|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#21
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 2, 8:19*pm, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
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 ], Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). No I don't, certainly not in pure science. This is only a straw man. And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French invention, to boot. But it is a French invention, indisputably. 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? One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I did mention this in my post. Had NASA never started to convert things like this, the problem could never have arisen. 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. Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S., Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split. Now this is oversimplified. All countries including the US use metric for some purposes. Equally, there is some use of English in countries that are officially metric. But so what of the numbers? The US clearly has a heck of a lot of power to impose its will on the rest of the world. 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. The cost is in conversion, period. If that's so, then there's no reason to prefer metric. Mostly because most people of my generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI; for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse would be true for non-Americans. I suppose so. But there's no reason one can't acquire both, whether you're American or not. And yet, the metric people tell us how easy it is for us to understand Celsius, but pretend that no one else in the world can understand Fahrenheit. Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements: milli centi none kilo Obviously you're not counting electricity, in which many prefixes beyond those are used regularly. Anyway, the point was that the number of independent words is not really any strike against traditional units. Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based and 1000-based values for these units). There wouldn't be any if not for (as usual) the meddling of standards organisations. 1024-based units are to be used for computer data (and there's a sound reason why) and 1000-based units for everything else. 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. How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Not often, I suppose. But how do you specify, say, the mass of the Earth? You've magically missed the argument that most people use when advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and barrels and hogsheads. I know all these conversions in my head. Most people don't, but they will quickly pick up any that they need to use frequently. And how much calculation do people do without a machine anymore? So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day, and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to gasoline? About 20 million vehicle-miles. More precision is unnecessary because of the conditions. That took me about 15 seconds to do mentally. [ Snip hoopla about base units ] Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a historical aberration. No, the fact that the kilogram (base unit) has a prefix is a historical aberration but I don't mention that. The fact that the 'seven base units', adopted in the 1960s, are promoted as illustrating the logical nature of the SI, is not. In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees. Radians are of course preferred for math but in practical engineering they have an obvious problem in not being rationally related to the circle. And grads (not 'gradients', that's something different!) may be used by some surveyors, but the great majority of people only know degrees. Andrew Usher |
#22
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 2, 9:19*pm, Joshua Cranmer wrote:
On 02/02/2010 05:54 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: I. Introduction I know better than to succumb, but oh well. 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!), That is obviously evidence of a homogeneous ethnic environment where you grew up. Eastern European names aren't really that bad to spell. Or pronounce, for that matter. 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. You overestimate the propensity of people to change when there are many clear good reasons to do so. Inertia counts for a lot in politics and general management. Indeed, it probably counts even more so in politics: it's extraordinarily hard to undo something. Just ask the U.S. Congress, European Commission, or the Japanese Diet [1]. 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 ], Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). Which probably means you should give up all synthetic fibers or drugs. And you'll probably need to start learning to sew by hand, for I believe the French were instrumental in the development of sewing machines. And the French also made significant forays into mechanical looms (including, most notably, the Jacquard loom, the first use of programming a century before the Babbage engines and two centuries before the first electronic computers). And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French invention, to boot. French was, and still remains, an important business language. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was more likely to be the international language one learned instead of, say, English. 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? One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I'm sure that the potential damage due to mixing up unit systems is much worse than mixing up languages. This would mostly be due to the fact that you often calculate using units and not with languages. Unfortunately, trying to statically cart around units is a lot harder in practice than you would think. 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. Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S., Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split. 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. The cost is in conversion, period. Mostly because most people of my generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI; for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse would be true for non-Americans. 