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/sci/ - Science & Math

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6817013 No.6817013 [Reply] [Original]

Why do we still use the Imperial system in America?

>> No.6817018

Because of industrial uses.

I live in a metric country and in the industry the imperial system is still used. It's been done that way for so long it would be almost impractical to do away with it.

>> No.6817042

Because consistency doesn't matter.

>> No.6817048

>>6817018
what country's that? all the other ones seem to have managed it

>> No.6817050

Some countries are bilingual :)

>> No.6817070

>>6817018
We still use imperial bolt sizes, pipe diameters etc in Canada, but that doesn't mean our roads have to be in miles and science classes have to use foot-pounds force.

>> No.6817095

>>6817070

I live in the United States, and our science classes use SI units.

>> No.6817115
File: 187 KB, 816x713, 1403859163133.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6817115

USA uses the imperial system because of politics. Let's remember that in 1999. NASA lost a space probe for Mars due to this.
As an astrophysicist I often run into old measurements for various things. I'm supposed to be doing homework now and I'm supposed to express my solution in steradians and square degrees for example. sometimes you can get formulas, constants and solutions easier using old systems of measurement, especially when it comes to astronomy.

don't be lazy, learn to convert it's not that hard.

>> No.6817143

I live in SI-land where even the atmospheric pressure is given in pascal (yes, lowercase) and I still use 0.1" on my printed circuit boards..

>> No.6817155

>>6817115
>sometimes you can get formulas, constants and solutions easier using old systems of measurement, especially when it comes to astronomy.
Is it easier because you don't have to convert the old measurements or is it easier because the calculations are easier with the Queen's system than metric regardless of what form the data is in?

>> No.6817162

The unit difference can lead to some pretty bad shit happened, for instance a Mars Spacecraft crashed on Mars because two groups working on the spacecraft were using different units of measurements.

>> No.6817165

>>6817155
it's easier because a lot of these calculations were made before the metric system became standardized. the calculations can be much easier (or more specific) if you do them using older measuring systems and then convert the answer to whatever SI unit is standardized for the calculation.
Angstrom is a unit of length sometimes used in spectroscopy for example because you work with less fractions and decimals and it was the unit they used to first determine wavelengths of light. 1Å= 10^-10m, so 1nm = 10Å. so in nanometers visible light is from around 390-760nm whereas in angstroms it's around 4000-7000Å. an even though you're not supposed to use it, you still find it in some places in books so it's useful to know.
Similar example for calories and energy, they had a big problem with thermodynamics because of that.

>> No.6817168

Because Americans have a juvenile need to be different for its own sake.

>> No.6817170

>>6817165
Ångstrom is a pretty bad example, as it's literally just a different name for an otherwise unpractical SI-unit (in terms of talking about it), just like (another example) barn is a shortcut for "10^(-27) cm^2", which is undoubtedly not particularly handy, but a order of magnitude which is very common for cross sections. But they're still based on the SI system.

Calories on the other hand have a completely different basis than Joules and there's no reasonable case where calories are easier to use than Joule.

>> No.6817172

>>6817170
Give a better one then. I never said calories were easier to use then joules, quite contrary.

>> No.6817173

>>6817172
I don't know any, as I don't even think there are any units especially useful for anything that you can't fit somehow into the SI system.

>> No.6817179

>>6817173
which is exactly the point of a standardized system of unit measurement. I'm just trying to expand the conversation, don't be mean cuz of that.
here's one though: kelvin is the standardized unit for measuring temperature, yet we use Celsius (farenheit in some countries) often outside of thermodynamics don't we. and we use the same marker for temperature degrees and angle degrees, yet they're very different things. it can all get messy sometimes for various reasons.

>> No.6817188

I used to wonder, but the answer is Congress, in a way:

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weights,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States

>At the First United States Congress, which met in 1789 when the metric system had not yet been developed in France, the system of units to be used in the future USA was one point of discussion.

>Jefferson's proposal was the world's first scientifically based, fully integrated, decimal system of weights and measures.

>In 1795 a bill titled "An Act directing certain experiments to be made to ascertain uniform standards of weights and measures for the United States" was passed by the House and was approved by committee in the Senate, but on the last day of the session the Senate said it would consider the bill during the next session. The bill was never taken up again.

