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American Chopper vs. The Metric System


MechMan

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I know the math in the video isn't the problem

Your right, it's the old man changing the measurement, first he says 6 7/8 then says 6 1/8. I use to watch that show, stopped when it became more fighting than anything, and the bikes started looking not so special sometimes, got burnt out on them I guess ?

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When you think about it we went from a foot which is infinitely variable to a meter which is also variable. The Earth's diameter constantly changes as it orbits the sun. A better reference would have been to use a "constant" that exists in our Milky Way galaxy. Actually IMOP that was the best show on television. If your a machinest the metric system is still harder to fractionalize---.00001 meter?, centimeter?, millimeter?, decimeter? Whereas .ooooooo1" inches is always inches.

JJK

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The failure of this country to join the planet with a non-medieval measurement system is both major insane as well as an enormous impediment to the economy.

Might as well change our currency back to pence, shillings, etc. Rather odd that we wouldn't dream of doing that but remain attached to a completely non-comprehensible measurement system.

It's come up here before and I expect to hear people actually defend this system. Fuhgeddaboudit. it's indefenisble. I rather hoped the Mars lander fiasco would draw attention to this, but it seems we are determined to be bypassed by history and maintain our quaint and queer customs.

Oh...the censor is going to get that perfectly good word used correctly in this context, isn't it?

Dave

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When you think about it we went from a foot which is infinitely variable to a meter which is also variable. The Earth's diameter constantly changes as it orbits the sun. A better reference would have been to use a "constant" that exists in our Milky Way galaxy. Actually IMOP that was the best show on television. If your a machinest the metric system is still harder to fractionalize---.00001 meter?, centimeter?, millimeter?, decimeter? Whereas .ooooooo1" inches is always inches.

JJK

I think the meter has been redefined twice. Once to a bar of platimum kept in Paris, then to some atomic standard that isn't variable. In any event, it's less variable than the size of the King's foot...

Dave

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Slowly but surely the automotive industry is now with the metric system. I have a "master" tool set from back in the race car days. Rarely used the metric tools. Now, with two Sportsters ('06 & '07) to maintain and work on, I rarely use the SAE sets. But.... at some point when my son is older and we do a race car with a vintage motor..... those dusty relics of the past will become quite valuable.

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Just think maybe 150 years from now with maybe 20 different space alien civilizations each with a measurement system based on the diameter of their home planet. That means 20 different measurement systems. Think maybe they could base the interspanational system on the speed of light through a vacuum or something. I'm fantasizing on how long the "Choppers" would be arguing about dimensions on a bike delivery to the "Klingons".

JJK

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Just think maybe 150 years from now with maybe 20 different space alien civilizations each with a measurement system based on the diameter of their home planet.

Won't matter as long as they are based on rational fractionalization. Base 8, base 10, base 12, or whatever is easy enough to convert. Length of the Prime Poobah's pecker? Problematic at best when compared to the neighboring Great Gobbler's Temporal Tendril...

Dave

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The original metre was based on an Earth dimension that is slightly variable, but the current metre is based on the speed of light, which is a constant.

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1299 792 458 of a second.

Machinists in Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and other countries using the metric system seem to have no problems doing precision work with it. There is no need to work with fractions. A centimetre is 1/100 of a metre. A millimetre is 1/1000 of a metre. A kilometre is 1000 metres. That seems pretty simple.

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It's no big deal. You just use conversion factors. In pharmacy we do it all the time. You can also throw in the avoirdupois system and then the apothecary. If you don't have any scruples your not worth a dram. It's all relative we could be using cubits

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It's no big deal. You just use conversion factors. In pharmacy we do it all the time. You can also throw in the avoirdupois system and then the apothecary. If you don't have any scruples your not worth a dram. It's all relative we could be using cubits

Yeah, NASA did that on the Mars lander. Splat.

So, I am supposed to trust my pharmacist?

Why convert at all as opposed to simply using a modern system that isn't likely to change?

Dave

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Yeah, NASA did that on the Mars lander. Splat.

So, I am supposed to trust my pharmacist?

Why convert at all as opposed to simply using a modern system that isn't likely to change?

Dave

Mallette I personally don't care if you trust your pharmacist or not.

Why convert at all? Some of the things we use are based in the other systems. Just because you use one system over another does not guarantee that an error will not be made. It's like knowing several languages and being able to translate. Should everyone be required to speak just one language? Should we all just use solid state amps and digital music since that is what is new and being accepted world wide? There is room for all different types of systems in this world. Dosing of old drugs was done in the apothacary system and just because someone says 5 grains of aspirin dosen't mean that it is wrong or that I can't convert it to approximately 325 mg in my head instantly. The error that is committed is in not knowing the units you are using or being diligent enough to check to see what the units are.

Who is to say that any modern system isn't likely to change? Modern systems could change at any time. We have to be smart enough to recognize what system is being used and being able to convert. The distance that light travels in a year is the same if it is measured in meters/second, kilometers/year or furlongs per fortnight.

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Merkin, I'd like to engage but I've heard this before. Makes no sense to me nor do I understand the urge to be last nation standing from the middle ages. Has nothing to do with languages or whatever. Has everything to do with life, competitive advantage, science, and ending the struggle our children have trying to make sense of a system that has no basis in sense.

It costs us untold billions. Heck, billions just in that dumb mistake on the Mars mission.

Dave

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