Do you use Imperial or Metric? - Page 65

On February 16 2012 02:30 Ungrateful wrote:
Lol at people who use the metric system and "weigh" themselves in grams and relate it to pounds. Learn your own system please, mass does not = weight.

On February 16 2012 00:54 Oshuy wrote:


It could be done and it has been a number of times
(see Decimal Time)

Usual way to do it is to decide 1 day = 10 hours, 1 hour = 100 min, 1min = 100 secs.
It is now a bit late to make the change, but it wouldn't bother me much to wake up at 2: 75 instead of 6:36 ...

Of course, attempts to turn a 365.25 year into decimals get a bit strange. The french republican calendar proposed weeks of 10 days, month of 30 days each, then 12 months and additional days "as necessary".
(see french republican calendar)

Note that other calendars have juste ruled out the fact that 1 year=1 earth cycle around the sun, which then allows to define a year of 1000 days.
(question that would arise for example if we ever get to other planets: why keep a strange year value that matches an orbital time of this planet ?)

On February 16 2012 03:33 Batch wrote:

The metric system is based on our planet as well. One meter is 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the equator and the North Pole.

Btw, I'm obviously using the metric system (look at my country) and would love if we would change the way we measure time to a decimal system. 10 hours/day, 100 min/hour and 100 seconds/minute would make much more sense. Days, months and years would be harder to change, both theoretically and practically.

On February 16 2012 05:37 Jerubaal wrote:
I always curse the high heavens for being born under the Imperial system when I'm baking cakes.

On February 16 2012 00:12 Abraxas514 wrote:


This isn't entirely true. 1kg at g=9.81 m/s (exactly sea level) is ~2.2lbs. kg is a measure of mass, lb of weight. More accurate would be to say 9.81 newtons is 2.2#.

But yeah, I'm a canadian engineer and having to learn both systems is awfull. Officially, we don't use imperial the same way England doesn't, but that doesn't stop non-government related goods and services from using the system.

But in a couple generations, imperial will dissapear, the only exceptions I can see are people's height and buying large quantities of weed (funny how you buy by gram -> ounce -> pound).

On February 01 2012 03:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


That does make sense (that being brought up learning one system means you'll be fine hearing it). I just mean that there is a larger scale of numbers to work with in Fahrenheit (as far as regular Earth temperatures are concerned)... going from 0 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit only covers from to -18 to 38 degrees Celsius. A range of 56 degrees is far less descriptive than a range of 100. I'd rather be more accurate in integers than need to resort to decimals colloquially. Perhaps that's just a personal preference though, and (as I said before) that probably takes a backseat to any important, objective scientific applications.

On February 16 2012 08:05 Manimal_pro wrote:


right..... do you know at what temperature water freezes? 0 Celsius or 32 fahrenheit
do you know at what temperature water boils? 100 Celsius or 212 fahrenheit

i can totally see the logic there

On February 16 2012 02:50 divinesage wrote:


Actually mass can equal weight. 1 pound-mass has an equivalent force of 1 pound-force. Similarly, a kilogram-mass has an equivalent value to 1 kilogram-force. But of course we rarely use kilogram-force. We normally just use Newtons.

Also, to be honest I dislike the imperial system because I don't see much of a reason retaining it when I have to go through all those painful conversions from pounds to kilograms or gallons to metre^3. It's just time consuming when I have to do that as an engineering student.

On February 16 2012 02:50 divinesage wrote:


Actually mass can equal weight. 1 pound-mass has an equivalent force of 1 pound-force. Similarly, a kilogram-mass has an equivalent value to 1 kilogram-force. But of course we rarely use kilogram-force. We normally just use Newtons.

On February 16 2012 03:33 Batch wrote:

The metric system is based on our planet as well. One meter is 1/10 000 000 of the distance between the equator and the North Pole.

Btw, I'm obviously using the metric system (look at my country) and would love if we would change the way we measure time to a decimal system. 10 hours/day, 100 min/hour and 100 seconds/minute would make much more sense. Days, months and years would be harder to change, both theoretically and practically.