A change for the kilogram
They’re planning to redefine the prototype kilogram:
During ceremonial weigh-ins that take place every few decades, when reference copies of the International Prototype Kilogram are flown in from around the world and compared to their distinguished forebear, the IPK has been found to have lost around 50 micrograms in mass, roughly equal to a single eyelash. Of course, because the IPK is the definition of the kilogram, it can’t technically lose or gain weight. Instead, it’s more accurate to say that the rest of the world has been getting slightly heavier.
Ah, that explains my inexplicable weight gain over the years.
Yeah, I know it doesn’t. But I’d love to be able to blame the kilogram. I never much cared for the metric system.
To metrologists these fluctuations are no more than an embarrassing gaffe. They don’t seriously undermine the legitimacy of the international metric order, but they do spoil the ambience of infallible metrical precision. With the redefinition on Friday, the age of physical artifacts — and its attendant imperfections — will be left for good. “We will transcend this messiness,” says Schlamminger. “We will be basing units on the fabric of the universe: on the heavens, so to speak.”
The article goes on to explain how this will be accomplished.
And here I thought my weight gain was caused by eating too much. My bad.
I have lived in places where the metric system was in use and had to continually refer to conversion charts to answer questions of how much, how heavy, and how far. I never adapted, maybe because I knew I was coming home.
Good thing gold is sold by the ounce.
if anyone wants to read whole posts not cut ups that are hard
and wants to know what comes after [edited for length by n]
i am now over here.. where we started MGTOW..
all are welcome… there anyone can start a thread, and no one ever edits it
but then again.. its run by a great guy..
https://www.the-niceguy.com/forum/
the whole of the leninist post and how and why they build an army of malcontents and perverts and so on will be there… you can look up the original biological lenninism… enjoy – before neo deletes/censors/modifies, etc. this
@Kate:had to continually refer to conversion charts to answer questions of how much, how heavy, and how far.
1 Liter = 1 quart
1 kg = 1/2 pound
6 miles = 10 kilometers
2 * C + 30 = F
Those are not exact conversions, but unless you are baking, how much more precision do you need? You don’t have to do conversions to 5 decimal places to navigate daily life.
10 C I probably need a jacket, at 20 C I probably don’t, and 30 C I’ll want shorts. Instead of a pound of pastrami I ask for half a kilo. If I go much faster than 100 km/hr I might be getting pulled over and definitely for 150 km/hr. Not so hard.
The kilo!!! Is EVAPORATING!! The HORROR!! The horror…
Howling scientific illiteracy in TFA. Planck’s constant is not “the smallest action that can be taken by a photon”. That doesn’t mean anything.
Action in physics is kind of hard to explain, since it’s very abstract, but it’s something that in principle can be measured, and it’s related to energy (which is also very abstract but people are familiar with the word at least). It has nothing to do with “actions” being “taken” by a photon or anything else. Planck’s constant is the fundamental unit of action and was in fact discovered long before Planck.
You might find this story amusing. About 40 years ago I was working on a government contract and we ordered some precision weights. They were very expensive and came in a velvet lined wood box and you were not supposed to touch the weights with your bare hands but use tweezers. When our precision weights finally arrived we went to shipping and receiving to pick them up. To our shock and horror they had put an inventory control tag not only on the box, but also on each of the weights. They told us the weights were so expensive they were required to inventory them individually. We had to remove the inventory tags and ship the weights back to the manufacturer to remove all the tag adhesive and check the calibration.
Artfldgr:
It’s not as though I haven’t explained to you, over and over and over, what I am doing and why.
I shorten your comments for length. I usually am not even reading them, I just cut them off at a propitious moment (not in the middle of a sentence, for example).
I also eliminate some comments, or parts of comments, if I happen to see that you (or anyone else, for that matter) are insulting people. One form it often takes in your case is your repetitive claim that people don’t know this and that and the other thing, when you often have no way to know what they know or do not know. Just because people don’t talk about a topic doesn’t mean they are unaware of it. Perhaps in some cases they even pay attention to your previous comments on the subject, and are well aware of what you yourself have previously said.
In addition, you sometimes say that I don’t know things I’ve written about and referred to previously, and called to your attention at times. Or you misunderstand something someone has said. But none of that seems to stop you from claiming that people don’t know various things, and haranguing them for their lack of knowledge.
I have politely requested many times that you stop doing that. And yet it is a frequent part of what you write here.
I have also said many times that I value the information you impart, and have no wish to ban you. You are welcome to comment here. But if you comment here I will continue to edit you for length and to remove posts or portions of posts (if I happen to see them; as I said I certainly do not read everything you write) if they are insulting to people here.
This is a blog where I write about what interests me. Commenters are all welcome, but there are rules and I will continue to enforce those rules. I have very little tolerance for insults and bickering between commenters, although I welcome discussions of substance. These are the rules for everyone, not just you. There are also rules about length, although if a commenter only writes very long comments occasionally, and they have great substance, I let them stand. Sometimes I let your comments stand even though they are very long, by the way; it depends most on how busy I am that day.
