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YYY-MM-DD-HH-MinMin-SecSec is probably the best, its the easier to sort, and the time convention is common too. Nobody does 10:30:45am as 45:30:10 (or the USA edition 45:10:30).
But I always write the month in letters (Feb etc) in order to avoid confusion. Thank you USA for making me write an extra character every time I write the date, wearing out my keyboard/pen ink/hand prematurely.
Metric-wise i believe Burma, Liberia, and USA are the only ones still on imperial. If USA were metric they would probably be threatening all sorts of UN sanctions or unilateral invasions on the other two, but might is right I guess :p?
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User was temp banned for this post.
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On July 07 2010 07:25 Bibdy wrote: 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.
Who the hell uses stones as a measurement (other than British people)? The fact that you needed to put the mass in pounds proves that it isn't widely used...and therefore, not useful.
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United States24495 Posts
On July 07 2010 10:12 Konfustikator wrote: Metric-wise i believe Burma, Liberia, and USA are the only ones still on imperial. If USA were metric they would probably be threatening all sorts of UN sanctions or unilateral invasions on the other two, but might is right I guess :p? Yes, your implication that the USA invades any country that does something differently than the USA is correct. Especially if it is hypocritical to do so.
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On July 07 2010 10:36 Linx_101 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 07:25 Bibdy wrote: 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.
Who the hell uses stones as a measurement (other than British people)? The fact that you needed to put the mass in pounds proves that it isn't widely used...and therefore, not useful.
The British...because I'm British..durp durp.
Should I say it in pounds so all those Canadians in Salisbury will understand me better?
I said that because I switch back and forth between the two numbers depending on who I'm talking to.
I NEVER use Kilograms or Meters. For anybody. Why memorize my height/weight in another format that I'm going ever going to use in Europe? And why would I run around Europe announcing my height/weight to anybody? My doctor, friends and family, the only people likely to be interested in such numbers, aren't there.
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Haha cool thread
Americans have secretly been using the metric system all this time. Look at the smallest unit of length in the imperial system in this table. It's called the Thou, or Mil or Point, and is 1/1000 of an inch. (Notice "Mil" as in Milli as in 1/1000).
Now for some imperial calculations gogo!
I want to build the worlds largest swimming pool with the following measurements:
length = 1 furlong and 3 chains width = 2 chains, 7 fathoms and 2 feet depth = 4 yards and 7 inches
How many gallons of water will fit in my swimming pool?
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As an American who was raised with the Imperial system my whole life I will say this. The metric system definitely makes more sense but it is not without it's flaws.
For example, It goes from millimeters to centimeters straight into meters (sure there are the lesser used deci- deka- or whatever but no one uses those). Centimeters are much too small for daily use of measurement, Inches are just so much more approriate in so many circumstances. That is not to say CM/MM are useless, they have their use in exactly the same way that inches are too large to be measuring smaller things. Same with Feet, It's absurd to say I'm 185cm tall, when you could simply say 6 feet tall. It's much easier to measure out, and much more practical in the same way inches are when measuring things smaller than a meter/foot but larger than a cm.
Yards are kind of dumb, since meters are the equivalent and there are almost never used unless referring to NFL or other sports.
The only reason why I don't us kmph over mph is because all the roads here are written as mph, all the ads are written as mph, etc. I have literally no clue how fast 30 kmph unless I look it up. So that's just unfortunate.
As far as weight/volumes I use those in the same manner as distance. kilos are too light, liters are too small, need my gallons and pounds. Ounces are around only because of a shotglass as far as I'm concerned. and cups, tsp, tbsp, are only around for cooking.
F and C are both kind of fucked up imho.
PS- all the rest of the imperial units; chains, fathoms, leagues, cables, etc. I guarantee you 95% of americans have no fucking clue what they measure or what they are mutliples/divisions of. Most use a mix of both systems like I do.
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On July 07 2010 09:48 EvanED wrote: From the pictures thread:
I agree on the other metric points... but I've actually come to prefer Fahrenheit.
