Metric/Imperial measurments and driving test requirments

[agentsmith1612]

Plus, personally I would rather do my calculations on base 10 than base 12.

That is my point, too.

At work we have some instruments from the US one of them was broken and we want to fix it. Then we realized that nothing of our metric tools (inbus and combination wrench) work on the screws, because the screws were in american system (inch). We bought a lot of new tools and now we have most of the tools in both systems. But our boss said, we will never buy a new instrument from US with screws in the inch system, again.

 

[brianman]

Well, the meter IS the only SI-unit with no natural base in nature/physics. No more logic than inch/foot/yard etc.

You're implying 'foot' had no logic, but it did.

 

[deonb]

I'm with you on the metric system. I wish we had adopted it in the US years ago. I think our paper sizes are just fine though 

Oh, no, U.S. paper sizes are horrible, and still irks me after 14 years of living over here. With ISO paper sizes you can always cut one piece of paper in half to get to the next paper size (A4 -> A5 -> A6 etc.), or put 2 of them next to each other on a photocopier to combine them (A4 -> A3 -> A2 etc.). So if you design e.g. an A1 poster, but you don't have an A1 printer you can simply use 2 x A2's (or 4 x A3s) for your drafts until you can have it professionally printed. Try that with U.S. paper sizes.

But then again, without it HP would never have been able to confuse and frustrate 2 generations of non-Americans the world over with "PC Load Letter" (in turn leading to a brilliant scene in Office Space ).

 

[brianman]

Fun with "PC Load Letter"...

Unreliable printers...

... bring out destructive tendencies...

... as do some songs ...

... when played endlessly ...

 

[ZBB]

In Australia we had imperial measurement up to 1975 and Metric from then. Never entirely understood why the USA never followed.

It's not that the US didn't try. We just never finished the swap.

For example, soda is sold in 2L bottles along with 12 oz cans or 16 oz bottles. Interstate 19, which runs from Tucson AZ to the Mexico border has all distances in KM and meters (and the old signs that also had miles shown have been replaced with metric-only signs).

By the way I've lived in Europe and Japan, and am married to a Canadian. I can switch pretty easily between the systems, and I wish the US would just finish moving to Metric...

 

[agentsmith1612]

You're implying 'foot' had no logic, but it did.

You say there is a system but for example take a look at lenghts.

SI system always uses 10^3 steps. Base unit is meter [m]. For smaller values you can go down in 10^-3 steps or up in 10^3 steps.

But what you do with inch, foot and yard ?
For every conversion you need different factors that you have to know. And if you don't know you are gone. For Americans it is easy but for the rest of the world nobody will understand where the logic is. Sorry but that's my opinion.

 

[brianman]

@agent - It's fine to dislike or disagree with decisions or logic of people from the past, but saying they had no logic is overstepping.

 

[agentsmith1612]

I said that for me it has no logic. For others it can be differnt.

But it is a not solveable discussion.
If you learn from childhood one system and you will prefer that everytime.

I learn only the metric system and the american system is strange for be, because I never got used to. Therefore is not a problem of what have more logic but rather what you used every day.

 

[jerry33]

I learned both systems and it doesn't bother me to switch back and forth.

 

[brianman]

I said that for me it has no logic. For others it can be differnt.

Again "no logic" vs. "logic that I don't understand or agree with."

It's kind of like dismissing every language you've never learned as gibberish.

Anyway, apparently there's a language barrier here w/r/t precision and correctness of expression.

Sorry for the somewhat OT folks.

 

[Johan]

This whole thread is OT

And my comment earlier about metres being noe more logical than the anglian units was very much a personal opinion. Metres are more logical since they use the base of 10, like our common number system, but they have no more or less basis in nature than yard, inch etc. It's all subjective anyway.

 

[jerry33]

This whole thread is OT

And my comment earlier about metres being noe more logical than the anglian units was very much a personal opinion. Metres are more logical since they use the base of 10, like our common number system, but they have no more or less basis in nature than yard, inch etc. It's all subjective anyway.

But they are not more human or natural. Base 12 can easily be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6, plus 8, 9, and 10 are factors of 2, 3, 4, and 5. Only 7 and 11 are the odd numbers out. So repeating decimals happen less often and mental math becomes easier to do.

 

[ggr]

And my comment earlier about metres being noe more logical than the anglian units was very much a personal opinion. Metres are more logical since they use the base of 10, like our common number system, but they have no more or less basis in nature than yard, inch etc. It's all subjective anyway.

Actually, that's not quite correct. Both systems, to some weird extent, are based on something in nature, namely the circumference of the earth. It's 10,000 km from the equator to the north pole, using the meridian that passes through Paris. Now, if the metric measure of angles (the Grad) had ever been adopted, this would allow you to directly convert latitude to distance from the pole. (There are 100 Grads to a right angle, instead of 90 degrees, and then you just use digits after the decimal point. I think very accurate GPSs now use degree, and decimal minutes, rather than degrees, minutes and seconds.)

On the other hand, Nautical miles are defined similarly, so a minute of latitude is a nautical mile. Which is why all the other funny historical units like rods, poles and perches don't fit nicely into nautical miles.

I wasted a year of my education learning to do arithmetic in pounds, shillings and pence before Oz went to decimal currency, and then another couple learning way too much about archaic units because my brother was a surveyor, before we went metric. Count me as solidly in favor of metric.