I can understand why average people use non-metric measurements in their daily lives. I'd prefer the US were completely metric, but I understand that part of it.

What really gets to me is when math and physics books refuse to use metrics. I have a Calc 3 book that was printed last year and most of the examples are in feet and pounds. There is no excuse for that. It would be expensive to change all road signs to kph and kilometer distances, but if you print a new book every year then at least act like you're part of the 21st century.

/end_rant

My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!


This is approximately .002 mpg, or 10.5 feet per gallon

A Prius gets about 900k rods/hogshead.

Most inane explanation ever: "Every country lies on this scale from 0-100 %"

Well, fucking duh!

If this is true, about fucking time.

I took some math classes that related to engineering and physics, we had to do all calculations in two different units and do conversions because Americans want to be different.

besides, royale with cheese sounds better than quarter pounder with cheese

Just don't switch which side my steering wheel's on.

>> ^alizarin:
>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

This is approximately .002 mpg, or 10.5 feet per gallon


Must be driving a Hummer.

my auto will go 300 hectares to a single tank of kerosene

**shifts into H**

^I get it!

>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!


Abe Simpson.

>> ^alizarin:
>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

This is approximately .002 mpg, or 10.5 feet per gallon


Don't you mean 84 cm per liter?

It's a non issue. Any engineer worth his/her salt can do conversions. And really, to work in a global environment, you absolutely have to know the metric system. It is taught in most schools from the elementary level.

Also, check out NIST or their website. There is alot of fascinating research going on there. It's a full research lab.

and then some assbackwards state will pass a measure banning metric system
or claim since we're a christian nation....

Going to school for engineering was enough to make me thoroughly sick of the English system, and convert over to metric. It's simply much easier and faster to work calculations in metric than it is with the English system.

^Exactly, it's all about ease of use... Answer these questions without reference to anything?

Metric:
How many meters in a kilometer?
How many centimeters in a meter?
How many millimeters in a centimeter?

(I know these change based on purity of water and air pressure, but for all useful purposes)
What temperature does water freeze?
What temperature does water boil?

Imperial/English:
How many yards in a mile?
How many feet in a mile?
How many inches in a mile?

How many fluid ounces in a gallon?

What temp does water freeze?
What temp does water boil?


It's utterly, utterly insane to keep going with imperial. Metric is logical, it's all base ten, it's all easy to remember... 10x10x10 type of stuff... imperial... um... not so much.

You know, I'm an engineer that finds the metric systems easier to use. But in "civilian" life, I LIKE dealing with pounds and pints. There is an intersection here with culture that should not be dismissed.

People, even professionals, should be able to choose what tools they work with.

>> ^longde:
You know, I'm an engineer that finds the metric systems easier to use. But in "civilian" life, I LIKE dealing with pounds and pints. There is an intersection here with culture that should not be dismissed.
People, even professionals, should be able to choose what tools they work with.


You're allowed to. Canadians still mention pounds and feet, mostly because that's what our parents taught us, even though aside from measuring people, pints and groceries, those measures are archaic to us.

>> ^longde:
You know, I'm an engineer that finds the metric systems easier to use. But in "civilian" life, I LIKE dealing with pounds and pints. There is an intersection here with culture that should not be dismissed.
People, even professionals, should be able to choose what tools they work with.


That's true, except that one system has a clear advantage over the other.

So why not start by making both systems readily available to anyone? Put distances on road signs with both miles and kilometers and let people choose what tools they want to work with

>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!


QM is feeling so proud he didn't get downvoted to -26 this time.

Maybe you should add something political to balance it out!

>> ^spoco2:
(I know these change based on purity of water and air pressure, but for all useful purposes)
What temperature does water freeze?
What temperature does water boil?
Well I'd say that depends on how thick your brine is

Its not really "logical or practical". If it was then we would also adopt "round-abouts" that also are proven better for roads than stoplight. Along with many other systems used.

So many things seem practical logical now-a-days, but the cost of them makes the illogical and impractical.

Its really bad in business when it comes to technology. The cost up upgrading negates the "need" for something.

The same argument vs metric/imperial could go for language barriers. Yah Chinese is better to learn than Spanish for business but who the frack wants to learn Chinese when its so far away when spanish is across the border.

^ The language analogy is closer than you think. At the moment, Metric is your foreign language.
You learn Imperial first, and then if you go into any form of measurable science, you have to learn metric, since that's the common method of calculation across the world, and is also the simplest method.

I can quite easily tell you how many nanometers are in one meter. How many square meters are in a square kilometer. How many mililiters are in one liter. How many grams are in a ton.

Can you tell me how many square inches are in a square mile? How many nanometers (I don't know of an Imperial distance unit smaller than an inch, but If there is one, enlighten me please) are in one yard? How many ounces are in a Ton? (Again. Is there an Imperial measurement greater than a Pound?).

