The metric system.

[mrsleeve]

We have a discussion going on at a different forum, about it.


Metric Vs Standard and imperial standards of measure and why the US conversion to the metric system has all but failed on a societal level


Discuss

[joshh]

The metric system is great.

America had to be different. (Palm to forehead)

[gwb72tii]

The metric system is great.

America had to be different. (Palm to forehead)

actually our systems of measurement came from the bristish and were a natural way to go at the time

think about how much $ it would cost a business man with a machine shop, or government motors (GM) to convert all manufacturing and production equipment from SAE to metric.

metric is much easier, btw, as it is base 10 insterad of base 12

[Massive Lee]

Any monkey who knows how to count up to 10 will understand the metric system. No more 1/32", or 3/64" or measures that appear pretty incomplete: 3/4", 2200lbs to a ton. What the hell do those measure come from?

On the other side, the metric system is perfect. It all started with water: weight and volume. It is universal, and the same around the world.

1 liter of water is 1 kg.
1 ton is 1000 litre of water.
1 ton of water measures 1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter.

Knowing the above, any metric dimension can be extrapolated. Volume or distance.

[guibo09]

just a force of habit. most of the world has converted to metric, it does cost money, and it is painful at first. but you just have to man up and do it. the US hasnt because of the difficulty and a certain misplaced pride and nationalism.

as an engineer, i use metric as much i can. all drawings are imperial drawings are converted to base ten anyhow nowadays (1/2" is written as .500"). i do admit that a 'thou' is more meaningful to me, and there is no direct equivalent in metric that works as well.

[daniel]

metric is much easier, btw, as it is base 10 insterad of base 12

just because there are 12 inches in a foot does not mean it is base 12.

[thornado327i]

Discussing with you guys on this forum forced me to bookmark one of those metric-imperial units converter pages ;)

Even though I lived in States for quite some time, I could never get used to imperial system.

IMO America will never turn away form imperial.

The American way would be to "free" all other nations from that horrid metric stuff.

[guibo09]

just because there are 12 inches in a foot does not mean it is base 12.

correct. the imperial system is not base anything. it's just a mess of shit. completely arbitrary based on history more than anything.

[TDE30]

Metric > Imperial.

[cochran]

One comment - I'm a manufacturing manager for an automotive (powertrain) components company. I used to be a machinist, and agree that a "thou" is an indispensable unit for that trade. But now, as mentioned, all our drawings are in metric (my company is based in Germany), and the new rule of thumb is microns or tenths of microns on our components. its hard to think in fractions of an inch anymore.

[BillBrasky]

I use it everyday and have to convert back and forth all of the time. I wish people would realize just how easy the metric system is as Lee pointed out.

[Bimmerman325i]

We use the metric system in school exclusively. We are taught the conversions and are expected to be able to do the calculations entirely in the english system, but instead all we engineering students do is convert our problem entirely into metric before we start and at the end of the problem we convert entirely back to english. Much easier than dealing with slugs, pound mass, pound force, inch, foot, mile, furlong, etc etc.

The only exception is for thermodynamic stuff, where all the tables are given in both systems. None of the students I know of understand a BTU or slug, and prefer metric in every single case.

[daniel]

I use it everyday and have to convert back and forth all of the time. I wish people would realize just how easy the metric system is as Lee pointed out.

[Hallen]

Metric is better. It isn't perfect by any means, but in general, it is better.

Units of measure have a very interesting history and it is tough to make sense of things. When you have a system entrenched and in consistent use for many, many years, it is very difficult to switch. The US tried to do the "patch" method, slowly phasing it in over a period of years. It was a wishy-washy method. It failed. The only way to do it is cold turkey. Bang, switch over in one day. It will be painful, but I think it is necessary.

I work with precision measuring devices use by land surveyors. They have accuracies down to 1mm for the GPS stuff, and 1 second angles for the total stations. This is tight stuff. In the US, there are three units of measure that are common. US Survey Foot, International Foot, and Metric. Metric isn't used much because everything was previously done in feet.
The difference between the US Survey Foot (the traditional measurement) and the International Foot (based on the meter) is very small. However, when you start talking about big coordinates or long distances, the conversion factors are enough to make a big difference. Many millions of dollars have been wasted because of the mistakes in conversions (or being unaware of the differences in the units).

There is this thing called the Vara. It is still used in Texas on very old surveys. It is 33 1/3 inches. What a stupid measurement.

A survey chain is 66 ft. 10 chains by 10 chains is an acre. Yeah, the imperial system is fugly.

Anyway, it is a royal pain to make software that works well with all of these different units. People screw up conversions all the time leading to costly mistakes. Plus, it is not always clear what units you are working in which leads to more mistakes.

[AndrewBird]

The metric system is much simpler, but because I'm used to imperial, I can work with it a lot faster. I have just about every decimal equivalent from 1/32" up to 1" memorized and work with them all the time. And yes, the "thou" is indispensable. But, when using digital precision measuring devices (calipers, micrometers, etc), it is usually more accurate to measure in metric as the display reads to 2 decimal places in metric (100th of a mm) which is much smaller then 1000th of an inch. It's all kind of a mute point though as most "average" stuff has tolerances of more then a 1000th.