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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."
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....
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."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
...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=
A quote:
"I remember my fifth-grade teacher instructing us in the metric system and telling us we would need to learn this material because we would all be using it in the future," he says. "I believed her, of course. And when that future failed to arrive I began to wonder why.
He should get a clue, the rest of the world uses the metric system, this future has materialized. If one country wants to be stubborn and hold out, whatever.
Anyhow, the real beauty of the metric system is that it's various units of measurements make sense. As in, a centimeter is a hundredth of a meter, a millimeter is a thousands of a meter, etc. The imperial system wouldn't be so strange if it was 10 inches to a foot, but it's not.
Anyhow, the meter is not the only part of the metric system, it also encompasses temperature, weight, etc. And the meter is certainly less arbitrary than the foot!
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
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...
We all knew this would be posted ;)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
In meters, for example, mathmeticians had to use a definition that allowed others acrossed the world to also come up with an exact length. If these mathemeticians truly wanted a non-arbitrary system back then, they could have made a "master meter stick", whose length was not based on anything arbitrary. But such a system would never work, because then they would have had to ship copies of the master meter stick across the world. The ratio system was much more practical.
Mass and volume are arbitarary in 2 ways. They rely off our arbitary meter, as well as the arbitary earth's gravity. A definition I've heard is that 1 cubic centimeter of water at sea level weights 1 gram and has a volume of 1 mL. Try taking a cubic centimeter of water to a different world, and you'll get different measurements. Today, the official definition of a kilogram is the mass of an international prototype in the form of a platinum-iridium cylinder kept at Sevres in France. (By the way, you could also say that using water is also arbitrary, since we earthlings used a commonly found liquid. The sea level is also arbitrary, since it varies across different coasts, as well over time)
Temperature is also based off the arbitary earth's atmosphere. 0 degrees Celsius is the freezing point of water at 1 atm (the standard air pressure of earth). If you increase or decrease the pressure, you'll get different freezing points.
Anyways, my point is, that it was next to impossible to come up with a practical system without it being arbitrary in some way or another.
P.S. If anything in this article needs correction, please correct it. I'm probably wrong somewhere since everything I said was what I remember from years ago.
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
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.
Not that it's relevant, but...
Which is heavier? a pound of feathers, or a pound of lead?
.
.
.
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!
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley