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i live in the US, why would i use metric if no one would know wtf i'm talking about?
On December 09 2011 14:37 Pkol wrote:
Pretty much echoing what everyone else is saying. It's pretty much the US and Liberia that haven't gone Metric yet. It makes more sense etc etc etc.
Do they teach metric at all in American schools?
only in chemistry did we ever use metric for me...
in math and shit too but that doesn't exactly count since it's just an arbitrary number...like the area of some object. but its normally in feet.
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On December 09 2011 14:46 JustinL wrote:
The imperial system is only around because people can't be bothered changing. It's hilarious reading some American people reply that imperial makes more sense. It only makes sense to you because you have been using it since you were a kid. From an unbiased perspective, metric just makes more sense to use. You can do more complex calculations in your head with it. SI units are based off it.
I had no idea Americans are told the imperial system is called 'standard'. It is as far away from standard as you can get.
I don't know where people are getting standard from either. Even in school (California), we learned that the two common systems were imperial and metric.
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As a Canadian, in everyday use, imperial for most things except the temperature. Pounds are more commonly used than kilograms, feet and inches more common than meters or centimeters and miles more common than kilometers.
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Out here at least (Colorado) we learned it as English (Imperial) and S.I. (Metric). Chemistry/Physics was all metric, but engineering classes were in english units, since that's what we use in the industry. Now that I'm working, I use no metric whatsoever.
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On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system.
I see no convenience (zero) with having a second 'casual' system to go along with a logical system that already exists.
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I use imperial only because otherwise no one would be able to visualize what I'm talking about very well, but it's still a stupid system.
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On December 09 2011 14:54 Mazer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system. I see no convenience (zero) with having a second 'casual' system to go along with a logical system that already exists.
Yes, but there is already a casual system of measurement in place in America and there is nothing I can do about it. Just be glad you live outside the US and don't have to deal with it. I simply proposed a change that would make sense for a casual system of measurement, and would give more information at a glance for the average person.
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Yeah I think Fontong just feels Fahrenheit is better for casuals because he is use to it. I like Celsius because its so similar to Kelvin but the numbers are smaller so its less of a mouthful in talk.
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In Singapore, we use the Metric system.
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On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system.
The practicality of any temperature measurement for day to day usage is based purely on whether you're used to it. Fahrenheit is more practical if you're used to it, likewise for celcius. It has nothing to do with what arbitrary value you give each number and everything to do with which is more common where you live. Even Kelvin would be practical if everybody used it because everybody would understand it.
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Standardization of a measuring system based on tangible, ubiquitous objects is not childish- it's pragmatic. In addition, the USA isn't the only country that hasn't adopted the metric system - the UK, for example, still use some imperial units.
Having said that, in the modern world there are other ways of standardizing the system, so ideally I would prefer if everyone used SI units, as is already the case in scientific fields.
At the same time, there is nothing necessarily wrong with being practical about it. All of you probably use units like hour, day, year even though they are technically not metric units. Are you going to fault particle physicists for not using kilogram and joule? What about astronomers for not using meter? As I've said though, there does need to be a little more consistency.
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On December 09 2011 15:00 Swede wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system. The practicality of any temperature measurement for day to day usage is based purely on whether you're used to it. Fahrenheit is more practical if you're used to it, likewise for celcius. It has nothing to do with what arbitrary value you give each number and everything to do with which is more common where you live. Even Kelvin would be practical if everybody used it because everybody would understand it.
I dunno. Having to say the temperature is three hunderd and twenty-two in everyday conversations seems a little tedious.
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Several people in this thread are using the argument that wood is always bought in imperial measurements as a pro for the imperial system.
For those who dont know, the measurements that you give for buying wood (like a 2 by 4) aren't the actual measurements. When you buy a 2"x4" it's not actually 2 inches by 4 inches but is closer 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches because of pressure treating, etc. Using those imperial measurements are just a relic of the past way that we cut wood.
In Canada we are taught ONLY the metric system in school. However, most of us tend to learn the imperial system for practical reasons. In conversation I find that Canadians tend to stray from metric when talking about weight or an individual's height. Also, often people will give the air temperature in celsius but refer to the temperature of liquid's in fahrenheit but I think that is starting to change
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Isn't this just a "do you live in america" thread?
I use inches in Autodesk, but that's about it I think...
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fyi technically the US standard is not a carbon copy of imperial
imperial became standardized after the US became a sovereign state so it will differ from states that became independent from the British empire after.
The easy example is that a pint in US is 16fl oz in imperial it's 20fl oz also the fl oz are different slighly
And they both omit uses of certain obscure measurement names.
On December 09 2011 14:54 Mazer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system. I see no convenience (zero) with having a second 'casual' system to go along with a logical system that already exists.
again how is 10 logical? speaking in terms of math something that is base 8 or base 12 ideally would be better. only reason why we use 10 is becuase we have 10 fingers.
Not all cultures math systems throughout the ages used base 10
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I only use imperial for peoples height way easier to visualise height in feet and inches.
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On December 09 2011 15:00 Swede wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system. The practicality of any temperature measurement for day to day usage is based purely on whether you're used to it. Fahrenheit is more practical if you're used to it, likewise for celcius. It has nothing to do with what arbitrary value you give each number and everything to do with which is more common where you live. Even Kelvin would be practical if everybody used it because everybody would understand it.
