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Metric and how not to use it.

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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 7:07 am

ldwechsler
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wyrm wrote:The real problem with the metric system is that there is no poetry in it. Which would you rather hear?

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;"

or

"Full metre nine point one four four thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;"

Alternatively

"Give him an inch and he'll take an ell"

or

"Give him twenty five point four millimetres and he'll take one point one four three metres"

So why would any sane writer discard the poetry of imperial measurements for the mundane ugliness of the metric system?


How about "four score and seven years ago"?

Silly, and frankly the math is easier with metric...perhaps that's why the decadent Europeans like it.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by Lord Skimper   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:00 am

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Metric time is second s based and it isn't written in 10 or 100 or 1000 or 100,000 seconds it is metric. 10 seconds is 1das or decasecond. 100,000 seconds is 100ks or kilosecond. 10,000,000 seconds is 10Ms or Megaseconds. 10 trillion seconds is 10Ts. etc... elegant nice and cool. 1000's of a second is 1ms.

Your birthday is inconsequential in space as every planetary system is different but you would be so many Ms to Gs old at a set time. It would be the same for everyone every where. Even those who don't live on planets.

Living on planets is a cool thing for Scify but in reality people will live in ships and habs more than on planets.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by Kael Posavatz   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 2:11 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:Living on planets is a cool thing for Scify but in reality people will live in ships and habs more than on planets.


There is a saying out of Britain that society is four meals away from anarchy.

There is probably a corollary about water.

A hab adds power, heat (both too little and too much), and air (and removal of CO2), to the list of riots waiting to happen. Also 'one hull breach away from death pressure.'

Not saying that it's impossible. But it will need either A) a distinct lack of real-estate, or B) a major socioculture shift that makes habs preferable to planets. (Peter F. Hamilton and Iain Banks have both come up with examples of what such a Culture might look like).

Edit:I apologize most sincerely for the pun.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by Relax   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 4:25 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:Metric time is second s based

Well... no exactly. Time, seconds, are based on? See my post upthread.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by stewart   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 8:16 pm

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TFLYTSNBN wrote:The United States made the mistake of allowing the National Teachers Association write the curriculum to teach the metric system. Since the goal was to teach metric in elementary school, they appointed a committee of Elementary School teachers to develop the curriculum who had zero knowledge or experience to enlighten them. They didn't understand that while the English system gradually evolved in a primitive era and was painfully adapted to accommodate science and technology, the metric system was designed to enable scientific and technical calculations.

As a result, rather than focus on converting centimeters to millimeters or meters of kilometers, they focused on conversions to inches, feet and miles. I actually got sent to the principal s office for pointing out the absurdity.

American s would embrace metric if they were taught how to use metric in isolation rather than in context of the English system.


---------------

Depends on the context for me --
In a scientific application ex chemistry -- metric only --> calculations are much easier
in Engineering, depends on the end customer needs / preferences -- conversion factors introduce errors that must be corrected for parts to match/be consistent
Daily life -- Baseball is in Feet / Inches; water bottles in 500/750ml; Iced Tea in 32 oz ; Gasoline in gal.

PLEASE do not change gas to liters -- the Calif legislature would LOVE to suck more tax dollars at the pump.

-- Stewart
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Oct 06, 2018 9:49 pm

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stewart wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:The United States made the mistake of allowing the National Teachers Association write the curriculum to teach the metric system. Since the goal was to teach metric in elementary school, they appointed a committee of Elementary School teachers to develop the curriculum who had zero knowledge or experience to enlighten them. They didn't understand that while the English system gradually evolved in a primitive era and was painfully adapted to accommodate science and technology, the metric system was designed to enable scientific and technical calculations.

As a result, rather than focus on converting centimeters to millimeters or meters of kilometers, they focused on conversions to inches, feet and miles. I actually got sent to the principal s office for pointing out the absurdity.

American s would embrace metric if they were taught how to use metric in isolation rather than in context of the English system.


---------------

Depends on the context for me --
In a scientific application ex chemistry -- metric only --> calculations are much easier
in Engineering, depends on the end customer needs / preferences -- conversion factors introduce errors that must be corrected for parts to match/be consistent
Daily life -- Baseball is in Feet / Inches; water bottles in 500/750ml; Iced Tea in 32 oz ; Gasoline in gal.

PLEASE do not change gas to liters -- the Calif legislature would LOVE to suck more tax dollars at the pump.

-- Stewart


That last explains it best. Conversions that are really used often have practical reasons behind it. And some changes are really difficult to make. Changing acres, for example, to meters, etc., would lead to great confusion about property lines.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by aairfccha   » Mon Oct 08, 2018 12:21 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:Metric time is second s based and it isn't written in 10 or 100 or 1000 or 100,000 seconds it is metric. 10 seconds is 1das or decasecond. 100,000 seconds is 100ks or kilosecond. 10,000,000 seconds is 10Ms or Megaseconds. 10 trillion seconds is 10Ts. etc... elegant nice and cool. 1000's of a second is 1ms.

Your birthday is inconsequential in space as every planetary system is different but you would be so many Ms to Gs old at a set time. It would be the same for everyone every where. Even those who don't live on planets.

Living on planets is a cool thing for Scify but in reality people will live in ships and habs more than on planets.

Meanwhile in the real world, such mental masturbations surface and peter out again like the French decimal time because all this elegance and (appearance of) rationality ignores one thing: people aren't machines.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by phillies   » Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:38 pm

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cthia wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:Since all societies in the Honorverse descended from colonists who used starships, no one even remembers that a foot is anything other than an appendage or that a yard is anything but a vegetated area adjacent to a residence. Mile? What the heck is a mile?

IT'S GREEN.


The folks who designed the spaceships might have used French imperial units, as supported by the tyrant Napoleon. The peopel who were awoken from cold sleep at the far end would have stayed with whichever units they were comfortable with.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by phillies   » Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:41 pm

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I don't see any basis for this claim. A kilometer is a type of distance, and it is similar within a factor of two to a mile. I believe someone carefully set up software that would let the illustrious writer get all his numbers right on missile firings.

Lord Skimper wrote:I under stand that RFC doesn't really under stand metric, I lived through the conversion times in Canada and in Canada we still use Miles and think of Km as a type of distant similar to a mile, even though it isn't.

a Km is 1000 metres. a Mile is 1 mile.

14,000,000 Km is 14,000,000,000 metres or 14 Giga metres or 14 Gm.

1,000 Km is 1,000,000 metres or 1 Mega metre or 1 Mm

1,000,000,000 Km is 1,000,000,000,000 metres or 1 Tera metre or 1Tm.

The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second or 300 Mm per second.

Metric is based on the metre for distance. and 10's 100's and 1000's or many 1000's or 1000th of a metre not a Kilo metre.
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Re: Metric and how not to use it.
Post by kzt   » Mon Oct 08, 2018 10:52 pm

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The preferred velocity measure is furlongs per fortnight.

phillies wrote:I don't see any basis for this claim. A kilometer is a type of distance, and it is similar within a factor of two to a mile. I believe someone carefully set up software that would let the illustrious writer get all his numbers right on missile firings.
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