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.
lights
Let's say you have a dozen cookies and you want to divvy them up for a bunch of kids. Starting with twelve you can make two groups of six, or six groups of two, four groups of three, or three groups of four, and of course twelve groups of one. If you went metric you could get two groups of five, or five groups of two, and the trivial ten groups of one. My point being that Imperial system gives you more factors for subdividing things into equal portions. The Imperial system was made by merchants for the convenience of merchants and their customers.
Of the actual physical properties measured (length, mass, and time) only length and mass have (sort of) rational definitions in the metric system. Time is still measured sixty seconds to the minute, sixty minutes to the hour, twenty four hours to the day, and just a tad less than three hundred sixty five and a quarter days in a year. A year subdivided into twelve months with (thirty days has November, April, June, and September. All the rest have thirty one, except February which has twenty eight, unless the cardinal number of the year is evenly divisible by 4 in which case it has twenty nine, unless of course it is also evenly divisible by one hundred which cuts it back to twenty eight, But then again if perchance it is also evenly divisible by five hundred, the Pope says that it again numbers twenty nine days.) If you can make all that mess fit into a rational system counting by tens (forgot about decades, my bad!) I will buy off on converting to metric. Just kidding, in fact metric seconds are defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. Now if only we could make the earth's rotation follow that specification...
Measurements of length (meters) make sense to some, explain three hundred sixty degrees in a circle, which rightly should be two*π radians (an irrational number to say the least!)
The other physical properties (length and mass) are defined in the Imperial System in terms which relate to human physiology whereas the metric system wholly dehumanizes them, talking about "the exact distance light travels in an absolute vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second" for a "meter" and a chunk of metal held by the French since 1889 for a kilogram. None of the "metric standards" are remotely reproducible by you, me, or that man up a tree.
Regards,
GtG
PS Where can you find an "absolute vacuum"? Even deep space has particles floating around, if it didn't we'd be blinded by the light of "billions and billions" of stars.
Metric isn't NEARLY as arbitrary as Imperial. The Meter is the only unit externally defined. Everything else is derived from it.
Metric's biggest advantage is in the interrelation of the units. Multiples of 10 work much better, because our numbering system is base 10. It's simpler to derive the meaning of a metric unit because of it.
A person familiar with metric can tell you how many meters in a kilometer, or centimeters for that matter. How about the number of square meters in a parcel of land 1km x 1km ? Not too hard in metric, but try to get the number of square feet in a 1mi x 1mi parcel without a calculator or memorization.
Do you know how many rods are in a fathom? Inches in a furlong?
A meter is perhaps arbitrary, but EVERYTHING else in the system is based on that meter. It is much more cohesive as a system than Imperial measurements, so unit conversion becomes trivial.
English units are more human sized. Here’s the kicker:
If the frogs had used the distance from the plane of the equator to the north pole rather than the distance along the Prime Meridian as the standard they could well have ended up with a base unit sometimes called a Pyramid Inch, 1.001”
If restricted to one set of tools, I would choose metric. They are close enough to standard sizes to use without rounding nuts and bolts on standard sizes. Standard US sockets are a tad too small when trying the opposite(ie 7mm 1/4”) I once owned an Olds Cutlass that was mixed standard and metric, it was a bitch to work on with anything but metric tools
I wonder if the Russians still use the “arshin”?
I think that we could probably do better, and include human factors engineering into it, if we tried. We won't, of course. ;)
Humans are insane.
/johnny
Too bad Le Corbusier’s “Modulor” system didn’t catch on. It was an attempt to create an anthropometric system based upon human scale to bridge the Imperial and Metric systems.
I’ve often thought that design, in architecture, automobiles, you name it has gone downhill since traditional npmethods and measures have become the norm. Proportions are seldom as nice, few good lines, just clunkier overall, sort of cartoonish.
Who's lazy?
I know and can relate to metric and standard, but I find metric to be less than suited for daily issues, just as measuring liquid in tenths or hundredths of a gallon would be of little value.
I can replace "keg" with "100-150 liter containers", but people are going to say 100 is too small and 150 is too heavy. You could go fractional and go with 130 liters, and people will still refer to that useful volume container as a "keg", which will have more meaning to them than 130 liters.
Base 60 and base 12 are very practical bases when people would fight to the death over booty not being divided equally.
Base 10 works if you have 2 or 5 members in your gang.
Base 12 works for 2, 3, 4 or 6 members
Base 60 works for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30 gangstas...
Ok, about the machine shops finding metric unwieldy. Why is that? Can you give an example that a non machinist can understand.
“if we want to trade with the rest of the world.”
Really? We don’t trade with the rest of the world as it is??
All my machine lead screws and dials are “English”. I don’t need to spend more money just to change to that other system.
There are a lot more drill sizes in the English system than the metric. More is usually better.
Not to mention when you are trying to measure small increments. A milimeter is too large and 1/100 of a milimeter is too small. The 1000th of an inch is the most logical measurement in the machine shop
I agree 100%. The metric system has no soul. It’s good for robots and geeks and central planners but not real people.
When I was in Tucson several years ago I drove down to see the San Xavier del Bac mission a few miles south. On the freeway back to Tucson they had distances in kilometers only--no miles.
But when something works then why change it? Only if you can find something that works better that is worth the annoyance of the change and the loss of the advantages of the prior system.
So far the flame ain't worth the candle. They are changing things for the sake of change not for any true improvement.
Humans are insane.
And there we agree. :)
In Fahrenheit, 100 was supposed to represent human body temperature, and 0 the freezing point of brine. The problem was, the instruments of the era were too imprecise to hit those numbers square on, and the system drifted over time.
Yep.
“if we want to trade with the rest of the world.”
One thing you are missing. The rest of the world wants to sell things to the biggest consumer market on earth. So they will build things to suit us. A good example is right hand drive cars. They are available for the countries that drive backwards. They always will be.
Even if China overtakes us someday as the biggest consumer market, the world will still be happy to build things to suit our large economy.
And conversely, they will buy things uniquely American if the product satisfies their need.
Anyone use metric drive sets?
I’ve never seen that, even in foreign made tools (not talking Chinese tools-German)
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