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I much prefer a unit based on the length of a dead king's foot than a unit based on the length of the path light travels in a vacuum in 30.66331898849837 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the cesium-133 atomic ground state.
Because that dead king's foot is right around the length of my own foot, but I keep misplacing my cesium-133.
Of course, the definition you used here for the meter is a retroactive one - I'm sure you can find any number of dry, uninteresting thing that are a foot long :)
Really though, about the metric system - in my little corner of the world, it is being used. And, having been raised on it, the alternative seems like the silliest relic of all times society still carries around. Seriously? 12 inches for a foot, 3 feet for a yard, 1760 yards for a mile? is this some kind of joke? who came up with that nonsense? When you work with centimeters, meters and kilometers there's really no room for error, and following the decimal system is really smart. Same goes for using Fahrenheit to measure temperature, using ounces and pounds to measure weight, acres to measure area, and gallons for measure volume. Whereever the metric system is streamlined and logical, the imperial system is clunky and confusing.
However, when I think about things, I can really see how people grow used to the weirdness of a bad measurement system. I myself am measuring time in the nonsense land of 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hours, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, ~4 weeks per month, 12 months per year (except sometimes months have more or less than 4 weeks, and sometimes years have more or less than 12 months...). Even though that's just a whole bunch of barely related numbers that don't make sense, I am so used to them by this point that changing them around would be very weird for me.
And those numbers ARE important - imagine, for example, how Paizo's publication schedule would change if "months" were longer, or shorter.
Anyway, while I completely understand how people get along with the imperial system, looking at it from the outside makes it seem like a joke.
Seriously? 12 inches for a foot, 3 feet for a yard, 1760 yards for a mile? is this some kind of joke? who came up with that nonsense?
People that didn't have access to mass produced accurate and standardized measuring devices.
The foot isn't named that at random. You literally measured with your (booted) foot.
When you work with centimeters, meters and kilometers there's really no room for error, and following the decimal system is really smart. Same goes for using Fahrenheit to measure temperature, using ounces and pounds to measure weight, acres to measure area, and gallons for measure volume. Whereever the metric system is streamlined and logical, the imperial system is clunky and confusing.
I mostly agree.. except for temperature. If you deal all day with boiling and freezing water i suppose celsius makes sense. If you deal with ambient temperature in a temperate climate Fahrenheit makes a lot more sense. (0 is about the coldest day of the year, 100 should be the hottest)
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I mostly agree.. except for temperature. If you deal all day with boiling and freezing water i suppose celsius makes sense. If you deal with ambient temperature in a temperate climate Fahrenheit makes a lot more sense. (0 is about the coldest day of the year, 100 should be the hottest)
*shrug*. I guess, maybe. To me, 0 degrees = freezing, 100 = boiling seems like it makes a TON of sense (pun intended). But I guess it's again a question of getting used to standards. My viewpoint is farther skewed by my scientific education (currently working on my first degree in electrical engineering and computer science). I can't ever begin to imagine working with Fahrenheit instead of Kelvin.
Just a short note on clock faces being divided into 12 parts:
1. Right angles have been a relatively easy construction since Greek days and (probably) before. One just needs a "square" tool.
2. Trisecting a right angle is very easy, especially when drawn upon a circle.
3. Drawing two lines at right angles to each other and passing through the center of a circle (easy, divides circle into quadrants) and then following by trisecting the 90 degree angles (in the 1st and 2nd quadrants and extending the lines) gives one 12 divisions.
Easily done since the early days of Egypt.
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Just a short note on clock faces being divided into 12 parts:
1. Right angles have been a relatively easy construction since Greek days and (probably) before. One just needs a "square" tool.
2. Trisecting a right angle is very easy, especially when drawn upon a circle.
3. Drawing two lines at right angles to each other and passing through the center of a circle (easy, divides circle into quadrants) and then following by trisecting the 90 degree angles (in the 1st and 2nd quadrants and extending the lines) gives one 12 divisions.Easily done since the early days of Egypt.
