Convenience of the metric system

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

Here, it's 50 x 100 if it's green timber.

Here too, but green timber is used occasionally only in congrete mouldings..

[avb3]

Originally Posted by Capt Phil

Very simple, hello sailor... There is a large portion of Canadian plywood manufacturers sent to the US for export. To retool all of the plywood mills to be able to produce both metric for domestic consumption and SAE measurements for export only to the US doesn't make economic sense.
Economics seems to drive many of these decisions.
One thing I've never been able to resolve is the difference between imperial and US gallons! Phil

Besides, virtually all the housing stock is build on 16/24 centers. Try fitting metric on to those studs.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

Here, it's 50 x 100 if it's green timber.

The size of a 4 x 2 depends on what you intend to hit with it

Which is why it is also known as a "four by clue"

[martinworswick]

Originally Posted by avb3

Besides, virtually all the housing stock is build on 16/24 centers. Try fitting metric on to those studs.

400 and 600 perhaps

It's not that difficult and you do your stud set out to work with the lining material that's specified

[avb3]

Originally Posted by martinworswick

400 and 600 perhaps

It's not that difficult and you do your stud set out to work with the lining material that's specified

If your building on existing studs, that becomes a cluster mess. Trust me... I'm renovating a 100 year old house right now. I've renovated 30 year old homes, and it is a problem there also. Sure, new housing could be done that way, but then, as another poster mentioned, the plants would have to tool for two different standards.

It's bad enough needing both metric and SAE wrenches and tools.

[martinworswick]

Yeah renovations and new builds require a different approach but I bet the skillsaw is out fairly frequently ?building from new there's a myriad of sizes available and you build to suit whatever your using.
You can never build without waste though,however hard you try

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by avb3

Besides, virtually all the housing stock is build on 16/24 centers. Try fitting metric on to those studs.

Fortunately US houses aren't build to last...

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Benz

Funny to see this old thread come up again. After destroying with logic all of K_V_B's objections (he never answered my last series of commentary, so I deem him vanquished),

Sorry Benz, but your last remark in this thread did not contain, logic, but an appeal to emotions.

To quote you:

I like to feel that the circular measurements I use, the time I use, the way they relate to navigating have their roots in antiquity--a vital, real connection to the past. Sentiment? no doubt: but the foot and fathom, yard, nautical mile, minute, second and hour, as they stand today (however you wish to define them), work together wonderfully to get me where I need to go without computers, programming, or electronical aids.

That's perfectly fine. But once feelings, taste and aesthetics enter the discussion it becomes unwinnable by either party, because taste is personal.
I have no problem with you wanting to stick with something demonstrably impractical for aesthetic reasons.
So I did not reply then. This does not make me "vanquished".


And you continue you appeal to aesthetics:

the thread has drifted to highlight another failing of the Metric system: there is simply no poesy in it. The Sensible System has many ways to express quantities of things: a teaspoon, a cup, a tablespoon, a pinch. Metric can only coldly say: 'X amount of grams'.

What is sensible with using "teaspoon", "cup", "tablespoon" when all these are are just roundabout ways of saying "X amount of grams".

The customary units only got a proper, precise definition once the metric system came along. In 1893 the foot was defined as 1200⁄3937 meters. But this was a different definition than the UK used, so in 1959 both countries agreed on a definition of "on foot = 0.3048 m". As a result surveyors in the US need to use a different foot as everybody else as most of the survey data predates 1959.
How is this "sensible".

I think it's no wonder that precision machinery comes from Switzerland or Japan...

[jeepbluetj]

Holy thread resurrection Batman! Must be forum Easter somewhere. (or whatever theology y'all want to insert there)

Why is this a conversation? The vast majority of the planet (and likely sentient beings on other planets aside from time==seconds) say that one system is sensible and the other has twelves, eights, no relation between volume, length, and mass, and a totally whack-a-doo temperature scale. Yup, water should freeze at what, 32? pick that out of thin air. Boils at what? yup.. Makes sense... Fortnights in a furlong and all that....

