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Who's "we"? This article is about Japan. The Japanese do not ever use "feet" as a unit of measurement. It's only Americans who still use feet and other imper

by magduf 7y ago

Who's "we"? This article is about Japan. The Japanese do not ever use "feet" as a unit of measurement. It's only Americans who still use feet and other imperial units, which is why they lost a Mars probe.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
You mean the British-built one? I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. Fuel is sold in litres but consumption measured in miles per gallon. Milk is sold in 1 pint or 2/4/6 litre bottles. Road signs to towns are in miles but in roadworks are in metres. And so on.
- GordonS 7y ago
  To add to the mix, some signs are in yards - who even knows what one of those equals these days?!
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    Yards are the easiest to translate. A yard is roughly a meter (~9/10's).
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I don't usually complain about downvote... but seriously? Someone really thinks it's OK to have signs in all of miles, metres and yards?!
- angrygoat 7y ago
  Yeah, the strange half-transition to metric in the UK is really odd. I'm from Australia, another Commonwealth country, and we're -entirely- metric here. The only thing I can think of is that people still talk about height of people in feet and inches, but on official forms it's in centimetres. I wonder why the UK couldn't quite make the jump over? At least the US has agreed that the Moon is a metric only zone! https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/0...
- justin66 7y ago
  > I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. McLaren recently failed to qualify for the Indy 500 (McLaren!) due in part to a unit conversion problem made prior to the last day of qualifying. https://autoweek.com/article/indy-500/mclaren-ceo-zak-brown-indy-500-debacle-we-made-so-many-mistakes https://autoweek.com/article/indy-500/mclaren-ceo-zak-brown-...
  - magduf 7y ago
    To be fair, from my reading of the article, this was a metric-to-imperial conversion problem, meaning McLaren was used to working in metric, but the Indy 500 is in the USA, which uses the backwards and archaic US customary units, so someone screwed up in converting to those. This could have happened to any non-American racing team, and doesn't serve at all as an example of Brits sticking with obsolete units, but rather the opposite. It does seem that McLaren made a lot of boneheaded mistakes here, but this example just doesn't go with the "Brits are still using imperial units" theme of this thread at all.
MisterTea 7y ago
Calm down. I clearly understood that as we humans, a collective whole.
- magduf 7y ago
  Humans, in general, do not use "feet" for measurement. It's only dumb Americans. They don't represent humanity: they're only a small fraction of all humans (around 4%). Don't blame humanity for something that only Americans do.
azernik 7y ago
And even then it's only the American public; NASA development is in metric. (Part of the Mars orbiter fiasco was that it was being developed during the transition.)
- magduf 7y ago
  Not really. The problem with the Mars lander (not orbiter, it was a lander that crashed) was that they got some data from a defense contractor (Lockheed Martin I think) which was in imperial units, and then NASA assumed it to be in metric units. Both sides made a stupid mistake here: the contractor didn't even provide any units at all on the data sheet they provided, and NASA didn't bother to ask, and just assumed some units. IIRC, these weren't some simple 1-dimensional unit like meters or liters, they were some compound unit (like lb-ft/N-m), so it was a stupid mistake, because even if you have metric units, you don't know if, for instance, there's some prefix, such as kilograms instead of grams, kiloNewton-meters instead of N-m, etc. It was really unbelievable IMO that they just took a bunch of bare numbers and assumed them to have some units associated.

by magduf 7y ago

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago

You mean the British-built one? I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. Fuel is sold in litres but consumption measured in miles per gallon. Milk is sold in 1 pint or 2/4/6 litre bottles. Road signs to towns are in miles but in roadworks are in metres. And so on.

GordonS 7y ago
To add to the mix, some signs are in yards - who even knows what one of those equals these days?!
- merpnderp 7y ago
  Yards are the easiest to translate. A yard is roughly a meter (~9/10's).
- GordonS 7y ago
  I don't usually complain about downvote... but seriously? Someone really thinks it's OK to have signs in all of miles, metres and yards?!
angrygoat 7y ago
Yeah, the strange half-transition to metric in the UK is really odd. I'm from Australia, another Commonwealth country, and we're -entirely- metric here. The only thing I can think of is that people still talk about height of people in feet and inches, but on official forms it's in centimetres. I wonder why the UK couldn't quite make the jump over? At least the US has agreed that the Moon is a metric only zone! https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/08jan_metricmoon/ https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2007/0...
justin66 7y ago
> I think us Brits are the worst of the worst when it comes to mixing units. McLaren recently failed to qualify for the Indy 500 (McLaren!) due in part to a unit conversion problem made prior to the last day of qualifying. https://autoweek.com/article/indy-500/mclaren-ceo-zak-brown-indy-500-debacle-we-made-so-many-mistakes https://autoweek.com/article/indy-500/mclaren-ceo-zak-brown-...
- magduf 7y ago
  To be fair, from my reading of the article, this was a metric-to-imperial conversion problem, meaning McLaren was used to working in metric, but the Indy 500 is in the USA, which uses the backwards and archaic US customary units, so someone screwed up in converting to those. This could have happened to any non-American racing team, and doesn't serve at all as an example of Brits sticking with obsolete units, but rather the opposite. It does seem that McLaren made a lot of boneheaded mistakes here, but this example just doesn't go with the "Brits are still using imperial units" theme of this thread at all.

MisterTea 7y ago

Calm down. I clearly understood that as we humans, a collective whole.

magduf 7y ago
Humans, in general, do not use "feet" for measurement. It's only dumb Americans. They don't represent humanity: they're only a small fraction of all humans (around 4%). Don't blame humanity for something that only Americans do.

azernik 7y ago

And even then it's only the American public; NASA development is in metric. (Part of the Mars orbiter fiasco was that it was being developed during the transition.)

magduf 7y ago
Not really. The problem with the Mars lander (not orbiter, it was a lander that crashed) was that they got some data from a defense contractor (Lockheed Martin I think) which was in imperial units, and then NASA assumed it to be in metric units. Both sides made a stupid mistake here: the contractor didn't even provide any units at all on the data sheet they provided, and NASA didn't bother to ask, and just assumed some units. IIRC, these weren't some simple 1-dimensional unit like meters or liters, they were some compound unit (like lb-ft/N-m), so it was a stupid mistake, because even if you have metric units, you don't know if, for instance, there's some prefix, such as kilograms instead of grams, kiloNewton-meters instead of N-m, etc. It was really unbelievable IMO that they just took a bunch of bare numbers and assumed them to have some units associated.