Square centimeters? I thought true Americans were proud of the Imperial System.
We use metric to indicate piddlingly small quantities, like the amount of Central Park I can see.
Except that my back-of-the-envelope calculation shows 6.4596 square centimeters to the square inch. If she wants to stay above unity, it's centimeters, which every American child has been taught for many decades.
Anticipated by LB, I see on preview.
stacks of unfiled paper I lifted off the floor of my office without sorting them last week, and realizing that I have to do something sensible with them when I take them out of the boxes.
The obvious solution being not to take them out of the boxes.
For machining work, Imperial still rules. .001 of an inch is a perfect standard unit of measurement when making precise parts. Suck it metric system.
6: You know, I've heard the same from a guy I know who used to be an engineer for Rolls Royce. But I don't get it -- what makes .001" more useful than 2µm? Not exactly the same, but pretty close.
Or did I just drop a decimal place there? I think I meant 20µm. In any case, the point is the same -- you can get arbitrarily close to the same measurement in metric.
So, Canada switched over to the metric system some time ago, but it hasn't caught on in carpentry. For one, most of the tools and things are made by American manufacturers or to American specifications. For two, everything, not just the size of the screws or the nails, about building, all the ideas of where to put the struts or the size of plywood sheets or the 2"x4"s is based proportionally and scaled to make it easy to calculate in Imperial units.
Of course, everything has an equivalent in metric, but it isn't as easy to use unless you standardize everything, including the sizes of the lumber cut at the sawmill, into metric and change the measurements. And that was just too expensive, because in some cases it would mean ordering all new equipment.
Which means you might talk about setting a seismic charge at a depth of 50 meters, but the replacements for the drill parts are in inches.
Also, in parts of western Canada, the rural roads are laid out on a 1 by 2 mile grid. Very convenient, until the speed limits change over to the metric system, because people will say things like it's so many miles away (counting by the road grid) but they can only get there at so many kilometers per hour.
1. Find a black marker pen.
2. Write "DONE" or "REVIEW COMPLETE" on boxes in big black letters.
3. Aren't they pretty?
4. Go home early.
So, in other words, to LB, it's not that you can't get as precise as you can using metric. Of course you can.
It's just that when you have a society built on the Imperial system, it's one that thinks in 3rds, 4ths, 8ths, and 16ths all the way down. You can run the conversion, but then you don't have a neat system where everything is divisible in neat numbers. ("Put two nails every sixteen inches") but one that you can't grasp intuitively without reworking the entire system from the ground up. ("Put two nails every 40.64cm.")
Oh, certainly -- converting the whole system is hard. But arguing that one system is superior because its units are a more convenient size strikes me as silly.
You know, I've heard the same from a guy I know who used to be an engineer for Rolls Royce. But I don't get it -- what makes .001" more useful than 2µm? Not exactly the same, but pretty close.
It's convenient to be able to use single units, and .001'' happens to be in the sweet spot. It works very well for fitting a precise part, and is quite attainable on most any material. .0001 of a meter is .00394'', not precise enough. But .00001 of a meter is .00039'', a bit too precise to be a handy standard unit of measure.
It's convenient to be able to use single units
Yeah, this is the bit I don't buy. How hard is it to calibrate your instruments to 25, 50, 75µm and so forth? If I've got my decimals right, that's within 3% or so of the .001" measurement, so still in the sweet spot, and it lets you stick with one international system of measurement throughout. Preserving an entire archaic system of measurement because your desired level of precision can be expressed in one, rather than two, significant figures sounds absurd to me, and leads to accidentally crashing probes on Mars.
You should take early and decisive action on those boxes, or they'll be a millstone of guilt about your neck. I vote either that you go with Felix's elegant solution in 10 or that you dragoon some helpless subordinate into sorting them out.
Yeah, this is the bit I don't buy. How hard is it to calibrate your instruments to 25, 50, 75µm and so forth?
