Metric and how not to use it.

Despite converting many years ago we still have a few old habits.
Easier to think of MPG than ltrs per 100kms, women understand 8 inches rather than 200 mm, TVs are advertised in inches, car wheels are still talked about as 17 or 18 inch.

cthia wrote:

Daryl wrote:In Australia we converted many years ago.
I still remember an old lady on Newsreel (before general TV) complaining "Why couldn't they have waited until all the old people have died?"

I wasn't aware you converted. You still measure the length of your crocs in feet. You still record how many feet are found inside of them.

cthia wrote:Men, it's a double standard that the girls we usually take home to meet the folks are the girls who practice — let's say — the metric system, on the first few dates. Or d&ys. Or weeks. Or months.


"She didn't budge a MILIMETER!"

I have found that women tend to be rather intimidated when confronted with decimeters.

Go with furlongs/fortnight as the unit of choice.

Some units just make more sense than others as they apply better to everyday life.

In many instances feet are superior to meters. Almost no one uses Cm as it is not relevant to most things. Millimeters is used very often.

Materials science, most still know what 100ksi is but say 0.7GPA and everyone is sitting there scratching their heads on both sides of the Atlantic. Same reason Everyone knows the rockwell C scale for hardness, but almost no one knows the Brinell scale. One is under scale of 100 and the other is some nebulous scale.

PS> Land navigation should be same as nautical..... Knots.

PPS. Darned Babylonians... we still use base 60. Why 360 degrees......

PPPS. French tried going to a 10 hour day and failed.

PPPPPS: USA did not switch in the 70's because every machine in the USA was in inches and when you spent the last 4 generations building industrial plants based on imperial units switching is an impossible task without bankrupting yourself. IT changed with the advent of the computer controlled machinery. Robots do not care about what numbers are on dials. Thus the industries which are automated are all in metric and only those which are not automated are still in imperial.

Relax wrote:Some units just make more sense than others as they apply better to everyday life.

In many instances feet are superior to meters. Almost no one uses Cm as it is not relevant to most things. Millimeters is used very often.

Materials science, most still know what 100ksi is but say 0.7GPA and everyone is sitting there scratching their heads on both sides of the Atlantic. Same reason Everyone knows the rockwell C scale for hardness, but almost no one knows the Brinell scale. One is under scale of 100 and the other is some nebulous scale.

PS> Land navigation should be same as nautical..... Knots.

PPS. Darned Babylonians... we still use base 60. Why 360 degrees......

PPPS. French tried going to a 10 hour day and failed.

PPPPPS: USA did not switch in the 70's because every machine in the USA was in inches and when you spent the last 4 generations building industrial plants based on imperial units switching is an impossible task without bankrupting yourself. IT changed with the advent of the computer controlled machinery. Robots do not care about what numbers are on dials. Thus the industries which are automated are all in metric and only those which are not automated are still in imperial.

Why complain about 360 degrees in a circle and then say all distance should be in nautical miles (defined as one-sixtieth of a degree {a minute} of latitude on the equator)?

tlb wrote:

Relax wrote:PS> Land navigation should be same as nautical..... Knots.

PPS. Darned Babylonians... we still use base 60. Why 360 degrees......

Why complain about 360 degrees in a circle and then say all distance should be in nautical miles (defined as one-sixtieth of a degree {a minute} of latitude on the equator)?

2π radians == 360 degrees is okay; you want a circle nicely divisible by 3 and 4. And by coincidence the year is about 360 days. But using 60 for the subdivisions of the degree ... no! Scrap the minutes and seconds, and use tenths, hundredths, etc. of degrees.

And the meter should have originally been defined as 1/9M of the distance from pole to equator, not 1/10M. Then a degree of latitude would be 100 km, and the knot would be 1 km/hr, usable on land and sea.

Relax wrote:Some units just make more sense than others as they apply better to everyday life.

In many instances feet are superior to meters. Almost no one uses Cm as it is not relevant to most things. Millimeters is used very often.

Materials science, most still know what 100ksi is but say 0.7GPA and everyone is sitting there scratching their heads on both sides of the Atlantic. Same reason Everyone knows the rockwell C scale for hardness, but almost no one knows the Brinell scale. One is under scale of 100 and the other is some nebulous scale.

PS> Land navigation should be same as nautical..... Knots.

PPS. Darned Babylonians... we still use base 60. Why 360 degrees......

PPPS. French tried going to a 10 hour day and failed.

PPPPPS: USA did not switch in the 70's because every machine in the USA was in inches and when you spent the last 4 generations building industrial plants based on imperial units switching is an impossible task without bankrupting yourself. IT changed with the advent of the computer controlled machinery. Robots do not care about what numbers are on dials. Thus the industries which are automated are all in metric and only those which are not automated are still in imperial.

In some ways we did. Some of our manufacturing shifted. A lot of unions and workers got upset and then they learned they only had to spend a few bucks to get slightly different tips for their drivers.

And we shifted quickly enough on things like soda bottles...two liter, etc.

But we had very little choice about those.

Using both Metric fasteners and SAE rasteners has a price. You should see my double width Craftsman tool chest and cabinet set.

Bill Woods wrote:

Relax wrote:PS> Land navigation should be same as nautical..... Knots.

PPS. Darned Babylonians... we still use base 60. Why 360 degrees.....
2π radians == 360 degrees is okay; you want a circle nicely divisible by 3 and 4. And by coincidence the year is about 360 days. But using 60 for the subdivisions of the degree ... no! Scrap the minutes and seconds, and use tenths, hundredths, etc. of degrees.

And the meter should have originally been defined as 1/9M of the distance from pole to equator, not 1/10M. Then a degree of latitude would be 100 km, and the knot would be 1 km/hr, usable on land and sea.

Uh, before that, you have to get rid of seconds, minutes, hours and redefine into 10 hours/day, either 10 minutes or 100 minutes/hour, and either 10s or 100 seconds/minute. And if 10minutes, 10 seconds are used, then you will need to make up a new time name at power of 10 past seconds. Probably would not happen. So, 10h, 100min, 100seconds. Problem, 10 hours/day doesn't work well and probably would have to turn that into 20 hours/day.

This changes definition of kilometer by the way.... as that is defined by light speed/second. Definition of second just changed...

Right now there are approximately 85,000seconds in a day.
60*60*24.

New "day" would be 100*100* either 10hours or 20 hours, so either 100,000 seconds/day or 200,000 seconds/day. Either way, kilometer is getting shorter, or MUCH longer, if someone kept definition of meter the same and made up something past seconds. If 10 hour day, then kilometer would be ~1/7th shorter than currently. If 20 hour day, a kilometer would be ~4.5/7ths shorter, or roughly a "foot", a MUCH more useable number as it now would approximately be the length of your foot...

A mile would become 1000 new "feet", so all of our "speeds" would increase and people would have larger ego's as they are now moving so much "faster"...

NO, circles do not need to be divisible by 3. 4 only. For quadrants. 100 degrees works just fine in that case. 25 degrees/quadrant and 100minutes/degree and 100seconds/minute.

I believe the French tried it in the 18th century but too many things changed and it turned into mass confusion.

IIRC in the metric system there are 1000 mils in a circle, but most people still used 360 degrees.

As an aside.

The French only count up to sixty-nine, 70 is sixty-ten, 80 is four-twenties and 90 is four-twenties-ten

Something to do with there being 60 minutes in an hour I believe.