/sci/ - Science & Math

it's because people in the US can use two systems of measurement without blowing our minds

if I want to talk about what temperature alcohol boils at, I'll use centigrade. If I want to talk about how warm or cold if feel outside, I'll use fahrenheit.

if I want to design an engine, I'll measure the volume of the cylinders in cubic centimeters. If I want to talk about how tall someone is, I'll use feet and inches.

it's just that americans can be comfortable using in knowing that no one system of measurement is "superior" for all situations, but rather each system works better or worse depending on what you're trying to do

Fahrenheit has many uses in engineering, but I don't see why we still use feet and inches. The metric system is extremely simple to understand and are a bit more accurate. Also, kilograms are a measurement of mass, where as pounds are weight. It only seems reasonable that we leave weight measurements to forces and have mass measurements as our primary measurement. My honest opinion? Ditch the imperial system for the general public.

>>6360808
>implying there are situations for which imperial system works better

>>6360830
There are few, but there are times.

>>6360826
Pounds aren't a measurement for mass?

-Learn something more accurate every day on /sci/!

>>6360833
There really aren't

feet and inches are still useful because they are, at their core, fractional systems. in a situation where tools of measurement are available, it's fine (and probably better) to use metric, but when no tools are available, it is easier to be more precise and accurate by estimating in imperial, since the brain generally thinks in fractions as opposed to decimal notation

ex: he's about five and a half feet tall is much easier to tell at a glance than he's about one meter, seventy centimeters tall.

Fahrenheit:

Triple Digits: Too Hot
Double Digits: Bearable
Single Digits: Too Cold

>>6360847
>ex: he's about five and a half feet tall is much easier to tell at a glance than he's about one meter, seventy centimeters tall.
Not really, no. Anyway...
ex: he's about one meter and a half tall is much easier to tell at a glance than he's about four feet eleven inches and a sixteenth

x-xy=2y
x-x=2y/y
0=2

>>6360808
Thank you sir! Saying better than I could have.

>>6360860
You seem pretty versed to me when it comes to math. Do know if
.999=1
?

>>6360808
>americans can be comfortable using in knowing that no one system of measurement is "superior" for all situations
Fahrenheit isn't better for any of your examples, though, only easier for people who happened to grow up using it.

>>6360785
IIRC there was a movement to switch to metric back in the Nixon (?) days but it died quietly. Probably because of some bullshit "muh business" excuse or something.

I wish we used metric, but at the same time there are a few instances where Imperial feels a bit more intuitive, at least for everyday mundane applications.

>>6360860
You are dividing with zero

>>6360826
>Fahrenheit has many uses in engineering
Can you give an example where fahrenheit is clearly superior?

>>6360785
> Or is it simply and purely being special?
Partly. Possibly even largely.

Part of it is just people wanting to stick with what they already know rather than learning something new.

In a rational society, the fact that the rest of the world uses a different system would be a reason to change. In the US, it's considered a reason not to (because whatever the US uses must automatically be superior to whatever foreigners use).

>>6360885
No he's not.

>>6360785
one holdover from this debate is the curious notion that the average human body temp is exactly 98.6 F. We don't know it to that level of accuracy it's just that when the data was taken and the average found to be 37 C the conversion was done and the three place accuracy is a mistake

>>6360887
The only advantage of fahrenheit I can think of is that you can measure smaller changes in temperature more easily, since a single degree in fahrenheit is smaller than one in celsius.

>>6360860
when you divide by y you'd actually end up with
x/y - y = 2y/y

>>6360906
You don't know what you're talking about

>>6360808
>it's just that americans can be comfortable using in knowing that no one system of measurement is "superior" for all situations, but rather each system works better or worse depending on what you're trying to do

>"x of this" is better than saying "y of that"!

The whole argument boils down to: force of habit. Stop grasping for straws, man.
Converting between different magnitudes is more streamlined in metric (e.g. cm to dm to m) than in imperial (ft to yards to furlongs or whatever), and that's it.

>>6360854

>95F is not hot.
>15F is not cold.

hurr durr

>>6360808
>but rather each system works better or worse depending on what you're trying to do

But that's completely untrue. Imperial units are not better for anything. And I say that as someone who grew up in America and still has to mentally convert some thing to imperial.

