jonno
Member of DD Central
nil satis nisi optimum
Posts: 2,742
Likes: 3,136
|
Post by jonno on Feb 19, 2021 10:30:34 GMT
Really!! All this talk about metric Can you just imagine what our song would have sounded like??...................................................The Proclaimers.
|
|
jonno
Member of DD Central
nil satis nisi optimum
Posts: 2,742
Likes: 3,136
|
Post by jonno on Feb 19, 2021 12:21:37 GMT
Really!! All this talk about metric Can you just imagine what our song would have sounded like??...................................................The Proclaimers.
I see all the idiot Brexiteers from the other thread are invading this one. Having made a Brexit style mess of the other thread, they want to claim sovereignty here instead like a bunch of unwanted beer belly expats. Oooh I say! Well, I'm not responding to your latest instalment of pathetic drivel other than to say fair shout on the beer belly
|
|
michaelc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 4,861
Likes: 2,762
|
Post by michaelc on Feb 19, 2021 16:29:22 GMT
When you go abroad, and hire a car, do you make a conscious effort to convert all road signs to miles, and speed limits and the speedo to mph, or do you actually manage to cope just fine? Abroad? ? ? We Leavers don't go abroad. We have everything we need here. Plenty of sunshine and rain. HUGE mountains for those that like walking and vinyards with the finest grapes producing wonderful wine. We even have herds of wilderbeast strutting majestically across the plain if that's what you want just go to Longleat. What do you want to go abroad for? All those funny little foreign chaps making funny sounds to each other. No, no, we should build a wall in the sea 100 miles from our coast and patrol it with a beefed up navy. That will keep them out.
|
|
|
Post by bracknellboy on Feb 19, 2021 16:31:42 GMT
We will never complete the transition. I'm sure many of us on here were bought up in a period that saw the switch to decimalisation (the 50th anniversary was a few days ago I believe), were young when it happened, or have spent entire lives post that time. However we seem to almost universally have a very ambiguous relationship with our use of units. My bathroom scales are consciously set to Stone/pounds; but I would no more want to order my spuds or sugar in pounds and ounces than I would want to measure the distance between London and Birmingham in Kilometres, nor check how much over the speed limit I was in km/hr. I know my height in feet/inches, and still always have to go convert it into metres every time I need it so*; my waist line most definitely expands in inches (or more optimistically, fractions of), and thereby get frustrated if I have to convert the length of a belt from cms. If I need to know the length/depth/width of something, for the purposes of DIY, I get annoyed when my (somewhat younger) wife fails at first to provide the requisite measurement in cms, and gives it in inches instead. Nonetheless, if I need to put a screw into something, [hasten to add this was not meant to be adjacent to mention of my wife, it just turned out like that], then I most definitely need to know its depth in inches (or do a conversion in my head). Meanwhile, I get very frustrated that I can't setup my cycle GPS to give me "Distance ridden", "Avg. Speed" and "Max Speed " in mph, but "Ascent" in metres. I happily buy my petrol in litres, but I am still far more interested in how many miles to the gallon I get from my car, than I am in how many litres it takes to do 100km. I do however have ingrained in my brain how many litres there are to an imperial gallon, and know there are 8 pints to the gallon, meaning there is less beer in a continental half litre than there is in a good old British pint. But for the life of me I cannot remember whether the US gallon is bigger or smaller than the UK one (actually, I think its smaller and I think that might be something to do with the shrinkage of a barrel during the Mayflowers journery, but that of course may be urban myth). As a graduate of physics, I am however delighted to say that I would never for a second contemplate measuring distance in anything other than metres (or light years) except when driving/riding; and everything of course has a mass measured in g/kg, except apparently for me. I have no idea how many feet chains there are in a furlong, or furlongs in a mile, nor even whether those are the right sequence of measurements. I'm however also pleased that I can do pretty good approximate mental arithmetic conversions from feet/yards to/from cm/m. I'm even more delighted to say that I have no idea what a florin was, that I can categorically say that a base 12 counting system is a bit bonkers when you use a base 10 number system. As I say, I think as a nation we have a fairly ambiguous relationship with our systems