Metric vs Imperial poll

[Mikey]

Originally Posted by masrapido

Mikey, how did you come to that conclusion?

Masrapido,
Most of Europe, Asia and Africa are on dd-mm-yyyy and not mm-dd-yyyy. I have worked professionally in Asia for the last 17 years and contact people in more countries than I can remember, not often North and South America though.

I write dates dd-MMM-yyyy (12-Oct-2009) because I am bored with the unnecessary misunderstandings, there are few people who see the date 9/11 and think it’s 11-Sep I can tell you. Same when you hear nine / eleven.

Standardisation is good...

Mikey

[rxcomposite]

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

What I never understood was why the metric folk did not, while they were at it, decimalise circular measure (degrees) and time units.

The radians (unit of angular measure) confused them.

[hoytedow]

I knew a guy with 12 fingers, once. Be glad he didn't set up the metric system.
I don't know how many toes he had, but it could have gotten complicated.

[masrapido]

Originally Posted by Mikey

Masrapido,
Most of Europe, Asia and Africa are on dd-mm-yyyy and not mm-dd-yyyy. I have worked professionally in Asia for the last 17 years and contact people in more countries than I can remember, not often North and South America though.

I write dates dd-MMM-yyyy (12-Oct-2009) because I am bored with the unnecessary misunderstandings, there are few people who see the date 9/11 and think it’s 11-Sep I can tell you. Same when you hear nine / eleven.

Standardisation is good...

Mikey

Good point. We use dd.mm.yyyy. format that so never occured to me.

Standardisation is good.

[capt vimes]

Originally Posted by ancient kayaker

Historical reasons probably. 1 inch - width of thumb, 1 foot = length of foot, 1 yard = length of stride or nose to tip of finger with arm held to one side, as when measuring cloth. Later someone set standards and it just came out with 3 feet to the yard and 12 inches to the foot.

SI was set up using the base of 10, which is the number of fingers careful workers generally have. More happenstance.

What I never understood was why the metric folk did not, while they were at it, decimalise circular measure (degrees) and time units.

nobody has a yard-long stride... ;-)
the average stride used in constructions - i.e. for getting a 'good' width/height relation for stairs (2*height + width) - is 63 cm... not a yard...

circular messaruments has been brought to metric as well - it is the radiant... 400 for the full circle, but nobody is using it at all...
a couple of pages earlier the military system was mentioned and it is based somewhat on the radiant...
it has 6400 'strich' (in german, do not know the english term) for the full circle...
you know where this derives from?
take a circle with 2 km diameter and calculate the circumference = 6284.something... so 1 strich is roughly 1 m at 1000 m of distance... making even the dumbest soldier able to estimate the distance of a known object when looking through his military-issued binocular which has a strich-scale in it... 6 m long tank meassures 3 strich = 2 km of distance ;-)
it is by the way also roughly the resolution of our eys... 2 points 1 mm apart at 1 m distance are just distinguishable as 2 points.

degrees and time measuring is still a remnant to history... it makes no sense but was established in the past by some folks and everybody got used to it...
the imperial system is the same with the disadvantage that its smallest unit is the inch... you want to messarure smaller units - you have to use millimeter, mikrometer etc...
so why not taking the metric system in the first hand?

now weights... the biggest imperial unit i know of is stones... anything getting realy heavy is meassured in tons...
so why not taking the metric gramm in the first hand?

1 liter of freshwater weighs 1 kg... the displacement of a ship calculated in m³ gives you without converting anything its weight in tons!
isn't that beautiful?

but i will definitely stick to nautical miles and knots because it is so easy to plot distances on sea-charts for 1 nm is 1 minute latitude... perfect
for land-charts there is a international standard - derives from nato to my knowledge - which is a grid-system... although from the nato its grid-squares are 1 km of lenght...
and still the US is determined to stick to their miles....

[murdomack]

Dear Me, Capt Vimes,

You have obviously never got into the Imperial system very deeply or you would not have made some of the statemennts that you have.

1. I have a Yard long stride. I could pace out Fifty and would expect a high degree of accuracy. To step out Fifty Metres, I would need to extend each step and it would all be "a bit of a hit and miss". It would also probably lead to a muscle injury.

2. Have you never heard of a hundredweight. There are 20 of the in every Imperial Ton. It's 14 Lbs= 1 stone; 8 stones= 1 Cwt (that's the short way of writing hundredweight) and 20 Cwt's = 1 ton. Multiply them all together and you get 2240 Lbs in a Ton. Easy Peasy.

