Why not ban AWG

[c4757p]

We could always go to Rankine!

No.

[Stonent]

Celsius isn't fine-grained enough for everyday use? Can you honestly feel a 1F difference? I'm hard pressed to discern an 1C difference!

-30C: please kill me
-20C: holy shit it's cold!
-10C: damn, it's chilly today!
0C: snowman weather
10C: light jacket weather
20C: room temperature
30C: pretty warm
35C: damn, it's warm today!
37C: holy shit it's hot!
40C: please kill me

Disclaimer: Opinions vary by region. Just ask someone from northern Canada. But I refuse to believe northern Canadians exist.

Kill Me to Kill Me is a 70 degree spread. Not enough for you?

I've also become quite good at estimating the fives from 45 to 80, a useful range for electronics.

90+ Hot
80s decently warm
70s nice
60s cool
50s brisk
40s cold
30s freezing
and so on.

[Fsck]

Celsius isn't fine-grained enough for everyday use? Can you honestly feel a 1F difference? I'm hard pressed to discern an 1C difference!

-30C: please kill me
-20C: holy shit it's cold!
-10C: damn, it's chilly today!
0C: snowman weather
10C: light jacket weather
20C: room temperature
30C: pretty warm
35C: damn, it's warm today!
37C: holy shit it's hot!
40C: please kill me

Disclaimer: Opinions vary by region. Just ask someone from northern Canada. But I refuse to believe northern Canadians exist.

Kill Me to Kill Me is a 70 degree spread. Not enough for you?

I've also become quite good at estimating the fives from 45 to 80, a useful range for electronics.

30C is please kill me now.

-40C is just a cold winter.
-50C is basically instafrostbite weather
If you happen to be doing research in antarctica:
-60C is I'd rather die than go outside
-70C is go outside and freeze to death
-80C is basically the same as -70C

[c4757p]

I prefer my "just a cold winter" a few more degrees away from my "instafrostbite", TYVM!

[Fsck]

I prefer my "just a cold winter" a few more degrees away from my "instafrostbite", TYVM!

it's only mild frostbite on anything exposed.

[Bloch]

Don't forget that the US economy is almost as large as Europe's, so we certainly don't have to convert.

No you don't, and it make a nice import wall :-)

I don't see where the stupidity comes in.  Why should the US convert, especially as we can see from the British example that there's little benefit?

The benefit comes then changing units.

All i do is move the decimal point. Very easy also then adding numbers....

13mm + 2cm+2m = 13+20+2000 =[/size] 2033mm

Is easier  than example inch + feet + miles


Is it true that drill size is like awg ?. I mean no easy relation to inch ?

[ludzinc]

The reason we don't give up the ghost over here can be summed up in one word. Construction! Every building, every plumbing fitting and fixture, every conduit of bulk cable, etc has been based on imperial measures for a couple hundred years. Nothing would work and nothing would fit together properly. It's one thing for say the auto mfg's to change tap sizes and use different bolts. It's another matter entirely when you're talking about 1000 sheets of drywall, $10,000.00 worth of kitchen and bathroom fixtures, reengineering roof trusses, stud spacing on walls, mating up with existing infrastructure, and the list goes on. That's just for one moderately sized house.  Multiply that by maybe 100 million and include industrial/commercial buildings. Now figure in the amount of redundant stock all the contractors and retailers would need to carry.  The costs would run into the trillions if not hundreds of trillions.  With that kind of money on the line nobody is going to change a damn thing over here when we have a system that works fine as is.  I guarantee if you owned a home in the states for 5 years you'd be cursing the metric system in no time flat!

Not a problem.  A foot = 300mm and everything is now ordered in multiples of 300mm, not multiples of a foot.

Works here in Oz....

[Bored@Work]

I don't mind the metric system, but I really don't like celcius. I feel it isn't fine grained enough to be every day useful.

That is what the decimal point was invented for. 22.034°C  Is that fine-grained enough for you? Of course, in polite company it is the decimal comma 22,034°C, but let's don't go there.

