The metric system sucks
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From: Heidi Graw on 3 Feb 2010 23:12 "Bart Goddard" <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote in message news:Xns9D14E13912687goddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.100... > "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in news:blran.64560$PH1.28067 > @edtnps82: > >>> The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack >>> of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing. >> >> Look luck with it. >> > > Ed. Note: "Washroom" is Metric for "Bathroom". I also noticed that wee little cyber bugs were munching on my own post. I'm pretty sure I signed off with Good luck. Hmmm... Heidi > > > -- > Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Andrew Usher on 3 Feb 2010 23:23 On Feb 3, 9:22 pm, Bart Goddard <goddar...(a)netscape.net> wrote: > I used to work for a surveyor, and I once mentioned to him > that our job would be hell if we had to switch to metric. > He just shook his head and said, "Naw, they've already > changed it several times. We used to do it in rods > and chains, then we had to do it in miles, feet and inches. > Then we had to switch to decimal feet. It's no big deal." When I have had contact with surveying, they used decimal feet - that's what makes the most sense to me, in that field. Again, decimal feet and decimal inches never coexist, showing that the units do serve their different purposes. > And indeed, even though the U.S. was laid out in miles, > the measurements were so inaccurate that there are no > sections which are very close to a mile square. The > dimentions are given in decimal feet: 5326.34 ft, etc. They can't be exact, due to the curvature of the Earth. I seem to remember that the surveys were pretty good, though of course they may differ by location. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 3 Feb 2010 23:24 On Feb 3, 9:25 pm, Marshall <marshall.spi...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > And anyway, my post was a defense of American and > British engineering. Which is of course based on non-metric units. Andrew Usher
From: Marshall on 3 Feb 2010 23:37 On Feb 3, 8:24 pm, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > On Feb 3, 9:25 pm, Marshall <marshall.spi...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > And anyway, my post was a defense of American and > > British engineering. > > Which is of course based on non-metric units. True enough! Even taking the benefits of the switch to metric as a given, those benefits are diffuse and delayed, with no immediate strong beneficiary to act as an advocate. On the other hand, the switching cost is obvious, immediate, and psychologically painful. So it's not an easy sell in the best of conditions. Not entirely dissimilar to qwerty vs. dvorak. Marshall
From: Matt on 4 Feb 2010 01:07
On Wed, 3 Feb 2010 08:57:17 -0500, Greg Neill wrote: >Matt wrote: > >> The metric base units are hosed. >> >> A meter is too long. If it weren't, the base imperial unit would be >> the yard. But few people find it convenient to express distance in >> yards, so we use feet. > >Strange, I see road signs that express velocities in miles >per hour, not feet per second, and distances between towns in >miles, not feet. And I find that common objects' measurements >are given in inches. Lots of engineering tolerances are given >in 'mils'. The point was that the choice of a base unit that is a full arm length long is inconvenient. Thus, the yard is not used as often by the general population as is the foot. By analogy: absent a fiat by scientists, the general population would not have adopted the meter as a base unit. >Do you think perhaps that the choice of unit might depend upon >the discipline and/or relative scale and/or circumstance? Of course. I didn't say otherwise. I'm not in the camp which insists there is magic in a meter. >> A degree celcius is too big. A temperature of 100 degrees F is a >> change in order of magnitude. It sounds hot. > >...because you're used to the Fahrenheit scale... and 100 degrees >C is certainly hot, it's the temperature at which water boils. 100�C is more than "hot"; it is beyond scalding. Prolonged immersion in air at 100 degrees C is invariably fatal. Not necessarily so at 100�F. The Celsius scale was not designed around temperatures which are meaningful to humans. The Fahrenheit scale was. People are accustomed to dealing with percentages. 100�F is analogous to "all the way to hot" for comfort considerations, which is probably the most prevalent use of temperatures by most people. 0� is analogous to "very cold: the diametric opposite of hot." The air temperature can be higher or lower, but not very often in many locations where people live. >> A temperature of 38 >> degrees C has no change in numeric character from 25 degrees C. > >Erm, and that's important technically why? Oh, it's the touchy- >feely guide to science. Why must it be important technically? What is meaningful on a human scale has nothing to do with what science may deem to be elegant. It is quite a self-centered notion for scientists to think they should dictate what units of measurement should be important to others. >> And >> zero degrees F sounds cold. Who wants to be outside when there is "no" >> temperature? (Don't get your panties in a wad that this isn't close to >> absolute zero. The non-techie doesn't care about that.) Zero degrees >> C is only light coat weather to some. > >Zero C is where water freezes. I can understand that. 100 C is >where water boils. I can understand that, too. Comfortable >(shirt sleeves) is between 18 C and say 28C. Easy peasy. That's a 10 degree range. The comparable Fahrenheit range is 18 degrees -- nearly twice the granularity. >> A newton is too small. Even the SI proponents don't use it. > >Really? Too small? It's less than a quarter the size of the >pound force. Do you see anything sold by the newton in stores? >> A kilogram is too heavy. A weight of 100 pounds is a change in order >> of magnitude. > >A change of 100 kg is also a change in order of magnitide. What's >you're point? 100 kg is 212 pounds. That is beyond heavy. Someone might think twice (or more) about picking up something that weighs 100 pounds and carrying it across the room. Not many are going to pick up and move something that weighs 100 kg without the help of a machine. >> It sounds heavy. A weight of 45 kilograms has no change >> in numeric character from 30 kilograms. > >A change from 35 pounds to 45 pounds has a similar 'flaw'. Again, people are somewhat familiar with percentages. To most people, 100 pounds is analogous to 100% heavy. A weight of 45 kg is disconnected from this analogy and provides less whole-number granularity without offering any advantages other than "everybody else is doing it because the nerds got revenge somehow." >> The value of 'g' in metric units, 9.8 m/s^2. isn't more convenient >> than 32.2 ft/s^2. > >Except that it's close to 10 m/s^2 for rough calculations. Your >argument is a non-starter. And g = 32.174 ft/s^2 is not aesthetically >any better than 9.8. So it is close to 10. But it isn't 10. The metric system doesn't make messy numbers magically go away. >> That the metric units are supposedly based in something more objective >> is irrelevant. People use units of measurement. People are quite >> subjective. It doesn't matter to the non-techie that the distance from >> the equator to the pole (which is not measurable with a ruler) can >> (almost) be expressed in a roundish number with lots of zeros. > >Which, of course, is why the meter is no longer defined as a >fraction of the pole-equator distance, and why the inch is now >defined in terms of the metric units. The point was that the original definition was hosed: it couldn't be measured directly. Where exactly is the pole? It has no fixed location. Not accessible. Not invariant. Duh! Scientists thought it was elegant and politically correct, as it was divorced from any parochial unit. Which also disconnected it from units which people found to be convenient in their real lives. |