3. Your ship will displace its own weight in any fluid, even in an EU wine lake. One Imperial gallon of Fresh Water weighs 10 lbs exactly.

4. In the end you admit that you will stick with the existing angular and time measures, except when ranging tanks through your Stritch system. This is the correct approach and you should adopt both Metric and Imperial systems. They are both faily simple when you get used to them.

[Fanie]

Good grief !!!

I thought I resolved the issue previously in this thread. Now the late comers start the fire back up again. Do check the previous posts, I'm sure you would find some insight there.

There is nothing that says you absolutely have to use the metric system. You don't have to use the imperial either. You can just as well develop and use your own, really, nothing wrong with that.

The only reason why the metric is the system of choice is for the reasons posted previously, and so we all know what each other is talking about.

Historical reasons probably. 1 inch - width of thumb, 1 foot = length of foot, 1 yard = length of stride

Probably... and who knows what he looked like. I see you guys still use terms like 'stone'... was it from the stone age ?? Shouldn't we move beyond the primitive ways... I know it's hard to let go I'm sure I have some monkey blood im me left too, you can tell when I'm swinging in the rigging

[rambo!]

capt vimes

there is a gunning and positionen system adopted by all NATO-countries that is in "millirads". definition is $\pi=3,2$ giving $6400$ millirads (mrad) in a full circle.
Thats equal to an accuraty of 1 meter in 1000 meter distance.

There is also microrad (equal to 1 mm at 1000 meter) and nanorad (equal to 0,001mm at 1000 m), but those are used in astronomy.

I found one possible problem for us metrics as I´ve just got som beatuiful handmade boat drawings made in imperial. You imperials have a "probably" a cleaver system when you use and switch between 4-, 8-, 16-th.

The upper digits used are only odd numbers...but do You normally use all options...like 7/8 or 15/16...a minor different I know...but I don´t have a natural feel for the precision in imperial...it´s there..but that´s the hardest part for me doing coversion to metric.

[ancient kayaker]

I too have a yard-long (36") stride (not boasting) and striding out a length in yards has been used since time immemorial. I well recall 22 yards for a cricket pitch, having been raised in the UK. The Romans used the pace, defined in the same way, it is 30" but folks were smaller then.

Capt. Vimes: either you need spectacles or you are unfamiliar with the use of fractions. The resolution of a typical human eye is 2 minutes of arc, which is about 1 in 2000 or 0.5 mm at 1 m. This applies to the ability to separate parallel lines; visual acuity varies with the type of target and task. Also, for information, the inch can be subdivided every bit as finely as the millimeter. Machinists commonly measure using the "thou" which is 1/1000" and "tenths" which are 1/10,000" or 1.54 micrometers.

The Stone is no longer in legal use in the UK although it is still commonly used for expressing body weight. I recall going to a seaside resort where for one penny one could be weighed on the most magnificent set of scales imaginable, at least 8 feet high (sorry, 2.5 m) and tricked out in gold leaf, in Stones, Pounds, Ounces and pennyweights, whatever those were. Historically there were several different stone weights depending on the commodity being weighed, 16 lb for cheese, 8 lb for meat etc., but 14 lb was the most common. There are many stories about the origin of the stone unit, my favorite is, the heaviest weight a strong man can hold at arm's length. I guess butcher's were not as strong as cheese purveyors, which I find hard to believe having done both.

The millirad is used for gunnery; 64000 to the circle. It is also a unit of nuclear radiation, or more specifically of exposure of a human body to nuclear radiation, but that is not used much these days.

Today I was drilling holes in my boat's tapered sprit booms, which had to be centered across the width. It was easy to find a unit that exactly fit the width of the booms with my imperial rule, which happened to be 1/16ths, then simply number off the same in 1/32nds! I wasn't trying very hard as the rule goes down to 1/128ths. If a metric rule were available it might have been more difficult to get the same precision.

The Imperial system is a practical system developed over many years for doing practical things. It should be no surprise that it is superior in some ways (not all) to a system developed by theoreticians like SI. The Imperial system is not very practical for scientific purposes.

For myself, I use whichever system is the best for the job at hand. The Inuit people had a system for measuring based on the human body; a kayak for a specific task (hunting, exploring, beaching dead animals) would have its various measurements defined in this way, the width of the hips plus a the width of a fist might define the cockpit width for a particular type of boat tailored to a specific person, for example. Very practical for boat making using undimensioned material found lying on the beach, not very practical for trade.