Oh, for sure. And the Imperial measurements are also the result of primitive endearment tools. Not saying that I can't see how they came to be, just that now that we have the alternative, switching them seems to make sense. We also used to travel by horseback, and changing from that to using trains and cars and airplanes took quite a lot of effort, but it sure was worth it. Changing measurement systems is not quite as important, but I think it's a big deal nonetheless.
Oh, for sure. And the Imperial measurements are also the result of primitive endearment tools. Not saying that I can't see how they came to be, just that now that we have the alternative, switching them seems to make sense. We also used to travel by horseback, and changing from that to using trains and cars and airplanes took quite a lot of effort, but it sure was worth it. Changing measurement systems is not quite as important, but I think it's a big deal nonetheless.Just a short note on clock faces being divided into 12 parts:
1. Right angles have been a relatively easy construction since Greek days and (probably) before. One just needs a "square" tool.
2. Trisecting a right angle is very easy, especially when drawn upon a circle.
3. Drawing two lines at right angles to each other and passing through the center of a circle (easy, divides circle into quadrants) and then following by trisecting the 90 degree angles (in the 1st and 2nd quadrants and extending the lines) gives one 12 divisions.Easily done since the early days of Egypt.
The point is that a circle can be divided exactly into 12 parts. Dividing into 10s and 100s reduces one to approximations.
Further, once something is truly standardized, the differing breakdowns don't matter and they are all just as good as the other. There is no scientific superiority of one over the other.
But, to go a little farther, if one car (or anything else for that matter) is built using imperial measurements and another is built using metric measurements they will both work just as well for the consumer.
However, the difficulty comes in trying to switch from using one method to using another. There is an enormous infrastructure in place to produce items (cars being an example) using the imperial system in the US.
As an example, look at all the necessary equipment for making a car: everything from the molds the motors were made in in to the machine tools grinding exact sizes for cylinders to the socket wrenches and bolts and nuts used. This goes for new cars being produced and for the continued manufacturing of replacement parts for older cars.
Replacing one piece (of a car or machinery to produce it) at a time with metric would lead to confusion and mismatching of parts. Replacing all at once would be an enormous expense to create a product that is not superior in any way. That is not even mentioning that the countless people who work on their own cars would gravitate away from the need to buy whole new sets of tools. Thus a greatly slowed (to a standstill) transition.
This is strongest in the US which came out of WWII with an enormous and fully intact manufacturing base. Transition would be an enormous expense to not produce a better product. The complete transition to metric in countries rebuilding their manufacturing base after WWII (France, Germany, Japan, Britain, etc.) was much simpler.
*shrug*. I guess, maybe. To me, 0 degrees = freezing, 100 = boiling seems like it makes a TON of sense (pun intended). But I guess it's again a question of getting used to standards. My viewpoint is farther skewed by my scientific education (currently working on my first degree in electrical engineering and computer science). I can't ever begin to imagine working with Fahrenheit instead of Kelvin.
I mostly agree.. except for temperature. If you deal all day with boiling and freezing water i suppose celsius makes sense. If you deal with ambient temperature in a temperate climate Fahrenheit makes a lot more sense. (0 is about the coldest day of the year, 100 should be the hottest)
Neither measurement system is more scientific than the other (unless you're dealing with boiling and freezing water all day) wires melt at X degrees or iron glows yellow at X degrees is so large of a number in either temperature system as to be indistinguishable, and don't relate to water any more than they relate to weather or any other natural phenomenon.
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About measurement systems being more or less "scientific" than each other - well, sounds like you people never had to do a complicated scientific calculation involving large amounts of time.
See if you work with the metric system, and you get a number like 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 meters to represent the distance you got, and you want to express that distance in units that make more sense for such large number, converting to kilometers is really easy - you just subtract the power by 3. But say you had 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 feet and you wanted to convert them to nautical miles...
And it gets much, much worse with time units. I once did a calculation of the moon's movement during a lunar eclipse, and when talking about celestial bodies nobody actually uses meters, or kilograms as their basic units, they use much larger units. But the thing is, the equations you learn use seconds in them. But suddenly, when say you switch the units of distance in an equation from meter to kilometers, the constant of the equation change. And then if you want to express time in hours, it doesn't calibrate on the same scale as the rest of the units, which are all decimal. This really does complicate things and caused me many headaches over the time of my studies so far.
