My metric: rant

[Umfriend]

Wombat, the thing is it becomes harder when you want to express the lenght of your shoes (which are quite large BTW ) in inches, yards, or miles. All we need to do is put the dot somewhere else and add or delete a few zero's.
So, if your shoes are 1ft 2in, how many miles are thirteen shoes?
Umf

[thop]

One meter is roughly one big step.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by GNEP
The UK has managed the transition (apart from on the roads, and when measuring people) - it really all stems from the education system. 20 years or so of using 2 systems is not really that bad. My sister (3 years older) was educated in the imperial system; I was taught everything in SI (metric) units. Both of us can work fine with either, but I am more comfortable with SI, and vice-versa. If the UK can do it, anyone can (and OK, we still drink imperially, but then who's doing calculations other than the number of beers?

No pain no gain I say - the US should convert and the UK should go the rest of the way. And we should all use Euros worldwide

No one uses cubits anymore, do they?

Gnep

Well when I was at school they couldn't make the mind up which to use so it was imperial one day metric the next dunno the day after. The result I just a little bit of each and was never at home with each measurement. Going back to university finally pushed to the metric side of things. But the schooling in my era was very poor.

[Strahd]

Originally posted by thop
One meter is roughly one big step.

So is a yard.

Each I believe has their own uses but it's a matter of which you are accustomed to.

My feet measure 6 rocks. 6 Rocks = 2 neptunes. As long as I get used to this, and it is functional to my needs, it's a perfectly adequate system to use.

[GNEP]

Yeah - university studying engineering most definitely put me on the metric side once and for all - we had one lecturer who still thought in imperial units, and so used to do all his example in imperial (after converting the question from metric), with all the little tricks that that involves, and then convert back to metric for the answer. Hilarious, but ultimately soul destroying for all of us in the lectures. Especially when it meant that our calculations would compress a page of his to about 2 lines...

[The PIT]

Originally posted by GNEP
Especially when it meant that our calculations would compress a page of his to about 2 lines...

LOL. Amazing that you a University lecture that could do calculations. We had one or two that couldn't.

[thop]

But how many Feet are in a Yard? How many Yards are in a Mile? 500Miles - 100Yards? A cubic Yard?

For day to day use both may be about equally good (depending what you are used to use), but overall i'd say metric is better.

[Strahd]

I agree that metric is better in most case as it's easier to comprehend differences between millimeters, centimeter, meters, Kilometers, grams, kilograms, millilitres, litres etc.

Change a football field to meters. The game would be completely different. The game of baseball woiuld be quite different if the distance between bases were measured in something other than feet, because the bases would be either farther apart or closer together, effectively changing the end result of the game.

[Umfriend]

Originally posted by thop
But how many Feet are in a Yard? How many Yards are in a Mile? 500Miles - 100Yards?

My point exactly. If 10 inches was 1 foot and 10 foot was 1 yard and 10 yards was one mile, it would be closer in efficiency to metric (albeit redundant as 10kfoot would equal 1kyard, so you do not need both). Metric is simply superior.

Originally posted by Greebe
231

Exactly, or closer to 230.996?
Umf

[Umfriend]

Strahd, changing to meters would not have to change the actual sizes that much, or actually not at all. There is no reason why bases would have to be a WHOLE number of meters apart from each other.
Umf

[The PIT]

Originally posted by thop
One meter is roughly one big step.

And if you're seven feet tall thats a lot more than a five shortie.

[Wulfman]

Originally posted by Strahd
I agree that metric is better in most case as it's easier to comprehend differences between millimeters, centimeter, meters, Kilometers, grams, kilograms, millilitres, litres etc.

don't forget deka(gramm), although most germans will struggle if you ask for "10 deka cheese" at the supermarket. I already made that mistake... metric system isn't perfect either.

mfg
wulfman

[Guru]

BTW Wulfman your sig should incude a popup warning!

[SitFlyer]

Originally posted by Guru
BTW Wulfman your sig should incude a popup warning!

Most definitely. I hate those kind of links.

[The PIT]

Well I given him stomach ache now.