What really made it hit home for me was working metal on a lathe and trying to turn a diameter on a steel part to within a tight tolerance. You're taking measurements with a micrometer, and trying to judge your cuts so that you maintain enough tool pressure to get the right cut and yet hit the right precision. Those little games on manual mills and lathes would be a huge pain in the ass using oddball numbers as your single units.
Also, standard unit for weighing both bullets and the powder charge is grains.
Suck it metric system.
The main flaw of metric, from my perspective, is that there aren't many good ways to subdivide 10 (and 100, etc). The solution is clearly to switch to base 12, so that for each order of magnitude we can subdivide by 2, 3, 4, or 6.
Also, standard unit for weighing both bullets and the powder charge is grains.
Yeah, standardized units are totally grains. Wizard grains.
That's a grains comment, Felix.
Metric is just are arbitrary as Imperial, and not even correct by its own standard, i.e. 1 meter is 1/100,000 of the diameter of the earth or whatever. Just 'cuz Napolean forced on Europe doesn't make it better. I think it is all a plot by the teacher's union to torture fourth graders
No, we should use base 60, like the Sumerians. Those guys knew what they were doing. Divisible by 2, 3, 4 *and* 5.
I'm on LB's side on the metric-imperial debate. There's nothing hard about shooting for 25um on your lathe or your mill, if you have metric dial-gauges and stuff.
And I'd be indecently pleased by metric lumber (ATM).
I wouldn't mind Imperial sentimentalism so much if people used it properly, but how many Americans know how many stone in a hundredweight, or how many chains in a furlong?
But I would walk 08:20 miles
And I would walk 08:20 more
Just to be the man who walked 16:40 miles
To fall down at your door
Hrm. I know how many pounds in a stone, but come to think of it I don't know how many pounds in a hundredweight. If it's 100, then 7 & 1/7, but I'm suspecting that's wrong.
The nice thing about chains and furlongs, though, is that the names themselves tell me I don't need to worry about those units.
Karl XII of Sweden devised an octal number system because that way halving and quartering supplies would be easier. You heard it here first.
You suspect right. That would be logical, which is contrary to some old charter or something which set up Imperial measures. 14 lb. to a stone; 8 stone to a hundredweight (cwt); 20 cwt to a ton. And 20 fluid ounces to a pint!
Gswift is a Luddite. He still uses a handcrank gramaphone because it's closer to nature.
JM, isn't LB a hapless subordinate? Does she have her own hapless subordinates too?
Felix has it right.
There's nothing intrinsically better or worse about Imperial or metric measurements, but the opportunity costs of switching when one is already entrenched means that it *is* difficult to set your lathe, or stop thinking in 8ths.
Metric plywood was a disaster when it was introduced where shivbunny worked. Yes, the units are interchangeable. But house frames and architectures styles are still based around the Imperial system, even if the blueprints print the directions in metric. So say the old plywood came in six foot sheets. Well, that's not an easy-to-use-metric number, says the metric sawmill, so let's make it two meters. That doesn't change the fact that the plans are just based around building codes that were converted into metric, so the end result of metric plywood was hours of recutting pieces.
The end end result was the crew telling the sawmill not to pull that bullshit again.
There's nothing hard about shooting for 25um on your lathe or your mill, if you have metric dial-gauges and stuff.
Uh, this is what the same diameter would look like on a blueprint for a part in both systems. I find the first one a tad easier.
.975 +/- .001
.02477 +/- 0.00025
I now suspect LB doesn't actually do a lot of machine work.
I do have hapless subordinates, or at least I share a hapless secretary with three other attorneys, but she doesn't know what's in the boxes so as to be able to sort through them with any efficiency.
Except in the imperial system you're not allowed to say ".001 inch", you have to give it its own name. Say, "975 +/- 1 honkits".
But gswift, if we used metric, everything would be different, systemically, and the analogous part might well simply be .025 +/- whatever. It's true that making one part for something original designed with imperial units in mind in terms of metric units would be awkward, but surely you don't think that that's what metric-using nations do?
