Thirty years ago, we all discovered how hard the Metric system sucked

[Blue_Tires]

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2397825667/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

#at=345

[Agschmid]

1. Not so much about how the metric system sucked...

But more about how we don't teach math, and how to do conversions anymore.

Glad the plane made it... And flew for many more years.

[Blue_Tires]

2. I know...Just putting a bad joke in the headline...

A remarkable. world-class bit of airmanship under those circumstances...

[kentauros]

3. The easy way of converting to the metric system:

Don't Convert. Accept it!

[Cirque du So-What]

35. Absolutely right

What is the point of converting metric-to-English anyway? Just teach metric all the way and avoid unnecessary redundancy. In the natural sciences, calculations are taught all-metric - and rightfully so. Doing otherwise would handicap young scientists, many of whom spend a good deal of their time poring over abstracts from international researchers, and I guarantee not a mother's one of them uses the English system.

[FarCenter]

4. It is interesting that the Royal Baby was announced as 8 pounds, 6 ounces

Instead of (8+6/16)/2.2 = 3.8 kilograms.

Apparently the UK is not fully converted.

[bobclark86]

6. From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system#Usage_around_the_world

The UK uses it for official things, but journalists still use it. That's why Top Gear talks about miles and stuff.

[kentauros]

19. I always wondered why Top Gear continued to use standard measures.

Then again, all too often they'd got someone as a guest from Wales or Scotland talking about how many stone they used to weigh

[krispos42]

43. Because for non-scientific endeavors, it doesn't matter

You just need a consistent and universally-understood measurement system.


Somewhere out there a guy will hop into his car to go hunting. He'll be driving a vehicle with a 4.6 liter, 240-horsepower V-8, and tires that are 225mm wide on 16-inch rims. He'll go hunting with a rifle that shoots 140-grain, 7mm ammunition from a 24-inch barrel and a 4x power scope with a 40mm objective lens. On the way back, he'll swing by a convenience store for a liter of cola and a quarter-pound cheeseburger.



We mix and match all the time. While, scientifically speaking, it would be much easier to calculate the ballistics of the rifle bullet and the thermodynamics of the engine's combustion in metric units, for the non-scientific uses, you just need a number, any number, for comparison.


The metric system shines with the easy convertibility into scientific notation, and for the consistency of derived units.

1 Newton of force applied to one kilogram of mass equals one meter per second, per second acceleration. Yay!

One pound of force applied to 32.174 pounds of mass equals one foot per second, per second acceleration. Derp?


But units of convenience can be far easier and more informative than scientific units, as long as there is a clear definition of what the convenience unit is.

[ProfessorGAC]

44. I've Driven in the UK

It's all miles per hour, one will see signs like "Shoulder Narrows in 200 yards", they still drink pints of beer, cheese is sold by the pound (i don't know about meat and produce, never bought any), and people at the site i visited would say things like "it's the door 20 feet down the hall on the right."

But, gas is in liters, milk is sold in liters (although it's clearly a gallon jug), and the garden place near the hotel where i stayed sold mulch by the kilo.

They go back and forth and don't seem to have any confusion.
GAC

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. Cheese isn't sold in pounds any more

You might be able to ask in pounds, and some shops may be able to convert, but the scales will be calibrated and tested in kilos - when the trading standards officers started only using metric for shop weights, a few people were prosecuted for refusing to have scales in kilos.

It is still miles on the roads (though the unobtrusive markers by the side of motorways mark off 100 metre intervals, and have done so for decades).

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. The UK is, we are not

and as pointed above, some journos still have not, since they are actually working with an American audience.

[FarCenter]

12. I checked the Daily Telegraph news story and it was 8 lb, 6 oz.

I think that the actual announcement from the hospital was pounds and ounces. A hospital is a bad place to be using the English system of units, since calculations are more complicated and errors more likely.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Yup you are correct

it is.

They still use Stones (now talk of this ) so maybe they have not done it completely or they did that for the media.

I grew up with metric... I get metric

[FarCenter]

16. 14 pounds / stone, but 16 ounces / pound -- why do they use so many different ratios?

And without further clarification, we must assume Avoirdupois pound (mass)?

