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The metric system sucks



 
 
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  #1  
Old February 2nd 10, 11:54 PM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
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Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

I. Introduction

LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by
Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), and not (as
he pointed out) any policies that happen to fall on the left-wing side
(which I support myself when it comes to economic matters). ] Leftists
attempt to insinuate themselves in every field in which they can,
contaminating it with their poison. It is imperative, then, that they
be stopped wherever this can be done without injury.

One such place is the imposition of the metric system. All conversion
to the metric system today, and not only that compelled by government,
can safely be put under this head, as anyone that had good reasons to
convert unrelated to ideology would have done so already. Besides this
political argument, there are many inherent reasons to consider the
metric system distasteful, especially when given universal
application.

It should be noted that arguments over current systems of measure have
nothing to do with pseudohistorical speculation about ancient systems
of measure. Any attempt by pro-metric advocates to link opposition to
metrication with that ought to be dismissed, just as an attempt by pro-
fluoridation sources to link opposition to it with claims of a
communist conspiracy.

The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI
[ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the
French nature of the idea ], for thee great crusade to impose metric
did not truly gain momentum until the codification of the SI, and it
has decreed within itself that it should replace all other metric
units. Not only, then, the replacement of traditional [ i.e. English
or Imperial ] units with those of the metric system, but often the
replacement of older metric units, can be considered a target.

II. Pro-metric bias

As with other leftist causes, metrication (an ill-formed word; anyone
with a decent education would write 'metrification' - I use it only
because it is now standard) relies on the subversion of language. By
language is meant not only the way we speak but also the way we think,
as foretold by Orwell (This was one of the areas where Orwell really
was far-sighted. It's no accident that his Oceania had adopted the
metric system!), for our higher thinking is done in accordance with
language. They manipulate our minds to believe silly things in favor
of metric, when an accurate look would show otherwise. Let's take some
examples.

The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because
it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages,
though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring
systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English? Again,
learning a new system of measure is much easier than learning a new
language; for example, all halfway-educated Americans know metric, but
comparatively few are fluent in any foreign language. It is surely not
unreasonable to ask that people learn our system of measures when
needed for communication; it is certainly much less an imposition than
the need to learn English. And there is no more reason that we should
necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures,
when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than
they would have you believe.

The next is the concept that metric is somehow more scientific, or
that scientific calculations can only properly be done in it. Of
course, the people this message is targeted at are not scientists;
they get an impression that the traditional units are always and only
a waste of time, and that one must convert to metric before doing any
serious calculation with them. No system (other than natural units)
can be said to be more scientific than any other, and I shall have
more to say about this below in sections IIX and IX.

News stories related to mishaps surrounding unit conversion invariably
get attributed by the media and influential sources to use of the
traditional units, which is absurd. It could as easily be said that
they are due to the metric system, for if English units were used
consistently, they would be avoided. For a real example, just look at
the Mars Climate Orbiter crash: if NASA has never moved toward metric
conversion (which they had no need to do, and only started because of
an amendment snuck into a 1988 Act of Congress), it could not have
happened.

Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to
metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself
within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But
the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units
- is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they
would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly
interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting
metric for its own sake.

Further examples can be drawn from my Section V and exposure of one
campaigner's fallacy. Finally, I should point out the classic book
'The Metric Fallacy' ( http://books.google.com/books?id=2AY...gbs_navlinks_s
), possibly the most comprehensive investigation of how measures are
really used. Everything in it remains true in principle today, and it
shows that the pro-metric people were spewing the same nonsense then
as now.

III. Metric prefixes

The system of prefixes is the unique character of the metric system,
abstracted from the particular units used, and is what distinguishes
it from all pre-metric proposals of a decimal system. This is often
touted as an advantage of metric, but I think it is more usually a bad
thing. How can that be?

Above I compared the difficulty of learning measures with that of
learning a language, and that is appropriate here also; for learning
the differing words for the units in the traditional system - as inch,
foot, mile or ounce, pound, ton - as not much more difficult than
learning a similar number of new words in a language, or not very hard
at all. In addition, the traditional names are shorter and can't be
confused.