33: This is silly -- you're translating a round number in imperial into metric, and complaining that it's not still round. That doesn't mean that a part designed to be .0248m +/- 2µm, in something that had been designed in metric from the ground up, wouldn't work just fine in terms of ease of manufacture and so forth.
34: No shit, Sherlock.
Give them a thousand honkits, and they'll take 63,360,000.
Cards on the table. How many of you commies actually want the US to switch to metric?
If it's good enough for Mother Russia, it's good enough for me.
gswift, I know what it would look like; I've designed those parts. I'm unperturbed.
I don't stay up nights longing for it, and I'd probably find the switchover annoying, but we should.
I've also fabricated them--I'm not a complete jackass ("Why, I don't see why it's harder for you to work to a different spec.").
(Back in 2000, Buck was convinced that Gore could put himself over the top and clinch the election by announcing that he planned to be the Metric President. I come by my political delusions honestly.)
Metric President
He was kidding, right?
And 20 fluid ounces to a pint!
Well of course, or else it wouldn't be 4 gills! It's like you want impossible measures and anarchy (not to mention smaller drinks).
Oh, and metric would be pretty damn awesome. I've already got a fairly intuitive feel for most of the day-to-day measurements in metric apart from the kilometer, so the ease of one system would be fantastic.
Realistically, though, it'll never happen, barring a successful armed invasion by Swedish technocrats.
Metric President
Obama should run as the Volapük President. Its time has come.
43: why? I mean that seriously. What are we losing by using inches and feet?
What are we losing by using inches and feet?
The time it takes to divide everything by 2.54 unless it's made in the USA.
Well, NASA lost a couple of probes by screwing up Imperial/Metric conversions, and I'm sure if it happens to NASA it happens elsewhere. Learning science is unnecessarily made intimidating by the fact that it happens in weirdo units, not like the ones we use getting around. And it adds another barrier, psychological if not practical, between us and the rest of the world.
52: I know just who could write the campaign song!
We Brits use a bastardised semi-Metric system in my experience.
When I was doing engineering (at high school) we used S.I. units all the way down. And I think in terms of metric for sizes of all things that aren't i) people or ii) distances by road. These latter two I always think of in terms of imperial because everyone still talks about someone being 14 stone, or 5ft 6 or driving 200 miles.
Once you use S.I. units I can't imagine how any crazy bastard would want to use anything else. The Mars probe crash thing was just so utterly dumb I don't think any engineer in the world (outside of the US) could believe it.
Anyone here drop out of sciences because they couldn't figure out how to use the metric system?
I just don't know how to weight the costs of replacing everything vs. getting rid of a psychological barrier; as even gswift would acknowledge, it's not that .125 inches is somehow pythagoreacally superior to its equivalent, but that everything: countertops, cars, engines, houses, streetlights, is based on the one system.
Gah. The metric system has no soul.
Use it for chemistry and physics and such, but my .45 uses a 230 grain bullet and that's the way I likes it.
I have to think in metric at lab and in imperial everywhere else and even though I've now been doing so for years, I still find it to be a pain. Especially celsius vs. farenheit, oy.
"Anyone here drop out of sciences because they couldn't figure out how to use the metric system?"
I hereby state -- diplomacy aside -- that anyone who dropped out of science for that reason is a stupid bastard. I mean, really, metric units are a vastly easier than imperial for any serious calculation.
And I think in terms of metric for sizes of all things that aren't i) people or ii) distances by road
ttaM, if you can walk into a pub and ask for three litres of bitter without getting slung out, the gaffers in Oxford have got a lot more laid back than they used to be.
And I have unpacked all of my boxes. Now I just need someone to come take away all of the binders of stuff from cases that are no longer active and that I should have gotten out of my office months ago.
driving 200 miles.
