Metric or Imperial?

Which system of measurement is the best?

  • Total voters
    96
Seriously. We have to use the Imperial system (or International System of Measurements as they call it) in school. Makes school work that much harder.
 
TollBooth Willie said:
Seriously. We have to use the Imperial system (or International System of Measurements as they call it) in school. Makes school work that much harder.
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I screwed up on a physics exam because I wrote my answer in Newtons when they wanted it in "slugs". Wtf? I've never even heard of slugs. (Apparentley its 32 pounds)
 
Metric all the way.

Seriously. We have to use the Imperial system (or International System of Measurements as they call it) in school. Makes school work that much harder.
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lol
 
theotherguy said:
I screwed up on a physics exam because I wrote my answer in Newtons when they wanted it in "slugs". Wtf? I've never even heard of slugs. (Apparentley its 32 pounds)
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slugs? wtf that's damn stupid. Slugs are something you use as ammunition for a railgun
 
Oh yeah, let's name them slugs, instead of after the guy that discovered them. That'll work. :|

Anyway, how many inches in a galon?
 
Well, great, now I look like an idiot down there with those two nobodys :|
 
theotherguy said:
I screwed up on a physics exam because I wrote my answer in Newtons when they wanted it in "slugs". Wtf? I've never even heard of slugs. (Apparentley its 32 pounds)
Click to expand...

Maybe they thought you were trying to use the Apple Newtons

Newton_eat_up_martha.jpg
 
well, it had to do with acceleration around the orbit of a planet, and the data was in ft/sec^2. and pounds and I simply converted them all into metric (because it was much easier) and when I got to the end I wasn't sure what to put the answer in, so I just left it in metric. 1 Slug is apparentley equal to 1 G in imperial (or 9.8 Newtons in metric)
 
theotherguy said:
well, it had to do with acceleration around the orbit of a planet, and the data was in ft/sec^2. and pounds and I simply converted them all into metric (because it was much easier) and when I got to the end I wasn't sure what to put the answer in, so I just left it in metric. 1 Slug is apparentley equal to 1 G in imperial (or 9.8 Newtons in metric)
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Silly. I'm quite sure even Nasa uses metric measurements for all of their R&D and just converts it to Imperial for the public on occasion.
 
"gimme a 3/4" socket."
"here."
"okay that's one size too small, give me the next one larger."
"9/17th"?"
"No, 22/73rd."
"oh right, my bad."

as opposed too:

"gimme a 13mm socket."
"here."
"okay that's one size too small, give me the next one larger."
"15mm"?"
"You're a f**kin moron."
"I hate you!"
*cries*
 
Metric FTMFW! Imperial can GTFO. USA seriously needs to switch gradually to the more convenient and effective system. I don't think it's a matter of people's ability to adapt, because metric is easy as shit but rather a matter of cost of having to reprint all measurements in metrics.
 
My car still has miles, I found this was bad when I was going 60 miles in a 60 Km/h zone... NOT GOOD

P.S. I chose not to realize I was obviously going too fast.
 
Stigmata said:
I don't see how "10cm in a decimeter, 10 dm in a metre, 1000m in a kilometer" is less simple than "12in in a foot, 3 ft in a yard, 1760yd in a mile".
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I have never heard of a decimeter in my life.
 
Solaris said:
I have never heard of a decimeter in my life.
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Lol what? I'm an American and have used Imperial all my life, and I still know what a decimeter is. Come on solaris, pay attention in school for once.
 
MiccyNarc said:
Lol what? I'm an American and have used Imperial all my life, and I still know what a decimeter is. Come on solaris, pay attention in school for once.
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Honestly, in the UK education system, we've always used metric and never mentioned decimeters.
 
Solaris said:
Honestly, in the UK education system, we've always used metric and never mentioned decimeters.
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Wow. The US educates its students about a system that it doesn't even use than a nation that actually uses the system. Mind boggling.
 
Why the hell would you want a decimeter, it's pointless, might as well say 10cm, or 15cm rather than 1.5 decimeters.
 
Solaris said:
Why the hell would you want a decimeter, it's pointless, might as well say 10cm, or 15cm rather than 1.5 decimeters.
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Then why not say 100 centimeters or 200 centimeters when we talk about Meters.
 
Yeah wtf. I know just about every prefix to the metric system up to mega and as low as nano -- and I live in Michigan!
 
Well I'm not surprised, it's not like decimeters are used much at all...ever...here anyway...
 
Because we use decimeters over here all the time.
 
eh? I meant to say I'm not surprised that somebody has never heard of decimeters, somebody being Solaris in this case.

Should have quoted him or something, sry :P
 
Oh.... oh God.... what have I done??! ;(

Actually, to be fair, people only prefix a unit if it's a multiple of 1000 or 1/1000. Or they should. I guess the centimetre gained popularity because it was the closest comparator to an inch when SI came out.

By the way, there is also a decameter and a hectometer (10 and 100 metres, respectively) that nobody uses.
 
There was an interesting and very infamous incident involving metric / imperial conversions in 1983 when the fuel was miscalculated for a Boeing 767 en route to Edmonton from Montreal.

I had always heard of it from my Dad because he worked in the airline industry all of his life maintaining the equipment planes use for navigation with Nav Canada.

Wikipedia said:
Gimli Glider is a nickname given to an aircraft involved in an infamous incident in aviation history. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12 km) altitude about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to a forced landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba.

The error occurred when it came time to calculate how much fuel was needed for the flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The calculations were based on weight instead of volume, which required a conversion in the measurements. The incident aircraft was the first aircraft in the Air Canada fleet that measured fuel in kilograms, whereas all of the other manuals and planes in the Air Canada fleet used pounds. The pilots used a unit conversion factor of 1.77 lb/L. However, a fuel load measured in kilograms should have used the conversion factor of 0.8 kg/L. After using the 1.77 factor, the figure 20,400 was entered into the aircraft's computer, attempting to tell it that they had 20,400 pounds of fuel on board. Because of the switch to the metric system, the computer's firmware had been changed to interpret the amount entered in kilograms. The computer interpreted the figure as 20,400 kilograms and indicated that there was enough fuel based on the erroneous input. In fact, the aircraft only had 9,144 kg (20,160 lb) onboard, too little for the flight to Edmonton.
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glider.jpg


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

All the nay-sayers of the Metric system surely cite this as an example of what can happen when switching systems of measurement.
 
Except in reality it's just what happens when one country refuses to go along with the rest of the world :P
 
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