More serious is the competition between prefixes and scientific
notation. There is no question about the convenience of the
exponential notation where large ranges of numbers must be used, or
where values far out of ordinary experience occur in science. And
before SI, physicists often used only scientific notation with the
base units (i.e. CGS). However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats
and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI
prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God
knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people
to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is
always unambiguous.

IV. The SI 'base units'

And now, for the most dramatic claim of them all: the SI derives every
unit we need from _just seven base units_! Strange, and I thought the
CGS system needed only three: why is seven any better? In fact only
three are sufficient (four if you use the SI electrical units, see
Section IIX), and the others redundant.

The Kelvin is merely a unit of energy given by Boltzmann's 'constant',
not a new base unit. The fact that temperature really is just energy
on a microscopic scale is the most important concept in
thermodynamics, yet our supposed perfect system of measures explicitly
denies it! You will see, if you work out the formulae (actually you
shouldn't have to if you're reasonably smart and have learned
thermodynamics) that they all can be written with 'T' in place of
'kT', and work perfectly.

The mole is not a unit at all, but a NUMBER - Avogadro's number. It's
related to the 'unit' 1 by that number, a conversion factor. Calling
it a separate base unit is as silly as saying the mile and inch are
both base units of the English system! (Come to think of it, some
metricists might, solely because their ratio isn't a power of 10 (as
if there were anything inherently special about 10!).) The 'unit' 1,
of course is one of mathematics, not physics, though there was a
serious proposal to officially designated 1 an SI unit named the 'uno'
- fortunately, the scientists had more sense than the French
bureaucrats and shot that down.

The candela is not a unit either. It's a response curve for the human
eye, which by the way is known to be inaccurate. Calling that a
physical unit is preposterous. If that's a base unit, then so is 'how
bad something smells' and 'how musical a sound is'. The response curve
of the eye is not not useful, of course, it's just not part of
physics.

V. Time and angle

It is no doubt familiar that our customary units of time, which are
nearly universal, involve factors of 60 and 24, and the units of
angle, of which the degree at least is still universal, factors of 60
and 90/360. These are highly divisible numbers in the mathematical
sense, and no doubt highly divisible numbers are preferable to those
that are not, ex. 113 or 38, if all other things are equal. But
according to the standards that the metric system acknowledges, all
bases are not equal: the decimal system is preferred, and they do have
a point, clearly.

Indeed, the argument for decimalisation of time is certainly stronger
than that for decimalisation of other common measures. We do freely
mix hours and minutes, or minutes and seconds. Conversion between the
units is very common, so much so that the most common values are
embedded in the minds of everyone, such as 48 hours = 2 days. And yet,
arguments about the inconvenience of conversion and mixing units are
the most used for the superiority of the metric system, in spite of
the fact that in most applications of length, weight, volume, etc. we
have eliminated the necessity for conversion, while in applications of
time they have not - and yet never mention it. This can't be honest.

In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees
are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. Still,
one might question their use for the same reasons as for time; the
divisibility by 3 of a right angle, while sometimes convenient, is
really no stronger an argument for angle than for time or length, and
a '30-60-90 triangle' would be better called a 'one-third [of a right
angle] triangle' anyway. Decimal degrees are now widely used for the
same reasons as other decimal measures; this would be fine if they
were used exclusively, but astronomers continue to use decimal
arcseconds as well, thus having two units of angle differing by 3600.
I shouldn't even mention measuring right ascension in units of time, a
completely unjustifiable practice which has no sense other than to
make things more complicated: if the connection with time really were
that important, we would measure terrestrial longitude that way also.

Finally, the use of base-60 units smaller than the second, in both
time and angle, disappeared after the introduction of decimals. If
base 60 is a good idea, why should this be? In truth, the traditional
units of time and angle deserve abolition a lot more than those of
length and weight which have the advantages of being at a natural
scale, and not creating substantially more calculational complexity in
actual use. This is another irrationality of the metric idea.

VI. A typical pro-metrication argument

I will now take, as an example, one pro-metric site I have come
across: http://www.metricationmatters.com/ and critique it. It is
neither the best nor the worst pro-metric argument I have seen, and I
think it may be taken as typical. Anti-metric arguments are not
necessarily better, of course, and I have seen some pretty silly ones
there, too.