Meanwhile, to quote some Slashdot poster, Fahrenheit is "a wonderfully human" temperature scale. 0 degrees is too damn cold, 100 degrees is too damn hot, and 50 degrees is pretty pleasant. Even if you disagree with exactly where those points should go (perhaps you are crazy live in Arizona and find 0 degrees far more unpleasant than 100 and think 70 or 80 is ideal, Fahrenheit is still closer to covering "natural human temperatures" in an easy-to-work-with, natural range than Celsius is.
0 celsius is too damn cold. 50 degrees is too damn hot and 25 is exactly room temperature. 50 farenheit is 10 celsius. Which I think is quite cold. Not that this argument means anything lol but I think celcius is more human. Also 0 and 100 actually mean something. Correct me if I'm wrong but 0 and 100 farenheit don't actually mean anything?
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On July 07 2010 23:00 TheFinalWord wrote: 0 celsius is too damn cold. 50 degrees is too damn hot and 25 is exactly room temperature. 50 farenheit is 10 celsius. Which I think is quite cold. Not that this argument means anything lol but I think celcius is more human. The problem is that 50 C is way more "too damn hot" than 0 C is "too damn cold". (I don't even consider 0 C "too damn cold" for just hanging around outside, but that's latitude bias I think.) Consider that the highest natural temperature recorded anywhere on Earth ever is 58 C, but the record low anywhere is -89 C. I'm not sure if I've ever been in 50 C natural heat, but we have weeks each winter where the high is below 0 C, and I don't even live anywhere particularly cold.
IMO if you want a scale that measures "weather" temperatures in a nice natural scale, Fahrenheit is the one to use.
Also 0 and 100 actually mean something. Correct me if I'm wrong but 0 and 100 farenheit don't actually mean anything?
They mean Fahrenheit was kinda crazy. (At least the legend I heard was that 100 was a mis-measured body temperature and 0 degrees was as cold of a ice-salt-water mixture as Fahrenheit could make.)
That said... while it's true that 0 and 100 Celsius mean something, what they mean I think is somewhat arbitrary. And here the usual metric arguments don't hold. The metric system is nice because you've got 10 millimeters in a centimeter, 1000 meters in a kilometer, 1000 grams in a kilogram, etc. Conversions between units. How often do you see "millicelsius" or "kilodegrees Celsius"? It's almost never true that you'll see someone arguing for the metric system on the basis of "one meter is a more natural unit than one foot", but it's exactly that sort of argument people are trying to make with Celsius.
The only scales that actually mean something with any non-arbitrary basis are those where 0 is rooted at absolute zero.
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On July 07 2010 16:55 CharlieMurphy wrote: For example, It goes from millimeters to centimeters straight into meters (sure there are the lesser used deci- deka- or whatever but no one uses those). We use the term decimeters all the time...
On July 07 2010 16:55 CharlieMurphy wrote: Same with Feet, It's absurd to say I'm 185cm tall, when you could simply say 6 feet tall. It's much easier to measure out, and much more practical in the same way inches are when measuring things smaller than a meter/foot but larger than a cm. How many are exactly 6 feet tall? Also when we talk about length of people we say "1 and 85", we don't mention the units so no problem with the speech.
On July 07 2010 16:55 CharlieMurphy wrote: As far as weight/volumes I use those in the same manner as distance. kilos are too light, liters are too small, need my gallons and pounds. Ounces are around only because of a shotglass as far as I'm concerned. and cups, tsp, tbsp, are only around for cooking. Um, one pound is roughly half as much as one kilogram, also the reason litres and kilograms are superior is due to the ease of transforming from the other metric units! One litre is a cubic decimeter, one kilogram is a litre of water and most organic stuffs density like meat can be approximated well with waters density so it makes total sense.
Now, how many gallons is a cubic feet??? What is the transition between gallons and pounds???
