7 ms·
An interesting article but infuriating in how it translates all dimensions to Imperial first. Such as stating the depth of the Kola borehole in feet and adding
by dingaling 8y ago
An interesting article but infuriating in how it translates all dimensions to Imperial first. Such as stating the depth of the Kola borehole in feet and adding metres in parentheses; it was drilled using equipment specified in metres...
- bcraven 8y agoThe Smithsonian is an American institution and as such caters to American's habit of using Imperial measurements. This makes it more relatable to the the passing reader.
- mekazu 8y agoI kinda like the idea that Americans could be gradually migrated from Imperial to metric by osmosis over the course of a few thousand measurement based scientific articles.
- testplzignore 8y agoThey may take our lives, but they'll never take our feet!
- mattnewton 8y agoIt’s hard enough to get readers for measurement based scientific articles, I imagine.
- perl4ever 8y agoScience, even at the level of secondary school classes, has used metric in the US for a very long time. I don't know where people get this weird idea that Americans don't use SI. Imagine Americans making fun of Europeans for not speaking English, because they thought multilingual = not speaking English. That's how silly this meme is. Every car I've ever owned had km on the speedometer.
- mschaef 8y ago> Every car I've ever owned had km on the speedometer. Same here. (Although, I've driven a couple cars that only had a single scale of digits on the gauge. Pressing a button would toggle the meaning of the numbers from mph to km/h and swing the needle around to point at whatever was correct.)
- mschaef 8y agoProblem is that the issue is not just about the numbers and units people expect to use. The other issue relates to the fact that we build things according to imperial dimensions. (Paper is 8.5x11, bolts have sizes in imperial units, screw threads are pitched according to inches, etc.) Some or all of this can be changed, but neither the change nor the transition are free. (ie: I two sets of tools - one for metric and another for imperial.)
- jayess 8y agoYou're easily infuriated.
- okket 8y agoLiterally the whole world uses SI, only USA plus a few small countries chose to remain in the dark ages.
- kasey_junk 8y agoThis is of course not true. If I go to England I’ll see & hear references to ‘stone’ for weight. Similarly most of the world uses Celsius instead of Kelvin for temperature. In China you’ll see measures denominated in duplicate units at times. The world over you’ll see variations in what units people use.
- perl4ever 8y agoThe UK also uses mpg, and confusingly enough, the Imperial gallon is significantly larger than the American one.
- sfifs 8y agoAnd in India, we still use a more traditional counting system beyond thousands - we say "lakh" for 100,000 and "crore" for 10,000,000. The words million and billion are not in common use.
- jayess 8y agoSo a system of measurement determines whether people are in the "dark ages." I see.
- okket 8y agoWhen you set human extremities as references instead of fundamental physical properties, yes.
- 8y ago
- brightball 8y agoThere are countries that use the metric system and countries that have been to the moon. :-)
- growlist 8y agoThe Third Reich? Ah no, it was just their rocket scientists wasn't it.
- perl4ever 8y agoVon Braun never was an astronaut, much less traveled to the moon. And, I presume Nazi Germany used metric.
- Piskvorrr 8y agoWell... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_programme