@thing from beyond the edge - you remind me of some dude from whom I once ordered Pizza on the phone (from a local Pizza place) - I had 4 friends with me so we asked him to just cut the pizza into 5 slices, to which he replied "But that's mathematically impossible!".
Dividing any area into 10 equal parts is possible, and the area we are discussing here is a circle - it has a whole kind of symmetry named after it (circular symmetry). dividing into 10 sections simply requires one to calculate pi/5, which all sorts of ancient cultures might not have been capable of - bu seeing how we know the first million digits of pi, I think we can accomplish that with sufficient accuracy for any practical purpose... besides which, digital clocks are the real kind of clock now, aren't they? :P
*shrug*. I guess, maybe. To me, 0 degrees = freezing, 100 = boiling seems like it makes a TON of sense (pun intended). But I guess it's again a question of getting used to standards. My viewpoint is farther skewed by my scientific education (currently working on my first degree in electrical engineering and computer science). I can't ever begin to imagine working with Fahrenheit instead of Kelvin.
I mostly agree.. except for temperature. If you deal all day with boiling and freezing water i suppose celsius makes sense. If you deal with ambient temperature in a temperate climate Fahrenheit makes a lot more sense. (0 is about the coldest day of the year, 100 should be the hottest)
Neither measurement system is more scientific than the other (unless you're dealing with boiling and freezing water all day) wires melt at X degrees or iron glows yellow at X degrees is so large of a number in either temperature system as to be indistinguishable, and don't relate to water any more than they relate to weather or any other natural phenomenon.
This isn't exactly correct. In Chrmistry there are a number of formulae that do not function if you don't use Kelvin as your measurement system for temperature. Not that you have to convert it later, or is just different, but gives you incorrect or broken information.
This is due to scalability. 40 degrees Fahrenheit is not half as hot as 80 degrees. Kelvin as a measurement system corrects for that.
About measurement systems being more or less "scientific" than each other - well, sounds like you people never had to do a complicated scientific calculation involving large amounts of time.
See if you work with the metric system, and you get a number like 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 meters to represent the distance you got, and you want to express that distance in units that make more sense for such large number, converting to kilometers is really easy - you just subtract the power by 3. But say you had 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 feet and you wanted to convert them to nautical miles...
And it gets much, much worse with time units. I once did a calculation of the moon's movement during a lunar eclipse, and when talking about celestial bodies nobody actually uses meters, or kilograms as their basic units, they use much larger units. But the thing is, the equations you learn use seconds in them. But suddenly, when say you switch the units of distance in an equation from meter to kilometers, the constant of the equation change. And then if you want to express time in hours, it doesn't calibrate on the same scale as the rest of the units, which are all decimal. This really does complicate things and caused me many headaches over the time of my studies so far.
@thing from beyond the edge - you remind me of some dude from whom I once ordered Pizza on the phone (from a local Pizza place) - I had 4 friends with me so we asked him to just cut the pizza into 5 slices, to which he replied "But that's mathematically impossible!".
Dividing any area into 10 equal parts is possible, and the area we are discussing here is a circle - it has a whole kind of symmetry named after it (circular symmetry). dividing into 10 sections simply requires one to calculate pi/5, which all sorts of ancient cultures might not have been capable of - bu seeing how we know the first million digits of pi, I think we can accomplish that with sufficient accuracy for any practical...
The above is just a bunch of gobbledygook. :D
The "headache" developed by making one type of change for length and mass and another for time doesn't exist. You just plug in different numbers.
See, this isn't the old days as you stated earlier when trying to discount how I pointed out the origins of the clockface. Point is, anyone can get an app or use the net to make the calculation if they don't know how tooff the top of their head nowadays. IOW, metric isn't any easier.
