I could see replacing astronomical distances with prefixed meters. A light-year would be about 9.46 Pm, a parsec about 31 Pm, there would be about 105 ly in an Em, the Milky Way would be about one Zm across. Sure makes the language more compact.
Grandpa, is that you?
the purpose of keeping the english system is an attempt to keep people sharp in their arithmetic skills and pressure from the slide rule industry.
No, this grandpa is metric.
I have a metric-converter hand-held calculator. Punch in the number and hit the From Metric or To Metric button, then the category button, kilometres/miles, square kilometres/square miles, litres/imperial gallons, litres/U.S. gallons and so on.
According to the calculator, 2.567 kilometres = 1.59505985 miles.
I have this calculator. The listed price is ridiculous. I picked mine up for 8 bucks at Staples.
Yeah, I cook nearly every single day; I know 3 tsp=1 tbsp; I know conversions from fluid oz. up to gallons, and that Imperial and US are different. But I never can remember it’s 16 tbsp to a gallon. I rarely need to know that, but when I do, I have to look it up. I suspect it’s not a very well-known conversion, as opposed to four quarts in a gallon.
I know, but how many feet is 0.59505985 miles? How many inches is the decimal part of that?
This may seem to be true, but the problem with that is that the units in which technical calculations and measurement are done in have to be converted at some point to units used by the general public, and the potential for error in the additional calculations (both from incorrectly performing the conversion and the previously mentioned floating point or significant figure errors) can be problematic. The failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter due to a units conversion issue is the most dramatic example, but there are others in manufacturing and transportation which are more pertinent to everyday life. That many building codes, regulations, and contracts in the United States still specify units of measurement in SI tends to increase the inertia to not converting even when it makes sense to do so. But you are correct, where it is sensible–such as in industries like automobile manufacturing or pharmaceuticals–the industries have volunarily converted (for the most part) in order to make better use of global supply chains and compliance with regulations.
As for the points made by several that US customary units are somehow more “intuitive”, these are merely rationalizations. The average adult foot is not 12 inches (2.54 cm) in length, and the variance of a foot (from about 10 to 16 inches at two standard deviations) is sufficient that measuring by pacing is only slightly more accurate than a skilled measure by eye. The finer graduations offered by the Fahrenheit temperature scale are not physically discernable by the vast majority of people, and the division of the Celsius scale from -10 to 40 (with the freezing and boiling temperatures of water at standard pressure at 0 and 100 °C) are quite aguably more sensible for the natural temperature variations tolerable by human beings. That US Customary units are more familiar is not in question, but switching to SI units for everyday measure is not this tragic and herculean effort for any person with an IQ above 90 who isn’t actively resisting the change, any more than it is impossible for someone to recalibrate their scale of “what things cost” when going from US dollars to Euros or Yen. All measures are artificial and their degree of “intuitiveness” is really based upon having a reasonable scale compared to the quantities being measured and the base of the calculation system (hence why metric units make carrying significant digits and rounding errors easier to manage).
Consider that prior to a little over two centuries ago there was almost no standardization in units of measure, and in fact, the standardization of units was done precisely to facilitate industrialization and internatoinal trade. That the vast majority of the world uses metric units for everyday measures argues against US Customary units–or any other native measures–as being inherently better or easier to interpret.
Regarding the neper (or decibel), while it can be considered a unit and is “metric” in the base 10 numbering system, it is not a unit of measurement, but rather a ratio of measures or of a measured value such as power or pressure to a normalized base. For instance, decibels in sound are calcualted against a reference value of 20 micropascals above the ambient pressure level such that a microphone captures the local pressure deviation and calculates the sound pressure level (SPL) = log(root mean square of the measured pressure)/log(20 µPa) for a given frequency band. The neper or decibel are not part of the SI system, although when used with an SI system of units are compatible with it and make it easier to handle quantities which scale exponentially to a numerical base.
Stranger
How often would you imagine a user of the U.S. customary system would need to know this? Inches and feet are most commonly used to either measure living things, or in construction or similar activity, and things like measuring if your room is wide enough to fit the new couch you’re thinking of buying. By and large we don’t measure miles at all, because they are too big, anymore than the average metric user measures anything in kilometers.
The only time we might use miles would be on a trip, and I’d never have a need to convert from miles to feet/inches.