Quite a nice article. I was saddened to see the definition of the meter as an integer number of wavelengths (of a certain atomic transition) go by the wayside. Measuring the speed of light (the new meter def. is kinda the reverse) was always bitchy. Maybe the electronics are better now.
My favorite part of the article is,
The ash-heap of older scientists who tried something grand and failed is large.
My favorite example is the Berkeley astronomer who first tried to detect exoplanets (outside our solar system). He explained in an interview that he had already wrecked his career and thought he would try something really difficult as a last hurrah.
His system entailed looking for a very slowly wobbling red shift in nearby stars. But somebody in Europe using his system was the first to succeed, because the Berkeley guy’s computer was only looking for month long orbits or longer, and the other guys found one with an orbit of a few days.
How to use American recipes in Europe: Buy a set of measuring cups and spoons. Use general conversions like Frederick’s (except that a kilo is 2.2 pounds) for things like buying meat, and measure out a few things like butter so you’ll know how many cups are in a standard package since they don’t have sticks with markings on the wrappers. It is annoying that containers of things I consider liquids are sometimes only marked by weight on the packages. You can get small flat scales for weighing a kilo or two and they give weights in both pounds and kilos. Also buy some folding rulers and tape measures in the US because they will have centimeters on one side and inches on the other.
I have never measured a kilo very precisely, so I don’t care what the nerds in Paris do. They may have to appoint a European commission on relabelling though. God forbid that a kilo package of sugar contains 2 grains too many.
Hey Kate,
In Canada, Bill said, “Oh, man it’s 40 below outside!” Peter replies, “Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?”
It’s a moldy oldy Canadian joke. -40C is the same temperature as -40F.
@expat:Frederick’s (except that a kilo is 2.2 pounds)
Yeah, 1 Kilo is about 2 pounds–I had first “1 pound = 1/2 kilo” and didn’t change everything.
This is a blog where I write about what interests me. Commenters are all welcome, but there are rules and I will continue to enforce those rules.
This is why I have given up on Ann Althouse. Her blog is over run with nasty trolls. She seems to post and forget it.
Medicine uses metric and the Army does. Metric just doesn’t work well for common activity unless you use it constantly.
Maybe this is the time to recall The Gimli Glider.
On July 23, 1983, Flight 143 was cruising at 12,500 metres (41,000 ft) over Red Lake, Ontario. The aircraft’s cockpit warning system sounded, indicating a fuel pressure problem on the aircraft’s left side. Assuming a fuel pump had failed, the pilots turned it off,[6] since gravity should feed fuel to the aircraft’s two engines. The aircraft’s fuel gauges were inoperative because of an electronic fault indicated on the instrument panel and airplane logs.
During the flight, the management computer indicated that there was still sufficient fuel for the flight but only because the initial fuel load had been incorrectly entered; the fuel had been calculated in pounds instead of kilograms by the ground crew and the erroneous calculation had been approved by the flight crew. This error meant that less than half the amount of intended fuel had been loaded.
Then the engines stopped.
As they communicated their intentions to controllers in Winnipeg and tried to restart the left engine, the cockpit warning system sounded again with the “all engines out” sound, a long “bong” that no one in the cockpit could recall having heard before and was not covered in flight simulator training.[6] Flying with all engines out was something that was never expected to occur and had therefore not been covered in training.[8] Seconds later, with the right-side engine also stopped, the 767 lost all power, and most of the instrument panels in the cockpit went blank.
Fortunately, like Captain Sullenberger, the pilot was a glider pilot in his off time.
In line with their planned diversion to Winnipeg, the pilots were already descending through 11,000 metres (35,000 ft)[4] when the second engine shut down. They immediately searched their emergency checklist for the section on flying the aircraft with both engines out, only to find that no such section existed.[6] Captain Pearson was an experienced glider pilot, so he was familiar with flying techniques almost never used in commercial flight. To have the maximum range and therefore the largest choice of possible landing sites, he needed to fly the 767 at the optimal glide speed.
They landed on a drag strip that was a closed RCAF base.
I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of people: those who use the metric system and those who put a man on the moon. More than once.
You think NASA uses Imperial?
Metric is simply better for any scientific use (basically because decimals work — 0.218 km is an easy convert to 218 metres, whereas 0.218 miles is in feet?) Even when people use Imperial they often bastardise it — pilots might fly at 20,000 feet, but who otherwise uses feet for that distance? They’ve sidestepped the conversion issue that is the bugbear of non-metric.
I grew up with Imperial, and can still deal with it, but my country’s conversion to metric has made things easier.
As someone said above, it’s all about using it regularly. I convert prices in foreign countries when I travel. But I’m not arrogant enough to assume my currency is better is the reason for doing so. It’s just what I’m used to.