Do people actually think of miles or kilometers when driving? IMX in L.A. they mean absolutely nothing, I think in terms of minutes or hours and then plan for double. The official motto of the SoCalAA is "Full tank, empty bladder"
I'm a traditionalist in most respects, but honestly, every time I have to measure something in inches -- Jesus 15/32ing Christ -- I have to kill something with my hands.
With mental weapons everlasting
Let us create new works of peace!
Our Volapük shall be the bond of loving,
Embracing henceforth all the lands and seas,
So that the splendid earth, basked in the sun-shine,
Will then become an Eden of true friends,
Where one tongue will be understood by all mankind,
And Peaceful sound of joy will sound through all the lands!
61, 62: Yeah, the problem isn't being unable to do the math in metric, it's in not having any intuitive sense of the measurements. Is something that's 70°C going to burn your hand if you touch it?
(For the "Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question" file: Some class at MIT -- the professor mentions that the surface temperature of some type of star is 6000°. Class nitwit: "Is that Celsius or Kelvin?")
Cala's already named the key factor: conversion. Not just of a particular part, but of the whole intricate network of spareparts, rules-of-thumb, tools that permeate the system.
We're surrounded by legacy things like that, things that persist because of standardization at some point in the past, which have never been worth systematically uprooting. Famous examples are the QWERTY keyboard and the height of loading docks, which when you think about it, governs the size of innumerable other things.
Speaking of Mother Russia, in WWII and to some extent still, the Russian calibers, that is the diameters of their gun barrels, were respectively 7.62mm for rifles, pistols and machine guns, and ten times that, 76.2mm for their artillery, including their excellent field guns and tank guns. And what is 7.62mm? We call it 30 caliber, because it's .300 inches.
Since there is talk of munitions and officialese in this thread, it is here that I will take my stand against the "Silkworm missile." I mean, gah! I hereby encourage everyone to refer to Iran's missile threat as Shahabs or Shahins or other names as appropriate.
58: I really have to emphasize this post, because I don't think most other people could appreciate just how drastic the mental divide is between British measurements of people, drinks and driving distances versus everything else.
When I first went over there and I was talking to some of my classmates about weight, I mentioned that I was 155 pounds and drew blank stares. I thought for a second, then came out with 70 kilograms. At that point, someone said "Err... what's that in stone?". And these were from the medical students who'd done their entire science GCSE and A levels in metric!
The fact that people aren't familiar with metric in an intuitive sense isn't really important when it comes to doing science. Hence the less than diplomatic tone of 62.
The difficulty of intuiting one set of measurements when one is used to another is a perfectly valid emotional reason to feel comfortable with one or the other.* As I said, I personal think in a mixture of imperial and metric and that's a pretty common (and fucked-up) legacy of that switch in the UK.
Nevertheless, it has sod all to do with which system is the best system for doing science. When, by any sane standard, S.I. units win hands down.
* but not to give up the practice of science all together ...
62: sure, that was my point. "We need metric to do science" isn't a reason to convert all of society unless you think that learning the metric system in a science classroom rather than as part of everyday life somehow limits our ability to do science. I don't think anyone's arguing that it isn't useful to do science in metric units.
Americans do science in metric, too.
I was going to commisserate with LB over the unpacked boxes, but I see that she's unpacked them in the time it's taken me to read this thread. So instead I'll curse at her and then whine about the boxes I'm looking at *right now* that haven't been unpacked since I moved.
And that's saying nothing about all the shit I left behind in my office because I just didn't want to deal with it then.
Yeah, I had a bunch of boxes in my office needing to be sorted for about three years. I solved the problem by changing jobs.
I was at a talk once (about spacecraft) where the speaker said "The metric system is perfectly adequate for undergraduates and Europeans, but if you actually want to build something, you'll end up using inches." Over the top and not entirely true, but has a kernel of truth. For example, it'd be really nice if I could get partially threaded flange-head bolts that were pre-drilled for safety wire in metric. But I can't. Plenty available in inches, though.
