@thismyusername While this is 100% true (I am guilty of doing the in-head conversion), it also partially underlies why I think the metric system is a hard sell for those accustomed to the Imperial system. The difference between 26 degrees and 30 degrees sounds negligible, but when swimming it is the difference between torture and delight.
Born in Europe and lived there til I was 25. If anything, I'm having problems adjusting to imperial system; it's not exactly the logical smooth sail that is the SI system (the official abbreviation for the metric system that is)
In my engineering and math classes in college, we'd get problems using both the metric and imperial system. I hated it, because why the fuck should we be using the imperial system (this was the U.S., but the metric system is simply better by my estimation). I used to always convert the given values into metric units, solve the problem, and convert back to imperial units. Always annoyed my professors because we were supposed to be learning how to handle both systems and it is harder to grade exams when one jackass has vastly different numbers right up to the end.
I work in a lab with scientists and engineers. The scientists all use SI and the engineers all use inches. It's a constant battle. I'm a computer programmer. We don't know from units.
@LaVikinga My first recipes started with things like "take a half peck of flour" (no, not making that up). I still don't like metric, and am grateful that I don't need to look at any recipes that use them. It's one of the ways you can spot a reproduction measuring cup: one side is proper, and the other is metric.
I'm old. I'm not going to change at this late date. Metric is for spacecraft; I'm earthbound, and get to choose.
@Shrdlu Funny that you mention the reproduction measuring cup today. When I got married last century, one of my prized newlywed gifts was a 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup. Yeah, weird to have a favorite liquid measuring cup, but this was mine.
I broke it a few years ago and had the darnedest time finding one locally. Finally settled with an Anchor Hocking. I pulled it out of the cabinet to use it to make sweet rolls this afternoon and realized it was blank. All the red measurement markers were gone. I had to hold it up to the light to read the faint markings so I could re-trace some makeshift lines back on with a Sharpie. That Pyrex version went through my dishwasher several times a week for years & years without fading. Love that old Pyrex stuff, especially the mix & pour bowls from the 60s.
@LaVikinga Sad to hear this. I had three sets of the mix and pour bowls, and decided that one was enough. I consigned the other two (and they vanished almost immediately, of course). Those were mix and pour and measure (I'm just mixing a little salt in the wound).
I have multiple measuring cups (but I use them all, when I'm canning). I hate the plastic ones. Many of them are inaccurate (I've seen them off by significant amounts). Besides, glass is the very best thing for a liquid measure (and metal is the right thing to use for dry).
@Shrdlu I remember my grandmother stressing the difference metal and glass cups made. Glass for liquid because one is supposed to get eye level with the lines to make sure there was the proper amount in the cup.
@cinoclav :) It's the FOUR cupper that is the perfect size. Deep enough to whip cream, etc. Although, now that I think about it, I don't have a 2 cup version.
Today is Bake All The Things Day. I've got to bake 13 dozen cookies for a cookie swap on Wednesday night, and then do all the baking for the Lord & Master's folks at work, as well as making the things for the little trays I drop at the neighbors to say thank you for putting up with us and our dogs.
@cinoclav Thank you! I have a BB&B coupon or two sitting around. I might have to wander on over next week. I'm doing my level best to avoid Stupid Driver Central until the next week. My little suburb only has two major North-South roadways out of it intersected only by two smaller East-West roads. The mall with all of the cluster of big box stores, strip malls, etc., is in the center of it all, so you can imagine what a fustercluck traffic is right now. Everyone is yakking on their phones, no one is even attempting to drive/accelerate at a green light with any bit of alacrity, merge with any sense of cars closing in behind them...ugh. Old people, moms with minivans, and redneck wannabes with their jacked up diesel dually trucks all make for frustration. For 10 days out of the year, my tiny town has traffic snarls that rival 495 in DC.
@cinoclav and @LaVikinga, just so you know. The new Pyrex cups are "different" than the old ones. Wikipedia has a brief but excellent explanation of this. The important thing is that the word Pyrex is licensed by one or more companies that may or may not be making the cups that LaVikinga and I grew up using.