Hey all, I could handle guessing how far a kilometer was, but in the kitchen, guessing sometimes didn’t work out too well. I brought American measuring spoons and cups with me and bought a kitchen scale labeled in metric and Imperial. I also used the conversion app on my Mac and some written conversion notes. I’ve still got some recipes in my files double labeled.
They had me at The Kilo is dead
and lost me at Long live the kilo.
Chester Draws,
There’s an infamous example of JPL using metric and Lockheed Martin rocket people using imperial. It was one of the Mars spacecrafts, Polar Lander maybe, where LM made the retro rockets and JPL put the craft together. The rocket thrust datasheets provided by LM had a bunch of numbers and no units listed. Naturally, the units just had to be Newtons. Actually it was pounds of thrust, and the “lander” crashed into the surface of Mars. I don’t who was the bigger chump.
I’m pretty disappointed to hear about this change to the kilogram. While I appreciate the motivation to pin its definition to a benchmark that transcends any mutable physical object, it feels to me like going off the gold standard and making everything fiat currency: all of the references appear to become circular somehow. The seven basic units of measure refer to each other in many ways; where is the ultimate foundation, I wonder?
As for the fact that the standard kilogram object has lost 50 micrograms, I think that’s a big deal, even though it’s just 1 part in 20 million. Couldn’t it have been prevented somehow? Or could it? Maybe not. I suppose, if nothing else, cosmic rays could have affected the thing over time. Can’t do much about those.
I am an unreconstructed American-Imperialist. I have no patience for this ridiculous and ignorant invention of the Metric System.
If it really had the advantage that its proponents claim for it — that after all it’s based on the decimal system, so all you have to do to get multiple or fractional amounts of a standard unit such as a meter is to shift the decimal point, I counter that you can do this using any (positive) integer as the base, though you may, as in the case of duo-decimal (i.e. base-12) system, have to add a couple of symbols. Thus the counting would go 1, 2, …, 8, 9, A, B, 10, …. and what we usually write as 1/12 in fractional notation, and is not expressible in decimal at all (1/12 = .08333333333333………) is easily expressed in duodecimal:
1/12 = .1 where the “.” isn’t the decimal point but rather the duodecimal point.
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In general, base-12 works much better because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8.
This makes arithmetic much easier, at least for those of us who are less than idiots savants at it. And as a practical matter, shortish lengths are easy to divide into halves, thirds, quarters, sixths and even eighths by eye. This of course is old news to anyone used to using inches and feet as the usual unit of measure. Also to cooks, though they may not realize it.
Of course the contender favored by star-struck computer mavens is hexadecimal, base-16, which is based on a power of 2, the binary foundation of computer life: 16=2**4, and at this stage most computers use the hexadecimal system. But practically speaking, hexadecimal lacks the advantages of having 2 prime divisors and four major divisors (2, 3, 4, 6).
On the other hand, Imperial weight-measures are based on hexadecimal, if you use the pound as the main unit: 1 oz. = 1/16 lb.
Anyway, for a million years it was called “centigrade.” 0? C (more properly known as 32?F of course *g*), or “freezing,” was read as “0 degrees centigrade”. Then some years ago nothing would do but that it be read “0 degrees Celsius.” Now what’s up with that?
MikeK and Neo,
The Gimli Glider is my favorite air disaster, especially since no one was hurt.
The Indonesian airliner crash a couple weeks ago has been largely resolved. And it ain’t pretty for Boeing and maybe the maintenance people.
It has an anti-stall feature that takes control out of the pilot’s hands and pushes the nose down sharply. Unlike Airbus, Boeing never did this type of stuff until recently.
The pilots had no training with it, it wasn’t written up in the manual, and it has an override but there was not training or information on that either.
Both the airspeed sensor and the angle-of-attack sensor failed before or during the flight, and the latter needlessly put the plane into an anti-stall nose down position.
It seems to me that the industry is increasingly treating pilots like Muni bus drivers.
MikeK, Wow! on the Gimli Glider story. I’m impressed.
TommyJay, excellent point.
There are times when low-tech is a great fall-back. One of the reasons I worry about such dependence on electronically-based infrastructure such as the Internet and even the Electrical Grid for basic survival is that both of them really are vulnerable to catastrophic failure … and then where will we be?
Well…life is risk, and death comes to all men. (I may not have been the first to observe these facts.) But I would prefer to die quietly and easily at home in my nice warm bed, having eaten a hearty supper of my favorite foods (it will have to have been quite a long supper, given the number of f.f.s) in the company of my dearest ones.
. . .
Wrt final para above: I hate having to be constantly pointing out tongue-in-cheek and self-mocking and joking comments with *g* or other markers indicating the intent — it feels like a comedian who is constantly mugging, or hitting the audience over the head with a pikestaff, in order to point out the joke. (That’s why we have deadpan. See Bob Newhart in the original “The Bob Newhart Show” on this.)
