5 ms·

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

by stass 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
It’s based on the decimal system, which we happen to use in our primary numerical system as well?
- blhack 8y ago
  We use the decimal system for imperial units too. Thousands of an inch, millionths of an inch, etc.
  - csihar 8y ago
    In most practical applications that I've seen fractions of imperial measurements used, it tends to be in powers of 2, i.e., 3/16 inch, 1/4 mile, etc. Decimals can certainly be used, but for most applications where you'd use something like a "millionth of an inch," it's vastly more common to use metric.
    - blhack 8y ago
      What applications are you talking about? Just for a general example of the sort of thing I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/EWqThb9Z1jk?t=137 https://youtu.be/EWqThb9Z1jk?t=137 They're resurfacing a surface plate, which has to be very flat. If you listen to the exchanges between them, everything is being done in millionths of an inch.
    - jpindar 8y ago
      In my experience (electronics manufacturing), both PCBs and machined parts are usually in mils or decimal inches, although millimeters are becoming more common and many drawings show both systems.
      - pcnix 8y ago
        This might be specific to where you live though, in my experience in the electronics industry, I've pretty much only seen millimeters.
  - guelo 8y ago
    Or nothing is stopping you from using things like 1.3 inches, 2.7 miles, .6 gallons. I tend to use the fractions when doing measurements in my head. But if things get too complicated and I have a calculator I switch to decimal.
kderbyma 8y ago
Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....
- Just_Smith 8y ago
  People don't really think in terms of 10s either - that's just societal conditioning based on the usage of fingers to count. If you can accurately picture 1/3 of set, but your number system cannot, it's not really that accommodating of a system. By the way, you can count base12 on your hands using the digits of your fingers. We just teach kids to use fingers because it's the norm.
  - jodrellblank 8y ago
    Why are you so obsessed with thirds? If you care about short, clean fractions on a human scale, base 6 is overall better, see this table: https://youtu.be/qID2B4MK7Y0?t=992 https://youtu.be/qID2B4MK7Y0?t=992 Plus you get all the convenience of having five digits on a hand and 5 as the highest counting digit, so you can count to 55 on two hands, and all the rest of the benefits in that (totally serious) video.
  - DareRight 8y ago
    A numbering system based on human fingers would be base6.
    - umanwizard 8y ago
      You've got it backwards. Counting to ten on your fingers predates the concept of our modern positional number system by hundreds of thousands of years. That's why base 10 was already the well-established natural choice when that system was invented. Thinking that you could represent the quantity IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII by the string "21" because it's 2 * 10 + 1, or similarly as "three fingers on left hand, three fingers on right hand" seems obvious to us now, but is actually pretty recent technology relative to the whole timescale of human development
bdamm 8y ago
They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  a kilogram of water is also a liter I have never, in around four decades of living, had an actual need to determine the mass of a given volume of water, or the volume of a given mass of water. When cooking, I routinely need to split some quantity of an ingredient into thirds or quarters. Yet I am also constantly told that I'm ignorant and backwards and irrational for preferring a system that optimizes for the latter, rather than for the former. Base 12 is genuinely better for many real-world applications than base 10, those applications are more common in the lives of non-scientists than the applications metric is optimized for, and I doubt you're going to be able to produce a rational argument otherwise.
  - atoav 8y ago
    So you never went hiking for a longer period of time or did anything that actually involves carrying water. I remember when some guys thought about building a pool on the balcony, calculating how much water weighs is admitably not ver often used, but when it is the consistency of the metric system is nice. I work with wood in mm for years and never had any problem with the metric system. Finding the third, fifth or sixth or whatnot is not hard if you are used to it at all. Converting from mm to meters isn’t hard, etc. Having a number like 666.66 mm probably sounds scary to measure (beyond the religious connotations), but in fact it is a point on a line that is easy enough to find.
  - xanipher 8y ago
    But that's because your recipes are built on the easy divisibility, no? If your recipes are built on weight measurements, suddenly "easy divisibility" brings nothing to the table. If you cook with a kitchen scale, "one ml of water is one gram" is used all the time.
atoav 8y ago
The metric prefixes we know and love are a huge plus. If you convert from Volt to kV or to mV, you just need to move your comma. Ah see what I did there? I uses a metric prefix on a unit that is also used in the US. The thing is 1V is also 1Nm or 1J or 1Ws. So suddenly we have the meter there right besides the Newton. In fact if you look beyond "I build my own shed in the US"-scenarios, you will find the meter everywhere intertwined in the definition of other units. In fact the definition of imperial length units is based on the metric definition of the length light travels through vacuum in 1/299792458s. So the foundation of the meter is light speed, which helps with all kind of practical issues in physics. The metric system has maximum compatibility to all these unit systems (except the °C which is a more-practical-for-every-day-use offset version of Kelvin). Unit systems are always something you grow up with and are therefore an emotional topic. People will take fractions of inches as an example of how metric fractions fail to deliver, when in fact no european woodworker has even remotly a problem with doing their thing in mm. In front of me lies a ruler with a 0.1mm scale and a caliper with 0.01mm or 1/128In accuracyIf I really wanna be ±0.01mm accurate on a cut of 1/3m or 333.33mm getting that accuracy would not be easier in inches. My saw blade is precisely 2mm wide anyways..
- cies 8y ago
  V=J/C V*C = J = Nm = Ws