My biggest objection to the new formulations for Pyrex is that pouring something boiling into a cup has the potential for having that cup shatter while you're doing so. Yep. Not kidding.
@Shrdlu I remember reading something about the difference in materials. The stuff I want is made from bor-something. I am brain mush right now. Have been trying to bake today with animals and large people underfoot. Each one of them needing my attention for some thing or the other. And then my little sister called. Oy. I love my family, but OY!
@LaVikinga Borosilicate. Wonderful glass, much more durable and resistant to thermal shock than the tempered soda glass of modern Pyrex. AFAIK, the old (good) Pyrex will have the logotype in all caps, the new (crappy) stuff lowercase, if you're trawling thrift shops. Or, use beakers - their lab equipment is still borosilicate!
Fine with metric, except for temperature... I very much prefer F over C. I get why C is what it is, but honestly in my day to day life I don't give a crap what temperature water boils or freezes (and it's not hard to remember 32 and 212)... The F scale aligns more closely with what we use temperature scales for in our day-to-day life, our comfort. A scale that has 20 points between room temp and freezing is lame.
@ugm133a Well at 40 below it is the same in both. And trust me on this - that is really, really cold - especially if you are using outhouses (I worked in NW Ontario one winter).
@ugm133a I feel the exact opposite -- I like C for answering the "how does today feel" question because each degree matters more. It feels ludicrously overprecise to say 63, but 17 is totally reasonable.
@WINTERMUTE I guess I prefer precise... And I would prefer to have it without having to say 17.5deg. The fact that digital thermostats tend to break the C scale into .5 increments tells me that it is less than ideal re: how precise it is. A set of 1 deg C jumps on a thermostat would be too much for my taste, and F just works better in this application.
@WINTERMUTE We brought the seat inside and took it with us when we used the outhouse. Also at those temps you need to thaw the wood before you put it in the wood burning stove because it was cold enough it put the fire out.
Strong preference for metric because it just logically makes sense to me. I can't convert feet to yards to miles or ounces to pounds etc etc for the life of me.
It just makes sense to use base 10 for everything.
If you explain metric and imperial units to a five year old, and then ask "which do you like better" they will pick metric every time. Because it makes sense. 1, 10, 100, 1000
Meh, they are all equally arbitrary. A meter being defined by the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second is no less arbitrary than the length of the foot defined by Henry I in the 1100's.
Once we get into energy, however, Metric uses Joules for energy (1 J = 1 Nm) whereas Imperial uses BTU for energy, and it's poorly defined. 1 BTU = 1.055 kJ (approx)
Interestingly, the kilogram is still defined by the International Prototype Kilogram of a special Platinum-Iridium alloy that gets weighed every 30 years or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram
All that being said, I do prefer metric measurements. The math is easier.
@Thumperchick Actually the English/Imperial system makes sense, at least the individual units of measure. They were based on real life, real usage human items or instances (though the instances themselves may have been somewhat arbitrary as @lumpthar charges, and not overly consistent; what could be back when they were derived, until efforts were made to actually standardize them?)
The hand, about 4"; the cubit, length of elbow to fingertip; the fathom, length between outstretched fingertips; a mile is 1000 paces or 5000 feet; a furlong is the distance a plow team (undefined) could plow a furrow without rest; a league is an hour's travel. Real things that would make sense to people who were using and living them, not necessarily calculating things.
@duodec I couldn't agree more. The 1/12 increments drive me nuts. Luckily, I don't deal with feet much. It's primarily inches and millimeters in my world.
I'm perfectly comfortable with the metric system. However my job entails significantly more annoying measurements.
Measuring Radiation There are four different but interrelated units for measuring radioactivity, exposure, absorbed dose, and dose equivalent. These can be remembered by the mnemonic R-E-A-D, as follows, with both common (British, e.g., Ci) and international (metric, e.g., Bq) units in use: Radioactivity refers to the amount of ionizing radiation released by a material. Whether it emits alpha or beta particles, gamma rays, x-rays, or neutrons, a quantity of radioactive material is expressed in terms of its radioactivity (or simply its activity), which represents how many atoms in the material decay in a given time period. The units of measure for radioactivity are the curie (Ci) and becquerel (Bq).
