the scenario I have in mind. I'm out for walk or a cycle (I don't really run!). I know I have N miles to go (because I'm British and for this sort of thing I still think in miles). I see a sign saying so many hundred yards to some landmark (loads of signs here are still in imperial, which means you can have fun guessing whether the 'm' on a sign means 'miles' or 'meters'!). Now what relationship does that distance have to the total distance I have to go?

Last time that happened I ended up working it out on the basis of 1 yard = 3 feet = 36 inches, multiply by 2.54 to get cm, divide by 100 to get m, divide by 1000 to get km, multiply by 5/8 to get miles! Would be a lot easier if I could only remember how many yards in a mile, dammit!


OK, here goes, gonna remember this once and for all...3 feet in a yard, 5.5 yards in a rod, 4 rods in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong, 8 furlongs in a mile.

Yeah, that's easy to remember

 

[pmv]

...though, now I come to think of it, it's probably quite useful to remember 220 yards to a furlong and a furlong is an eighth of a mile

 

[nehalem256]

At it's most basic level, if I go to the web and look up the metro schedule for me to out tonight I'll be given a number of choices.

A: 27 minutes, walk 1500 meters
B: 32 minutes, walk 300 meters
C: 40 minutes, walk 10 meters.

I made these up but do you see the 1500 meters up there? There's where the conversion comes in really handy.

If this was in the states it would say 266 feet, 3492 feet and 1.5 miles. The relationship is broken.

Well personally I cant remember the last time I converted between miles and feet.

But even if you only know the ballpark that its ~5000ft/mile its not difficult.

Also you do realize that choice A should be 1.5km

Or you can just know if it is in miles its effing far

 

[nehalem256]

Decimalization of time will never happen in Metric - it would break way too many things. Many of the metric units are based off of the current second. In fact, the length of a metre would change if metric time were decimalized.

Maybe you should have used a more unchanging definition for the meter. Something like the length of a guy's foot

 

[randomrogue]

Almost nobody knows that a mile is 5280 feet or close to 5000 feet. Go down to your local track and ask people how long a 1/4 mile is in feet. They don't know that either and they're at the track. Yards? Forget it.

Choice A is written like that. Everything is in meters. The conversions are done in our heads as needed. It's the same with driving. It'll say 1500 meters to an next exit, not 1.5km, or maybe it will. Mileage markers are written in km but when we talk about it we don't talk about 400 km we talk about 40 "10^4ths".

Why am I even trying to discuss this with you?

 

[kevinsbane]

Maybe you should have used a more unchanging definition for the meter. Something like the length of a guy's foot

Please tell me how to define a foot if I don't have that guy's foot. I don't want to have to cut off that guy's foot and bring it with me

By the way, the foot is defined by the metre. Even in the USA. A foot, by definition, is 0.3048 metres.

 

[Imaginer]

Let's take volume for example. Yo own a quart measuring device... that's it. With this quart you can roughly figure out a pint by filling half. From this you can roughly figure out a cup by again filling half. Alternately if you fill the quart and dump it in a larger vessel 4 times then you have a gallon.

Try doing the same thing with a Liter container when it is asking for 230 mL.

Sadly the scientific world thinks that everyday man needs to measure stuff precisely. This is not the case, has never been the case, and I seriously doubt it will ever be the case. Metric makes sense when I need precise figures and I am doing math with these figures. It makes it easier for it that time. But when I want rough and dirty measurements, I will take Imperial/American any day.

Finally! Someone that understands the use for the Imperial/American/English measurement. It has more easily divisible units than metric and makes building things a lot easier than having to measure out decimals.

That said, I prefer a higher precision measuring system for pure scientific dealings because in that arena, it isn't that cut and dry and sliced easily and needs all the precision it can get.

And no, as much as an engineer I appreciate metric and working with it, as a artist and woodworker, English units are a lot better to use.

 

[Imaginer]

Please tell me how to define a foot if I don't have that guy's foot. I don't want to have to cut off that guy's foot and bring it with me

By the way, the foot is defined by the metre. Even in the USA. A foot, by definition, is 0.3048 metres.

No, but it gives a good approximation looking at the average male foot (or your own if you know the offset and error) and determining small distances. And you don't need to carry a tape measure to do these measurements.

 

[Imaginer]

10 is cleanly divisible by either 2 or 5.
12 on the other hand works with 2, 3, 4, or 6. More options to divide.

 

[kevinsbane]

No, but it gives a good approximation looking at the average male foot (or your own if you know the offset and error) and determining small distances. And you don't need to carry a tape measure to do these measurements.

Ok, but what does that have to do with the definition of a metre?

Sure, a foot neat since it's close to (some) human's feet. I also find the following ratios neat for me.

1cm = width across third knuckle, pinky
5cm = width across second knuckle, 3 middle fingers held together
10cm = width of fist
20cm = from pinky to thumb, width of hand stretched out (8" actually, but I've started thinking of this in cm now)
40cm = length of a "cubit" (elbow to tip of finger)
50cm = length of a stride

And my foot is 25cm.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

40cm = length of a "cubit" (elbow to tip of finger)

We really should bring back the cubit. If it's good enough for Noah, it's good enough for me.

 

[lxskllr]

50cm = length of a stride

You sure about this? I always used a 3' pace.

 

[Imaginer]

Ok, but what does that have to do with the definition of a metre?