Or, like precious metals, are Royal babies measured in Troy pounds and ounces?

[nadinbrzezinski]

17. Must be troy pounds

[Horse with no Name]

21. Hospitals do use metric for children

because all of the conversions are mg/kg...however, we also write it out in pounds and ounces for everyone else.

[bobclark86]

5. I like metric.

For non-critical work, it's super-simple to convert. A kilometer is 0.6 miles. A meter is a yard and a few inches (like a bit over three). Why is my soda in a 16.9 oz bottle? Oh, it's 500 mL. A gallon of milk is just shy of 4 liters.

For super-critical work, just start there, and to change to a different label, move a decimal point. NASA learned to stick with it after the Mars Climate Orbiter wrecked and lost them their project and $125 million.

There's a reason every country uses it except like Liberia and Burma -- you know, really crappy places to live. Oh, and the U.S.

[FarCenter]

8. Google makes all the conversions easy

Just type "6 furlongs in meters" into the google search box, and you get back "6 furlongs = 1 207.008 meters".

1 btu = 0.29307107 watt hours

1 btu = 1.05505585 kilojoules

[John1956PA]

7. Interesting documentary.

Thanks for posting.

The aircraft should not have taken off with its fuel gauge being inoperative. The ground crew pumped only about half of the required amount of fuel because its calculations became muddled between the traditional "pounds to gallons" calculation procedure and the newly-implemented metric calculation procedure.

I think that the ground crew's pump measured the flow in gallons rather than liters.

1 kg = 2.2 lbs;
1 gal of fuel weighs 6.8 lbs, or 3.1 kg;
The weight of fuel required by the flight was 24,000 lbs, or 10,900 kg;
The volume of fuel required by the flight was: 24,000 lbs ÷ 6.8 lbs/gal = 3,530 gal;
Alternatively: 10,900 kg ÷ 3.1 kg/gal = 3,520 gal;

The flight crew did not catch the ground crew's error.

Regardless, if the fuel gauge circuit had been operating, thee shortage of fuel would have been apparent.

[RC]

9. That video was adrenalin inducing.

Well worth the watch.

[metalbot]

11. There's one domain in which the imperial units are slightly more convenient

The speed of light really close to 1 foot per nanosecond, so teaching/learning special relativity is commonly done using feet because it makes the math simpler.

I'd love to see the US shift to metric, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

[FarCenter]

20. 300,000 km/s seems more convenient than 186,000 miles/s

Fortunately, electrical engineering developed late enough that there is only the metric system of units. There is no English system equivalent to the Volt, Ampere and Ohm in use anywhere.

Most scientific work seems to be done exclusively in metric. If journals think the English equivalent would be informative, it is included parenthetically.

[kentauros]

24. The thing is, we're halfway there,

and most people don't even know it. They use the metric system on a daily basis, and have no idea that they are!

Electricity = kilowatts
Large soda bottles = 2 liters
Medicines (solids) = milligrams
Computers = Megabytes, Gigahertz
All money = base-10

I know there's plenty of others, including distances run in track & field and other sports, I just can't think of them all at the moment.

I think what they've had to do in our country is to slip metric in there in little bits, so people either accept it or just learn to ignore it. It takes longer because so many people are so insanely stubborn for their antiquated measuring system, but it's getting there

[ismnotwasm]

13. I have to use part of the metric system

I think in Celsius and and milliliters, liters centimeters and kilograms, for instance. I work as a nurse and we use metric for measurement of various things.

It's easier I think, and I've learned one or two conversions for patients. Celsius to Fahrenheit, (I either ballpark it or use a calculator) and kilograms to pounds. (2.2 pounds is one kilogram)

I just picked it up with repetition. I don't use kilometers, so I still think in miles though. I'm trying not to, might as well go all the way.

It's not that bad.

[Sentath]

28. Kilometers and Miles (the easy way)

Convert at a lovely 5mi=8km ratio.

So, just divide your miles by 5 and multiply that by 8 for km's.