>> No.6817237

Tangentially related, why isn't there an Imperial system for time?

Something like 1 second = .854 cobs, 23 cobs = 1 barrow, etc

If there is, I think the US should adopt it.

>> No.6817312

>>6817173
The electron volt

>> No.6817314

>>6817312
Damn, right, it was so obvious. You won.

>> No.6817315

>>6817162
Ok, but that could happen even if everyone used metric. So you call a subroutine that requires feet and you send it meters instead... problem. You call a subroutine that requires meters and you send it centimeters instead... problem.

>> No.6817320

>>6817314
I think that's the only one though. Everything else that's useful that I can think of either is an SI unit or comes directly from SI units.

>> No.6817341

>>6817315
>You call a subroutine that requires meters and you send it centimeters instead... problem.
As there is a factor of 100 between cm and m it is very likely that you'll notice that there's a little problem there. And that example is even the closest one. Most SI units for the same dimension have a factor 1000 between them (grams, milligrams etc).

>> No.6817345
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6817345

coz the left side is obviously better

>> No.6817354

>>6817345
I don't understand the month day year pyramind

years (up to 2014) > days (up to 31) > months ( up to 12).

>> No.6817363

>>6817354

Days last 24 hours. Months last anywhere from 7
672 hours to 744 hours. Years last 8766 hours.

>> No.6817366

>>6817354
It's just about the notation. Americans write 10/16/14 instead of 16.10.2014, which is pretty unintuitive.

>> No.6817380

>>6817345

Sure buddy. Quick, how do you convert gauss to tesla? joules to ergs?

Might have been nice, but your beloved scientists (the same ones who can't convert feet to meters without bringing down a space probe) decided to name each scale of each unit with the name of a dead guy.

>> No.6817384

>>6817366
I think 10/16/14 is a lot more intuitive than 16.10.2014. Obviously it's because I'm american, but the way I understand it if you write October, 16th or the 16th of October you're relating the day to the month, and not the month to the day.

You wouldn't right October on the 16th or 16th, October

>> No.6817386

>>6817341
This isn't very convincing to me. I don't see how you are going to "notice" any more with one set of units over the other, or a mix. Your testing procedure is the same.

There are fewer divisions in common use under the Imperial system than the metric. The inch is about the smallest in general use. The mile is the longest. inch, foot, yard, mile. You've got many more than that for length in use under metric.

>> No.6817392

>>6817384

Month first is nice if you are doing monthly accounts. "What transactions did you process in October", etc.

Year first is nice if you want your dates to be in numeric order.

>> No.6817393

>>6817386
The amount of divisions isn't what makes metric better. The thing that makes metric good is that it's an internally consistent unit system and that it's base 10, which is what we use.

Try taking force and distance and making a unit of energy out of it. In metric it's kg*m*s^-2 *m=kg*m^2*s^-2 = Joule.

Try doing it in imperial units of lbs (of force, to make the distinction) and feet. lb*ft= 0.00128 BTU.

>> No.6817399

>>6817384
Where I'm from you never say "October the 16th" it's always "The 16th October". That might be the reason why you think it's intuitive.

>>6817386
In most scenarios where distances of a few metres are involved you'll be quite surprised if you read "131 metres" instead of "1.31 metres".

The same doesn't apply to inches and cm. An inch is 2.54 cm, they are too close to notice obvious mistakes.

So I'm assuming that a human looks at these numbers before doing anything with it.

>> No.6817433

>>6817115
>Let's remember that in 1999. NASA lost a space probe for Mars due to this.
NASA lost that probe because Lockheed Martin was using imperial. NASA was using metric.

>> No.6817435

>>6817393
>The thing that makes metric good is that it's an internally consistent unit system and that it's base 10, which is what we use.
>confusing the metric system with the SI prefix system
shiggy

>> No.6817443

How stupid do you have to be to ask this question?

>> No.6817669

>>6817013

because americunts

>> No.6817685

>>6817013
You are clearly not American.

In America they use United States customary units, which differ from the British/Commonwealth Imperial units in a few ways.

I'm guessing you are just trolling Americans.