Make of this what you will. ;>)
There’s an infamous example of JPL using metric and Lockheed Martin rocket people using imperial.
I remember that story. A friend of mine is an American captain. Until recently, he was “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.” Now he flies an Airbus and I wonder at his reaction to that Boeing story. “Fly by Wire” was the objection to Airbus before, especially after AF 447. Now Boeing is in the cross hairs.
“I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of people: those who use the metric system and those who put a man on the moon.”
That must have been said by the mechanical engineers. I worked on the missile range in telemetry data systems. I’m an electrical engineer and we use the MKS system (meter,kilogram,second).
Hi Neo,
I hate the metric system. It was invented by some English bishop back (I think) in the 17th century, but it really came into being during the worst of all revolutions — the French Revolution. ‘Nuff said.
Julie iC,
Preface:
The MKS metric system is very dominant in physics and engineering, though I had an E&M prof. who was a theoretician and proclaimed “I will use God’s units” which were CGS metric (Centimeter-Gram-Seconds). Electrical constants like the “permittivity of free space” are replaced with numbers like 4*pi in CGS units.
Main Point:
My science mentor, who did a lot of drafting at a real drafting table, said not to even try to use metric. A fractions based system is so much better. For smaller parts, always draft 1:1 unless it’s really tiny. For stuff bigger than the paper, draft at 1/2 or 1/4 scale. With a binary fractions ruler (inches) it’s duck soup to scale a drawing. With metric you waste time with a calculator.
Later of course, I used CAD, and wasted a little time with a calculator.
Julie, base-12, eh? I’ve never seen it advocated before; interesting. It still feels unnatural, but it does beg the question of whether base-10 is really that much more natural.
Or should we all just go logarithmic? I was party to a table talk once in which the protagonist pointed out the preponderance of fundamental constants with ordinal values in the range 1 – 3 and inferred from that that, essentially, the universe operates basically on a baked-in log scale as a matter of routine, while here we are trying to make everything arithmetical. Something like this, I recall, was his point. I wonder about it still from time to time.
Yay TommyJay! And the Great Frog blessed you when it/he/she chose your science mentor. Or, as they say, There but for the grace of the Great Frog go I. ;>))
When I was in the Army I developed a real good sense of how long a kilometer is, how wide a 105 mm main gun shell is, and how fast 100 kph is, and I’ve never forgotten. I also have a very good idea of how much 750 milliliters is. I actually prefer the metric system — I can’t stand it that both weight and volume in the English system (I guess it’s the American system now) are both measured in ounces, and when they quote stock prices in quarters and eighths it drives me nuts. Almost all electronics is now measured in metric, except for the good old RCA 1/4″ phono jack, and virtually all American car and truck engines are metric.
Yes, I realize the metric system was developed by the French, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. Besides, isn’t 300,000 kps a lot more handy than 186,000 mps?
Philip,
Well, of course the standard explanation for the adoption of base-10 is that it was inspired by the number of fingers the Great Frog gave us, and which are convenient for keeping track of how many apples you have. You match each apple in your pile to a different finger. At the point where you run out of fingers, I suppose you could get up to 100 by setting aside the pile of 10 apples and starting another one, and matching each pile to a finger. Etc. At what point abstraction enters into this and we get powers-of-10, I have no idea.
Duodecimal also lends itself to fingerithmetic *g*, if after finishing the fingers on one hand you make a fist and consider that you have six apples. Do the same thing with the other hand and you have a pile of 12 (decimal) apples.
Repeat until you get bored.
As I mentioned before, I’m an electrical engineer and worked in digital design. We used binary, octal and hexadecimal arithmetic because they are all powers of 2. I have an abacus that uses biquinary arithmetic, but I don’t recall having heard of duodecimal arithmetic.
@Julie near Chicago:Well, of course the standard explanation for the adoption of base-10 is that it was inspired by the number of fingers the Great Frog gave us, and which are convenient for keeping track of how many apples you have.
Except that the Sumerians and Babylonians did not have 6 times as many fingers as everyone else.
And we’re still using it!
Lost my link.
Richard S., I don’t deny that given enough experience with the metric system most people can become “fluent” in it. As is true of language, if you lived in Europe long enough, you might have to go through arcane conversions (translations) to get back to your Mother Numeric-base, so to speak.
After all, it is said that people who speak more than one language fluently can express thoughts in one language that can’t be expressed in another. But I intend to go on speaking my Mother Tongue, English, however convenient Mandarin might be to express some thought not naturally expressed in English. (By “naturally expressed”: I mean, a thought that you might have to torture English to express in English, or which might not be expressible in any English yet invented.)
(Aside — that’s one reason why languages “borrow” words from other languages; though in the borrowing they often lose a bit of their original-language nuance or even meaning. And even more aside, this also happens as the meanings of words in English come to change over time and locale.)
