The metric system sucks
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From: jmfbahciv on 7 Feb 2010 08:47 Paul Ciszek wrote: > In article <3q1nm554bvd9j4iidr32paag2e6hi425er(a)4ax.com>, > Matt <30days(a)net.net> wrote: >> On Thu, 4 Feb 2010 17:18:26 +0000 (UTC), Paul Ciszek wrote: >> >>> In article <Xns9D15464AACB40goddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.93>, >>> Bart Goddard <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote: >>>> nospam(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote in >>>> news:hke1bi$n19$6(a)reader2.panix.com: >>>> >>>>> 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 >>> If you mean non-technical people, they get through most of their >>> lives without doing any calculations at all. Engineers, on the >>> other hand, have to deal with the density of water quite a bit. Things >>> get submerged in it, containers are built empty and later filled >>> with it, it can end up standing on the roofs of buildings if you >>> didn't design them right, etc. >> I think you ascribe too much apathy about units of measure to >> non-technical people. They outnumber techies by a large factor. >> >> And they have need to calculate for various reasons: cost per unit >> weight, fuel per unit distance, cost per unit of household energy, >> etc. > > "That's MATH. I was told there would be no math!" > > In the popular world view, math is considered slightly less useful > than latin. > Until they see all the deductions from their paycheck and have to submit an income report to the IRS. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 7 Feb 2010 08:51 Andrew Usher wrote: > On Feb 6, 7:05 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: > >> If you have a business which wants to sell widgets to >> people in countries who use metric, you should manufacture >> your products using screws and bolts and things which >> are metric. > > Not necessarily. The user of a machine usually doesn't care what units > it's built to internally, only what it does. This point is made in > that great book I referenced: "The metric fallacy". > What happens when things break and you need the machine right now? /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 7 Feb 2010 08:54 Andrew Usher wrote: > On Feb 6, 7:12 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: > >>> Yes, but balances are almost obsolete. When measuring force as modern >>> scales do, the full correction is needed. >> Where did you get the notion that balance scales are obsolete? >> Do you really believe that computers replace them? > > I said almost obsolete. Computerised scales replace them in most uses > today - yes, even in chemistry labs. > How do you check them? /BAH
From: Bart Goddard on 7 Feb 2010 09:24 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote in news:hkmfcf11h2e(a)news6.newsguy.com: >> Hypothetically. But note two things: The US doesn't sell >> widgets, it buys widgets. So your "if-then" is vacuously >> true. Second, other countries sell stuff to the US >> all the time with parts that don't fit our official >> measuring system. Hmmm..... There's still a gap >> in your philosophy. >> > ARe you really claiming that the US doesn't export anything? No, I didn't say "anything", I said "widgets". The US exports plenty of things, mostly jobs and patents. Jobs and patents aren't really things one uses a measuring system on. B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Paul Ciszek on 7 Feb 2010 09:32
In article <307d9f52-e674-403a-ad41-29b831fa1d6d(a)r19g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >On Feb 6, 9:46�am, nos...(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote: > >> Sure do. �A resistance measured in ohms multiplied by a capacitance >> measured in Farads gives you an RC time constant in seconds. �For >> the rail gun afficianados, the energy stored in a capacitor measured >> in Joules is one half the capacitance in Farads times the square of >> the voltage measured in Volts. �Yes, the rail-gun fans I know do >> talk about energy in Joules. �I have even used spot-welders where >> the intensity of the pulse was given in Joules. > >Well, I guess you can. But just because you can calculate with >barbarous units doesn't make them superior - after all, you'd never >allow that for English units, would you? So, how would *you* choose a resistor and a capacitor to produce a desired time constant, without using ohms and Farads? -- Please reply to: | "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is pciszek at panix dot com | indistinguishable from malice." Autoreply is disabled | |