Secondly, I never said that anything is impossible. I said that it ends up being an approximation. of course, you can always extend enough decimals out to make it accurate. But, by that point, you no longer are meeting your definition of why metric is better and the argument used to discuss imperial suddenly is discounting your choice unless you allow yourself to use conversions and stuff which suddenly dismisses the dismissal of imperial again.
That's the point.
nm
People who work in mathematics-related fields do their work where keeping an overview of the maths done is difficult. That is why they are paid for it. At that point, adding in further complexity is not a good thing. Ever. Due to problems like this, a simple error in conversion resulted in NASA seeing a Mars probe turn into a little crater on Mars' surface. It is a very real problem. It is a very costly one at times. And it is NOT merely a matter of "putting in different numbers". Complexity costs, and having two different systems IS the problem.
As it stands, most production companies have changed into metric, even in the US. The different authorities and agencies have too. Making the switch completely would be a no-brainer... But Americans.
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nm
What does "nm" mean? is it "never mind"?
Anyway,
1) The headache does exist. I don't know if you ever did a complicated calculation or not, but it's insanely useful when all of your units are just different powers of 10 - using a calculator is fine, but as anyone who dealt with serious physics/mathematics can tell you, there's immense value in being able to easily comprehend your own calculation. Because at at a certain point in the process of solving a problem it's easy to be mistaken somewhere (like, for example, typing the wrong number into the calculator) and if you get confused with your calculation and can't retrace it, you are pretty much doomed to scrap all your work up to that point and start over. Again, this is not in theory - I'm talking from 7 years of experience. Converting for meter to kilometers is a simple matter of raising the power by 3 -easy to follow as it doesn't change the coefficient. But now convert seconds into months. I triple dare you :)
2) As far measuring time - I am confused about your argument here -
But, by that point, you no longer are meeting your definition of why metric is better
Time measurement has nothing to do with the metric system or the imperial system. It simply doesn't make much sense, is all. It would be the easiest thing in the world to divide the time it takes the earth to rotate around itself into 10 equal parts ("hours"), and then divide those parts into say 100 smaller parts ("minutes"), and then divide those by 10 or 100 or whatever. It sounds strange to us because we are used to how time is measured now, but really there's no reason not to do this. Even if we take the geometric consideration that a clock needs to fit on a circle - dividing a circle into 10 equal sections is a trivial task in modern times, and it only needs to be done once. I can get that done in several minutes, for example, with a simple computer program.
The bottom line is that old measurement system are arbitrary, while the metric system is systematic. It is NOT a coincidence that the SI units are the world standard, and not the imperial units. There are still parts of the world that use imperial, because switching over it a messy process that most people don't feel like doing anyway because they are used to imperial. For most day to day uses, the systems are equally reliable. For calculations and serious measurements - you'd rather have metric.
bout measurement systems being more or less "scientific" than each other - well, sounds like you people never had to do a complicated scientific calculation involving large amounts of time.
You're getting really arrogant about something incredibly silly.
But say you had 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 feet and you wanted to convert them to nautical miles...
What calculations do you do with Celsius?
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bout measurement systems being more or less "scientific" than each other - well, sounds like you people never had to do a complicated scientific calculation involving large amounts of time.You're getting really arrogant about something incredibly silly.
But say you had 1.48 times 10 to the power of 17 feet and you wanted to convert them to nautical miles...What calculations do you do with Celsius?
Didn't try to sound arrogant, sorry about that (and also not sure why just saying that I did a complicated calculation is being arrogant. Never said it was easy or that it makes me superior to anyone, just that I did it. If this thread would have been about grammar or something and someone would have said, "people who never edited a large text probably don't understand why German is much harder than Spanish" or something, would that be arrogance?)... but I was bringing the real place where a real big difference applies. And claiming that working with ounces and stones and pounds is as easy as working with grams, kilograms and tons is just inaccurate - whereas with the SI units you only ever change the power of ten (always in jumps of 3), switching from imperial unit to imperial unit also changes the coefficient. My teacher actually made me try a calculation in both systems in high school, and I gotta say, SI is easier.
