Going metric-50 years later

[A fool and his money.....]

15 minutes ago, Cambon said:

I absolutely agree. Nautical miles is the obvious choice then. Based on logic and science, it is the only real solution. 

Neither logic nor science have any use for imperial units full stop.

[wrighty]

Base units need to be meaningful in terms of a person’s experience. That’s how imperial measurements came about. An acre for example is the area a man can plough in a day, or something like that. Metric units are easier with their standard x10 multiples, but apart from that the base units are completely arbitrary. 
 

Scientific units could be based on the speed of light, Planck’s Constant, and the Gravitational Constant, leading to a system that is natural and effectively dimensionless. The problem then is relating these to everyday life. 
 

I think a mile is OK for road signs - changing to km would be quite painful and probably generate loads of speeding accidents (“the sign said 110 your honour, I was only doing 95mph”). What I don’t understand is Americans continuing to use Fahrenheit and Pounds. 

[Happier diner]

No. Everyone would have to get their speedo dials changed. Its a dumb idea. The rest of the world should change to miles

[Happier diner]

3 hours ago, John Wright said:

YES

I do more than half my annual mileage outside IoM/UK. Mainly driving vehicles with mph speedos. But I tend to think distance in km and conversion between mph/km/h is easy.

No idea why we haven’t followed through, no idea why one of the things touted as a Brexit benefit was the ability to buy champagne in pint bottles. ( does any champagne house actually do that now they have the freedom.)

I drive in Europe a lot. I bought a digital speedo gps off ebay and its great. It has a heads up display as well. My KPH marks on my speedo are so small I cant read =/- 5kph. The only issue is in tunnels where the digital speed doesn't work 

[The Voice of Reason]

4 hours ago, The Voice of Reason said:

And NO from me.

Look at this way. If you went to the pub with your mate. Your preferred tipple is a pint of real ale. You ask your companion if he would like a drink. He says “ I’d like pint of fizzy lager”.

Would you say “ Good idea I’ll have one of those too instead of my usual. It makes life much easier, don’t you think?”

[Two-lane]

An advantage of some metric units is the ability to describe things in more than one way. Sometime in the 1980s, the user's manual of a Fiat car I had showed the fuel tank capacity in cubic decimeters. You can't do that with Imperial.

 

[The Voice of Reason]

9 minutes ago, Two-lane said:

An advantage of some metric units is the ability to describe things in more than one way. Sometime in the 1980s, the user's manual of a Fiat car I had showed the fuel tank capacity in cubic decimeters. You can't do that with Imperial.

 

That sounds useful!

[forestboy]

10 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

That sounds useful!

Pints and gallons please. 

[Two-lane]

Then there is atmospheric pressure. When I was at school pressure was measured in inches of mercury. Everyone can understand that. Then they went partially metric with millimetres of mercury. Then there were bars and millibars (not somewhere where they serve small drinks). And now it's some obscure unit named after a foreigner - which is so useless it is usually prefaced with -hecto - whatever that is. Of course, you could insist on using Newtons per square metre instead - more of a Britsh feel.

[John Wright]

31 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Look at this way. If you went to the pub with your mate. Your preferred tipple is a pint of real ale. You ask your companion if he would like a drink. He says “ I’d like pint of fizzy lager”.

Would you say “ Good idea I’ll have one of those too instead of my usual. It makes life much easier, don’t you think?”

But you’re looking at the qualitative rather than the quantitative.

Beer is typically served in 300ml or 600ml glasses. They’re as near as can be to a half or full pint. 

In Spain you can order by the caña or pinta. Old names preserved. In Italy they still sell cheese, sliced meats etc, by the etto, 100gm, roughly a quarter.

Nothing problematic with metrification. Everything is sold in metric nowadays. Has been for years. Even fuel. We can still retain old names.  Don’t understand why miles are so sacrosanct? Ireland changed. The sky didn’t fall in.

[A fool and his money.....]

1 hour ago, wrighty said:

Base units need to be meaningful in terms of a person’s experience. That’s how imperial measurements came about. An acre for example is the area a man can plough in a day, or something like that. Metric units are easier with their standard x10 multiples, but apart from that the base units are completely arbitrary.

Why do base units need to be meaningful? How many people plough by hand these days? It's completely meaningless.

If you asked anyone in the street what any imperial unit corresponds to, aside from guessing based on the name, almost nobody would be able to tell you.

A metre I think is something like the wavelength of argon on the moon or something (I've no idea)  equally obscure. That's completely missing the point though. The point is that in terms of length, it's the only unit you'll ever need - true you can use others which are equally as versatile as imperial units but they're described from a metre using standard prefixes and converted with nothing more complicated than multiplying or dividing by factors of ten.

It's 40 years since I left school, but give me any metric unit, even one I've never heard of and I can convert it into a bigger or smaller one in seconds in my head. Not only that, I could then communicate my result to almost any country in the world and be understood.

That is infinitely more useful to anybody than any (probably inaccurate) measurement of how much land one man and a horse can plough in a day.

[A fool and his money.....]

1 hour ago, The Voice of Reason said:

Look at this way. If you went to the pub with your mate. Your preferred tipple is a pint of real ale. You ask your companion if he would like a drink. He says “ I’d like pint of fizzy lager”.

Would you say “ Good idea I’ll have one of those too instead of my usual. It makes life much easier, don’t you think?”

But you're doing nothing more important than having a beer, for you to both drink the same think has no advantage whatsoever.

Move onto the increasingly international endeavour of scientific and technological development, or road safety and standardisation - especially in favour of an infinitely superior and near universally accepted system is a no brainer.

 

Edited June 5, 2023 by A fool and his money.....

[Two-lane]

7 minutes ago, John Wright said:

Beer is typically served in 300ml or 600ml glasses

It seems that there is variation between countries, if not within countries. In the south of Germany, a large beer is 1 litre and a small beer is 0.5 litre. In Frankfurt, a large beer is 0.4 litre and a small beer is either 0.25 or 0.3-ish litre.

 

[Andy Onchan]

5 hours ago, The Phantom said:

I can well imagine the IOM Govt commissioning a method of measuring distance that is solely applicable to the Island. 

Manx Per Hour. 

 

You mean TDL/hour?

[A fool and his money.....]

2 hours ago, Happier diner said:

I drive in Europe a lot. I bought a digital speedo gps off ebay and its great. It has a heads up display as well. My KPH marks on my speedo are so small I cant read =/- 5kph. The only issue is in tunnels where the digital speed doesn't work 

Good idea, although we'd probably be a good few years from finishing the necessary calculations to launch the satellites for it to work if it weren't for metric units.