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Everyone knows the metric system is better and easier, the problem is the amount of time and effort It would take for the US to adjust. Too many people, including myself, don't want to go through the effort of having to relearn measurements.
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On July 07 2010 06:16 101TFP wrote:You think you know which way to write a date is right? You disagree with the metric or the imperial system? You have an important opinion on whether or not Fahrenheit is a flawed unit to measure temperatures? Then this thread right here is the place for your argument. Please refrain from discussing these topics anywhere else on tl.net. Thank you. + Show Spoiler [click if you need a jumpstart] +
The imperial system is far superior to any other system because i know how long a foot is.
Writing a date YDM is the best way because a year is bigger than a month. and days are inside months.
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit based his system on the temperature of a fart in a moderately heated room being 100 °F
Discuss!
If you grow up not using imperial system how would you know how long a foot is? Are your feet both 12" in length?
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Tradition is a terrible reason to do anything and the imperial system is no exception. It's really frustrating in the school systems too because science relies on metric. So much time is wasted teaching the metric system again and again so people can actually do science experiments. If people just started out on metric it'd probably be easier to get kids interested in science.
Anyways you can't just switch and it's hard to transition, but people also blow it out of proportion. It's not like it hasn't been done before or anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication
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Well everyone uses DD/MM/YYYY here so you have to do the same.
Scientific stuff: metric, everyday use: mix of both. Again, that's what everyone here does.
The only time I remember seeing Fahrenheit is when we were writing programs to convert it to Celsius.
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Use metric for science. Because you need to be accurate
Use imperial for everyday use. Because who gives a shit how vague it is.
And wasn't 100F the temperature of freshly-squeezed pig's blood or something?
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The only beef I have with the Imperial System is that there are 5280 ft in one mile.
I mean, why can't we just use nice and normal 1s and 0s.
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imperial system takes more skill
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To be honest, it's all semantics unless you're looking at it from an industrial/engineering point of view. Each industry has its standards, and even when there is collaboration between countries - there's generally consensus on which units are to be utilized anyway. I'm in petroleum engineering and a ton of countries use US Oilfield Units (psi, millidarcy, STB, and centipoise). I've heard from aerospace engineering students that the metric system is used primarily in that particular industry (NASA included I believe).
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This is one of the most funny threads i seen in my life ;D On topic: the metric system is best because it makes sense. Also people shouldn't be so afraid of giving up a piece of culture for convenience. It's just silly, all countrys should learn english as a second language (preferably english since it's so wiedly used)!
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On July 07 2010 06:22 Barrin wrote:
Writing a date MM/DD/YY is the best way because that's the way most people in the US already do it. Again, no sense in confusing everyone now for potentially slightly more smoothness later.
I am often confused by MDY dates. Not very surprisingly as DMY is what basically everyone uses in Germany.
Both Fahrenheit and Celsius are worse than Kelvin. Well, Kelvin is a bit unpleasant for everyday use (the temperature today is 291K?), but only the unit 1K is arbitray, the 0 sits at a proper place, while both Fahrenheit and Celsius are completely arbitrary.
The foot is a horrible unit; not even a single person's feet are equally long. I prefer units that don't suggest that they are related to real objects when they are completely arbitrary.
And while we're at it I suggest that we define a base length via quantum physics, and based on that and the speed of light in vacuum we can define a new unit for time etc.
Then we use a decimal or even better binary/hexadecimal system to deal with larger units. 2^n is much nicer than 10^n.
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how can fahrenheit be flawed but not celcius, when fahrenheit is just a linear transformation of it
anyway I think kelvin scale is the best, since 0 is the coldest possible temperature and goes upward from there
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What's the definition of a centimeter? What's the definition of a liter? What's special about the triple-point and boiling point of water?
The only thing special about the metric system is its base-10, not base-crazy-ass-bastard.
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Well 1 meter = the distance light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second
Well a foot = The length of something of something thats gone long time ago
What is most useful? Like can i be in Canada, UK, or Uganda and find out how much a meter is? YES because its universal and can be found in any laboratory.
But imagine we forgot how much a foot was, we couldnt figure out how much it was again.
Anyways
How would you define a newton in imperical system? (with imperical units) o.0 LOL
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Eh, even in the U.S. once you've taken some kind of science class you wish everyone were using metric instead of customary.
Like the hell is a foot-pound? A Joule is so much nicer...
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As a mathematician living in America...
I cringe at my country's scales and systems.
We need to switch to metric.
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So I had to measure the dimensions for a kitchen project this past weekend, going from inches to yards to inches is fucking annoying. When you actually work with the numbers, you appreciate it.
The basic argument of I know how long/wide/deep/etc. X is so that makes Y system superior applies to everyone regardless of what system you prefer.
On July 07 2010 07:19 Loser777 wrote:
Eh, even in the U.S. once you've taken some kind of science class you wish everyone were using metric instead of customary.
Like the hell is a foot-pound? A Joule is so much nicer...
I like slugs better than I like Newtons.
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On July 07 2010 07:16 exeexe wrote:
Well 1 meter = the distance light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second
Well a foot = The length of something of something thats gone long time ago
What is most useful? Like can i be in Canada, UK, or Uganda and find out how much a meter is? YES because its universal and can be found in any laboratory.
But imagine we forgot how much a foot was, we couldnt figure out how much it was again.
Anyways
How would you define a newton in imperical system? (with imperical units) o.0 LOL
Well pressure is measured in pounds per square inch (psi), and that's essentially Force normalized by gravity (weight/area, instead of force/area)
You obviously aren't going to use it for scientific calculations, but for everyday use the imperial system works fine.
You can't say that a meter is more scientific than a foot. But, you can say the metric SCALE is more scientific than the imperial scale. A meter is just a meter. Which is 100cm, which is 1000mm. A foot is just a foot, which is 12 inches, or 1/3 of a yard.
You also can't go around saying its more useful. I'm about 6' 2" and weigh about 15 stone (210 pounds). I use that for my height and weight all the time.
How many meters or kilograms is that? Couldn't give a shit. Nobody knows what I'm talking about if I say it in meters or kilograms.
My mother (back in England, where I grew up) still, to this day, converts everything back into shillings, crowns and whatever other crazy systems they had back in the day. Would you like to try converting that post-war generation to the metric system on the grounds that "its more useful, dammit!"?
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EPT
