To All American and British People...

To All American and British People...

  • Total voters
    121
speedycatz said:
Would you consider switching to km/h, instead of mph?
mph_kmh.gif
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No, but thank you for the suggestion.
 
BTM5 said:
to begin with I live in Iceland and we use the SI system a.k.a. metric system,
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Not quite, but almost.

For example the hour is not a base SI unit; no the base SI unit for time is the second, while an hour is an awkward 3600 seconds.The natural way of stating velocity or speed in the SI system is metre per second. While hour is permitted it is discouraged because it is awkward. If I travel 100m in 9s what is my average speed? Easy in base SI units, slightly more awkward than it should be in metric Kilometre per hour.

I think the whole world should switch to using strict SI units tomorrow and stop pissing about with half arsedness. We would all have to spend squillions on changing over, we'd all have a (somewhat) new system to learn, it would make your calculations nice and easy and I would be able to stare incredulously at Germans saying "You must! ... Because it is better! ... It will work; because it is better. ... You must!" like I remember some German eurocrat doing on UK TV news over the issue of joining the Euro some years ago.
 
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THE REAL STIG said:
Imperial is the work of the devil. Anyone who does science or engineering will agree. But for the average Joe, it just doesn't matter.
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It's only bad for people who can't do conversions. All the equations work the same in either unit system, you just have a different set of constants to pick from. Both sets are seeming random values anyway, so it isn't any easier or harder, just different.

I might feel differently if I were in a different field, but the only conversions I have to do with any regularity aren't any easier in metric. ?F to ?R vs ?C to ?K, or knots to Mach v km/h to Mach.
 
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All i know is when homework problems are in British units, the assignment takes twice as long.

Just b/c students arent used to working with slugs, Rankin, BTU's etc. Thank god there are no e/m Imperial units, Id just die if i had to learn them.
 
sonza68 said:
It's only bad for people who can't do conversions. All the equations work the same in either unit system, you just have a different set of constants to pick from. Both sets are seeming random values anyway, so it isn't any easier or harder, just different.
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The main problem with the Imperial 'system' is that you end up having to do conversions within it. Converting from feet to yards to miles and from grains to ounces to pounds to stone to tons and so on. Working purely within SI units this isn't necessary.

That is why it should be meter per second rather than kilometre per hour, because you don't want to be converting the number of seconds in an hour, it just adds an unnecessary step.

Just look at this nonsense, even my mum and dad wouldn't have a clue really:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/English_mass_units_graph.svg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/English_length_units_graph.svg
 
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If there's supposed to be a picture after the really: it's not working :p
 
In countries where imperial units are used (either alongside metric or not) in fields such as science and engineering metric is the only system that is used as far as I know.

I'm not talking about a carpet fitter measuring a room in feet or a backyard CNC worker measuring something in thou - just where measurement and communication, often with other countries etc. is important.

I don't go around doing much conversion of imperial to metric or vice-versa in my everyday life because I've no need to, both are perfectly understandable if you live with them.
 
Why have a barrel of oil - not some quantity of litres? It is anacronistic, all petroleum products are sold around the world to consumers in Litres - except the US me thinks - yes, even us.
 
I would make the switch. I don't mind. It would just take a little time to get used to Kph.

However, I doubt the US would ever change.

..
 
No I would do the MPH to KPH - so long as the speedo has both systems on it then why bother. I am all for SI units in science though, as it does help with the maths when you start out - it switched in the late 1960s here - I was at school at the time, and all the old text books were dumped, so its not cheap.

Mind you the Irish have done the change OK it seems, so you know it could work OK I suppose.
 
Why?
There would be no improvement but a huge cost associated with the change.
Right now America is all but broke financially. Changing from MPH to KPH would be a huge expense with nothing to gain. The money would be better spent else where.
 
Maybe if we moved to a decimal time system, reconfigured the SI system to take that into account, and relabelled everything internationally, then the cost to each country wouldn't result in an economic disadvantage.
 
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Metric is for lazy stupid people who don't want to do mental arithmetic and also hate cool words like bushel
 
Cobol74 said:
I have never understood what the hell a rod, pole or a perch is anyway.

http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/units/length.htm
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I'll refer you to the second graph I posted... erm... let me see... a rod is 11 cubits.

Metric, especially SI is much easier to understand, you need to know 7 base units and only one kind of unit per measure. Every unit, other than time, is then known by standardised decimal multiples.
In Imperial there are dozens of units for every measure and they are never related in a consistent way. I defy anyone to know how many lines there are in a cubit without looking it up. It's not a case of being able to do mental arithmetic, you have to be a memory champion to remember all the relevant relationships.

If you're used to thinking in pounds and stone, feet and inches, pints and gallons it will be harder to imagine a kilogram, metre, or cubic metre (a thousandth of which is a litre), but in the UK those people who grew up with exclusively Imperial units also grew up with pre-decimal currency, and although my dad may refer to 10 pence as two bob to his peers on occasion he's got used to the fact that there are no longer 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound (and all the other informal crazy denominations like the half-crown), but that there are 100 pence to the pound.

We're taught base 10 as a standard at school, it's used universally in the metric system (rather than a hodgepodge of other multiplication factors)... as long as we only use seconds and ignore minutes, hours and days. So unless you have small bits of the imperial system drilled into you from a young age, you're fucked if you then try and use it.

Fuck general metric too... SI all the way.
 
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