How do you feel about the metric system?

[Cheesesteak]

@Malthus

Freezing and boiling points of water are the significant temperatures in everyday life and activities, so it makes a lot of sense to use them as endpoints

In terms of everyday life and activities, the boiling point of water doesn’t come up very much.

The freezing point of water matters, because if the air temperature is measured to be 0C or less, water in the environment can freeze and cause a hazard. Saying the temperature is below zero or above zero means something to the listener.

The number used for the boiling point of water doesn’t matter at all. There’s hardly any importance to saying that something is at 95C vs. 105C. If you’re boiling water, it’s at 100C, exactly, every time, there’s no value in measuring 100, or setting something to 100, because the water is inherently limiting. It gets there without having to be measured.

Of course, I sat here fiddling so long that leahcim said all this already.

[bot3]

@DCnDC

Bullshit.

The reason the US has not converted to the metric system is as simple as “We don’t want to.” If large groups of people all over the country were clamoring for the metric system, government and private businesses alike would comply with their wishes, but the fact is most people don’t care, and your arguments for conversion, whether they are sensible or not, are unconvincing because we have a system that works for us and we have no compelling reason to change, no matter what you think.

BS back at you. It certainly is. People are always reluctant to change be it good, bad or indifferent. But when its to the advantage to some individual group it gets done. (Obama-care, Seat belts, no smoking, most lobbying efforts, Gun control, etc…). Need I say more. Money is the only determining motive. Ask any scientist
(and most educators) and see if they don’t agree. That is if you believe in the scientific method.

[DCnDC]

@bot3

BS back at you. It certainly is. People are always reluctant to change be it good, bad or indifferent. But when its to the advantage to some individual group it gets done. (Obama-care, Seat belts, no smoking, most lobbying efforts, Gun control, etc…). Need I say more. Money is the only determining motive. Ask any scientist
(and most educators) and see if they don’t agree. That is if you believe in the scientific method.

What the fuck are you talking about?

[bot3]

@DCnDC

What the fuck are you talking about?

You have no clue.

[iljitsch]

Maybe we can compromise on the temperature thing, and make 0 the freezing of water like C and 100 body temperature, like F. But then a degree would be very small, so let’s make body temperature 10 degrees.

So you would set your thermostat to something like 5 degrees and 7 or 8 degrees would be beach weather. Water boils at 27 degrees and a good freezer runs at -5.

[Malthus]

@Cheesesteak

In terms of everyday life and activities, the boiling point of water doesn’t come up very much.

The freezing point of water matters, because if the air temperature is measured to be 0C or less, water in the environment can freeze and cause a hazard. Saying the temperature is below zero or above zero means something to the listener.

The number used for the boiling point of water doesn’t matter at all. There’s hardly any importance to saying that something is at 95C vs. 105C. If you’re boiling water, it’s at 100C, exactly, every time, there’s no value in measuring 100, or setting something to 100, because the water is inherently limiting. It gets there without having to be measured.

Of course, I sat here fiddling so long that leahcim said all this already.

It is true that boiling water is self-limiting, but it makes sense that if you are basing your system on one phase change (freezing) you would build into it another phase change (boiling). All setting it at 100 does, though, is determine the size of degrees.

But yeah, the truly significant point is freezing. Making that 0 degrees strikes me as absolutely necessary. 100 doesn’t have the same significance that 0 does, no matter what you base it on.

[DCnDC]

@bot3

You have no clue.

No I do not. Because your statement a) is nonsensical on its face, and b) you’ve posted a whole lot of conspiracy talk and backed it up with absolutely nothing. So go on. Convince me.

[bot3]

Not worth the effort. You crude language speaks for itself and describes your outlook towards reasonable and constructive argument.

[DCnDC]

Then why are you here? You were plenty happy to throw your shit at the wall and see what stuck upthread. Now you’re backing down because I challenged you?

[bot3]

@iljitsch

Maybe we can compromise on the temperature thing, and make 0 the freezing of water like C and 100 body temperature, like F. But then a degree would be very small, so let’s make body temperature 10 degrees.

So you would set your thermostat to something like 5 degrees and 7 or 8 degrees would be beach weather. Water boils at 27 degrees and a good freezer runs at -5.

That would be interesting. But water is common to everyone and can be easily related to. Most thermometers show both F and C so I guess its a mute thing.

[bump]

For the most part, I’m measuring system agnostic. I’m used to using US standard measurements for things, but it doesn’t really cause me trouble. I can even convert most usual things in my head without much trouble.

I do often wonder why I see packaging in strange measurements in both US standard AND metric. ISTR seeing a shampoo bottle that wasn’t a very clean measurement in either scheme; like say 14.6 oz / 432 ml. Seems like you’d make it 14 oz OR 430 ml, and record the measurements accordingly in both systems, leaving only one an oddball amount.

[Hail_Ants]

I’ll preface this by saying 99% of everything about this just comes down to: “You always like the system you grew up with”.

