Metric vs Imperial poll

[murdomack]

Originally Posted by gunship

well, on the other hand all i have to do put metric unit in to calculation, and out comes metric unit. and since pretty much all science is based on metric nowsays, such units as amps, joule and other stuff is also metric units. i understand that if you were schooled with the imperial system its easy, but i can easily apply all kinds of science to common measurements, and solve it all whith one simple formula. after that i can convert it between Giga/Mega/Kilo/Base unit/deci/centi/milli/micro/nano etc. for a conventiently long number, which can also be aproximated by 10^ for example -2 for centi.

I agree with you that Metric is easier to work with in many instances, but why does that make it better. In school we were taught science through the Imperial system, then we would be taught the Metric way at the end.

I always thought that learning in Imperial give us a better understanding.

It is not coincidental that the websites of suppliers from the US are far more informative than those from all these countries that take the easy route to everything. Being Imperial trained, they understand what their customers need to know and publish that in detail. Long may they keep it up.

[gunship]

@ informative and easy way: I have no experience on that point, but i have never found any shortcomings in metric websites. allthough, i think it should be mentioned that there are only three countries who oficcially doesent use the metric system.

[masrapido]

"Informative" and "easy" are personal views from someone who doesn't like the metric simply because they donot even understand it. Earlier nebulous "explanation" and a comment like "it's a real man's system" are further proof of ignorance, nothing else.

If the "imperial"system were really good, the world would have adopted it. It didn't. Smart real men looked at both and went with the better one. For those who still think they know better, just look at the pool. The tendency is towards the metric. To say that the lonely 4 imperialists are the only men in this forum, is childlish and frankly plain stupid.

Imperial system is complex and cumbersome. You deal with fractions and it takes a lot of time just to convert fractions into a common one just to be able calculate something. Only the fourth world countries are still using the "imperialist" system (the word intended).

usanian scientists also use metric system. There's a reason for that. For one, they are smarter than the "real men" who like the obsolete and useless system. Educated people know the other many reasons.

[dskira]

I work with both, I don't see any problem of co-existance.
each one as its advantage, and I like using the imperial for the wood construction and the metric for steel construction. Beside its easy to go from one to an other. make my brain stay alert!

[yipster]

as said i work with both also but do see problems in co-existance
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metric..._avoidable.htm

[url]
Smart people can make stupid mistakes. In fact, this happens all the time

[murdomack]

Yipster, I hope the people reading that link that you put up do not use the scales in the title for converting or there could be another $125M "Metric Error". They have 15mm to the inch.

It's true that having both systems is not clever. A lot of the problem is that standards have adopted metric while lots of their dimensioning is still in inches. Take a look at the table of pipe threads posted which tells us that a 2" pipe thread or a G2 (I think that's its new name) has 11 threads per 25.4mm. This is one of the main reasons that I cling to Imperial, if industry would tool up from afresh in Metric instead of this mish-mash everyone would adopt it.

http://www.roymech.co.uk/Useful_Tabl...e_Threads.html

[ancient kayaker]

My metric rule has cm, usually too big to use for an approximation, and mm, sometimes too small to see. Because of the metric system's obsession with decimal scales the next highest precision would be 0.1 mm which could not be seen with the naked eye. That's it, just 2 levels of precision, take it or leave it; whether I am working with low accuracy or high precision makes no difference.

My 1 ft imperial rule has 1/8ths, 1/16ths, 1/32ths and 1/64ths. My 6 inch rule also has 1/128ths, which gets hard to read but it's there if I need it and it's 4 times as precise as the mm's on the metric rule. I can have either precision or clarity I need with imperial.

This is a binary progression - that’s 2:1 for you under-educated anti-imperialists - the entirely logical, efficient and natural scheme that your computer uses internally. Computer folk have to be logical, they deal in logic; they also work in octal (1:8) and hexadecimal (1:16).

Decimal systems are appropriate for those who must count with their fingers if a calculator is not handy. People tout decimal systems because it seems to be easier to add and subtract and do other arithmetic on the numbers, but that’s because they can only handle decimals.

