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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
At the same time, this is the actual definition of Celsius, so those specifics do not mean much ...
Do you know at what temperature mercury becomes solid ? -39°C or -38°F
Do you know at what temperature mercury boils ? 357°C or 675°F
Also note that the "water boils at 100 Celsius" supposes a "water level air pressure" of 101 325 Pa, which is not a round number either. Moreover, modern definition of Celsius puts that boiling point at 99.975°C.
Current definitions are all linked to absolute 0 and Kelvin degrees, which is the only valid reference we know of.
On February 16 2012 05:51 Agaz wrote:
i cant understand shit of the the imperial system... "im 7 feet tall..wat"
Getting used to it is a matter of habit, but I admit that when I hear a distance in feet I imagine a guy setting one foot in front of the other for measurement. Stating "7 feet tall" gets that little guy to walk upwards, which feels weird.
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Both. Was taught metric in school, but always think of height in feet and inches, and weight in stone/lbs. We are still hanging onto miles and acres too. At work it's all metric, though older guys still think in imperial, so it kind of filters down.
How is it hard to get your head around working out what 7 feet is. Do you not have a foot?
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On March 22 2012 18:29 Hipsv wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 03:33 Batch wrote:On February 16 2012 00:54 Oshuy wrote:Time cannot be based on a power of 10. The Earth spins a complete revolution roughly 365.25 (leap year takes into account the decimals) times per cycle around the sun.
In terms of breaking up a day into powers of 10, well I suppose it could be done. 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 ?) 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. Time in terms of the orbit of the earth is a fairly rigid relativistic system. Obviously it works for us now based on the fact that 100% of all humans occupy within 500 miles of the earth, however once we start becoming less and less dependent on a single planet keeping dates and time based on the orbit of the earth is not very ideal. Einstein showed us that time doesn't flow equally across the universe, as such using a fixed way to measure the date is inaccurate and that travelling near the speed of light slows the speed of time. With such factors it is fairly complicated to make a system of dating period, let alone a system that fits within the metric system. Also factoring in that we have units of measurement that depend on our 365 day year (light year) means that it is fairly unlikely to have a system that is metric for dating in the near future. If you actually try to conceptualize what could be the basis for a new system of dating its absolutely mindboggling. (this is also a funny double entendre)
Much of what you wrote here is either misphrased or just wrong.
Why can't humans in space or another planet still use Earth years as a universal timestamp and then have local time? Like the stardate system.
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On March 22 2012 19:09 Vorgrim wrote:How is it hard to get your head around working out what 7 feet is. Do you not have a foot?
Certainly good sir, but so does my 4 year old sister and i'm sad to admit our feet are not equally big.
Also metric because i'm cool like that.
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Damnit, I meant to click Metric..
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On March 23 2012 08:23 FlamingForce wrote:
Damnit, I meant to click Metric..
I did the same, it is because it is "standard" for me. They should have used the imperial name in the poll.
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metric - it´s the more logic approach imho, though imperial does have some charm with its real life "measurements"
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On March 23 2012 08:17 Abraxas514 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2012 18:29 Hipsv wrote:On February 16 2012 03:33 Batch wrote:On February 16 2012 00:54 Oshuy wrote:Time cannot be based on a power of 10. The Earth spins a complete revolution roughly 365.25 (leap year takes into account the decimals) times per cycle around the sun.
In terms of breaking up a day into powers of 10, well I suppose it could be done. 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 ?) 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. Time in terms of the orbit of the earth is a fairly rigid relativistic system. Obviously it works for us now based on the fact that 100% of all humans occupy within 500 miles of the earth, however once we start becoming less and less dependent on a single planet keeping dates and time based on the orbit of the earth is not very ideal. Einstein showed us that time doesn't flow equally across the universe, as such using a fixed way to measure the date is inaccurate and that travelling near the speed of light slows the speed of time. With such factors it is fairly complicated to make a system of dating period, let alone a system that fits within the metric system. Also factoring in that we have units of measurement that depend on our 365 day year (light year) means that it is fairly unlikely to have a system that is metric for dating in the near future. If you actually try to conceptualize what could be the basis for a new system of dating its absolutely mindboggling. (this is also a funny double entendre) Much of what you wrote here is either misphrased or just wrong. Why can't humans in space or another planet still use Earth years as a universal timestamp and then have local time? Like the stardate system. @ last question:
Because at larger distances time as independent entity begins to lose it's value; people at such a planet (let's call it X) would still be able to measure time in earth years, but we would not be able to tell when something at planet X in earth's time, because of the distance.
