The Metric System

[Brodie Butland]

I'm going to play the ignorance card here. I'm asserting that it seems as though the metric system has more broad applications when contrasted with gallons, pounds, miles, etc.

I guess I'm just unsure why we have not completely switched already. I am hoping you can enlighten me.

Because then McDonald's will have to rename the Quarter Pounder.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The Royale with Cheese.

[Alchemist]

Just my humble opinion, but for most things (especially length measurement) Imperial works better. One could argue whether kilograms are more useful than pounds (although I'd submit that ounces are more useful than grams).

Most notably, a yard or foot can be divided up in almost any way you wish without using fractional inches, half, third, quarter. Hanging drywall (4x8 foot sheets) and want to make sure you have at least two (equally spaced) studs in the middle and one on each end? 16 inch centers, easy peasy, one on the left edge, one a third of the way, one two-thirds, and one on the right edge.

In the UK, drywall (plasterboard) is usually 900x1200 mm or 2400x1200 mm. Stud spacing is usually 400 mm . Amazing! It divides right out also, easy peasy. It is all a matter of what you are used to and what your associated products are build for.

I use both and switch back and forth as appropriate. Weighing things out is a dream in metric when I need to convert on the fly. I can think in both F or C. It is a lot like being bilingual. I can think in either system, but I may need to pause for an exact translation.

To that end, I find it interesting (telling maybe) that once you get under 1" in a machine shop, everyone moves to talking about hundreth's, thousands and ten thousand's of an inch. 1/32" is just a pain in the ass. 0.040" is way nicer and 1 mm is fine too. And don't even get me going on how annoying imperial gauges (thickness) of metal are. 16 gauge mild steel is 0.0598" yet Aluminum is 0.0508" and stainless steel is 0.0625". I get how they are calculated but in the shop, on the bench, but damn it, it is annoying. Just give me 1.5 mm stock and all is good.

[Pluripotent]

This is not always true, there are instances in which we end up using something inferior. One example is the use of the QWERTY keyboard layout versus the DVORAK layout, which was shown to be superior (more words per minute). There are many more examples.
There's a cost associated with adopting something new and if not enough people around it adopt it, the utility of you adopting it is low, so you don't adopt it and we keep our inferior whatever, measure system, keyboard, etc.

It's fine with me if you want to learn a different keyboard. But I learned QWERTY a quarter century ago and I can type 90 words per minute without looking at the keyboard with near perfect accuracy. I understand it's origin in mechanical keyboards to prevent people from typing too fast or the keys would jam. But I'm not learning another keyboard so I can type 92 words per minute. Basically, these standards Nazi's would be more than happy to outlaw the use of whatever you learned and force you to use their chosen system, and if you can't or won't, maybe your obsolete already. To the salt mines with you. At a certain point, it's not about the standards anymore, it's about absolute control. You can see this playing out in Canada and New York City, where it's now illegal to refer to someone by anything other than their preferred pronoun, even if the pronoun is a made up word or animal. Seriously.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

The Royale with Cheese.

You a smart motherfucker.

[Brodie Butland]

The Royale with Cheese.

At least the Big Mac is safe.

[MarinePMI]

This is not always true, there are instances in which we end up using something inferior. One example is the use of the QWERTY keyboard layout versus the DVORAK layout, which was shown to be superior (more words per minute). There are many more examples.
There's a cost associated with adopting something new and if not enough people around it adopt it, the utility of you adopting it is low, so you don't adopt it and we keep our inferior whatever, measure system, keyboard, etc.

Yeah, but if the power ever quits working, QWERTY will be what works mechanically superior to the DVORAK. So not an entirely apples to apples comparison. And to those that say the power will never go out, I remind them of the Southwest power outage a few years back (took me four hours to get home; a whopping 26 mile drive). Sometimes adopting something "easier" or more "efficient" isn't always the best answer, especially in a world that tends to be messy, not orderly.

[Rob-UK]

135, 225, 315, 405, .... sacred numbers.

Rip mentioned that nobody in the US cares about Benching 400 because of the above and it occurred to me that 396 (I believe your Bench record, Rip?) would have been been 4 plates a side in the UK.

But it appears 25kg plates get used in competition rather than 20kg so I guess not?!

The UK is officially metric but I still buy beer in pints and get a speeding fine if I go over 70MPH. Most people know their weight in stones and height in feet and inches. The country may be officially metric but is a long way from replacing all imperial measures.

Yep - pints for beer and milk but ml and litres for everything else.

Feet and inches for height but would use mm/cm/m for any other length measurements.

Stones and Pounds (how come stones never made it across the pond?!) for bodyweight but kg for lifting weight and anything else.

Miles for distance and mph for speed (km/h makes no sense in my head whatsoever).

A complete mash up!

[BrooklynJerry]

In the mid seventies the American car companies switched over to metric fasteners. It forced us mechanics to buy all new sets of sockets and wrenches.Made the Snap On tool guys happy. It would have happened soon anyway when the Jap cars began to take over.

[AndrewLewis]

The Royale with Cheese.

Sick reference, bro. Your references are out of control. Everybody knows that.


Wouldn't it just be a Royale? Quarter Pounder's default is to have cheese, so you have to specify a "quarter pounder without cheese" if you don't want cheese. Perhaps this was different when Pulp Fiction came out.