Also, for all that Fahrenheit is screwy and doesn't start at zero, it is more useful for expressing the types of temperatures you're likely to see (damn cold is 0, damn hot is 100).
re: 74
Ah, OK. I misread you.
Although the whole Mars probe debacle suggests that at least some Americans are attempting to do serious engineering and science using imperial units. Which is, as has been repeatedly stated, crazy.
re: 77
You know, in countries that use the metric system, you can get those things in metric sizes. And your fahreinheit rational can be run the other way.
Celsius: 0 is freezing point of water, 100 is the boiling point. How much more logical can you get?
Arlo Guthrie has a routine where he's sings a lyric "inch by inch, mile by mile" to a young Canadian, and the Canadian asks what language the song is in.
Like Gswift, Guthrie is a Luddite.
I thought the lyric was "Inch by inch, row by row," about gardening. Is there another similar song, or is Arlo just planting one hell of a big garden this year?
I was telescoping two lines, I think. But I did cleverly out another Luddite stoner.
hine about the boxes I'm looking at *right now* that haven't been unpacked since I moved.
Nice use of the passive voice.
DaveL, that's the problem with this whole academic/writer thing: in the end, it all belongs to me. Dammit.
Do people actually think of miles or kilometers when driving? IMX in L.A. they mean absolutely nothing, I think in terms of minutes or hours and then plan for double.
My mom is originally from California, and has said that, after moving east, she found describing distance in terms of time is a west coast thing, as opposed to the east coast habit of describing things in terms of distance. I tend to think of everything in miles.
83: OTOH, that also means that there's no one but you to be pissed if the boxes never get sorted. And think how much fun it will be to rediscover your younger self when you look into them in about ten years.
18: Our telephones are even already set up for base 12. * is 10 (it conveniently has an X in it), while # is 11 (it's made of two 11's).
84: News flash for Californians: "the West Coast" is not a synonym for "California". There are these two other states, you see, where distance is frequently expressed in terms of distance and "the" is not used in reference to freeways ("I-5", not "the 5"). Or it least that was true while I was growing up. The Californication of Washington may be nearing completion by now, with Oregon to follow.
It's not uncommon, where I grew up, to answer a question about distance ("How far away is the Golden Triangle from where you live?") in terms of time ("About an hour during rush hour, 15 minutes the rest of the time.")
MattF and his mom shall be soundly spanked!
87: "the 5" is a Socal thing. California isn't just one big homogeonous LA, racist.
85: I've found that descriptions of distance in terms of time is pretty common on the east coast. At least in the small city where I grew up.
85: Good point!
87: I described things in terms of time when I was in Washington.
88: That's funny, I would've chimed in on the "East Coast uses distance" thing, but you're right about Pittsburgh, IME. But I live in the city itself, where distance is irrelevant relative to time. Whereas, when I lived in suburban Miami and NJ, distance was much more commonly used.
I think it all comes down to how much of your driving happens at 60 MPH, where the mile-a-minute thing makes conversion effortless, even for the innumerate. But in cities, or in heavily congested SoCal, mileage offers little or no indication of travel time (indeed, I'm a total map geek, but I still don't know how many miles my house is from Downtown, either by crow-fly or car. Actually, I do know that I'm 18 min./4.8 mi. from PNC Park by bike. But biking is much less traffic-affected).
I'm all for metric. FSM knows that no one in the US can multiply or divide by anything other than 2 or 10 anymore. [And even that's indicative of book larnin' - I once had a secretary who revealed that she had no idea that 1/2 and 50% were the same thing. But only after she'd spent several hours ostensibly calculating percentages of accrued interest for an estate tax return.]
FTM. for baking, measuring by weight is far more accurate than using cups, dry or liquid. And grams/mils are easier to convert up or down than ounces. It does prevent one from saying "add a gill of Jack" in a whiskey cake recipe, but that's probably a Good Thing.
78a: For all that it's crazy to try to make a Mars probe in imperial units, something like 80% of all successful Mars probes were in fact designed and built in imperial units.
