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Metric to Standard

calamity said:
It's a huge problem in steel purchasing. Metric sizes are simply not standard. Steel thicknesses come in gauges and fractions of an inch. Of course, we can always buy coils worked to whatever thickness we want, but when buying structural steel shapes and flats, everything is sold in inches. It would probably cost a fortune to retool everything to metric.
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It would be worth it in the long run.
 
_Sal said:
question for you guys...

does the speedometer in your cars have both mph and kilometers?
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Both my personal vehicle(Nissan) and my company vehicle(Ford) have both mph and kilometers. I think it's standard now.
 
ObamacareFail said:
It would be worth it in the long run.
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Who pays for it? Certainly you, given your political views, would not want the government to fund that or order it. And, right now, the steel companies see no profit in making such a costly transition.
 
calamity said:
Who pays for it? Certainly you, given your political views, would not want the government to fund that or order it. And, right now, the steel companies see no profit in making such a costly transition.
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As a conservative, I believe in states rights. it would be a cost to the states as well as some of the businesses. it's going to happen sooner or later. It will just go from voluntary to mandatory.
 
_Sal said:
question for you guys...

does the speedometer in your cars have both mph and kilometers?
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I believe my car is only metric.
I did remember years ago the first time I rode my brothers Ducati I thought damn this thing sure is sweet and stable doing 100 on these back roads then I realized it was a US import and was in MPH. I was even more impressed with it after that!
 
Quag said:
I believe my car is only metric.
I did remember years ago the first time I rode my brothers Ducati I thought damn this thing sure is sweet and stable doing 100 on these back roads then I realized it was a US import and was in MPH. I was even more impressed with it after that!
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ooooooooooooooomg...that is pretty fast... :cool:

glad ya made it :thumbs:
 
calamity said:
Highly accurate, IMO. We use Tenths and Thousandths, where the metric folks use Microns and fractions of a mm. Personally, I can more easily visualize a 1/4 of a millimeter and 5 microns than 10 thousandths or 2 tenths.

But, I actually prefer working in thousandths and tenths.
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Me too

but its what I grew up with
 
_Sal said:
ooooooooooooooomg...that is pretty fast... :cool:

glad ya made it :thumbs:
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Ive gone much faster since then on my Ducati (yes I bought one too, cause well D**n they are sweet!) but dont tell the police ;)
 
Imperial is ridiculous.

I guarantee you most Americans do not know how many feet are in a mile (5,280 btw).

But I guarantee you most people who deal in metric know that there are 1,000 meters in a kilometer.

And try dividing a mile by 25...you need a calculator (or a paper and pencil - it's 211.2 feet btw).

A kilometer...simple - 1,000 divided by 25 = 40 meters.


The only reason people like Imperial is probably because they don't like new things...cause logically, it makes almost no sense whatsoever.

'I don't like spinach'.
'Have you tried it?'
'No...but I know I do not like it.'
 
When I lived in the Netherlands, I used to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit by doubling the Celsius number and adding 30. It was quick, easy, and close enough.
 
This ain't rocket surgery
 
Serenity said:
Metrication was introduced into Australia well before I was born so that's what I've grown up with. That being said, I'm just as fluent with the imperial system and can easily convert one to the other. Much prefer metric though.
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so how many liters are in a gallon? serious question
 
EMNofSeattle said:
so how many liters are in a gallon? serious question
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Exact or close? 4 for all practical purposes. 3-point-7 something, to be exact: 3.78541.
 
Porchev said:
When I lived in the Netherlands, I used to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit by doubling the Celsius number and adding 30. It was quick, easy, and close enough.
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Not when you get to negative numbers.
 
calamity said:
Exact or close? 4 for all practical purposes. 3-point-7 something, to be exact: 3.78541.
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Ah but see that's where you're right, and very wrong. We In the US use 3.7 for a gallon, but in metrified commonwealth countries it's 4.54 liter per gallon.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Ah but see that's where you're right, and very wrong. We In the US use 3.7 for a gallon, but in metrified commonwealth countries it's 4.54 liter per gallon.
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Yeah, I had a suspicion that you threw out a loaded question. I should have asked. Which gallon?
 
calamity said:
Yeah, I had a suspicion that you threw out a loaded question. I should have asked. Which gallon?
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It was actually quite a headache to international operations back when everyone used the term gallon but meant different things.

I personally think the US should metrify.
 
Porchev said:
When I lived in the Netherlands, I used to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit by doubling the Celsius number and adding 30. It was quick, easy, and close enough.
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The point - to me - isn't how easy is it to convert. The point is how easy is it to use each system.

Clearly, the metric system is far, FAR easier to use then the imperial.

For instance, how many cups in 25.87 U.S. gallons? 25.87 times 16 = 413.92 btw. Not so simple...certainly not something most people could figure out in their heads.

But how many decilitres in 25.87 litres? Just multiply by 10...258.7. Centilitres? Multiply by 100 - 2587. And so on...simplicity.


How many feet in 99.5% of a mile? 5280 (feet in a mile) divided by 99.5% = 5306.53366332.... Not so simple.

How many metres in 99.5% of a kilometre? 99.5% of 1000 metres (1 kilometre) is 995 metres. Simple.


And so on and so on...
 
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EMNofSeattle said:
It was actually quite a headache to international operations back when everyone used the term gallon but meant different things.

I personally think the US should metrify.
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I believe there are several versions of a pound too.
 
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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We measure in English because we speak English. Personally, I merge the two systems. 1 mile = 1.6 km. 1 meter = 39.37 inches. An inch is 2.54 cm, etc, etc, etc. I remember in 1979 there was a push to "go metric", but so many people didn't want to subject the USA to the same measurement system as the Communist countries. Standard American English is part of the USA's sovereignty; it must be preserved.
 
EMNofSeattle said:
Ah but see that's where you're right, and very wrong. We In the US use 3.7 for a gallon, but in metrified commonwealth countries it's 4.54 liter per gallon.
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Back in the day, we referred to those as "Canadian Gallons".
 
SDET said:
We measure in English because we speak English. Personally, I merge the two systems. 1 mile = 1.6 km. 1 meter = 39.37 inches. An inch is 2.54 cm, etc, etc, etc. I remember in 1979 there was a push to "go metric", but so many people didn't want to subject the USA to the same measurement system as the Communist countries. Standard American English is part of the USA's sovereignty; it must be preserved.
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That's funny. We aren't using metric because it's "commie." :lol: I believe you. I just think it's funny as hell.
 
I prefer the precision of Fahrenheit.


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