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New Book Says The Meter Is all Wrong

Posted by timothy on from the humane-fahrenheit-inhuman-celcius dept.

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."

8 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Arbitrary doesn't matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who cares about the actual size of the Meter. Of course it's arbitrary. All units of measurement are arbitrary....

    All I want is a system that allows easy conversion to other units. None of this 2 cups to a quart; 4 quarts to a gallon, a dozen gallons to a bushel and a peck....

  2. Re:The correct measuring scale by KnightStalker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is fine, but then the problem occurs that you discover your original measurements were wrong, (or just inaccurate) but the old lengths are by now established. You then will have to redefine your everyday unit of length" as 1.28462341 * 10 ^ 12 hydrodgen-atom-widths (or whatever) and it's become just as arbitrary as the meter.

    --
    * And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
  3. Re:The correct measuring scale by Rick+the+Red · · Score: 4, Insightful
    1 length - the distance across 1 hydrogen atom
    The French and the English have been battling for years over the question: Is the basic unit of length the diameter or the radius of a hydrogen atom?

    0 degrees - the energy at which a hydrogen atom is at rest. 1 degree would be the energy at which hydrogen is one quantum state higher than rest.
    The Americans refuse to take sides in the length debate until the French and English decide whether the measurement is taken at 0 or 1 degree.

    --
    If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
  4. Why? by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.

    Because people had been using the imperial system for so long, it became (and still is) a major undertaking to convert. You don't just say "Okay everyone, we're going to use Metric for everything now!"..

    There are books of formulas, constants, tables and charts that need to be rewritten. There are machines that need to be rebuilt and redesigned. There are entire conventions that need to be done away with and started afresh. This is extreamely difficult, costly and possibly dangerous to just 'do'.

    Only in the more modern technologies has the metric system really taken hold, and everything else has been undergoing a gradual conversion.

    The metric system has many advantages over the imperial system... like having destinct units for mass and force: grams and newtons as opposed to just 'pounds' (pound-mass, which must be converted to slugs for calculations, and pound-force). As well as not having any unweildy fractions. Non of that 15/32 of an inch.

    However, that does not make the imperial system any less useful. If you really think about it, any measurement system is going to be arbitrary, and it will be valid as long as it's consistent.
    =Smidge=

  5. So what? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Who the hell cares that the meter is arbitrary? It sure beats Imperial hands down. 5,280 feet in a mile? 12 inches in a foot? 160 square rods in an acre? What the hell is that?

    You'ld think at least NASA would get this.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
    1. Re:So what? by jericho4.0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Carpenters are welcome to use whatever system they want to mesaure bits of wood. For the calculations I do, the fact that there is a sensible relationship between mass, length, volume, temp, etc, makes a lot more sense.

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  6. In other news... by Violet+Null · · Score: 4, Insightful

    24 hours is a day discovered to be arbitrary. 100 pennies in a dollar discovered to be arbitrary. 4 quarts in a gallon discovered to be arbitrary. 67 trolls in a Slashdot article discovered to be arbitrary...

  7. Re:The correct measuring scale by smoondog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The idea that we should use nature to determine length standards is totally ridiculous. Length should have a predetermined standard and left at that. Nature has a bad habit of changing. Do we, at that point, change the standard? Of course not. That would require recalculation of a nearly infinite number of calculations. Could you imagine having different versions of the meter?

    "Yes, I measured your property, but the architectual drawings use Meter version 19.52.6a. So I need to go downtown and figure out the conversion factor between the current version, 25.03.2c, and the old version."

    -Sean