Why is the metric system associated with the '70s?

[kphoger]

But, alas, nothing happened, to the annoyance of me, as the metric system wasn't invented by an English guy on opium. Seriously, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

Yeah, what's a third of a meter?  A repeating decimal.

What's a third of a yard?  A foot.  And what's a third of a foot?  Four inches.

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

None of that, however, makes me at all sure of how many pints are in a gallon, or how many cups are in a quart.  Our system is a mix of twos and threes, and that's the worst part about it.

Example:

16 (2x2x2x2) cups in a gallon
16 (2x2x2x2) tablespoons in a cup
3 (WTF?) teaspoons in a tablespoon

[renegade]

But I don't know something is 15 minutes away if I don't know how far it is.

Say I'm walking home, and my wife calls to ask how long till I get back.  ??

Same answer I give:  "I'll be there when I get there!"

Ah, you didn't pass the Marriage 101 course.

Oh, yes I did ... 35 years ago and counting!

[MCRoads]

But, alas, nothing happened, to the annoyance of me, as the metric system wasn't invented by an English guy on opium. Seriously, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

Yeah, what's a third of a meter?  A repeating decimal.

What's a third of a yard?  A foot.  And what's a third of a foot?  Four inches.

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

None of that, however, makes me at all sure of how many pints are in a gallon, or how many cups are in a quart.  Our system is a mix of twos and threes, and that's the worst part about it.

Example:

16 (2x2x2x2) cups in a gallon
16 (2x2x2x2) tablespoons in a cup
3 (WTF?) teaspoons in a tablespoon

I would rather have 1/3 of a meter be 33.333····, than the current system tbh. And, our system isn't perfect either. Try to express 1/7th in any decimal system besides heptedecimal and it's multiples. See what happens.

[Scott5114]

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

Hell, if that's the goal, go hexadecimal and get powers of two really working for you. 0x10 cups in a gallon!

[kphoger]

Time to take Marriage 102.

[kphoger]

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

Hell, if that's the goal, go hexadecimal and get powers of two really working for you. 0x10 cups in a gallon!

How do thirds work in hexadecimal?  (not a math nerd)

[hotdogPi]

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

Hell, if that's the goal, go hexadecimal and get powers of two really working for you. 0x10 cups in a gallon!

How do thirds work in hexadecimal?  (not a math nerd)

Repeating decimal.

[1995hoo]

Time to take Marriage 102.

This sounds like a new thread of "That's When the Fight Started" jokes.

Example:

My wife and I were relaxing in the den one evening and she commented, "It would be nice if we had more quiet time together."

I said, "That's fine with me. So, could you please be quiet?"

And that's when the fight started....

[stevashe]

and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

It's 5280. I've never understood why they stuck an 11 in there. At least the pound sterling was 240 old pence, which is 2*2*2*2*3*5, and it can be easily subdivided into pretty much anything.

If it was 5820, that would be even weirder; one of its prime factors is 97.

The 11 would be the fault of the unit called a "chain". There are 22 yards (66 feet) in a chain, then 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs to a mile (so 80 chains to a mile). I must admit the Imperial system gets a lot more crazy if you look into all the units that aren't really used anymore.

[J N Winkler]

Chainage is still the British/Commonwealth English term for what we call station, though highway design in those countries has been metric for decades and we now do stationing in hundreds of feet.

[kphoger]

and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

It's 5280. I've never understood why they stuck an 11 in there. At least the pound sterling was 240 old pence, which is 2*2*2*2*3*5, and it can be easily subdivided into pretty much anything.

If it was 5820, that would be even weirder; one of its prime factors is 97.

The 11 would be the fault of the unit called a "chain". There are 22 yards (66 feet) in a chain, then 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs to a mile (so 80 chains to a mile). I must admit the Imperial system gets a lot more crazy if you look into all the units that aren't really used anymore.

Yes, it makes for nice, whole numbers when dividing plots of land.