35 mph 35/5=7 7*8=56 56 km/h

The official number from Google is: 56.372 , which I find to be an acceptable margin of error for most purposes. At 100 mph the error is almost exactly 1 km/h (160.934)

[Rstrstx]

34. WAY too hard for most people, the easiest way...

is to look on your speedometer if you have the needle type, just under mph it's listed in km/hr. So if you're going 55mph it'll also read 88 km/hr

[Sentath]

38. Location dependent

But yes, charts are easier than math.

[blue sky at night]

14. Here is why the metric system DOESN'T suck......

Practical use of a ruler. I want to divide a piece of sandpaper into thirds to fit my sander.

Divide 11 inches by 3 ='s 3.6666666666666666666666666666667 or 3 6/10, ok try finding 6/10 of an inch on the ruler.

Now divide 280 mm by 3 ='s 93.333333333333333333333333333333 or 93mm. Easy to find on the metric side of the ruler.

by the way, if you want to fold a letter into thirds just use the 93 mm we found above...it will work!

[hfojvt]

22. but 3.6666666 is pretty darn close to

3 and 11/16ths. It's a lot closer to THAT than it is to 3 and 6/10ths.

3.6875
3.66666666
3.6

[blue sky at night]

36. ya...

its fun to do that math in your head.......just an example, I deal in ML of liquid, ever try doing 10% of a quart?

[snooper2]

46. "I want to divide a piece of sandpaper into thirds to fit my sander."

You could just fold it twice and tear like everyone else LOL

[laundry_queen]

18. :)

I can't see the embedded video (since I'm in Canada) but I've seen a couple documentaries on the Gimli glider, and it's a scary/great story.

As a Canadian, we learn metric in school, but still often talk about our heights and weights in feet, inches and pounds. But we are used to using Celsius, km/h and litres for temp, speed and liquid volumes.

When my children were born, they gave me the weights in grams in the delivery room, and I asked them to convert to pounds and oz please, lol.

[Nye Bevan]

23. Celsius is one of my all-time biggest pet hates.

1. Forces people to use negative numbers;

2. Compresses realistic temperatures into an unnecessarily small range. Fahrenheit is such a perfect system, given that temperatures below zero or above 100 are very uncommon, but possible.

[sweetapogee]

26. best advice

use the Kelvin scale. No negatives

[kentauros]

29. That would be true if it wasn't for "weird physics"

Negative Temperature

That stuff is way over my head; I simply knew it existed from something I'd read, probably on the Science group here

[longship]

27. Winters in Minnesota; summers in Phoenix.

Plenty of negatives and over 100's in those places. So you might want to stay away.

My suggestion? San Francisco or Hawaii but avoid high altitudes where those evil negative numbers might creep up on you.

Celsius is fine, but science uses the Kelvin scale.

[reformist2]

31. I agree - the Fahreheit scale is perfectly suited for temperate-zone weather.

100 means it's hella hot. And zero means it's hella cold. Anything outside that range and you know you're in freakish-weather territory.

What are these numbers in Celsius... 40 and -20? Doesn't have the same impact.

[TrogL]

33. Glad you think so. Where I live -40 is a realistic temperature with wind chills below that.

[Doc_Technical]

25. Thread Killer

The Frantics

[kentauros]

30. That only kills the thread

if where you happen to work doesn't block all YouTube videos

That said, describe the video to me

[applegrove]

40. The CBC did a twenty minute documentary on the gimli glider last night. 20 minutes Here it is:

http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/ID/2397825667/

[kentauros]

41. Thanks!

I'll have to watch it this evening, though

[SDjack]

32. Drug dealers have done a lot to promote the use of Metric System in USA. nt

[kestrel91316]

37. Metric doesn't suck. It is how science and medicine and engineering operate globally.

What sucks is how the US clings to such an unwieldy, irrational system. I wish we'd just convert and be done with it, even though I personally struggle to this day with metric, in spite of using it in my veterinary practice part of the time. The converting back and forth is where problems occur.

[GreenStormCloud]

39. For navigation, nautical miles and knots is much easier.

One nautical mile is almost exactly one minute of latitude, or one minute of longitude at the equator.

[Apophis]

42. The metric system makes sense and is easier to learn than the crap we have here.

I use metric in my archaeology work.

[WCGreen]

47. European Liberal Pansies use the Metric System....

So did Mao and the Commies in Europe.