"You don't know the power of the metric system. I must obey my meter."
Posted on 11/05/2012 2:14:59 PM PST by null and void
Back in grade school, we were told that the Imperial System was a thing of the past, that eventually we’d be living the Metric System life, with all it’s base-10 logic built right in. We’d be just like the rest of the world. But those predictions have proven about as accurate as the flying cars and moon colonies that we all imagined we’d be enjoying in the year 2012.
Occasionally, the issue bubbles up and people argue back and forth about why we haven’t gone Metric, but I think it’s all about inertia. There would be a huge intellectual cost in moving to a new system—training ourselves to think of temperatures in Celsius when we’re leaving home and trying to decide on whether to grab a jacket. Straining to remember what kilometers per liter really comes down to, when we’re used to a lifetime of miles per gallon. Attempting to determine whether you’re losing enough weight, as you stare at the scale showing a strange number of kilograms.
While there are economic costs—heck, just think of the signage issues on our roads—they should be lower today than they would have been a generation ago. Many consumer products in this digital age already allow us to toggle between Imperial and Metric units. And the prevalence of smartphones means that no one has an excuse not to have a conversion app (or at least a calculator) on them at virtually all times.
What this issue comes down to is, as I said, inertia. It’s laziness. No one wants to be the generation that has to juggle two systems in their heads all the time. If we switched today, my kids would grow up pretty much thinking in Metric and would have no problem. But I feel like I’d forever be doing that calculation in my head. Even if I knew 28° C was a nice warm summer day, I think I’d always be converting it back to 82° F just to make sure I knew exactly how warm it was, based on my past experiences. We don’t want to be the ones straddling the two worlds, dealing with parts in both sizes or wondering how to deal with machinery that still had Imperial components that were no longer allowed to be manufactured.
Besides, who has the guts to push an idea like this forward in the country today? If Republicans championed the cause, Democrats would rail against it. And vice versa. And unfortunately, engineers, scientists and the like don’t have the kind of lobby that would be needed to get politicians interested. Even a public relations disaster like losing the Mars Climate Orbiter (due to a conversion mishap) didn’t move the needle on fully switching to Metric. So I guess I’ll just wait with you for that long-off day when we get the first flying car—and wonder what kind of miles per gallon that thing will get.
Ah... not a zoomie.
"Dad? are you lost?
"No dear, I was looking at the... uhhh... "
"Dad, that's a culvert".
"Yes, the drainage thingie..."
The only thing more dangerous than a butter bar with a compass and a map is a zoomie.
TACAN wasn't invented because AF guys can do dead reckoning.
/johnny
Estimating the ballpark of the answer before feeding the equations into a calculator is a lost art.
I like prime numbers but they are not as useful, just more fun.
I vaguely remember an early Art Buchwald Thanksgiving Day column (originally written soon after WWII when he was in France, but reissued on later occasions) which features Kilometres Standish.
I’m down with base 60, though I also like thousands. It’ll get you close enough for work at home.
Interesting.
I think it's been a great thread. Interesting reading all around.
“Around 30 years ago, I began to add metric tools to my collection. I very seldom use any of them.
There is one part of American cars which have always been metric.
Does anyone know what it is?”
Beibers?
Agreed !
Funny. I normally have zulu time or local military time on my computer clocks.
Have you ever heard of "beat time"? It's something swatch came out with in the late 90s as a decimal time system. They even actually made some watches that kept beat time. From wikipedia:
Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 and marketed by the Swatch corporation as an alternative, decimal measure of time. One of the goals was to simplify the way people in different time zones communicate about time, mostly by eliminating time zones altogether.
Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.
There are no time zones in Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Mean Time (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+1. Unlike civil time in most European countries, Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.
At the time, I thought it was kind of an interesting concept. However, there is no way in hell we'll ever give up the 60/24/7/52/365 measurements we use for time until perhaps after we leave this planet for interstellar space. I'm doubtful it will happen then.
People seemed to skip over the pyramid inch comment, though...
A few days back I was contemplating interstellar trade.
There would need to be some universally recognized standards of measure, what would they look like?
More to the point of my musings, what numeric system would the be used. We favor base ten because we have ten digits on our primary organs of manipulation.
What would an interstellar civilization with multiple species and the resulting multiplicity of standard bases use?
Would 10, 100, 1000 be octaves, decades, dozades, or?
Close enough for a cook.
/johnny
I got it.
It just feeds my OCD on this issue, so I try to ignore it. I'm so going to need the dwarf, the pretty girls, and the jello pool....
Every friggin culture since mankind started making measuring marks and building structures has something nearly an inch long. And a cubit long. And a foot long.
2.5 cm? Not so much.
/johnny
"You don't know the power of the metric system. I must obey my meter."
8. Think about it.
You didn't study the classics in grammar school, did you?
/johnny
I’ll bite, why base 8?
“...if it didn’t we’d be blinded by the light...”
Well, OK. So long as we don’t have to be revved up like a duce.
That would drive me nuts.
“And for some reason my 10 MM wrench is constantly missing!”
Same here! Seriously - I thought it was just me.
Must be 10mm is the sock of the wrench world.
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