Our Friend, The Meter

dbirchall writes "Upon hearing that SpaceShipOne reached 100km today, I did some hasty math based on the altitude in feet sttated by Scaled Composites in their press release, and was surprised to come up with a number under 100,000 meters. Fortunately, a friend pointed out that my inches-to-meters conversion was flawed. Some quick Googling determined that lots of people still have no idea how many inches are in a meter, even after some folks have had big problems because of conversion errors."

Comments

On in the US

[gnuman99]

This problem appears to occur only in the US. Even the British adopted the meter, and they invented the imperial units!

Maybe it's the time for the US to join the metric world. At least we wouldn't loose that Mars probe!

Re:On in the US

[popeydotcom]

A lot of us brits, even those taught the metric system at work, still talk in feet and inches. Our road signs (like US ones) are all in Miles, and I don't see that changing any time soon. We buy beer and milk in pints and mostly weigh in stones and pounds and not kilos. Speed over water and air is still measured in knots, and our road speed limits are in miles per hour.

So whilst we have "adopted" the metric system we still use the "old" measurements day-to-day.

Re:On in the US

[Bootsy Collins]

Do you ever buy soda in two liter bottles?

Cecil Adams pointed out that it's a lot easier to switch than most people think. The way to do it isn't to label everything in both imperial units and metric units; it's to just do it. Instead of labelling each gallon jug of milk with the fact that one gallon = 3.74 liters, thus making the metric system seem comparatively complicated (when in fact, it's less so), the right thing to do is to get rid of gallon jugs and replace them with four liter containers. We see two liter and half-liter soda bottles running around and everyone's fine with it now. Remember a couple of "temperature calibration points" -- water freezes at 0C, 20C = a nice spring day, 34 = Miami in July -- and dealing with the temperature scale change becomes fairly easy. It's trivial when you just do it.

Oh, and as an aside, while you may be very comfortable with miles and pounds and gallons (and, I'd guess, Fahrenheit degrees), how many other imperial units are you comfortable with? Most people aren't familiar with very many. How many people are comfortable with rods, links, chains, bushels, and pecks? How many people understand fluid ounces and ounces of weight (not understand that there's a difference, but what that difference is, and how they're related)? Can you picture an acre in your head fairly accurately? Most people in the U.S. can't, despite the fact that it's the most commonly used unit of land area. For most of us, for most purposes, imperial units are useless because we don't even understand them. One thing that metric units buys you is that the whole thing hangs together, is internally consistent. If any of it makes sense, it all does. I can't visualize an acre, but I can easily visualize a hectare, the corresponding unit of the metric system -- a square that's 100 meters (a little longer than an American football field) on a side.

Just Remember 2.54

[SnowZero]

1 inch = 2.54 centimeters

It's fairly easy to remember, and everything else regarding length conversions can be derived from it. It also happens to be the official definition of the inch, since NIST uses metric internally.

Re:Why should I care?

[oleimann]

Just because we don't want to, doesn't mean we can't.

We wouldn't have come this far if we weren't a lazy people - that particular trait is the cause of most of our (household) inventions and technological progress.

Having a single, global frame of reference for technical units, which also happens to calculate easily, makes technical development not only faster, but also improves international cooperation.

Sticking to one's own system is just another extra point for one's will for isolationism.

Re:Reason for Imperial units

[rooijan]

You seem to assume that everyone else's windows come in imperial measurements and we all spend our time converting to metric to do difficult sums just for the hell of it. In a metric country, like South Africa, our windows come in nice round metric numbers (138cm is a common one), like all our other measurements.

Obviously you would find it difficult to use metric if all the products you are using are made with imperial measurements that are "nice" numbers. Just bear in mind that other peoples products come with "nice" metric measurements.

Also, I prefer metric becasue I was born after it was adopted and it's all I know, certainly. But it does seem that if everything is ten more than the previous level it's a lot more consistent than imperial where the number of x's in y differs depending on what type of measurement you're talking about.

Arguments against the metric system

[marinebane]

every time somebody makes an argument against the metric system, they are essentially also making that same argument agaisnt the arabic (our) number system. to use a number system with a base of 10 and not use units with a base of 10 is illogical, and impractical where units with a base of 10 are much easier to manipulate using a number system with a base of 10.

Re:Quick note..

[MochaMan]

Amazingly, you're speaking and writing English. So use the logically correct spelling, or change the way you pronounce it to match how you spell it. You fucking idiot.

I, for won, am exited tu help yu re-rite Inglish literachure, in yore new language. "The Nites Of The Round Tabel" iz so much better than chainjing the pronunsiashun tu "the kuh-nig-hets of the raund tahbluh"

How 'bout we all just calm down and realise that no matter how much you rant about one retarded system being better than another retarded system, English simply has fucked up spelling and that's that?

If you truly do feel passionately that meter is better than metre, then please "use your fucking brain" and start spelling table in a way that's consistent with label (as English and Americans alike pronounce it).

On the topic of units of measurement, please feel free to explain why this "pint" unit is still spelled like mint, hint, dint, lint, tint, vint, glint and any other word ending in 'int'. Yes indeed, the Americans have certainly got this spelling thing all worked out once and for all. Pity the rest of us haven't picked up the fantastic system work they've done.