Talk:Metrication/Archive 1

Concrete

>In concrete work, adding one gallon of water to one (cubic) yard of concrete increases the slump by >one inch.

Are these British gallons (4.5 L) or US gallons (3.78 L)? Blaise 21:53, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, and is it on the ground, in a wheelbarrow, in a cement mixer, in a wine barrel or what? Perhaps this would be best just deleted. Jimp 21Sep05

Gyproc

What is "gyproc"? Sheetrock? -phma

Yes, gyproc is synonymous with sheetrock or drywall. Steggall 14:13, 13 Jul 2005 (UTC)

UK road signs

Why won't the UK change road signs?

They say they are worried drivers will be confused. I heard somewhere the UK government says they won't change road signs until a majority of British drivers received a metric education (right now a majority of drivers were went to school before metric was introduced)... which apparently is only 10 years or so away... The other issue I think, is they want to change to metric gradually, so that those idiot "anti-metric campaigners" don't get to influence the public too much. The recent requirement that loose goods be sold in metric, led to the "metric martyrs" rubbish: they don't want too much of that too often. -- SJK

I obtained a document a couple of months from the Department of Transport under the new Freedom of Information Act. The document showed that no accurate costings of the cost of changeover were ever produced, but back-of-the-envelope estimates were in the region of tens of millions. I suspect that a British government which spent sums of this order on metrication would be pilloried in the press, even though in the long run metrication, taken as a whole, is expected to produce a net financial benefit. Blaise 21:58, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Idiot "anti-metric campaigners

Are these idiot "anti-metric campaigners" the reason the USA is having trouble giving up miles, feet and inches etc too?

I don't know what you are implying by "idiot anti-metric campaigners" - there really doesn't seem to be any organized pressure to move to metric, nor any general support for the idea.

As the United States is a huge country, the average American doesn't leave the country often, and so there is limited incentive for most residents to switch. Implementing the metric system everywhere in the country would be hugely expensive, and seems impractical to most (myself included). At a time in which our government faces a budgetary deficit, the thought of taking up all those hundreds of thousands of roadsigns and replacing them with newly-minted metric ones doesn't exactly thrill people. Does it matter what "the rest of the world" is doing if you only leave the borders of your country once in a blue moon? (And when we do leave the country, all we really need to know is Celsius temperatures and kilometers. The other stuff doesn't matter.)

As the article says, scientists who need the added precision in their work use the metric system anyways. Most people who have come out of high school in the last few years understand metric measurement, at least as far as distance, mass, and volume are concerned. And college students should understand Celsius temperatures after taking any lab class. I think the article is right in saying that Americans feel the Standard/Imperial System to be more personal, especially in regards to temperature. But if Americans are able to function fine using mostly the old system and occasionally the metric then what is the harm? Americans also aren't usually in favor of following what the rest of the world is doing about anything anyways....

Why should industry waste billions of dollars converting American industry then having to deal with resistant workers, when it is so much easier to shut the factory down, move the jobs to India and China and have them build the products in metric? Burger flippers and Wal-Mart greeters don't need to be metric literate.

Metric martyrs

I've restored the statement about court rulings against 'metric martyrdom'. This had previously been deleted and replaced with a reference to the most recent ruling, a reference which I've also left intact. I can't see any reason not to include both these facts. It certainly makes sense to include a note about the lack of legal success rate of the metric martyrs in domestic and international courts. They lost every case, even their appeal to the highest courts. Toby W 21:37, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've altered it not to use the term 'metric martyrs' in an editorial way. this is a POV term used by one particular side. Morwen 21:44, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

Is it really? I thought both sides used the term. (Still, I don't see any problem at all with your edit.) Toby W 08:26, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether this is true:

Apart from the US, Liberia and Myanmar have also not officially adopted the system.

Given that the UK still sells beer in pints and has road signs in miles, can it be said to have officially adopted the system? --Delirium 05:05, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

Some Caribbean countries do not use the metric system, or at least not in everyday things like road signs. I believe most of the East Caribbean countries, along with Jamaica, retain the imperial system. I'm not sure if they are in transition or not.

Bolts 1 in vs. M24

The example of the 1-inch bolt that is different from an M24 bolt is unlucky. Metric (iso) threads have a different angle than American bolts. For example, M4 and #8-32 have the same diameter, but they don't match anyway. Han-Kwang (talk) 16:28, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Monomaniacal"

"The monomaniacal decimalism of the metric system continues to reflect the French Revolution's ideology of Pure Reason at the expense of human scale and the irregularities and accidents of historical traditions."