I even have a rule calibrated in 1/12ths - handy if I need to divide accurately into 3's for example. You can’t do that using a 1:10 scale. We “imperialists” are comfortable with other scales and it often pays off. Sure I have metric rules and know how to use them, and sometimes I do, but they are just not as useful.


When the rulers of the galaxy finally decide to take humanity under their guidance, they will be shocked to find that some of this supposedly intelligent species are using a decimal scale for the arbitrary reason that they have 10 fingers. Hopefully they will decide that there is hope for us all when they discover some of us using the superior and natural binary scale of the imperial system.

Why do they call it imperial anyway? The SI system was initially imposed on an unwilling world as a by-product of Napoleon's imperialistic ambitions!

[dskira]

Ancientkayaker,
Next time you go to an hospital, try your thought!
To be honnest I don't know in Canada, but here in the US the medical community use the metric system. Of course doctors doesn't know how to count, and always look at there fingers. Mostly the major one, with a plastic glove

[marshmat]

I think it's safe to say that everyone will continue using the units they're comfortable with for as long as they live.

For me, that's metres, kilograms and newtons for everyday things and for most design work. It's inches and fractional inches where stock fasteners, lumber, pipe and fittings are involved. It's electron-volts, barns, coulombs and nanoseconds in the lab.

Now, just to see if we can really confuse anyone who's only fluent in imperial, or only fluent in metric:

What boat am I describing here?
LOA 0.20202 chains
LWL 1.2347x10^-7 nanoparsecs
Beam 225.7 jows
Displacement, in race trim, without crew 3.55x10^28 amu
Sail area in racing trim 7.06x10^28 barns
Speed record for the class 102.9 hands per microfortnight

No Google Converter, guys, you have to figure this out for yourselves to truly feel like you won the challenge!

The answer will be posted... let's say tomorrow or Thursday. Take yer guesses!

[yipster]

cubing is where i prefer metric and fractioning goes complicated, there is more offcourse
where's that upside down piramid before "3.55x10^28 amu" or can we use mol as well?
isnt it hard enough as it is? i'm never to old to learn something tho, so go rite ahead

[Fanie]

The metric system is the international system of measurement. It was designed with several goals in mind.

Neutral and universal

Any laboratory can make a model of the base units. Starting with length, the meter was determined by the distance between two lines of latitude. This can be measured at any location on earth with the proper instruments. Once the length is established, a cube can be constructed that is 1/10 km on each edge. The volume of this cube is the liter. Everyone has access to water, so fill this cube with water and you have a kilogram of weight at 3.98 degrees celsius. Oh, yes, you also had to develop a thermometer by dividing the difference between water's freezing and boiling points into 100 equal parts.

Decimal multiples

The metric system is decimal. The next larger unit is always 10 times as large, the next smaller always 1/10 as large. You don't have to remember 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, are there four pints in a quart or only two, etc. To convert, simply move the decimal point.

Prefixes

All derived units use a common set of prefixes for each multiple. "Kilo" means 1000 whether it is used both for mass (kilogram) or length (kilometre). A few units such as the tonne (megagram) and quintal (100 kilograms) survive from old units but have been rounded to metric. The prefixes which come from the Greek language (kilo, mega, giga) are multipliers and those with Latin origins (centi, milli) are divisors.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Four_advan...f_measurements

As you can see the link reads advantages of the metric friggin measurements

Someone started thinking and the metric system came to be.

On a positive note, some of the US manufacturers are actually beginning to use the metric system which is encouraging. There may be hope for the US after all Masalai will be delighted

[Fanie]

Stolen from someone on the net -

What are the advantages of the metric system?
-------------------------------------------------

This question comes up in misc.metric-system usually in discussions
with US Americans who see no compelling reason for why the United
States should make a serious effort to abandon their customary
inch-pound units and move on to the metric system.

The most frequently given answers include:

- Because practically everyone uses it

Americans who have never left their country may not realize that
their customary system of inch-pound units is today practically
unknown in most countries. For more than 95% of the world
population, the metric system is the customary system of units,
and for more than half of the industrialized world, it has been
for at least a century. Products designed in non-metric units or
using non-metric standards can cause serious maintenance and
compatibility problems for customers in major world markets and do
place a manufacturer at a disadvantage.

