To be clear, I meant the area of one State of Rhode Island (we leave off the rest now), not the area of one Rhode Island island here in Rhode Island, aka Aquidneck island.
I’m against it.
The metric system is here now in the U.S. (science, medicine, military, many sports, and a lot of manufacturing) (and the units used for all things electrical are metric, including the units for power). Actually, the metric system is the basis of units in the U.S.; all of the ‘customary’ units are officially defined by metric units. Which is to say, the metric system is not going away.
At least don’t do what some of the equipment at my work does: static pressures are measured in pounds per square inch (PSI), but rates of pressure change are measured in pascals per second (Pa/s). Er, what? Metric? Imperial? US Customary? Make up your mind!
I do a lot of work on cars, and have metric & SAE sockets and wrenches. Not surprisingly, I don’t use the SAE stuff very often nowadays. I use the SAE stuff on my 1974 Pinto, and on my (USA-made) lawnmower, and that’s pretty much it.
But consider this: the entire world uses the inch system when it comes to square drives. 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch, and 1/2 inch square drives are ubiquitous for sockets and extensions, and I don’t ever see that changing. Oh, and those (very common) driver bits that are used with impact drivers? Those have a 1/4 inch hex shank. They’re used throughout the world.
Johhny Carson voice: “I did not know that.”
In the USA they tried to teach metric to us in the 70’s and it made good math sense yet I’ve driven from Belfast to Dublin where the signs say the speed limit changes from 70 /national speed limit to 100 - whoo hoo! Yeah, there are several signs reminding you that the Republic of Ireland uses metric and we’re all in agreement with the temperature (well, they don’t say that latter bit).
Yet end of the day it all comes down to square drives which are not at all archaic things peculiar to the USA.
At least I can boil water for my coffee in the morning way faster than the USA because we use metric electricity in the UK.
That won’t change. Nobody is going to throw out their old sockets and bits for new drive sizes, so nobody will buy the new wrenches and drivers with new drive sizes that fit the sockets and bits they won’t buy.
Not really. The “metric” part of the electric standard is the 50 Hz frequency, which of course is half of a nice metric-friendly 100 Hz and probably chosen for that reason. But that doesn’t affect power delivery directly. You can boil water faster because of the higher voltage (240 s. 120), but those weren’t set by any metric system motivations.
(I realize you were probably speaking tongue in cheek, but there is actually a connection there)
Oh, there are lots of things that are “metric,” but are really just Imperial conversions. For example, vast numbers of electronic parts are on a 2.54mm pitch, because they are spec’d in Metric, but were designed in inches (.1” = 2.54mm).
What I find amazing is that Japan (which is a sensibly metric country) is half 50 Hz AC power and half 60 Hz. The divide being approximately midway between Tokyo and Osaka, as so many things in Japanese culture seem to.
It’s also only 100 Volts, but that’s a nice sensibly metric number.
Aye, I was doing just that. I’d be doubly apologetic if this were Factual Questions! Somehow “metric electricity” seemed like a funny thing to write.
In comparing day-to-day differences between the various countries I’ve lived in, upon returning to the USA and using an electric water boiler at my Mom’s house - I really at first thought the thing was broken (after like 2 minutes it clearly was on yet when does it reach 210F° / 100C° ?!).
Happily, diodes, cathodes, generators, oscillators (sorta paraphrasing an old Polecats song) are irrespective of metric and are about waveforms.
These guys were all right:
- Heinrich_Hertz
- André-Marie Ampère
- Alessandro Volta
- Nikola Tesla
The reason Japan has separate and incompatible electrical grids has to do largely with the US occupation of Japan after WWII. The use of an underpowered 50 Hz/100 VAC power grid is evident to anyone who has tried to use an electric razor or element heater, and the disconnect has caused a lot of problems over the years, particularly during the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Volts, of course, are an SI (“Metric”) unit, as are all commonly units associated with electromagnetic phenomena, and aside from the legacy infrastructure associated with traditional English units there are no rational arguments for not adopting SI units. The claims that English units are more “natural” or somehow innately “intuitive” is ad hoc rationalization not borne out by any evidence; the consistent base 10 fundamentals with a 103 prefix iteration not only makes the mathematics of going between scales straightforward but is also a conceptually intelligible vice measurements that were made based upon some arbitrary measurement of a king’s anatomy or the volume of a typical wineskin.
