Metric system, USA and Photography

will it help me lose weight? Does it vote left or right? Can I get it at Walmart?
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These comments are to be used for entertainment purposes only.

Bob Sakamano said:

will it help me lose weight? Does it vote left or right? Can I get
it at Walmart?

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And instead of going 60mph you'll go 100km/h!

Jay Turberville said:

"We're not in the blame game," said Thomas Gavin, deputy director for
space and Earth science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "A
single error should not bring down a $125 million mission."

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/orbiter_errorupd_093099.htm

Jay Turberville said:

At a price tag of $193.1 million dollars.

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That was the price tag for the whole project. Only the orbiter
suffered due to Lockheed Martin not complying with specifications.
You can't attribute a loss of the full mission price due to the units
standard foul-up.

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Right. I stand corrected. $125 million is pocket change compared to $193 million.
I take it all back. ;^)

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http://www.pbase.com/soenda

PhotoTraveler said:

Just ask the typical american to represent the volume of a liter with
their hands, they will fail miserably.

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I know that a litre (liter) is a 4" cube, or 1/9th of a cubic foot.

But then I'm British and in my early 60s, so I was a schoolchild under Imperial, (with a considerable nod to metric, especially in science classes) and I've lived my life through an increasing adoption of metric units, a process which is not yet complete.... so miles are still around even if gallons are fading into history.

Change ain't that hard, I promise.

You simply go down to Home Depot and pick up a tin (can) of paint (1 or 2 litre, say) that's the right size for the WALL you have in mind. The fact that a slightly different amount of product is in there is just as likely to SAVE wastage to go hard in the bottom when you try to keep it for another day, as to increase it...

..... and if you are concerned about actual coverage, just read the notes on the side of the pack the way you always did. The recommendations can be in square yards, square meters, or square blooming cubits if that's the area measure that's currently most used around your neck of the woods. ;-)

I think US should just go ahead and take the process that's already started, broaden it and speed it up a bit. After all, America is a "can do" kinda country, isn't it?

Make a start on road signs. They need replacement all the time, and are already on a rolling program of maintenance. Simply ensure all the replacements and all the totaly new ones have distances in kilometres. They don't have to mention miles at all..... people will accommodate with no trouble whatsoever...

.... meaning, it isn't gonna change the distance to the next town to yours and the time it takes to get there...... (or to Chicago, or anywhere else for that matter)... just the figures that are used to describe that distance!

Now, if you guys want to do yourself a BIG favour you should be adopting International paper sizes, and doing so with all possible speed. That REALLY is worth doing. I hold the day sacred that the system was approved for roll-out in UK. ;-)
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Regards,
Baz

jinjimbob said:

I wonder why engine sizes here in the US use liters though.

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Oh! Litres (liters) now for engines in the States, is it? That's a relatively recent change, isn't it?

[I can remember glancing through American 'muscle car' mags on British newstands that had engine capacities in cubic inches, and roughly converting to units I was more used to. It doesn't seem that long ago.]
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Regards,
Baz

sean000 said:

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods
to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it."

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Haha. Hilarious

sean000 said:

Seriously though...I wish we would adopt the metric system. Now that
the Internet allows people to easily communicate and share
information with others around the world the metric system makes more
sense than ever. My two main hobbies, bicycling and photography,
measure everything in metrics.

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I think the US will eventually convert to the metric system, it will just take a lot of time.

As mentioned by others the cost of switching all signs and systems at once is so large that it probably wont happen, but bit by bit i am sure the metric system will find its way in.

I was very surprised to find soda in liter bottles the last time i visited the US.

The change over here went very smoothly by all accounts and the country went not just imperial to metric but also from pounds to dollars.

I can still remember when I was still in the UK the very long debate of loosing part of the national identity when shillings and sixpences and thruppency bits were to disappear in favour of boring and frankly uninspiring 'new pence'. The fact that it went as well as it did was partly because many citizens warmed to the romanticised idea of being 'European' and adopting the metric system was part of being a European. The fact that it made working basic figures as easy as counting fingers and toes just added to the ease of excepting the metric system. Of course that didn't stop the 'them and us' mentality altogether because the fortress Britain idea was a highly, and to be fair understandably, ingrained mental hurdle.

Where I live people tend to use a combination of both metric and/or imperial depending on the situation. Some use feet and inches to give their height while others use meters or centimetres. Everyone still seems to get the idea whether a person is six feet tall or 1.8 meters.

The automotive trade is a real mixture. Even Japanese cars seem to have brake componants with 11/16" embossed on them but held on with a 5mm bolt. Asian imported aftermarket wheel trims have the size in inches and the tyre sizes are a combination of both metric and imperial. Buying a metric nut-n-bolt isn't all plain sailing either because customers will ask for a 10mm bolt, when in fact they want a 6mm bolt which happens to have 10mm spanner head on it. Just to add to the confusion, when you get to the larger size bolts (10mm and above I think) then the common pitches are 1.0, 1.25 and 1.5.

