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> however in any kind of academic, engineering or scientific contexts metric units are used almost exclusively This is true in the United States as well, but f
by microcolonel 8y ago
> however in any kind of academic, engineering or scientific contexts metric units are used almost exclusively
This is true in the United States as well, but fueling a commercial airplane is not an academic, scientific, or even an engineering exercise. It is as routine and pedestrian as refueling a bus.
> Your point about Americans assuming imperial units is precisely wwhy it's so dangerous that metrification hasn't happened there.
Or maybe it's an argument for why "metrification" is itself dangerous. The problem is the transition, not being on either side of the fence. It seems to me that the only safe mode of transition is first to dual readout, and only then to SI-exclusive.
Don't get me wrong, I like SI units, I use them every day, and I don't long to spend any time multiplying and dividing by irregular fractions; I just don't like the dismissive "shoulda been metric" rhetoric that floats around everywhere; as though you can just stop selling letter paper and force everyone to use A-series compatible envelopes, and convert the clean (if baroque) markings on the paper products to bizarre decimal fractions of a g/m² without any empathy for the old guard.
Some people care about how Britain still drives on the wrong side of the road, but that doesn't mean they should berate you every time a drunk roadtripping Frenchman turns out into oncoming traffic.
- cheerlessbog 8y agoEven in academia doesn't the US use CGS, and most of the rest of the world uses SI/MKS? We can't use the same physics textbooks.
- mypalmike 8y agoI took high-school and college physics in the US around 30 years ago. It was all SI then, and I suspect it still is.
- Symbiote 8y agoA British bus will be refuelled in litres, which I think was the point. > as though you can just stop selling letter paper and force everyone to use A-series compatible envelopes, and convert the clean (if baroque) markings on the paper products to bizarre decimal fractions of a g/m² without any empathy for the old guard. The first part was done in Britain in the 1950s, but with the weights rounded to convenient metric numbers.
- stordoff 8y ago> A British bus will be refuelled in litres, which I think was the point. Refuelled in litres, but with efficiency measured in miles per gallon. It's kind of a mess.
- bostonpete 8y agoMiles per US gallon or miles per imperial gallon?
- magduf 8y agoThe latter, miles per UK gallon. Watch out for that, because if you don't know better, you'll read about some car in the UK and wonder why it has such astounding fuel economy!
- Symbiote 8y agoThat's the case for cars, but I wouldn't be certain it's the same for buses, especially large fleets of public transport buses. All three British bus manufactures give all measurements except speed in metric, although none give an actual fuel consumption. (Just "20% better" etc.) [1], as the first reference I can find, uses both l/100km and mpg. [1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fuel_consumption_of_prototype_nb https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fuel_consumption_of_p...