78b: Is there a metric version of Aircraft Spruce & Specialty? I would be overjoyed to hear of such a thing.
wasn't one of the space disasters a failure to convert to or from metric?
On the other hand, I *hate* it when people around here describe *walking* in terms of time, because they're always wrong, since they so seldom actually walk.
92: Yes. When I lived in the Southeast, miles generally equaled/averaged minutes unless near a football venue. Out here it all depends on random acts of violence.
97: Me! They're great if you bake.
91, 92: Yeah, I suspect that the real distinction is closer to urban vs. rural than east vs. west or California vs. everyone else. But California vs. everyone else is more fun.
And on the metric/Imperial thing in general, I think people overestimate how hard the transition is. Think about food - so much packaging is now metric, but since food years ago stopped being uniformly 16 oz. and other round Imperial amounts, it's unimportant if it's 13 oz. or 400g. Plus, there are so many other ways in which Americans have embraced metric.
But Cala is right about the construction industry - there would be a HUGE transition cost. Sometimes manufacturers will fudge, since 1.2m is pretty close to 4 feet, which is a critical module - but the product is usually actually 4', or else you'll have to trim 1/2" along every piece of drywall in a whole building.
As for the handiness of various measurements, it's often overstated, but it's simply true that "about an inch" is more useful than "about a cm" or "about a dm" - how often do Americans refer to something as being about a quarter inch, or about 4 inches? I've heard that (some) Euros use "a quarter" (or some slangy equivalent) to mean .25 dm; in other words, an inch. Is this a myth?
Finally, I will back gswift's contention ages ago - if you're a carpenter telling your assistant to trim a board, it's much more informative to use eighths, sixteenths, etc. than to quote a certain number of mm. Why? You rarely need the precision of an mm, but you're forced to quote a number. Maybe I'll ask my Austrian uncle, who was a carpenter (actually cabinetmaker, which might well use 1 mm). But picture an Imperial ruler, with each line a different length for 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32. Now picture a metric one, with distinct lines at 100 mm (4"), 10 mm (~1/4"), 5 mm (a heavy 1/8") and then 4 identical lines.
The bottom line is that Imperial is responsive to how our eyes and minds work (recall from your HS science that the precision number is 1/2 the smallest measurement marking you have, because, no matter how close the markings, your eye can always pick out the midpoint). I'm not an Imperial absolutist - far from it - but I see a lot of daily benefit to the inch-foot system. I don't think it should be surprising that a measuring system originating in the human body should be a useful method of delineating the human body (and structures designed for its habitation).
I do bake! I am not terribly precise: my oven temperature dial has three magic-markered guesstimates. But I haven't seen many recipes with weight measurements.
It's the Rose Levy Berenbaum cookbooks again -- they're all by weight. And anything from a European source is by weight.
95: sort of. There was a failure to report thrust in the correct units (reported in Newtons, pounds were expected) in one part of the software. This caused the probe to drift slightly off course over time. The controllers noticed that all their readings were off course by a small amount, but were too busy to investigate fully, so figured everything was probably OK.
There are those who argue that this is not strictly due to units conversion, and that the probe had programmatic issues that made it much more vulnerable than normal to things going wrong. Indeed, the sister probe was lost a week or two later due to a minor problem that uncovered but not noticed during testing.
I really think that for someone who started out metric, none of the imperial arguments would make any sense. I agree that of you're famliar with system A, you won't want to switch to system B, and that some of the reasons you give for not switching might even be valid in some small way.
So the space program is now in "shit happens" mode?
Naah. Both of the lost Mars probes (Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander) were created during a period of great optimism regarding how much things should/could cost. So they aren't saying "doing this the old way would cost $500M, but because we know so much more now we can do it for $250M!" any more, and instead reduce the capability or increase the funding allocated to an individual mission.
I agree that if we had to start from scratch, the metric system would make more sense than the Imperial system. But when we have to switch over...
I also own a scale, and adore baking by weight.