This seems very POV to me, this sentence should be deleted.

Agreed - done. (By the way, please sign your posts by typing four tildes.) Toby W 13:06, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Has the metric system started to admit units that are not multiplied or divided by tens from the base unit? This insistence on tens and only tens is the very definition of monomania, as well as one of the chief reasons why the system is too unwieldy for human scale applications. There does seem to be a whole lot of pro-metric evangelism here; why shouldn't one of the arguments against metrification appear in the section devoted to opponents of metrification? -- Smerdis of Tlön 19:59, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree that dissent from metrication is exactly what belongs in the section about opposition. But, as with the pro-metrication arguments, each argument must be presented in an objective way, so the resulting article is a balanced NPOV review of all the arguments, not just a series of opposing subjective opinions. Feel free to add as many anti-metrication arguments as you see fit, but please present them factually rather than subjectively, with phrases such as "Opponents of metrication have argued that?" and "One claim often made against metrication is?". Feel free, also, to tone down any parts which you feel are "pro-metric evangelism" to make them neutral too. Toby W 10:14, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Currently the text is: "It has been argued that the metric system, with its monomaniacal decimalism, its perceived "tunnel visioned" insistence on ten as the sole multiplier or divisor among permitted units, sacrifices convenience and human scale for the sake of mathematics."

I think that that is not a good example of NPOV. Essentially it reads: "It has been argued that A sacrifices B", which is NPOV, but suggests that "A" and "B" by itself are undisputed facts. I don't think it is generally agreed upon that the metric system has a psychiatric disorder called monomaniacal decimalism.

Han-Kwang (talk) 13:28, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, I'm happy with the results of Han-Kwang's edits. Toby W 14:31, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I found the section about Ideology of the metric system to be fundamentally biased, there is no "ideology" or whatsoever conspiracy. It also contained redundant information about the French Revolutionary Calendar and metric time, and quite eyebrow-raising statements about "monomania", "decimalism" and some remarks against "pure reason", other than a not-so-well hidden prejudice about the metric system being invented by the French. I believe the section did not add any useful information, so I deleted it.

• Using always 10 as a multiple is not "monomania" or "decimalism", it's practical sense. You move from one unit to the next only adding zeros and moving points, no calculations necessary.
• Without the "Reason goddess" of enlightenment and the French revolution, modern democracy would not be here. Please don't spit on freedom.

Orzetto 09:14, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The article on "SI" (why is it under this unlikely acronym? what English words does it stand for? is there anyone who calls the metric system "SI" in English?) says of its origins, "It was invented by French scientists, and was given a huge boost in popularity by the French Revolution of 1789. The metric system tried to choose units which were non-arbitrary, while practical, merging well with the revolution's official ideology of "pure reason"; it was proposed as a considerable improvement over the inconsistent customary units which existed before, whose value often depended on the region." That the metric system has a built-in ideology, and was intended to steamroller the diversity of local communities, seems confirmed by this history; as something with a built-in ideology, those who reject that ideology may well find it unacceptable. Moreover, the chief reason for its unwieldiness in practical life is the insistence on ten and only ten as the one permissible multiplier or divisor; this is what makes it pretty useless in the home and in the kitchen. This sacrifices convenience and scale on the altar of inflexible mathematics, and I think is fairly described as a type of "monomania," -- Smerdis of Tlön 11:48, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The acronym SI is frequently used in the English-speaking metric world, despite being based on a French phrase. The journal Science (published by the U.S.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science) says in its guidelines for contributors,

Units should be metric and follow SI convention. (my emphasis)

The American Institute of Physics Desk Reference (Cohen, Lide, and Trigg, 2003) regularly refers to "SI units" right from page 1. Speaking from personal experience, scientists in Canada regularly use the term "SI units" as well. The UK-based journal Nature also requests the use of "SI nomenclature" without further explatation [1].

