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Post by gato on Jun 28, 2021 6:42:05 GMT -5
I think my first encounter with the Metric system, was when my buddy and I went to the theater in 1962, for the first showing of Dr. No. The new handgun Bond was issued was described as a Walther PPK: "7.65 millimeter with a delivery like a brick through a plate glass window." We looked at each other and shrugged. Mike Hammer's .45 auto we understood. The other? Not so much.
I read a lot of newspapers and magazines. Many of them play with my head when it comes to measurements, using the metric system, to describe the volume of a liquid in liters, for instance, or record breaking temperatures in Centigrade.
You would think that a guy who owns and works on old VW's would be all-in on metric. I mean, the tools are all metric. The nuts and bolts, pistons, cylinders, ditto. But no.
When I read that some place is sweltering in 46C weather, I have to Google to find out what that equals in Fahrenheit. It's easier if I'm reading at my breakfast nook where I have a comparison chart taped to the table for reference. When something is referenced in millimeters, I mentally place a 9mm bullet between thumb and forefinger to get a glimmer of scale. But a waistband size in centimeters?
I have been hearing for decades about how much easier the metric system is than our clunky system, but try as I might, I can never quite make the leap. For me, it's like those "easy" combinations of keys on the keyboard to accomplish a task. Except for Ctrl-Alt-Del, I can NEVER remember those time savers. I've got a Windows 10 cheat sheet lying around here somewhere for those.
Were you raised on Metric? If not, did you make the switch, ditching your little 1/2 tablespoon cooking aids in the kitchen drawer? I'll be in my 1.82 meter grave before I come around.
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Post by orrk01 on Jun 28, 2021 7:24:24 GMT -5
You'll be 1.8288 meters under, to be more precise. I'm from Minnesota so of course I had to find a conversion app to respond to your post. I'm in the same boat as you, but don't get me started on nautical measurements.
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Post by jhawkr on Jun 28, 2021 7:31:41 GMT -5
Same here. I have a conversion app on my iPad and iPhone to mitigate they metric nonsense. The USA tried to do the metric conversion back in the 70’s and failed miserably.
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Post by ninworks on Jun 28, 2021 7:58:09 GMT -5
I'm very good with millimeters, and centimeters, due to having worked on and modifying Japanese motorcycles for over 30 years. I often worked in the machine shop with machines and precision measuring tools that were SAE and measurement specifications that were metric. I was constantly doing conversions. I kept a calculator in my shirt pocket at all times. Kilometers are another story entirely. I can figure it out but it messes with me and I can't do it in my head. A kilometer is 1000 meters and a mile is 5,280 feet or 1760 yards. Those numbers seem pretty unrelated on the surface.
Other than that I'm pretty useless. I can calculate cubic centimeters and liters to cubic inches, fluid ounces, quarts, and gallons, but don't have the capability to do it from memory. Metric weight conversions also mess with me. I know the conversion factor is .454 but I can never remember which direction the conversion applies to. I don't use it often enough and always have to look it up or figure it out. I remember .454 because that number is related to Chevrolet big block engine sizes.
It's confusing remembering the conversions from one system to the other. A liter is more than a quart but a meter is less than a yard, a mile is more than a kilometer but a pound is less than a kilogram. HUH?!! I just wish everyone would settle in on one or the other. I will remain confused until that happens.
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Post by Leftee on Jun 28, 2021 8:00:50 GMT -5
I was in middle school (maybe late elementary?) when the conversion was attempted in the schools.
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Post by Laker on Jun 28, 2021 8:18:19 GMT -5
When I was a job shop machinist I often had to program CNC machines to specifications on customer drawings that were often given in metric dimensions so I became quite comfortable working with either SAE or metric.
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Post by slacker 🐨 on Jun 28, 2021 8:29:51 GMT -5
I do some simple translations in my head....a centimeter is pretty close to 1/2" for example. A meter is pretty close to a yard...you can soft of just replace those if there aren't too many of 'em and you don't need precision. If someone tells me something is 100 meters, I just imagine a football field and that's good enough.
Temperature though....no good translation there. I brew beer and people post on the brewing forums talking about recipes where they do a step mash and list the temps in Celsius. That means nothing to me. Or they'll ask advice on a recipe and give their mash volume in liters and ingredients in grams and kilograms. I just skip it because I don't want to do the math to figure out what than means for me.