In this paper: http://www.metricationmatters.com/do...sOfMeasure.pdf
, he attempts, it seems, to show that the metric system was really
conceived in England, and hence should not be considered particularly
French. It should be remembered that even if this were true, it would
be no argument in its favor. But I do not see it. Wilkins did propose
something like a decimal system, but only as a small sidelight in his
paper. Thus it should be seen in context, but he takes it out of
context: if you consider that most of that work is presumably
impractical (and would be agreed so by everyone), why is wanting to
rationalise measures deserving of being singled out as insightful?
Obviously, only because of what happened in the future; but no one can
see the future. Anyway, the main difference between Wilkins's work
(and others) and the metric system is that he had not used prefixes,
which are the chief important change that metric actually did make.

In this one: http://www.metricationmatters.com/do...sOfMeasure.pdf
, he makes many typical distortions, but due to its length I only
focus on the very beginning. He again credits Wilkins with inventing
the metric system, which is truly dishonest. Metric is thoroughly
French, despite any claims to the contrary; indeed, we are even forced
to use the French abbreviation SI, and he uses the French spelling
'metre'. The really laughable thing, though, comes on page 2, in the
entry about the beginning of the universe. He gives the diameter of
the observable universe as '285 yottametres', and says that before
'the metric system', scientists had difficulty referring to those
numbers! Of course, no one in his right mind would say '285
yottameters' (leaving aside the question of whether that distance is
meaningful at all), but 2.85e23 km (scientific notation) or 30 billion
ly or 9.2 Gpc. I can't believe he is ignorant of this, but if he's
not, he's lying.

Now that I've started reviewing the papers there, let me quickly go
through some others. This paper http://www.metricationmatters.com/do...sOfMeasure.pdf
is almost obscene in its claims that metrication is one of the most
pressing issues that we face. Does he truly think the writers of those
questions were ignorant of it? The fact is that units of measurement
simply have no bearing on most issues, which do not care what units we
use. The cost of conversion is much lower than he asserts, especially
since it is largely automatic now. Worst, he claims that 'many, many'
hospital errors are due to incorrect conversion, while admitting he
doesn't know (and using a dishonest reference). There is, however,
another type of error that happens only with metric: the confusion of
one prefix for another. I KNOW that that happens with some regularity,
from seeing several stories about fatalities from that cause. This one
http://www.metricationmatters.com/do...etrication.pdf
makes the point that we extensively use decimalisation with English
units. Yes, because it has been found convenient. What's wrong with
that? Nothing, except for people that think going metric is a goal in
itself, some kind of crusade. This one
http://www.metricationmatters.com/do...urthOfJuly.pdf
is actually a pretty good idea - to use year-month-day whenever we
write dates in all figures. I don't do so myself, but it does make
sense and there is hardly any tradition behind the old ways anyway as
dates haven't been written in all figures for very long. Many of his
other articles (too many to enumerate) are devoted to showing how hard
the English units are to use. As typical, these don't correspond to
how people actually use the units, for they rarely mix or convert
units and do not actively use all the archaic units he lists. I
suppose I have now spent enough time on him, and have shown (and you
can check it yourself) that his arguments are considerably fallacious
and dishonest.

VII. Practical electrical units

The term 'practical' units in used in the sense it was in the 19c. -
that is, the units used in common uses of electricity, not just in the
laboratory or in theoretical discussions. These units are the volt,
ampere, farad, watt, etc., and they are now part of the SI. Metric
advocates say that these imply that we 'use metric' in all electrical
work and even that it is inconsistent for anti-metric advocates to use
any electrical devices because of their being 'in metric'. To the
latter point I may first say that the English system, unlike the
metric, does not pretend to be universal and meant to replace all
other units in every field; nor do we say that the utility of any
product has any relation to the units used to make it (Pro-metric
people, on the other hand, have implied such!).