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True. The business with oz. as meant in measuring fluid volume and as meant in measuring weight is a pain. And it would be convenient if the Imperial system were base-n throughout, regardless of the value of n, instead of being partly base-12 and partly base-16.
The base ten metric system is out of date, the modern age demands binary. Fortunately there is a wonderful system for that, where inches are divided into halves, quarters, eighths, and so on.
Long, long ago, I programmed an IBM 650, which used decimal and had ten digit memory addresses. Two digits were the operation (add, etc) the next four were the address of the quantity to be operated upon and the final four were the address of the next instruction. It had 2000 memory units. They were located on a rotating drum which spun at 12,500 rpm. That was at Douglas Aircraft Company. Over at the main plant, they installed an IBM 704, then the transistor version was the 7040. That came along as I was leaving to go back to school to do pre-med.
And of course, there are non-integer basis, as well as the better known trinary system.
Frederick, re the Babylonians: True enough. But everyone knows they were in fact marooned colonists from another, extra-Solar planet.
I’ve read von Däniken too, you know. ;>)
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From your link: “…could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60….” — my boldface on the “12.”
In its article on Babylonian math, the Great Foot reminds us that
Well, somewhere I left out the end-italics tag. Sorry.
MikeK, you programmed the 650 ?!! My gosh, man, how old
are you!!!
Once a month (IIRC) we 3rd- and 4th-year girls in the dorms were allowed 3 o’clocks. Naturally the other girls got to live it up going out to concerts, followed by dinner or drinks (if old enough) at some night spot, or to parties. But poor little Me, all I had to show for them was several hours watching my Honey (and fiancé) program the 650. What a charge. :>((((
*VERY self-satisfied grin*
No time left over for even a little nookie.
He was a physics undergrad, doing the usual lab work to help pay for such luxuries as food.
This was in 1962 & ff.
Julie near Chicago — You don’t convert, you just have to know what the measurement is. It’s like learning a language: if you have to translate each word before you say it, you’ll never speak the language. You have to know what the concept you are expressing is in the new language. A bottle of wine is 750 ml. I don’t think , “Well, that’s about 3/4s of a quart,” I just know how much wine is in a bottle.
P.S. Where near Chicago? My wife is from Elgin. We lived on Sheridan Road in West Rogers Park when we were first married. My in-laws live in an assisted-living facility in Glenview, and my sister-in-law lives in River Forest.
Mike K — you call programing an IBM 650 hard? I programmed an RPC 4000 in 1970, a paper-tape machine with 256K of 64-byte words. In hexadecimal! Eventually I could read right off the tape.
Richard, now I’m in Rockford, about 1-1/2 hrs S. of Madison, about 90 driving miles from Chicago. Grew up on a farm 100 mi W of Chicago, then to U. of Chicago for school, ended up with said Honey in Naperville, which boasted something like 43,000 when we moved there (1975) and now is ~ 147,000. I think it’s listed as being 23mi from Chi, but it seems to me it was 33 mi from our house to Hyde Park.
Elgin! Yes indeed, my folks would take us kids up there once in awhile. I’m told, and believe, that Elgin fell on hard times many years ago now. Gangs, crime. Maybe by now it’s making a come-back. I hope so. The Elgin Clocks used to be famous. If they are still around, Hi to your wife’s folks, and to your wife of course, from Rockford. :>)
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To your point on measurement, of course you are right. But I imagine that for those of us who don’t “pick up” a foreign language just by a lot of talking-&-pointing with folks who do speak it, we learn first by translating (= conversion). Sure, if you forget all about the English/American systems and dive straight into metric, then if you have any knack at all you get the idea fairly quickly of how full the bottle is when you’ve got a liter in there.
But I still don’t think most people can easily divide a pan of brownies into roughly equal fifths and tenths, although I don’t doubt that practice will bring one closer.
. . .
That’s interesting — suddenly autofill is working again for my uname and address. The ways of WordPress are deep, and even occasionally pleasant.
For all you Frankophobes, I recommend David McCullough’s The Greater Journey. It’s about Americans culturally appropriating 19th century French medicine, art, and even message sending, the latter of which resulted in the telegraph and the Morse code. It’s a good thing the SJWs weren’t around to condemn Americans then. Maybe Macron will have something to say about this.
Oh. You told about your parents-in-law’s present locale. It didn’t register, sorry.
My brother and his wife and kids used to live in Oak Park, south of River Forest and just a block or two west of Austin; now they’re in Berwyn. My Honey grew up in Albany Park, and we knew quite a few people from Rogers Park.
This is interesting. Edit is also working. But I’m using an oldish Safari, instead of my usual Firefox. I always how much of these inconsistencies are a fault in the whatchamacallit, wordpress or typepad or whatever, how much in the browser or both not playing nicely together, and how much in the OS, which also doesn’t play nicely with one or both and sometimes not even with itself….
