New Book Says The Meter Is all Wrong

Bill Klemm writes "Ken Alder's new book 'The Measure of All Things' scandalizes the metric system as 'arbitrary.' CNN has a little article about a new book that explores the 'odyssey' of Delambre and Mechain to find the perfect unit of measure."

Comments

Metric System

[MBCook]

Dwahaht? The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 15 rods to the hog's head and that's the way I likes it!

We all knew this would be posted ;)

Re:Sigh.

[Rick the Red]

The imperial system wouldn't be so strange if it was 10 inches to a foot, but it's not.

12 inches to a foot isn't strange at all. It's three barlycorns to an inch, and one foot is 1/10th the length of the right feet of the first ten men out of church on Sunday; thus it works out, more or less (depending on who cuts out early and who stays for coffee on any given Sunday) to 12 inches per foot.

It's all quite simple, really. Just because the French can't understand it is no reason for us to abandon a perfectly good system of measurement.

Base 12 rocks

[jman11]

Blaming difficult divisions on a system of measurement is stupid. The reason the metric system is so easy is that it mixes with the base we use and we all use base 10.

All of those people arguing that metric is bad due to this difficult division need to realise the problem is base 10.

I will now announce my plan to improve the world. We move to base 12. "How to get there?" you ask. We convert 2 letters to numbers, but which 2.

I propose Q & X. X will be replaced by ECKS and Z where it is necessary. Q by KW, in Iraq is will be replaced by c, ck or maybe rc (Rhymes with arc). This will have several benefits, SEX ==> secks and is thus longer for everyone who speaks English. Keyboards also become smaller. 3 rows of 8, with the numerals stuffed somewhere (not sure about how to solve that).

On the numerical side we can now convince aliens we don't count on our fingers. It will also help to weed out the ignorant (who DO count on their fingers).

There are various benefits in terms of division.

All numbers are now reported in base 12, the numerals are as follows: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Q X

The best one is time: there are now 50 seconds in a minute, so we can move 2 minutes to one, then we get 26 minutes in an hour, by quadrupling the hour to 100 minutes we now get 6 hours in a day, halving the length of a second will now give us 10 hours in a day. We have just decimalised time without significantly changing the base unit. Yeah. The metric system would remain the same, but things will all of course be done in base 12, allthe prefixes still work. I should add this scheme would have put off the millenium bug for about 1000 years. The only thing remaining nondecimal is the year, which short of altering the flight path of the earth will have to remain as is. Of course there are now 275 days or 276 in a year.

Regretfully 5 is no longer a nice number, nor is 10. The only reason we use these though is as our base is 10. Log_10 is now useless, but we add in log_12. Multiplication is easier, i think, I'm not sure of the patterns, but I'm sure multiplication by 3 and 4 is a lot nice. 6 becomes like 5 and is funky. There should be a pattern for 9 and 11 becomes as easy as 9 is currently. 13 is also really easy to multiply by.

Another drawback is that maths will be forced to find a new name for the arbitrary variable. Variables can't just be set to X, that would not work. The multiplaction system should also probably be changed. * could work.

The ultimate plus though is that there are now 20 letters, that respects our base people, beautiful.

I hope you all enjoy that.

Pound of feathers and a pound of lead

[NTDaley]

Not that it's relevant, but...

Which is heavier? a pound of feathers, or a pound of lead?

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The pound of feathers is heavier!
Lead, being a metal, is measured in avurdupois weight; feathers, not being metal, is measured in imperial weight. Differences between an avurdupois pound and an imperial pound, mean that one pound of feathers is heavier!