Exposure describes the amount of radiation traveling through the air. Many radiation monitors measure exposure. The units for exposure are the roentgen (R) and coulomb/kilogram (C/kg).
Absorbed dose describes the amount of radiation absorbed by an object or person (that is, the amount of energy that radioactive sources deposit in materials through which they pass). The units for absorbed dose are the radiation absorbed dose (rad) and gray (Gy).
Dose equivalent (or effective dose) combines the amount of radiation absorbed and the medical effects of that type of radiation. For beta and gamma radiation, the dose equivalent is the same as the absorbed dose. By contrast, the dose equivalent is larger than the absorbed dose for alpha and neutron radiation, because these types of radiation are more damaging to the human body. Units for dose equivalent are the roentgen equivalent man (rem) and sievert (Sv), and biological dose equivalents are commonly measured in 1/1000th of a rem (known as a millirem or mrem). For practical purposes, 1 R (exposure) = 1 rad (absorbed dose) = 1 rem or 1000 mrem (dose equivalent). Note that a measure given in Ci tells the radioactivity of a substance, while a measure in rem (or mrem) tells the amount of energy that a radioactive source deposits in living tissue. For example, a person would receive a dose equivalent of 1 mrem from any one of the following activities: 3 days of living in Atlanta 2 days of living in Denver 1 year of watching television (on average) 1 year of wearing a watch with a luminous dial 1 coast-to-coast airline flight 1 year living next door to a normally operating nuclear power plant
@Kidsandliz No, it's actually the same exposure according to this page. Two days of living in Denver is the same as 1 year of watching tv. You receive 1 mrem for each. Though tbh, I think whomever wrote that is way off. Denver should be significantly higher exposure as it's 5 times higher elevation than Atlanta and I also have a dose chart next to me that says a cross country flight results in 2.5 mrem. Interestingly enough, the average exposure in my job is only 2 mrem/year.
@thismyusername It wasn't like the emissions were huge with CRTs either. Ironically, there seems to be more cases of cancer being reported in young people these days than ever before, so what does that say?
@cinoclav IIRC The background radiation in Atlanta is due to the massive subterranean granite deposits that all give off radon as they decay. I think Atlanta would have a higher background than other places in the southeast, say Birmingham (that don't have those deposits), so the comparison to Denver may still be valid.
@lumpthar I've done some research and really haven't found anything that shows the Atlanta area radon levels as being significantly higher than many other areas of the country. While it's generally the highest reading area in Georgia, the overall comparison to other states, particularly through large parts of the north doesn't support what you've suggested. I still think the numbers were simply incorrect. http://www.city-data.com/radon-zones/
@kuoh Working in healthcare, this subject comes up somewhat often. I believe an important factor is our advanced ability to diagnose diseases. In decades past, many symptoms were often attributed to more common causes as people found it difficult to believe that diseases of 'older people' could be so common in youth. While I also think the screwed up chemicals and GMO's we use may play a role, I don't believe they're the primary cause.
I still visualize metric thingys in english. I know body temp is about 28c so when I see temps in the mid 30s on the beeb I know that's in the 110's. A liter is a little less than a quart. A kilo fits in a garbage bag (unless it's been bricked).
@cranky1950 A liter is a little more than a quart. 1.8 ounces more to be exact. I know this from Coke as well, although I will defer to your knowledge about kilos.
@thismyusername I miss Randall's obsession with Summer Glau.
@thismyusername Haha, 3L is about the same as a 2 liter bottle of soda.
@thismyusername While this is 100% true (I am guilty of doing the in-head conversion), it also partially underlies why I think the metric system is a hard sell for those accustomed to the Imperial system. The difference between 26 degrees and 30 degrees sounds negligible, but when swimming it is the difference between torture and delight.
