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It keeps surprising me that “you Americans” are still not using the SI system. As an European, it feels like I am reading an article from 1830, with hp instead
by rgj 5y ago
It keeps surprising me that “you Americans” are still not using the SI system. As an European, it feels like I am reading an article from 1830, with hp instead of kW and lb-ft instead of Nm.
But - out of curiosity - why is the soda can measured in ml and not in fl oz?
- mpalczewski 5y agoThe 12oz soda can?
- rgj 5y agoYeah that one ;) But gladly I just realized that litres are not an SI unit either.
- carlob 5y agoCall them dm^3 (or cm^3 for ml).
- dr_dshiv 5y agoWHAT? Of course they are, they just aren't a base unit.
- carlmr 5y agoWikipedia says they're not an official SI unit. However they work quite well with the SI units.
- valdiorn 5y agoWow that's a weird exception; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre I was always tought that the liter was an SI unit, I mean, it's defined in terms of SI units, I know it's not a base unit, but weird that it's singled out as "well, you're technically SI compatible, and you're defined in SI units, but we're not gonna let you be part of the group" :) It even has an official SI symbol (L), despite not being an SI unit, what?!
- dr_dshiv 5y agoUnrelated: "The kilogram is the mass of a litre of cold water; a cubic centimetre or millilitre of water has a mass of one gram" So satisfying...
- ulfw 5y agoI'm European and think in horsepower, not kW. Because I was born 40+ yrs ago. So what? It's basically just a linear conversion of kw = .75 x hp anyway. What's the huge advantage here? I'm all for metric or SI. But let's not overstate the value please.
- inter_netuser 5y agomost of the value is in having a uniform and consistent system of units. It is the mixture of both that ends up being very confusing.
- rgj 5y agoI was born 48 years ago. The advantage is not having to remember all those funny constants and being able to do math in your head that actually makes sense? Or more important, to be able to write an article that the entire planet can just read without 95% of them (everybody outside the US, UK and Myanmar) having to resort to Google to find out if those numbers are impressive or not?
- shpx 5y agoadd Canada and you've named like a fifth or a quarter of all English speakers
- rgj 5y agoGood addition / correction. So the amount of people that is unable to follow the article without too much effort went down from 95% to 80% of the audience.
- pietherr 5y agoFunny how all these proponents of SI units state their age in years instead of seconds :)
- Kbelicius 5y agoIt isn't funny because the GP doesn't want SI units to be used because they are a standard but because 95% of the world can understand them. I'm certain that more than 95% of people understand years.
- mongol 5y agoBecause it is made to metric specifications? It has Swedish text on it btw.
- qwertox 5y agoI was surprised during NASA's first commentary session of the WEBB telescope launch. It seemed like it was the first time when they were consistently using SI units while speaking to their US audience. I think one time an imperial unit slipped out, but it got corrected immediately.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoPlease don't say Imperial, the unit system you are talking about is US Customary. Volume units are different in the two systems.
- gambiting 5y agoI don't see why you are being downvoted, you are absolutely right. For example you have US Gallons and Imperial Gallons, with the Imperial ones being used in UK not US.
- ksec 5y agoThank You. Never knew that. I was always under the impression both Gallons are the same.
- gambiting 5y agoYep, and those two gallons aren't even remotely close. It's the most annoying thing on car forums, because someone will always say "oh my car gets 30mpg but everyone here says they are getting 40mpg!" Like, yes, because you haven't established whether they mean US MPG or Imperial MPG.
- ksec 5y agoYES! I always assume ( and very stupid of me ) that it was some regulation with cars and the way they drive between US and UK making some difference in MPG. I never knew the G in mpg was different! This is one of the illustration with online or even real world discussions where we argue pass each other under the wrong basic assumption.
- dasKrokodil 5y agoFor better or worse, hp is still used a lot in European publications as well.
- Maarten88 5y agoYes, it's funny that when the standard unit is a somewhat lower number (so the KW number is the same magnitude but just a bit lower / less impressive than in HP) there is more resistance to the change.
- bipson 5y agoI think in EU it is mostly due to the German car industry (and all the associated publications) unwilling to change. In the German speaking world everyone knows what a hp is (PS), how much his car has, his past cars had, in which configurations their car is available... although the kW is what is printed on the documents since ages now. Nobody likes change. Some people still complain about the Euro, and that the DM was so much better... At least it is not called ECU.