Having said that, I see little reason for the US to bother converting to metric, nor do I see it likely to happen anytime soon. I was in grade school in the mid-seventies when the push to convert started (and very quickly ended). Besides just general push-back there was also the bad timing of it being the exact same point in time that pocket calculators became cheap and ubiquitous. And in terms of computer technology, it’s a thousand times even more common today! So the whole ‘based on tens’ thing doesn’t matter nearly as much.

The biggest issue I have with the unit meter is that its a yard, and I don’t and have never ‘thought’ in yards, but in feet. So if someone says a yacht is 30 meters long I’m like, “That makes no sense, it’s 100 feet! No one would say its 30 yards!” Same goes for height. Saying The Empire State Building is 443m tall makes as much sense to me as saying its 400-odd yards tall. It’s 1450 feet tall!

Another similar issue is how a kilometer is so much shorter than a mile. Consequently in terms of car speeds, KPH is nearly half of MPH. The old limit of 55MPH is 90KPH. Again I know it’s just what I grew up with, but I can’t help but feel that 0-100MPH is a more ‘natural’ range of automobile speeds than 0-100KPH is. 100MPH is just about the fastest you ever would or could or have gone in a regular car on a regular highway. Its’ similar to what Iwrote in one of my first posts about Celcius, coincidentally nearly exactly 15 years ago!

Oh, and I’m surprised none of the ‘metric people’ have mentioned either the Mars Climate Orbiter or the Gimli Glider yet!

[iljitsch]

@bot3

so I guess its a mute thing.

Right…

[bot3]

@Hail_Ants

I’ll preface this by saying 99% of everything about this just comes down to: “You always like the system you grew up with”.

(much deleted)

Oh, and I’m surprised none of the ‘metric people’ have mentioned either the Mars Climate Orbiter or the Gimli Glider yet!

I did make reference to failed space projects earlier due to metric vs US. But your first sentence sums it up. I wonder how Europeans look at our measuring standards.

[iljitsch]

Since you ask… It’s an insane system. If you’re flying somewhere, do you even know if the airplane progress thingy is in nautical miles or “land” miles? (Or US survey miles.)

It took me a long time to realize that people who grew up with imperial units don’t have a problem using different units for different things, so adding some metric here and there isn’t too problematic. But for metric people, having different, unrelated units for different things makes our head hurt.

[Cheesesteak]

@iljitsch

It took me a long time to realize that people who grew up with imperial units don’t have a problem using different units for different things,

It’s like time, you don’t need to easily translate hours or days or years into seconds, because you’re not measuring the same thing.

You use years to measure your marriage, days to measure an eBay delivery, hours to measure a work week, and seconds to measure foreplay.

[DrDeth]

@iljitsch

Since you ask… It’s an insane system. If you’re flying somewhere, do you even know if the airplane progress thingy is in nautical miles or “land” miles? (Or US survey miles.)
.

When you are flying it doesnt make much difference for nautical miles, and none at all for survey miles, that being 0.999998 that same. :rolleyes:

[california_jobcase]

Familiarity, or the idea of it, is the reason people stick to customary measures in the U.S. They think they have a “feel” for how big or small the units are. I used to ask my students to estimate a couple of things for me and write them down on a card, anonymously. I’d take the cards and write the answers on the board. The two estimates they gave me were their height in feet and inches and in meters, and how far they lived from school, both in kilometers and miles.

The answers revealed most of these ninth-graders had no idea of the size of the metric units. I’d get answers of 5’6" and 10 m for height and 5 mi and 1/2 km for distance. I’d also get ones in the other direction, such as 5’8" and 1.5 m for height and 10 mi and 250 km for distance.

I attribute this lack of knowledge, even though the kids had been taught SI units for three years by then, to two things, mostly. The first is reinforcement of the customary units on road signs, billboards, mi/h on speedometers, products sold by the pound, and so on. Only liters (usually 2 liter bottles) are encountered daily by most freshmen in high school.

The second is lousy examples given in school that don’t really fit students’ out-of-school lives. The classic example of a gram is a paperclip. The only place many of my students ever see paperclips is at school. They just aren’t used in most households, and kids don’t give a rat’s ass about paper clips! A better example would be a dollar bill. The students are told a kilo is about 2.2 lbs. A better example is to tell them a half-kilogram is just a bit bigger than a pound. Even better is to tell them a liter of water is a kilo, so a 2 L Coke is going to be a bit more than 2 kg, because of the sugar and the bottle.

Marketing people got 2 L soda bottles accepted in the U.S. by pushing the idea that a liter was a bit bigger than a quart. Maybe the next thing they should do is market stuff by 500 g packaging at the pound price, since 500 g is about 10% more than a pound.

My opinion of the metric system? It’s great! Don’t believe me? Do the following word problems with only pencil and paper, and get back to me.

What is the area of a rectangular plot measuring one mile, four hundred yards, two feet, and five inches long by two miles, 1289 yards, one foot, and three inches?

What is the area of a rectangular plot 1.97579 km by 4.39773 km?

[Cunctator]

I’ve lived with the metric system for 40 years. It’s just normality.

[johnpost]

America doesn’t have an ounce of sense.