Fahrenheit and Celsius make sense for everyday usage because they are easy to understand for humans. Having freezing at 273 doesn't do much good for the average person, so yes it does have to do with the arbitrary value you give to each number. Yes, Kelvin makes more sense than Celsius, which in turn makes more sense than Fahrenheit. However, for the average person it is simply better to have arbitrary points, like the freezing point of water, set to things like 0. It's a bit of a pain to have 280 be cold weather and 297 be fair weather.
On December 09 2011 15:06 semantics wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2011 14:54 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:44 Fontong wrote:On December 09 2011 14:38 Mazer wrote:On December 09 2011 14:34 Fontong wrote:
The only good thing about imperial, in my opinion, is Fahrenheit. The weather rarely goes above 100, so that's basically a max and you can go off that. Not having freezing at zero is a pain though :/ A good system for casual temperature measurement would have the hottest weather for temperate climes at 100 degrees and freezing at zero. Very easy to tell how the weather is.
Or you can set 100 to be something consistent like I dunno, the boiling point of water at a certain pressure since you're already using 0 for the freezing point of water at a certain pressure. Seems like everyone decided to gloss over my post. "A good system for casual" Causal. As in day to day, as in the most important temperature for most people will be the temperature of the weather. I only mean that it's nice to have 100 degrees as a general cap for the weather and freezing at zero. Jesus, people are so touchy about their systems of measurement. I don't even think anyone in this thread is really arguing that imperial > metric, as that is basically impossible to argue. I simply mentioned practically the only convenience of using the imperial system. I see no convenience (zero) with having a second 'casual' system to go along with a logical system that already exists. again how is 10 logical? speaking in terms of math something that is base 8 or base 12 ideally would be better. only reason why we use 10 is becuase we have 10 fingers. Not all cultures math systems throughout the ages used base 10
Yes, but it doesn't make sense at all to have there be 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and 1760 yards in a mile. Having a non base ten system would be fine, but for the fact that we already use it for counting.
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I use the standard metric system.
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One of my friends was discussing this with me before. "Standard" (imperial) is actually a very convenient notation to use in civil engineering. Basically, metric gives you precision and easy scales but at intervals that aren't very useful in a practical sense (e.g. day to day). While both metric and imperial can be broken into fractions, everyday measurements usually are usually *small* whole numbers when done in imperial as opposed to metric.
A few other examples:
Long Distances:
There aren't many times when you use say "go 700 feet that way" or "after 200 meters turn right". If you're in the city, you usually say go X number of blocks. If you're travelling farther distances, you'll want to use kilometers or miles. I think we can all agree that miles and kilometers are about equally useful in that respect.
Short Distances:
If you are trying to point something out to someone in the same room, I don't know what the "standard" increment of measurement is in metric (10 cm?) but increments of a half foot are quite easy to work with and scale well (it's easier to triple 2.5 feet than it is to triple 75 centimeters).
Building material sizes:
Most metal sizes (e.g. rebar, welding, metal sheets) can have precision to 1/8". The equivalent to that in metric is 3.175mm. While you could say "yeah but they could have just made metal in increments of 3mm", imperial has benefits when you start looking at areas and moments of inertia.
Rebar #'s are done in 1/8 of an inch increments; so a #4 rebar has a diameter of 4/8 or 1/2 an inch, #8 rebar has a diameter of 1 inch, #9 has a diameter of 9/8 of an inch. The corresponding mm's are 12.7, 25.4, and 28.65 (you don't use cm that often since stress is often measured in megapascals, N/mm^2). The areas of these rebars are: .2in^2, .44 in^2, and 1 in^2 or 129mm^2, 509mm^2, and 645mm^2; imperial here is much easier to spot check.
Moments of Inertia:
In order to calculate how much a beam will deflect (we have to control deflection in order for people to feel comfortable in a building), you need to use moments of inertia. Moments of inertia have units of length^4. I'm not sure if these are usually done in cm or mm (since no stress is involved) but in either case the metric value comes out to be substantially larger than the standard value. In the case of mm, 78 in^4 becomes 32,466,051 mm^4. In tall buildings, those moments of inertia can quickly rise to billions or trillions for the members at the base.
Scale:
Because you (usually) want to stay in the units of stress, you typically stick with inches or mm all the way through your calculations. You may say, 32466051 mm^4 is no problem, just use .3246 cm^4, but then you have to be very careful whenever you are using powers (for example, in concrete analysis you usually use square roots) since 10mm^(0.5) will not give you the same value as 1cm^(0.5).
Although the inches to feet conversion might sound quite stupid, it offers a check to make sure you haven't forgotten to convert units anywhere since the number itself actually changes (in metric only the magnitude would change).
Anyways, I think that these are a few of the reasons why it has stayed in use for so long. From a science standpoint, I agree that metric would be more useful since it offers scale and a high degree of precision. From an engineering standpoint, however, inches and feet do have their uses.
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Being from Canada I think in a mixture of Metric and imperial units.
Distances Tiny: mixture if its less then an inch, I think about it in mm.
Distances moderate: mixture - if its less then 20ft, then I think about it in feet, other wise I use meters. I think this has something to do with wanting higher resolution in smaller distances, as I only tend to think in integer multiples of units. (5' 11'' not 173cm)
Large: Kilometers.
Temperature: mostly metric -When I'm using a convection Oven, I think in Fahrenheit otherwise Celsius. I'm not really sure what 80 F feels like, i think its like a warm summers day (in Canada) but i'm not sure.
Fluid Measures(volume): Always in metric, I didn't know what an fluid ounce was in ml until a year or so ago.
weight: mostly Imperial, if its liquids then I use metric just because it works out really nicely, but other then that I mostly think in pounds. Though I have a better idea of how much a kilogram weighs then a pound.
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EPT
