Metric and how not to use it.

wyrm wrote:The real problem with the metric system is that there is no poetry in it. Which would you rather hear?

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;"

or

"Full metre nine point one four four thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;"

Alternatively

"Give him an inch and he'll take an ell"

or

"Give him twenty five point four millimetres and he'll take one point one four three metres"

So why would any sane writer discard the poetry of imperial measurements for the mundane ugliness of the metric system?

Lord Skimper wrote:Living on planets is a cool thing for Scify but in reality people will live in ships and habs more than on planets.

Lord Skimper wrote:Metric time is second s based

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The United States made the mistake of allowing the National Teachers Association write the curriculum to teach the metric system. Since the goal was to teach metric in elementary school, they appointed a committee of Elementary School teachers to develop the curriculum who had zero knowledge or experience to enlighten them. They didn't understand that while the English system gradually evolved in a primitive era and was painfully adapted to accommodate science and technology, the metric system was designed to enable scientific and technical calculations.

As a result, rather than focus on converting centimeters to millimeters or meters of kilometers, they focused on conversions to inches, feet and miles. I actually got sent to the principal s office for pointing out the absurdity.

American s would embrace metric if they were taught how to use metric in isolation rather than in context of the English system.

stewart wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:The United States made the mistake of allowing the National Teachers Association write the curriculum to teach the metric system. Since the goal was to teach metric in elementary school, they appointed a committee of Elementary School teachers to develop the curriculum who had zero knowledge or experience to enlighten them. They didn't understand that while the English system gradually evolved in a primitive era and was painfully adapted to accommodate science and technology, the metric system was designed to enable scientific and technical calculations.

As a result, rather than focus on converting centimeters to millimeters or meters of kilometers, they focused on conversions to inches, feet and miles. I actually got sent to the principal s office for pointing out the absurdity.

American s would embrace metric if they were taught how to use metric in isolation rather than in context of the English system.

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Depends on the context for me --
In a scientific application ex chemistry -- metric only --> calculations are much easier
in Engineering, depends on the end customer needs / preferences -- conversion factors introduce errors that must be corrected for parts to match/be consistent
Daily life -- Baseball is in Feet / Inches; water bottles in 500/750ml; Iced Tea in 32 oz ; Gasoline in gal.

PLEASE do not change gas to liters -- the Calif legislature would LOVE to suck more tax dollars at the pump.

-- Stewart

Lord Skimper wrote:Metric time is second s based and it isn't written in 10 or 100 or 1000 or 100,000 seconds it is metric. 10 seconds is 1das or decasecond. 100,000 seconds is 100ks or kilosecond. 10,000,000 seconds is 10Ms or Megaseconds. 10 trillion seconds is 10Ts. etc... elegant nice and cool. 1000's of a second is 1ms.

Your birthday is inconsequential in space as every planetary system is different but you would be so many Ms to Gs old at a set time. It would be the same for everyone every where. Even those who don't live on planets.

Living on planets is a cool thing for Scify but in reality people will live in ships and habs more than on planets.

cthia wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Since all societies in the Honorverse descended from colonists who used starships, no one even remembers that a foot is anything other than an appendage or that a yard is anything but a vegetated area adjacent to a residence. Mile? What the heck is a mile?

IT'S GREEN.

Lord Skimper wrote:I under stand that RFC doesn't really under stand metric, I lived through the conversion times in Canada and in Canada we still use Miles and think of Km as a type of distant similar to a mile, even though it isn't.

a Km is 1000 metres. a Mile is 1 mile.

14,000,000 Km is 14,000,000,000 metres or 14 Giga metres or 14 Gm.

1,000 Km is 1,000,000 metres or 1 Mega metre or 1 Mm

1,000,000,000 Km is 1,000,000,000,000 metres or 1 Tera metre or 1Tm.

The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second or 300 Mm per second.

Metric is based on the metre for distance. and 10's 100's and 1000's or many 1000's or 1000th of a metre not a Kilo metre.

phillies wrote:I don't see any basis for this claim. A kilometer is a type of distance, and it is similar within a factor of two to a mile. I believe someone carefully set up software that would let the illustrious writer get all his numbers right on missile firings.