Didn't read the other post, so don't know about that
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Isn't metric used wherever the english havn't colonized?
Everyone's gonna think that whatever they've grown up using is the more logic one. Personally I have no clue about imperial weights and lenghts apart from a pound being about half a kilo, and a mile is around 1,7 kilometers or so.
A few other interesting differences is the long and short scale of numbers, where for instance english has 'million - billion - trillion', wheras i think every other european language uses the long scale, going 'million - milliard - billion - billiard' with the same intervals, so a billion in for instance german has three more zeroes.
Also the use of commas and dots in numbers. Americans seem to use 1,000,000 for a million and 3.14159265 for pi while Europeans tend to use 1.000.000 and 3,14159265 for pi.
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use both coz im canadian. drive in kmh but im 5 feet 7
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On January 15 2012 01:05 Balian wrote:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bbwDV.png)
I was going to post the same picture, so.. yeah.
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On March 23 2012 09:32 Conti wrote:I was going to post the same picture, so.. yeah.
What's that?
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On March 23 2012 09:55 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 09:32 Conti wrote:On January 15 2012 01:05 Balian wrote: I was going to post the same picture, so.. yeah. What's that?
Spread of worldwide Tiberium contamination
For reference:
![[image loading]](http://cnc3.ru/files/fanart/TheEternal/WorldTiberiumMap1.jpg)
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On March 23 2012 09:55 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 09:32 Conti wrote:On January 15 2012 01:05 Balian wrote: I was going to post the same picture, so.. yeah. What's that?
I think its a pic that highlights that essentially America and only a few other countries use Imperial instead of metric. This though is a vast simplyfing of it. For example here in the UK we officially use Metric, but I don't know many people who could tell em their height in meters, and most people would still use stone and pounds for weight. A lot of it comes from parents. They used imperial so always weighed/measured us using that system.
I personally use both a lot of it depends on the distance. eg if someone was close I would say they are a couple of feet away. if they were across the room I would say they are 10 meters away, and if they were across the country I would say they are 100 miles away. I think it will all over time move to metric though. It will just filter down through generations.
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On March 23 2012 10:08 Dustus wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 09:55 Euronyme wrote:On March 23 2012 09:32 Conti wrote:On January 15 2012 01:05 Balian wrote: I was going to post the same picture, so.. yeah. What's that? I think its a pic that highlights that essentially America and only a few other countries use Imperial instead of metric. This though is a vast simplyfing of it. For example here in the UK we officially use Metric, but I don't know many people who could tell em their height in meters, and most people would still use stone and pounds for weight. A lot of it comes from parents. They used imperial so always weighed/measured us using that system. I personally use both a lot of it depends on the distance. eg if someone was close I would say they are a couple of feet away. if they were across the room I would say they are 10 meters away, and if they were across the country I would say they are 100 miles away. I think it will all over time move to metric though. It will just filter down through generations.
Yeah that map's awful. Canadians use imperial as well. Every Englishman I've spoken seem to prefer to use mile, pound etc instead of kilometre and kilo. It seems to show how far the metric system has spread in any way shape or form, rather than which is primarily used where.
What do Australians and Indians use?
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I use a combination as well. And at ^, Indians use Metric
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Americans use metric too. We just have both standard and metric on everything. (My car has km/hour and mph. My measuring cup has both cups and mL. Food has its weight listed in both pounds and grams.)
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We use metric for just about everything except when talking about people. We measure our height/weight in feet/pounds.
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I find I have more intuition for imperial, probably because I grew up in America, so when it comes to quick guesses or light discussion I tend to use those units.
In more serious contexts (physics, for example), seeing units from the imperial system tends to piss me off though because they really don't make any sense when it comes to unit conversions (it is much easier to see the connection between 4.3E-6 meters and 4.3E-9 kilometers than between 4.3E-6 yards and 1.548E-4 inches). To be fair, the metric system isn't exactly great for many sciences either, but at least it makes more sense.
+ Show Spoiler +Not that I've said anything particularly different from a good amount of the previous 60-some pages.
EDIT: I totally know what I'm doing with unit conversions
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My point was the few enough people even know how far a mile is, so it'd make more sense if the map showed that group, rather than showing everyone who knows how far a meter is, as that's practically everyone.
I assume it has something to do with official country whatever, but that's BS anyway. Sweden doesn't even have a national anthem if we have to go into country official.
Edit. How come imperial seems to be referred to as 'standard'?
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EPT
