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Why does the USA use inches, miles, feets, yards ect.

 
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Hirmuinen
CT Certified Sales Rep.


Joined: 16 Mar 2005
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Thu Feb 06, 2014 3:35 pm 
Post subject: Why does the USA use inches, miles, feets, yards ect.
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Instead of metric system. Enlight me, give me history lesson here.

To me using inches instead of centimetres is awful way of measuring things in your head.
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atatme
Atatame Who?


Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Location: Bozeman, Montana, United States
PostPosted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 1:12 am 
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Personally, I think it makes no sense what so ever and we are dumb as hell. Also, why Fahrenheit? Seriously, why?
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Stealth
▲RAWR TRIANGLE RAWR▲


Joined: 13 Mar 2005
PostPosted: Mon Feb 10, 2014 3:06 am 
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Money.

America is large. Insanely large. Switching to metric involves changing all the signage, documents, and laws that used the Imperial system.

Yes, The metric system is easier to use which is why the scientific community has adapted and works in mostly Metric units. But it's ease of use is shadowed by the daunting task of spending shit tons of money.

So, there you have it.

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Now to play Devil's advocate because it's late at night and I'm bored. Just note, I agree with you.

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Argument for the Imperial system.

Point: The Metric system is a base 10 systems, which means it can be broken in 2 and 5s.

1/3 of 10. 3.333333333333333333333333333

This makes obtaining a third of anything awkward. A required equal part in each third is needed, but hard to obtain exact numbers. However, Imperial units excel at dividing in thirds (ex. feet) and fourths (ex. cup). The system was made to allows these measurements.


Point: Measuring is awkward. (Measure a pencil? Your arm? Whip out the bulky meter stick.)

For example, measuring a person would either need to be centimeters or meters. Centimeters being a small unit and a meter too large. It's hard to find a median between the two.

Decimeter is an option, but it's a weird unit and it would most certainly require very messy decimals. Which brings me to my next point.


Point: The Metric system is messy.

The amount of times I've received a .3, .6, .9 repeating numbers while doing math is insane. Calculated the amount of energy during the transfer? 123.33333333333 Joules? Round it off to two to three decimals.
But, What if you're doing a large calculation with pages upon pages of math each with their own rounding? Precision is key.

Now I know what you're thinking, only round off what you need to continue the calculation to avoid the loss of precision. And you should. But the point still stands that it's messy with repeating numbers, while in most cases, the Imperial unit can be converted to large units and smaller even units. Ex. Yard, Feet, Inches.


Point: Everything cannot fit a base 10 system merely for convenience.

A clock has ~24hrs in a day.
A circle has 360 degrees.
The right angle of a triangle is 90 degrees.
Irrational numbers (Pi, E, Golden ratio, etc.) [Who we kidding? These don't count for IU anyways!]

Two in which can be divided by 10, but they don't fit the purpose of the metric system, which is to make everything even to memorize easily.


Case: So what's better? Imperial or Metric? Neither?

A new system with base 12 instead. The system would have far less decimals, more even numbers, would clean up a lot of these issues. Although, good luck explaining how to use it.


So... why not just switch to Imperial units today?





Money.



Fuck!


[I hope you enjoyed this and came full circle with me.]



As to Fahrenheit, I'll leave this here.

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Erwin Rommel
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Joined: 02 Aug 2005
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 5:55 pm 
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Base 12? pfft.

Base 60 is where it's at. Then you get fifths as well.
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Chronic
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Joined: 26 Dec 2008
PostPosted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:14 am 
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atatme wrote:
Personally, I think it makes no sense what so ever and we are dumb as hell. Also, why Fahrenheit? Seriously, why?


Because it sounds more intense
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Messy Recipe
El Gran Capitán
<b>El Gran Capitán</b>


Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Location: Inter Veritates
PostPosted: Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:27 pm 
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For things like ounces/cups/quarts, a lot of the units are x2 or x4 the smaller one (or at least some power of 2). This allows you to take say, a standard cup of rice, and measure out any other amount just by doubling and halving it a few times. The Fahrenheit thing is similar -- better for everyday usage even if wonky to calculate anything in.

No idea about miles vs km, they're both equally meaningless to me...
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