The goal is the same as it's always been: get the most resources for the least amount of effort. This is true whether you're a squirrel, a person, a company, or a government.
I never feel any guilt about taking things from the trash. About trespassing to somewhere you're not supposed to be? Sure. But if it's something that's 100% clear is in the trash and will be going to the landfill and not going to some charity reuse place or something, and I want it, I'm taking it.
When I find people recycling out of our trash bins I just remind them that I have to ask them to leave because it's a liability issue. Then I let them know what our office hours actually are.
Depends on the trash. A co-worker and I would regularly grab prototype machines out of our dumpster. Thousands of dollars of quality electromechanical hardware (motors, precision linear slides, pneumatic cylinders, mini-compressors & solenoid valves, etc.) and big sheets of 6061 aluminum for the taking. Company had to throw it out and tell us not to take back out in order to take the write off.
At one point we upgraded to having an intern standing in the dumpster throwing stuff out to us as we directed him.
I know that, but Americans don't and ask for "Imperial". No one has ever asked me for "US customary". Either way, I am using those units to be facetious more than compliant ;-)
In practice the volume units are a much bigger problem. I have not hit anyone with the "cubic hand" yet...
No but they had a clean year of 12 months, 30 days each (3 ten-day weeks) plus 5/6 holiday days at the end of the calendar (around the September equinox).
Also, the months were given names by a Poet, and the days had minerals, vertues or plants instead of Saints. The calendar itself was pretty cool.
Honestly, if they had 5 weeks of 6 days each instead of the 3 weeks of 10 days, I'd even call it the perfect calendar.
Better would be an even more fundamental change: instead of trying to standardize everything on base 10, recognize that base 8 or 16 is much more convenient in both computing and everyday life, and standardize around that.
Base-60 for everyday life would be nuts; you really think it would be more convenient to have 60 independent digit symbols?
There's an argument for 12 for sure, but I still think having a power of 2 would be more beneficial than having the extra factors. 8 would give you the same number of integer factors as 10, plus all the benefits of being a power of 2.
Having decimal numbers, it’s the best solution. Otherwise you’re bound to make mistakes scaling things up or down.
> a liter is not a cubic meter
Well, it’s a dm^3, close enough ;)
Conversion is trivial, 1 m^3 is 1000 l.
A cubic metre is a bit large for everyday use, but it makes sense e.g. when measuring water consumption or larger volumes. The litre also had the advantage of being close to 2 pints, so it already made sense as a unit when it was introduced. Contrary to hours with 100s.
> 'kilogram' is the base unit, not 'gram'
Yeah, this one is perplexing. It’s an annoying inconsistency on an otherwise beautifully regular system.
I don't understand your issue between gram and kilo gram: gram is the base unit and the prefix kilo, meaning one thousand just says that 1 kg = 1000 grams.
It is exactly the same as meters and kilometers: meters is the base unit and 1 km = 1000 meters.
There's an etymological reason for the word gram. It derives from a greek word γράμμα which roughly translates as "small weight" and made its way into French via the latin gramma to the French gramme, and the English gram. And 1kg is just very chunky. It wouldn't be right to refer to that as small.
As the name kilogram implies, gram is actually the unit here. But it was derived from the mass of a standard 1 kg chunk of metal that lives in a museum somewhere near Paris. This is the literal base unit of mass (at least historically, the definition has since been redefined using the Planck constant). A 1 gram chunk would have been tiny and be tedious to work with doing e.g. experiments with gravity.
They also have the original prototype meter in the form of a length of platinum-iridium alloy bar. And because the specific reference object for mass weighs 1kg instead of 1g, it means 1kg is the base unit in SI.
But quite obvious in the system of measurements, the gram is the logical unit here that you augment with prefixes and people commonly handle a lot of mass quantities that are in the order of grams rather than kg.
Derivations are simple. Simply apply powers of ten and their commonly used prefixes (kilo, milli, mega, micro etc.). The base unit is something physical that you can point at as the base unit. Or at least historically that was the intention.
There's also convenience. A 1l of water is about 1kg and a volume of 10x10x10cm. or 1 dm3. That's not accidental but intentional. It makes it easy to work with volumes and masses for people. Never mind that a liter of water isn't exactly a kg (because water purity, temperature, and a few other things).
Kilogram is indeed the base SI unit and not gram. It’s an exception.
Every formula using SI will expect mass in kg and you will be off a factor of 1000 if you use gram as the base unit. Same with derivative units like the newton which all use mass in kg for conversion.
