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Metric to Standard

ttwtt78640 said:
1) 5/32

2) 11

If you keep your tools in size order it does not matter. What drives me crazy is when some parts/fasteners are metric and others are SAE on the same product.
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Yes that is evil!
 
KevinKohler said:
Well, I'll say this. We didn't put a man on the moon using fractions. We did it with decimals.
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Base 10 is crappy system. You have a number that is divisible by only two numbers (2 and 5), going to base 12 would mean that your base would be divisible by 2,3,4 and 6. I think that we should also go to a 12X30 calendar with 5-6 holidays thrown in for the odd days. Have 5 6 day weeks per month, giving us a 60 week year (divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12, 15, 20 and 30).
 
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calamity said:
Yeah, I know most of the fraction to decimal conversions by heart, and they make a lot of sense.

1/64.0156253/64.0468755/64.078125
1/32.031253/32.09375
1/16.06253/16.1875
1/8.1253/8.375
1/4.253/4.75
1/2.5

Even more cool is when fraction results just drop the 0 from the decimals smaller than .1
5/32.1562515/32.4687523/32.78125
5/16.312515/16.9375
5/8.625
The patterns seen there is music to my brain. Not sure why.
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I think that you would have liked my method of teaching people how to read fractions on a tape measure. For each mark of the same length, all you have to do is add 2 to the numerator to get the next value. 1/16 add 2 -> 3/16 add 2 -> 5/16. Worked great for people with limited English skills 1/16 y dos -> 3/16 y dos -> 5/16. To figure out what the denominator is, you just start multiplying by two starting with the longest line. 2 years of training new hires how to read a tape and I never once had someone not get it.
 
faithful_servant said:
Base 10 is crappy system. You have a number that is divisible by only two numbers (2 and 5), going to base 12 would mean that your base would be divisible by 2,3,4 and 6. I think that we should also go to a 12X30 calendar with 5-6 holidays thrown in for the odd days. Have 5 6 day weeks per month, giving us a 60 week year (divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12, 15, 20 and 30).
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Peoples heads would explode.
 
Quag said:
I thought a peck was a measurement of volume
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Dry weight apparently. Amazingly enough two pecks make a kenning Which is an obsolete measure. If a kenning is obsolete and yet no one appears to know what a peck is or what it is used for then why is a peck not being called obsolete.
 
calamity said:
For the most part, metric is much more tidy. Water freezes at 0; boils at 100; a mm is 1/1000th of a meter and a KM is 1000 of them; mass is a kg and force a newton, no one ever confuses the two. That sort of thing. People around the world are good with it, but here at home, not so much.

Americans have these things called feet, which are made up of 12 inches; gallons which are 4 quarts that happen to be 2 pints, and pints are pounds, but also 2 cups. And, speaking of pounds---we have pounds mass and pounds force, unless of course, you've heard of the slug. Which I bet very few people have, except, of course, when we are talking about slimy little creatures with no feet (not to be confused with the feet that consist of 12 inches).

Oh, and Fahrenheit: water freezes at 32 and boils at 212. Yeah, now it all that makes sense. We're nuts.

Anyway, there a few tricks for quickly converting various metric units to standard that I have picked up over the years. A few are simple, a few a little more convoluted.

Celsius to F: 0C is 32F and basically for every delta 10 C we get a change of 18 F. So, 10 C is 50 F, 20C is 68, 30C is 86... Going the other way, -10C is 14, -20 is -4--and, guess what? -40 is -40. :)

Distance is pretty easy to calculate at a glance too. 100 KM is 60 miles. 1 m is 40 inches. So, a meter and a yard are only 4 inches apart. Going small? No problem. A mm, at 40 thousandths of an inch, is really just a large 32nd. 10 mm is 3/8--or at least it's close enough for fast math in a pinch (it's actually closer to 13/32, but that gets a little too hard to work with, IMO).

Pounds are even better. Figure a kg is 2 pounds and you will always be in the ballpark.

Liquids are pretty much like yards and meters. If you think of quart as equal to a liter, you'll be in the ballpark every time.
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Due to my profession and early years, I happen to know Both systems very well. As to converting over to the Metric system, No.
 