>> No.6817829

>>6817237

Because time doesn't exist

>> No.6817863

>>6817829
Julian Barbour pls go

>> No.6817900

>>6817320
Newer packages have pitches in mm, so PCB design will soon also move away from the classic 0.1" design rules

>> No.6817905

>>6817320
>I think that's the only one though.

the parsec

>> No.6817924

>>6817013
Because there's no difference

1 inch isn't anymore logical than 1 cm and only popsci bandwagoning retards would claim otherwise

>> No.6817931

>>6817924

0/10

>>>/b/

>> No.6817970

>>6817115
>NASA lost a space probe for Mars due to this
>>6817433
>NASA lost that probe because Lockheed Martin was using imperial. NASA was using metric.

Same thing would have happened if one contractor used mm and another used cm SINCE THEY DIDN'T LABEL IT. Metric isn't some magical unit that solves all our problems.

>>6817393
>The thing that makes metric good is that it's an internally consistent unit system and that it's base 10, which is what we use

That has nothing to do with metric

>Try taking force and distance and making a unit of energy out of it.

SPOILER: You can't get rid of all conversion factors. Take mass into energy and you're going to need a retardedly complicated conversion factor in metric

(299792458m/s)^2*9.10938291×10^-31kg=8.1871051×10^-14J

"god that's so stupid and unbase 10"

But with plank units it's

.511MeV = .511MeV

"so smart, so base 10!"

>> No.6817977

>>6817970
>That has nothing to do with metric
troll harder faggot

>> No.6817999

>>6817354
One: It's YYYY/MM/DD for obvious intelligent reasons and usually year is assumed so it's written like MM DD(, YYYY) since the year and month tells you far more than knowing it was a 13th day of some unknown year or month. Thus it's better for sorting/skimming information.

Two: No one scales units. We pick one that works with the problem size and stick to it.

>> No.6818007

>>6817977

Oh look, it's heresy: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kilogallon

The gods of SI will punish them for using sacred prefixes with their blessed permission

>> No.6818078

>>6817900
> PCB design will soon also move away from the classic 0.1" design rules
"Soon"? It's only through-hole which uses 0.1", and when was the last time you saw that on a commercial (i.e. non-hobby) PCB? A handful of surface mount formats use 0.05" (1.27 mm), the rest are all metric (1.0, 0.8, 0.65, 0.6, 0.5, 0.4 mm).

But the biggest issue is that as soon as you use one metric format, you need to do everything in metric. 0.1" and 0.05" can be represented exactly in metric (2.54 mm and 1.27 mm respectively). But none of the metric pitches can be represented exactly in inches, e.g. 1mm = 0.03937007874015748031496062992126... inch.

You might think that you could use an approximation to some "sufficient" number of decimal places, but you need the cumulative error over the size of the largest component to be insignificant.

More importantly, you also need the difference between your approximation and anyone else's to be insignificant over the size of the entire board (for production runs, this means the entire sheet, not the individual boards which are cut from it).

The net result is that all commercial PCB design and production now works on a 0.01mm (10 um) grid (aka "2540 dpi"), so 0.1" is 254 units, 0.05" is 127 units, 0.5mm is 50 units, etc.

>> No.6818083

>>6818007
Irrelevant.

>> No.6818094

>>6817999
Nice try.

But you're never going to convince anyone other than yourself that MM/DD/YYYY actually makes any kind of sense.

Customary notation in most of the world (apart from that one place which just has to be a special snowflake) is DD/MM/YYYY. Even in places that use "October the sixteenth" rather than "the sixteenth of October".

YYYY-MM-DD is a neologism; it arose because YYYY-DD-MM simply doesn't exist so there's no risk of confusion, and as an added bonus it results in lexicographic order being equal to chronological order.

>> No.6818100

>>6818083
not irrelevant. SI prefixes are one of the most common arguments for why people say metric is better than imperial, but there's literally nothing stopping you from using SI prefixes with imperial units.

>>6818094
>Even in places that use "October the sixteenth" rather than "the sixteenth of October".
lmao you're seriously arguing that having ambiguous conventions is better than consistency?

>> No.6818104

>>6818100
There is nothing stopping you, but it's a kludge, and there is no standard.

But I was disputing your point that base 10 had nothing to do with the metric system, it very obviously was incorporated into the metric system from the get go.