- Because using two incompatible systems causes unnecessary friction

The United States lacks a coherent system of units. Economic
realities, international standards, and the short-comings of the
inch-pound system (e.g., lack of electrical and chemical units,
lack of small subunits) force it already to use the metric system
alongside its customary inch-pound units. American students waste
at least half a year of mathematics education with developing
unit-conversion skills (both within the inch-pound system and
between inch-pound and metric) that are utterly irrelevant in the
metric-only rest of the world. [The study "Education System
Benefits of U.S. Metric Conversion", by Richard P. Phelps,
published in Evaluation Review, February 1996, claimed that
teaching solely metric measurements could save an estimated 82
days of mathematics instruction-time annually, worth over 17
billion dollars.]

- Because it dramatically reduces conversion factors in calculations

In spite of a significant amount of secondary school time being
wasted in the United States in science and math education with
training the use of conversion factors between the bewildering set
of units in use there, only few educated Americans know by heart
how to convert between gallons and cubic feet or inches and miles.
The inch-pound system suffers from a bewildering, random and
completely unsystematic set of conversion factors between units
for the same quantity, for instance 1 mile = 1760 yards and 1 US
gallon = 231 cubic inches. It also suffers from the use of too
many different units for the same quantity. Energy alone, for
example, is measured in the US in calories, british thermal units,
ergs, feet pound-force, quads, therms, tons of TNT,
kilowatt-hours, electron volts, and joules, and power is measured
in ergs per second, foot pound-force per second, several types of
horsepowers, and watts.

Users of the metric system, on the other hand, have to use
conversion factors only where there are significant physical
reasons for using alternative units to express some situation. An
example is the choice between molar concentration (a count of
molecules better describes a chemical reaction balance) and a mass
concentration (which describes better how a pharmacist prepares
medication) in medicine. The main other reason for using
conversion factors in the metric world is the continued use of
non-decimal multiples of the second (hour, day, year).

- Because metric dimensions are easier to divide by three

A commonly brought up -- but misleading -- claim is that the
inch-pound system supports division by three. While it is true
that the factor three appears in the inch-foot and foot-yard
conversion factors, this argument fails for the rest of the
system. In practice, people find that metric dimensions are far
easier to subdivide by various factors, as it is easier to move to
smaller subunits and as it is more common in the metric world to
use standardized preferred number sequences. For example, in the
British building industry (see British Standard BS 6750), it is
customary to chose major design dimensions (e.g., grid lines on a
building plan) as multiples of 300, 600, or 1200 mm. As a result,
common building dimensions can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10,
12, 15, 20, 24, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, 100, 120, 150, 200, and
300, without having to resort to millimetre fractions. Even
without such precautions, it is instantly obvious that one
kilometre divided by three is 333 1/3 metres and 1/3 L = 333 1/3
mL. On the other hand, even inch-pound enthusiasts are a bit
pressed when asked what 1/3 mile is in yards (answer: 586 2/3) or
what 1/3 lb is in ounces (5 1/3). Furthermore, while the use of
decimal fractions is preferred in the metric system, because this
simplifies the mental conversion between different unit prefixes,
there is no reason why vulgar fractions cannot be used where it
seems appropriate.

- Because it is the only properly maintained system

The inch-pound system used in the United States has essentially
stopped evolving more than 200 years ago when the metric system
emerged. Although it would, in principle, have been possible to
extend the inch-pound system into a coherent and even decimal
system of units, this never happened. The US customary system of
units uses the inch and pound only for mechanical quantities. It
had to copy, for example, all its electrical units (volt, ampere,
watt, ohm) from the metric system. The length of the inch still
differed noticeably between several English-speaking countries as
late as World War II, which interfered with the exchange of
precision equipment. It had to be redefined in 1959, when 1 inch
finally became 25.4 mm. At this point, industries in all
English-speaking countries -- apart from the United States --
decided to abandon the inch entirely for precision work, and later
also for general use.