Sure, a foot neat since it's close to (some) human's feet. I also find the following ratios neat for me.

1cm = width across third knuckle, pinky
5cm = width across second knuckle, 3 middle fingers held together
10cm = width of fist
20cm = from pinky to thumb, width of hand stretched out (8" actually, but I've started thinking of this in cm now)
40cm = length of a "cubit" (elbow to tip of finger)
50cm = length of a stride

And my foot is 25cm.

Nice references. Still, the fact stands 10 works with 2 and 5 versus 12 with 2, 3, 4, and 6.

 

[Train]

Please tell me how to define a foot if I don't have that guy's foot.

First tell me how to define a meter if I don't have a vacum and the equipment handy to measure how far light can travel in it, down to 1/300 millionths of a second accuracy.

These comparisons between metric and imperial are just getting stupid.

 

[kevinsbane]

You sure about this? I always used a 3' pace.

Depends on how hard you're walking. I find that more often than not, my stride is relaxed and I end up with a 50cm stride. If I'm walking hard, it increases to about 70cm or so. Of course, I'm not terribly tall either. I was quite surprised when we did a study in our class on stride lengths - my stride length was nowhere near as much as I thought it was. No one in our class (this was middle of high school) had anything close to 0.9m as their stride.

stride length = from toe to toe.

Nice references. Still, the fact stands 10 works with 2 and 5 versus 12 with 2, 3, 4, and 6.

Yeah. As it stands though, 100 works with 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50. Decimetres are so rarely, rarely used :-/

First tell me how to define a meter if I don't have a vacum and the equipment handy to measure how far light can travel in it, down to 1/300 millionths of a second accuracy.

If you need a metre, and exactly a metre, then you can reproduce it with enough effort, independently, anywhere, anytime.

Besides, a foot is also found by how far light travels in a vacuum in a given time, since it's defined by the metre.

These comparisons between metric and imperial are just getting stupid.

Well, yeah.

 

[Imaginer]

Depends on how hard you're walking. I find that more often than not, my stride is relaxed and I end up with a 50cm stride. If I'm walking hard, it increases to about 70cm or so. Of course, I'm not terribly tall either. I was quite surprised when we did a study in our class on stride lengths - my stride length was nowhere near as much as I thought it was. No one in our class (this was middle of high school) had anything close to 0.9m as their stride.

stride length = from toe to toe.


Yeah. As it stands though, 100 works with 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, and 50. Decimetres are so rarely, rarely used :-/

Base 100? Great, now you are getting into Asian denominations of having a specific character for everything.

 

[Imaginer]

Besides, with 100, you still get the disadvantage of the 1/5th or 5's because they don't work nicely in quickly cutting circles unless using assisted outside measurement.

 

[kevinsbane]

Base 100? Great, now you are getting into Asian denominations of having a specific character for everything.

There's a 100 cm in a metre. There's 12 inches in a foot. I don't see what the issue is. It's not as if the imperial system uses a base 12 consistently across its units.

Besides, with 100, you still get the disadvantage of the 1/5th or 5's because they don't work nicely in quickly cutting circles unless using assisted outside measurement.

Circles...? What does a circle have to do with anything? There are circles in the metric system too. Circles in metric can be as easily cut into quarters, halves or whatever as circles in imperial. An imperial circle is just as hard to cut into fifths as a metric circle.

Actually, more to the point, what is a circle in metric? And how is it different from a circle in imperial?

 

[Imaginer]

A clock with 10 divisions just looks wrong. That is how I see metric in some cases.

 

[nehalem256]

Almost nobody knows that a mile is 5280 feet or close to 5000 feet. Go down to your local track and ask people how long a 1/4 mile is in feet. They don't know that either and they're at the track. Yards? Forget it.

Maybe because they don't sit there converting the measurement into different units?

Maybe they have more important things to do.

Choice A is written like that. Everything is in meters.

And for the imperial choices you made one in miles. That is not a fair comparison.

The conversions are done in our heads as needed. It's the same with driving. It'll say 1500 meters to an next exit, not 1.5km, or maybe it will. Mileage markers are written in km but when we talk about it we don't talk about 400 km we talk about 40 "10^4ths".

Why am I even trying to discuss this with you?

So your km aren't so great after all.

 

[kevinsbane]

A clock with 10 divisions just looks wrong. That is how I see metric in some cases.

Well, I agree with you on the clock issue. It's a good thing metric clocks look exactly like imperial clocks. That's one thing I'm glad I don't have to convert.

 

[sourceninja]

Homebrewing has gotten me to covert to metric. It all started with hops.

it's a lot harder to find a scale that is accurate in hundreds of a ounce then it is grams.

Measuring .25 ounces is a lot harder to do then 7 grams when scales simply don't seem to be accurate at ounces. I've tried 3 scales, in grams they are accurate, but I can use ounces, put in .25 and click grams and get 8, take it back down to 7, click ounces and still get .25.

In the end I just do everything metric. It's easier to calculate modifications, percentages, and volumes.

 

[Train]

If you need a metre, and exactly a metre, then you can reproduce it with enough effort, independently, anywhere, anytime.

Good luck with that, a second is based on the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

Anywhere, anytime?

 

[nehalem256]

Good luck with that, a second is based on the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

Anywhere, anytime?

You saying you don't carry cesium 133 atoms around with you?