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polyphenol

macrumors 68020
Sep 9, 2020
2,111
2,591
Wales
Something I never hear these proponents of the metric system, and proponents of the virtues of switching to measurement systems that are base-10 talk about is this: Why don’t we re-divide the day to be 10 hours, 10 minutes per hour, 10 seconds per minute? In for a penny in for a pound right?
Can't think why you haven't heard of such an idea.

Something like that was actually introduced in France in 1793.

And remember that "in for a penny, in for a pound" arose when there were 240 pennies in a pound. (Or 240 pennyweights in a pound weight.)

Further, few who appear antagonistic towards the metric system actually know the pre-metric UK and US systems properly. Things like bushels and stones varying depending on what you are measuring.

Few outside the racing fraternity have any idea about chains and furlongs.
 

polyphenol

macrumors 68020
Sep 9, 2020
2,111
2,591
Wales
I'm an American that grew up in Asia. When I moved back to the US, I had to learn the US systems. Metric is just easier. You don't have to remember arbitrary conversion numbers (i.e. inches in a foot, quarts in a gallon).

Days are based off of the earth rotating around its axis, so it has to be a factor of 360 degrees... Either way, even our hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year are all off as we have to correct with leap years, then we have to correct the correction by dropping a leap year every 100 years that aren't divisible my 400. It is amazing how this was all figured out before we even had computers/electronic calculators/cars/airplanes/...
And the difference between sidereal and solar times which necessarily feed into such things.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,365
Something I never hear these proponents of the metric system, and proponents of the virtues of switching to measurement systems that are base-10 talk about is this: Why don’t we re-divide the day to be 10 hours, 10 minutes per hour, 10 seconds per minute? In for a penny in for a pound right?
You are referring to Metric Time, a byproduct of the French Revolution. It wasn't in wide use and didn't last past 1897.

 

Herdfan

macrumors 65816
Apr 11, 2011
1,350
7,898
When it comes to nuts and bolts, I don't really care which. The number on the side of a socket/wrench is meaningless. Either it fits or doesn't.

Now for construction, it matters when everything has been based on 4x8 sheets of plywood and 8' studs. Changing that would be hard.
 

mtbdudex

macrumors 68030
Aug 28, 2007
2,882
5,227
SE Michigan
Well .. this also.
How does the metric system handle wood studs??
2f5a90329a22193cf0aca82306156dc1.webp

c3af56bfacde82adad38d681a14ff6cc.png

483b82715229ae2e4140a00482c42eea.webp
 
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JT2002TJ

macrumors 68020
Nov 7, 2013
2,057
1,386
That also assumes that they would cut the wood in Standard dimensions. They would just cut the wood to metric dimensions, if they were going to use wood... Sure would be a lot easier if sheetrock or sheets of wood were in cm or meters vs inches or ft...

Studs would be a whole metric number apart, and sheets would be a whole metric size, just like how they are 4' sheets and 16" studs center-to-center.
 

polyphenol

macrumors 68020
Sep 9, 2020
2,111
2,591
Wales
Well .. this also.
How does the metric system handle wood studs??
2f5a90329a22193cf0aca82306156dc1.webp

c3af56bfacde82adad38d681a14ff6cc.png

483b82715229ae2e4140a00482c42eea.webp
In the UK, most timber now is metric - and identified by finished size.

The whole system of nominal and finished sizes was a nightmare. The relationship between nominal and finished varied - depending on type of timber, the wood mill, etc. Thus, you could buy some from one yard and it would differ to that from another yard sufficiently to be a problem.

Sheet materials are often based on 1220 x 2240 but there are some exceptions.
 
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Herdfan

macrumors 65816
Apr 11, 2011
1,350
7,898
Well .. this also.
How does the metric system handle wood studs??


483b82715229ae2e4140a00482c42eea.webp

Never understood why when you get to 2x10's it goes from 1/2 to 1/4.

In the UK, most timber now is metric - and identified by finished size.

Yes a 4x8 sheet is now 1220 x 2440 and it is very close for whole sheets. But 48 divides by 3 (16" centers) very easily in your head. 1220 not so much: 407, 407, 406?
 

