Metric and how not to use it.

cthia wrote:Except Grayson. They play baseball. You can't mark a baseball diamond in metric. The pitcher's mound is exactly 18 feet away. 18.39 meters. In a friendly game of pickup, how do you walk off 18.39 meters?

Umm, speaking of how not to use metric... 18.39 meters hardly equals 18 feet .

The pitcher's plate is 60 feet, 6 inches (18.39 meters) away from the rear point of home plate [though the MLB must have missed a couple classes since those aren't equivalent numbers, 18.39 meters is only 60' 4"].

18 feet is the diameter of the mound, not its distance from the plate. (And of course regardless of imperial or metric marking out a field for for a pickup game walking off 24 adult paces from home base is plenty close enough to mark a pitchers mound)

Jonathan_S wrote:But yeah, it's all peripheral stuff and some of those it's just a name that happens to describe a physical characteristic; 2 liter, 9mm, 35mm, etc. People aren't measuring it or even usually thinking about the metric system when the use the name.

Pretty much everything in the US military is is metric. Artillery fire is adjusted in meters, map grids are KMs, effective ranges are in meters, etc.

johnb wrote:You should try being here in the UK, we have a right mishmash.

We buy petrol(gas) in litres, but drive in miles, we buy draft beer in pints, but in bottles it's in ml(millilitres) sometimes it's 500ml, others it's a direct conversion from pints more or less(440ml is common). The EU is Brussels tried for years to make us buy draft beer in litres, but gave up in the end!!!

We buy sheets of timber in millmetres, say 2400mm x 1200mm, but its still the same old 8ft x 4ft sheets.

Me ... well having lived through the conversion period I'm pretty well bi-lingual in all that stuff.

Until I come to the US where your US gallon is 3.8litres and our imperial gallon is 4.45litres.

Oh well we cannot all be the same.

John

You forgot the weirdest measurement, body weight is in stones. Wtf is up with that?

ZVar wrote:

johnb wrote:You should try being here in the UK, we have a right mishmash.

We buy petrol(gas) in litres, but drive in miles, we buy draft beer in pints, but in bottles it's in ml(millilitres) sometimes it's 500ml, others it's a direct conversion from pints more or less(440ml is common). The EU is Brussels tried for years to make us buy draft beer in litres, but gave up in the end!!!

We buy sheets of timber in millmetres, say 2400mm x 1200mm, but its still the same old 8ft x 4ft sheets.

Me ... well having lived through the conversion period I'm pretty well bi-lingual in all that stuff.

Until I come to the US where your US gallon is 3.8litres and our imperial gallon is 4.45litres.

Oh well we cannot all be the same.

John

You forgot the weirdest measurement, body weight is in stones. Wtf is up with that?

Oh, that's easy. A stone WAS a stone. You know, find a big stone, set it up where ever you need an official weight - that's your 'stone'. Of course, everyone had a different stone - the weight of a stone varied from about 5 pounds weight to about 40 pounds depending on where you where, when you were, and what you were weighing.

A stone is now 14 pounds. That's the law in the UK. Thank you, Edward III.

Jonathan_S wrote:

jtg452 wrote:The metric system just never really caught on in the US in everyday life. The effort in the '70's to start a gradual change over was a complete bust. All it succeeded in doing was confusing small children. Sort of like the 'new math' craze of the same period did.

About the only piece of the metric system that can be found regularly in everyday life in the US is the 2 liter soft drink bottle. Inches, ounces, feet, yards, pounds and miles are the measurements of everyday life. The only impact is that most Americans have figured out a way to translate from the metric system when necessary.

There are a few other places it's snuck into regular peoples' lives around the edges.
Car engine displacements are almost always given in liters now rather than cubic inches.

Home power usage is reported in kilowatt hours kWh - but that's partly because practical use of electricity is new enough that there weren't widely adpoted pre-SI units to displace.

Similar situation for sound volume with decibels (though you could report it in PSI).

If you looking for a bright LED light you're now looking at its number of lumens not its candlepower

Back when people took film photographs it was usually 35mm film

A popular pistol caliber is 9mm

But yeah, it's all peripheral stuff and some of those it's just a name that happens to describe a physical characteristic; 2 liter, 9mm, 35mm, etc. People aren't measuring it or even usually thinking about the metric system when the use the name.