Born in Europe and lived there til I was 25. If anything, I'm having problems adjusting to imperial system; it's not exactly the logical smooth sail that is the SI system (the official abbreviation for the metric system that is)
fluent because science
In my engineering and math classes in college, we'd get problems using both the metric and imperial system. I hated it, because why the fuck should we be using the imperial system (this was the U.S., but the metric system is simply better by my estimation). I used to always convert the given values into metric units, solve the problem, and convert back to imperial units. Always annoyed my professors because we were supposed to be learning how to handle both systems and it is harder to grade exams when one jackass has vastly different numbers right up to the end.
I work in a lab with scientists and engineers. The scientists all use SI and the engineers all use inches. It's a constant battle. I'm a computer programmer. We don't know from units.
Raised on the imperial, college educated on the metric. Work in science so metric all the way.
I can't cook in metric!
@LaVikinga I hate to cook so that won't be a problem for me LOL
@LaVikinga My first recipes started with things like "take a half peck of flour" (no, not making that up). I still don't like metric, and am grateful that I don't need to look at any recipes that use them. It's one of the ways you can spot a reproduction measuring cup: one side is proper, and the other is metric.
I'm old. I'm not going to change at this late date. Metric is for spacecraft; I'm earthbound, and get to choose.
@Shrdlu Funny that you mention the reproduction measuring cup today. When I got married last century, one of my prized newlywed gifts was a 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup. Yeah, weird to have a favorite liquid measuring cup, but this was mine.
I broke it a few years ago and had the darnedest time finding one locally. Finally settled with an Anchor Hocking.
I pulled it out of the cabinet to use it to make sweet rolls this afternoon and realized it was blank. All the red measurement markers were gone. I had to hold it up to the light to read the faint markings so I could re-trace some makeshift lines back on with a Sharpie.
That Pyrex version went through my dishwasher several times a week for years & years without fading. Love that old Pyrex stuff, especially the mix & pour bowls from the 60s.
@LaVikinga Sad to hear this. I had three sets of the mix and pour bowls, and decided that one was enough. I consigned the other two (and they vanished almost immediately, of course). Those were mix and pour and measure (I'm just mixing a little salt in the wound).
I have multiple measuring cups (but I use them all, when I'm canning). I hate the plastic ones. Many of them are inaccurate (I've seen them off by significant amounts). Besides, glass is the very best thing for a liquid measure (and metal is the right thing to use for dry).
@Shrdlu I remember my grandmother stressing the difference metal and glass cups made. Glass for liquid because one is supposed to get eye level with the lines to make sure there was the proper amount in the cup.
@LaVikinga Here's the beautiful music I'd mentioned.
@LaVikinga @Shrdlu Even funnier that you brought this up. Looks what's on sale today: http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/pyrex-2-cup-measuring-cup?ID=333153
@cinoclav :) It's the FOUR cupper that is the perfect size. Deep enough to whip cream, etc. Although, now that I think about it, I don't have a 2 cup version.
Today is Bake All The Things Day. I've got to bake 13 dozen cookies for a cookie swap on Wednesday night, and then do all the baking for the Lord & Master's folks at work, as well as making the things for the little trays I drop at the neighbors to say thank you for putting up with us and our dogs.
@LaVikinga Well, you can jump on that one too! Bed Bath & Beyond has it for only $6.79 (before any 20% off coupons!) http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/store/product/pyrex-1-quart-measuring-cup/1010162424
Actually, BB&B seems to be the place to go. The 2 cup is normally priced $5.69 there.
@cinoclav Thank you! I have a BB&B coupon or two sitting around. I might have to wander on over next week. I'm doing my level best to avoid Stupid Driver Central until the next week. My little suburb only has two major North-South roadways out of it intersected only by two smaller East-West roads. The mall with all of the cluster of big box stores, strip malls, etc., is in the center of it all, so you can imagine what a fustercluck traffic is right now. Everyone is yakking on their phones, no one is even attempting to drive/accelerate at a green light with any bit of alacrity, merge with any sense of cars closing in behind them...ugh.
