The three countries that don't use the metric system

[WelshBloke]

...

When the Celsius scale was created, humans were not all living at sea level. Even then, sea level is arbitrary. Why should where people live determine the basis of a scale? That is being arbitrary.

To make perfect sense doesn't mean that something isn't arbitrary. Just because you can see why someone did something doesn't change the fact that it is arbitrary. What system did they use to make those choices? Did they go around an count the population to make sure that most people were living at sea level?

Its not sea level as such, its standard atmospheric pressure (which is the same thing ). So it wasn't chosen arbitrarily just for the Celsius scale.

 

[Cogman]

The idea was that you could calibrate your own thermometer easily yourself.

That might be a good reason to go with Celsius over Fahrenheit. It would be harder to calibrate a Fahrenheit thermometer correctly.

 

[Cogman]

Its not sea level as such, its standard atmospheric pressure (which is the same thing ). So it wasn't chosen arbitrarily just for the Celsius scale.

True, but the idea of a standard atmospheric pressure unit should be based off of sea level atmospheric pressures is in itself arbitrary. It could have easily been decided to be something like 1N/m (which would still be arbitrary, but a little less arbitrary).

 

[WelshBloke]

Thank you, and that is sort of my point. Someone somewhere made the decision that a Celsius degree should be based off of water. That is just as arbitrary as someone somewhere saying that water should use two different materials to base a temperature unit.

Since nobody really uses sub-units in reference to temperature (you never hear of kilo-Celsius degrees) the use of Celsius over Fahrenheit is itself an arbitrary decision (you could just as easily use kilo-Fahrenheit degrees).

I think the use of water was more practical than arbitrary, its not like they picked it at random.

Its something everyone has access to and the two end points are repeatable and easily reached without specialist equipment.

I cant think of any other fluid which matches that of the top of my head.

 

[WelshBloke]

That might be a good reason to go with Celsius over Fahrenheit. It would be harder to calibrate a Fahrenheit thermometer correctly.

Find a slightly ill German?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

The imperial system gave us no problem landing on the moon.

lol

You forgot to point out that the people who you relied on to perform this task didn't actually use Imperial measurements in their collective professional capacity.

its not that it makes more sense to me, it makes more sense on a human scale of experience. if you were designing a scale for human experience you certainly wouldn't choose the number 37" to be a hot day.

No, it doesn't. Body temperature has little relation to perceived environmental temperature. Aside from this rather fatal flaw, your reasoning is, well, reasonable.

Celsius is just as arbitrary as Ferinheight in measuring temperature. Why use water as the base? Why not steal, mercury, oxygen, or carbon as the base measurement. Why not define it to be the difference in temperature cased by 1000J in hydrogen (the most abundant element). Or even the temperature change caused by 1000J dissipated into 1 Liter of water.

To argue that celcius is more logical than ferinheight is silly. Base units are arbitrary in their origins.

Because water is the basis for all life. And because we use it a lot. And because we use ice and boiled water a lot.

And why should water boil at 100, why not 1000, or 10? And why not sea water? (which is far more common than fresh water.) or even some hybrid of 100g salt per 1 liter of water.

Because we don't really need so many increments as 1000, and we need more than 10.
Because it's easy to control the composition of fresh water. It's water. With nothing else in it. The composition of sea water varies with temperature, season, location, etc.
And because 100g of a salt like NaCl in 1L would kill you if you ingested it.

And why should this measurement be taken at sea level atmosphere, Why not 1000 ft? 2000 ft? or below sea level.

Because it's a point that is easy to define.

Get the picture? Tons of arbitrary decisions go into the creation of a base unit.

I don't understand how Fahrenheit is any less arbitrary:

1) Body temperature varies between individuals
2) Body temperature varies between health states.
3) Temperature varies with diurnal cycle.
4) Reproductive-age women cycle temperature along with their periods.
5) Human body temperature has nothing to do with perceived heat or cold in the environment.
6) Boiling and freezing points of water is far more pertinent to life in general than our body temperature.

The first four reasons make the scale completely useless for scientific purposes. The last two make is pretty useless for general life too.

True, but the idea of a standard atmospheric pressure unit should be based off of sea level atmospheric pressures is in itself arbitrary. It could have easily been decided to be something like 1N/m (which would still be arbitrary, but a little less arbitrary).

The point of having standard conditions is that they are 1) standard, and 2) easily extrapolated to the general habitable environment.

Also, N/m is not a unit of pressure.

 

[Cogman]

I think the use of water was more practical than arbitrary, its not like they picked it at random.

Its something everyone has access to and the two end points are repeatable and easily reached without specialist equipment.

I cant think of any other fluid which matches that of the top of my head.

