Nobody died there, but it wasn’t fun…
I was always under the impression that it actually was shoved down their throats kicking and screaming. That’s how I read that phrase, “Total conversion costs were less than 1 percent of original estimates at General Motors”. The savings were an unexpected (and unexpectedly huge) bonus. I could be wrong. (I would love to see those initial estimates and see where they went wrong.)
Did they convert completely to metric?
Even in many countries that are supposedly 100% metric, aircraft altitudes are still in feet, aircraft speeds are still in knots, aircraft distances are still in nautical miles. Air traffic control will tell a pilot to fly at “flight level 330” (33,000 feet) at “300 knots”.
I’ve read that the Former Soviet Union used only metric units for aviation.
I’m no great fan of imperial measurements, although I still use feet, inches, ounces, pounds etc (I’m 27 and have always lived in England, and most people my age still think likewise - metric is fine for shopping etc but we don’t “think” in metric)… but anyway, I couldn’t let this pass:
Who the hell would convert pounds and ounces into a frickin’ decimal before multiplying? That’s not how it works - you don’t use decimal points with imperial measurements :smack:
If you’re multiplying 4lb 3oz by six, you multiply 4lb by 6, to give 24lb, then multiply the 3oz by 6, to give 18oz, or 1lb 2oz. Add them together and you get 25lb 2oz.
Easily done, in your head, with no “0.01875 pounds” nonsense.
I got the chance to visit the air traffic control center a couple of years ago (now that I think about it, it must be at least 10 years ago). The controller told me that since this particular airfield was also used by the military they had to use both metric and imperial measures. So the Swedish military uses metric but the civilian aviation uses imperial (at least that was the case back then).
A transition period would be over soon. It’s a lot better than maintaining mixed units indefinitely. The Gimli Glider incident was a result of two countries using different units, not confusion during a transition period.
Can I just in throw one example where metric has a clear advantage - weight of water. If I need to know, for example, how much support is needed to mount a 20 gallon tank, I’ve got some calculations to do. But an 80 litre tank holds 80kg of water. Much easier.
I for one am ready for metric time. 10 seconds to the minute, 10 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to the day, 10 days to the week, 10 weeks to the month, and 10 months to the year. What could be simpler?
I’ll just reply to previous points about the weather (0F being very cold while 100F being very warm).
Perhaps it’s just cause we have vastly different weather than other people, but I see it differently. The system others have put down simply fails once you get to reasonably cold temperatures. I have -40C at the low end of my temp (which is also -40F!) but have also experienced -50C with windchill. Most people’s brains would probably implode upon reading that (sorta like reading 150F?) I then see 40C as a limit at the top for my area, with the understanding that there are a few places around that are a bit hotter, and I would not want to visit them.
Between these two is 0C; the limit between water freezing and being liquid. It tells me whether I need cold-weather gear to wander about outside, or if it’ll be merely uncomfortable.
People are used to what they’ve been using, plus what suits their geographic area.
I remember driving down Highway 41 from Chicago in '85. In some places, the speed limet was posted in metric and imperial. The metric was 88km/h. And I think this is where it went wrong.
The authorities of the US decided to convert exactly, when the effort to go metric was being made. But driving at 88 km/h is just stupid. The typical speed limits here are: 50, 70, 90, 110. For all practical purposes, this is close enough to 25, 40, 55 nad 70mph. Using nice round figures would have made the conversion a lot easier.
And this is an example of that. Do you seriously believe that, had the whole world been metric, monitors would be marketed as “Check out the brand new 43.18 cm TFT from Samsung?” It’d be 40 or 45 of course.
Sure, but would you buy 7up in a 67.6280451 oz bottle, or that whiskey in a 25.3605169 bottle?
You buy a 2 liter or 750 ml bottle, figuratively, because it’s a nice round number. The metric conversion is unfortunately about converting, when it should’ve been about interpreting.
No. We actually still use inches and stuff for construction material. Houses last a long time and there are some pretty old houses around here. A ½ inch pipe will need new fittings to be ½”. Lumber comes in 2x4 ASF. There are 2” nails for those who want to buy them.
Interestingly enough, a yardstick is called an inch-stick (tumstock) in Swedish.
See above.
Ya think? :dubious:
That because you don’t understand the beauty of the A-system for paper
A0 = 841x1189 mm
A1 = 694x841 mm
A2 = 420x594 mm
A3 = 297x420 mm
A4 = 210x297 mm
This might seem arbitrary. It’s not. A0 paper is 1 sq. meter and all sizes below are exactly proportional to each other. Thus, there are 16 A4 to an A0, all the same size and all the same proportions to the original sheet.
I don’t really care If you guys want to stick with feet and inches. I think it’s your loss, but since it’s an emotional choice, not one from logic, we can debate this till the cows come home. using logical arguments to persuade emotions have never worked. Or vice versa.
Sticking with the current system would be similar. It just so happened that the world had managed to adopt the system we currently use for time quite a while ago. When the metric system was created, around the world all sorts of different systems were being used for measuring length, volume, etc. There was a definite advantage to creating a new system and everyone switching to it.
