The metric system sucks
in [Physics]
|
Prev: connecting Poincare-Luminet Dodecahedral Space with AP-reverse concavity #380 Correcting Math
Next: Hiding random?
From: Cwatters on 4 Feb 2010 07:52 "Bart Goddard" <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote in message news:Xns9D14516084083goddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.90... > Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote in > news:hkbrpu$e0j$1(a)news- > int2.gatech.edu: > >> Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the >> rest of the world should too. > > Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well? > "We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way, > if they don't, then they're just stoopid." > > B. I was a schoolboy when the UK went metric so I had to learn both. Metric/SI units are a lot easier to work with. There are fewer different constants you have to remember. I just wish we'd gone the whole way. We buy gasoline in Liters but most people still work out fuel consumption in miles to the gallon. We write "4 Pints of milk" on our shopping list but it's sold in 2L bottles at the supermarket. I'll bet many people haven't noticed and now have a warped sense of how big a pint is/was.
From: Bart Goddard on 4 Feb 2010 07:54 nospam(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote in news:hke1bi$n19$6(a)reader2.panix.com: >>It seems natural to want to divide units into halves, thirds and >>fourths. It's not often that a person needs to levitate a >>dust particle to the moon. But note that it takes more >>mental effort to divide a meter into thirds than it does >>a foot. > > What is the density of water in pounds per cubic foot? As usual, the decimaphile offers us a calculation that 1. is already known and 2. nobody ever does. Against that uselessness, I offer back the useful and often performed calculation of dividing land into halves, quarters, halves of quarters, etc. When the rubber hits the road, God didn't accomadate us by making anything in the universe come out in an even number of meters or liters. So every REAL calculation in metric is just as nasty as it is in the English system. (I guess I am assuming that you don't sit around all day re-calculating the density of water over and over again, just because it's so delightfully easy.) B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Mike Dworetsky on 4 Feb 2010 07:56 Aatu Koskensilta wrote: > "Mike Dworetsky" <platinum198(a)pants.btinternet.com> writes: > >> Marshall wrote: >> >>> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the USA was the >>> first country to make it go BOOM, plus we still have that whole >>> "moon" and "internet" thing going. >> >> Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units. >> Most American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in >> metric, even then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, as >> is nearly all science. Some American engineering is for obscure >> reasons done in Imperial, hence the Mars probe disaster. > > I doubt Marshall was trying to argue against the metric system, or for > the Imperial system. He was, I take it, simply valiantly defending the > good name of American and British engineering. > >> American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for >> defense purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications >> such as email and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the >> hypertext protocols that led directly to the internet, a way to use >> the interconnected network for passing, storing and creating >> information content quickly and easily. > > Well, no. I was using the term internet a bit loosely. Would have helped if you had elaborated. Well, technically, what we now call the internet is a system of interconnected computer systems sharing certain protocols such as IP and TCP and was around and being used by academics in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was difficult to send stuff and sometimes it took days for an email to propagate to the recipient if in another country. There was Arpanet, NSFnet, Janet, IBMnet (or something like that, I can't recall its name). So in that sense yes the Internet existed before Berners-Lee et al came up with better ways to create documents that you read on a terminal screen (with links). What we used to do was create ftp sites and people could send or retrieve stuff to and from such sites, or send each other attachments as text documents. It was clunky and slow. Back then your typical terminal couldn't do images, and the first browsers pre-Netscape were things like Mosaic using http and ftp that could embed links in the text. It was a terrific improvement, at least if you were doing science. By then documents could be formatted in post-script using TeX and that made it easier too. MS Word didn't come along until later. -- Mike Dworetsky (Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)
From: Bart Goddard on 4 Feb 2010 07:59 nospam(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote in news:hke34s$n19$13 @reader2.panix.com: > > In article <Xns9D149007B59A1goddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.91>, > Bart Goddard <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote: >> >>> So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans >>> are certainly free to remain behind. >> >>Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead" >>while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition >>of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a >>restatement of the original, unsupported thesis. > > No, a nation of people who insist that the world is only 6,000 years > old, and refuse to teach their teenage children anything about birth > control or even the most basic facts about human reproduction are > behind. Maybe. But the point above is that one's measuring system is NOT the reason one is "behind". (And, really, our children seem to know all about reproduction, and are quite skilled at it. It seems odd that you think your kids are "ahead" in this when you have to teach them how to do what ours seems to know inately.) B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: J. Clarke on 4 Feb 2010 07:50
Mike Dworetsky wrote: > Andrew Usher wrote: >> On Feb 3, 5:13 pm, Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeo...(a)verizon.invalid> wrote: >> >>> The Internet was developed by researchers in the U.S. working under >>> the ARPA program to link up the various research universities. Why >>> do you think IANA was originally controlled by the U.S. Department >>> of Defense (and is now run by a company who does it on a contract >>> with the U.S. Department of Commerce). >> >> Yes. And what does it have to do with units? >> >> The Internet, by its nature, doesn't care what units are used. >> Going to the moon was done very largely with English units. >> >> So how is this supposed to be an argument for metric? >> >> Andrew Usher > > I don't know, but all the other space countries and consortia such as > ESA are using metric, and they are highly successful at launching > commercial and scientific satellites. Even India is getting in on > the space industry. The difference is that none of them are having > to prove themselves better than the Russians. > > I don't see any signs lately that the US is going back to the moon, > regardless of units, so at best your comment is an irrelevance. If > it ever does, the astronauts may have to bring passports with valid > Chinese visas. Yeah, like the Chinese are going to the Moon anytime soon. In any case, China is a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty. |