-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Metric or traditional inch system?
- Thread starter TerpDaddy
- Start date
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
Been a long long time since I’ve come across any car, foreign or domestic, that didn’t use metric nuts and bolts.
Tam
Well-Known Member
Good guessing!
If you look at the owner's manual, it lists the rims as inches (18,19, 20) but its Lug Nut Socket Size is only listed in millimeters!
I wish the US would switch to metric... how expensive can it really be at this point...
Billions upon billions upon billions of dollars. Probably trillions. if you think it'd be cheap, you aren't thinking hard enough.
All the signs… twice (you think it can be done without a transitional period? Think again). Huge changes to legacy software. Retraining a hell of a lot of people that rely on the system not changing. Surveyors?. Car nav systems (and speedometers in some cars). Textbooks. Thermometers. Stoves. Thermostats. Blueprints. So so so so much more. LAWS! Think of how many laws are explicitly worded using imperial. Then you've gotta actually educate people on this stuff. How long do you think it'll take Americans to get used to thinking their body temperature should be ~37 instead of ~98.6? The aviation world at large mostly uses nautical miles and feet. Should they change too?
On top of that, all the cultural stuff like hand-egg and baseball.
Tam
Well-Known Member
It's not just an American problem, there is the whole list of all 3 countries out of the whole world still officially use the imperial system:
1) the U.S.
2) Liberia
3) Myanmar
Although the UK has officially used metric since 1965, there is still money for a guerilla operation to deface the metric road signs!!!
Yeah the UK is a bonanza of weird mixes of whatever the hell they feel like using. At least we are consistently noncompliant with the metric system over here.
It takes a generation. Canada did it when I was a kid. It wasn’t that big of a deal. And the transition for road signs etc took about 6 or 7 years. Meh. I can still function in both
cpa
Active Member
We tried it in California in the early 70s. It was a colossal failure.
No one liked it. There might be all of ten signs like this remaining throughout the state.
No one liked it. There might be all of ten signs like this remaining throughout the state.
It's not really as crazy as all that. The UK is basically metric for any serious work involving quantities (science, commerce). They just retain a few of the pervasive/traditional items like road speeds and "pints" (20lfoz, not 16) of beer etc. But schools/education has been metric since the late-1960's.
The worst though is Australia. Many will argue with me on this, but they are wrong. Want to know why?
For some degenerate reason, a tablespoon there is 20ml instead of 15ml. For most things that won't realllllly matter much, but when you're dealing with baked goods and working from a recipe, a 33% increase in rising agent can wildly distort things.
cpa
Active Member
This is a serious question:
I am well into my seventh decade, and obviously I have used the imperial system my entire life. What I like about it is that the measurements standards are easy to eyeball and explain. Eighteen inches is pretty easy to mark off. For those using the metric system, what do you say? Forty-five hundredths of a meter? Four and one-half decimeters? Forty-five centimeters? Four hundred fifty or so millimeters? I can pretty closely visualize a meter, centimeter, and millimeter. But visualizing tens of centimeters or hundreds of millimeters is difficult for me.
I guess it is hard for me to visualize lots of tiny units or significant fractions of larger units when the imperial system has refined the units into small, medium, large, and extra large.
I am well into my seventh decade, and obviously I have used the imperial system my entire life. What I like about it is that the measurements standards are easy to eyeball and explain. Eighteen inches is pretty easy to mark off. For those using the metric system, what do you say? Forty-five hundredths of a meter? Four and one-half decimeters? Forty-five centimeters? Four hundred fifty or so millimeters? I can pretty closely visualize a meter, centimeter, and millimeter. But visualizing tens of centimeters or hundreds of millimeters is difficult for me.
I guess it is hard for me to visualize lots of tiny units or significant fractions of larger units when the imperial system has refined the units into small, medium, large, and extra large.
In your example I'd say either "45 cm" or "a bit under half a metre", depending on context.
FWIW, I've lived about half of my life in metric countries (plural), and I for one prefer imperial (which is sort of an odd thing to call it at this point) measurements for weather (I feel like the wider bands of fahrenheit make for easier conversation: "What's the forecast?" "70s"), and casual distance/size discussion ("How tall are you?" "6'4").
For precision measurements I prefer metric.
cpa
Active Member
I am not sure about the eastern United States. But at least west of the Mississippi, legal land descriptions use a base line and meridian method. (Think x-and-y axes.) The units used are miles and acres. The land is broken into townships emanating from the intersection of the base line and meridian. Each township is six miles by six miles, giving rise to thirty-six sections within each township. Since a section (square mile) is 640 acres, land descriptions are something like
The north 1/2 of the east 1/2, Section 16, Township 6N, Range 14E Mt. Diablo Baseline and Meridian. This would be the legal description of the quarter section (160 acres) in Section 16, the sixth township north and fourteenth range east using the summit of Mt. Diablo as the intersection of the x-and-y axes. Sections within each township are numbered left to right starting in the upper left corner, then continuing right to left so that Section 7 is immediately beneath Section 6, and Section 12 is immediately beneath Section 1. Then Section 13 is beneath 12 and so on.
It is conceivable that the measurements of smaller, irregularly-shaped lots that are surveyed could easily be converted from feet to meters, and the angles converted from degrees to radians. But I think it would be nearly impossible to restate the legal descriptions. Not to mention the headaches in the recorder's office and the assessor's office.
Last edited:
Behind the scenes almost all industry, government and science HAS switched. We just show the "dumb" Imperial face to the general public. It is so crazy when you think about it since the definition of an inch is 254 mm. YES we use metric to define the Imperial system. We already buy drinks by the liter and all food is labeled with metric info. We run 10Ks and we take 325mg aspirin. It is just so easy compared to this bull we have. Like how many yards in a mile or ounces in 1 gallon + 1 quart +1 pint or how many ounces in 3¼ lbs? How about is that a ⅔" or ⅞" or ¾" or ⅗" or 1⅛" nut? 17mm or 22mm or 19mm or 15mm or 28mm (closest in metric) or so much easer and logical to understand and visualize.
Also the cost would be a lot less if we started by just adding metric to signs and use as replacements (using this with most infrastructure). In 10 years start using only metric as replacements. Sure it would be 25 to 30 years but at least we would be heading in the correct direction. Just saying it is hard or expensive is a poor excuse to stay backwards to the rest of the world.