It’s an historical artifact, as it was easier to manufacture a reference kilogram than a reference gram.
Considering today we set the kilogram by fixing the Planck constant and deriving it from there, we can just divide each side of the definition by 1000 and use that as a base unit. Using kg as the base unit is completely arbitrary, as we can derive each unit of weight directly from the meter and the second, not from the base unit.
It's not the same reason. Gram is already part of the nomenclature, wug is not. The change I asked about would shift the relation of the prefixes to the masses: kilogram would represent a mass 1,000 times larger than it does now.
It's exactly the same reason: gram referenced a known quantity. Changing it by a few insignificant digits because of the kilogram update wouldn't force people to realign their perception of it.
Changing it to ~1,000 times what it used to be, or giving it a new name, would force people to realign.
There's reason many people still prefer customary and imperial units, and it's not just bigotry and nationalism (even if they play a part in that preference).
The kilogram is no longer defined by a physical artifact, fwiw.
Anyway, the point is the inconsistency in the system due to the kilogram being the base unit. So derived units are defined in terms of kilogram rather than gram. Say, the unit of force, Newton (N), is defined as kgm/s^2 and not gm/s^2). Or pressure, Pascal (Pa) which is N/m^2 which inherits N being defined in terms of the kilogram). And so on. Anyway, an annoying inconsistency maybe but doesn't really affect usage of the system once you get used to it.
The biggest source of communication issues around these unit systems is that in metric, you're supposed to reach for decimals when working with the units, and in imperial, you're supposed to reach for fractions when working with the units.
Which is why the imperial lovers all cry out about their fractions not "working" in metric. Yes, exactly, that is the point. They don't understand that they're reaching for a tool they shouldn't be reaching for, and then they blame the unit system for it.
It's pretty relevant with computers. If we were used to working in base-8 or base-16 in everyday life, numerous aspects of programming would be simplified.
Except now you can't divide accurately by 5. Or 10.
You're making an argument from familiarity. Yes, a 12-base system using fractions works very neatly in a small human-sized domain, but it disintegrates into complete uselessness outside that domain. That's why you get ridiculousness as things being 13/64th of an inch, or that there's 63360 inches in a mile. It's unworkable for very large distances and very small distances. With a metre and standard prefixes, you don't need any conversion factors, and you can represent any distance at any scale with a single unit.
> That's why you get ridiculousness as things being 13/64th of an inch
Such fractions are very rarely used, you're more likely to use mils (1/1000 of an inch) at that scale.
> or that there's 63360 inches in a mile.
Likewise, something that will probably never come up in your life. Inches/feet/yards and miles just remain separate things, never mixed.
> With a metre and standard prefixes, you don't need any conversion factors, and you can represent any distance at any scale with a single unit.
There's no intuition for them. Knowing what a meter is does not help with getting a feel for a kilometer. They might as well be as separate as feet and miles at that scale.
> Quick, what's 11/64" + 3/8"?
That one's not even hard, it's just a fraction. 35/64"
> Quick, which weight is bigger: 0.6lbs or 10oz?
Another arbitrary problem that will probably never come up, but to entertain you: since 0.5 lbs is 8oz, adding 1.6oz to that (another tenth of a lbs) results in 9.6oz. 10oz is bigger than 0.6 lbs. Not hard, but at least mildly harder than the first question.
None of this really had to do with the convenience highlighted initially: 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard make extremely convenient divisible factors. You can trivially divide things by 2, 3, 4, and 6 and keep with whole integer values. The same definitely cannot be said of metric.
Are you purposely doing this? That is obviously not what I meant. Nobody says "3 miles, 500 feet", they say "3.1 miles". Effectively two systems of distance measurement: inches/feet/yards (near scale), and miles (distant scale).
"5 feet 10 inches" is completely normal and fine.
> This requires you to start with 12 inches. If you're making a cupboard to fit in an 18¾" (476mm) space, it's no use, or is only randomly useful.
So you cut the cupboard to fit a 18¾" space, no big deal. Same as anything else, and just as random as 476mm.
Typically they come in (integer!) 12-inch, 24-inch, 36-inch, or 48-inch variants.
They are talking past each other. One is saying, "metric is better than imperial", the other is saying "imperial works". Neither claim is relevant to the other.
Obviously, the base should be the same for units as it is for numbers in general, but there are good arguments in favor of using 12 for both. Then all your examples become as simple as division by 5 is in decimal.
5 and 10 are arbitrary numbers though. Halving and doubling are really the only special operations, and base-8 or base-16 would be superior to 10 or 12 for those.
