I understand the stubborness. I think in English units. If someone gives me a celsius temprature, I mentally convert it to farenheit before I can get a feel for how warm it is outside. If someone says it’s so-and-so many kilometers to Springfield, I’ll have to convert it to miles to get a feel for the distance.
Irrational and perhaps indefensible, but I’m too old to change. I do however support a transition to metric. In a global age, it’s useful to have a common measurement system.
I used to feel like you did until I had to layout 6 trunk lids for spolilers in 1993.
The directions were in metric. I converted. No problem.
So I had to measure the width of the trunk lid, and divide that in half, and then measure out the same distance from the center on both sides to find the place to drill the holes.
The trunk lid was 32 27/32 wide, quick what is half of that?
Then I had to measure out 15 25/32 out form that center mark.
I would up checking and could not arrive at the same locations twice. Finding lowest common denominators, and all that. After 20 minutes I gave up.
On the way home, I stopped and bought a metric tape measure. Deck lid is 1432 mm wide. Half of that is 716mm. Measure out 625 mm make the mark and drill the hole. It took me less time to mark and drill all 6 deck lids than I had spent just trying to mark the one lid the day before.
The only problem I have with metric is torque. I know what a foot is, and I know what a pound is. Foot pounds make perfect sense. With Newton-meters on the other hand, I know what a meter is, but I have no clue what a Newton is.
Other than that, I can cope with metric is really is easy.
We defined thinking as integrating data and arriving at correct answers. Look around you. Most people do that stunt just well enough to get to the corner store and back without breaking a leg. If the average man thinks at all, he does silly things like generalizing from a single datum. He uses one-valued logics. If he is exceptionally bright, he may use two-valued, ‘either-or’ logic to arrive at his wrong anwers. If he is hungry, hurt, or personaly interested in the answer, he can’t use any sort of logic and will discard an observed fact as blithely as he will stake his life on a piece of wishful thinking. He uses the technical miracles created by superior men without wonder nor surprise, as a kitten accepts a bowl of milk. Far from aspiring to higher reasoning, he is not even aware that higher reasoning exists. He classes his own mental process as being of the same sort as the genius of an Einstein. Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.**[right]-- Robert A. Heinlein[/right]
kanicbird is referring to the Mars Climate Orbiter, which failed due to an error in a navigation and manuevering subsystem. While the error has been highlighted as being due to a mix-up in units, in truth the fact that it wasn’t caught prior to mission launch was due to an abbreviated test shedule and budget cuts. The failure was a human one, not due to anything about the system of units used. And compared to the wide variety of Imperial/U.S. Customary measurement units used for mass and force (only an idiot savant can you mentally convert between pound-force/slug-mass and poundal-force/pound mass systems without a fearful chance of error) the SI system is trivial, a matter of scaling by factors of ten, which despite claims to the contrary, is very natural for people who’ve grown up using a decimal counting system. Fear of the SI system is unnecessary, and attempts to rationalize the superiority of Imperial/U.S. Customary are idiotic.
As an engineer, I concur with Rick’s observations. Getting drawings that are marked in fractional inches is a big friggin’ pain in the ass, especially when the stated tolerances don’t match up to the divisors. And momentum calculations that don’t involve the use of “pound-mass” measurements are a hell of a lot clearer; I can pop kilograms into a calculations and get newtons out without any mucking about with whether I’ve thrown in the appropriate “slug” conversions. Switching would require a major revision in measurement tools and materials, to be certain, but would reap benefits in being able to commonize with the European Union (making it easier to export equipment or have dual manufacturing on both continents) and would minimize a lot of intersystem unit conversion errors.
2N ~ 9lbf, and 1m ~ 3.3ft. By memorizing a couple of simple multiples, you can actually calculate between lbf-ft and n-m pretty easily.
Stranger
I am the only one who took kanicbird’s post to be tongue-in-cheek? In other words, WHOOSH.
Seconded.
Well the spacecraft part was, but I really do feel that the ‘American system’ is much more human centric then the metric.
Bold mine
I think you got it Sunspace. While it’s true that 0C is the freezing point of water, which causes ice, the human factor is that 0F is the point that human nose hairs will freeze in only 2 breaths. Again metric is cold and inhuman, and the US System is human based.
0F is the point that it really gets cold out, and gloves and hats are a must for most at this temps.