On July 07 2010 09:48 EvanED wrote:From the pictures thread: Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 00:10 BabyFarkMcgeeZax wrote: 0 degrees Celsius = H2O freezing point <----smart 100 degrees Celsius = H2O Boiling point <----smart
32 degrees Fahrenheit = H2O freezing point <-----stupid 212 degrees Fahrenheit = H2O boiling point <-----stupid
I agree on the other metric points... but I've actually come to prefer Fahrenheit. First, what's so special about water? How often is it important that water freezes at 0 degrees or boils at 100 degrees? I freeze and boil water all the time, and I don't know if I ever actually measure the temperature. I put water on the stove and turn it on; when it's bubbling, it's boiling. I don't pull out a thermometer and say "oh, it's at 80 degC so 20 more to go." Um, have you ever heard about snow and ice outside? When you got negative degrees it is white outside and the roads/walkways might be slippery, that is by far the most important temperature jump in everyday lives so it makes total sense to have it as the 0 point on a layman scale unless you live so far south that the temperature never drops below 0. Water boiling at 100 is just a good reference point to have since it is something everyone can relate to, every time you boil water it is almost exactly 100 degrees, not a single degree above or below.
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On July 07 2010 23:31 Klockan3 wrote: Um, have you ever heard about snow and ice outside? When you got negative degrees it is white outside and the roads/walkways might be slippery, that is by far the most important temperature jump in everyday lives so it makes total sense to have it as the 0 point on a layman scale unless you live so far south that the temperature never drops below 0. Water boiling at 100 is just a good reference point to have since it is something everyone can relate to, every time you boil water it is almost exactly 100 degrees, not a single degree above or below. Okay, fair enough; I will concede that benefit of having 0 at freezing. I still stick by my original point though which is that Fahrenheit is more natural for measuring "weather" temperatures.
Though I'm starting to wonder if I'm biased in that respect by where I've lived: in central PA, where I grew up, the temperatures you'd experience during a typical year would run from about 10 F to 95 F. Here in southern Wisconsin, it's more like -10 to 90 F. But both of those are quite close to the 0-100 scale in Fahrenheit, but those are like -12 C to 35 C or -23 C to 35 C, resp. Neither of those scales are very natural at all IMO.
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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 already do it. Again, no sense in confusing everyone now for potentially slightly more smoothness later.
so you're saying its easier to confuse 6 billion people on a day-to-day basis rather than 300 million for the sake of semantics.
right on.
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Ideally 1 unit of temperature should be defined in such a way that 1 Joule and 1 Calorie becomes equal. 1 calorie is the amount of energy required to heat 1 cubic centimeter of water 1 degree celcius, while 1 joule is the energy required to push 1 cubic decimeter of water with a force of 1 newton a distance 1 meter. So we would have 1 temperature unit being 1/4.184... of 1 celcius.
Of course this isn't exact since the density of water and such isn't exact but it would be extremely close making calculations even easier than they are now!
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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
The imperial counterpart to a newton is the pound. The imperial counterpart to a kilogram is actually a slug, approx. 32 pounds on earth.
The imperial system is based on the old system of base 12 (dozens, etc.) and base 12 is easier than base 10, but we use base 10 these days so the imperial is fucked up now.
12 inches = foot 12/4 or 3 feet = yard 12/2 or 6 feet = fathom 12/6 * 1000 (yay, base 10) or 2000 pounds = ton 12 * 440 (that one's arbitrary, i think it has something to do with the Romans) = mile
base 12 for the win.
As for dates, I prefer DD/MM/YYYY because it goes from smallest to largest.
Well 1 meter = the distance light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second
Are you telling me you want kids to memorize THAT number? I can't even remember it for more than 30 seconds!
And if such, we can remember feet by the 1:30.48 foot to centimeter ratio.
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On July 08 2010 00:12 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Are you telling me you want kids to memorize THAT number? I can't even remember it for more than 30 seconds!
And if such, we can remember feet by the 1:30.48 foot to centimeter ratio.
YES! and i want kids to rule the world ! irony may have been used.
