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Author Topic: The Metric system...  (Read 402 times)

Dr.Rev.DelmarMacReady

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The Metric system...
« on: September 16, 2020, 10:28:23 am »
In light of recent events, I have been dealing in metric numbers a lot more lately. It made me curious, and I discovered that the U.S. adopted the metric system of weights and measures way back in 1866. I find it hilarious the only thing we use it for is firearms.  :D :D
Bennydaheeb

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2020, 06:50:31 pm »
We in Canada supposedly adopted the metric system in about 1970, though it took about 7 years to become used extensively. However, it has never really been a hit here, and now we tend to dabble in both systems for various purposes:

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This sometimes leads to some pretty significant confusion:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

For my model work, I have a Logan lathe and a Burke mill, both Imperial, so I work with that. If they were metric, I'd go metric.

Confusing enough for you?
Bob

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2020, 07:33:50 pm »
I've worked all my life in diverse engineering and scientific related fields, and have used both systems extensively. Neither is ultimately superior in my estimation, and both have significant utility that needs to be understood and appreciated for what each can best do.

Scientifically the metric system is hands down the best thing going, and I highly recommend that everybody working in any connected capacity, learn and make use of it!

Engineering related fields, I'm a bit more ambivalent concerning metric, and though I find that it can have utilitarian value there, I also find that it tends toward more sterile designs lacking artistry and flare.

Which is to say that I think having a mind trained to interpret fractions and make use of proportional concepts aids tremendously in the "vision" of aesthetic design work. The long established practice of application of the "Golden Mean" in designing most anything that wants to have aesthetic quality, along with utilitarian functionality, as inherent components of the overall design is best done in a system that is designed around and comfortable with fractional concepts!

...... or so I think, but YMMV.
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music: Music is THE BEST...   
Wisdom is the domain of the Wis (which is extinct). Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence..."
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Tony Bird

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2020, 03:35:37 am »
Hi,

When I was young the UK used Imperial.  When I started work in 1960 as an apprentice watch repairer I used metric; so I used metric to 100 mm about 4" and Imperial for larger measurements.  I never really got my head around using a Imperial micrometer; where my friends; apprentices in trades using larger sizes could convert most of the fraction sizes to thousandths in their head I had to use tables.  Over the years as most of the machines I worked on were imperial I found I could convert the 1000 divisions seeing them as metric.  Making models whose plans were almost always in Imperial was hard work but again made easier as time went on.  The advent of DRO's and digital verniers has made life a lot easier.  Our son who is near fifty only uses metric as do all his generation so I talk to him in metric and to the old members of our model engineering club in Imperial.

When I started work in the jewellery and horological trades: grains (7000 to the pound), dwt (20 to the Troy oz), lignes and doziems (something to do with an old French foot if memory servers) were being phase out.  I think the price of gold is still quoted in Troy oz (31.6 grams) not the Avoirdupois oz (28.4 grams).  But if it was simple anyone could do it.

Take care and stay safe.

Tony.

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2020, 08:02:16 am »
Actually, Tony, it all really is very simple. The key to it is this: don't try to convert from one to the other, just use the system you're given.
Bob

Dr.Rev.DelmarMacReady

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2020, 09:55:24 am »
Ok, and I thought my head hurt before. You guys just made it all the worse, with your jewelry standards...and Stoker I won't even comment. You went over my book learning pretty quick.

I stick to the tried and true measuring method using hairs (involving a certain C word Marcy has informed me is VERBOTEN). Or the secondary method of "a grunt past the squeak"
Bennydaheeb

RedRyder

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2020, 10:28:06 am »
The USA also decided to adopt or re-adopt the metric system in probably around 1970 when Canada did so.
The US plan was to phase it in over a 20 year period after which we should all be fully metricated. (is that a word?)
The American automobile industry quickly adapted.


The school milk suppliers also at some point renamed the 1/2 pint milk carton as 256 ml.
Can you just picture a kid going up to the counter saying please give me one of those 256's..??
I am not saying it never happens. I am saying it will never roll off the tongue as nicely, smoothly, or elegantly as our old Half Pint!


To my way of thinking the biggest scam was the entire USA alcohol industry dumping what we had for the metric volumes.
Think about this.... a 750 ml bottle of whiskey looks like a 5th of whiskey..... but it is considerably smaller and costs the same.
Wine is also 750 ml and has been for a long while now.


Beer is still sold here in cans measured in ounces.


We did at one time long before the metric was added, we had access to the GIQ of beer which was a "giant imperial quart".
The GIQ was 40 oz of beer!


I personally am glad the metric system did not take hold too well here.
Call me old fashioned and I'll thank you!


Gil

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2020, 11:17:35 am »
Well now, there is one classification of aesthetic beauty, where I do actually prefer a metric based scale to provide the needed range of gauging options for properly defining a "quantity" in an otherwise wholly subjective field of measurement.

The beauty of any given woman is truly in the eye of the beholder, and yet we crass male types are always given to comparisons of that which cannot readily be compared. I often find myself having to push the scale when viewing a series of really attractive woman, because three back I already awarded a 10, and yet I find another to seem yet a bit better, so I end up breaking the scale to award 14's and the like. Clearly the standard scale of 1 to 10 is not adequate to the requirements of the field of application.