Julie,
I learned how to survive in Germany by studying catalogues. Language courses didn’t help much in dealing with the real world. Problem was that catalogues don’t tell you whether nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter, so I am still pretty incompetent when using der, die, and das. Theoretically, I get them, but when I’m talking I just pull something out of my hat. Fortunately, forks and cups don’t harass me for not using their preferred pronouns.
“I never much cared for the metric system.”
I have returned to the U.S. after living and working abroad for thirty years. I am finding it painful to re-adapt to Imperial Units. Imagine, having to explain to my foreign born wife that there are 12 inches in a foot and 5,180 feet in a mile (eyes rolling). And let us not even get started on fractions of an inch.
Do you have any idea how many times I have been asked why the U.S., the most advanced country in the world, still uses such an archaic system of measures?
I blame Carter for this. We were supposed to convert to the metric system under a phased plan that was put in place under Kennedy. The U.S. and Canada were to convert together. But when the time came for American consumers to convert to buying gasoline in liters and vegetables in kilograms, Carter caved in at the first signs of resistance. Canada went ahead and converted.
The U.S. is now the only country in the world still using this archaic and awkward system. Worse yet, we actually use both systems, since the science and medical industries did go ahead and convert.
Reference the following link:
https://nonpartisaneducation.org/Review/Essays/v3n3.htm
In particular, I quote, “With reference to the USA, if you take the cost estimates from items 1 and 3 and make a bold, but not wild, assumption that it costs about 9% of gross turnover to use dual measurements (metric and U.S. Customary) then based on a 2005 estimated Gross Domestic Product for the USA of $12.735 trillion dollars it costs the USA about 1.15 trillion dollars per year to use dual measures; this is a bit more than $3850 per person per year.”
The decision made by the U.S. not to convert was tragically foolish and costly.
This was in 1962 & ff.
I was working at Douglas Aircraft as an engineer in the wind tunnel facility in 1959 when I decided to go back to school and do premed. Most of my time was actually programming printers with the plug boards they had. I was trying to get the printer to print heading on each page. It got to the point that the impulse to drive the printing of the header was not precise enough. It varied in milliseconds and sometimes would print and sometime would skip. I finally gave up.
Medicine was more fun. At the time I left, every engineer but my boss was leaving for grad school of some type.
“Do you have any idea how many times I have been asked why the U.S., the most advanced country in the world, still uses such an archaic system of measures?”
No. I wonder if they asked why the U.S. is the most advanced despite “an archaic system.”
Or if it even matters. Both systems are arbitrary. Just covert if needed. Math is power.
@Roy Nathanson:Do you have any idea how many times I have been asked why the U.S., the most advanced country in the world, still uses such an archaic system of measures
Several reasons:
1) Being so advanced, so much earlier than the rest of the world, it would have been very expensive to convert all the industrial plant. I don’t know that the economic benefits of being on the metric system would ever be measurable, but rebuilding everything sure would be. In 1789 it would have been very cheap to switch to metric. Not so much in 1979. Some industries already are metric; generally each is moving at the pace that makes economic sense.
2) Being free, the government doesn’t have the ability to force us all to spend our money that way, and there isn’t a lunatic in power with that particular bee in his bonnet who can make his will law.
3) All of our traditional units have been defined in terms of metric standards anyway since 1893, and the metric system has been legal for trade since 1866. It’s just that are people are free to keep using the traditional systems, so they do.
You math geeks forgot base 14 (I think). Brits still refer to a person’s weight in stone. I cannot accurately divide by 14 in my head.
Julie near Chicago — been to Rockford. I wouldn’t exactly call it near Chicago, though! Yes, Elgin has fallen on hard times. The watch factory burnt down in the ’50s and the company moved to S.(or N.?) Carolina. The developers of Woodfield Mall wanted to build it on the watch factory site, but the city fathers turned them down, which is why the Woodfield mall is in Schaumberg and Elgin is now a slum. My wife hated Elgin and couldn’t wait to got out of there.
Funny story. During the French Revolution, a French government representative was sent to President Thomas Jefferson with a set of metric systems standards. The idea was that Jefferson was interested in the idea and might induce the U.S. to adopt the metric system. Trouble was, the ship the French rep took was taken by pirates and sunk. If it hadn’t been for that, the U.S. might have been on the metric system for 200+ years.
One of the reasons the U.S. didn’t convert to metric in the 70’s was the cost of replacing major machine tools, e.g. lathe and milling machines. Even if the scales on the cranks are changed, the lead screws that move the traveler are made to cut Imperial threads.
Economically, businesses couldn’t just buy a whole new machine shop and declare the old stuff a loss. If Carter really wanted the conversion to happen, he could have tried to get legislation for the immediate expensing of all fabrication equipment, at least temporarily. But then they’d have cut business taxes; heaven forbid!