What I have found though is going metric definitely doesn't have an effect on ones sense of national identity as this country clearly shows.

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'Believing something doesn't make it so'

Barrie Davis said:

Now, if you guys want to do yourself a BIG favour you should be
adopting International paper sizes, and doing so with all possible
speed. That REALLY is worth doing. I hold the day sacred that the
system was approved for roll-out in UK. ;-)
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Regards,
Baz

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Whats international paper sizes? Doesn't everyone use A4 fax paper?

--
'Believing something doesn't make it so'

Mike_PEAT said:

Bob Sakamano said:

will it help me lose weight? Does it vote left or right? Can I get
it at Walmart?

Click to expand...

And instead of going 60mph you'll go 100km/h!

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Yup, and when you think you've bought a pint at the usual pint price you'll find it's only 500 cc's or 500 ml's as they say...

Regards, David

PS The advantage of the rag bag of measures we had was that we had to think in different ways and the mental maths was easier. No calculators required, just use the brain a bit: the exercise is good for you.

You will weigh LESS than HALF if you go over to Metric.
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George with the (big) rack

Barrie Davis said:

Oh! Litres (liters) now for engines in the States, is it? That's a
relatively recent change, isn't it?

[I can remember glancing through American 'muscle car' mags on
British newstands that had engine capacities in cubic inches, and
roughly converting to units I was more used to. It doesn't seem that
long ago.]

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I'm not so sure - My father used to love his American cars, and at one point had three Cadillacs at the same time here in England. In 1979, my family went on a long trip across the US and Canada, and at the time, it was cheaper to buy a car than to rent one for the amount of time we needed it. He bought a 1978-model Buick Regal coupe. At the end of the trip a few months later, he couldn't bear to resell the car. So it was shipped back to the UK to join his Cadillacs.

My father died in 1980, and all the Cadillacs were sold off, but my mother kept the Buick. Anyway, to cut a long story short, that car had a little badge on each front wing which proclaimed "3.8 Liter". I remember thinking to myself in my teens that it was odd, as I'd always thought cubic inches were the units Americans used. Perhaps the car was intended for the Canadian market, but it was sold to us by a dealership in New Jersey so I doubt that.

Amy

Jay Turberville said:

Yup. These things are more about building associations and less about
doing math. When lay people get confused with metric, it probably
typically due to a lack of association and/or a poor ability to do a
conversion.

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Exactly what I do when confronted with the US system: a gallon is that bottle of milk, that's really the image that comes to mind. 5" for a CD, 21" for my monitor. Otherwise I memorized 2.54 cm for an inch and ±1.6km for a mile; luckily the mental calculation for these units is rather easy (multiply by two and add a half for inches, or add a little more than a half for the miles).
If I'm lazy and near a computer, there is simply http://www.convert-me.com

Amypics said:

My father died in 1980, and all the Cadillacs were sold off, but my
mother kept the Buick. Anyway, to cut a long story short, that car
had a little badge on each front wing which proclaimed "3.8 Liter". I
remember thinking to myself in my teens that it was odd, as I'd
always thought cubic inches were the units Americans used. Perhaps
the car was intended for the Canadian market, but it was sold to us
by a dealership in New Jersey so I doubt that.

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. . . That 3.8 liter V6 engine was around for a long time and was always known simply as the '3.8' from its first introduction in the seventies. Americans do use the metric system along with the old pounds/inches system and it's not anything recent although there is more metric content now than in previous years. There's more resistance to using kilometers vs miles than there is with units of volume and weight. I work in a hospital and our patients are often described for weight and height in kilograms and centimeters. Doseage of medications are usually measured in milligrams per kilogram.

Now that we've decided that metric is better (snigger!), which is it to be - Kill-o-meeter or Kih-lomm-etter?

Amy

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George with the (big) rack

Amypics said:

Now that we've decided that metric is better (snigger!), which is it
to be - Kill-o-meeter or Kih-lomm-etter?
Amy

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since it´s two words, kilo and meter, I dont think it is correct to pronounce the lo and the m in one sylable. The lo belongs to kilo, the m to meter.

Just like you probably wouldn´t say cen-tim-eter, with the accent on the tim, lol! But centi-meter.

René

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George with the (big) rack

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George with the (big) rack

have sex with sheep?

That is good to hear..

Yeah, people are always scared for no reason. Never did figure that out. No sense of adventure.
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George with the (big) rack

gives me more usable space than the letter size
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George with the (big) rack