And I don't use Celsius precisely, I use Kelvin, which is basically the same only they moved 0 down from the freezing point of water to the actual "zero heat" - the temperature where atoms don't have any kinetic energy. It is the standard measurement unit when calculating anything that has to do with atoms and sub-atomic particles. For example, if I want to do stuff with electrical charge carriers in a semi conductor, it's basic traits are affected by the temperature, which is measured in Kelvin
People who work in mathematics-related fields do their work where keeping an overview of the maths done is difficult. That is why they are paid for it. At that point, adding in further complexity is not a good thing. Ever. Due to problems like this, a simple error in conversion resulted in NASA seeing a Mars probe turn into a little crater on Mars' surface. It is a very real problem. It is a very costly one at times. And it is NOT merely a matter of "putting in different numbers". Complexity costs, and having two different systems IS the problem.
As it stands, most production companies have changed into metric, even in the US. The different authorities and agencies have too. Making the switch completely would be a no-brainer... But Americans.
Everything above is nonsense. There is no other way to describe it.
It is just a case of using different numbers.Adding extra steps can increase the chance of error in some cases. Replacing the numbers used in each step doesn't.
Do errors happen?
Yes.
Do they happen because people were doing imperial instead of metric and had to input a conversion factor when changing from something like feet to yards or etc.?
No.
When making conversions in calculations an error is going to happen by mistyping or looking at the wrong conversion when not paying attention. Such mistakes are just as likely to occur regardless of which system used.
Basically, there appears to be a misunderstanding of how errors occur and propagate here and I am not the one misunderstanding.
Regarding the imperial vs. metric discussion, The Oatmeal did a nice comic about it:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/senior_year/science.png
That comic nicely sums up my main pet peeve with how the conversion from imperial to metrics seems to be handled in media. Basically, someone yanked out a calculator and did a direct conversion.
I really doubt someone actually measured the distance and woha, that guy actually lives exactly 30 miles away, to the inch! Remarkable! More likely, those 30 miles are really an implied "roughly 30 miles", and translating "roughly 30 miles" into "48.28 km" is just plain inane.
You see this on TV all the time. Some guy goes "oh, it's about 10 miles." and the translation will be "oh, it's about 16.0934km." Nobody talks like that.
(We also need to talk about the decimal point, because the above - done deliberately - is clearly wrong and should die in a fire.)
People who work in mathematics-related fields do their work where keeping an overview of the maths done is difficult. That is why they are paid for it. At that point, adding in further complexity is not a good thing. Ever. Due to problems like this, a simple error in conversion resulted in NASA seeing a Mars probe turn into a little crater on Mars' surface. It is a very real problem. It is a very costly one at times. And it is NOT merely a matter of "putting in different numbers". Complexity costs, and having two different systems IS the problem.
As it stands, most production companies have changed into metric, even in the US. The different authorities and agencies have too. Making the switch completely would be a no-brainer... But Americans.
Everything above is nonsense. There is no other way to describe it.
It is just a case of using different numbers.Adding extra steps can increase the chance of error in some cases. Replacing the numbers used in each step doesn't.
Do errors happen?
Yes.
Do they happen because people were doing imperial instead of metric and had to input a conversion factor when changing from something like feet to yards or etc.?
No.
When making conversions in calculations an error is going to happen by mistyping or looking at the wrong conversion when not paying attention. Such mistakes are just as likely to occur regardless of which system used.Basically, there appears to be a misunderstanding of how errors occur and propagate here and I am not the one misunderstanding.
I reckon I will just leave this here.People who work in mathematics-related fields do their work where keeping an overview of the maths done is difficult. That is why they are paid for it. At that point, adding in further complexity is not a good thing. Ever. Due to problems like this, a simple error in conversion resulted in NASA seeing a Mars probe turn into a little crater on Mars' surface. It is a very real problem. It is a very costly one at times. And it is NOT merely a matter of "putting in different numbers". Complexity costs, and having two different systems IS the problem.
As it stands, most production companies have changed into metric, even in the US. The different authorities and agencies have too. Making the switch completely would be a no-brainer... But Americans.
Everything above is nonsense. There is no other way to describe it.