[dskira]

For construction I love Imperial.
1 by 2 by, 4 by and so on, board feet, pipe, and fasteners dimensions. It is so practical.
Daniel

[Fanie]

In case you didn't know

A) Humans

Typical height of an adult: 1.60-1.90 m
Typical weight of an adult: 50-90 kg

[The "body mass index (BMI)" is the weight in kilograms divided by
the height in metres squared. BMI values of 18-25 kg/m² are
considered normal, values outside this range can mean an increased
disease risk.]

Keeping in mind that the size of most adults varies by about 20%,
the following are easy to remember estimates for typical values:

Width of an adult hand or foot: 10 cm

Width of the nail of the small finger: 1 cm

Maximum distance between elbows: 1 m

Height of the hip above ground: 1 m

Length of a moderately large step: 1 m

Foot length: 25 cm

Daily energy needed: 10 MJ (men)
8 MJ (women)

Energy of a healthy meal: 2 MJ

Daily water needed: 2 L

Blood volume: 5 L

Lung capacity: 5 L

B) General Physics

Speed of sound (in air): 340 m/s

Speed of light (in air or vacuum): 300 000 km/s

Acceleration of free fall (Earth): 10 m/s²

Atmospheric pressure (Earth): 100 kPa

Density of water: 1000 kg/m³ = 1 kg/L

C) Geology and Astronomy

Distance pole to equator (Earth): 10 000 km = 10 Mm

Length of the Earth equator: 40 000 km = 40 Mm

Altitude of geostationary Earth orbit: 36 000 km = 36 Mm

Distance Earth-Sun: 150 Gm

Diameter of solar system: 12 Tm

Diameter of our galaxy: 1 Zm

Distance to most distant visible objects: 100 Ym

D) Traffic

Walking speed 5 km/h

Cycling speed 20 km/h

Speed limit in traffic-calmed areas: 30 km/h

Speed limits on urban roads: 50-60 km/h

Speed limits on rural roads: 60-80 km/h

Speed limits on highways: 90-130 km/h

Long-distance average car speed: 100 km/h

Cruise speed of passenger planes: 600-800 km/h

Cruise altitude of passenger planes: 10 km

Official altitude boundary between Earth's
atmosphere and space ("Karman line"): 100 km

E) Temperatures

Lowest possible temperature: -273.15 °C = 0 K

Typical freezer temperature: -18 °C

Freezing water/melting ice: 0 °C

Drink with many ice cubes: 0 °C

Temperature of highest density of water: 4 °C

Typical refrigerator temperature: 4-8 °C

Comfortable office room temperature: 20-25 °C
(same for swimming-pool water)

Hot day (for Britain): 25-35 °C
(same for baby bath water)

Body temperature: 37 °C

Fever temperatures: 38-40 °C

Deadly fever: 41-42 °C

Proteins denaturate starting from: 45-50 °C
(in cooking: egg becomes solid)

Food poisoning bacteria might grow: 5-55 °C

Food poisoning bacteria die: 60 °C

Flour absorbs most water starting at: 70 °C
(minimum temperature dough/batter needs
to reach in any kind of baking)

Alcohol boils: 78 °C

Best temperature for green tea (Japan): 80 °C

Water boils (at sea level): 100 °C

Typical baking-oven air temperature: 150-220 °C

Washing machine settings: 30, 40, 50, 60, 95 °C

F) Angles

While degrees remain popular and useful for large angles (30°, 45°,
60°, 90°, etc.), the radian is extremely convenient and intuitive
for small angles, for example those covered by a pixel of a digital
camera.

1 mm seen from 1 m distance: 1 mrad
1 mm seen from 1 km distance: 1 µrad
1 m at the "end of the universe" (100 Ym): 0.01 yrad

The steradian is used mostly in the context of describing the
intensity of radiation.

1 mm² seen from 1 m distance: 1 µsr
1 mm² seen from 1 km distance: 1 psr

[apex1]

Originally Posted by Fanie

[url] a cube can be constructed that is 1/10 km on each edge. The volume of this cube is the liter.

Fanie, how many liters of beer can you drink before you get tipsy?