My good friend Mr. Google tells me there are 261,000 instances of "SI units", and it's certainly a term I remember from my freshman chemistry classes umpty-ump years, so yes, it's safe to say that it's a commonly used designation. --Calton | Talk 01:01, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Meanwhile, the idea that the metric system is designed to "steamroller the diversity of local communities" has some truth to it—but the same can be said of any standardized system of measurement. The United States government insists on a uniform foot and a standard pound. New York isn't allowed to have a different inch from San Francisco. It isn't ideological pressure that drives this; it's economic. --TenOfAllTrades (talk/contrib) 15:35, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

True. Much like, say, Standard Time, which has really run roughshod over local community diversity. --Calton | Talk 01:01, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can't disagree there. Given the widespread availability of inexpensive computing power, there is no reason to keep time zones, which are an antiquated artifact of the railroad era. Moreover, their boundaries have been politicized well beyond the requirements of longitude, and have shown a distinct westward creep, which is definitely a movement in the wrong direction. There is no reason in this day and age why we cannot get right with God and in tune with the universe by going back to local mean solar time. -- Smerdis of Tlön 03:36, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ireland

Does anyone else think that it was more appropriate when Ireland sub-section was part of Europe? Because to me (I don't know about you) it makes a lot more sense. Road signs are ALL in the metric system (except some minor distance signs which are too small and usually too old and dirty to read anyway) schools use the metric system, shops use the metric system. I really don't see how its different from Europe.

True and, of course, Ireland is in Europe. Jimp 21Sep05

Dispute

Rktect: Please can you explain why you think this article should be 'disputed' or need cleanup? Looking at the discussion, I don't see any great problems amongst the contributors. Thanks, Ian Cairns 18:49, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Rktect seems to have an interesting Wiki history. Maybe we should just remove the tags.

Atlant 00:22, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I personally can't see the reason for the tagging of this article. However, I'm trying to give Rktect an opportunity to present valid reasons for this, and the benefit of the doubt for not having explained himself, which I believe he is experienced enough to know to do. I had to review Rktect's User contributions tonight to check for other instances, and commented accordingly on his user talk page. If no reasons are forthcoming, then I see no reasons for keeping the tags Ian Cairns 00:26, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the tags here to talk: Where tags are used on articles, the specific reasons for them being there need to be given so that any concerns may be addressed. In any case, concerns should be raised here on the talk page first, and tagging the article used as a last resort if disputes about the content can't be resolved. Enchanter 12:18, August 28, 2005 (UTC).

• I removed the tags which I placed because I didn't want to make edits without discussion, but thought it important to address the overall tone of the article. My dispute with the article is its POV that metrification is inevitable and resistance is futile.

Well, it’s just globalisation. Christoph Päper

• Last night I cut and pasted the article in and addressed each issue one by one and as I did so I realized that despite its overall POV you are aware that people don't want metrification and are resisting it. Its not just some fringe anti metric group. You are aware that even in places where the metric system has been passed into law people are resisting it and you are certainly aware that North America and the UK are resisting it worldwide.

What’s that supposed to mean—are they introducing English units in occupied Iraq? Anyhow, ca. 95% of Earth’s population is metric, I can’t see much resitance there. Christoph Päper

• I think you understand that the metrification process is actually going backward.
• People are more comfortable with measures that relate to their bodies. Even in the case of plastic beverage containers with lables that contain information in both metric and English systems, people will buy a liter bottle but still want their serving size in oz because of the English systems natural doubling properties. You are aware of that.

Rubbish, people are just more comfortable with being lazy and not change anything once learned. That’s why prejudices work so ‘well’. Christoph Päper

• What you seem not to be aware of is who is pushing metrification and why. That's one reason I am attempting to put up some articles on the history of measures, where they come from and why they are so amazingly resistent to change. Only multinational corporations pushing the now failed euro really ever wanted the metric system.

I always assumed that this was the real intention behind your illformed pseudo-scientific crap.

Which multinational organisations have there been over 100 years ago, when most of Europe (incl. colonies) changed (and the US and UK began to)? How has the euro failed? (Except that it is not yet the most important currency of the world.) Christoph Päper

• The reason they wanted it is that measures define property and if you redefine them you undermine everything from landholdings to patents. The most sucessful application of that principle was the original adoption of the metric system during the French revolution where the peoples advocacy of the scientific method undermined the divine right of kings and churches to establish their rule by statute and thus increase their taxes and tithes by decree. By appealing to the expert authority of science as soverign over the whims of kings they undermined the feudal system.

