for a good chuckle today.....

[Steve Carlson]

Originally Posted by steve dunham

Plus Metric is just too complicated and arbitrary!

Complicated, no. Arbitrary, yes.

[Steve Carlson]

Originally Posted by Jim Bennett

Edited for accuracy.
Temperature with 0° as freezing, and 100° as boiling, instead of 32° and 212°. Where did those numbers come from any way.

Simple: 0F is damn cold, and 100F is damn hot.

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlson

Simple: 0F is damn cold, and 100F is damn hot.

Evidently Minnesota is your adopted home or you grew up along the Minnesota / Iowa border.

[ZachO]

Originally Posted by CPW

Not in Florida, and a lot of water is used here for agricultural irrigation. Water use permits are issued in gallons (thousands of gallons) and usage is reported the same way.

Ah, I guess it's a western thing, then. What about miner's inches?

Many water right permits are issued here in gallons per minute for flow, acre-feet for volume. So they use both in the permit. You can take a certain flow per time-unit, but are also limited by a maximum volume. A typical domestic well water right would be for 35gpm, 1.5 acre-feet per year. But in the field they can be measured (and are) in cubic feet per second, gallons per minute, and miner's inches depending on the situation...And reservoir capacity is often measured in acre-feet.

These things all make sense in their specific application, but they don't play well with other systems.

[skalywag]

As an aerospace design engineer, I had the privileged to work on both Airbus and Boeing aircraft. Airbus was a metric machine, except for the threads of the fasteners which are English. It became easy to work in either "system" using the conversion tables a lot.
Cheers

[Mike_L]

When it comes to systems of measurement, you will find the one you were initially schooled in to be the easiest because you are familiar with it and conversion isn't straight forward.
As a Canadian I was initially exposed to the Imperial system. As a professional scientist for 40 years, I used the metric system exclusively. I did however have to also use the Imperial system when interacting with my US counterparts.
The metric system is much more straight forward because it uses the meter as a standard unit of distance measurement and all other units are multiples of 10 based on this standard.
A cubic meter has a volume of 1000 liters, the standard unit of volume measurement, with other units of volume based on multiples of this amount. The prefexes denoting the multiples of 10 for both distance and volume are the same (milliliters, millimeters etc.) so remembering them is easier. The Imperial system has two cups in a pint, two pints in a quart and four quarts in a gallon, as I remember?
I've also seen reference to a British, a Canadian, an American and an Australian gallon. This would be challenging within your own country and even more so at the international level.
From a trade perspective an international language works the best.

[ZachO]

My knowledge is limited, but my feeling is that the metric system is based on numbers, and having those numbers make sense.

Where the I guess imperial (?) system is based on actual measurements of things found in the world, or a standard object or size. Then you have to make the measurements all fit that real world object, which leads to strange (was going to say odd! ), uneven numbers. So some good that was traded weighed a certain amount, was decided to be a "pound" (or something), and all other objects were then compared to that. So the numbers were never meant to be all nice and easy.

I know which makes more sense to me, but in the end...whatever works, works.

[Jon in AZ]

I don't see how that proves anything. Metric hardware is more expensive because demand is limited. If the US were to adopt metric, the prices would likely flip-flop.

I'm not advocating either way. At one time, the cost of retooling was a drawback of making the switch, but globalization in many industries has changed that.

[Steve Carlson]

Originally Posted by steve dunham

Evidently Minnesota is your adopted home or you grew up along the Minnesota / Iowa border.

I gather you are saying zero is not "damn cold"? I dunno, it seems appropriate to me. Temps above zero F are not worth worrying about, but you have to take it more seriously when below zero.

[shrug] perception is reality when it comes to temperature. Just witness the battles over thermostat control in our office...

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlson

I gather you are saying zero is not "damn cold"? I dunno, it seems appropriate to me. Temps above zero F are not worth worrying about, but you have to take it more seriously when below zero.

[shrug] perception is reality when it comes to temperature. Just witness the battles over thermostat control in our office...

Then we agree
1) Down to zero degrees is CHILLY
2) It doesn't get cold until it's below zero
3) 20 below F and colder is Damm Cold
4) 32 deg F is not cold , you can't even freeze water

I have put heating controls in hundreds of office buildings .
Half the people are roasting and the other half are freezing , 12 months out of the year.