Riot Nrrrd

macrumors 6502
Feb 23, 2011
278
146
Lost Androideles
Something I never hear these proponents of the metric system, and proponents of the virtues of switching to measurement systems that are base-10 talk about is this: Why don’t we re-divide the day to be 10 hours, 10 minutes per hour, 10 seconds per minute? In for a penny in for a pound right?
Others have mentioned Decimal Time already, but I’ll mention something much more recent:

Swatch Internet Time

I retired it for my Apple Watch Series 4, but for 20 years I wore a Swatch beats wristwatch that kept Swatch Internet Time as well as ‘normal’ time. It didn’t get adopted widely either …
 
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Apple fanboy

macrumors Ivy Bridge
Feb 21, 2012
56,907
55,844
Behind the Lens, UK
In the UK, most timber now is metric - and identified by finished size.

The whole system of nominal and finished sizes was a nightmare. The relationship between nominal and finished varied - depending on type of timber, the wood mill, etc. Thus, you could buy some from one yard and it would differ to that from another yard sufficiently to be a problem.

Sheet materials are often based on 1220 x 2240 but there are some exceptions.
Exactly. Easy peasy. Just need the US to catch up with the rest of the world.
 

Herdfan

macrumors 65816
Apr 11, 2011
1,350
7,898
Wow. You guys make it hard for yourselves. I buy 15mm x 30mm x 2000mm guess what size it is?
15mm x 30mm x 2000mm!

But it would not work here in the US.

A 2x4 would end up being 38x89-2440.

It would be too hard to switch from nominal board sizes as too much construction (at least residential) is based on factors of 4".
 

polyphenol

macrumors 68020
Sep 9, 2020
2,111
2,591
Wales
But it would not work here in the US.

A 2x4 would end up being 38x89-2440.

It would be too hard to switch from nominal board sizes as too much construction (at least residential) is based on factors of 4".
Our studwork timber is based on 38, 63 and 89 mm. And lengths 2400 and 3000.

We had some problems when switching to metric. But some issues were due to older timber often being oversized so repair/replacement work almost always required some sort of playing around.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,365
When it comes to nuts and bolts, I don't really care which. The number on the side of a socket/wrench is meaningless. Either it fits or doesn't.

Now for construction, it matters when everything has been based on 4x8 sheets of plywood and 8' studs. Changing that would be hard.
Small town America, early 90s a main street that has never had a stoplight at a particular intersection get's a stoplight. It's a threeway stop (T-intersection) and so they also took the opportunity to build in curbs and a small amount of sidewalk (in a sidewalkless town).

Only the construction crew that built the intersection interpreted metric measurements as imperial. And we got an intersection way too narrow. They had to tear it all down and redo it.
 
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Chuckeee

macrumors 68040
Aug 18, 2023
3,010
8,635
Southern California
It brings to mind the measurement of angles. Only in construction is it common to use metrics gradians (or grade or gon) to measure angles (400 grad in a circle). With roads marked with a 12% (or 12 grade) slope, or building a flat roof with a 2% slant.

Using radians (2 pi radians in a circle) is the more mathematical preferred way to measure angle. While using the common vernacular is still to use degrees (360 degrees in a circle) because of archaic tradition
 

AZhappyjack

Suspended
Jul 3, 2011
10,184
23,659
Happy Jack, AZ
Okay guys, this is probably my angry 1 AM self again posting here, but this is something that has been bothering me for a few weeks now. I am posting it here because I know this is a website primarily of American people, and I don't know who else to rant this about.


Okay, first off, temperature. We all know what the three useful temperature measurements are. Only one is used in daily use, it's Celsius, and across the entire world. It is the most logical of the three, 0° is water's freezing point, 100° is its boiling point, every semi-educated person knows that. Only THREE countries use Fahrenheit exclusively, and surprise surprise, the United States is one of them. Why? Why is that necessary? Why use a system that is absolutely outdated, makes no sense whatsoever (water freezes at 32° and melts at 212°? yeah, totally makes sense), that is used by basically no one else? Even, excuse me for this term, stubborn countries like the United Kingdom now use Celsius exclusively and primarily. Even Canada, and its influence of the country did not force it to keep Fahrenheit. It annoys me because every time someone says "it's 60° outside!" I have to google and convert it because that means nothing for me, and I don't communicate enough with Americans to bother learning it. I could get away with it if it was something that was used interchangeably in multiple countries, but it isn't, it's outdated.