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

by stass 8y ago

What are the redeamable qualities of metric units?

saagarjha 8y ago

It’s based on the decimal system, which we happen to use in our primary numerical system as well?

blhack 8y ago
We use the decimal system for imperial units too. Thousands of an inch, millionths of an inch, etc.
- csihar 8y ago
  In most practical applications that I've seen fractions of imperial measurements used, it tends to be in powers of 2, i.e., 3/16 inch, 1/4 mile, etc. Decimals can certainly be used, but for most applications where you'd use something like a "millionth of an inch," it's vastly more common to use metric.
  - blhack 8y ago
    What applications are you talking about? Just for a general example of the sort of thing I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/EWqThb9Z1jk?t=137 https://youtu.be/EWqThb9Z1jk?t=137 They're resurfacing a surface plate, which has to be very flat. If you listen to the exchanges between them, everything is being done in millionths of an inch.
  - jpindar 8y ago
    In my experience (electronics manufacturing), both PCBs and machined parts are usually in mils or decimal inches, although millimeters are becoming more common and many drawings show both systems.
    - pcnix 8y ago
      This might be specific to where you live though, in my experience in the electronics industry, I've pretty much only seen millimeters.
- guelo 8y ago
  Or nothing is stopping you from using things like 1.3 inches, 2.7 miles, .6 gallons. I tend to use the fractions when doing measurements in my head. But if things get too complicated and I have a calculator I switch to decimal.

kderbyma 8y ago

Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....

Just_Smith 8y ago
People don't really think in terms of 10s either - that's just societal conditioning based on the usage of fingers to count. If you can accurately picture 1/3 of set, but your number system cannot, it's not really that accommodating of a system. By the way, you can count base12 on your hands using the digits of your fingers. We just teach kids to use fingers because it's the norm.
- jodrellblank 8y ago
  Why are you so obsessed with thirds? If you care about short, clean fractions on a human scale, base 6 is overall better, see this table: https://youtu.be/qID2B4MK7Y0?t=992 https://youtu.be/qID2B4MK7Y0?t=992 Plus you get all the convenience of having five digits on a hand and 5 as the highest counting digit, so you can count to 55 on two hands, and all the rest of the benefits in that (totally serious) video.
- DareRight 8y ago
  A numbering system based on human fingers would be base6.
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    You've got it backwards. Counting to ten on your fingers predates the concept of our modern positional number system by hundreds of thousands of years. That's why base 10 was already the well-established natural choice when that system was invented. Thinking that you could represent the quantity IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII by the string "21" because it's 2 * 10 + 1, or similarly as "three fingers on left hand, three fingers on right hand" seems obvious to us now, but is actually pretty recent technology relative to the whole timescale of human development

bdamm 8y ago

They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.

ubernostrum 8y ago
a kilogram of water is also a liter I have never, in around four decades of living, had an actual need to determine the mass of a given volume of water, or the volume of a given mass of water. When cooking, I routinely need to split some quantity of an ingredient into thirds or quarters. Yet I am also constantly told that I'm ignorant and backwards and irrational for preferring a system that optimizes for the latter, rather than for the former. Base 12 is genuinely better for many real-world applications than base 10, those applications are more common in the lives of non-scientists than the applications metric is optimized for, and I doubt you're going to be able to produce a rational argument otherwise.
- atoav 8y ago
  So you never went hiking for a longer period of time or did anything that actually involves carrying water. I remember when some guys thought about building a pool on the balcony, calculating how much water weighs is admitably not ver often used, but when it is the consistency of the metric system is nice. I work with wood in mm for years and never had any problem with the metric system. Finding the third, fifth or sixth or whatnot is not hard if you are used to it at all. Converting from mm to meters isn’t hard, etc. Having a number like 666.66 mm probably sounds scary to measure (beyond the religious connotations), but in fact it is a point on a line that is easy enough to find.
- xanipher 8y ago
  But that's because your recipes are built on the easy divisibility, no? If your recipes are built on weight measurements, suddenly "easy divisibility" brings nothing to the table. If you cook with a kitchen scale, "one ml of water is one gram" is used all the time.

atoav 8y ago

The metric prefixes we know and love are a huge plus. If you convert from Volt to kV or to mV, you just need to move your comma. Ah see what I did there? I uses a metric prefix on a unit that is also used in the US. The thing is 1V is also 1Nm or 1J or 1Ws. So suddenly we have the meter there right besides the Newton. In fact if you look beyond "I build my own shed in the US"-scenarios, you will find the meter everywhere intertwined in the definition of other units. In fact the definition of imperial length units is based on the metric definition of the length light travels through vacuum in 1/299792458s. So the foundation of the meter is light speed, which helps with all kind of practical issues in physics. The metric system has maximum compatibility to all these unit systems (except the °C which is a more-practical-for-every-day-use offset version of Kelvin). Unit systems are always something you grow up with and are therefore an emotional topic. People will take fractions of inches as an example of how metric fractions fail to deliver, when in fact no european woodworker has even remotly a problem with doing their thing in mm. In front of me lies a ruler with a 0.1mm scale and a caliper with 0.01mm or 1/128In accuracyIf I really wanna be ±0.01mm accurate on a cut of 1/3m or 333.33mm getting that accuracy would not be easier in inches. My saw blade is precisely 2mm wide anyways..

cies 8y ago
V=J/C V*C = J = Nm = Ws