[rambo!]

Hey ancient K,

If 1/32 is 0,8 mm...for what use is a ruler of 1/128...thats close to 0.2mm..half of a 0.5 normal Bic pencil.

So I do not dobt you can build a very good boat in either metric or imperial but a ruler marked in 1/128 imperial or tenths of an mm in metric will be a black line of no use.

No if 180 degrees is $3,2 radians$ then $6.4 times 1000$ will be 1000 times bigger equals $6400$, now radiation exposure is another thing, not covered in this thread

[marshmat]

For angular measure, radians (or milliradians, etc.) are the SI standard, and are the only "units" you'll find physicists and mathematicians using. I say "units" in quotes, because the radian is dimensionless: it is, by definition, the ratio of arc length to radius.

The trigonometric functions are intrinsically related to the constant Pi and the arc length / radius ratio, independent of whatever number system or base we choose to use; thus, radians are the natural units to use for this purpose. Any other system would introduce unit-system-dependent constants into all sorts of equations that, frankly, are hideous enough as they are. They are, however, quite inconvenient for engineering and building (how do you make a protractor with an irrational number of gradations?). So we stick with degrees when all we're worried about is the angle itself.

There is a unit of angular measure known as a grad, of which there are 100 in a right angle, but these aren't seen much in everyday practice.

[murdomack]

Originally Posted by rambo!

Hey ancient K,

If 1/32 is 0,8 mm...for what use is a ruler of 1/128...thats close to 0.2mm..half of a 0.5 normal Bic pencil.

This will be one of these 6" steel rules that percision engineers, and some posers, carry in their coat pocket and produce with a flourish when some intricate marking is called for.

The 1/128th scale has a use. Lets say that you are scribing a dimension of 2-9/64" straddling a centreline. This would be common enough in a precision workshop.

You would have to mark 1-9/128" on either side of the centre.

[ancient kayaker]

The SI unit of radiation dose is the Gray, equals 100 rad. Not sure if the Rad is imperial or just some older unit. As a measure of human absorbtion of radiation it is a more practical unit than the Gray which is just too large.

Well, Rambo, I have at least one rule calibrated in 1/128th inch and I assure you it is not just a black line. Howewer, I would not want to go down another factor of 2. Buy one and take a look; they are not expensive.

Because the SI standards people are obsessed with the 1:10 ratio they would not countenance a scale with 1/5th mm, and yet the mm is too big for handmade precision work and 1/10 mm would be virtually impossible to read without magnification. For that matter, 1/128th inch is to small for most purposes but it comes in handy on occasion.

My last post had an error, it is 6400 millirad to the circle.

[capt vimes]

Originally Posted by murdomack

1. I have a Yard long stride. I could pace out Fifty and would expect a high degree of accuracy. To step out Fifty Metres, I would need to extend each step and it would all be "a bit of a hit and miss". It would also probably lead to a muscle injury.

i don't know about your stride or your leglength.... but making strides of 91,44 cm isn't easy either... stridelength as posted is in average 63 cm.

2. Have you never heard of a hundredweight. There are 20 of the in every Imperial Ton. It's 14 Lbs= 1 stone; 8 stones= 1 Cwt (that's the short way of writing hundredweight) and 20 Cwt's = 1 ton. Multiply them all together and you get 2240 Lbs in a Ton. Easy Peasy.

i had to laugh! ;-)
you call that easy-peasy....
how much ounces in 1 lb? 16 i guess...
16 * 14 * 8 * 20... from the smallest imperial weight to the highest... this is nuts!
now in metric:
10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10 * 10... from the gramm to the ton... now that's easy peasy! ;-)

3. Your ship will displace its own weight in any fluid, even in an EU wine lake. One Imperial gallon of Fresh Water weighs 10 lbs exactly.

oh suddenly your metric? ;-)

4. In the end you admit that you will stick with the existing angular and time measures, except when ranging tanks through your Stritch system. This is the correct approach and you should adopt both Metric and Imperial systems. They are both faily simple when you get used to them.

i would not call the imperial system easy....

[masrapido]

I find it funny how 'democrats' of all colours in those three underdeveloped countries still using that archaic and clumsy system, love calling it "imperial".

One would think metric would be perfect for 'democrats" to cut the ties with their empires.

The price of living in the stone age...