General > General Technical Chat
why is the US not Metric
KL27x:
Re: skymaster,
Cool to hear your experience in french Canada. Viva the inch?
Just an FYI, because of the part where you quoted me. I discovered, since then, that I was wrong about Matthias Wandel. I noticed him using millimeters in a recent video, and I discovered he consistently uses metric. I should have noticed a year or 4 back, when he made the video about a gag combo ruler that obviously poked fun of imperial. (I thought it was weird that he wasn't making more fun of metric, TBH, but I thought he was just being nice. :-DD)
Bud:
It is common that at the Home Depot here in Toronto they sell tape measures that are inch/foot only. If i need a metric one i have to specifically check them.
bsfeechannel:
--- Quote from: KL27x on December 25, 2019, 02:35:38 am ---Naturally. Please inform bsfeechannel of this. He thinks the speed of light is based on the meter.
--- End quote ---
I don't mind that your posts be rife with fallacies, misconceptions and sheer ignorance. But when you attribute to me things that I didn't say you are establishing a dangerous precedent. And that's the second time you do this.
But since I am still under the influence of the metric inebriation I've had recently, I'll try to educate you into the more advanced concepts of metrology which lacks in general for those who resist metrication (and that's precisely why they do it).
Decades after Laplace, Legendre, Lagrange, Lavoisier and other luminaries proposed and made the brilliant metric system happen, which was enthusiastically adopted by the nations who managed to see that it represented the future, giants of science such as James Clerk Maxwell and Max Planck considered using fundamental constants of physics and properties of the subatomic world to define its units. The reason being they are much more stable than the previous standards based on macroscopic prototypes and properties of the earth.
In 1960 the meter was defined in terms of the wavelength of krypton-86 radiation (so much for the rod). In 1967, the second was defined in terms of the frequency of a specific radiation emitted by the caesium-133 atom. You might have seen several threads on the forum with members discussing about their caesium (or cesium) frequency standard units. You can buy them for cheap off ebay, apparently.
Now prepare your imperial head for this important explanation because, for someone who uses one unit for distances (mile), another for altitudes (foot), yet another for screws (inch), a fourth one for football fields (yards) and invented a nonsense fifth one for machining (thou) because the ancient Romans didn't think of that, this may be a bit difficult to grasp.
Since the speed of light is constant all over the universe, if you DEFINE an arbitrary value for it in meters per second, let's say 299792458 m/s in vacuum, then you can define the meter in terms of that constant and the second. And that's what happened in 1983, replacing the old standard based on the krypton-86.
So, the meter is now exactly the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second, also known as 3.335640952 ns. Any entry-level cheap-ass oscilloscope these days is capable of distinguishing pulses 3 ns apart, of course with a very limited precision, but this goes to show that with relatively modest means you can reproduce the exact same standard anywhere you want. The meter standard is right in front of your nose.
And in fact this happens every day when people use laser distance meters. It shoots a laser pulse and measures, against a calibrated time base, the time it takes for the reflected pulse to come back. So it is not measuring distance, it is measuring time. Then it converts this time, using the speed of light as a factor, to meters, to cubits, or to any of your laughable (for 2020) units of your pitiful system of measures. You can find those laser distance meters from $12.
So you need no unit of length, not even the meter. We already do that for astronomical distances, we use the light-year: time multiplied by the speed of light. We could say, for instance, that we saw a 20 light-ns high (6 m) house or that we bought a 33 light-ps (10mm) drill bit, etc. But we don't because, if there still are people in the world that can't understand that using just one unit of length is enough for any task, how difficult it would be for them to understand that we need none!
As soon as Einstein taught us that time and space are related by the speed of light, the metric system absorbed that achievement, while the imperial system lagged behind counting feet and paces. This shows how the metric system is miles, oops, kilometers ahead of those who insist in using archaic solutions.
Imperial? It belongs to oblivion. Or at best in a museum.
cs.dk:
--- Quote from: KL27x on January 02, 2020, 12:13:29 am ---^ It would appear that someone in France wanted to make everything into 10's and 100's.
If that had caught on, we would be making right angles of 100 degrees/grads (a hectodegree?). Triangles would have 200 degrees/grads. Circles and polygons would add up to 400 degrees/grads.
--- End quote ---
There is indeed 400 grads compasses. I think the military used that system long time ago.
tooki:
--- Quote from: SkyMaster on January 02, 2020, 05:01:07 am ---
--- Quote from: gabinetex on December 24, 2019, 12:05:21 am ---...
Now, seriously, I confess that I don't really care why (or why not) the US is not metric... what really worries me, what keeps me awake at night, is why US ringbinders have 3 holes... I mean.. Why? Why? What in the hell is wrong with you people!!
--- End quote ---
Canada became officially 100% metric in 1978. Our ring binders have 3 rings. Standard paper sheet is 8.5 inches x 11 inches.
I had a job where I had to travel the world and get LARGE documents printed in Canada and shipped to the customer, while I was at the customer place. It seems that only United States and Canada use the proper 3 rings binder and the correct 8.5 inches x 11 inches paper sheet. Everybody else is using 4 rings binder and paper that is not wide enough and too long. Why? What in the hell is wrong with you people!! ;)
:)
--- End quote ---
:P
Personally, I prefer the aesthetics of the 8.5x11" ratio (or even more, the ratios of 8x10.5" of common notebook paper and 7.5x9.75" of composition notebooks), but man do I love the way that ISO paper formats are always halves of the next size up, so that you can fold or cut one size and get the next size down, or use multiple smaller sheets to make big posters or whatever. Makes layout changes so much easier, and allows things like automatic booklet making without leaving asymmetrical margins.
As for 3 vs 4 holes, I'm fairly indifferent. What I hate is the 2-hole standard that is far, far, far more common with ISO paper than the 4-hole system. (The 2-hole standard is simply the center two holes of the 4-hole standard.) This leads to pages curling if a binder isn't totally full, and binding on the rings when turning pages, since it's easier to be off-axis. (In fairness, it's possible that the binding is more due to the smaller holes used in ISO hole punches.)
Only high-grade hole punches even have the 4 holes (ordinary ones are just the 2), and so comparatively few binders have 4 rings, and those cost a lot more. :(
I got a $100 die-cast 4-hole puncher at a thrift store for $5, so I punch 4 holes, and maybe someday I'll look for a cheaper source of 4-ring binders to switch to.
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