of weights and measures. *Whatever units its expressed in, it is however considerably less than that of registerme , and no precise measurements are required to know that. Just as it is natural for me to drive on either side of the road/car, I can use both systems (up to a point - some Imperial measures baffle me as I previously posted). If you use them you get used to them. There is a reason we in the UK as a whole haven't gone completely SI/metric, and it is a similar reason to why we didn't sign up fully to the EU (and sadly eventually left). No one made the case strongly enough and we did it half heartedly. (etc) one reason we struggle to do it I think is we are unlikely to ever change from miles/mph for road usage. Its not something one could reasonably do incrementally but nor could one realistically do it overnight. And it will always be argued that the cost of doing so is greater than any benefits (indeed I reckon there will always be a large cohort of those willing to die in the ditch to preserve the mile and all its constituent fractions and multiples that would make it too difficult anyway). I forgot to mention in my original post the trials and tribulations of land area: for such as gardens and fields, I can only fathom them (see what I did there ?) in acres: I can never remember what a hectare is, let alone envisage it, and no sooner have I looked it up than it gets forgotten again. Until that is the area in question gets too large, at which point I'm much more comfortable working in km 2. And don't get me on the subject of describing area as the equivalent of so many football pitches. This might work in the US where a "football pitch" is of a prescribed size, but since I'm not a fan of football football, and given that those pitches are not of a prescribed size, the concept seem rather meaningless.
|
|
adrianc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 8,970
Likes: 4,801
|
Post by adrianc on Feb 19, 2021 16:40:07 GMT
|
|
dovap
Member of DD Central
Posts: 467
Likes: 410
|
Post by dovap on Feb 19, 2021 18:17:20 GMT
seems pretty straightforward then.......... should be no trouble at all for everyone to switch to miles/mph etc so as to avoid confusion
|
|
adrianc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 8,970
Likes: 4,801
|
Post by adrianc on Feb 19, 2021 19:46:20 GMT
seems pretty straightforward then.......... should be no trouble at all for everyone to switch to miles/mph etc so as to avoid confusion One minor issue...
|
|
Greenwood2
Member of DD Central
Posts: 4,243
Likes: 2,686
|
Post by Greenwood2 on Feb 19, 2021 20:44:09 GMT
seems pretty straightforward then.......... should be no trouble at all for everyone to switch to miles/mph etc so as to avoid confusion One minor issue... Seems totally ridiculous, no one asked me, or probably most sensible people to vote in this poll. How many people voted? I obviously didn't and wasn't asked to.
|
|
|
Post by bernythedolt on Feb 19, 2021 23:46:00 GMT
One minor issue... Seems totally ridiculous, no one asked me, or probably most sensible people to vote in this poll. How many people voted? I obviously didn't and wasn't asked to. I would say 2,060. Small print at the bottom, n=2,060.I suspect this would be how a lot of elderly people would vote irrespective of any Brexit referendum, and that leave/remain is just a confounding variable here.
|
|
|
Post by bracknellboy on Feb 20, 2021 8:10:01 GMT
From the Canada article from the NYT: "When Canada completes the changeover to the metric system, the United States will be the last major industrial power still sticking to the more cumbersome English measurements, although some smaller countries like Liberia and Southern Yemen still retain the English system."I can see the editor's note: "Except of course for .... no wait, they are no longer a major power. Leave as is." Tells you something about our place in the world, even back in 1977....
|
|
adrianc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 8,970
Likes: 4,801
|
Post by adrianc on Feb 20, 2021 8:42:17 GMT
From the Canada article from the NYT: "When Canada completes the changeover to the metric system, the United States will be the last major industrial power still sticking to the more cumbersome English measurements, although some smaller countries like Liberia and Southern Yemen still retain the English system."I can see the editor's note: "Except of course for .... no wait, they are no longer a major power. Leave as is." Tells you something about our place in the world, even back in 1977.... The UK was officially changing, even back then. The government had formed the Metrication Board in 1968, with a target of completing change-over by 1975. Metrication of speed limits was due in 1973. The board was wound up in 1980, with one of the main reasons it failed cited as lack of government funding...