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. Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements: milli centi none kilo Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based and 1000-based values for these units). 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. How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Indeed, the media seems to think that most people already can't handle numbers larger than a trillion (million billion and billion billion starts becoming popular). You've magically missed the argument that most people use when advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and barrels and hogsheads. So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day, and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to gasoline? [ Snip hoopla about base units ] Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a historical aberration. In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees. 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. You are so insensitive, you know that? What about the Japanese and their koku of rice? Or their ri? The Chinese li? The ancient cubit? You're being so Amerocentric. And what about the Anglo-Saxons' units, before the Romans imposed their unit system onto them? [1] I know, I know, I shouldn't be so biased towards the economically-advantaged nations, but unfortunately my media sources provide me with too little information on third world countries. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth Whenever I need to do any calculations involving physical quantities, I first convert to metric, do the calculation and then convert back to english. This avoids bizarro conversions such as feet in a mile or psi to something else. I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to 1. Using SI, you could then simply insert the correct units at the end knowing it was correct with no conversions. One of the few truly arbitrary things in metric system is temp using Celsius but true SI uses Kelvin whose units of temp happens to be the same size as Celsius degrees. In SI units, I can readily calculate things as varied as time to fall to earth for an object, period of a pendulum, amount of fuel needed to change an orbit, ALL IN MY HEAD. In english units, no way. Let me see, 12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet/mile, a cubic foot of water weighs ...........I dunno. However, a cubic meter of water is obviously 1000 Kg. One does need to remember a few basic constants such as c, q, mass of electron and proton, Avagodros number, etc. However, in english units you would not only have to remember such constants but also conversions between various units. Ummmmmm, how do you go from BTU/sec to hp? How is hp related to watts? Calculating pressure, you say nobody does this, WRONG. I used to be an oilfield engineer, the only way to deal with english units was to memorize bizzaro conversions such as: downhole pressure =.052*mudweight(pounds/gallon)*depth in feet. Somewhere in that .052 number is the constant g (what is g in english units, something like 32 ft/sec/sec) but this formula gives no physical sense of what is happening. In SI, one simply uses the formula Pressure =rho*g*h where rho(density) is in kg/m3 and g is about 10 m/sec2 and h is in meters. This formula in SI would be useful on the moon where g is 1/6 of that on earth whereas I have no immediate idea how to modify the english one (probably divide .052 by 6 I think just to keep units correct). Quite frankly, the cumbersome english units cause so much confusion that we would have far better of understanding of physical concepts if we simply used SI in everything (except temp where we would use Celsius). |
#23
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
"Bart Goddard" wrote in message . 136.81... "Heidi Graw" wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82: He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use. I also prefer metric for those same reasons. Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school over Engineering. B. chuckle ...and lots of folks do just that. A good question to ask is, "How do you get the most using the least amount of energy?" If cosmetology earns one an adequate living, and it requires less energy and effort, then why not? Haven't you noticed that those who earn the most conserve the most energy? Being an energy efficient person can be rather quite profitable. ;-) Heidi |
#24
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 3, 12:04*am, "Heidi Graw" wrote:
"Bart Goddard" wrote in message . 136.81... "Heidi Graw" wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82: He prefers the metric. *It's easier to learn and easier to use. I also prefer metric for those same reasons. Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school over Engineering. B. chuckle ...and lots of folks do just that. *A good question to ask is, *"How do you get the most using the least amount of energy?" *If cosmetology earns one an adequate living, and it requires less energy and effort, then why not? Haven't you noticed that those who earn the most conserve the most energy? *Being an energy efficient person can be rather quite profitable. *;-) Heidi The observation that various fields use variations on units is one of the great "Duh" lines in the original rant. I work in x-ray spectroscopy and routinely use eV for photon energy instead of the usual Joule simply because it is easy to relate this to how the x-rays are produced. Of course, I then convert to wavelength. |
#25
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 2, 10:59*pm, Frogwatch wrote:
Obviously you can't use paragraphs ... Whenever I need to do any calculations involving physical quantities, I first convert to metric, do the calculation and then convert back to english. *This avoids bizarro conversions such as feet in a mile or psi to something else. This practice is ridiculous and one of the things I complained about. It doesn't avoid any conversion; it only shifts them somewhere else (at best). I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to 1. Those are useful - but they are not metric. *Using SI, you could then simply insert the correct units at the end knowing it was correct with no conversions. You must be mistaken. If he truly was using natural units, you do need to insert conversions to get to SI units. If he was using purely mechanical formulae, then of course _any_ system of units is correct (because there are no constants between M,L,T in classical mechanics) - again I mentioned this in my essay. In SI units, I can readily calculate things as varied as time to fall to earth for an object, period of a pendulum, amount of fuel needed to change an orbit, ALL IN MY HEAD. *In english units, no way. Given that the formulae are exactly the same in English units, this makes no sense. Let me see, 12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet/mile, a cubic foot of water weighs ...........I dunno. *However, a cubic meter of water is obviously 1000 Kg. That works only for water, of course. *One does need to remember a few basic constants such as c, q, mass of electron and proton, Avagodros number, etc. However, in english units you would not only have to remember such constants but also conversions between various units. How is that qualitatively different? *Ummmmmm, how do you go from BTU/sec to hp? *How is hp related to watts? If you need to know, you will know. That's the point. If you use Boltzmann's 'constant' (actually a conversion factor) frequently, you will remember the first few figures of it (I remember it as 10,604.5 K/ ev). Calculating pressure, you say nobody does this, WRONG. *I used to be an oilfield engineer, the only way to deal with english units was to memorize bizzaro conversions such as: downhole pressure =.052*mudweight(pounds/gallon)*depth in feet. If I'm not mistaken, that number should be .134 , the number of cubic feet in a gallon . You just convert the density into slugs/cubic foot and then the simple formula works. If that .052 is correct, then there is some other modification being done - which would need to be done also in the metric version. And how is using that number any harder than using 9.8 in the metric version? Somewhere in that .052 number is the constant g (what is g in english units, something like 32 ft/sec/sec) but this formula gives no physical sense of what is happening. *In SI, one simply uses the formula Pressure =rho*g*h where rho(density) is in kg/m3 and g is about 10 m/sec2 and h is in meters. That formula isn't 'in SI'. It is universal and does not have units. This formula in SI would be useful on the moon where g is 1/6 of that on earth whereas I have no immediate idea how to modify the english one (probably divide .052 by 6 I think just to keep units correct). Certainly! The pressure is going to be 1/6 of what it is on Earth no matter what units you are using, that should be immediately obvious. Quite frankly, the cumbersome english units cause so much confusion that we would have far better of understanding of physical concepts if we simply used SI in everything (except temp where we would use Celsius). If you have trouble with concepts due to choice of units, then you don't really understand them at all. Andrew Usher |
#26
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 2, 11:13*pm, Frogwatch wrote:
The observation that various fields use variations on units is one of the great "Duh" lines in the original rant. *I work in x-ray spectroscopy and routinely use eV for photon energy instead of the usual Joule simply because it is easy to relate this to how the x-rays are produced. *Of course, I then convert to wavelength. Exactly! And I'm sure you don't go through Joules, etc., to do that. Instead you memorise the conversion you use, which is 12,398 ev-A. Is that easier just because it's 'metric'? (In fact ev are only half- metric at best.) Andrew Usher |
#27
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
On Feb 2, 4:47 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 Hi Heidi, if I knew there was a girl of the opposite sex reading my post I wouldn't have mentioned the PP part. I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to such things like 4'x8' plywood and 2"x4" studs, and much more. That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes, that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking. The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number 10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals. My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok. In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute. In science I think in terms of metric, but science is only a very small part of commerce and is not generally useful, for 95% of people. I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days. Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it. Regards Ken |
#28
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
"Ken S. Tucker" wrote in message ... Ken wrote: I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to such things like 4'x8' plywood... ....that is 5/8" thick... ... and 2"x4" studs, and much more. ....like those 2"x10"? That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes, that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking. Well...instead of building by the square foot, you could build by the square metre. The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number 10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals. 2.5 doesn't involve all that much screeching...no worse than trying to finangle something that is 3/16" of whatever. My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok. I use metric measures and metric recipes. Works just fine. In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute. Hey, I like driving 120 km/hr down the freeway. It gives me the impression I'm going much faster than I'm actually driving. ;-) I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days. Yes, it comes in handy knowing both, especially when it involves cross-border trade and tourism with the US. 70F also sounds a lot warmer than 20C. No wonder the Americans think Canadians live in igloos. Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it. No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather quite unique. Take care, Heidi ...whose house is a mishmash of German metric and British standard. |
#29
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
Heidi, I red your post, nifty...