It gets back to what I’m saying, where it makes sense most Americans that need it already use the metric system. But average people have little if any cause to ever convert from miles to feet and inches–in fact I’ve never done it in the entirety of my life outside of when I was a little kid and had to learn that 1 mile = 5,280 feet. At that length it’s too big a unit to use in daily life.
But that’s roughly the same as a kilometer, I imagine a driver can “roughly tell” when they’ve driven a km if they’re used to it, but can they tell when they’ve gone 100m versus 480m? Unlikely, no more than I can easily tell if I’ve gone 200 ft versus 520 ft. [Now I bet most Americans can roughly guesstimate yards, because we know 100 yards is a football field so we can sorta roughly think–okay, the next street I turn at is 2 football fields away–but that’s not a common thing either.]
I’ll give you the answer if you can give me a legitimate, practical, everyman reason why I would need to know that.
Well I know it’s a fun story but the Mars Climate Orbiter failure is really a pretty poor example when responding to my claim that most people in their day-to-day lives would realize few if any of the benefits of a change. I imagine vanishingly few people on the forums here are involved in the design of NASA vehicles (maybe 1-2 might be, maybe.)
But I think there’s probably a bigger reason than just building codes that most of the construction trade still works with customary units–because it doesn’t appear that metric is intrinsically that advantageous in that industry.
Just one is sufficient, I think. I live two blocks from the Pacific Ocean. During the warmest time of year the trade winds are blowing, and that helps it feel cooler.
It gets a bit hotter in the so-called “interior,” but only to maybe 35 C. No place in Panama is more than about 40 km from the sea.
I used to live in Washington DC. Panama has a better climate in both the winter and the summer.
Did you mean 16 cups? There are 16 x 16 tbsp in a gallon.
All widths very approximate:
yoctometer - neutrino
zeptometer - top quark (x 10)
attometer - up quark
femtometer - proton
picometer - uranium nucleus (x 100) or helium atom (x 0.05)
nanometer - glucose molecule
micrometer - largest virus or smallest bacterium
millimeter - tiny insect
meter - dodo bird
kilometer - Vatican City
megameter - Italy
gigameter - Sun (x 0.6)
terameter - Antares
petameter - Stingray Nebula
exameter - Rosette Nebula
zettameter - Milky Way Galaxy
yottameter - Virgo supercluster
When I hung out with electrical engineers 40 years ago, pico was the smallest prefix in wide use. (picofarad was in such frequent use, it was abbreviated as “puff.”) But I don’t recall hearing giga except half-jokingly.
How about now? One can buy a terabyte hard drive for a few dollars at the supermarket. :smack: What else?
I could do that.
Or I could say it’s 1.6 miles and leave it at that, because unless I’m trying to pass a middle-school math test I can’t fathom any reason why 1.6 miles wouldn’t be an acceptable solution.
Of course, if you’re trying to be needlessly pedantic, one wonders why you haven’t asked us to compute it in miles, furlongs, chains, rods, yards, feet, and inches.
No, no, no. After zeptometer it goes harpometer, chicometer, grouchometer.
Yes, that’s a dramatic example of how our clinging to the old system can cause massive failure.
The situation is already quite messy. It is not possible to fit Earth’s surface into rectilinear grid. In fact, only 25 out every 36 sections have 640 acres. The others may be up to 10% larger or smaller. Additional space may have been lost/gained for roads and other easements. Likewise, roads are 1 mile apart only at a specific parallel that was used for the survey. at any other point, the spacing is larger/smaller. It is just like 2x4s - just because we call it one thing, it doesn’t mean that is the exact dimension.
It’s not 1.6 miles though. You already made a mistake. Since you have to keep track of all these conversion factors, the mistakes add up.
It’s actually 1.6 km in a mile, not the other way around. And the question was not how many miles in 1 km, it was how many in 2.567 km. So you have to get out your calculator.
Meanwhile, there are exactly 2567 meters in 2.567 km. I didn’t have to remember a conversion factor or do any math other than moving a decimal point.
Suppose I propose a new money system with 135.7 pennies per dollar. A dime is worth 38.3 pennies. A nickel is 14.2 pennies.
I think most people would instantly see how completely stupid that system would be and reject it.