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I bought a nice French bicycle in 1970. While all the parts were metric, I discovered that bicycle threading could be French metric, or British metric, or Italian metric. The wheels and tires were 700C as in mm. Nobody had tires for sale. So I rebuilt the wheels to a 27 inch standard.
A couple years ago, I bought a few 27 inch tires because now everybody uses 700 mm on road bikes. So that industry is completely converted. In the 70’s the Japanese had a big impact on the bike component business with Shimano & Suntour and they picked the British metric bicycle standards, and the other two became minor players. Unless you gotta have Campagnolo.
I’ve been thinking about the Wiki entry on the Gimli Glider story.
During the flight, the management computer indicated that there was still sufficient fuel for the flight but only because the initial fuel load had been incorrectly entered; the fuel had been calculated in pounds instead of kilograms by the ground crew and the erroneous calculation had been approved by the flight crew.
I think this has it backwards. If they calculated the fuel in kilograms, then loaded it in pounds, they would have about one half of what they thought they had. I just think the Wiki entry reversed the units, sort of like the ground crew did.
Roy N:
“Imagine, having to explain to my foreign born wife that there are 12 inches in a foot and 5,180 feet in a mile (eyes rolling). And let us not even get started on fractions of an inch.”
5180?? When I was a lad, there were 5280 feet in a mile. Just kidding, but one of the small advantages of the metric system is not having to remember numbers like that.
On the topic of existing infrastructure and so on, I once ran across a spec for an M6.35×1.27 thread. I think I know why – anyone else want to take a guess?
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Tommy J:
‘Even if the scales on the cranks are changed, the lead screws that move the traveler are made to cut Imperial threads.’
I have a 1940s vintage US made lathe. I checked – if I wanted to cough up the coin, I could buy gearing to allow me to cut metric threads.
Roy,
Oh yeah, that’s a 1/4-20. 1/4″ diam. with 20 threads per inch. One of the most common machine screws in the U.S. A National Coarse standard I think.
Is it a LaBlonde? They are nice.
‘Tommy Jay:
Oh yeah, that’s a 1/4-20. 1/4? diam. with 20 threads per inch. One of the most common machine screws in the U.S. A National Coarse standard I think.’
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Right first time! 1/4-20 UNC. It is possibly more common than you think – it is the screw thread for every camera and tripod I’ve checked, no matter where it was manufactured. OK, I’m not a photographer, but even my little point and shoot digital has a 1/4-20 thread for a tripod. I think that’s why there’s a metric spec for a UNC screw thread.
Not a LaBlonde, a South Bend student lathe.
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TheNewNeo: Come for the culture and politics, stay for the tech talk!
Sonny Wayze:
Yes, I can honestly say I didn’t expect 60+ comments and counting on this thread.
Sorry Sonny, I got your name wrong.
I’ve used a South Bend and a Hardinge. Nobody would let an amateur like me use a LaBlonde.
I wonder if there are more science types here than on other blogs. I think it is also true the measurement and units really do impact people’s lives.
It reminds me of an interview with independent filmmaker John Sayles, who made dozens and dozens of low budget films. When asked what film he would make if someone gave him $20M, he said he’d make 20 $1M films. He went on to say that he had no interest in any one topic that could attract millions of viewers.
So while mainstream journalists eschew effort, detail (too boring), and science in order to capture the big audience; here’s Neo embarrassing them all with important details, and fascinating stuff.
This thread has gotten very basic somehow.
Chuck on November 14, 2018 at 10:35 pm at 10:35 pm said:
The base ten metric system is out of date, the modern age demands binary. Fortunately there is a wonderful system for that, where inches are divided into halves, quarters, eighths, and so on.
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The world is divided into 10 kinds of people.
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Julie near Chicago on November 14, 2018 at 9:36 pm at 9:36 pm said:
Philip,
Well, of course the standard explanation for the adoption of base-10 is that it was inspired by the number of fingers the Great Frog gave us
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New Math: “The book I got that problem out of wants you to do it in Base 8. Now don’t panic. Base 8 is just like base 10….if you’re missing 2 fingers.” — Tom Lehrer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4
Tommy Jay,
No biggie on the name 😉
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” When asked what film he would make if someone gave him $20M, he said he’d make 20 $1M films.”
There was an interesting experiment where arts students were divided into two groups: One had to make a single *great* work in a term, and the other group was to experiment and try stuff (technical term, there). Guess which group made the best work…
Aesop, is that all base-8 needs? No wonder I was getting it wrong. 🙂
I was in Rockford twice. I discovered it has some good restaurants. Abreo, Egg Harbor Cafe, Five Forks, that Thai place…
AesopFan, I’d forgotten that Lehrer number. Thanks!
Actually I’m with him on this: “It’s the
thoughtidea that counts.” I mean a number is just the presecribed-by-dead-white-males “answer,” but the idea is *hushed whisper* philosophy..