True, like I said above, that would be a good reason for using water for the base.

 

[frostedflakes]

I haven't read this whole stupid neckbeard thread, but America is stupid. The funny thing is that they teach pretty much exclusively in metric in American universities (at least mine) and now that I'm in industry we're back to using fucktarded units again. Stupid.

That always kind of cracked me up. All my EE classes were pretty much exclusively metric, but in the couple mechanical and civil classes I took we were exposed to some pretty funky non-metric units because for whatever reason industry still uses them.

 

[Cogman]

lol

You forgot to point out that the people who you relied on to perform this task didn't actually use Imperial measurements in their collective professional capacity.


No, it doesn't. Body temperature has little relation to perceived environmental temperature. Aside from this rather fatal flaw, your reasoning is, well, reasonable.


Because water is the basis for all life. And because we use it a lot. And because we use ice and boiled water a lot.


Because we don't really need so many increments as 1000, and we need more than 10.
Because it's easy to control the composition of fresh water. It's water. With nothing else in it. The composition of sea water varies with temperature, season, location, etc.
And because 100g of a salt like NaCl in 1L would kill you if you ingested it.


Because it's a point that is easy to define.


I don't understand how Fahrenheit is any less arbitrary:

1) Body temperature varies between individuals
2) Body temperature varies between health states.
3) Temperature varies with diurnal cycle.
4) Reproductive-age women cycle temperature along with their periods.
5) Human body temperature has nothing to do with perceived heat or cold in the environment.
6) Boiling and freezing points of water is far more pertinent to life in general than our body temperature.

The first four reasons make the scale completely useless for scientific purposes. The last two make is pretty useless for general life too.

I was not arguing that Fahrenheit was less arbitrary. In fact, the whole "being based of of horse temperature" thing is pretty dang arbitrary in the beginning. My argument was that there isn't a good reason to use Celsius over Fahrenheit other than "Everyone else is using it!". Fahrenheit is pretty well defined now and can be calibrated for just as easily as Celsius.

People seem to think that everything in the SI scale came from pure unadulterated logic distilled from mount Olympus by Athena herself. Any criticism is to be taken as an attack on Athena.

 

[Cogman]

The point of having standard conditions is that they are 1) standard, and 2) easily extrapolated to the general habitable environment.

Also, N/m is not a unit of pressure.

Sorry N/m^2 Better..

Also, why should standard conditions be easily extrapolated from habitable environments? Isn't that pretty arbitrary? What about something like Farads where a 1F capacitor is almost never seen.

 

[WelshBloke]

I was not arguing that Fahrenheit was less arbitrary. In fact, the whole "being based of of horse temperature" thing is pretty dang arbitrary in the beginning. My argument was that there isn't a good reason to use Celsius over Fahrenheit other than "Everyone else is using it!". Fahrenheit is pretty well defined now and can be calibrated for just as easily as Celsius.

People seem to think that everything in the SI scale came from pure unadulterated logic distilled from mount Olympus by Athena herself. Any criticism is to be taken as an attack on Athena.

I'd say that the decisions that lead to Celsius were more solid than the ones that lead to the Fahrenheit scale.

You are right that that's all pretty much irrelevant now as no one needs to make or calibrate their own equipment any more.

Edit: The rest of the Imperial system is way less logical than the Fahrenheit scale anyway.

 

[KingstonU]

Is there a simple way to determine say... what 73.4% of an inch is or 73.4% of a foot is? Like you can do with the metric system (73.4% of a meter is 734 millimeters).

Also I always find it simpler to know that water boils at 100'C and freezes at 0'C. The entire metric system is based on water I believe. 1 gram of water = 1 cubic centimeter.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Also, why should standard conditions be easily extrapolated from habitable environments? Isn't that pretty arbitrary? What about something like Farads where a 1F capacitor is almost never seen.

For 2 reasons:

1) It makes experiments easier, cheaper, and more convenient to observe. We could say that standard conditions could be a frictionless vacuum, but it makes it very difficult to work with, and very difficult to achieve.
2) The point of having observations is that you get data out of them, which you use to predict the behavior of the world. Going back to the frictionless vacuum thing, there would be no point conducting boiling point or melting point measurements in a vacuum, since the boiling point of water in a vacuum is radically different to the boiling point of water on Earth.

 

[HAL9000]

Is there a simple way to determine say... what 73.4% of an inch is or 73.4% of a foot is? Like you can do with the metric system (73.4% of a meter is 734 millimeters).

Also I always find it simpler to know that water boils at 100'C and freezes at 0'C. The entire metric system is based on water I believe. 1 gram of water = 1 cubic centimeter.

Technically water freezes at -0.1'C but yeah I get your point.