[casper.bang]

That's the problem with a superpower, they don't have to conform to anyone, which you can see signs of a lot of other places as well, i.e. their refusal to join the Haag war-crimes tribunal. In the case of the US, they're further held back by that annoying thing called "patriotism" which we can basically translate to "I don't have to think critically if I plant my nations flag on my porch".

In Canada, unfortunately they are stuck in some double-world due to their strong business relations with the US. So while air temperature is measured in Centigrade, water temperature is measured in Fahrenheit; content of bottles and cans are measured in ounces while gasoline is measured in liters etc etc.

It is my understanding though, that this is changing slowly and that most professional engineers in the US work with the metric system, after some pretty spectacular failures, most known probably the NASA Mars Climate Orbiter.

[Kremmen]

Hmm. I haven't really paid attention since it is not my problem, but didn't the UK switch to metric some years ago? Putting the attitude issues to one side, they in principle then had just this same challenge so how did it work there if it is impossible to do in the US? Could it be that numbers are just numbers and if you say have a drywall sheet that is 2.748 by 1.118 meters (or whatever, i haven't calculated)  is numerically "inconvenient" but otherwise no different.
On a personal level, i am quite OK with imperial dimensions based on inch/feet etc. What gets me is the bloody obsession to measure things with "gauges" of this and that. That has got nothing to do with measuring things in either inches or millimeters, rather it comes from standardizing some medieval production processes. The metric system is at least applied consistently so you don't have gauges, you got linear dimensions which are the right choice in that you can directly use them in calculations. You either can't do that with gauges at all or then you have to carry the baggage of including the gauge definition in every calculation which is just plain moronic.

[GeoffS]

When I went to school, it was all the imperial system, metric only got a fleeting mention. This also included money in the pre decimal currency days prior to 1966.
There was a short period during the introduction of the metric system where you would convert from one to the other but after a while, you didn't need to.
It's not as big a deal as some make out.

[westfw]

Can you honestly feel a 1F difference?

Yes.  My house gets too cold, and then thermostat trips and the heater goes on till it's too warm, and then it goes off again.  All within +/-1 F, or a total range of about 1C.  Adding a decimal would take another whole display digit; unacceptably costly, you know.

BTW, WRT C "ambient temperature", I heard somewhere "tepid twenties, thirsty thirties, fiery forties."

[Caca]

Srsly doesn't it take some weird constans when you calculate other things from imperial? In metric it's mostly just mul/div of the units used

[mariush]

I think these pretty much sum up the whole thing





though volume and area comparisons are the other way around (unless i'm that screwed up after a sleepless night)

[KJDS]

i like using which ever unit gives an easy number, so a sheet of paper is about 12 inches long, that's easier than 300mm. My soldering iron bit is 1mm wide, that's easier than a fraction of an inch, however the traces on the board are 6 thou wide.

As for temperature, when it's cold its celcius, so about 0 degrees C, however when it's hot I'd far rather it was 80 degrees F.

In the UK, we have both older imperial plumbing and more modern metric stuff and adaptors to connect the two are readily available. I believe that the French stuck with imperial rather than suffering the change.

[peter.mitchell]

i like using which ever unit gives an easy number, so a sheet of paper is about 12 inches long, that's easier than 300mm. My soldering iron bit is 1mm wide, that's easier than a fraction of an inch, however the traces on the board are 6 thou wide.

As for temperature, when it's cold its celcius, so about 0 degrees C, however when it's hot I'd far rather it was 80 degrees F.

In the UK, we have both older imperial plumbing and more modern metric stuff and adaptors to connect the two are readily available. I believe that the French stuck with imperial rather than suffering the change.

But a sheet of paper isn't 300mm nor is it 12 inches, it's 297mm, and I legitimately think it is a really important number to remember (trust me on that).

As for temperature, since it is so subjective, I just usually respond with "urrrh" *shrug*.

[Fsck]

i like using which ever unit gives an easy number, so a sheet of paper is about 12 inches long, that's easier than 300mm. My soldering iron bit is 1mm wide, that's easier than a fraction of an inch, however the traces on the board are 6 thou wide.

As for temperature, when it's cold its celcius, so about 0 degrees C, however when it's hot I'd far rather it was 80 degrees F.