It is just a case of using different numbers.Adding extra steps can increase the chance of error in some cases. Replacing the numbers used in each step doesn't.
Do errors happen?
Yes.
Do they happen because people were doing imperial instead of metric and had to input a conversion factor when changing from something like feet to yards or etc.?
No.
When making conversions in calculations an error is going to happen by mistyping or looking at the wrong conversion when not paying attention. Such mistakes are just as likely to occur regardless of which system used.Basically, there appears to be a misunderstanding of how errors occur and propagate here and I am not the one misunderstanding.
From the link:
***
(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.
For that reason, information failed to transfer between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft.
***
It had nothing to do with the "complexity" of the Imperial system or it being cumbersome to convert from unit Imperial measure to another Imperial measure.
It had everything to do with both systems, metric and imperial, being used when only one should have been used.
It can just as easily be argued that had both teams used Imperial units the problem would not have occurred. Obviously, metric is flawed in that case. /sarcasm
So, to repeat:
Do errors happen?
Yes.
Do they happen because people were doing imperial instead of metric and had to input a conversion factor when changing from something like feet to yards or etc.?
No.
When making conversions in calculations an error is going to happen by mistyping or looking at the wrong conversion when not paying attention. Such mistakes are just as likely to occur regardless of which system used.
***
The government of Spain set out to build a fleet of the world’s most advanced submarines. But the new ships have a pretty embarrassing problem. The vessels are so heavy, engineers fear the subs will sink to the bottom of the sea.
Each of the new ships is about 100 tons overweight and will need a serious redesign to operate properly. What caused this massive miscalculation? Apparently, engineers at Navantia, the company building the submarines, made a major math mistake. While they were calculating the subs’ specifications (detailed requirements and measurements), someone put a decimal point in the wrong place. As a result, the underwater vehicles were built way too heavy.
A lot of work had already been done on all four ships before the mistake was discovered. In fact, one of them was nearly finished.
***
Notes:
1. Sounds like a metric mistake with that decimal error...
2. The "about 100 tons" is different from the original articles I read which stated "100 tonnes" as Spain uses the metric system.
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The thing about the metric system is it's standardization: Even though all measurement systems are built on the same essential basis (ie, find something in nature that we can agree on to use as a comparison and abstract it into a numerical value we can then use for measurement of other things), the metric system ("Metre" simply meaning "Measure" in French) was created with the intention of finding the most universal points of reference available, and always with the notion that, as our capacity for observation improved, those points of reference would be further defined.
That's why it started using the calculated perimetre of the Earth as basis for the metre; you don't get more universal than the planet everyone lives on, plus there was a relatively trusted method of calculating that number. Also, using such a measure allowed defining the metre within a frame of reference that didn't change (at least in practical terms).
As technology allowed for more precise observations, more universal and stable measures were used, and that's why we ended up with, say, the second being calculated over the atomic activity of a very specific element. Sure it sound complicated when you look at it from that angle, but how exactly it is determined is less important than how dependable the source of the measure is; unless the laws of physics go bananas all of the sudden, the second we are using today will be measurable in 100, 1,000 and 10,000 years without change.
Then it is decimal, which is the system we all use today. A lot of civilizations in the past used other methods (like the Egyptians, who used a sexagesimal system. These guys were the first to measure time in multiples of 6, later influencing the Mesopotamians and Greek into developing the 60/60/24 system we use today), but for a good while we've been doing everything on a base of 10. Thus, in order to make it even more universal and scalable, the measures were all built with the idea of decimalization in mind.
The result is a system that has a very solid foundation and that leaves behind all the cultural and political issues that made measures used in one part of the world very hard to reconcile with those used somewhere else.
If you grow using feet and pounds, it's very reasonable for you to see it as the more comfortable method; I grew up using metres and kilograms, and they seem very natural to me (and there are some techniques to help you grasp them easily since an early age, such as measuring the size of your hand and learning your "metre step" and "metre waist"). But considering the Imperial system was built over thousands of years of multiple localized measures and a mixing of consuetudinary references (which, really, was the exact same method everyone used prior to the XVIII century. There were like 80 different measures for the league, for instance, almost one for each country that used them), while the Metric was built from the start as an internally-consistent and universal method, I think it is fair to claim the latter as, at least, a more dependable option in the long run (not to say that Imperial units may not be more effective at certain specific scenarios, though).