- tim333 5y agoAlso the non techie and children are more familiar with horses than with kWh.
- usrusr 5y agoI'd dispute that. Everybody can roughly imagine a 1/4 multitude of the 2.5 kW of a typical hairdryer, nobody has a meaningful mental image of the amount of continuous work one could expect rotating a number horses (peak power per horse is about 15 hp)
- kube-system 5y agoThis makes sense now. We must not use kW in the US because we have horses but we don’t have any 2500W hairdryers!
- jeofken 5y agoWhen communicating in English with the intent to be understood it is wise to include both, putting the conversion in parens. I’m always thankful when Americans include this - otherwise all those feet and pounds and inches and stone are just random numbers to me.
- phkahler 5y agoI just remember that 1hp is 754 watts, but lets just call it 750. Another magic conversion that I remember from working on that stuff is that Nm * RPM / 9549 = kW. We never used ft-lbs though.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agokW*h is the unit that absolutely kills me. Especially because people will just say "kW". And before long they're talking about "kW*h per day"... Kills me. "What do you people have against James Prescott Joule?!"
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoThe prefixes with Joules get bigger. 1kWh is 3.6MJ. G and T are rare outside data sizes, it's nice if everything can stay in the milli through kilo prefix range.
- pezezin 5y agoI learnt that 1hp = 735 watts. Your comment made me curious, so turns out there is not one, but 6 definitions of horsepower: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower#Definitions
- HNSucksAss 5y ago
- throwaway81523 5y agoSI isn't being used for real in Europe either. Highway speed limits there are always in kilometers per hour, instead of the SI units of meters per second as used for spacecraft. Heh.
- comboy 5y agoIt's called SI prefixes [1], you may also want to check the "Time" section. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
- ddek 5y agoAre you just trying to be obtuse? Expressing quantities in SI units doesn't require 'base units'. SI prefixes are permitted (milli, micro, kilo, mega...), as are certain exclusions (including minutes, hours, ...).
- yason 5y agoAnd why the heck do sockets and drives come in negative powers of 2 such as 1/2", 1/4", 1/8" whereas smaller tolerances come in 1/1000's of an inch? Why not 1/512" and 1/1024" ? This gets into awkward conversions even within the imperial units such as 5/8" into decimal 0.625" instead of something like 640/1024" because of no good reason :-/
- alexb_ 5y agoSo THAT'S where hard drive companies got the idea from....
- injb 5y agoWhy does it matter though? They're used for different orders of magnitude. I've never understood why people think that having everything in multiples of 1000 (as the metric system does) is an advantage. Yes it's easy to say how many millimetres there are in a kilometer. But when was the last time that came in handy? That said, I think the US car industry has moved to metric and it is great to not need multiple sets of everything.
- Symbiote 5y agoAny time the calculation is scaled up (or down), or involves numbers at different orders of magnitude. If we have 2mm of rain in Copenhagen this afternoon, and my yard measures 8m×12m, how much water must drain away? 2mm × 8000mm × 12000mm = 192 000 000mm³ = 192 000cm³ = 192 dm³ = 192 L = 0.192 m³ How much rain falls on the whole city? 2mm × 180km² = 0.002 m × 180 000 000 m² = 360 000 m³ approx. = 360 000 tonnes.
- jaclaz 5y agoParsing/reading error of the day: > my yard measures 8m You use a very long unit of measure.
- bluGill 5y agoSure, but when do you need to do that? What about if it isn't water you are calculating but some other substance? You use a look up table to find the factors - we need to look up a but more in the table, but it isn't a big deal.
- go_prodev 5y agoEngland is a strange combination of metric and imperial. Walking is measured in km but driving is miles. Weight of a person is stone and lbs, but of any other object is in kg and g. Height of a person is ft and inches, but of any object is in m, cm or mm. It's very odd
- M2Ys4U 5y ago>Weight of a person is stone and lbs This one is definitely changing. Lots of people here only know their weight in kg now (including me).
- gambiting 5y agoWhen my baby was born about a year ago here in UK I would always say his weight in kg when someone asked, and people would literally stare me blank in the face and say they have no idea if that's a lot or not. Once I converted it to pounds for them they were like "oh yeah, he's a big baby then".
- ksec 5y ago>Lots of people here only know their weight in kg now (including me). Is that with younger generations? Most people I know doesn't have clue about their weight in Kg.
