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why is the US not Metric
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bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: KL27x on December 06, 2019, 05:00:11 am ---You are not doing this.
--- End quote ---

It's your time to do the homework.


--- Quote ---The "why" other countries did this is not nearly the same situation that modern America is in.
--- End quote ---

Let's investigate that claim.


--- Quote ---Because of modern education and the internet.
--- End quote ---

When the US was an "island", no one gave a rat's ass for their units. But now that the world is integrated, the US is in an awkward position with regard to their outdated standards.


--- Quote ---Also because of the size of our road system.
--- End quote ---

I guess the world's road system is far greater than the US's. That was not a problem for metrication.
 

--- Quote ---Also, because of the manufacturing and machining history of America,
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The refusal to modernize their system of units goes invariably along with some reference to the past. Past, past, past.

It gives us the impression that the US is a nation of the past.
bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on December 06, 2019, 04:05:19 am ---If you look at old schematics from Metric countries, nanofarads are noticeable for their absense.
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯


--- Quote from: KL27x on December 06, 2019, 05:00:11 am ---
--- Quote ---What engineering practice?
--- End quote ---
bsfeechannel, earlier in the thread: "Is driving a car on a road not engineering?" :-DD

--- End quote ---

According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.


--- Quote from: forrestc on December 06, 2019, 06:20:31 am ---
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on December 06, 2019, 03:59:22 am ---Conclusion, the imperial system is perfect for penny-pinching drivers, people without a degree in meteorology and frightened pilots.

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Exactly!   Now you get it !!!!!
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You see rstofer? I'm trying hard to redeem the respect you think the US deserves to no avail.
CatalinaWOW:
I came across another example of how the US is being practical about conversion to metric while fiddling with one of my other hobbies.

High quality topographic maps of the US have been made available for more than 100 years from the USGS.  Obviously they started in traditional units.  And until the 1990s they were produced by largely manual methods.  Which basically means tediously going through surveys and stereographic aerial photographs drawing contour lines.  They were updated periodically by editing older maps.  Switching to metric units would have meant repeating all of that work.  I can't even imagine how many man hours would have been involved.  So it wasn't done when metric became the preferred system in 1974.  In roughly the 1990s a metric overlay was added to the maps so distances could be evaluated in both meters and miles.  But contour lines and the basic size of the maps remained traditional. 

Sometime in the 2000s the data in the maps was digitized and augmented by various overhead systems including radar from the Space Shuttle and airborne laser radars.  It become economical to redraw the maps with automated methods and current editions of these maps have the contour lines metric. 

You can go to the USGS website and literally view the maps over time and see these changes.

It is happening.  Too bad everyone is not happy with the pace.
vk6zgo:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on December 07, 2019, 02:44:41 am ---
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on December 06, 2019, 04:05:19 am ---If you look at old schematics from Metric countries, nanofarads are noticeable for their absense.
--- End quote ---



¯\_(ツ)_/¯


--- End quote ---
Congratulations! you found one with nF..
Maybe I should amend my comment to say "many old schematics from Metric countries don't use nF".
I assume you did notice however, that they use both nF & decimal parts of a uF, as well as decimal parts of a M \$\Omega\$!

[/quote]
KL27x:

--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on December 07, 2019, 02:44:41 am ---According to the dictionary, an engineer is, among other things, "a person who operates or is in charge of an engine".

When you drive a car, you are essentially operating an engine. So you're practicing engineering. And you even need a license to do it.
--- End quote ---
You got me. I see what you did there. But I'll give you the bonus point jackpot if you can demonstrate why the many benefits of metric apply to this kind of engineering. Driving. Or flying a plane for that matter.

If you are the pilot, where are you shifting a decimal place? Where are you converting cubic meters into liters? Converting Kelvin into C? Mixing molar solutions?

I don't recall who said it, and I'm just paraphrasing. But there was the complaint that using feet for ATC is bad because vertical distance and horizontal distance are in different units. I won't go into it, but this isn't particularly compelling to me. It's done that way because it works a million times better. And it's the same way in metric. Maybe there is a better reason?

I mean, I can see this in a space ship. But considering the operating parameters of an airplane, it just makes sense to use a small unit for altitude and a large unit for horizontal distance. In metric, it just happens the large unit is 1000x the small one. You want to call it the same unit, but that's semantics. You use it like two different units. It's like adjusting the voltage knob on an O-scope. You're getting a different scale but the same information.
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