Second, measurement units. On one hand, you have the most logical system on the planet, the metric system. Simple, each unit correlates with each other, and there are basic prefixes which simply divide or multiply the numbers by multiples of 10. And I will be blunt here, the imperial units are more intuitive and are still somewhat logical. However, once you want to do anything slightly more complex, it becomes annoying. You can't do anything with a system like that. You have to learn the massive amount of words and how each of them correspond with each other. Imagine instead of having to use Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, you would instead use Floppies, Discs, Drives, and Servers. It seems like the logical option, but they do not work together well at all and you gotta remember all of that crap. Once again, only the United States along with two other small countries exclusively use this system. In fact, when I thought that the United Kingdom was responsible for the same thing, it turns out it's technically the main measurement system of today (even though many people still use the other one), so I've actually gotta give them credit for having the guts to defy a traditional system. Every commonwealth country has adopted the SI, even if some like Canada still offer it occasionally. Seriously, why do this? Sure, I can deal with that, it's not like it's stupid or anything, but NOT when it's officially only used in a SINGLE GODDAMN COUNTRY (I'm excluding minor countries here because they are usually very small and have very little influence on the rest of the world).

Finally, this one pisses me off so much I just want to die. The date system. The entire world uses one or the other, either a DD/MM/YYYY system (common in European countries), either a YYYY/MM/DD system (common in East-Asian countries and some other places). Both are perfectly fine, as they represent a proper level of importance. What is NOT fine is when a single country just comes to troll everybody and bring a MM/DD/YYYY system, which completely messes up the order of the dates. The month, then a small part of the month, and then the year which the month takes place in? WHAT? How does that make any sense? WHY IS THAT NECESSARY? WHY THE ILLOGICALITY? I can bear with a January 1st, 2016 date system because it is closer to being a feature of the language, but not when it's a purely written form! At least use YYYY/MM/DD if you want to keep the M/D part! Seriously!


Okay, I understand that this was a bit blunt. But I can't accept that. I can't accept a country where there are people so lazy to adopt systems that are, by far, much more convenient than whatever is present, especially considering we are in 2016 and no improvement has been made to this date. And not to mention I'm sure there will be some idiots defending this system saying that "we are not sheeple to follow other people like that!". Well, uh, then you're sheeple to your own ****ing community. Any thoughts? Sure, you may call be brainwashed if that's what you believe, but I'd just like to point out that even though I grew up in a 24h system and I completely switched to 12h. And now I'm (partially) back at 24h. During this whole time, I barely spent any time outside. How exactly can you prove this against me if that's your intent? Anyway, any reasonable and non-biased explanations and/or defenses? Thank you.

Probably just to pi$$ off the global snobs who see America as a bunch of backwoods hicks who only do what we do because we don't know any better. SMH
 

pdoherty

macrumors 65816
Dec 30, 2014
1,491
1,736
Not very well, cos you missed out all the other linguistic influences in the formation of modern English, such as Norse, Latin, French, Norman, Gallic, Pictish, etc etc etc.

For the purposes of this 'discussion', English is the OG and US English is the copy. :cool:
US English is the original British English, preserved from hundreds of years ago.

 

AlaskaMoose

macrumors 68040
Apr 26, 2008
3,585
13,429
Alaska
Some of you are overcomplicating things. In the US we use more than one measuring system: metrics where needed, and the US customary systems by choice and need for some. In some places around the world the driver sits on the right on what an American would call "passenger's seat" :p, while in the US the driver sits and drives on the left.

~Just kidding folks😅
 
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AlaskaMoose

macrumors 68040
Apr 26, 2008
3,585
13,429
Alaska
US English is the original British English, preserved from hundreds of years ago.

That is true.

However, the English language, British or not, still contains latin, German. and so on.
For example, a rough translation (bolded above): Estados Unidos Ingles, es ... originál Británico Ingles, preservado ... ..........
 
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