Whether you own 12.345 acres or 4.9958 hectares doesn’t make much a difference. (Increase or decrease precision if necessary.) Christoph Päper

• You go so far as to mention that metrification can be adopted to body measures using a sexigesimal system without realizing that sort of metrification goes back to Mesopotamia where the cubit was 500 mm, the hand 100 mm, the finger 20 mm, the thumb 25 mm and the great cubit 600 mm.
• The English system actually is derived from that by way of Egypt, Greece and Rome and a number of adjustments to make 600 stadia of 600 Greek feet egual to 1 degree of the earths Great circle.

Having relations to is not the same thing as being derived from. Christoph Päper 01:33, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

• You know that the divisions of time and degree are sexigesimal and have never been metric and that because of the dominance of the US in military systems, planes and ships tend to be resistant to the metric system.

Radians and gons are not sexagesimal, actually not even degrees are truly and neither is time. Christoph Päper

• All I really think needs to be adjusted is the POV that there exists such a thing as a process of metrification which like some sort of Manifest Destiny must inevitably result in world wide metrification
• As a counterpoint which you don't make, the resistance to the Metric system in the West may become irrelevant as the well metrified Chinese take over the worlds economy on the backs of a billion human rights violations.Rktect 13:23, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

Please can you (Rktect) clarify who is being addressed as 'You' in your discourse above. If it's me, then I for one can see Metrication as progress - so I don't think I'm being addressed. It must be someone else. Ian Cairns 13:48, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

I was addressing anybody whoresponds. re: 1. tags and 2. discussion. The purpose of the tags seems to be notification that some discussion is required else an edit is pending, so with discussion underway I removed them. If you (any user responding) take the position that Metrification is progress could you give some reasons why? Do you think it is some sort of manifest destiny and that resistence is futile? Do you agree that what people like and are comfortable with has a place, and if not should we just take the human rights factor out of the loop and learn to speak pinyang? Rktect 21:51, August 28, 2005 (UTC)

"Anti-metric movement" redirects here

Contents of the article "Anti-metric movement" where addd to "Metrication", and now "Anti-metric movement" is a redirect page. However, the page Talk:Anti-metric movement still exists. -- Austrian 07:34, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Why not move the contents of Talk:Anti-metric movement here? Jimp 20Sep05

Why not? That's what I'm doing. The following is the content moved from the said talk page. Jimp 21Sep05

Should this be a separate article?

This article features phrases such as "as opposed to the awkward nature of the SI system". I think this article either needs cleaning up, or to be deleted and supplemented to Metrication#The_anti-metrication_movement.

Please sign and date your posts, user 82.43.193.15. There's certainly some cleaning up to do. Ideally, IMO this would remain as a separate article, with a summary and wikilink at the article section you quote. It's a major topic. Even if you think that the anti-metric people are a lunatic fringe, they are a significant movement. Personally, and having lived through the fiasco over stage lighting suspension bolts in Australia, I think there are some good arguments on both sides, and by implication also some lunatics opposing them! Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

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Pretty much the entire anti-metric movement basically amounts to "I'm more used to imperial units, so imperial units are better". — JIP | Talk 6 July 2005 09:29 (UTC)

See comments below concerning JPL and screw threads. Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

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"citing such factors as familiarity, convenience, and simplicity." Someone may well be citing this, but until it's sourced, I take out the simplicity bit at the very least. After all; why is a system sometimes revolving around 4, sometimes 2, sometimes 8 and sometimes 164,32 simpler than one revolving around 10? Yes, I'm biased, but here I'm on safe ground. --TVPR 21:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually, by god, this article needs NPOV'ing. "A dozen eggs cannot be metricized." --TVPR 22:14, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

---

"A dozen eggs cannot be metricized." Indeed ... they sell eggs in packs of ten in Japan (yet nobody seems to be dying of malnutrition as a result). This is obviously nonsense. It doesn't matter whether you've got ten eggs or twelve. The question is whether you weigh them in grams of ounces.

Most of these arguments are just as valid as this one. However, it's worth noting that what the article says is that these are the arguments given. It doesn't explicitly say that they are valid arguments.

What would be nice, of course, is some words on why these arguments are largely a load of bull. For example, the article goes on and on about how nice a dozen is but guess what: there are not half a dozen but five and a half yards in a rod.