There is indeed a huge amount of "this is what I know, therefore it's right." I understand that what you grew up with feels reasonable. But hey, I'm a 'merican from frickin West Virgina, and I understand how long 30cm is. And how hot 25 degrees is. And what mass is vs weight. If the entire rest of the planet wants my oil drain plug to be 15mm, why do I want to protest that? Grab a 15mm wrench and change the damn oil.

I long for the day I don't need to buy two sets of tools. When billions of $ don't go crashing into Mars because some idiot thought pounds was a reasonable unit for thrust of a rocket motor. When 90+% of the world agrees that metric makes sense, metric makes sense. It's intellectual and economic insanity to reject that.

It'll work out eventually. The rest of the planet will increasingly find the quaint, antique, medieval units that the U.S. deals with as foolish and will not play along.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by StuM

Which is why it is also known as a "four by clue"

never heard of it and I can't google it if I can't google it, then it mustn't be true. Cause everyone knows google is always right

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

never heard of it and I can't google it if I can't google it, then it mustn't be true. Cause everyone knows google is always right

Try "clue by four". Plenty of hits that way round.

Apparently 2x4 is the usual way it is said in the US but 4x2 is more common in most English speaking countries.

[Benz]

jeepblue: the rocket did not go crashing into Mars because the Imperial system is bad; it went awry because some idiot decided to try and read in Metric plans that were in Sensible. But perhaps if we repeat the mantra "metric is better" enough times it will become true. It's been tried before. BTW, 90% of everyone has been wrong lots of times; I have no reason to expect this is any different.

K_V_B: Hello, my old friend. I will only say in response that we are creatures irrevocably bound to emotion--it is part of being human. I find the metric system clumsy and difficult, which makes me upset, which makes me return to measuring things with a more understandable system, one in which the way I navigate and tell time are organically connected to. The big claim is that "Metric is Better." Baloney. Metric can be made to work, but better is a matter of opinion. Of emotion. You have all showed that things can, indeed, be measured in Metric--but things have measured in Sensible for ages, bridges and buildings built, men put on the moon, wars fought and won. It is specious to say that it is a system that doesn't work.
Ben

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by Benz

K_V_B: Hello, my old friend. I will only say in response that we are creatures irrevocably bound to emotion--it is part of being human. I find the metric system clumsy and difficult, which makes me upset, which makes me return to measuring things with a more understandable system, one in which the way I navigate and tell time are organically connected to.

And this is what I don't get.


Is it really inconvenient when cooking being able to correctly measure the ingredients for a recipe using just one digital kitchen scale?

Is it really inconvenient having all the dimensions in a technical drawing just being in the same unit, or decimal fractions there of? If this is so inconvenient, then why is this also the common practice in the US?

Why is this "clumsy", but it is suddenly not clumsy when you have to have disagreements about what "ounce" and "gallon" means?

Is it natural having to get out a calculator if you want to know how much 10 kubic feet of water weigh?

It's ok to have irrational preferences. I have a bundle of them. But it looks silly trying to rationalize them.

[Capt Phil]

Originally Posted by K_V_B

Fortunately US houses aren't build to last...

Heh, Heh... Planned obsolescence!

[Dennis.G]

When I was in elementary school (USA) we learned the metric system, and were told that this was going to be soon the standard for USA. I was very happy for this, as my young mind hated fractions and all the stupid conversion factors required for imperial units. Metric system could be learned in a day - so simple.

But the conservatives in government saw the conversion to the metric system as some sort of socialist/communist plot or something. Metric highway signs that had been newly installed were torn down and replaced with those in miles and MPH. Heaven forbid we loose our feet/inches/yards/drams/ounces/pounds/tons/furlongs/chains/cups/carats these all being so logical and all. All through college science classes used metric (SI units), but after graduation and going into engineering profession had to relearn imperial units to use on the job. Ugh!

Years have past and now many USA manufacturers have gone metric so as to be able to sell overseas. Bicycles, engines, machine tools, etc now made in the USA are being made in metric so they can be sold in places other than the USA. Economics is forcing this. Likely many billions of dollars of export trade has been lost by USA for not transitioning to metric many years ago as originally planned. All so stupid.