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125 Years of Longitude 0 0' 00" At Greenwich
An anonymous reader writes "This week marks the 125th anniversary of the International Meridian Conference, which determined that the prime meridian (i.e., longitude 0 0' 00") would travel through Greenwich, UK. One of the reasons that Greenwich was agreed upon 'was that 72% of the world's shipping already depended on sea charts that used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.' Sandford Fleming's proposal of a single 24-hour clock for the entire world, located at the center of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian, was rejected / not voted on, as it was felt to be outside the purview of the conference."
I wonder how much longer it will take for the US to catch up?
For example, we continue to teach date formatted in a completely nonsense format (MM/DD/YYYY) instead of either high to low (YYYY/MM/DD) or low to high (DD/MM/YYYY) like the rest of the world. Plus using AM/PM instead of 24 hour ("Military Time") again like the rest of the civilised world.
Don't even get me started on our lack of metric....
People still use watches!? Everyone I know just whips out their cell phone when they need to find out what time it is these days.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
Clearly you're not a woodworker. Small measurements are where the metric system shines... large measurements people just estimate anyway.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I have tried finding a reference to this and can't. What does it mean by being located at center of the Earth and not linked to any surface meridian? Time zones are linked to surface meridian's right? So how would a system work that was not linked to anyplace on the surface?
stores [open] 3 hours before local midday
You imply that the entire population can consistently and correctly subtract 3 from a number.
Watches seem to be becoming popular again, even if only as a fashion accessory, especially for men. Next time you're watching TV, keep an eye out for large, flashy watches; they're very common.
It's what makes time travel POSSIBLE!
Quickly, convert from 1234 kiloinch to miles!
$ time units -v '1234 kiloinch' miles
1234 kiloinch = 19.47601 miles
1234 kiloinch = (1 / 0.051345219) miles
real 0m0.046s
user 0m0.040s
sys 0m0.008s
That didn't take to long at all!
Seriously, the metric system has a lot going for it in some ways, but is harder in others. For example, while 10 is a great multiplier (since we tend to think in base 10), it doesn't have a lot of factors. For example, dividing by 3 doesn't work so well. Sure, you and I know that 1/3 meter is 33.33333 cm, but that's not as easy as 1/3 foot being 4 inches. 5280 (the number of feet in a mile) is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 and a lot more. Not that a 15th of a mile comes up a lot, but if it does, you can be assured that it's exactly 352 feet!
The metric system units are also more calibrated to scientific use than everyday use. The meter is too long and the gram is too light (the liter is about right). Other things, like degrees Celsius are too big (not to mention as arbitrary as Fahrenheit). And metric time never really took off -- you still have seconds, minutes, hours, etc.
All in all, the metric system is optimized for scientific work where conversions between units happen more often, and knowing that 100 million micrograms is .1 kilograms is useful. But it doesn't work so well for common, human scale use.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
So why not have a "London" and a "London, Ontario"? I thought it was pretty common in english to assign the minor version a secondary title to differentiate it... not to assign every other possible version a secondary title as well. Do americans really say they're going to "Paris, France" for their honeymoon, or do they just assume people will know that no-one would want to go to Texas for a romantic holiday?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Oh man, I intend this as a high compliment - fifty years from now, Primer is going to be regarded by intellectual snobs (the trendsetters) in Brazil, China, India and Indonesia as maybe the finest example of American Geek Cinema of early Twentieth First Century, so far ahead of its' cultural time that it's almost awe-inspiring.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
So how much does a gallon of water weigh? How about that 2 gallon/10l gas can, how much will that weigh when it's full? In metric it's easy since 1l of water = 1 kg Gasoline has a relative density of 0.71-0.77 (lets call it 0.75) so in metric 10l of gasoline is 7.5kg All without a calculator or writing anything down, lets see if you can do that in pounds and inches. Yes you might have to deal with learning to use 1.25 1.6 and 2.5 more often but it's no less work then learning how many feet are in a mile or fluid oz in a pint etc. Not to mention that the UK and US numbers are often different.
You miss the point. The advantage of using the same base across all measurements is not merely that it goes well with the digits we use, but it means different type of measurements work well together. A cubic meter works out to exactly a thousand liters, which when filled with water would weigh 1 metric tonne, which is 1 thousand kilograms. The pressure of 10 metres of water works out to 1 atmosphere, which is approximately 100,000 Pascal, which is 100,000 Newtons per square meter. At sea level the acceleration due to gravity is approximately 10 M/s so 1kg is roughly 10 newtons worth of weight. If you have a force of 1 Newton over 1 meter , you get 1 joule worth of energy, which is the energy drawn per second by 1 ampere of electric current at an electric potential of 1 volt.
Now, lets say you have a pool of water that is 10 feet deep and 10x20 yards by the sides. You want an electric engine operating at 230V to drive a pump that can empty the pool through a pipe that has a diameter of 3inches. The drain is at ground level. You don't want to leave it on unsupervised at night so you want it to take no more than 2 hours. How many amperes of current will your engine draw? What's the total amount of energy necessary to empty the pool? How much pressure does the pump have to handle?
I would STRONGLY suggest you convert to SI units before trying to solve that problem.
All in all, the metric system is optimized for scientific work where conversions between units happen more often, and knowing that 100 million micrograms is .1 kilograms is useful. But it doesn't work so well for common, human scale use.
I would disagree. People will adapt to any unit system they know. Really the proof of this is the system we use in america. It is quite possibly the worst collection of units I could think of, with there being NO consistency in conversions. While you say that the gram is too light, I doubt that people that use it think so. Mainly because they know the system. I know I would much rather use a system where the units make sense.
I live in the US, and I really, really wish we went to metric. The whole base 10 thing is cool, but metric is just elegant, because all of the units are related. For example, 1 liter of water always weighs 1 kilogram (yeah I know kilogram is a measure of mass). A cubic centimeter (cc) of water always weighs 1 gram. Tell me off the top of your head how much a cubic inch of water weighs, I'll wait for you to get out your calculator.
Celsius is not as arbitrary as Fahrenheit, 0 = freezing point of H2O, 100 = boiling point of H20. Do you know the boiling point of water in Fahrenheit without having to look it up?
In your original post, you use the sentence "Tells you where the power and money was when the GPS system was set up." to get in a free bit of US-bashing, as another poster said. The parent to which you replied attempted to explain why things to you using Objectivity, which you conveniently ignored.
As GP to this post stated, the GPS system was design, built, and paid for by the US. The US is still paying for this system. I suppose you can interpret that to mean that money and power were located in the US when the system was launched. It also means there was a hell of a lot of Smart and Reasonable as well. Tell me, can non-USians use the system? Indeed they can. Do they pay for it? Nope. Do I personally mind? Not a bit.
But you make it sound like GPS was some "Free Gift From God" that was wrenched away from whatever your favorite country happens to be. It wouldn't exist for anyone to use if it hadn't been built and paid for by someone. The US happened to do it. Big Fucking Deal if the Prime Meridian moved 100m. If you've got that much of an anti-US agenda, by all means, go about your business assuming the non-WGS94 standard. Just make sure you avoid anything that supports it and, by your logic, supports an unfair US takeover of the Prime Meridian. So that means no telecommunications, air or sea travel, commerce that wasn't produced/manufactured locally, etc.
Oh, GPS is incredibly fucking useful for modern life? Huh. How 'bout that. The Prime Meridian getting moved 100 meters doesn't seem like such a big deal in comparison now, does it?