It would absolutely be a better thing to ONLY use imperial units than to use both imperial and metric, yes. Still, the metric system is far better if you are to choose only one.
I think the simplicity of either system (that is, ease of use) just comes down to what you learn as the standard system at an early age.
Having grown up in the US, the imperial units of various sort are so ingrained that I don't find a decimal system any easier to use. The other day I was working on some RPG scenery scaled to factions of inches, and I had very little trouble finding the common denominators of halves, quarters, eighths and sixteenths. (Don't get me wrong, I think both factions and decimals and the conversion between the two should be taught in grade school.) The only thing that really throws me for a loop is that every temperature scale out there is measured in "degrees"; it's as if the US had centimeters that were two and a half times the size of metric centimeters instead of "inches."
I do enjoy the feet and inches of imperial measures because twelve is evenly divisible by two, three four and six, rather than only two and five, but I'm also the sort of nerd who likes to think about how a dozen dozen is a gross.
Can I ask all the metric users out there, is there a common unit that falls between the centimeter and the meter, or do you guys just look at what I would call a foot and say, "Meh, looks like about thirty centimeters."
1 meter = 10 decimeters = 100 centimeters.
Sure, I've heard of them, but do you guys actually use decimeters very often? I see measurements listed in centimeters (150cm) and meters and centimeters (1m 50cm) all the time, but I don't think I've ever seen any listed in decimeters (15 dm).
From time to time. Usually in an approximate manner for things on the 10 cm to 1 m range. "That's about 4-½ decimeter."
Sure, I've heard of them, but do you guys actually use decimeters very often? I see measurements listed in centimeters (150cm) and meters and centimeters (1m 50cm) all the time, but I don't think I've ever seen any listed in decimeters (15 dm).
Decimeters are generally only used in groups of a half to four or so. For precision, you use cm instead, and in common language, you use meters and halves thereof. But seriously, what do you guys do if you want to measure 0,2 mm? Still multiples of fractions of inches? It boggles my mind to think of it. So, how thick is your car body?
I work with EPA air emissions regulations, and particulate emission rates are measured in grains per dry standard cubic foot. Yes, grains. We're old-school like that.
You can even get crazy and start combining Imperial with metric. Our coal-fired boilers measure steam load in kilopounds per hour.
Sure, I've heard of them, but do you guys actually use decimeters very often? I see measurements listed in centimeters (150cm) and meters and centimeters (1m 50cm) all the time, but I don't think I've ever seen any listed in decimeters (15 dm).Decimeters are generally only used in groups of a half to four or so. For precision, you use cm instead, and in common language, you use meters and halves thereof. But seriously, what do you guys do if you want to measure 0,2 mm? Still multiples of fractions of inches? It boggles my mind to think of it. So, how thick is your car body?
Why would we want to measure 0.2 (we'll just save commas vs decimal points for a later date, I guess) mm? That's metric! :P
(Serious answer, the smallest gradation I've ever seen on a imperial measure ruler was thirty-seconds of inches, but if you go to the drafting section of the art supply store, you can find all sorts of whacky increments.)
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@thing from beyond the edge - you remind me of some dude from whom I once ordered Pizza on the phone (from a local Pizza place) - I had 4 friends with me so we asked him to just cut the pizza into 5 slices, to which he replied "But that's mathematically impossible!".
Asking the pizza man to deviate from his standard cutting procedure is asking for trouble in any measurement system.
Can I ask all the metric users out there, is there a common unit that falls between the centimeter and the meter, or do you guys just look at what I would call a foot and say, "Meh, looks like about thirty centimeters."
For most everyday uses, I do pretty much that and more or less guess how much above or below half a metre something is. Body measurements also help: I know the distance between my index's knuckle and tip is almost exactly 10cm, so that helps make small measurements easy without too much error.
I never really use the decimetre. I do use milimetres a lot, though.
