5 ms·
For the modern world: 822 MPH = 1322.881 km/h
by bamboozled 3y ago
For the modern world: 822 MPH = 1322.881 km/h
- frankwiles 3y agoThank you for putting it that way. I swear if the rest of the world just poked fun at us for using it, we would probably change it. “Awww look honey, the Americans are still using miles and pounds, isn’t that precious..”
- teeray 3y agoSNL captured this well: https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk
- CamperBob2 3y ago[flagged]
- readthenotes1 3y agoAre you Japanese? It has been a while since the USA made it to the Moon.
- CamperBob2 3y agoAre you Japanese? ¿ʞsɐ noʎ op ʎɥʍ 'oᴎ
- kube-system 3y agoThe last time NASA sent a spacecraft to the surface was technically 2009.
- bee_rider 3y agoMy detector must be broken, I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.
- remarkEon 3y agoThe old system is useful for very common things like cooking, because it's a Duodecimal system and you can more easily do fractions in your head. I get it it's funny "the Americans don't like science", but it's actually pretty far from the truth. I have a habit of measuring ground distance in meters, for example, because I was in the (US) Army and yes we measured those things in meters/kilometers. But other things are not measured like that. Measuring systems are only useful if they are, well, easy. And some systems are more easy in certain circumstances than others. Which is to say, it's easy to get used to a meter being a pace (tie a meter long string to your ankles).
- blendo 3y ago“A pint’s a pound the world around”
- wolverine876 3y agoThe metric system is pretty good at that: 1 ml H2O = 1 cm^3 = 1 g, and 1 calorie will increase its temperature 1 deg C (assuming 1 atmosphere pressure, and a certain water temperature). Anyone have a rhyme for it?
- trimethylpurine 3y agoSounds great, until you add pretty much anything to the water.
- snovv_crash 3y agoSame with pints and pounds.
- remarkEon 3y agoMy favorite part about the metric system is that the weight of 1 kilo is the same as 1 liter of H2O. This was extremely useful for me in a past life.
- 3y ago
- mango7283 3y agoI dunno man, I'm rest of the world and my dad uses pounds/feet/miles habitually despite obviously knowing kg/m/km and using SI units professionally (He's a mechanical engineer...). I grew up on metric but eventually learned the conversion factors anyway because it's still in common use.. and for some reason we still measure houses in sq ft and tire pressure in psi...
- flymand 3y agoIf you want to get technical, we should be using Mach number or knots since that’s what the world uses for aviation. That being said, the majority of the article’s consumers aren’t technical with this topic :P
- ufmace 3y agoWell as long as we're getting technical, Mach number is a unitless aerodynamics term, not a speed. As such, it is only valid in the exact medium that a craft is traveling in and relative to that medium, so here air at the exact temperature and pressure the aircraft is flying at. There is no valid general conversion between speed and Mach number, and things like Mach number relative to the ground is nonsensical.
- geor9e 3y ago>There is no valid general conversion between speed and Mach number, and things like Mach number relative to the ground is nonsensical. Sure, if you also want to say water doesn't freeze at 0C or boil at 100C. In practice if an author casually leaves out the variables needed to calculate ground speed from mach or airspeed, it usually means they're doing engineering calculations set at the ISA standard day model (sea level, 15C, no humidity).
- SlickNixon 3y agoNot terribly useful to assume supersonic airflows are occuring at sea level.
- flymand 3y agoYes agreed. We should be using ground speed knots here. I replied above, but knots have a similar problem when flying (indicated air speed).
- flymand 3y agoSure, but it is more relevant to describe aerodynamic properties of an aircraft. Knots can have a similar problem (look up indicated airspeed). But I guess you’re right, we should be using ground speed knots in this instance. If you ask a pilot, ground speed only really is important for calculating ETA. Everything relevant to flying is a relative number since atmospheric density is fluid.
- gumby 3y agoDon’t planes use knots (nautical miles per hour)? That would make 822 of them equal to 1522.34 km/h
- selectodude 3y agoYes, but the plane was only going about 700 knots.
- spookie 3y agoAre there any advantages to this besides being the convention? Always wondered that.
- kabes 3y agoMostly convention, but some minor adva tages I can the of: - 'knots' is faster to say on the radio than 'kilometers per hour' - the way the world is divided in wgs84, maked it so that 1 degree of latitude equals exactly 60 miles. So that makes quick measurements a bit easier.
- spookie 3y agoDidn't know about your second point, makes sense
- defrost 3y agoDon't degrees of latitude have varying arc lengths as latitude changes from the equator with a major axis to the poles with a minor axis? What with the Earth being an ellipsoid and not a sphere and all that?
- snovv_crash 3y agoIt depends what geoid model you use, and once you go down that rabbit hole it depends on the local gravitational field which is affected by things like mountains, not only the centrifugal effect. For a sailor in the 16th century, assuming a sphere was perfectly adequate when combined with 1 degree = 60 nautical miles.
- remarkEon 3y agoIn Aviation, Imperial units are used for altitude, distance and speed. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2566/what-is-the-measurement-system-used-in-the-aviation-industry https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2566/what-is-th...
- addaon 3y ago> In Aviation, Imperial units are used for altitude, distance and speed. In my experience, US pilots usually use feet for altitude, but use nautical miles for distance and knots for speed, not standard Imperial units.
- remarkEon 3y agoRight, I only meant that the metric system is not used. But I'm confused. Are feet and NM not part of the standard Imperial units of measure?
- pacificmint 3y agoAn imperial mile is 1,609 meters. A nautical mile is 1,852 meters.
- eCa 3y agoNautical miles are globally used and are older than the imperial units by a couple of hundred years[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile
- chungy 3y agoFeet, nautical miles, statutory miles, and meters are all part of the United States Customary Units. "Imperial units" is ambiguous and can refer to many different sets of units all sharing the same name. US Customary units use SI as a baseline for measuring based on physical constants, and standardized conversions from them to units very similar to what was conventional. Eg, since the meter is defined by the distance light travels in a vacuum for the duration of 1/299,792,458 second, and the US defines an inch to be exactly 2.54 cm, any refinement to the speed of light inherently changes the length of an inch. 12 inches equals a foot, a mile equals 5280 feet (exactly 1609.344 meters), and all these things are based on physical constants. Nautical miles are defined as exactly 1852 meters, which is approximately 1.15 miles.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xscott 3y agoThis one always seems silly to me. If you wanted to use SI units, it'd be meters/second. Or maybe km/sec if you were going really fast. Having hours in your velocity units means you've got a dumb 3600 in there if you wanted to do any math with acceleration. I guess the real benefit to km/h is that it allows people to act superior without knowing it's just as dumb as imperial units.
- pritambaral 3y agokmph is a more relatable unit for most humans on this planet, since it's the predominant vehicle driving speed unit.
- noduerme 3y agoIt's odd to think that one's adherence to an arbitrary measurement system makes one "modern", but it would be more interesting to examine why someone assumed that something "modern" was obviously better.