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Post by gato on Jun 28, 2021 8:37:54 GMT -5
I do some simple translations in my head....a centimeter is pretty close to 1/2" for example. A meter is pretty close to a yard...you can soft of just replace those if there aren't too many of 'em and you don't need precision. If someone tells me something is 100 meters, I just imagine a football field and that's good enough. Temperature though....no good translation there. I brew beer and people post on the brewing forums talking about recipes where they do a step mash and list the temps in Celsius. That means nothing to me. Or they'll ask advice on a recipe and give their mash volume in liters and ingredients in grams and kilograms. I just skip it because I don't want to do the math to figure out what than means for me. The angry parent rant: "I swear I'll thrash you within 2 centimeters of your life!"
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pdf64
Wholenote
Posts: 557
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Post by pdf64 on Jun 28, 2021 8:43:14 GMT -5
I was educated pretty much with both systems, I’m fine with either for distance and weight, but for volumes and temperatures I’m a metric guy. I’m vaguely aware of the basics, but need google etc to work out the details, eg whether something that’s at 100 F would be too hot to touch. The UK is crazy really, both systems tend to get used but for different things. eg petrol is sold in litres, but cars fuel consumption is rated in miles per gallon. Or I’ll enjoy a 5k run on a nice day, but the next town is 10 miles away. I suspect it’s resulted in several generations of folk with a poor grasp of these things.
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Post by gato on Jun 28, 2021 8:50:43 GMT -5
So, two penguins walk into a bar. Each is about 25.4 cm tall. One is carrying a gallon bucket of packed snow and the other has 2.7 liters of lemon juice. They hit up the bartender for a couple of 30 ml shots of whiskey and 28 grams of peanuts to snack on. "I dunno," says the first penguin, "I've put on 50.7 grams of weight in the last month. The wife says I look like a bowling pin .............."
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Post by hushnel on Jun 28, 2021 8:59:58 GMT -5
.113,396 K’er or a Quarter Pounder at the drive in window.
The only time I find metric to be comparable is with small stuff but my micrometer does inch fractions and I have no problem with that.
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Post by rok-a-bill-e on Jun 28, 2021 9:45:11 GMT -5
I'm helpless and hopeless with metric anything. Gato gave the reason---" I mentally place a 9mm bullet between thumb and forefinger to get a glimmer of scale.--", and I have no useful mental metric scale. I have now internalized that a 750ml bottle of whiskey yields 12 two oz. drinks (plus a small allowance for the generous pour) but that is about it. And with the customary units, I can pace off "feet" and stride off "yards" and use the digits on my hand to approximate inches, and be pretty darn close.
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Post by RufusTeleStrat on Jun 28, 2021 9:47:47 GMT -5
hushnel That is why they call it a Royale with Cheese
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Post by insanecooker on Jun 28, 2021 10:01:04 GMT -5
I grew up with metric in Brazil, but was always exposed to the need for using USCS on occasion given so many tools, products, etc. I had were from the US.
Since moving here I try to use USCS for all of my projects (e.g., whenever doing random DIY stuff) to build the muscle memory, but for smaller increments mm just make so much sense.
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Post by dadzmad on Jun 28, 2021 10:47:47 GMT -5
I recall about 20 years ago many state DOT's tried to do a hard conversion to the metric system, seemed like a good idea at the time. What happened ended up being a nightmare of nominal vs actual sizes as the local manufacturers kept making the same size products and just calling them a round number of metric units. This faded away when the PIA factor kicked in and most realized that those metric cars have no problem going down our 12 ft driving lanes.
I am just talking about length measurement here
In my own experience it matters little what units you measure in. But in designing or laying out it's best if the units have a practical human basis for building on a macro scale. For a great deal of what we build on a large scale (buildings, roads, infrastructure) a unit of 1/8 inch or a 1/100 if a foot is both useful and practical to handle. The meter is an arbitrary unit derived during the French revolution and implemented by a rough bunch. The metric system did not evolve from work and practice but idealism. A meter is too large, a mm is too small, and a cm is neither fish or fowl. The decimal nature is not the problem the base unit is not properly scaled to us.
Yes the sciences like physics are much easier to do metric and imagine the same with machine work. But when designing something I have to fit into metric just seems clunky. Yes the rest of the world does it (along with a lot of other stuff I can't agree with)
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Post by Taildragger on Jun 28, 2021 11:16:41 GMT -5
I was raised on hogheads, leagues, furlongs, cubits and farthings.
Well...OK...not really...
I don't use metric measurement unless I have to cause, "old dog/new tricks" and all that. I do have a complete set of metric sockets and open-end/box wrenches from working on foreign cars, motorcycles and bicycles I've owned over the years, though. But SAE is my preferred environment.
I remember back during the 1960s when a friend bought a Norton Commando and had to scrounge up a set of Whitworth tools to work on it.