Thus a new scale needs be created that offers far greater range, and more options, to score near equals with nuanced grading so that they may be very near each other yet still have a slightly different rating assigned to each of them.

Going back into deep history I find a perfectly usable standard of beauty to base the new system upon, and a simple base 10 decimal system, exactly like the metric system provides, is perfect for this scale expansion that I wish to employ.

So here's the new deal .... as it were. In ancient Greece, somewhere around the turn of the 1200 century BC, a woman named "Helen" the wife of Menelaus the King of Sparta, who was then considered the most beautiful woman in the world, either absconded on her own, or was absconded with by Paris, the King of Troy, thus fomenting the Trojan Wars of great and historic renown. Her husband then proceeded to launch a thousand ships to attack Troy and effect the return of his beautiful Helen. Or so goes the history/mythology of the events according to Homer ..... but enough of that seminal digression.

Let us now define this new scale of feminine beauty which I propose, based on the Helen scale:

If Helen possessed such a beautiful face as to be the cause of launching 1000 ship, then in a metric format, a woman with a face that would launch only 1 ship would score 1 millihelen. Ergo 1/1000 of a Helen is one millihelen or 1mh! Thus we now have vastly (or perhaps only half-vastly) expanded upon the old and inadequate "Bo Derek" scale, by a factor of 100, and may now more closely define the beauty that we see, as we see it!!!

If you doubt that there are women whose beauty would only launch but a single vessel, would ever get any vessel launched in their name, I suggest you look to the naming of New England fishing schooners of a century and more past. Many were the schooners, which bore the owner/captain's wife's name, and often when photos of these women are found, it becomes more obvious why their men might be willing to go out fishing on the "Banks" in mid-winter risking everything, life itself, in miserable conditions for long periods of storm, ice and privation ..... just to get away! Perhaps in some cases anyway .... but I digressed yet again, to no point in this instance, so I'll desist.

Please feel free to use this system of subjective comparison if you wish ...... or not, but I do find that it offers far more scope than the old system currently in use.

;c)
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music: Music is THE BEST...   
Wisdom is the domain of the Wis (which is extinct). Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence..."
F. Zappa ... by way of Mary, the girl from the bus.

classixs

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2020, 12:54:29 pm »

...The school milk suppliers also at some point renamed the 1/2 pint milk carton as 256 ml...

Well, that just stupid...
Over here, there´s 250ml in that carton, and its called a quart...not that much harder to pronounce, than a ½ pint  ;)

As far as the change in bottlesizes go, it merely appears to be a smart move to raise profit...
Back when they deemed our 25 Øre (a coin worth 1/4 of our Danish Crown) obsolete, every screw or piece of candy which until then had been sold at 25 Øre, swiftly had their prices lifted to fit the new lowest value coin here.
That being the 50 Øre coin (½ of a Danish Crown), that simple move raised the price 100% on those smaller items over night.

Metric found not guilty, case dismissed!  ;D
Cheers
Jan
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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2020, 01:30:29 pm »
Canada kept much of its packaging equipment after the change, so we buy 454g of butter (one pound), a 341ml bottle of beer (12 Oz), 1.14l of milk (1 Imperial quart), and so forth.

Things get further messed up when people call a 12 oz. bottle of beer a "pint" (nowhere near it, either US or Imperial!), or when a bar sells a "pint"  of draft beer that contains 18 US ounces of fluid instead of the larger 20 Imperial ounces (the Ontario liquor licence board works in Imperial ounces) and few seem to know or care, at least after a few beers.

It's enough to drive me to drink!
Bob

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #10 on: September 18, 2020, 01:45:50 pm »
I always thought the "old saw" was that  ..... A pint is a pound the world around ...... which is to say one pint = 16 ounces avoirdupois, which is 454 g/ml/cm3.

Now Jan ... isn't your money metric?

Over here, 1/2 pint is one quarter of a quart (.95L), which in turn is 1/4 of a gallon (3.79L), which brings us to one pound in a pint, two in a quart and eight pounds in a gallon, depending on the specific gravity of the liquid of course. A gallon of gasoline weighs a fair bit less, while a gallon of Mercury weights 13.6 times more .... give or take, depending on temperature.
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music: Music is THE BEST...   
Wisdom is the domain of the Wis (which is extinct). Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence..."
F. Zappa ... by way of Mary, the girl from the bus.

Nick

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #11 on: September 18, 2020, 02:08:27 pm »
Well, I’m confused
Nick

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #12 on: September 18, 2020, 02:13:22 pm »
Well, I’m confused

Well okay then Nick .... let me help you with this.

Tell me which is heavier .... a pound of Gold or a pound of Lead?
"Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music: Music is THE BEST...   
Wisdom is the domain of the Wis (which is extinct). Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence..."
F. Zappa ... by way of Mary, the girl from the bus.

Nick

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #13 on: September 18, 2020, 02:19:12 pm »
Well, I’m confused

Well okay then Nick .... let me help you with this.

Tell me which is heavier .... a pound of Gold or a pound of Lead?

A pound of feathers  :P
Nick

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Re: The Metric system...
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2020, 02:56:21 pm »
Just googled the subject, and found this one pretty funny...
(From a metric point of view of course, as i am certain there´s plenty who finds it very easy, when raised with the imperial system.)

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Cheers
Jan
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