The real history of electrical units shows that the situation is more
complicated than that. The practical electrical units were decided
long before there was an SI system, and the fact that the joule and
watt (coincidentally) happened to fit into the MKS mechanical system
was hardly noticed at the time, as almost all scientists then used
CGS. But once the electrical units were established, they would be
difficult to change and there was no really good reason for doing so.
Also, the fact that it is sometimes convenient to use the same unit of
power (Watts) for all uses, is no pro-metric argument given that until
recently metric users used calories for their unit of heat, and of
course it is the same difficulty to convert calories to joules as BTUs
(or foot-pounds, etc.) to joules; in addition, we often measure time
in units greater than a second and therefore factors of 60, 3600, etc.
come into play no matter what.

And of course, the electrical units actually confirm the anti-metric
argument! The fact that units, once established in a particular field,
can be suffered to endure in spite of being theoretically less than
perfect (as they were and still are) is precisely the argument that
has repeatedly been made against metrication, but metric advocates
always reject it then, exposing their typically leftist double-
standard.

IIX. Electromagnetic units

Now we discuss electrical units in a more theoretical context, such as
is used in physics. It is well known among almost everyone in physics
that SI units are unjustifiable and bad for any sort of theoretical
calculation. Not only does it introduce the unnecessary 'constants'
eps0 and mu0, which are even less justified than Boltzmann's
'constant' (which at least could be justified as a conversion between
the macroscopic and microscopic views of temperature), but it
introduces an unnatural and unnecessary fourth base unit to physics.
It could be justified (I say) if that new base unit were the charge on
the electron or something equally natural, but it is not; it is
completely arbitrary. For parsimony the base electrical unit, if not
natural, should be derived from mechanics, as scientists had always
done in CGS units.

The coherent system of CGS units, usually called Gaussian, has
developed in common usage, and the sole justification for it is its
close link with the three base mechanical units, not what those units
actually are, so again it does not show any superiority of metric
units over English or other by that fact. Actually, the modified
Gaussian system, using the magnetic unit of current, is really
superior for theory, given that Maxwell's equations take on their most
symmetrical form in it; also, the unit of inductance becomes cm (which
has always been used for calculation) rather than an impractically
large unit, and that of resistance becomes dimensionless.

The other obvious fact (shown by that unit of resistance which is, in
SI terms, Z/4pi) is that SI units clearly put an improper factor of
4pi into the equations. They hide the perfect symmetry between the
gravitational and electric force laws by forcing us to write 1/(4pi
eps0) in the latter. By so doing, they hide the factor of 4pi where it
should appear, and replace 2pi in certain magnetic equations with an
inexplicable 1/2; the 4pi and 2pi are derived correctly by the
integration over resp. a sphere or a circle.

IX. Theoretical physics

That last argument ought to be made more general. For theoretical
physics is the algebra of physics; just as algebra generalises
arithmetic, and in the calculation of algebraic formulae we avoid
substituting particular numbers, and that that makes the utility of
algebra; so it is with theoretical physics where results are derived
by the manipulation of formulae without using any actual numbers, and
again that is what makes it most useful. So with a system of units for
use in any theory it is important that it be conceptually simple, and
lacking arbitrary difficulties, and not that its quantities be of an
ordinary scale, though that is beneficial where possible. Hence the
popularity of various sorts of natural units in theoretical
calculation, where otherwise undesirable conversion factors would be
thrown in.

But where no dimensionless quantities can be obtained, formulae can
always be written without any conversion factor at all, as in
classical mechanics where all quantities can be reduced to mass,
length, and time so that all equations shall be satisfied equally by
any set of fundamental units. If anyone says then, that modern physics
is based on metric units, as many partisans would, they are in error;
the equations of mechanics may be used with the system based on the
meter, kilogram, and second, or the slug, foot, and second, or on
_atomic units_; and I have used all three in my own calculations.

The metric zealots, though, wish to impose SI units on everything,
which has the results that many theoretical formulae have pointless
complications that obscure the subject; these include not only the
electromagnetic as discussed above, but the thermodynamic, for
example. Every time I see thermodynamic relations written with 'kT' in
place of the clear 'T' I feel
sick, but it is necessitated by the SI unit of temperature, which is
wrongly called fundamental. Likewise when considering matter at atomic
or subatomic scales, it is clear that one should use a system of units
that at least takes the elementary charge to be unity, while insisting
on the SI is silly, but increasingly many do.