Assuming I've done all my math correctly...

|  4 rods = 1 chain
|  10 chains = 1 furlong
|  8 furlongs = 1 mile
|  1 mi² = 1 section

1 section = 5280x5820 feet
1 section = 1760x1760 yards
1 section = 320x320 rods
1 section = 80x80 chains
1 section = 8x8 furlongs
1 section = 640 acres

1 half = 5280x2640 feet
1 half = 1760x880 yards
1 half = 320x160 rods
1 half = 80x40 chains
1 half = 8x4 furlongs
1 half = 320 acres

1 quarter = 2640x2640 feet
1 quarter = 880x880 yards
1 quarter = 160x160 rods
1 quarter = 40x40 chains
1 quarter = 4x4 furlongs
1 quarter = 160 acres

half-quarter = 2640x1320 feet
half-quarter = 880x440 yards
half-quarter = 160x80 rods
half-quarter = 40x20 chains
half-quarter = 4x2 furlongs
half-quarter = 80 acres

quarter-quarter = 1320x1320 feet
quarter-quarter = 440x440 yards
quarter-quarter = 80x80 rods
quarter-quarter = 20x20 chains
quarter-quarter = 2x2 furlongs
quarter-quarter = 40 acres

half-quarter-quarter = 1320x660 feet
half-quarter-quarter = 440x220 yards
half-quarter-quarter = 80x40 rods
half-quarter-quarter = 20x10 chains
half-quarter-quarter = 2x1 furlongs
half-quarter-quarter = 20 acres

quarter-quarter-quarter = 660x660 feet
quarter-quarter-quarter = 220x220 yards
quarter-quarter-quarter = 40x40 rods
quarter-quarter-quarter = 10x10 chains
quarter-quarter-quarter = 1x1 furlong
quarter-quarter-quarter = 10 acres

1 acre = 8 rods x 20 rods
1 acre = 1 chain x 1 furlong
1 acre = 160 rods²
1 acre = 10 chains²

half-acre = 80 rods²
quarter-acre = 40 rods²
half-quarter-acre = 20 rods²
quarter-quarter-acre = 10 rods²
half-quarter-quarter-acre = 5 rods²

Thus, in a city with eight blocks to a mile (such as Chicago), one city block is exactly ten acres.  Cut that city block in half (as the city blocks in Wichita are), and each block is exactly five acres.  Divide that block in half (for two facing streets), and each half-block is exactly 400 rods².  Divide that half-block up into ten properties (as is the block I actually live on), and each property is exactly 40 rods² or exactly one quarter-acre.

[kphoger]

I decided to make a graphic illustration of the system in this neck o' the woods.  This is how my city is laid out (actually rotated 90 degrees).  Chicago is similar.

Dark lines are streets.  Each rectangle (20 per city block) represents a typical residential lot.  Obviously, some blocks and neighborhoods have larger lots than this, so it doesn't always work out to 20 each.

If I pretend our own property extends out to the middle of the street, and that we live on a corner, then the yellow rectangle could be our house's lot.  My block has this exact layout.

1 lot = 1 chain x 10 rods = ¼ acre
1 city block = 1 furlong x 5 chains = 5 acres

Major avenues are located along section lines.
Through collector streets are located along half-section lines.
Residential streets are located every furlong or half-furlong, depending on EW/NS.

[Scott5114]

(math...)

When I was applying for a land use permit for a greenhouse last year, one of the things we had to have was the full legal description of the property, which is 45 acres shaped kind of like the Tetris "S" block. The way it was done, specifying sections and quarters and such, was absurdly lengthy, and kind of reminded me of one of corco's I-86 proposals.

I have used furlongs for exactly one thing in my life–they are still routinely used to quote horse race lengths. Hollywood Charles Town in WV regularly runs 6½ furlong races, for instance. Not all tracks do this; Los Alamitos tends to just specify them in yards since a majority of their races involve quarter horses.

[kkt]

Here, there are a lot of grids and sometimes they match up, sometimes they don't, and sometimes they meet each other at wacky angles.  The Public Lands Survey System is for recording land ownership, not for navigation.