I've added a few counter arguments in the commentary (you'll only see them when editing). Perhaps they could be worked into the article somehow. Jimp 20Jul05

• Thank you. Your comments more or less read my mind, and are all prudent. If it wasn't such depressing work, I'd get right on this article myself now.--TVPR 16:46, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

JPL

Useless comment: The machine shop of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used "imperial" units until about ten years ago. At the time the machinists were dead set against changing. They were experts at what they did. One was quoted in the Los Angeles Times that he knew that 1/32 of an inch felt like, and that the loss of that kind of knowledge would someday lead to a critical mistake. I recalled that quote when a Mars mission went astray due to a faulty unit conversion (not the same problem, but a related issue). I can't find the reference, so I only mention it to remind editors that anti-metric isn't synonymous with "anti-science". -Willmcw 05:04, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Anti-metric is not synonymous with "anti-science", but it definitely makes the labor of the scientist and engineer a bit more complicated. --Luiscolorado 14:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Screw threads

Some screw threads have proved extrememly resistant to metrication (Australian English metrification). AFAIK even German and Japanese moving coil meters always used BA threads, and the ones on the most recent equipment I have examined still do. A current series Elmo overhead projector bought by my church recently has three BA screws, used to mount the lens, although all other threads appear to be ISO standard fastener threads.

In Australia, we had a real fiasco over stage lighting suspension bolts, and in both this and in the bolts you can buy in your local hardware store, we have now reverted to Whitworth (BSW) threads in practice (after a period in which they were illegal). Part of this is that the ISO fastener threads which were the recommended (or mandated) replacements are much finer threads, and just don't work as well in many applications. When you're at the top of a ladder hanging forty or fifty lights, a bolt that is harder to start and slower to do up doesn't win any friends. Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Nonsensical speed argument?

In travel, an average highway speed of 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) results in an instant conversion to one mile per minute. The number of miles to your destination is hence the number of minutes until you arrive. This useful rule of thumb works only in Customary units, because 60 km per hour is equivalent to 37 mph, a speed seldom seen on any standard highway.

Can anyone explain to me how this is not complete rubbish? It works perfectly in metric, where 60km per hour results in an instant conversion to one km per minute. The only difference is that 60mph is a speed one might find on a highway (a 'standard highway' according to the writer), whereas 60km/h is a speed one might find driving on the main roads in towns and suburbs. Both rules are equally useful in different driving situations, and so the paragraph strikes me as both absurd and POV-ridden (unless there's an ISO standard highway?). Unless someone can tell me what I've missed, I'll cut this point (and its subsidiaries) soon hereafter. -- Perey 15:37, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Because people don't usually try and figure times that way on short distance drives; you play games like that on long tedious tasks, not short attention demanding tasks like city driving. Even if they did, it would be useless. You can drive at 60 mph on a highway for a hundred miles without having to change speed, but in the city you'll run into stop lights and school zones and random changes of speed limits all the time. --Prosfilaes 19:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I use it quite a bit when I'm not in the city (where, you're right, traffic is pretty much unpredictable). The speed limit is 60km/h for most of the distance between the town where my family lives and the larger one next to it. Clawed's point below is also a good one — maybe it's just a metric way of thinking, but I find it easy on the highway to convert fractions of 100km to fractions of an hour, knowing I'm going to be doing 100km/h. Essentially, whatever the usefulness, I don't see any way to neutralise the point of view of this paragraph. -- Perey 02:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

It's an argument encountered in real life, which is what the article is recounting. You can't make it go away just by calling it POV.--Prosfilaes 13:20, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

It might be a real life example but I do not think it deserves a mention in the article. There is no real advantage to calculating time remaining to a destination using distance in miles, as it is reasonably simple to calculate it at any speed. --Clawed 13:52, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

It's not simple for the average person or even this math major to calculate time remaining at any speed. I think it very POV to dismiss any arguments against the metric system because you don't like them.--Prosfilaes 21:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, but the paragraph as written does not merely document the argument, it makes the argument. It calls it a 'useful rule of thumb [that] works only in Customary units'. In doing so, it crosses the line from documenting a POV to taking a POV. And then it has further bullet points tacked on after it to try and present counterarguments. The whole thing should be reduced to a single, merely documentary paragraph, or — as I believe — cut entirely: it may be an argument encountered in real life, but that doesn't make it significant. -- Perey 16:46, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

If there was 230km (or miles) to a destination with a 100km/h (or 60 miles per hour) speed limit, then I think about 2 and a half hours would be better (working with metric) than 230 minutes which I would have to manually convert into hours because 230 minutes does not mean much to me.--Clawed 22:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)