Didn't try to sound arrogant, sorry about that (and also not sure why just saying that I did a complicated calculation is being arrogant.
It comes across as "I do scientific calculations and none of you obviously do"
And I don't use Celsius precisely, I use Kelvin, which is basically the same only they moved 0 down from the freezing point of water to the actual "zero heat" - the temperature where atoms don't have any kinetic energy.
We know what kelvin is.
If we're in a lab, we can use it just fine because ,as I said, when you're dealing with numbers that big you lose all form of conceptualization that you gain from dealing with the temperature in every day life.
Sure, I've heard of them, but do you guys actually use decimeters very often? I see measurements listed in centimeters (150cm) and meters and centimeters (1m 50cm) all the time, but I don't think I've ever seen any listed in decimeters (15 dm).
I don't know about elsewhere, but here we don't generally use decimeters in common parlance. The concept exists though, if milimeters, centimeters and meters aren't doing it for ya. :)
A deciliter is a very common unit of measurement though.
Asking the pizza man to deviate from his standard cutting procedure is asking for trouble in any measurement system.@thing from beyond the edge - you remind me of some dude from whom I once ordered Pizza on the phone (from a local Pizza place) - I had 4 friends with me so we asked him to just cut the pizza into 5 slices, to which he replied "But that's mathematically impossible!".
And it does seem to me that to cut a circle into five EQUAL pieces would be a tough feat, without some tools for precision.
But yeah, it can be a bit frustrating asking for unusual fractions. When I go to the deli counter at my local supermarket, the people who work there use a scale with quarter-pound increments. I can ask them for a quarter pound of meat, or three quarters of a pound, and they're fine with that. But I long ago gave up asking for a nonstandard fraction. I wasted some time once asking for two thirds of a pound. The guy at the deli counter estimated, and gave me more than three quarters. I told him that two thirds were LESS than three quarters. When he didn't seem to understand, I gave him a couple of simple demonstrations of that fact. He gave me a look that clearly said "You're obviously stupid, but whatever. The customer is always right, even when he says ridiculous things, so I'll just humor you."
And they would have a heart attack when I asked them for sixth tenths of a pound! Tenths are the Devil's tool!
I can imagine how these people would react to having to switch to grams. They'd probably assemble a group of vigilantes to have all proponents of the metric system rounded up. And decimated.
We're trained from birth to think in decimal, which matches (1) the median number of fingers, and (2) the metric system. Imperial is inferior, both in that it is inconsistent (12 inches to a foot, 16 ounces to a pound) and that it is not decimal.
The United States should really just get with the program.
That Farenheit was actually perfectly rational and sensible more than 2 centuries ago is not a very good reason to keep on using it IMO ;-)))
Its perfectly rational for keeping track of weather. 10 degrees= 1 measure of cold/hot
20 Where did they go?
30 freezing
40 cold
50 chilly
60 cool
70 good
80 warm
90 hot
100 freaking hot
110 Gerk....
Adjust up or down a bit depending on your locale.
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Didn't try to sound arrogant, sorry about that (and also not sure why just saying that I did a complicated calculation is being arrogant.It comes across as "I do scientific calculations and none of you obviously do"
And I don't use Celsius precisely, I use Kelvin, which is basically the same only they moved 0 down from the freezing point of water to the actual "zero heat" - the temperature where atoms don't have any kinetic energy.We know what kelvin is.
If we're in a lab, we can use it just fine because ,as I said, when you're dealing with numbers that big you lose all form of conceptualization that you gain from dealing with the temperature in every day life.
Another standard usage of Celsius just occurred to me, and I bet you (and just about everyone else) use it too - 1 calorie is exactly equal to the energy required to heat 1 kilo-gram of water by exactly 1 Celsius degree. Speaking of which, a single kilo-gram of water takes up an exact 10 cubic centimeters of space. The simple elegance of that fact - that such simple decimal relations exist between so many of the metric measurement units - is another point in it's favor.
Can't we just use Planck units? It would make everything so much easier!
Isn't that the unit of fish you get at Long John Silvers?