At the big grid used for most new subdivisions in the county after about 1900, there's 2000 house numbers per mile and streets are numbered as the house number divided by 100.  Some blocks are thicker and when that happens the street numbers will skip a street, but the house numbers carry on regardless.

[CtrlAltDel]

I suppose so, although grams and meters are spelled almost the same everywhere.

They're metres in most countries.

By country, it could be, but I was curious about how it worked by language, and so I headed over to the Wikipedia, and I found that the most common spellings are:
21   Meter
15   Метр
13   Metro
8   Metre

I thought it also interesting that the original French spelling, Mètre, is used in only French and Occitan, another language spoken in France.

The full list is as follows. (International characters may not render correctly.)

Code Select Expand


21 Meter
15 Метр
13 Metro
8 Metre
7 Metr
5 Méter
5 Metru
4 متر
4 米
4 Metri
3 मीटर
3 Metar
2 Метар
2 میٹر
2 মিটার
2 Mètre
2 Meeter
1 Μέτρο
1 Метер
1 Метър
1 Миэтэрэ
1 Мэтар
1 Мєтро
1 Մետր
1 מטר
1 מעטער
1 ميترو
1 مەتر
1 މީޓަރު
1 मिटर
1 मितर
1 মিটাৰ
1 ਮੀਟਰ
1 મીટર
1 மீட்டர்
1 మీటరు
1 ಮೀಟರ್
1 മീറ്റർ
1 เมตร
1 ແມັດ
1 སྨི།
1 မီတာ
1 မဳတာ
1 მეტრა
1 მეტრი
1 ሜትር
1 メートル
1 公尺
1 미터
1 Gŭng-chióh
1 Huehcan
1 Kûng-chhak
1 Kong-chhioh
1 Läng
1 Mèt
1 Mète
1 Mèter
1 Méadar
1 Mét
1 Mítà
1 Mɛtɛlɛ
1 Meatair
1 Mehter
1 Metatra
1 Metras
1 Metros
1 Metrs
1 Metrum
1 Miita
1 Mita
1 Mitara
1 Mitir
1 mitre
1 Mitru
1 Myjter
1 Temira'ãha


[kphoger]

As I illustrated earlier, our system of land measurement is beautiful.  There are 40 acres in a quarter-quarter-section, there are 40 square rods in an acre.  Large parcels of land are easy to divide by powers of two and then, when it gets small enough to be actual fields or residential lots, it becomes easy to divide them into strips of ten.  Nice, round numbers, all the way down to the size of a garden.

Then, too, our system of measuring everyday materials–lumber, fabric–is quite handy as well.  Twelve inches to a foot means you can divide it into 6, 4, 3, or 2 and come out with a whole number.  A yard can be divided evenly into 18, 12, 9, 8, 6, 4, 3, or 2 and come out with a whole number of inches.  This is really useful in real-world application.

But the two systems don't go together.  My theoretical residential lot illustrated earlier can be neatly measured as 0.25 acres, with a perimeter of one chain by ten rods.  But, in yards?  Oh, that would be 22 yards by 55 yards.  Multiples of eleven!  What number could possibly be worse to work with than eleven?  It's like seven, only larger and more unwieldy.  A rod is 5½ yards long?  What the heck kind of number is that?

The solution:  make the inch exactly 10% longer than it currently is.  There would still be 12 inches in a foot and three feet in a yard.  But, with the inch 10% longer, the following would be true:

5 yards = 1 rod
20 (2²x5) yards = 1 chain
200 (2x10²) yards = 1 furlong
400 (2²x10²) yards = 1 quarter-mile
800 (2³x10²) yards = 1 half-mile
1600 (2²x2²x10²) yards = 1 mile
4800 (3x2²x2²x10²) feet = 1 mile
57,600 (3²x2⁶x10²) inches = 1 mile

(This would lead to an interesting situation in which a yard would differ from a meter by less than 6 mm.)

