Three Countries that Do Not Use the Metric System

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Celsius is just like any other units--until you get used to them, it's simply annoying. Just like anything else though. Any supposed lost of precision is easily deal with... by using a decimal.

If anything, I think I'd adjust to using C faster than using km and cm: I'm not going to do "multiply by 5 and divide by 9, and subtract 32"... or whatever it is... instead I'll just "learn" what room temp is, and what human body temp is, and go from there.
 
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Originally Posted By: surfstar
Originally Posted By: Nate1979
Originally Posted By: surfstar
Originally Posted By: NHHEMI
Why put people through it though? Just no need.


How about preventing another one of these:? "NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional metric system for a key spacecraft operation"


Switching to metric isn't going to suddenly cure stupidity. Even within metric you can still have errors when doing various calculations, unit conversions. Will the errors be reduced less than the cost to change to metric? Not to mention why would we want to switch to a useless (day to day usage) temperature scale that is celsius?


By eliminating the conversion from ever taking place, you have just eliminated a potential failure/error point.

I agree that C is weird for daily human temps, using F all our lives, though!
0 freezing 100 boiling, does make sense, logically


You still have to do conversions with metric, they are just by 10 (and assuming you are only doing simple unit conversion like km to m). If the programmer makes a mistake and says there are 100m in a km you will still have a failure.
 
There's nothing wrong with Celsius for ambient temperature. I had to adapt to daily use of metric units when I moved back here a decade ago and now imperial units just look silly and and antiquated.
 
I don't get the argument that F is more logical for day to day.

0C...the water outside can be Ice...that's logical, amd makes more sense than "32F"...-5C, and there's a good chance of ice on the shady hill on my commute...F implies a "degree of iciness"
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
I don't get the argument that F is more logical for day to day.

I don't get it either, but in the previous thread our friend turtlevette claimed that F gives him more precision/granularity, as in, there are more degrees between 32F and 212F than there are between 0C and 100C.

And my counter point was that you can always use the decimal point if you really need such accuracy.
 
Originally Posted By: Nate1979
If the programmer makes a mistake and says there are 100m in a km you will still have a failure.

But, if you were to enforce SI units only throughout the project, then there's no concern about which prefix is being used, much less what it means. That's always been a beef of mine. Use the SI units and scientific notation, and you'll avoid conversion problems.

Quattro Pete: Exactly; decimals are the answer. We have plenty of programmable thermostats in this country that can be switched between F and C. The F is commonly to one degree resolution, with the C to half a degree.
 
Regarding the precision thing and metric, the cars that I drive regularly have fuel mileage in 0.1 (Km/L, or l/100Km, but the Maxima we drove through the US only clicked up or down in 0.3MPG increments.

Is that typical ?
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Regarding the precision thing and metric, the cars that I drive regularly have fuel mileage in 0.1 (Km/L, or l/100Km, but the Maxima we drove through the US only clicked up or down in 0.3MPG increments.

Is that typical ?


This likely varies by manufacturer.

What my BMW does is actually report in 0.1 l/100km increments, and then converts it to MPG. What this means in reality is that a change from 12.0 l/100km to 12.1 l/100km ends up being a change from 19.6 to 19.4 MPG (0.2 MPG difference). But a change from 7.0 l/100km to 7.1 l/100km ends up being a change from 33.6 to 33.1 MPG (0.5 MPG difference). Another words, the MPG increment varies, and rightfully so, because gaining 0.3 MPG when going from say 12 to 12.3 MPG is a lot more significant than gaining 0.3 MPG when going from 40 to 40.3 MPG.


This is one reason why MPG can be such a misleading measure. People trade cars "because the new car gets 5 extra MPG." Well, if your old car got you 12 MPG, then that 5 extra MPG is huge. But if your old car got you 35, then that 5 extra MPG isn't that big of a deal anymore, and probably does not justify someone getting in more debt over.
 
I find it interesting that in Japan, Kq/CM^2 is often used a a measurement of pressure, but in Europe, BAR and KPa are more common. I heard so many people tell me that the metric system is exactly the same in every part of the world.
 
Originally Posted By: artificialist
I find it interesting that in Japan, Kq/CM^2 is often used a a measurement of pressure, but in Europe, BAR and KPa are more common. I heard so many people tell me that the metric system is exactly the same in every part of the world.


choose someone else to listen to.

There's SI, which is designed to be the international, (universal) system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

Then there's metric, which happens in flavours, and uses standard units to explain things.
 
Yes, Japan is metric, but doesn't follow SI very well. They favour 10, 12, 14 bolt head sizes, SI would be 11, 13 and 15. If you work on Japanese cars you will know about 10mm 1.125 bolts. I have a container of them I've saved because they are hard to find at wholesalers.
 
Back in the 70's I was working at one of those cheap off-brand gasoline retailers during the period that gas was hitting .999 per gallon for the first time and no one had yet installed pumps that would calculate sales over $1 a gallon. For a time many places would set the pumps at say, .539 and post signs that the actual cost was double. But the dumb (expletives deleted) who ran our store decided to replace the mechanical computers in all their pumps with ones that would measure and calculate gas by the LITER. As an example...a price of .309 per liter would actually work out to 1.169 per gallon.

Hilarity ensued when our price sign changed from the high .90s back to .309 as drivers dived into our station thinking they were getting a GREAT DEAL...and a few moments later they were literally burning rubber in their haste to leave when they realized they weren't getting a gallon for that price. Our regular customers abandoned the place in droves and business never recovered. It limped along until 1985...losing money every month.
 
Originally Posted By: artificialist
I find it interesting that in Japan, Kq/CM^2 is often used a a measurement of pressure....

That's a terrible unit to measure "pressure," and it would cause one no end of troubles if trying to use that with dimensional analysis. That's simply not pressure.

And, of course, there are lots of ways to legitimately express pressure in any measurement system. Pounds per square inch is the easiest way in the U.S. system, but there are many other ways to do it. How about slugs per acre? It would be odd, but it is a legitimate use of force over area.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow

choose someone else to listen to.

There's SI, which is designed to be the international, (universal) system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

Then there's metric, which happens in flavours, and uses standard units to explain things.


I wasn't able to choose someone else to listen to. I was stuck hearing this stuff in elementary school, along with other lies and half-truths most people hear in elementary school.
 
Originally Posted By: sciphi
Originally Posted By: BRZED
At 20°C I feel comfortable. At 68°F I begin to sweat.


Funny how our minds play tricks on us like that!!!

13mm is the metric 1/2", 15mm is 5/8", 17mm is 11/16", and 19mm is 3/4". And 1/4" is 5.5mm. We've converted, but just haven't made it official yet.


Disagree. Encountered plenty of standard fasteners that would not take their metric equivalent, and vice versa. 13mm seems to be a frequent example that I have seen.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: artificialist
I find it interesting that in Japan, Kq/CM^2 is often used a a measurement of pressure....

That's a terrible unit to measure "pressure," and it would cause one no end of troubles if trying to use that with dimensional analysis. That's simply not pressure.
...


Anyone can see the "q" is a typo ... kg/cm2, and it's kg-force
 
kgf was done away with decades ago.

I N = one bar of chocolate (102 g).
banana2.gif
 
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