Well, the tip of your thumb is about an inch, so it's nice to be able to shorthand measure things. That's about all I've got though.
On our vacation to Hawai'i, you have no idea how much this tripped us up.rudolphna said:I can agree that the metric system is better in almost all things, except temperature. Maybe it's because we are used to it, but if I go outside and it's oven roasting hot, it seems to make more sense to me to say "man, must be at least 100 degrees outside!" than to say "man must be at least 40 degrees outside!" etc
1.9m also makes you sound tall as fuck.Kalezian said:Because I would rather say I was 6'4" or 76 inches instead of saying I'm 193.04 centimeters tall.
That just makes me sound tall as fuck.....
On that point, I've often said that inventing an entirely new metric system, stil a decimal one, but with quantities defined so that all natural constants would be simply some power of ten instead would be kind of awesome.drthmik said:Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...
"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."
... Wait that's not divisible by 10
Uh, you seem to have missed a detail when you asked wikipedia about this, namely "Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact because the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time"drthmik said:Look at thatHeronblade said:Actually, the meter is defined using the speed of light, it is a decidedly non arbitrary constant.drthmik said:Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things
so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?
In fact, the only SI unit that is not tied to a universal constant of some kind is the Kilogram, and that is only due to a lack of easy measurements to link it to
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...
"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."
... Wait that's not divisible by 10
And since meters were developed by the french after the french revolution you can't say that the meter is BASED on the speed of light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
and light travels 1 foot in 1 nanosecond
so what?
You carve up the distance light travels into a certain number of chunks
We cave it up into a different number of chunks
that is the definition of arbitrary
African or European?Vegosiux said:I'm sure it would also be fun to calculate the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in bloits.
Vegosiux said:On that point, I've often said that inventing an entirely new metric system, stil a decimal one, but with quantities defined so that all natural constants would be simply some power of ten instead would be kind of awesome.drthmik said:Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...
"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."
... Wait that's not divisible by 10
Say, the speed of light defined to 10^8 bloits/second, so one bloit would be the distance light travels in 0.00000001 seconds.
I'm sure it would also be fun to calculate the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in bloits.
Well, first of all, I don't care about SCIENCE, but I do agree with your other points. The metric system is much easier to use and makes more sense, but I grew up with the imperial system and I can easily eyeball all of the units. Since the imperial system is still far more widely used here, I will continue to use it as it is just easier for me personally at this point in time.Amaror said:First of all. I know this i probably going to be a pretty difficult discussion. Everyone here has grown up with one or the other measurement system, so nobody can be really objective about this.
Ok, then let's get this started. I read up a bit on the Imperial System and i just can't find any great benefits to it.
Let's start with the obvious advantage of the metric system, as that it is not only the international standard, but also the System of SCIENCE (Which kinda is an instant win right there).
It's easy to calculate with and is just perfect for Mathmatics, Physics and so on.
I heard from some people that the imperial system is easier to use in day to day life, but i can't see why.
It's obviously better in day to day life, if you have grown up with it and used it your entire life.
But if we look at both systems and how we would use them in day to day life, i still think the metric system to be far superiour.
First of all, you just have to learn 3 units of measurement. Meter, gramm and litre. Any larger or smaller units you might need, you just use the appropriate word before it. kilo for a thousand, mega for a million and so on.
In the imperial system you got yards, feet, miles, pinch, pounds, tons and so on, and so on.
It's just way more to memorize, for practically no benefit in day to day life.
Oooooo! Are you on local TV. You must be, like, a celebrity or something!Atmos Duality said:Apart from a couple of handy conversions, there's not much that's all that great.
As a meteorologist, (mostly Celsius, though it's not like it's hard to convert between the two since they have the same degree ratio)
All of them are arbitrary, but the point of difference is what you do with it and how using them helps you.drthmik said:Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things
so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?
Well, speaking as an American I can see why it would make more sense for a system to be based off of multiples of ten rather than having a different amount of numbers needed to make it to the next tier of measurment.drthmik said:Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things
so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?
Edit: I'd also like to point out that by simply doing nothing we can piss off millions of people and that amuses us to no end! XD
This guy put my point across a lot more clearly.hermes200 said:All of them are arbitrary, but the point of difference is what you do with it and how using them helps you.drthmik said:Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things
so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?
For every measure in the metric system, to express it in the immediately next unit you only have to multiply or divide it by ten, always. Just move the decimal point... simple. For the imperial system, if you want to express a distance to the next scale, you have to multiply it by 1/12 (inches to feet), 1/3 (feet to yards), 1/220 (yards to stadia) or 1/1760 (yards to miles)