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The Wayne ([personal profile] thewayne) wrote2007-09-11 02:04 pm
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The EU gives up on making England metric

Which means the US will have that much less reason to convert. Not that it matters, we can afford to lose multi-million dollars space probes every once in a while due to conversion errors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm
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[identity profile] kylejcrb.livejournal.com 2007-09-11 08:31 pm (UTC)(link)
I thought England has always been metric. Now I'm confused.

[identity profile] thewayne.livejournal.com 2007-09-12 12:31 am (UTC)(link)
They went decimal a few decades ago and went away from the 'pounds, shillings, and pence.' But they didn't go metric.

[identity profile] thedragonweaver.livejournal.com 2007-09-12 03:28 am (UTC)(link)
About halfway down this page (http://www.grotto11.com/blog/?+1188298800) is a rant on why the imperial system is not so bad, after all. And he makes a pretty good argument for why we shouldn't worry about going metric for things we deal with in a tangible format— that is, units of baking measure, rulers for drawing, etc. The imperial system is extremely useful for teaching division and fractions— because who wants to try to get a seven-year-old to understand 1/8 of a centimeter. Or even a decimeter.

Anyway, my take on it is that you should never, ever start your physics in anything other than metric. (The flip side of the argument is that metric is better for intangibles, such as physics.) Every physics class I'd ever had was in metric so the Imperial units in Statics came as a bit of a shock.

But leave the miles and gallons and yardsticks alone. Our currency is decimalized, and our sciences mostly so, so why is it a big deal to switch the rest? We're not exactly going to go sub-light on the highway...

[identity profile] thewayne.livejournal.com 2007-09-12 12:07 pm (UTC)(link)
For me, I'm the opposite. I'd much prefer the metric system for cooking because we combine names for both weight and volume, and it drives me nuts. I have no idea off-hand how many cups are in a quart. The English system still confuses the heck out of me, I'm constantly having to look up conversions, especially when I'm needing to halve or double a recipe. And why should an eighth of a centimeter be any different than an eighth of an inch? Fractions are based on portions of one.

I haven't read your link yet but I'm looking forward to it.
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