Old people, moms with minivans, and redneck wannabes with their jacked up diesel dually trucks all make for frustration. For 10 days out of the year, my tiny town has traffic snarls that rival 495 in DC.
@cinoclav and @LaVikinga, just so you know. The new Pyrex cups are "different" than the old ones. Wikipedia has a brief but excellent explanation of this. The important thing is that the word Pyrex is licensed by one or more companies that may or may not be making the cups that LaVikinga and I grew up using.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex
My biggest objection to the new formulations for Pyrex is that pouring something boiling into a cup has the potential for having that cup shatter while you're doing so. Yep. Not kidding.
@Shrdlu I remember reading something about the difference in materials. The stuff I want is made from bor-something. I am brain mush right now. Have been trying to bake today with animals and large people underfoot. Each one of them needing my attention for some thing or the other.
And then my little sister called. Oy. I love my family, but OY!
@LaVikinga Borosilicate. Wonderful glass, much more durable and resistant to thermal shock than the tempered soda glass of modern Pyrex. AFAIK, the old (good) Pyrex will have the logotype in all caps, the new (crappy) stuff lowercase, if you're trawling thrift shops. Or, use beakers - their lab equipment is still borosilicate!
Fine with metric, except for temperature... I very much prefer F over C. I get why C is what it is, but honestly in my day to day life I don't give a crap what temperature water boils or freezes (and it's not hard to remember 32 and 212)... The F scale aligns more closely with what we use temperature scales for in our day-to-day life, our comfort. A scale that has 20 points between room temp and freezing is lame.
@ugm133a Well at 40 below it is the same in both. And trust me on this - that is really, really cold - especially if you are using outhouses (I worked in NW Ontario one winter).
@ugm133a apt:
@Kidsandliz One trick we had for that was to carpet the seat. Not all that sanitary but your butt won't freeze to it either.
@ugm133a I feel the exact opposite -- I like C for answering the "how does today feel" question because each degree matters more. It feels ludicrously overprecise to say 63, but 17 is totally reasonable.
@brhfl Needs Rankine.
@ugm133a
Did you know there are infinite points between room temp and freezing in both systems?
@WINTERMUTE I guess I prefer precise... And I would prefer to have it without having to say 17.5deg. The fact that digital thermostats tend to break the C scale into .5 increments tells me that it is less than ideal re: how precise it is. A set of 1 deg C jumps on a thermostat would be too much for my taste, and F just works better in this application.
@WINTERMUTE We brought the seat inside and took it with us when we used the outhouse. Also at those temps you need to thaw the wood before you put it in the wood burning stove because it was cold enough it put the fire out.
@thismyusername YOU'RE A WITCH! BURN HIM!
I'm so comfortable with it, I switched to metric time.
@hallmike Which metric of time - galactic time? (grin)
@Kidsandliz French Revolutionary Time.
@Kidsandliz Pre-Cylon invasion time.
KuoH
Strong preference for metric because it just logically makes sense to me. I can't convert feet to yards to miles or ounces to pounds etc etc for the life of me.
It just makes sense to use base 10 for everything.
If you explain metric and imperial units to a five year old, and then ask "which do you like better" they will pick metric every time. Because it makes sense.
1, 10, 100, 1000
Don't give me this 1, 12, 3, 5280 bs.
My favorite thing in the imperial/metric debate occurred on these very forums between @Starblind, @narfcake, and @DaveInSoCal.
@jqubed awesome find. I forgot all about that!
@jqubed I too forgot about that. Well, at this hour, I'm forgetting a lot of things. And why am I not asleep yet?
@narfcake Because you are awake?
Grampa Simpson: The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
Meh, they are all equally arbitrary.
A meter being defined by the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second is no less arbitrary than the length of the foot defined by Henry I in the 1100's.