As long as we're on the topic of measurement systems, check this out, just for fun:
My fav is the "pood", which is equal to 40 "funts" or 16.38 kilograms (36.11 pounds). Leave it to the Ruskies to come up with something weird...
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Post by Peegoo 🏁 on Jun 28, 2021 12:08:22 GMT -5
They tried to get us kids to accept the metric system when we were in junior high school...but it never caught on.
Being a mechanical type, however, I am now comfortable with all of it and can operate just fine with either imperial/SAE or metric. Often it's a mix of the two.
And I also use Frankenstein and Centipede for temperature.
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Post by De ville on Jun 28, 2021 14:43:26 GMT -5
I like both systems. I think they both have advantages, and disadvantages.
Too bad nuts and bolts aren't forged with the sizes stamped on them. Like the hardness stamps for example.
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Post by jhawkr on Jun 28, 2021 16:16:08 GMT -5
It’s not that metric measurement is difficult, it is actually easier to learn than SAE. The problem is the lack of a frame of reference because we don’t equate the measurements to everyday things around us. When I was a quality manager, we built aircraft structures for a company in Belgium that in turn sold them to Boeing. They were engineered in SAE. They were built in SAE. The company in Belgium would inspect by transferring all the measurements and tolerances to Metric. It doesn’t go well when you do that. It was compounded by trying to talk to people for whom English was a second language. I have full sets of metric tools and done mind them at all.
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Post by Taildragger on Jun 28, 2021 19:02:26 GMT -5
You'll have to pry the foot pounds from my cold, dead fingers: no newton metres for this boy!
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Post by jhawkr on Jun 28, 2021 19:18:01 GMT -5
I’m pretty sure Issac Newton was dead before the meter, (meter) was invented.
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Post by Taildragger on Jun 28, 2021 19:59:27 GMT -5
Fig Newtons are OK, though...
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Post by jhawkr on Jun 28, 2021 20:06:43 GMT -5
Absolutely!
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Post by windmill on Jun 28, 2021 20:42:13 GMT -5
The change to metric over here came when I was in my teens. I was old enough to have had a good grounding in the old Imperial system and then learnt the new metric system. At the time there were numerous conversion tables and formulas around so some of them have stuck with me. I consider myself fortunate to know both, as I am able to talk the "old talk" with older people as well as knowing what the youngsters are talking about. Personally I still convert some things sback to the old measures, I calculate travel time by converting a distance back to miles and a persons height needs to be in feet and inches for example. In the broader community a babies weight is still announced in pounds and ounces and blocks of land for housing is usually in fractions of acres. So there are still some vestiges of the "old ways".
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Post by Taildragger on Jun 28, 2021 22:28:42 GMT -5
Bring back the "pood"!
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Post by dadzmad on Jun 28, 2021 22:58:45 GMT -5
Remember that a mile is 80, 66 ft Gunters chains. 40 acres is is 1/4 mile or 20 chains on each side - the old surveyors rule was "if chains be multiplied by chains the product is reduced to acres by pointing off one decimal from the left hand" Don't get me started on figuring acres from rods. When I was younger I worked with guys who called measuring with a steel tape "chaining"
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Post by Ragtop on Jun 29, 2021 5:14:06 GMT -5
Back in my working days I was constantly converting lbs. into kilos and grams into ounces in my head. Maybe a few others. It was confusing, but I learned to make it work.
But I've forgotten it all now.
I don't ever see the USA going metric. Good idea in the long term, but it would be a disaster for a generation.
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Post by gato on Jun 29, 2021 7:54:41 GMT -5
Back in my working days I was constantly converting lbs. into kilos and grams into ounces in my head. Maybe a few others. It was confusing, but I learned to make it work. But I've forgotten it all now. I don't ever see the USA going metric. Good idea in the long term, but it would be a disaster for a generation. For this generation, it would be like changing Microsoft Windows to Microsoft Doors.
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Post by Mfitz804 on Jun 29, 2021 7:59:43 GMT -5
I pay almost no attention to whether tools are SAE or metric. I just use the closest size to whatever I’m working on and it always works. If something seems to be “in between” two sizes, then I will switch to the other set and that one will always work.
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Post by Mfitz804 on Jun 29, 2021 8:00:12 GMT -5
Back in my working days I was constantly converting lbs. into kilos and grams into ounces in my head. Maybe a few others. It was confusing, but I learned to make it work. But I've forgotten it all now. I don't ever see the USA going metric. Good idea in the long term, but it would be a disaster for a generation. For this generation, it would be like changing Microsoft Windows to Microsoft Doors. Or Windows 7 to Windows 11.
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