Metrifacation

[geoffh]

I,ve just got back from my local hardware store with a 3/8th rachet for my 41mm socket to fix my scoot which is limited to 47.6kph in a country that has road signs in mph.I have a lot more to say but if it.s just me I,ll get my coat and rant in the coal hole.


geoff 

[FrankenMech]

The US had a good metric conversion going back in 1976(?) but the AARP put a stop to it and we have been Farked every since.

[PirateLabs]

The metric system sucks! Of course, that is just my opinion but, I am sticking to it. Same thing with Celsius instead of Fahrenheit for temperature. C is too compact whereas F has from 32 for freezing to 212 for boiling water instead of just 0 and 100. I have a friend in Australia that complains he is freezing cold when it is 8 degrees C and burning up when it is 27 C. Not enough of a range if you ask me...of course, no one did.

Bill

[geoffh]

Nope no one asked me either,but buying a 3m length 4X2 timber should be impossible but heh ho i,ll just open another 568ml can of beer.

geoff

[mrkswthwrth]

I for one seem to use a combination.. i always reach for the metric wrenches first. Volume is usually imperial. I refer to distance in miles meters yards feet and millimeters. And temperature is farenheit.

[Raizer]

Jun 23, 2018 19:30:13 GMT -5 PirateLabs said:

The metric system sucks! Of course, that is just my opinion but, I am sticking to it. Same thing with Celsius instead of Fahrenheit for temperature. C is too compact whereas F has from 32 for freezing to 212 for boiling water instead of just 0 and 100. I have a friend in Australia that complains he is freezing cold when it is 8 degrees C and burning up when it is 27 C. Not enough of a range if you ask me...of course, no one did.

Bill

[jackrides]

The US measurement system originated from merchants who would come up with their own 'system' to keep customers in the dark. As long as are talking metric, Metric Time. 10 hours a day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 sec per minute. So a metric second is .864 of our second. Then we could eliminate military time vs. civilian time, and create a great jobs program for clockmakers.
The easy way to teach people Celsius as illustrated by the National Bureau of Standards, early '70s: picture a thermometer with 2 scales with adjacent pictures for us number challenged people. The bottom picture shows an attractive Inuit woman dressed for winter, the next to the top picture shows a woman in a two piece swimsuit, and the top picture shows a woman from just above the knees to her feet. Yes I swear this was real.

[FrankenMech]

I am old (65) but we were taught both systems in school. I use both, but I prefer the metric system. For most of the stuff I work with I use mm/g/seconds, as opposed to MKS or CGS.

Back in 76 I was just getting a 'feel' for the temp in °C when they shut down the whole conversion. Unfortunately shutting down the conversion really hurt the US for foreign trade and our trade balance. You can't sell anything abroad unless it is totally metric.

I had one incredibly stupid boss that thought all you had to do was punch a single button on a CAD system to convert a part drawing to metric.

Converting English measurements to some odd number of ml/CC's or grams is equally stupid, -just round it off.

[90GTVert]

I like metric for basic measurements. So much easier to me to quickly note a mm or even half mm than getting into all of the fractions of an inch. I'm much more used to thousandths of an inch meaning something to me for small stuff though. Don't like kilometers per hour and such, but mostly because I have not been used to it so it doesn't immediately resonate. 60MPH means something to me instantly. 100kph I have to think for a second. It's like a foreign language to me. I once knew a woman that came to the US from Germany when she was I think 10-12 so she spoke only German till she got here. I asked her if she thought in German, at least sometimes, even though she spoke English other than around her mother that never was fluent in English and she thought it was such a weird and silly question and wouldn't give me an answer. Made sense to me, and relates to this. I've been used to MPH for so long, that any time I hear KPH I have to relate to it via MPH. Much like when I had years of Spanish in school, something like zapato for example would make me think shoe before I thought of a shoe. Granted, my Spanish was not a functional level. I guess maybe with enough practice that all changes and you replace your standards so to speak... but when that German woman got upset she still said something in German as a first response even with more of her life using English as a primary language. Maybe it's not so relevant because in the case of measurements you are thinking of something physical where a mm is it's own thing while a zapato and a shoe are the same thing but a different word. I'm gonna stop thinking about this before blood shoots out of my nose. lol

[AtariGuy]

I worked at a place where all our measures were metric (it's amazing how many big brands have gone metric though, john deere for example). We had an automated brake press though that would measure to thousandths of an inch. 25.4mm per inch, 12.7mm for 0.5", 6.35mm for 0.25". Or roughly 0.040" to make 1mm, 0.004" for 0.1mm. Below that and one would be splitting hairs.

But now i work at a shop where we measure in fractionals and degrees of a circle. When i first started, my brain was still fully wedged in metric while converting to decimal inch. Trying to tell a buddy of mine (who's worked there since the day he got out of the military) measures in decimal and he looked at me like i was speaking greek. "You need to advance it a few hundredths yet." "I DONT KNOW THESE HUNDREDTHS YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT! PUT IT IN FRACTIONS!" "Uhhhhhh... the f%&@ are fractions? Like... 1/16? ... TOO FAR!"

It still blows my mind trying to talk fractions when i'm already 90% metric in america.

[PirateLabs]

Metric is base 10. I think we need a base 11.296 system just to make it even more confusing, ha ha.

Bill

[FrankenMech]

Wait until the aliens from the 'Galactic Empire' get here and make us convert to base 8...

Many machine tools can be converted to/from metric with different lead-screws installed. Sometimes the tools even came with the conversion parts in the spare parts. Lots of times those 'spares' get lost though.

[tiny]

Okay the Canuk is going to chime in. Born in '79 i was raised with metric and find it sooo much easier to work on stuff where its either 8 or 10 millimeter or so forth and not trying to figure out fractions.
Til I went to collage for Architectural Technologies then realizing that all building in NA is in Feet and Inches crap now have to figure that out now. Hell Im so use to Horse Power and Pound Foot of torque I have no Idea what that equates to in Kilowatts and Newton Meters.
Kilometers to Miles that conversion is easy so its a non issue for me. Same with Kilos to Pounds.
Hell all my tools are in metric so if I ever get a classic US made car Im in trouble would need to buy a set of SAE tools to work on it

[FrankenMech]

Yeah, fractions suck. Feet/inches/and thousandths isn't too bad.

I was born in 53 and we studied metrics in school along with English measurements.

Actually, if given a choice to only carry one set of tools to work on almost any car either metric or SAE, I would carry a metric set.