Anyone who uses numbers and measurements beyond primary school has to learn Metric as a second mathematical language, and as any language, they usually speak it with an accent.

If Imperial is so much better, why is pot not sold by pound and ounce?

I'm Canadian, but I'm not old enough to have been around when we made the switch. I think it would be worthwhile for the US to make the switch as far as road speed limits go, but then again, Canada can me retardatly Imperial at times.
I went to paintball a few weeks ago with some Japanese exchange students. Keep in mind that Japan uses far less imperial measurements than Canada. We were told not to shoot from less than 15 Feet away, but it wasn't until the very last game that one of the Japanese students turned to me and asked "How far is 15 Feet?".

Oh, and also start using Celsius, Fahrenheit makes less sense than FOX.

In reply to this comment by longde:
It's a non issue. Any engineer worth his/her salt can do conversions. And really, to work in a global environment, you absolutely have to know the metric system. It is taught in most schools from the elementary level.

Didn't some multi-billion dollar piece of hardware slam into Mars due to a "salted" engineer's metric/imperial conversion error?

The main reason we don't switch over is because all the rule of thumbs our engineers use would be thrown out the window.

Payback, switching to the metric system won't stop incompetence.


To alot of the commenters, I don't know a school (except maybe in Texas) that does not teach the metric system alongside the english system.

>> ^longde:
Payback, switching to the metric system won't stop incompetence.

To alot of the commenters, I don't know a school (except maybe in Texas) that does not teach the metric system alongside the english system.


To which I ask, why learn the Imperial at all? What's the benefit of knowing both, aside for the fact that you would have to multiply all your roadside sign distances by 1.6?

Just for clarification, over here in good old English land, we actually use a messed-up combination of both Metric and Imperial systems.

Our road-signs are in MPH but we buy petrol (gas) by the Litre.

Our food has to be labelled in Grams and Millilitres by law (damn the EU!) but you can still buy a pint of milk (which is actually 568ml).

As an occasional engineer, I work in metric sizes for measurements but we still throw back for feet and inches or stones and pounds when we're talking about height and weight. Your average Brit wouldn't be able to tell you how heavy they are in Kilograms.

Also, there's a lot of Imperial measurements that you guys use that we don't - quarts and cups are a couple of examples that I know of.

Thank $deity we converted to decimal coinage before that got out of hand; I still have no idea how Pounds, Shillings and Pence works...

>> ^Payback:
If Imperial is so much better, why is pot not sold by pound and ounce?


It is over here! 1/8th bag is your average buy ... allegedly!

>> ^honkeytonk73:
>> ^alizarin:
>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!

This is approximately .002 mpg, or 10.5 feet per gallon

Must be driving a Hummer.


That would be a Hummer, pulling 15 other Hummers. All running.

>> ^quantumushroom:
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!


That's nothing. My car will do the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs.

At one restaurant where I worked the chef had recently changed all the baking recipes over to metric. Grams and Millilitres instead of Ounces, Pounds, Cups, Tablespoons and Fluid Ounces. For some recipes that was great. But for a bunch of them, I actually ended up writing the ounces back in in the margins. After all, the scale I was using was marked in ounces and grams, and it is easier to remember 3 ounces, 5 ounces and 10 ounces than 85g 141g and 283g.

The imperial system is not necessary, true.

But then, there are many things we do that are not necessary either out of tradition or habit that only produce minor inconvenience. As long as people remember how to multiply and divide, the imperial system falls within the minor inconvenience category.

>> ^SlipperyPete:
my auto will go 300 hectares to a single tank of kerosene
shifts into H


Hectare is a unit of area, not distance.

1 km^2 = 100 hectares

>> ^djsunkid:
At one restaurant where I worked the chef had recently changed all the baking recipes over to metric. Grams and Millilitres instead of Ounces, Pounds, Cups, Tablespoons and Fluid Ounces. For some recipes that was great. But for a bunch of them, I actually ended up writing the ounces back in in the margins. After all, the scale I was using was marked in ounces and grams, and it is easier to remember 3 ounces, 5 ounces and 10 ounces than 85g 141g and 283g.


Yeah, but that's because the recipe was created in the imperial system. If you started with the metric system, I'm sure you'd use more rounded figures and it'd turn out as the same dish... 90g, 140g, 280g... or, in Australia we have metric cups and metric spoons, which work great, pretty much all of our recipes work in amounts of 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and whole cups... and then amounts of the metric teaspoon, tablespoons etc.

If you start from a metric world then everything falls into nice, easy to use amounts.

I just recently read a book about the forms of measurement around the world and where they came from, and why some places keep sticking to their imperial amounts. And I get that... I do get how some lengths are easy to work in your head (hell, as metric as I am, I think of people's heights in feet and inches... and nothing else, nothing else I measure like that, just height. I know my height in feet and inches, but not cm... weird).