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Feb 20, 2021 9:02:01 GMT
Certain things work better with imperial. For example if you want to work with halves. So suet puddings need 4,2,1 of the key ingredients. Wood working often needs 1/2" 1/4" 1/8", 1/16", 1/32. The metrics equivalent often work out as silly dimensions. Then metric has some useful things. A litre of water weighs 1kg, while a pint of water weighs 1 1/4 lbs. While compass roses use 360 degrees, minutes and seconds. Days still come in 24 hours and weeks come in 7 days. Circles still need Pi.
The there is the magical square root of -1=j where would we be without "j"?
From this I conclude that 10 is not a magic number so don't sweat it.
|
|
|
Post by bracknellboy on Feb 20, 2021 9:43:49 GMT
Certain things work better with imperial. For example if you want to work with halves. So suet puddings need 4,2,1 of the key ingredients. Wood working often needs 1/2" 1/4" 1/8", 1/16", 1/32. The metrics equivalent often work out as silly dimensions. Then metric has some useful things. A litre of water weighs 1kg, while a pint of water weighs 1 1/4 lbs. While compass roses use 360 degrees, minutes and seconds. Days still come in 24 hours and weeks come in 7 days. Circles still need Pi. From this I conclude that 10 is not a magic number so don't sweat it. 10 is most definitely not a magic number. The most "magic" numbers tend to be irrational: Pi, e. Or more esoterically, "i" . Those are numbers which genuinely contain 'magic' in them. Fractions are terribly useful. Digital Computers are fundamentally binary, so base 2 and base 16 are critical. However, there is nothing clever or no good reason for a base 12 currency system when our core number system is base 10.
|
|
|
Post by bracknellboy on Feb 20, 2021 10:00:49 GMT
e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0 The five most magical numbers (e, pi, i, 0 and 1) all in one magical equation. thank you for reminding me of that.
|
|
adrianc
Member of DD Central
Posts: 8,970
Likes: 4,801
|
Post by adrianc on Feb 20, 2021 10:27:46 GMT
Certain things work better with imperial. For example if you want to work with halves. So suet puddings need 4,2,1 of the key ingredients. Wood working often needs 1/2" 1/4" 1/8", 1/16", 1/32. The metrics equivalent often work out as silly dimensions. Cups, sticks... And is it 14 or 16 pounds in an ounce? It's the other way round to stones, I know that... And I now know, thanks to this thread, that it's 20 flozes in a pint. You want to make a suet pudding? How big? How about 20g/40g/80g, for a finished 140g (about 1/3lb) pudding? Bigger? 40g/80g/160g (about 2/3lb)? Too big? 30g/60g/120g (about 1/2lb)? Half-way between? 35g/70g/140g (5/8lb...?)? You really need more precision than 35g (about an ounce and a quarter) for your finished suet pudding...? Working in dibnahs, you'd be struggling to keep those proportions - 5g is about 1/6 of an ounce. (Does suet still exist? Or has it been banned as the health hazard it is, being pure saturated fat?) Woodworking doesn't NEED fractions. It's just that's what old-school chippies learned how to use, back in the day. They didn't have power tools back then, either. The ones who aren't nudging retirement age prefer the precision of millimetres for fine work, centimetres for coarser, and metres for general planning. Ever since I was 'ickle, I've always spannered for fun on old, resolutely metric, cars. A few years ago, I bought an old Land Rover (with a 2.25 litre engine...). Nothing compares to the joy of wondering if the next spanner up from the 53/157" is 78/243" or 1/2"... Except, because mine was built only a decade and a bit after the Metrication Board became a thing (it's 40yo now - but it was only 5yo when I bought my first metric spanners and sockets), it then has some bits that are metric, just to wind you up. I even found one brake pipe that had a dibnah union at one end and a metric one at the other - and then we wonder why the British motor industry died... However, there is nothing clever or no good reason for a base 12 currency system when our core number system is base 10. It wasn't even consistently base 12. It was a mix of base 12 and base 20 - with an occasional leap over to base 21.
|
|