The topic of this thread is why the base 10 number system is less than optimal, and a different base would be better. Obviously having to convert to other bases when we use a base 10 system normally is inconvenient, but that's not the point.
Of course... But - look at your open hand right now. Count the number of segments on your 4 fingers - it's 12. You can even use your thumb as a pointer and count one handed.
Or forget about the thumbs and just count fingers. 8 would be a better base than 10 for sure, and arguably better than 12. (Easier doubling and halving, easier binary conversions, but fewer integer factors and fewer digits.)
I think there is true utility in choosing a unit scheme that matches your number scheme. So we use decimal numbers, makes sense to use decimal units. It seems you're arguing that the real mistake is using decimal numbers to begin with?
There's two reasons to use a measurement system -- one of those is for sort of every day work -- cooking, home carpentry and the like, and in that case, having something like the imperial system is nice, because you can divide things usefully.
The _other_ reason to use a measurement system is for doing _science_, and for that, having everything in base ten makes things _immensely_ easier, especially if you're working the math out by hand
Again, this is just familiarity. You think it's super neat that you can divide a cup of whatever by 2 or 3 or 4, but if I tell you to divide it by 5, you're gonna deflect and ask me "who does that?!?"
Imperial works neatly for a small domain of problems, and is useless outside that domain.
Metric is less neat in that small domain, but works equally well everywhere.
Firstly, we can divide a cup by 2, 3, and 4 in the kitchen because those are common measuring-cup sizes. Nobody is prevented from using a fractional size: if I divide a cup by 5 then I have 1/5th of a cup, nothing more and nothing less.
While 1/4th of a cup is 2 oz, and 1/3rd of a cup is 16 teaspoons, 1/5th of a cup doesn't divide evenly into a smaller unit and that's why "we don't do it", but there is nothing to stop the chef from using 9 teaspoons. [Or he can instinctively go up to 45mL on his graduated measuring cup, which almost always has both systems on it!] Teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, cups, quarts and gallons are all inter-related multiples, and once you internalize it, you can convert like a boss.
While I'm sure it's lovely that metric measures divide by 2 and 5, that's all they divide by, so in terms of divisors, you've lost 3, 4, 6, 8...
So if it really is about dividing things usefully without resorting to fractions, then using a system that is nothing but multiples of 10 is a handicap, when we've had systems with lovely 12s and 16s with many different options for dividing them up.
But the metric people can simply chop up the measures even more finely and claim victory. For example, currency: it was in multiples of 16 or 8 which allowed for limited permutations. Decimalization chopped it into pennies, and we find 100 gradations in every pound sterling. All that did is make base-10 math easier for bean counters, and confuse people on the streets with a mystifying array of coinage. [Mental math indicates that it must increase the volume of coins per average transaction, as well.]
If a basic customary unit of length is an inch, many people can put two fingers together and estimate that on the human scale. But who can estimate or eyeball a millimeter?
Oh, and, have you ever found a nice British recipe in metric, shopped at your American grocery store, and prepared that in your American kitchen with your Fahrenheit range? You will eventually want to tip it all in the rubbish bin. Adam Ragusea suggests as much: https://youtu.be/TE8xg3d8dBg?si=SD8wLxD6ib6InLX4
From an European view who has accustomed to imperial units, these discussions are so tiring. The metric vs imperial debates almost always come down to just personally preferring what you're familiar with. I've had the exact same feelings about imperial units as Americans express of metric. I really don't have a problem estimating what 10 cm or 1 kg or 1 kilometer or 2 degrees of Celsius difference in the weather is.
And the division issue is almost trivial in my view; you can just take 120 cm or 12 gram quantity. You don't magically lose the ability to divide things by other than 10 or 5 or 2 when using metric. Its not like decimal fractions disappear in imperial systems either. The metric system is there for making it easy to scale things between orders of magnitude and have sane conversions between units.
> If a basic customary unit of length is an inch, many people can put two fingers together and estimate that on the human scale. But who can estimate or eyeball a millimeter?
If you'd grown with a metric system you could eyeball a centimeter with ease. Also comparing orders of magnitude different measures for estimation isn't fair, how precise would be your guess of a barleycorn?
Go look at the Nevada Test Site on Google maps. About 1000 nukes were set off there. Las Vegas is only about 100 miles away and by all accounts seems to be thriving.
In a nuclear attack, it's unlikely "we'll" be fine, but someone will be.
If this is a government document, how is it not public domain? If it's not a government document, why is it hosted on a .gov?
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