Once we get into energy, however, Metric uses Joules for energy (1 J = 1 Nm) whereas Imperial uses BTU for energy, and it's poorly defined. 1 BTU = 1.055 kJ (approx)
Interestingly, the kilogram is still defined by the International Prototype Kilogram of a special Platinum-Iridium alloy that gets weighed every 30 years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram
All that being said, I do prefer metric measurements. The math is easier.
@lumpthar at least with metric the increments make sense.
@Thumperchick Actually the English/Imperial system makes sense, at least the individual units of measure. They were based on real life, real usage human items or instances (though the instances themselves may have been somewhat arbitrary as @lumpthar charges, and not overly consistent; what could be back when they were derived, until efforts were made to actually standardize them?)
The hand, about 4"; the cubit, length of elbow to fingertip; the fathom, length between outstretched fingertips; a mile is 1000 paces or 5000 feet; a furlong is the distance a plow team (undefined) could plow a furrow without rest; a league is an hour's travel. Real things that would make sense to people who were using and living them, not necessarily calculating things.
Metric is arbitrary except in its increments.
@duodec I couldn't agree more.
The 1/12 increments drive me nuts. Luckily, I don't deal with feet much.
It's primarily inches and millimeters in my world.
1/12 = .0833333...
1/10 = .1
1/16 = .0625
Which fraction above looks the easiest?
@duodec I did not know these things. Would a league by horseback be different from a league walking?
I'm perfectly comfortable with the metric system. However my job entails significantly more annoying measurements.
@cinoclav Hmm so it is safer to watch TV for a year than live for 2 days in Denver LOL Couch potato wins!
@Kidsandliz No, it's actually the same exposure according to this page. Two days of living in Denver is the same as 1 year of watching tv. You receive 1 mrem for each. Though tbh, I think whomever wrote that is way off. Denver should be significantly higher exposure as it's 5 times higher elevation than Atlanta and I also have a dose chart next to me that says a cross country flight results in 2.5 mrem. Interestingly enough, the average exposure in my job is only 2 mrem/year.
@cinoclav @Kidsandliz does anyone even watch CRT based TVs anymore? The rads coming off a modern LCD/LED are minimal.
@thismyusername It wasn't like the emissions were huge with CRTs either. Ironically, there seems to be more cases of cancer being reported in young people these days than ever before, so what does that say?
KuoH
@kuoh What does that say? You mean like, Don't be a young person? YEA for senior citizens?
@cinoclav IIRC The background radiation in Atlanta is due to the massive subterranean granite deposits that all give off radon as they decay.
I think Atlanta would have a higher background than other places in the southeast, say Birmingham (that don't have those deposits), so the comparison to Denver may still be valid.
@lumpthar I've done some research and really haven't found anything that shows the Atlanta area radon levels as being significantly higher than many other areas of the country. While it's generally the highest reading area in Georgia, the overall comparison to other states, particularly through large parts of the north doesn't support what you've suggested. I still think the numbers were simply incorrect. http://www.city-data.com/radon-zones/
@kuoh Working in healthcare, this subject comes up somewhat often. I believe an important factor is our advanced ability to diagnose diseases. In decades past, many symptoms were often attributed to more common causes as people found it difficult to believe that diseases of 'older people' could be so common in youth. While I also think the screwed up chemicals and GMO's we use may play a role, I don't believe they're the primary cause.
Very comfortable. I am a civil engineer and was taught both in school and have completed plans in both English and Metric.
I still visualize metric thingys in english. I know body temp is about 28c so when I see temps in the mid 30s on the beeb I know that's in the 110's. A liter is a little less than a quart. A kilo fits in a garbage bag (unless it's been bricked).
@cranky1950 A liter is a little more than a quart. 1.8 ounces more to be exact. I know this from Coke as well, although I will defer to your knowledge about kilos.
I once had a metric, but some big kids beat me up and made me eat it.
@Bkmack That's what you get for showing off.
@cranky1950 I wasn't showing off, I was taking it for a long walk about 30 gigalats. It all seems so unnessary now. Distance = persperation
@Bkmack Unh huh, so said Josh Norman