>>6360911
>what are decimals
Are all murifats this retarded?

>>6360955
both of those temperatures fall into "bearable" you retard.

>>6360969
>bearable

You'll die pretty quickly naked in 15F air.

>>6360964
Not American, but that reasoning can be applied to Fahrenheit as well. Use decimals, gain precision.
Temperature scales are both retarded. Fahrenheit has arbitrary fixed points and step size, while Kelvin has a nice fixed point but an arbitrary step size. Perhaps defining the basic unit of temperature as a multiple of the Planck temperature would be best instead of using 1/100 of the temperature difference between two phases of water at certain conditions...
At the very least, the retardedness divide isn't as large between both systems as in spacial units.

>>6360964
I'm thinking more of physical thermometers, where people are usually going to round to a whole number.

>>6360983
>Not American, but that reasoning can be applied to Fahrenheit as well. Use decimals, gain precision.

Exactly, so it's a completely retarded argument.

>>6360982
>>6360911

You're telling me you can notice the difference between 74F air and 75F air?

>>6360983
Using Planck units would be the best thing to do for "serious stuff", but it would be impractical in almost all situations since you would use really huge numbers.
I don't think Celsius are better than Fahrenheit or vice versa, but since the whole world uses Kelvin and Celsius I think it is retarded to keep using a different system.

>>6360994
>>6360983
>multiple of the Planck

The kg is also the standard unit instead of the gram. A bar is equal to 10^5 Pa. There is no problem.

>>6360979
why would he be naked

>>6361001
yeah, that's weird

the GRAM should be standard, they should bump everything up by an order of magnitude

>>6361017
Three orders.

>>6361020
sure

>>6361017
why exactly should the gram be standard?

>>6361043
because "kilo-" is a modifier

just like how we speak in terms of meters and not kilometers for standard measurement, gram should be the standard

just semantics, really

>>6361055
yeah

which is the answer to OP's question, incidentally

>>6361050
well but that would be way too much effort just for semantics.

>>6361044
actually, the reason for this is because a bunch of weird shit went down when we tried to create a physical entity that represented the gram/kilogram. Veritasium on YouTube made a decent video of it. Just search for veritasium kilogram

>>6361050
People could just rename the kilogram a gram, shift the other prefixes accordingly and call it a day. But again, force of habit.

>>6361062
yeah, that's what i meant by order of magnitude

>>6361017
> the GRAM should be standard, they should bump everything up by an order of magnitude
Just go back to the original terminology: change "kilogram" to "grave" and "gram" to "milligrave".

The change was caused by the French revolution happening before the terminology became widespread. "Grave" was considered too close to Graf/Greve (German or Nordic names for a Count or Earl).

>>6360830
>implying its easier to convert Kilograms on the Earth's surface to Newtons of gravitational force than it is to convert pounds to pounds-force.

>>6361062
> People could just rename the kilogram a gram,
Hell no. Then you'd get into issues with figuring out whether something was referring to the old or new gram (like long-scale versus short-scale "billion" etc before short-scale became universal).

By all means rename it to something without a "kilo" prefix, but not something which already has an existing meaning.

>>6361073
is there any good use for long-scale?

Degrees Celsius are the dumbest thing ever. Freezing should be 180 degrees away from boiling. Half a circle. Why would it be 100 degrees? 100 degrees is nothing. It's a little more than a right angle. How does that make sense, stupid Eurofags? Freezing is the opposite of boiling. 180 degrees difference. Get with the program.

>>6361072
>convert pounds to pounds-force.
You mean pounds to pounds-mass, right? A pound is a unit of weight (force), not mass.

The main problem is that you have to pick a specific value for g. But in practice people will convert one pound (force) to one pound-mass regardless of the local value of g (which varies by both latitude and altitude, as well as over time).

>>6360785
Its easier to deal with angular measurements and produces more exact thought when considering various measurements.

>>6361083
No, a pound is a measure of mass. Pounds force is a measure of force, which is the force exerted that accelerates a pound of mass 9.80665 m/s^2. Google calculator agrees with me. If you want to specify force you have to tell google calculator pounds force".