As a retired engineman who has worked on many european diesels and auxiliary equipment, I can go either way.

I do prefer PSI over kPa.

I screw with a guy who part times for me. I take his drywall T-square square and hide it in my truck after laying a metric T- square on the hack of sheetrock while I go after coffee.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Metric is a whole lot easier to use.

A hundred dollar bill weighs one gram (factoid I got from the internet). Therefore, a thousand of them weigh a kilogram, and a million weigh a thousand kilograms, or a ton, and is worth a hundred million dollars. Ten thousand kilograms, ten tons, is worth a billion.

So, a billion dollars is ten tons of hundred dollar bills, or 20 pickup loads using a standard light duty pickup. Now, a billion dollars can easily be pictured.

Try that one using pounds and ounces.
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Thanks for that. :roll:

;)

Now, you've got a 1/4" nut and a 6mm wrench.

It won't budge. Why?

How are you going to solve this dilemma?

Am I making sense to you?

;)
 
ttwtt78640 said:
1) 5/32

2) 11

If you keep your tools in size order it does not matter. What drives me crazy is when some parts/fasteners are metric and others are SAE on the same product.
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1. correct.
2. correct, but a lot easier.

That is a real pain in the butt, when you have to keep two sets of tools and then guess which one will fit.
 
ChezC3 said:
1 Thanks for that. :roll:

;)

2 Now, you've got a 1/4" nut and a 6mm wrench.

It won't budge. Why?

3 How are you going to solve this dilemma?

4 Am I making sense to you?

;)
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1 You're welcome.
2 because the wrench doesn't fit properly.
3 Use a 1/4 inch wrench
4 yes.
 
soylentgreen said:
Dry weight apparently. Amazingly enough two pecks make a kenning Which is an obsolete measure. If a kenning is obsolete and yet no one appears to know what a peck is or what it is used for then why is a peck not being called obsolete.
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Kenning is obsolete?
 
calamity said:
Metric is absolutely beautiful. As an engineer it's like music to me. Standard is a nightmare. BTU, Horsepower, Slugs, pounds, feet, inches which break down into fractions and thousandths. Ugh.

Give me a joule and, within seconds, I can calculate volts by knowing amps and newtons by knowing the meters, usually in my head. Give me btu, and I'm heading off to the computer before I can calculate anything, unless I estimate by saying a btu is about 1000 joules, and then start calculating in metric. Doing it in English is a nightmare.

The only english system I like is pressure. I totally understand psi. MPA is a bit more cumbersome when faced with loads in pounds and area measured in inches. But, it's nice when dealing exclusively with newtons and square mm, but we never do at work--it's always pounds and often inches, although mm are showing up more and more.

In my job, I find myself converting metric to english and vice-versa in my head all the time.
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I switch, not sure why but, I tend to use thousandths of an inch and inches when talking about small distances less than a metre, metres when talking about distances between a metre and a km and miles thereafter, even though most cylists use kilometres I just cannot ride to speed in km/h! I use 0.040" = 1,00mm a heck of a lot all the way down to 0,005" = 0,013mm.

I grew up with both and have to be conversant with both as I deal with measurements internationally but, I just find visualising those distances easier within those boundaries.
 
William Rea said:
I switch, not sure why but, I tend to use thousandths of an inch and inches when talking about small distances less than a metre, metres when talking about distances between a metre and a km and miles thereafter, even though most cylists use kilometres I just cannot ride to speed in km/h! I use 0.040" = 1,00mm a heck of a lot all the way down to 0,005" = 0,013mm.

I grew up with both and have to be conversant with both as I deal with measurements internationally but, I just find visualising those distances easier within those boundaries.
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Here it's always miles. Miles per hour, miles covered and miles to go. I don't ever remember discussing distance in KM unless speaking to someone from another country. The same applies to yards and feet, the latter particularly. I look from here to there and say, "That's probably 50 feet."

Smaller distances, even though I grew up dealing in thousandths, I learned to love mm. 2 mil, 1 mil, 1/2 a mil, etc is just so convenient. Same with microns. 10 microns, 5 microns, etc. I just love that for conversation. But...I actually convert those numbers to ten thousandths of an inch in my head first to fully visualize what I am talking about.
 
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