How to save billions of dollars.

[--Pete]

Hi,

On the general rant - I think you exaggerate how little we convert units. I'm 5 foot 6 inches. My baby was born 9 lbs 4 oz. Stuff like that.

OK, we use units all the time. But where is there any conversions there? Or do you mean that since you're using mixed units, there's some kind of conversion?

No, the US may have been one of the signing nations of the Metre Convention, but up to this day does not officially use or mandate a metric system of units, making it one of only three countries that still use customary units.

First, all the units used in the USA are defined in terms of metric units. Second, mandate all you will, many people in countries that are officially metric use their traditional units in everyday life.

Yeah, maybe we should have kept the Stunde, which represents the distance a person walks in a hour

Perhaps you should read more carefully. This was answered in the original post in the paragraph about the league.

The original Nautical mile was not suitable for a standardized unit of length, because it varied from equator (1843 m) to poles (1862 m). It wasn't until 1929 that the (average) value of 1852 m was used internationally, and the US kept using it's own version (1853 m) until 1954.

Poor logic. The nautical mile was not a good unit to standardize length because it wasn't standardized itself, but then it was standardized? So why not standardize it in 1800?

The base unit of mass in the Metric system is Kg, nog gramms.

NO! It is the gram -- as Gnollguy so well pointed out. And thank you for contributing to my argument that nobody uses the metric system as defined. The symbol for 1000 is 'k' not 'K' (which is the designation for degree Kelvin).

MKS stands for Metre-Kilogramm-Second, so I see no problem with measuring my mass in Kg. I know you asked for weight, but noone is really interested in how hard the earth pulls at me in my current location, is it?

The point isn't whether I'm interested in your weight or your mass. The question is whether you're intelligent enough to know the difference.

Apparently you are having a problem with the decimal numbering system as well as the metric system. I'll readily agree that binary would be better, but there are plenty of higher-priority issues, don't you think?

Yeah, like increasing the general intelligence of humanity -- as your post demonstrates so well.

That's true, but beside the point. Metrification is about standardisation and unification. If you want to compare gas usage between a European and American car, for example, you will need to choose one set of units. In other words, one of us has to do a conversion. Since you claim to be 'metric', why don't you drop the miles and gallons and give me the numbers in kilometres and liters? (btw, if you insist on miles, which one is it?)

Yep. How often is this necessary? Especially since the 'same' car will get a different gas usage in Europe and in the USA (the safety and emission standards of the USA make it illegal to import many European cars, and those that are imported are often an Americanized version so that, conversion or no conversion, the comparisons are meaningless).

The metric system is not limited to 7 base units. It doesn't say you can't use your own convenient units. It only requires you to define such units in SI units. That's why solar mass and atomic mass units are so popular around the world, and noone needs to guess how much it actually is.

I can use my own convenient units? The inch is defined to be 2.54 mm. So I can use the inch. The foot is defined to be 12 inches, so I guess I can use the foot. Or the hand, the fathom, the league, the mile (any of them as long as they're ultimately based on the inch).

As to the solar mass unit (Ms = (1.989±0.004) x 10^30 kg) and the atomic mass unit (1 u = 1.660 54 x 10^-27 kg, approximately), they're not even close to being 'defined' in terms of SI units. Your arguments are not only lousy, they're inconsistent.

Water can easily be obtained in a pure enough form to measure its freezing and boiling point accurately, no worries there. Actually, there aren't many other readily available liquids that would do.

Yeah, right. A bunch of scientists on a huge budget couldn't do it at one of the foremost labs in the world. And where does it say it has to be 'readily available'? Or what does that even mean? Sure, you can get water from the sink. But water of the quality you need does not come from a sink. If you have ever been in a real lab, you'd know that a large number of liquids are 'readily available'. But as usual, you use your ignorance as the platform for your argument. You don't know, so it must not be.

Second, the relatively steep lines of its phase transitions mean that small errors in the pressure yields a larger error in the temperature than would be the case with other materials.

You got that backwards. A sharp phase transition is needed for accurate measurements. If ice would melt gradually between 0 and 5 degrees, how would you ever determine the exact freezing point of water?

Again, ignorance. You argue and you don't even understand the concepts you are arguing about. It is not the sharpness of the transition that I'm talking about. It is the slope of the transition line in the temperature-pressure plane.

Your factors of 10 find their use in the prefixes of units. The metric system says nothing about conversions having to be based on factors of 10.

The metric system is based on the concept of one unit per physical property and a set of prefixes to allow that unit to cover all necessary cases. Those prefixes designate powers of ten. Your statement here is another fine bit of nonsense. From it, I can logically claim that I only use the metric system, but I do so based on conversion factors of 25.4 and 12 and 3 and 5280, etc.

Celcius and Centegrate rule! They're easy to understand and usable in everyday situations.

Celsius is centigrade. Fahrenheit is easy to understand and usable in everyday situations. Neither is particularly good, since neither is a thermodynamic scale. And just because you're used to one doesn't make it superior.

I don't understand yards and feet and whatnot.

And so, you blame the units for your lack of understanding?

errrrr..... why?

Because one size does not fit all.

I wouldn't mind all the road signs and such being changed and waiting another 100 years so for the mile and foot and inch and such to fade out completely. Yes it will take that long, . . .

You might be right, although I don't think it would take that long.

--Pete

---

Hi,

And are there 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, or just 1000?

Funny you should ask. There are 1000 bytes in a kilobyte. There are 1024 bytes in a kibibyte. I kid you not.

Yet another 'simplification and standardization' from the people who brought you the erg.

--Pete