>>6361079
This is a good point. Why use the term "degree" if it's not going to relate to angles.

>>6361096
make a new unit called Temp?

>it's 20 temp Celcius outside

>>6361100
You could just make Celsius the unit, like Kelvin is a unit.

>>6361100
*temps

>>6361079
Ha! That's hilarious. I'm old like your grandpa and I've never put the 180 degrees F thing together

>>6361079
We should just ditch degrees in circular geometry. Just go purely to radians with them. Degrees is based around some religious stuff that the number 6 is sacred.

>>6361115
i thought it was 60 because a lot of numbers divide cleanly into 60

>>6361115
Degrees is based around 2*2*2*3*3*5=360, i.e. it has a large number of divisors which makes mental arithmetic easy. Similarly for 60 (2*2*3*5) seconds/minute and minutes/hour, 24 (2*2*2*3) hours/day, 12 (2*2*3) inches/foot, etc.
No idea how they came up with 1760 (2*2*2*2*2*5*11) yards/mile, though.

>>6361115
I thought it was based on the days in the year (based on the common ancient 360 day calendar which is the average between the solar and lunar year)

>>6360983
you good sir have hit the nail on the head

>>6360838
I'm sure it could be used as a measurement of mass unless you're going asperger supersaiyan. Just specify pounds of mass vs. pounds of weight.

American here who recognizes that SI is superior in every way, but thats such a niggling argument.

>>6361014
>why would he be naked

Because depending on what you are wearing, any temperature could be "bearable." I was giving anon the benefit of the doubt in assuming what he said was merely wrong and not total nonsense.

>>6360876
stopping this before it starts

>>6360885
has nothing to do with that. He's ignoring the distributive property of multiplication and division.

>>6360915
this is correct.

(x-x)y != x-xy
unless y=1

>>6361160
physics care about significant figures, maths doesn't

Eg I have only .999 of this bottle due to atmospheric dissipation.

Calc says 0->1 > 1-> infinity

Semantics!!!!!!!

>>6361174
I'm having trouble fleshing out what you're saying here. Could you write it out?

and clearly the .99 repeating argument is in terms of pure math, it wouldn't really make sense otherwise.

I dont have the ability to place correct notation, but ill try

All the numbers between 0 and 1 are greater then 1 to infinity, because you never reach 1, ex 0.1, 0.01, 0.001.

As with the water glass example, there is still water in the bottle some it evaporates into the atmosphere, so I no longer have one bottles worth of water, the three glass have roughly .999 of the water bottle

>>6361160
>stopping this before it starts
Everybody ignored it before you posted.
Well done, you started it.

>>6361156
> Just specify pounds of mass vs. pounds of weight.
Pounds are the reason why Murrika will never be able to colonise another planet (unless they manage to find one with exactly the same gravity as Earth). Losing the ability to conflate mass and weight will cause everyone's brains to melt.

>>6361193
Oh god. These hands. What have they wrought...

>>6361214
Or you could just specify one or the other if the situation calls for it. The amount of mass that gives something a weight of 3 pounds on Earth would just be called 3 pounds of mass. So on a larger planet, such an object would have 3 pounds of mass but maybe 5 pounds of weight. No brain melting here.

Again, I agree SI is better, which is why it's used in every scientific discipline in the states.

>>6361185
All numbers between 0 and 1 is greater than all *integers* from 1 to infinity, yeah.

And nobody is saying that .999 is 1.
.999 repeating infinitely is. Bringing significant digits into it means it no longer repeats infinitely, which is the key part of the whole thing.

>>6360785
>Is there any good reason why America still has the Imperial system of measurement?

Because changing the system mid-stride is incredibly difficult. You can see that in places like the UK, where Metric is the official standard, but Imperial customary measures endure many decades after the switch in common use (such as the incredibly British measure of "stone" for a person's weight). Most other nations had the benefit of adopting Metric in the process of industrializing and modernizing their states, but America's whole infrastructure is built around US Customary (which is actually slightly different than Imperial), which makes changing difficult.

If it's any consolation, the formal definitions for US Customary units are actually based in Metric and Metric IS an officially approved system of measure for use in the United States (and has been since, like, 1870), just not the customary one in everyday life.