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That's something I've done time and time again, and seen others do too. It's easy to look at something and think you understand it well enough to know how it ca
by penpapersw 9y ago
That's something I've done time and time again, and seen others do too. It's easy to look at something and think you understand it well enough to know how it can be improved. But when you find out the rationale and reasons it is the way it is, it's kind of humbling. Like how it surprised me to learn that there's a lot of valid, practical reasons to use the Imperial measurement system over Metric.
- elcapitan 9y ago> Like how it surprised me to learn that there's a lot of valid, practical reasons to use the Imperial measurement system over Metric. I've always wondered about that. Why?
- penpapersw 9y agoI don't remember where I read it, but one of the big reasons was that Imperial units are much easier to divide in ways that make a lot of sense in practical usage, whereas Metric is designed to make conversions easier for doing science, which puts practical usage on a lower priority. But take this with a grain of salt.
- barryfandango 9y ago* 64.7989 mg of salt
- CamperBob2 9y agoMachinists and engineers often prefer Imperial "mils" (thousandths of an inch), for instance. It's easy to convert from kilograms to pounds or kilometers to miles, but there's no convenient metric unit for expressing typical distances and tolerances used in mainstream machining. A millimeter is way too coarse, a micrometer is way too fine. As a specific case, in electrical work, it's easy for me to specify "6 mil trace/space" attributes for a PC board design. Not so easy to say "0.1524 mm" or "152.4 microns." If I round my specification down to 0.1 mm, the resulting copper features will carry less current and cost more money. If I round it up to 0.2 mm, other physical and/or electrical requirements won't be met. So now I have to add at least one more sig fig, which is a pain in the neck for no obvious benefit.