And to make the most general, we may say in truth that different units
are applicable to different purposes, that a diversity of units is not
necessarily a bad thing, so long as a profusion of different values
for the same unit (which has, with just a few exceptions, not existed
in the English-speaking world for many centuries) be avoided.

X. Conclusion

The English units of measure are part of the English language, and
indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most
particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common
heritage, and where we got our traditional units from.

Perhaps if I had total power, I would move to abolishing the metric
system everywhere, and establishing a non-metric basis for all
science, simply to drive the nail in the coffin of the absurd dream of
a universal, 'rational' system. But in the real world, it is not
necessary to do so everywhere, in particular, the areas where metric
was fully established by 1960 (which includes some, but not all, of
the sciences) and areas where it is used for standardisation only and
not to measure anything fungible.

But there is no need to insist upon it; it only is highly desirable to
use it where it has traditionally been, and where we naturally think
in the traditional units. And it needs to be observed that the precise
values of the English units are not critical, but only won by default
out of the thousands of different standards that once existed in
Europe.

Andrew Usher
  #2  
Old February 3rd 10, 12:17 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Mark Borgerson
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Posts: 38
Default The metric system sucks

In article 242d41ed-7890-4154-8f0d-146ce2675881
@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com, says...
I. Introduction

LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I
mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by
Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), and not (as
he pointed out) any policies that happen to fall on the left-wing side
(which I support myself when it comes to economic matters). ] Leftists
attempt to insinuate themselves in every field in which they can,
contaminating it with their poison. It is imperative, then, that they
be stopped wherever this can be done without injury.

SNIP Lengthy treatise on metric and English units.

The English units of measure are part of the English language, and
indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most
particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common
heritage, and where we got our traditional units from.

Perhaps if I had total power, I would move to abolishing the metric
system everywhere, and establishing a non-metric basis for all
science, simply to drive the nail in the coffin of the absurd dream of
a universal, 'rational' system. But in the real world, it is not
necessary to do so everywhere, in particular, the areas where metric
was fully established by 1960 (which includes some, but not all, of
the sciences) and areas where it is used for standardisation only and
not to measure anything fungible.

But there is no need to insist upon it; it only is highly desirable to
use it where it has traditionally been, and where we naturally think
in the traditional units. And it needs to be observed that the precise
values of the English units are not critical, but only won by default
out of the thousands of different standards that once existed in
Europe.

If the metric system is a leftist plot, it seems strange to me that
amongst the first non-scientific organizations in the US to adopt
and teach the metric system was the US military. As far back as
the war in Vietnam, soldiers commonly referred to distance in 'klicks'.

Hmmm---if the Chinese invade the US, will they have to teach their
soldiers miles and yards? ;-)

IIRC, the road signs in Iraq and Afghanistan also show distances
in km---but that may not be much of an issue if the place names
are in Arabic script! ;-)


Mark Borgerson

  #3  
Old February 3rd 10, 12:18 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Yousuf Khan[_2_]
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Posts: 1,692
Default The metric system sucks

Andrew Usher wrote:
I. Introduction


big snip

Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?

Yousuf Khan
  #4  
Old February 3rd 10, 12:58 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Ken S. Tucker
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 740
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 2:54 pm, Andrew Usher wrote:
I. Introduction


Agreed.
It's the frogs, 1 Napolean penis weighs 1 gram, and has a length
of 1 centimeter and climax's in 1 second, sounds scientific.
Base 12 is vital in architecture, I need 16" centres on a 4'x8'
ply, bingo, 16", that has no solution in a MeTric base 10 system.
Ken
.....
  #5  
Old February 3rd 10, 01:31 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 5:18*pm, Yousuf Khan wrote:

* * * * big snip

Wow, you didn't just write over 400 lines worth of anti-metric system
rhetoric, did you? Only nutcases would do that. Get some help, will you?


You can't be serious. Every one of those lines is quite rational.