So you base the foot on the metric scale, well thats a step in the right direction. Next step would be to just skip the imperical scale.
For the rest of your post i choose to ignorre it, because you seem to be happy with having an inferior system and i dont want to ruin it when you are happy and as long as i dont have to use the imperical system im happy too ^_^.
On July 07 2010 23:51 Klockan3 wrote: while 1 joule is the energy required to push 1 cubic decimeter of water with a force of 1 newton a distance 1 meter.
pushing water? what are you talking about? Joule is the energy required to lift 1 kg by 1 meter.
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I can't really say which is better but I am a Canadian and prefer to use the imperial over metric, for some reason it just clicks easier. Also its better in construction, its rare you will see people use metric unless its very fine carpentry cause the ticks are too close to matter and your pencil mark alone is going to screw the measurement. For me its just easier to see in feet and inches but of course I am bias because construction and carpentry work. EDIT: I think Imperial is better for practical uses like measuring a persons height, most carpentry and things of that nature but for anything requiring fine numbers and measurements metric is the way to go.
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Germany2896 Posts
In every day life I use metric, at university we usually don't. Imperial is retarded. The right way to write a date is YYYY-MM-DD, lexical sorting for the win. And never ever use AM/PM when writing a time.
@exeexe "Joule is the energy required to lift 1 kg by 1 meter." no, just no. Klockan is right even if his sentence written a bit strange.
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masterofchaos, no it is correct, i looked it up before i posted it. Never heard of pushing water before, but funny and nice try ^^
edit: right i hate to be wrong but none of us is right anyway: upon further looking deeper into it i found this frase to be the truth: One joule is defined as the amount of work done by a force of one newton moving an object through a distance of one metre
What i dont get then, is if you move something 1 meter, there would be resistance like friction or air resistance and even if you put it into space and there are no external forces like gravity you should only give it a very tiny tip and it will move 1 meter with easy, and this little tip can be less than equelevant to 1 joule.
? can you explain that?
edit: ok i get it now
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On July 08 2010 04:43 MasterOfChaos wrote: In every day life I use metric, at university we usually don't. Imperial is retarded. The right way to write a date is YYYY-MM-DD, lexical sorting for the win. And never ever use AM/PM when writing a time.
@exeexe "Joule is the energy required to lift 1 kg by 1 meter." no, just no. Klockan is right even if his sentence written a bit strange.
After many asked me whether it's DD/MM or MM/DD I just use YYYY MM. DD. When I write without year, I'm now doing it MM-DD with a 0 in place of first D if it's a single digit day so people won't ask again.
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On July 08 2010 00:12 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:Show nested quote +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 The imperial counterpart to a newton is the pound. The imperial counterpart to a kilogram is actually a slug, approx. 32 pounds on earth. The imperial system is based on the old system of base 12 (dozens, etc.) and base 12 is easier than base 10, but we use base 10 these days so the imperial is fucked up now. 12 inches = foot 12/4 or 3 feet = yard 12/2 or 6 feet = fathom 12/6 * 1000 (yay, base 10) or 2000 pounds = ton 12 * 440 (that one's arbitrary, i think it has something to do with the Romans) = mile base 12 for the win. As for dates, I prefer DD/MM/YYYY because it goes from smallest to largest. Show nested quote +Well 1 meter = the distance light travels through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second Are you telling me you want kids to memorize THAT number? I can't even remember it for more than 30 seconds! And if such, we can remember feet by the 1:30.48 foot to centimeter ratio.
The base 12 system makes use of the fact that 12 can be divided in many ways. It has factors 6, 2, 3, and 4, making it the optimal system for approximation. Back when easily approximating something was key using the Imperial system was very effective. However, now that we value accuracy over approximation Metric makes more sense. Therefore, those that say Imperial is more usable in every day life have some merit. I mean, just look at the measurement of angles: the degrees system is alot easier because 360 is very divisible number, but radians is the better but harder to use measurement because it is more usable in mathematical equations.
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