Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by vlehto on Saturday November 17, 2018 @07:40AM
(#18475316)
Do I detect sarcasm here? I'm pretty sure I detect sarcasm here.
Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by Iv on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:58PM
(#18478940)
I detect 1.23 furlongs of sarcasm.
Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by Natanael_L on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:48AM
(#18476226)
Much of the sarcasm targets the mixing of multiple units that is everpresent in imperial measurements. Feet + inches instead of one or the other?
Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by umanwizard on Saturday November 17, 2018 @01:32AM
(#18474297)
Whether decimals or fractions are used is not necessarily related to metric vs. customary units.
I just weighed myself on my bathroom scale -- 191.2 pounds.
Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by wolf550e on Monday November 19, 2018 @12:43PM
(#18488115)
People use "stones" for weight of humans. As if 14 pounds is a convenient amount.
Re:International System of Units overhauled in historic vote
by stephen_g on Saturday November 17, 2018 @02:45AM
(#18474492)
These are problems you actually pretty much never have in actual precision manufacturing in metric... Most general machining is done to a tolerance of +/- 0.1 - what does half a millimetre have to do with anything?
As for building, that's mostly just rounded to the millimetre, centimetres aren't usually ever used.
Take drill bits, for example. Obviously it's much easier to figure out that 11/32" is less than 3/8". Or is it more? No, I'm pretty sure I was right the first time. The metric ones with their 5.5mm, 6mm, 6.5mm sequencing are just too complicated to work with, in comparison. And half a millimeter isn't very precise - it's much bigger than 1/64". Well, a bit bigger. Let's not get into tenths of millimeters.
And at larger scales, of course, base 12 is much easier when it comes to dividing distances. Taking a distance of 2'7" and dividing it by three in your head is much easier than dividing 79cm by three, because... well, 2' divided by three is 8", obviously. If you need to be sure, just tap it into a calculator. That supports base 12...
Anyway, you'll quickly determine that it's 10 1/3", which is much more precise than 26.3333cm. Now I just need to subtract the radii of these two 5/16" holes from that, which is easy - imagine trying to subtract 8mm from 26.3333cm! What folly.