Most imbecile journalists will tell you that a new windmill or solar farm will generate say 5 Megawatts per year. WTF?

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Except Grayson. They play baseball. You can't mark a baseball diamond in metric. The pitcher's mound is exactly 18 feet away. 18.39 meters. In a friendly game of pickup, how do you walk off 18.39 meters?

Umm, speaking of how not to use metric... 18.39 meters hardly equals 18 feet .

The pitcher's plate is 60 feet, 6 inches (18.39 meters) away from the rear point of home plate [though the MLB must have missed a couple classes since those aren't equivalent numbers, 18.39 meters is only 60' 4"].

18 feet is the diameter of the mound, not its distance from the plate. (And of course regardless of imperial or metric marking out a field for for a pickup game walking off 24 adult paces from home base is plenty close enough to mark a pitchers mound)

Darn metric.

ZVar wrote:

johnb wrote:You should try being here in the UK, we have a right mishmash.

We buy petrol(gas) in litres, but drive in miles, we buy draft beer in pints, but in bottles it's in ml(millilitres) sometimes it's 500ml, others it's a direct conversion from pints more or less(440ml is common). The EU is Brussels tried for years to make us buy draft beer in litres, but gave up in the end!!!

We buy sheets of timber in millmetres, say 2400mm x 1200mm, but its still the same old 8ft x 4ft sheets.

Me ... well having lived through the conversion period I'm pretty well bi-lingual in all that stuff.

Until I come to the US where your US gallon is 3.8litres and our imperial gallon is 4.45litres.

Oh well we cannot all be the same.

John

You forgot the weirdest measurement, body weight is in stones. Wtf is up with that?

In the olden days, wasn't it the measurement of how many it took to fully stone every inch of your body?

'Taint fair to stone a 100 lb man with the same number of stones an 800 lb gorilla requires. LOL

The metric system never caught on in America because the English language is based on the SI unit which would make much of our language meaningless.

What fun is it if a girl's skirt can no longer inch up on its own?

There would be no more pussyfootin around.

No more inchworm.

Spouses who haven't quite made up their mind, still on the cusp will have to go through with marriage anyway now, since cold feet would no longer be possible.

Without SI how can one ever learn to tie his shoes, no longer able to put a foot in a shoe?

Children would become unruly, parents no longer able to put a foot in an ass.

If you're fatally sick in the metric system you can no longer fight for your life, when you have just one foot in the grave.

White people usually find that they are much better dancers if they convert to metric, no longer busting a move with two left feet.

Again, in a war, metric sucks. Without SI, where would that leave . . .

The thrill of victory and the agony of the feet.

The metric system would kill the NFL. No more 4th down goal to goal and inches.



Poetry and music screws 'em all up.

Foot

Definition:

No toes, no shoes, no soles. In literary circles, this term refers to the most basic unit of a poem's meter.

A foot is a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. There are all kinds of feet in poetry, and they all sound different, so we'll give you a handy list. If you want to be the nerdiest nerd in the nerd herd, you should memorize it:

• Iamb: daDUM
  
• Trochee: DUMda
  
• Spondee: DUMDUM
  
• Anapest: dadaDUM
  
• Dactyl: DUMdada
  
• Amphibrach: daDUMda
  
• Pyrrhic: dada

A combination of feet makes up a line of meter. So, for example, the most common meter in English poetry is iambic pentameter, which contains five (that's where that "pent-" comes from) iambs, all in a row.

Finding your feet can be as tricky as learning the Viennese waltz, but that's the main task of scansion, a fancy term for analyzing a poem's meter. Just remember the list above, and read aloud, read read aloud.

To clarify

SI units are a super-set of the metric system

The old units are referred to as Imperial units.


Just saying

George J. Smith wrote:To clarify

SI units are metric based

The old units are referred to as Imperial units.


Just saying

See, an English bloke displaying the convenience of putting a foot in ass. LOL

George, do foreigners get athlete's feet?