On Feb 3, 2:38 am, "Heidi Graw" wrote: "Ken S. Tucker" wrote in ... Ken wrote: I build houses, and very much respect an old 1940's decision to base housing construction on 4" x 4" square, leading to such things like 4'x8' plywood... ...that is 5/8" thick... You're an expert. Went in to order some 5/8" during the MEtric conversion and the guy asks if I want 16mm ply, ok that's the same, then a few months later I went back and placed an order for 16mm, and guys asks, do ya mean 5/8" ? Canucks are really screwed up. ... and 2"x4" studs, and much more. ...like those 2"x10"? Code on our floor calls for 2"x8" stud, I like a bit of bounce. That decision resulted in building high quality low cost homes, that fit together with a minimum of customized thinking. Well...instead of building by the square foot, you could build by the square metre. The base 12 of the foot is divisible by 2,3,4,6, the number 10 cannot be divided by those without screeeching decimals. 2.5 doesn't involve all that much screeching...no worse than trying to finangle something that is 3/16" of whatever. My max tolerance is 1/8", the thickness of my carbide saw blade. I draw two lines and cut between them, so my error is less than a 1/64". My wife finds MEtric to be annoying, when cooking, when table spoons, ozs etc work fine. Cups, quarts and gallons works ok. I use metric measures and metric recipes. Works just fine. But a gazillion cook books use, teaspoons, etc. stuff right off the table. In Canada kms are too small cuz miles is what a big country needs, 60 mph is a mile a minute. Hey, I like driving 120 km/hr down the freeway. It gives me the impression I'm going much faster than I'm actually driving. ;-) "120 klicks" you must be a hot-rodder. Are you that person yapping into a cell while breezing past me in a sports car? I figure ya gotta be bi-measureable now a days. Yes, it comes in handy knowing both, especially when it involves cross-border trade and tourism with the US. 70F also sounds a lot warmer than 20C. No wonder the Americans think Canadians live in igloos. Yeah, 0F is cold and 100F is hot. (there are 180 degrees between 32F and 212F, that's how temperature was unitized, later Celius plagurized the degree, and screwed it all up. Common units work extremely well, but if you want your house built in MeTric I'll add 25% to the cost, and you've got it. No need. I wouldn't be hiring you anyway. My husband built the house I designed. Custom? Very...and rather quite unique. OK!, wife and I would like to see some pix's. I'm trying to get a design together, have a look, http://www.flickr.com/photos/46333912@N06/4260035955/ The Architectural consultants inform me that we have a lack of washrooms, so I'm redesigning the plumbing. Take care, Heidi ...whose house is a mishmash of German metric and British standard. Looking forward. Ken |
#30
|
|||
|
|||
The metric system sucks
Bart Goddard wrote:
"Heidi Graw" wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203@edtnps82: He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use. I also prefer metric for those same reasons. Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school over Engineering. B. Now try cooking. Before you respond with another snotty post, think chefs. /BAH |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Take that, metric system! | Fred J. McCall | Policy | 2 | September 12th 07 08:44 PM |
NASA boldly goes with metric system | Rusty | History | 14 | February 1st 07 05:35 AM |
MAILGATE sucks, or at least NSA/MI6 sucks | Brad Guth | SETI | 41 | April 6th 05 06:18 AM |