The argument that Fahrenheit scale of temperature is somehow closer to human perceptiveness than Celsius is objectively nonsense. The greater ostensible fidelity of Fahrenheit is imperceptible; the difference in the perception of of dry air between 70 °F and 72 °F is at the very limit of what even a very temperature sensitive person can distinguish, so in this sense Celsius is clearly a better fit. As for temperature ranges, the stages of Δ10 °C from -20 °C to 50 °C are completely comprehensible, and it is even quite easy to do mental conversions from Fahrenheit to Celsius and reverse by memorizing a few conversion points (10 °C <==> 50 °F, 20 °C <==> 68 °F, 25 °C <==> 77 °F, 30 °C <==> 86 °F, 35 °C <==> 95 °F, 45 °C <==> 113 °F) and interpolating by dividing or multiplying by 2 which gets close enough to be a rounding error. The preference of Fahrenheit is nothing more than an inculcated familiarity.
Nearly all units used in scientific research today are SI; unfortunately, the same cannot be said about engineering where many bizarre and non-intuitive units (I defy anyone to make intuitive sense of BTU/ft2•hr•°F) are still in routine use purely because of institutional inertia. The shifting of manufacture from English to SI units is often stated as some kind of apocalyptic change but aside from some hardware and modest tooling changes it would not be difficult to implement in a phased manner. Many companies that have to homologate products for sale in the European Union already have to provide engineering documentation in dual units, and as noted many American manufacturers including automotive companies already use some mix of SI and SAE components.
Stranger
That’s true, but so is the reverse. There’s nothing more intuitive about Celsius. No one really has an intuition for what “boiling” feels like, because it’s too far past the “causes immediate damage” point.
I’m bilingual. I know what Fahrenheit temperatures feel like from -5 to 100, and what Celsius temperatures feel like from 0 to 45. (Yes, the range is different. I’ve never experienced Celsius in a cold place, and I’ve been to hotter places in Celsius than Fahrenheit.) They both work fine. You can hang your hat on either one.
Well said.
And, to go back to the earlier point… who gives a shit? I speak English because I was raised speaking English. I like hotdogs because I was raised in a culture that eats hotdogs. The primary benefit to using Fahrenheit is that I can say “Man, feels like it’s a hundred out” to the person next to me and they know what I mean. No theoretical “but the scale is more logical!” nonsense is going to be more important to me than that. There is straight up zero benefit in me converting to Celsius when discussing the outdoor temps and nothing that would make the effort (however minimal) worth my time.
There is one place where I use Celsius daily: computer component temps. I have a readout on my keyboard about how hot my CPU and GPU are and it displays in C because everyone else uses C. And, just like temperature points in F, the scale for how it gets there is meaningless compared to where it is. I know that, for my purposes, 80 is getting too warm, 90 is too hot and 100 is dangerously hot. When the number gets past 80, spin the fans faster until it’s below 80. How do I know that 90F is getting too hot? Same way I know that water freezes at 32F or body temp is ~98.6F – someone told me and I put info in my brain and can pull it out and it’s no big deal. If it was common to discuss CPU temps in Fahrenheit then I’d just memorize that 82F is a low idle temp and 176F is getting toasty and 212F is where hard thermal protection kicks in and my life wouldn’t be any different, better or worse, for it.
Until the day comes that I need to bake a pizza or heat my home with my CPU, I can know that my CPU is currently at 37C, comfortable room temp is 70F and a pizza bakes at 425F, perform all functions perfectly well and give zero shits how they compare. I have two main interactions with temperatures: Knowing whether to bring a coat and trying to make things from one number to another number. As long as I know what the number is that I’m trying to reach, it doesn’t matter what “scale of progression between freezing and boiling” is used to get there.
I don’t think anyone cares how you, personally, set your thermostat, but engineering use of abortions like BTU per pound-mass or horsepower-hours sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Right, and that’s why we should switch to Celsius. Because in this day and age, “the person next to you” could be on a different continent. If we all want to be able to communicate things like this, then we all need to be using the same units, and there are a lot more non-Americans than Americans.
Yup. And i learned Celsius because i spent enough time in places where that’s how people think of temperature that it was worth it to me. Now, when i travel, i change my phone to display temps in Celsius so i can relate what it says to what people around me say, what the hotel thermostat says, etc. I almost never convert. I know what 24C or 50F feels like, and that’s good enough. (Today is about 50F, and I’m off to mow my lawn. And i won’t have to worry about overheating.)
That’s possibly a reason for YOU to switch to Celsius. It basically never comes up for me (or comes up so rarely as to be inconsequential). And has never come up in a meaningful or time-sensitive way. “Man it’s 30C out today” “What’s that in Yankee? LOL”
If we’re working on important temperature related things across the globe, hopefully we’ve decided on a standard and are using it. Which standard is less important than picking one. But that’s not the case for the vast majority of people communicating locally or across the globe.
Oops, temps are up to 60. I guess I’ll wear a head band so i don’t drop till much sweat into my eyes.