It should be noted that to the extent that Imperial works better for driving long distances on a highway, this is merely a happy coincidence. The length of a mile was defined long before there were cars. And even trains for that matter.
Absolutely. Plus the fact you’re just as likely to be cruising at 100kph as 60mph, which makes calculations equally easy. (And who the hell cruises at 60? 
)
The shelves are 21.34" wide? 21-11/32"? Why not take it up to 21-3/8" or down to 21-5/16" or even 21-1/4"? Can you saw that accurately? Do you know a carpenter who won’t laugh at you if you give him dimensions in any unit smaller than an eighth?
That would be 21.34" per shelf, PLUS the kerf (the width of the saw cut is wasted material–let’s call it another eighth per shelf) but since lumber doesn’t come in endless lengths you THEN you figure out how many shelves plus kerfs (standardizing English plurals of words ending in F is another thread) you can get out of an eight-foot board AND take into account that you’ll want to take some off each end because the ends of commercially cut lumber are too rough to use for your pretty shelves–let’s say another inch or so. So, 21.34 +.13=21.47. Eight feet (96") / 21.5 (rounded) = 4.465 shelves so you’ll have plenty left over to clean up both ends. Of course, this calculation is easily done in your head since 21.34" is far enough under 24" (two feet or a fourth of eight feet and a perfectly meaningful number in this case) to tell you that you can get four and only four shelves per board with enough left over to cover your waste but not nearly enough to be of much use for anything else. So you have to buy 25 1x8 (3/4" x 7-1/2") boards to make 100 shelves, but you’ll probably want a couple more, just in case. The first way is precise and complex and may seem to play into your case that Imperial is complex. The second way is child’s play and, in fact, EASIER than metric multiplication because it uses approximations and rounding with precision only needed when making the final cuts.
Now that I’ve seen that you’ve changed your requirements and only need ten shelves it becomes even easier. Four shelves per board, three boards, and two shelves worth of lumber left in case you screw up but you lose the volume discount I was going to give you when you were planning to buy 25 boards.
Remind me not to hire you to do any cabinet work. 1/8" is fine if you’re framing, but you’d damn well better be more accurate than that building furniture, i.e., inside 1/32".
Your primary point about how the calculation would be made is perfectly fine (though of course those same approximations would be made in metric, so that’s a wash, not an advantage for imperial). But I can assure you that figuring cutting lists is not always so easy. I built a desk last fall that contained a myriad of differently-sized pieces, and I spent a couple hours piecing together a cutting scheme that wasted the least amount of wood possible. And yes, that particular task would have been easier in metric, but since my lumber was in standard dimensions, I drew the plans up in inches.
While the US undeniably produces the largest number of Nobel Prize winners in raw numbers, your phrase “handily trouncing the competition beyond our numbers” implies that it also produces the largest number of winners per capita, which is not the case.
By that criterion, the US is 10th in the world.
That is a cumulative assesment of all Nobel prizes. Is there a similar statistical comparison available which only deals with Nobel prizes for, say, the last 20 years? Otherwise it’s impossible to see if what Bytegeist claimed is currently true.
I agree with almost everything you said in this post, Gaspode, but you’re missing a point here.
Speed limits are the maximum legal speed permitted on that highway – under either measurement. They’re set by law or regulation in round figures on the MPH system. Those are actual numbers representing the legal maximum speed. Therefore the conversion to metric needs to be exact, because the maximum speed permitted a Canadian or European car with a KPH speedometer is the same maximum speed permitted a U.S. car with a MPH speedometer, i.e., that single speed that is 55 MPH or 88 KPH depending on the system you’re using.
If I’m driving in Canada with a 100 KPH limit on an open non-super highway, I know that I can do about 62 on my MPH speedometer legally. The 5/8 or 8/5 conversion is so simple to work in one’s head, and so close to accurate, that it shouldn’t be a problem for people.
Slight aside - do American speedometers generally not also have a kph scale? Just about any British one I’ve seen has, apart from vintage cars.
Sorry, my hackles were raised by the accusation that the U.S. is “anti-science” and that our society is “crippled”. I’m much calmer now. A little abashed too. It’s unseemly to be tossing around such purple language.
To help answer GorillaMan’s question, I found this page, which lists number of prizes won in the 15- and 25-year periods up through 2002. Among those nations listed, Switzerland beats the U.S. in the 25-year period, with Sweden coming in a close third. In the 15-year period, the U.S. ranks first.
That’s assuming I did all my arithmetic correctly. The page doesn’t do the per-capita calculation for you, so I looked up population figures from elsewhere (the CIA World Factbook) and did the divisions by hand. You still have the issue of what population numbers should be used for that division, since the numbers are actually changing over time. An average population of some kind might be most appropriate, but I simply took the most recent ones. That might change the results.
So in recent times anyway the U.S. still seems to rank at the top, or near the top, Nobel-wise. Even so that doesn’t justify my using words like “trouncing”. Again, my apologies for acting like a boastful buffoon.
All the cars I’ve had in the past 20 years (three Japanese, one American) have had kph scales in addition to mph. Not that you’re given any reason to read the kph scale, since all the highway signs and mile markers report their distances in miles.
It was Polycarp’s comment about driving in Canada that made me ask.