>> No.6818108

>>6818104
>But I was disputing your point that base 10 had nothing to do with the metric system, it very obviously was incorporated into the metric system from the get go.
no it wasn't. that's a coincidence.

The metric system was designed to have convenient unit conversions related to water. the fact that it has convenient base-10 conversions is a result of the fact that we use a base 10 system.

>> No.6818111

>>6818100
>ambiguous conventions
Like the ambiguous conventions in the admixture of SI prefixes and customary units you are proposing?

>> No.6818112

>>6818111
Exactly. Neither system is inherently better than the other.

>> No.6818118

>>6818108
You need to study some history of science and mathematics. The decimals system was deliberately adopted in 1790 as opposed to easy to divide by 2, 3, 4 etc systems based on 12, 36 etc.

I can give you links if you want.

>> No.6818119

>>6818112

No, metric is inherently better than imperial in several ways. At best you can say it's not better in every conceivable way, but literally nobody was saying that.

>> No.6818124

>>6818112
The metric system has clear conventions.

Do I say 8.5' or 8'6" ?

We don't know.

>> No.6818127

>>6818124
>The metric system has clear conventions.
this right after you just finished telling us that people completely break convention when speaking about dates.

>> No.6818128

>>6817013
Funny thing is, guess which system will be in use 100 years from now?

>> No.6818130

>>6818127
>you

are you one of those anons who assume there are only two anons in any thread, one of which is yourself?

>> No.6818133

>>6818128

Huh?

>> No.6818154

>>6817168
America confirmed for the hipster nation.

>> No.6818159

>>6818127
Date notation isn't even a part of either metric or imperial system.

>> No.6818322

>>6818112
I think you have to admit that the metric system is a hell of a lot more intuitive than the imperial system anon. There is a reason why metric usage in science is practically universal

>> No.6818324

>>6817013
how else do we teach people fractions?

>> No.6818332

>>6817095
Unfortunately this isn't the case if you don't live in a well-developed area. As somebody who lived in West Virginia his entire life, we did not use SI units until my late-level AP classes, simply because the National Test required them.

>> No.6818333

>>6817924
Metric is base 10
>>6818324
Pie.

>> No.6818340

>>6817013
I walk three ells, five quarterstaves, and a stave to make it to my mailbox and back.

How many feet did I walk?

>> No.6818347

>>6818322
>I think you have to admit that the metric system is a hell of a lot more intuitive than the imperial system anon. There is a reason why metric usage in science is practically universal

m-kg-s is no way more intuitive than ft-pounds-s or cm-g-s or km-tonne-s or whatever

>> No.6818351

>>6818333
>Metric is base 10

reported for being underage or trolling

>> No.6818354

>>6818351
Our number system is base 10, metric uses the same base.

Metric is base 10.

>> No.6818357

>>6818347
retard detected

>> No.6818359

>>6818347
you did a good job of mentioning other systems but they arent as easy as a base 10 system. thats all there is to it

>> No.6818363

>>6818351
>"reported for trolling"
>is trolling himself

metric is 10^x based, idiot.

>> No.6818377

>>6817173
lbf (pound force) in the ideal rocket equation is difficult to represent in SI due to gravity canceling wierdly. The Russians even invented kgf (kg force) to deal with this.. kg is mass normally for you amateurs

>> No.6818483

>>6818322
>I think you have to admit that the metric system is a hell of a lot more intuitive than the imperial system anon.
i don't have to admit that at all. there is no intuitive benefit to the definition of a kilogram.

are you talking about SI units? that's not the metric system.

>> No.6818485

>>6817013
Because Imperial is better. I can get about 2.5 centimeters for ever inch, this exchange rate shows Imperial is much more valuable then Metric.

>> No.6819231

>>6818483
>>6818347
Sorry? What is that about the ubiquitous use of imperial base units but using SI prefixes? Oh wait; that's retarded and nobody does that. If you're going to start using SI prefixes then you might as well at least switch to the same base units as the rest of the world too. It's literally the same as if the rest of the world adopted a universal language but america decided it was going to keep on speaking whatever it was before because it can't be bothered to make the switch despite how convenient it would be for everyone

>> No.6819234
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6819234

>>6818351

>> No.6819236

>>6818483
>i don't have to admit that at all.

You do if you don't want to look ridiculous.