Are you still imperial?

[mddolson]

Walter Bubbled: I was being sarcastic, pointing out that the system is not as logical as many claim.

Ah!, touche

I am not a proponent of the metric system, but I do believe however it's far more logical than the Imperial system, which was based on the Imperial Monarch's proportions at the time :

A foot = length of King's foot
1 inch = length of tip of thumb to first knuckle, which was also 1/12 length of his foot ( so that' why there are 12 inches in a foot)

So what happened when a new King come along, new measures?
I quess it would depend on whether he had big feet or not!

Mike D

 

[mexman]

I live in a bilingual country but speak only one official language.

I live in a metric country but find myself bilingual when it comes to measurment. Although Canada converted to the metric system when I was still in school, I find that different systems of measurement work for different things.

When diving internationally I'm confortable with metric. At home in Canada, I use imperial. I seem to have ended up with both types of guages and use them interchangeably.

Funny thing is when I'm mountaineering, I can only think of elevation in feet but distance to me is always in km. I tend to think of depth in diving in feet but prefer my tank pressure in bar. Go figure! It might have something to do with the mountains seeming higher and the dives deeper when related in feet instead of meters.

 

[frogxman]

Funny thing,

the both systems are hopelessly mixed for me. I live in Canada too, and originally I came from country with a metric system, but need to calculate depth and pressure in imperial. The worst thing is that I have mixed equipment i.e. my dive computer is imperial and my console is metric. I have difficulties in reporting my pressure any time, especially when I need to tell my buddy under the water how much air I've got as well as to understand how much air he/she (trying to be nice, ladies ) has.
Any ideas what to do?

 

[frogxman]

Do you know that the mission to Mars (I think that was Mars) failed several times because of the errors in calculations caused by conversion from metric to imperial (or opposite)?
But anyway it is cheaper than convert the whole country to metric.

 

[greg somers]

I learnt to dive in '85 under the imperial system. I have an imperial depth guage and SPG still. They get regularly serviced and work fine so they ain't getting dumped yet. Metric is the rave but when I used metric gear I still feel like I've gone over to the otherside and been unfaithful....Hahahaha!!!!
The one and only
Gasman

 

[KrisB]

Arnaud once bubbled...
A kid in a metric country learns 3 basic measures at school: the gram, the meter and the liter.

Actually, it is the gramme, the metre and the litre. When the SI/metric units are taught in the US, it is the gram, the meter and the liter.

Up here, a meter refers to "a device that measures and records the quantity, degree, or rate of something, especially the amount of electricity, gas, or water used." (Oxford English Dictionary); and a gram is "a chickpea or other pulse used as food" (idem.).



Just thought I'd stir the pot a little.

 

[diverbrian]

I dive in imperial and because I use it all the time, I have fewer problems with psi, ft, and degrees F because that is the way that I think.

I work for a company that ships internationally as a chemical operator. We pump in our large quantity materials by the pound, but ship it by the kilo and I have to convert it to Kilos to tell the computer system what we used to write off material in inventory control. We measure smaller quantities by the gm.

I can tell you off hand that a pound is equal to 454 gms or 2.2046 pounds is equal to one kilo. I convert those fairly easily in my head. I know off hand that a kilometer is equal to .6 miles from my times driving in Canada. To the rest of the world....

we are coming around over here, give us time!

 

[padiscubapro]

Dr Paul Thomas once bubbled...
Thanks Rick,

No one ever explained that to me. It certainly makes for easier calculations. The nearest I got to being an artilleryman was my Sergeant Major's offer of letting me take a mortar base plate on a battalion jump. I reluctantly declined the offer of 45 lbs (or was it 45 kgs?) of additional weight!!!

Pi x 2000 = 6,284 mils in a full circle. 90 degrees = 1,571 mils. ( I much prefer degrees and minutes of arc for navigation!)

I am not sure decimals are due to us having ten fingers, I think it is more to do with moving decimal points and the mathematical powers of the magical number "10".

Is this thread about The Metric system or a metric system? I concur with mdonaldson. The Metric system is based on the Metre as the unit oflength and all other measures of length follow from it; in divisions of ten, 100 or 1,000 with appropriate prefixes. Because the area of an object is determined by the squared power of its linear dimensions, and volume by the cube power of its linear dimensions the prefixes are not interchangeable from length to area to volume.

In the scientific world units are normally restricted to the power of 10^+-3 (that is one thousand units or a thousandth of a unit.) It is far easier to understand and to work with 2.5 millimetres than 0.0025, 2.5 x10^-3 or 2.5/1000 of a metre, which are all the same length!

As for microscopy, I do not know if there is a term for a millionth of a Metre (1x10^-6) but if I remember correctly one Micron is 1x10^-9, while an Angstrom is a tenth of a Micron; 1 x 10 ^-10 Metres.

For the same reason (simplicity in the use of those particular units alone) we tend to use the same prefixes for volume, at least. A decilitre is 1/10 of a litre and a millilitre is 1/1000 of a litre. Blood cell volumes are measuerd in fentilitres.

A decimeter (pronounced "desimeter") is a tenth of a metre and a decameter (dekametre) would be 10 metres. A centimetre is 1/100 of a metre (and 100 meters would I suspect be a centametre but this a term that I have never used.) A millimetre is 1/1000 of a metre and 1000 meters is a mil . . . a kilometre!!!!

A kilogram is 1,000 grams. A litre is 1,000 mls so if one ml. weighs 1 gram a litre weighs a kilogram.

What about bytes, kilobytes, megabites and gigabites? There are 1,028 bytes in a kilobyte becuse this is a binary, not a decimal system.

All of which proves you should only use the system with which you are familiar or you WILL make mistakes

You have a mistake so here is a table for you

otta [Y] 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 = 10^24
zetta [Z] 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 = 10^21
exa [E] 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 = 10^18
peta [P] 1 000 000 000 000 000 = 10^15
tera [T] 1 000 000 000 000 = 10^12
giga [G] 1 000 000 000 (a thousand millions = a billion)
mega [M] 1 000 000 (a million)
kilo [k] 1 000 (a thousand)
hecto [h] 100 (a hundred)
deca [da]10 (ten)
1
deci [d] 0.1 (a tenth)
centi [c] 0.01 (a hundredth)
milli [m] 0.001 (a thousandth)
micro [µ] 0.000 001 (a millionth)
nano [n] 0.000 000 001 (a thousand millionth)
pico [p] 0.000 000 000 001 = 10^-12
femto [f] 0.000 000 000 000 001 = 10^-15
atto [a] 0.000 000 000 000 000 001 = 10^-18
zepto [z] 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 001 = 10^-21
yocto [y] 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 001 = 10^-24

 

[Arnaud]

KrisB once bubbled...

...Just thought I'd stir the pot a little.

Not my pot! I'm French and know all about it.

But when in Rome...

 

[sheck33]

i am metric 'all the way', at work, in school and elsewhere.
however, i have just switched my divecomputer display from meters to feet. Since the foot is a smaller unit it allows for more accurate depthkeeping. I like it. Also i switched my SPG from bar to PSI because i found out it is easier to be consistent in one system PLUS if i dive in a team it is a good thing when there is no confusion caused by mixing imperial and metric. As far as converting from one system to the other, that has become easy to the point that it has gotten automatic.

But for everything else metric is the way to go of course.