- M2Ys4U 5y agoWell I'm in my early thirties so I'll leave that up to you to decide if that puts me in the "younger generations" bucket
- spaetzleesser 5y agoBe happy that the soda can isn't measured in tennis balls or school buses. These are the usual measurements hen something is written about.
- bkanber 5y agoIt makes me sad that the top comment on a really cool new motor design is a gripe about units.
- phkahler 5y ago>> ...a really cool new motor design... It's not that great a motor design. It's good, but we had similar power to weight motors where I worked 10 years ago and could run 200kW for more than 20 seconds. Good motor designs are cool, but IMHO they are usually not news-worthy but are just marketing.
- simonlc 5y ago> But - out of curiosity - why is the soda can measured in ml and not in fl oz? The article is written for an American magazine while the pictures are from Koenigsegg directly, which are European; beverages use ml and l to measure contents. Take a look at the graph, also provided by Koenigsegg, it uses Nm and kW.
- 55873445216111 5y agoIf you want to see something fun, go check the size of the tires on your car (printed on the wall of the tire). It will read something like "245/35R18", where 245 is the section width in millimeters and 18 is the diameter in inches. All standard tire sizes use a combination of inches and millimeters, haha.
- Juicyy 5y agoit gets worse the more you dig in. The middle number is am aspect ratio for length of sidewall. so its side wall thickness 35% of 245mm. Then on top of that when youre getting into trucks and jeeps common sizing switches to inches. so you go from 315/70/R18 to something like 35x12.5r18 complete shitshow.
- gambiting 5y ago>>As an European, it feels like I am reading an article from 1830, with hp instead of kW Where in Europe are you that anyone uses kW for engine power lol. Yes it's listed in kW on my registration document but I've literally never heard anyone using kilowatts to describe engine power instead of horsepower, and I lived in a few European countries so far.
- pornel 5y agoI've seen it used for electric cars.
- rgj 5y agoI’m in the Netherlands. I just did a Google search for electric cars and checked the top 3 results (Polestar, Hyundai Ionic, Mini) and all three of them list the kW numbers first / large and then the pk number between brackets or small. So we can safely assume that kW is dominant where I am.
- robomartin 5y agoYeah, it's a pain point for me as well. We try to do all of our design work in SI units, use metric screw, etc. The problem is that industry simply isn't aligned this way. Sometimes you end-up with such a mess that you are forced to go back to imperial just for sanity. The problem with switching the US to the metric system is that the cost would be truly massive. It would take decades, somewhere in the order of 50 years, for a complete conversion. There's the obvious, things like every single highway sign would have to be replaced. And then there's everything else, like every single tool that everyone owns in this country would have to be replaced at some point. You would still have to be able to buy and use imperial unit hardware and tools for decades during and likely after the transition. I can't possibly list just how deep and wide such a conversion would have to reach. And that's assuming everyone goes along for the ride. That said, a 50 year timeline would mean a new generation would grow up using the metric system. Another 25 years after that and we should be OK. All of that said, the real problem is political. The cost of such a transition would be significant. Politicians will only get behind things they can convert into votes. Going metric isn't one of these things. Spending billions of dollars over five decades isn't something anyone can use to win an election. Most people aren't close enough to the design and manufacturing of goods to understand just how much this system actually hurts us. And so, going metric, in a practical sense, becomes an impossible dream.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoThe Farenheit temperature scale makes a little bit more sense to me then the Celsius one. It covers the temperatures we care about in more or less temperate climate, with 0°F being the lowest temperatures one will witness (-32C) and 100°F the highest (38°C), the latter being also a body temperature above which one has to worry about. This said as a French and ex-physicist.
- relaxing 5y agoNot sure where you’re seeing ml. The soda can is labeled 106 mg caffeine.
- rgj 5y agoThe text in the article says “ For scale, that's a 330-mL energy drink in the pictures seen throughout.”
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoIt keeps surprising me that people care so strongly about essentially nothing.
- amai 5y agoThe Europeans are also still not using the SI system for measuring clothes or shoes. Actually I believe clothes and shoe sizes are a much bigger mess between all the countries in Europe than in the US. It is strange that the bureaucrats of the EU have not tried to a least unify these sizes, let alone using metric units.
- rgj 5y agoTrue. Bit at least mens shoe sizes are the same as womens shoe sizes here in Europe.