Quote:I don't care which is better. But I think that having the old one when the whole word uses metric is an obstacle. Changing isn't much of a hassle. The only thing against changing I could think about is the nostalgy factor.
Think about the odd fractions you get when using the old imperial system. You are often dividing by 3 and other numbers which will multiply the number of decimals in the results. In a scientiphical environment, the less "carried error", the better, and the imperial system favourishes the carried error increase as we are doing more and more calculations.
It's not so difficult to change. It looks like it's difficult at first, but I guarantee you that in two years you'll know exactly how long is a kilometre or how heavy is a kilogram.
Having to change all the driving signs, for example... well, I don't think it's a very big problem. We had to change ALL our coins and paper money. And we survived :lol: And note that 1 euro = 166.3860 pesetas, so the conversion was tricky at times 
It's not like all of europe and most of the world just suddenly had the same standard..
It was adopted by most countries you* know..
*You is generic and does not refer to na_th_an
If you live to 120, and tell your great grandkids about the world when your parents went to school, referring to inches, feet pounds, furlongs, yards and chains or even the acre for Pete's sake, they are going to look at you and think "WTF is he on about?" Imperial measurements are no longer taught in schools. Not even in cooking or textiles.
Metric is the (now) favoured way of measuring.
BTW a can of coke for example in Australia is 375mL. Some alcoholic drinks come in 440mL cans, just because they can.
It is often forgotten that an original Imperial yard is slightly different to the US yard. The same applies to a mile.
Go anywhere in the world that uses metric, and tell someone they need to be 5,448m from where you are. They will know how far to go.
As for time, it's a little more complicated than just switching to metric. It has taken thousands of years and countless civilizations to get the time right. The fact that our planet has a 365.254 day long year (a "day" being approximately 23 hours and 57 minutes or so) makes it god-awful problematic to keeping a metric standard. This is where your article holds up. Metric really isn't practical for time. But for distances and whatnot, it is.
90 degree angles, 360 degree circles. A hangover from imperial nautical times? Try telling the Naval forces of the world they must use metric to navigate.
Explained.
>anarky
I still think liquid chocolate would be better (and tastier)...
Without resorting to google or wikipedia...who here knows what an arcsecond is? :wink:
An arc being part of a circle, a second being one 60th of a minute, a minute being one 60th of a degree...
=360*60*60
=360*3600
Or more simply put: 1/3600 of a degree.
Where I live on Earth, thats about 50 metres.
>anarky
I was digging aroung one day looking at how metric time wold be implemented/used and came accross this excelent artical on why there are 24hrs in a day:
http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/58460.html
---
Back on topic I've used my nickname all over the place since I was about 14. I stick with it as I often run into people who know me. BTW it's pronounced Fido... if you didn't know.
I somehow doubt that had anything to do with it. An interesting read, however.
>anarky
Quote:I don't care which is better. But I think that having the old one when the whole word uses metric is an obstacle. Changing isn't much of a hassle. The only thing against changing I could think about is the nostalgy factor.
......
It's not so difficult to change. It looks like it's difficult at first, but I guarantee you that in two years you'll know exactly how long is a kilometre or how heavy is a kilogram.
Having to change all the driving signs, for example... well, I don't think it's a very big problem.
......
I haven't actually researched the issue of converting to a metric system. The excerpt of the article that I posted before, I found by chance a few months ago.
Nathan, you say that you don't care which is better. You're right. Which is better is not the issue. Both systems have their merits.
The big issue is CHANGE. You say that changing isn't much of hassle, and that it's not so difficult to change. You're right regarding change on an individual basis. But what about on an industry-wide basis? The automotive industry in the USA is undergoing some bad times. What would happen to this industry if you now burdened it with a conversion to metric? And what about all the other major industries?
Frankly, I don't know how they sustained the change to metric in the UK. They must have really been eager to get into the European Common Market.
*****
Quote:na_th_an Wrote:I don't care which is better. But I think that having the old one when the whole word uses metric is an obstacle. Changing isn't much of a hassle. The only thing against changing I could think about is the nostalgy factor.
......
It's not so difficult to change. It looks like it's difficult at first, but I guarantee you that in two years you'll know exactly how long is a kilometre or how heavy is a kilogram.
Having to change all the driving signs, for example... well, I don't think it's a very big problem.
......
I haven't actually researched the issue of converting to a metric system. The excerpt of the article that I posted before, I found by chance a few months ago.
Nathan, you say that you don't care which is better. You're right. Which is better is not the issue. Both systems have their merits.
The big issue is CHANGE. You say that changing isn't much of hassle, and that it's not so difficult to change. You're right regarding change on an individual basis. But what about on an industry-wide basis? The automotive industry in the USA is undergoing some bad times. What would happen to this industry if you now burdened it with a conversion to metric? And what about all the other major industries?
Frankly, I don't know how they sustained the change to metric in the UK. They must have really been eager to get into the European Common Market.
*****
The UK is messed up and isn't really metric.
Schools only teach metric, but the UK public mostly runs on imperal.
Milk is still sold in pints with litres in small print. No one askes the milk-man for 0.568261485 litres, but thats the only size you can get it in.
Motoring is still miles and miles/hr. And if you speak to builders etc they work in feet/inches. (But have to order their goods in metric.)
Ireland did things properly. They converted to metric (road signs and all) in 2 days if I remember correctly.
Quote:The big issue is CHANGE. You say that changing isn't much of hassle, and that it's not so difficult to change. You're right regarding change on an individual basis. But what about on an industry-wide basis? The automotive industry in the USA is undergoing some bad times. What would happen to this industry if you now burdened it with a conversion to metric? And what about all the other major industries?
Well, we changed our money. What can be more difficult than changing your mind about how many stuff costs? That's why I say that it's easy, 'cause I know what's changing your mind radically.
Imagine our change: 1⬠is more than 166 pesetas (concretely, 166.386 pesetas). Suddenly, stuff that happened to cost 1,000 pesetas are now around 6â¬, so everything is like WHOAH, SO DAMN CHEAP 'cause there was some kind of "1⬠= 100 pesetas" in our brains that messed everything up. But after 5 years of euro, I can guarantee to you that even the oldest people who at the beginning were in serious trouble with the conversions are now fine with it. With usage, you soon learn to measure in the new unit.
The metric system doesn't have the tradition of the Imperial or Spanish systems (yeah we do have one, and it's still used but not in official products - that also means that we changed systems a while ago and we survived), in fact it was somewhat
created to make things easier in science. It's ugly and doesn't have any charm, but heck, it's useful as hell, and easy to deal with.
And change is good. Otherwise you grow spiderwebs