Andrew Usher
  #6  
Old February 3rd 10, 01:47 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Heidi Graw
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13
Default The metric system sucks



"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
...
On Feb 2, 2:54 pm, Andrew Usher wrote:
I. Introduction


Agreed.
It's the frogs, 1 Napolean penis weighs 1 gram, and has a length
of 1 centimeter and climax's in 1 second, sounds scientific.
Base 12 is vital in architecture, I need 16" centres on a 4'x8'
ply, bingo, 16", that has no solution in a MeTric base 10 system.
Ken
....



....and mechanics in Canada use two sets of tools, one for metric
and one for non-metric. Car parts are now made all over the world
and are combined into one vehicle. This means certain parts require
metric tools and others not. It's a massively confusing thing to work
on a globally manufactured vehicle. Btw, my own husband prefers
the metric system.

Heidi

  #7  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:06 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Uncle Al
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 697
Default The metric system sucks

Andrew Usher wrote:

I. Introduction

[snip crap]

One such place is the imposition of the metric system.

[snip 400 lines of crap]

HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.

10^15 milliliters and 10^15 grams in a km^3 of 4 C water.

idiot

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm
  #8  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:14 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Frogwatch
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Posts: 147
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 7:47*pm, "Heidi Graw" wrote:
"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message
....
On Feb 2, 2:54 pm, Andrew Usher wrote:
I. Introduction


Agreed.
It's the frogs, 1 Napolean penis weighs 1 gram, and has a length
of 1 centimeter and climax's in 1 second, sounds scientific.
Base 12 is vital in architecture, I need 16" centres on a 4'x8'
ply, bingo, 16", that has no solution in a MeTric base 10 system.
Ken
....


...and mechanics in Canada use two sets of tools, one for metric
and one for non-metric. *Car parts are now made all over the world
and are combined into one vehicle. *This means certain parts require
metric tools and others not. *It's a massively confusing thing to work
on a globally manufactured vehicle. *Btw, my own husband prefers
the metric system.

Heidi


This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
levitate a dust particle on thge moon. Using SI units, I could do all
of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units. The old
english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing so many people
that they never like technical subjects. If we went metric,
engineering would be so much motre obvious that we would have more
American engineering students. The old english system simply promotes
stupidity.
  #9  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:32 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.physics,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 7:14*pm, Frogwatch wrote:

This evening, I did a calculation of the amount of charge necessary to
levitate a dust particle on thge moon. *Using SI units, I could do all
of it in my head because there is then no conversion of pounds of
force to anything else or Volts/foot to some other units.


I rather doubt you did, as your 'problem' is not well-defined.
Nevertheless, if you could do it, it would be because you have
memorised some values - specifically, Newton's and Coulomb's constants
- in SI units. If you had the same in English units it would be
equally easy.

*The old
english units are simply stupid and unnatural confusing so many people
that they never like technical subjects.


I doubt you can provide any evidence of this. If people lack the
intelligence to understand units of measure, they should not be in
technical subjects anyway.

*If we went metric,
engineering would be so much motre obvious that we would have more
American engineering students.


Sure, that's why American engineering has been declining just as
engineering has been going metric. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

*The old english system simply promotes stupidity.


Stupidity is not bothering to think for yourself but instead
regurgitating tired metric propaganda.

Did you even try to read my essay?

Andrew Usher
  #10  
Old February 3rd 10, 02:41 AM posted to soc.men,sci.math,sci.astro,sci.geo.geology
Andrew Usher
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default The metric system sucks

On Feb 2, 7:06 pm, Uncle Al wrote:

HEY STOOOPID - tell us how many fluid ounces and how many weight
ounces there are in a cubic mile of water at 39.20 degrees Fahrenheit.


Such a problem would never arise, which is why it's ridiculously
biased. Also, water is not the only substance in the world, and if
metric sets the density of water to 1 (well, almost!), it can't set
the density of anything else to a simple number.

The problem is not difficult if one has the appropriate conversion
factors, which one would in any line of work where this problem might
come up. It's no harder than it is in the metric system for any
substance other than water, or indeed for water at a more normal
temperature.

Andrew Usher
 




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