[Raz]

Originally Posted by Jon in AZ

I don't see how that proves anything. Metric hardware is more expensive because demand is limited. If the US were to adopt metric, the prices would likely flip-flop.

I'm not advocating either way. At one time, the cost of retooling was a drawback of making the switch, but globalization in many industries has changed that.

It was a joke Jon. A little banter at Mr. Bennetts expense.


Like it or not if every thing you buy uses metric hardware then the U.S. already has adopted metric when it comes to hardware. Typically hardware is needed for repair. And judging by what I see at the transfer station not much repair is going on. Which is probably why hardware stores sell toasters.

[floyd]

Originally Posted by steve dunham

Then we agree
1) Down to zero degrees is CHILLY
2) It doesn't get cold until it's below zero
3) 20 below F and colder is Damm Cold
4) 32 deg F is not cold , you can't even freeze water

I have put heating controls in hundreds of office buildings .
Half the people are roasting and the other half are freezing , 12 months out of the year.

Here are a couple of other exact temp measurements which crossover between °C & °F...

1] Hotter than the hinges of hell!
2] Colder than a well digger's @$$.

Then there's -459.67°F which is "absolutely" cold!

[Raz]

Or -273.15° C if you're north of the 49th.

[Borrego Dave]

As this thread has morphed to temps, it seems folks to the north consider 0 to be the difference between chilly & cold. I'm going to chime in for us desert dwellers, at 75 it starts to be chilly & at 50 it's down right cold...no matter what scale you want to use .

[ZachO]

We had a winter a bit ago where temps were in the - teens for lows, sometimes creeping into the single digits below zero for highs, for weeks. The clutch on my truck was acting up so I was walking to work that whole time. I remember the first day it crept up above zero to 8 degrees F. I referred to that 8 degrees as feeling "balmy", after the previous couple weeks...I had my jacket unzipped on the way to work

[Mike Magee]

I like the line in Grumpy Old Men, they are ice fishing and Meredith Burgess' character says, "It's colder than a witch's t!t"!

[Tom 72]

Back on post 205, The Escape 19 was cited: If you want proof, my trailer was made in a country on the metric system but is called an Escape 19 - Not an Escape 5.7912.

However, it is actually 19' 6", which makes it an Escape 6.0, in meters that is.

I do like the sound of 19 better, and am thinking hard about buying one. If I don't act soon, it will be a '19 19', instead of an '18 19'.

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by Mike Magee

I like the line in Grumpy Old Men, they are ice fishing and Meredith Burgess' character says, "It's colder than a witch's t!t"!

I learned the phrase " Colder than a Witches left T_t when I was in grade school in the 1950's. There are several other phrases of wisdom that I learned in the 50's but are no longer PC and best not repeated

[k corbin]

Memorize this 25 millimeters is a very tiny bit less than 1 inch. It will get you by for mentally making those quick, rough, conversion calculations.

If the USA changed over to metrics it would be OK by me. It is only legacy items that one needs to measure that would create an issue but I already have that issue of figuring out what the size is in either system covered since I have the tools for converting the measurements back and forth.

I have digital calipers that at the press of a button will display the measurement in fractional inches, decimal inches or millimeters. I also have a tape ruler with inches on one side and metric on the other. I have need of these because I have customers from many different countries. If I am describing a product in printed literature I use dual dimensions. If I am showing the size of something with a ruler I use a ruler that has inches on one side and millimeters on the other side in the photo.

My cell phone, tablet and computer all have apps for converting various kinds of measurements from one measuring system to another. The apps get used a lot when shopping for various parts and supplies from the internet.

I can work in either system in my 3D CAD program that I design in or even go back and forth if needed.

[Kai in Seattle]

It's not that one can't convert things--it's that it's not automatic.

What really gets to me are weights--of human bodies.

I mean, someone who weighs 14.3 stone
Just doesn't seem the same size as someone who weighs 90.9 kilograms...
Or even as big as someone who weighs 200 pounds.

I mean, seriously...could anyone take 14.3 stones seriously around here?

OH, fine, you Canadians and British. You go ahead and never mind weighing 14.3!

That's light even for a pug dog! (Well...I mean, in pug stones)

BEST
Kai