USA just will not go metric.

Dusterbd13-michael said:

I'm going to have to say my personal belief is that if God wanted the metric system he would have only had 10 disciples

but, but, ten commandments...or fifteen before Moses dropped one of the three stone tablets.

Toyman! said:

I find it hilarious how worked-up people get over what system of measurement is used.

The one I find most bizarre is the people who get incensed about using Fahrenheit, pushing Celsius as inherently superior.

Metric (or at least, SI) is better because it's easier to convert small units into larger ones of the same type.  That's fine as far as it goes, but nobody ever does that with temperature!  The only people who do math with temperature units are scientists, and since those equations require that you start at absolute zero they all use Kelvin anyway. :)

Simple C to F estimate is double the C and add 30.  

20C is officially 68F but my method gets you to 70F which is generally the same (for things not scientific.) 

2C = 35.6F but 34F estimate is close enough to remind you to grab your tuque 

RX Reven' said:

Toyman! said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

You actually read the article? I'm impressed. I tend to bypass articles that use fish as a scale. 

Sounds like you're willing to use fish once they've been scaled though or did I misunderstand???

Carp, it's only fifteen clams, get one just for the halibut or knot:

That was awesome. 

And yes, once I know the size of the scaled tuna is 4 meters, I can math from there and get it in any measure of distance I want. 

So the asteroid is approximately 22375693.12 Mickeys. 

Assuming I got the math right. 

Toyman! said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

You actually read the article? I'm impressed. I tend to bypass articles that use fish as a scale. 

Fish scales?

Honestly, even though I, like most of us, have grown up using imperial measurements, I really like metric. It is so easy to use and needs no weird funky mathmatics to measure things.

ShawnG said:

192/195ths of the world uses the metric system. 

Just for accuracy

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that have put men on the moon, and those who use the metric system.

I probably shouldn't point out that NASA uses metric?

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that have put men on the moon, and those who use the metric system.

I probably shouldn't point out that NASA uses metric?

They didn't in the 60s.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that have put men on the moon, and those who use the metric system.

I probably shouldn't point out that NASA uses metric?

Wasn't that when they crashed on Mars?

Civil engineers use tenths of a foot. That's not metric OR imperial. 
 

I think they do it just to berkeley with us. 

In reply to SV reX :

My 300 foot tape has that on one side and regular on the other. Great way to berkeley with people.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that have put men on the moon, and those who use the metric system.

...Kinda?

"...the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter robotic probe in 1999, which occurred because a contractor provided thruster firing data in English units while NASA was using metric." 

 https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon#:~:text=Although%20NASA%20has%20ostensibly%20used,of%20the%20U.S.%20aerospace%20industry.

It's only a matter of time until America uses metric- we just have too much older legacy stuff that uses SAE before we can.

I say we keep Fahrenheit tho. While its methodology is a little dumb, it's way closer to human comfort than Celsius. 

SV reX said:

Civil engineers use tenths of a foot. That's not metric OR imperial. 
 

I think they do it just to berkeley with us. 

And machinists use thousandths of an inch.

I had a CAM teacher tell us "fractions are for carpenters"

Growing up I heard the constant refrain of "well if so-and-so jumped off a bridge would you follow?" being used to extoll the value of not just following the crowd. It seems the correct answer was "Yes Mother, but only because the bridge is only 14.1452 decimeters off the ground." 

GIRTHQUAKE said:

It's only a matter of time until America uses metric- we just have too much older legacy stuff that uses SAE before we can.

I say we keep Fahrenheit tho. While its methodology is a little dumb, it's way closer to human comfort than Celsius. 

The only reason Fahrenheit is "better" for human comfort is because you have calibrated yourself for it. You know what 70F feels like. Someone who grew up in the metric system knows what 21C feels like. One's not better than the other, it's just what you know. Take this from someone who grew up with metric and had to re-learn "what to wear when it's X outside".

Water freezing at 0 is an excellent landmark. There is a real  and important thing that happens in the world at that point, so having the Celsius scale centered around freezing makes perfect sense. The linguistic habit that was hardest for me to shake when moving to the US was using "freezing" and "zero" interchangeably.

I use metric when I'm working on things because it's just easier to deal with those measurements. I convert them to US numbers when I need to communicate with someone who doesn't speak metric or when I'm dealing with something that was designed in the US and has nice round US measurements because the designer was a little lazy.

Noddaz said:

Tuna as measurement

And if you don't want to go look, here is the headline.

Asteroid the size of 22 tuna fish to fly closer to Earth than the Moon - NASA

The absolutely funny part of this is that, unlike bananas or coconuts or washing machines, a lot of people think tuna are small because you can buy it in those little cans.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Just remember, there are two kinds of countries in the world. Those that have put men on the moon, and those who use the metric system.

I probably shouldn't point out that NASA uses metric?

US standard measurements are defined as a function of metric, so technically the US has always been metric.  We just use shorthand.

Good, lucky pilots avoid death from bad metric conversion.

Streetwiseguy said:

Good, lucky pilots avoid death from bad metric conversion.

Gimli Glider?

(clicks)

Gimli Glider.

What is somewhat interesting, is that the ultimate cause was human error allowed into the equation because of the aircraft's sensor faults requiring manual calculation.  People had been going by good-enough approximations for fuel load, and good enough approximations work right up until they don't.

This does address something that bothers me: when people convert aircraft altitude to metric.  In this sense, feet is the world standard. When you fly at 30,000 feet you aren't measuring meters or cubits or furlongs, you are at flight level 300.  It's just a standardized number, based off of a base-10 calculation, yet somehow some pro-Metric people are horrified by it because its roots are in a different arbitrary measurement than their favorite arbitrary measurement 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

somehow some pro-Metric people are horrified by it because its roots are in a different arbitrary measurement than their favorite arbitrary measurement 

Yeah, if you want a system of units that's not arbitrary you need to use planck units.

Flight Level 5.715e+38 rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? :)

Whatever.  We pilots use knots.

Keith Tanner said:

Water freezing at 0 is an excellent landmark. There is a real  and important thing that happens in the world at that point, so having the Celsius scale centered around freezing makes perfect sense. The linguistic habit that was hardest for me to shake when moving to the US was using "freezing" and "zero" interchangeably.

Not only that.. but 100 is boiling.  So you just need to make all the spots in between equally spaced and you have your degrees centigrade.

Appleseed said:

Whatever.  We pilots use knots.

Oh man. Next time you get stopped by the fuzz, and the obligatory "Do you know how fast you were going back there?"

Dude. Answer in knots. For the lolz.