 

[Cogman]

For 2 reasons:

1) It makes experiments easier, cheaper, and more convenient to observe. We could say that standard conditions could be a frictionless vacuum, but it makes it very difficult to work with, and very difficult to achieve.

We are talking about standard units here, not engineering approximations. Engineers have been working at the nano-scale for years now, somehow the fact that a meter was 10^9 x bigger hasn't phased them. Experiments don't become more expensive because of the unit of measure being used.

2) The point of having observations is that you get data out of them, which you use to predict the behavior of the world. Going back to the frictionless vacuum thing, there would be no point conducting boiling point or melting point measurements in a vacuum, since the boiling point of water in a vacuum is radically different to the boiling point of water on Earth.

My point was that using water is arbitrary (which you still don't admit). A degree could have been stated as the temperature gradient that causes mercury to move 1 cm in a 1mm diameter tube facing upwords with a vacuum on the empty end.

Your whole frictionless vacuum thing has nothing to do with units of measure.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

We are talking about standard units here, not engineering approximations. Engineers have been working at the nano-scale for years now, somehow the fact that a meter was 10^9 x bigger hasn't phased them. Experiments don't become more expensive because of the unit of measure being used.

Erm...you know I'm talking about these standard conditions, right?

My point was that using water is arbitrary (which you still don't admit). A degree could have been stated as the temperature gradient that causes mercury to move 1 cm in a 1mm diameter tube facing upwords with a vacuum on the empty end.

But then you would have asked, 'why mercury?' or 'why 1mm/1cm?' or 'why should it be a vacuum?' Pretty much everything has to have an arbitrary decision in it somewhere.

 

[Colt45]

WTF? Of course I do...8 oz per cup, 16 oz. per pint, 32 oz per quart.

Real pints are 20oz, and real quarts are 40oz :awe:

In the above you are talking about two volumetric units, but your original statement was:

Changing to a metric system would take several generations at least.
"Let's see...the recipe calls for 250 grams of flour...how many cups is that?"

Which is like asking:
"Let's see...the recipe calls for 1/2lb flour...how many cups is that?" it's a goofy question, asking how much volume is a mass, and sounds goofy in imperial too.

 

[BoomerD]

Real pints are 20oz, and real quarts are 40oz :awe:

In the above you are talking about two volumetric units, but your original statement was:

Which is like asking:
"Let's see...the recipe calls for 1/2lb flour...how many cups is that?" it's a goofy question, asking how much volume is a mass, and sounds goofy in imperial too.

Not necessarily. I see lots of cooking shows where the recipe calls for XYZ grams of something, yet if it were an American show, it'd be measured in cups or spoonfuls, or in some cases, by either weight or liquid volume.

BTW, if measured properly, a cup of flour should weigh 4.25 oz...and a cup of confectioner's sugar, 4 oz.

 

[Howard]

WTF? Of course I do...8 oz per cup, 16 oz. per pint, 32 oz per quart.

Of flour. I'm not so stupid (or condescending) to think that you don't know how many ounces of water are in a common standard volume.

EDIT: There's no real answer, by the way. Flour density varies wildly.

 

[Broheim]

Honestly, it doesn't. It is arbitrary. Provide me with some good solid logic for using the boiling point of water to create a scale.

And why should water boil at 100, why not 1000, or 10? And why not sea water? (which is far more common than fresh water.) or even some hybrid of 100g salt per 1 liter of water.

And why should this measurement be taken at sea level atmosphere, Why not 1000 ft? 2000 ft? or below sea level.

Get the picture? Tons of arbitrary decisions go into the creation of a base unit.

the boiling point of water was defined as 100 degrees because then as I said the human body can detect 1 degree variations.

salt water wasn't chosen because of the variations depending on where it's collected from, where as the variation in drinkable freshwater is much smaller.

sealevel was chosen because that is the closest thing you can get to a constant all around the world.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Coz they fat

 

[pcgeek11]

We use the metric system where I work in the USA, but then I work for a German Company in the USA.

 

[sdifox]

We use the metric system where I work in the USA, but then I work for a German Company in the USA.

OMGWTFBBQ, zeee Germans invaded USA!

 

[Sea Moose]

Why do British people have fucked up teeth?

I have been told that this is because the drink water is poor. Apparently if you drink a glass of water in england it has passed through 10 others.

Also, i have heard that America is slowly changing to metric. The cost to do it overnight would be enormous. Even in australia, which is a metric country, you can buy both metric and imperial.

America does need to change, as metric is a more accurate system. I believe (not sure) that Nasa uses metric

 

[Texashiker]

The three countries that don't use the metric system

33% of the countries that do not use the standard system are world leaders.

If the rest of the world would convert to the standard system, we would all be better off.