borgo100
Active Member
The Blue Km?
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Millimetres and the Mind: Measuring a Royal Pain
- Thread starter borgo100
- Start date
The Blue Km?
Dan416
Senior Member
Trying to say kilometre in everyday language just sounds ridiculous. Besides, both England and the United States use miles, so why can't we?
drum118
Superstar
No big deal, as I prefer metric in the first place.
From a construction point, easier to use than imperial.
I don't like the haft and haft process now.
whatever
Senior Member
Speak for yourself on that. I'm a tradesman, and I find imperial a million times more intuitive to use than metric. The numbers get to be too big with metric, and millimeters are too small and overly precise for what you can accurately do by hand.
BobBob
Senior Member
How can something be overly precise? 
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
I had never really thought of it that way. In the abstract, the metric system is more intuitive. But I can see how in application inches and feet would be better lengths. They may seem arbitrary, but they're more "human-sized", if that makes sense.
mangasparky
Banned
I would take imperial over metric in a heart beat, especially for measurements. I can see in terms of doing a slab layout, to use mm, based on a print that is metric, but for anything else it is kind of unnecessary.
Most things in construction don't need to be very accurate, not that imperial is inaccurate, its more comfortable to use from a trade standpoint, because it is more common.
Most things in construction don't need to be very accurate, not that imperial is inaccurate, its more comfortable to use from a trade standpoint, because it is more common.
whatever
Senior Member
How can something be overly precise?
When you're setting an elevation with a station that has a line that's a sixteenth thick, it doesn't do much good to have a blueprint specifying measurements to the thirtysecondth. Similarly, because millimeters are about two-thirds the size of a sixteenth it's too small a dimension to realistically discriminate in most practical applications.
It takes a little bit longer to get comfortable with, but I try to encourage apprentices to use it as much as possible, especially given that most tools are dimensioned in imperial units anyways (an all-metric tape measure is actually a specialty item, you generally can't get them at a Canadian Tire or a Home Depot) and most consumables are dimensioned in imperial (drill bits, saw blades, grinding wheels, shims, etc)
BobBob
Senior Member
I know what you mean, but there is nothing about the metric system that forces one to talk in terms of millimetres. You can use centimetres where appropriate, or meters, etc. I feel like your mention of thirtysecondths points to exactly what sort of thing is awkward with the imperial system.
Urban Shocker
Doyenne
I tend to size up the world, at a glance, in inches ( subdivided into halves and quarters ) ... or else in picas ( six to the inch ) subdivided into pica points ( 12 to the pica ). They're manageable units, for my purposes. Centimeters are an alternative, but their subdivision - the millimeter - is a tolerance too fine for any practical application in my daily life, and it serves no purpose at work where picas and points are standard. So I tend not to carry the Metric system around in my head as a system through which I evaluate what I see.
Designed objects create their own measuring systems. The windows of the TD Centre are modules of the larger building, which itself draws on Golden Section proportions for harmony. The Neolithic Chinese pottery vessels in the ROM are each little aesthetic worlds unto themselves, subdivided by applied decorative motifs that create harmony in the object as a whole. Music, and the silence it contains, is a system of measurement. The "empty" spaces between the windows on buildings, and the "empty" space between buildings themselves, are a form of punctuation that's a visual equivalent to musical rhythm.
Designed objects create their own measuring systems. The windows of the TD Centre are modules of the larger building, which itself draws on Golden Section proportions for harmony. The Neolithic Chinese pottery vessels in the ROM are each little aesthetic worlds unto themselves, subdivided by applied decorative motifs that create harmony in the object as a whole. Music, and the silence it contains, is a system of measurement. The "empty" spaces between the windows on buildings, and the "empty" space between buildings themselves, are a form of punctuation that's a visual equivalent to musical rhythm.
MisterF
Senior Member
Do trades in Europe and the rest of the world use metric or imperial? In Canada imperial is used for trades but metric is used in planning and engineering.
gei
Active Member
Is this whole imperial vs metric discussion supposed to be a joke?
Do you think we should also weigh ourselves in "stones"?
I'm not even going to begin comparing the two... but I think it's pretty clear we have no scientists on this forum... they would be tearing their hair out.
Mongo
Senior Member
golodhendil
Active Member
Dan416
Senior Member
It's just that things like height are much easier to describe in imperial. It's easier to say I'm 6 feet rather than 183 cm. Similarly it's easier to say I'm 180 lbs rather than whatever that is in kg.
Conversely, I don't really know miles. I just find km awkward to say; it's just not poetic. At all. Additionally, I don't know Fahrenheit at all.
Scientifically speaking, of course you're going to go with metric, even in the US.