In the UK, we have both older imperial plumbing and more modern metric stuff and adaptors to connect the two are readily available. I believe that the French stuck with imperial rather than suffering the change.

But a sheet of paper isn't 300mm nor is it 12 inches, it's 297mm, and I legitimately think it is a really important number to remember (trust me on that).

As for temperature, since it is so subjective, I just usually respond with "urrrh" *shrug*.

you're wrong. it's 279.4mm long aka 11 inches.

[rolycat]

But a sheet of paper isn't 300mm nor is it 12 inches, it's 297mm, and I legitimately think it is a really important number to remember (trust me on that).

you're wrong. it's 297.4mm long aka 11 inches.

No, you're wrong.

11 inches is 279.4mm, which is only the height of a sheet of paper in North America and a few other countries.

Most of the world uses ISO international standard sizes, the most common of which is A4,  297 x 210 mm.

[Fsck]

But a sheet of paper isn't 300mm nor is it 12 inches, it's 297mm, and I legitimately think it is a really important number to remember (trust me on that).

you're wrong. it's 297.4mm long aka 11 inches.

No, you're wrong.

11 inches is 279.4mm, which only the height of a sheet of paper in North America and a few other countries.

Most of the world uses ISO international standard sizes, the most common of which is A4,  297 x 210 mm.

yeah, I transposed the digits, which is what happens at 4am

[casper.bang]

Most of the world uses ISO international standard sizes, the most common of which is A4,  297 x 210 mm.

Indeed, it was a nightmare to find standard A4 in north america even in the office mega-stores like Staples etc. I had to get it special cut and pay a smaller fortune for it.

[KJDS]

Most of the world uses ISO international standard sizes, the most common of which is A4,  297 x 210 mm.

Indeed, it was a nightmare to find standard A4 in north america even in the office mega-stores like Staples etc. I had to get it special cut and pay a smaller fortune for it.

I've had to produce documents with custom borders so that they'd print out ok in the UK and North America.

[Kjelt]

The British construction industry, like many others, converted to the metric system without crippling costs. 

Great, now if they would please start driving on the right side of the road or stay on their island with their cars where the steering wheel and the driver are on the wrong side 

[peter.mitchell]

But a sheet of paper isn't 300mm nor is it 12 inches, it's 297mm, and I legitimately think it is a really important number to remember (trust me on that).

you're wrong. it's 297.4mm long aka 11 inches.

No, you're wrong.

11 inches is 279.4mm, which is only the height of a sheet of paper in North America and a few other countries.

Most of the world uses ISO international standard sizes, the most common of which is A4,  297 x 210 mm.

God dammit 'murrica

[rolycat]

The British construction industry, like many others, converted to the metric system without crippling costs. 

Great, now if they would please start driving on the right side of the road or stay on their island with their cars where the steering wheel and the driver are on the wrong side 

Both the steering wheel and the driver in our cars are on the right side. Clearly, therefore, it is yours which are on the wrong side.

You guys only drive where you do because you got owned by Napoleon and he ordered it. That's the main reason the British trounced him at Waterloo, you know - so we could stick with the proper traffic system 

[Kjelt]

You guys only drive where you do because you got owned by Napoleon and he ordered it. That's the main reason the British trounced him at Waterloo, you know - so we could stick with the proper traffic system   

Yeah well besides income tax Napoleon was not so bad with his naming systems and standards  Else we would still be measuring everything with our feet, ellbows, thumbs and who knows what else and all be called Jan's son here in Holland.
But the main reason traffic WAS left is probably (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic)

Some historians, such as C. Northcote Parkinson, believed that ancient travellers on horseback generally rode on the left side of the road. As more people are right-handed, a horseman would thus be able to hold the reins with his left hand and keep his right hand free—to offer in friendship to passing riders or to defend himself with a sword, if necessary.

But if you have paid attention there are not many horses used as means of transportation and if you need the right hand now in a car, it is very handy for shifting gears (and giving other traffic contributors the middle finger)  I believe even Jeremy from top gear had that belief (not sure though).