BTW my car alerts me to possible freezing conditions at 37F.
Again with your hot end, 100F means it’s hot out - that IS a human range. 37C again is cold, clinical and inhuman.
Metric, schmetric.
When in the hell is the rest of the world going to get over spelling Labour - labor?
What’s with the U, huh?
Or the word: Pedophile which is smushed together to be Paedophile.
What the hell is going on with the ae thingie? What is that, anyways?
But, what I would really like to see is the US do what Zee Germans do ( and I think every other EU nation) is roll the stinking tax into the price of whatever the hell it is you are buying, so If you are getting a $1.99 thingie, it costs 1.99. Not 2.06.
(What the hell is the .99 ending in pricing anyways? Huh huh?)
Sorry, but weather forecasts simply develop a terminology to suit the scale being used. ‘Near freezing temperatures’, ‘reaching the low 20s’, ‘as far as double figures’ and so on. All are celsius-based, all make perfect sense to anyone who hears such things on a daily basis. American forecasts make no sense to me, precisely because I’ve never been in a position to acquire a similar familiarity with farenheit.
EVERY Deli service lady in Every groceriy store, large or small, in every city of Austria, I can assure you. “WieVielDeka?” (How many dekagrams, spoken at mach 27) If you don’t answer within a millisecond, they storm off and refuse to wait on you. All the really good stuff is at the deli counter, by the way.
It was a proud moment when, after two months, I finally left the deli counter with the lady smiling, exactly the amount of exactly the items I wanted in my basket. I was finally “fluent enough” in german. (Wiener Dielekt actually)
The deli counter in the ValuMart across the road from my apartment prices meats by units of 100 grams. I think they do this because the prices are smaller than if the used kilograms or pounds. I usually ask for 100 grams of spiced turkey breast–I know from bitter experience that if I buy much more than 150 grams, I won’t eat all of it before it goes bad.
Dekagrams? I’ve never used them. (Although I think the US spelling, with a k, is better than the international spelling ‘decagram’. Just as I prefer the Canadian ‘L’ for litre to the international ‘l’–it’s less confusing.)
And room temperature is 21 degrees C. This is so well known that there is a heating and air-conditioning company in Toronto named “Twenty-One Degrees”.
I am an American. You can have my inches, feet, links, chains and acres when you pry my cold, dead fingers from around them.
OK, it’s a little tough getting my fingers around the acres, but the rest is good to go!
Sunspace, the landscape world has a foot in both systems, too, and it’s frustrating as all hell. I would never work in imperial if I had my way - designing in metric is sooooo easy (move decimals to change measurements). You guys who are clinging to your outdated, unwieldy base-2 or base-12 or whatever the heck it is system have no idea how easy metric is. I cannot stress that enough - it is SO easy. You’d get used to it much quicker than you think if you used it every day.
You find a common usage for measurements that make sense for what people actually do (like the 100 grams for meat example). You buy a meter or a half-meter of fabric, a 500 mL bottle of Coke (although those are often 591 mL for some unknown reason), drive 120 km/hr, put on your parka when it’s -5 degrees out, etc. The only metric that hasn’t really caught on here yet is home baking - we still mostly work in cups and teaspoons for that.
Did I mention how EASY metric is?
The metric system?! In my day my car got 40 rods to the hodshead, and that’s the way I liksed it!!
*40 rods to the hogs-head
Wow we need an edit button.
Lot of headache for marginal gain. That’s why not.
(What really pisses me off is when IKEA comes over here and passes off half-assed metric conversions. “Oh, this frame is 20x30 (or whatever), it will fit a 4x6 picture just fine.” Will not.
Whatever. Ironically, you’re still referring to a base 10 system, just not one that’s internally consistent.
Stranger
We tried that, when I was in High School in the 70s.
So far I like “American” measurements. It’s a 1/4, or 1/2 or a whole cup of flour, not 1.67 pints or whatever. In order to buy the same amount of milk as is in a quart of milk, it would have to be an uneven measurement in liters.
I think all that sort of nonsense is why the attempt failed all those years ago.
Except that most non-US recipes do not use cups for dry ingredients. They are weighed out on kitchen scales.
Any good baking recipe will give flour weight in ounces as well as volume in cups, and a smart baker will use the weights. So that’s not really a metric/English thing.