But when you try to do ANYTHING like calculations using imperial it all falls flat really, really fast. Things like miles... a mile was originally 8 furlongs. A furlong being the length of a field you could work with your oxen over the course of a day. And 8 furlongs being pretty much how far you could walk in an hour. So a mile was how far you could walk in an hour, and was 8 times as long a field as you could work with your oxen in a day. And that worked out to 5000 feet.

BUT...

Technology got better, so ploughing became easier and furlongs became longer (as they remained being the length you could work in one day)... so to still say a mile was 8 furlongs, well, a mile became longer and longer until it was 5280 feet. There's logic in there to begin with, but using a measurement of 5280 as a base unit is insane... utterly insane.

>> ^Payback:
If Imperial is so much better, why is pot not sold by pound and ounce?

It is if you're not one of those skeezy gram buying cheapos. Sack up and by and eighth...an eighth of what you ask? An eighth of an ounce. If you're flippin birds big time you could be buying a pound (16 oz) of marijuana. Now, it gets tricky when you're buying grams cause there's some conversion involved. There's about 28.3 grams per ounce. So buy a $300 ounce, sell it as $20 grams and you've made roughly $560-$300=$260 profit. Now you'll be tempted to do half-eighths for $25, but you're actually losing about $10 dollars on the deal as that person is getting about 1.75 grams for $25 bucks. That's an extra .75 grams for $5! Save the price break for the bigger clients or long time clients that will come back with business for you later.

Do this a couple times and build a rapport with your dealer and you will be buying cheap half pounds to pounds of weed. Now with this quantity it's better to sell them as half to full ounces.

Not that I know...

1mph is a really slow walking pace. Normal walking pace is 3-4mph, unless you're 100 years old.

>> ^longde:
Payback, switching to the metric system won't stop incompetence.

To alot of the commenters, I don't know a school (except maybe in Texas) that does not teach the metric system alongside the english system.


Oh... so the engineers that work on space missions are incompetent? I was a mistake. A mistake that may have not occurred if the extra calculations and built-in error they cause weren't used.

>>demon_ix
Why are you guys measuring things in feet again?

>> ^djsunkid as metric as I am, I think of people's heights in feet and inches... and nothing else, nothing else I measure like that, just height. I know my height in feet and inches, but not cm... weird

I'm the same. I think it's just easier to deal with saying 6'1 instead of 185cm. It's also easier to deal with carpentry. A door is 3 feet wide. Nice, single unit number.

Yet I use metric for everything else.

>> ^Asmordean:
>> ^djsunkid as metric as I am, I think of people's heights in feet and inches... and nothing else, nothing else I measure like that, just height. I know my height in feet and inches, but not cm... weird
I'm the same. I think it's just easier to deal with saying 6'1 instead of 185cm. It's also easier to deal with carpentry. A door is 3 feet wide. Nice, single unit number.
Yet I use metric for everything else.


You say your height is Six One. I say my height is One Eighty. It's not a matter of simpler there, it's just what you're used to. Let's disregard the fact that a smaller base unit (1 inch = 2.5 cm approx) gives you better precision.

Suppose when dealing with carpentry, your door isn't 3 feet wide, it's 3 feet, 2 inches and 1/4 inch. Is that still simpler?

Still makes sense if he's riding a lawnmower.

>> ^jwray:
>> ^SlipperyPete:
my auto will go 300 hectares to a single tank of kerosene
shifts into H

Hectare is a unit of area, not distance.
1 km^2 = 100 hectares

I was in Amsterdam last week and with magnificent foresight, if I do say so myself, I checked and of course they all use metric, as did the (mostly English or Northern Irish) buyers. Obviously I wouldn't be in an Amsterdam coffeeshop except that I thought their measurement system would be handy to know. So traumatised by drug usage was I that I had to sit down immediately and find some way to calm myself.

>> ^rottenseed:
Now you'll be tempted to do half-eighths for $25

Half-eighths??? Only a stoner would have trouble figuring out what half of 1/8 is! I assume this is some regional lingo and not actually because people can't figure out what 2x8 is, but I've never heard of a half-eighth before. I've heard of a sixteenth many times.

I wouldn't mind pounds, miles, feet, gallons, ounces and what-not so much if you could at least choose one of each and stick with it. It's like the old joke about which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold. Feathers of course, because gold is measured in troy units and a troy pound weighs less than the more standard Avoirdupois pound. And a Ton can be 2000 (short Ton), 2205 (metric Ton), 2240 (long Ton, or ton shortweight) or 2400 (ton longweight) pounds, depending what definition of Ton you have in mind. And let's not even get started on gallons and ounces.

But yeah, I don't know of a country that is 100% metric yet. Even here in Finland we still use inches (mainly in carpentry, 5" nails, two-by-fours, stuff like that) and horsepowers (though magazines are using the kW as a standard and sometimes omit the hp figure completely, people still use them in everyday speech).

>> ^xxovercastxx:
Don't you mean 84 cm per liter?

Don't you mean 117 607.2 l/100km? Just kidding. =)