Somewhat more seriously, wrt to the conversation about conversions vs. what I might call recognition, I definitely do subtraction step-by-step, which is like a “conversion” method, instead of “just” recognizing the answer, or even the answer as it occurs in each column. Only I usually do it “backwards,” left-to-right, which is slightly less tortuous for me personally.
I once had to take a subtraction test to qualify for a summer position at Woolworth’s. There were 50 problems, at most 3 digits. Should have been easy for a math major in between 2nd and 3rd years, right?
To my undying embarrassment, I missed not one but two of these 3rd-grade simple arithmetic problems. I was mortified. My only excuse was that well, after all I could hardly take my socks off in public.
Unsurprisingly, I did not get the job. Surprisingly, it was because my score on the test was too high. (They said people like that never stayed, so not worth hiring them.)
I tell this story fairly often because it tickles me, so if y’all have heard it before, I apologize…mildly. ;>)
Philip, in noting decent eateries in Rockford you mention “that Thai place.” Do you recall which one? The Young Miss is strongly pro-Thai-food, and is always on the lookout for a good Thai restaurant.
(Me, I like good Thai food, but like Chinese even more. Alas, I don’t know of a really good Chinese place anywhere in Illinois anymore, but then I no longer visit Chicago.)
There used to be at least three knockouts here: Bishop’s Cafeteria, where we were taken as a special treat when I were a young’un; Anchor Inn, which was a wonderful chain whose menu was all-you-can-eat shrimp and (not “or”) chicken, alas now one with the angels; and the Sweden House, which was a genuine smörgasbord restaurant, fair enough because Rockford historically was almost a Little Sweden. They also closed many years ago, so all this is just reminiscence.
Speaking of the excellent Mr. Lehrer, please do not forget the classic Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is His Name,; a.k.a. "PLAGIARIZE!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A
Julie, the Thai Hut at Sandy Hollow Rd and 11th. I thought it was at least reasonable, but we must bear in mind that that was 6 years ago now; hopefully it’s not changed too much in the wrong direction. Five Forks was the first place at which I ever had roast duck.
(I know an interesting Indian restaurant in Naperville. I found it on my last trip to Brookfield.)
Thanks, Philip. :>)) As it happens, Thai Hut is the YM’s favorite spot.
A good Indian restaurant in N’ville? I’m a fan of Indian food (I’am a fan of food!), but I’m gonna have a hard time persuading her to drive me down there. Still, maybe one of these days … What’s its name, and roughly where is it?
I’ll have to look into this Five Forks.
By the way, House of Sushi, or Sushi House (whichever) is right across the street from the library downtown, and it really is good, if you get out that way again. (But I imagine Benihana in Lombard is still The Place as a hibachi restaurant.)
I’ve written many posts on Lehrer. See these.
You’re welcome, Julie 🙂 Deccan Spice was the Indian place. About a mile south of the downtown CBD going down Washington, in the plaza next to its intersection with Gartner Rd. When I was there, it had only been open a couple of months, I think.
On my way out, I took one of their business cards with me and the manager (owner?) earnestly asked me to recommend them to folks. Since I live about 1000 miles away, I didn’t think I’d ever have occasion to do so effectively, but whaddaya know! 🙂
I’ll try and remember that sushi place.
Philip,
Deccan Spice, Gartner Plaza, got it! Thanks! Let’s see. The 2nd-best Chinese restaurant in N’ville — now long gone — used to be Hunan Inn, next door to the Colonial Restaurant/Inn (forget which), which was an old-fashioned family-diner place, pretty good American cooking. There was also a place kitty-corner across the parking lot next to Casey’s supermarket (if it’s still there).
There used to be an exceptional Siamese restaurant in the little plaza at the SE corner of Jackson & Washington — Bangkok Restaurant/House. Alas, also long gone.
Next time you run up (or over) to N’ville for the food, there is (still, I assume) an Egg Harbor Café next to House of Sushi. You enter the building; Sushi on the left, Egg Harbor on the right.
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Fun talking about shoes & ships & sealing wax, and number systems and food. Thanks to Neo and all the commentariat. :>)))
Julie near Chicago on November 15, 2018 at 10:43 pm at 10:43 pm said:
AesopFan, I’d forgotten that Lehrer number. Thanks!
…
I tell this story fairly often because it tickles me, so if y’all have heard it before, I apologize…mildly. ;>)
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Like Neo, I have most of Lehrer’s songs firmly implanted in my memory, although I do forget some of the lines from time to time these days.
I appreciated your story – hadn’t heard yours specifically before, but I am familiar with the travails of the overqualified.
One of our college friends followed his father into the law firm, and told us once that his dad would never hire graduates from the Ivy Leagues because they didn’t know any more about the law than those from the second-tier schools, but they still thought they were too important to do the work he needed done.
I used to teach computer programming, and would often sing New Math as an introduction to non-decimal bases; once I had a student ask me to slow down so he could take notes, and another wanted to know if it would be on the exam.
Sigh.