[Scott5114]

Multiples of eleven!  What number could possibly be worse to work with than eleven?  It's like seven, only larger and more unwieldy.

The Norwegian (Trafikkalfabetet) and German (DIN 1451) road sign typefaces, instead of being based on fourths as FHWA Series is, is based on sevenths. The lowercase "x" is 5/7 the height of the capital X (in FHWA Series it's 3/4). This caused me a lot of heartburn when I was drawing Trafikkalfabetet from scratch in 2018. (Need to get around to finishing/releasing that...)

Then again, Clearview's x-height is 21/25. No accounting for taste, I guess.

[kkt]

Please don't redefine a unit we've already got.  If you want a new unit, give it a new name.  Survey inches thank you.

[SkyPesos]

If you want a new unit, give it a new name.

I'll use the washing machine unit from now on

[GaryV]

"Smoot" is already used, so don't use that for your new unit:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot

[hotdogPi]

mi/km ≈ φ
(mi/km)⁸ ≈ 45
-tan(mi/km) ≈ marathon/mi

Even more surprising:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.96 gives the value of significance as 1.9599639845400... standard deviations.
(mi/km)^√2 = 1.95995299582040...

[CNGL-Leudimin]

IMO the metric system isn't old fashioned. The US customary system is. I would expect the so-called Third World, and not an advanced country, to be still using their own systems. I'm tired of having to indicate I want km to Google Maps when asking for a route in the USA.

On the vein of new custom units, I prefer to combine very large and very small units for some measurements. For lengths I use the attoparsec, which is a parsec (3.26 light-years) combined with the SI prefix atto, which causes it to be 18 orders of magnitude smaller and be a human-scaled unit of about 1.2 inches (about 3 cm). For volume I use the barn-megaparsec, multiplying a barn (used for cross-sectional areas of atomic nuclei) by a megaparsec (one million parsecs) to obtain an unit equalling about 2/3 of a teaspoon (about 3 ml). Both can be used in Google .

I also have a customary unit, equalling the distance from my home to one of my favorite towns (which I currently have out-of-reach due to travel restrictions thanks to you know what). I have defined it as exactly 120 miles. The reason I have it defined from a non-SI unit is because the original measurement came out to be 193.1 km, and it took me a while to realize that was 120 miles to within two feet.

[mrsman]

But, alas, nothing happened, to the annoyance of me, as the metric system wasn't invented by an English guy on opium. Seriously, 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and however tf many feet in a mile (5820?) WTF!

Yeah, what's a third of a meter?  A repeating decimal.

What's a third of a yard?  A foot.  And what's a third of a foot?  Four inches.

Duodecimal makes for easy fractions, whereas decimal does not.

None of that, however, makes me at all sure of how many pints are in a gallon, or how many cups are in a quart.  Our system is a mix of twos and threes, and that's the worst part about it.

Example:

16 (2x2x2x2) cups in a gallon
16 (2x2x2x2) tablespoons in a cup
3 (WTF?) teaspoons in a tablespoon

I would rather have 1/3 of a meter be 33.333····, than the current system tbh. And, our system isn't perfect either. Try to express 1/7th in any decimal system besides heptedecimal and it's multiples. See what happens.

Slightly late to the off-topic conversation, but in my mind, it would seem that the liquid measurements would be amongst the easiest metric measurements for the US to adopt.

1 tsp = 4.92 mL.  But if we were to redefine the tsp to 5 mL, it would be a lot easier to work with metric.  In fact, even the FDA for purposes of nutrtion labeling adopts 1 tsp to 5 mL.  See item 9 on this link:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/guidance-industry-guidelines-determining-metric-equivalents-household-measures#:~:text=For%20purposes%20of%20nutrition%20labeling,)(5)(viii)).

Keeping the 1 tsp = 5mL approximation would lead to the following:
1 TBSP = 15mL instead of 14.79 mL
1 fl OZ = 30 mL instead of 29.57 mL.  Heck I would even label small bottles as being TMLs (thirty millileters) in place of fl oz to keep the relative familiarity of a fluid ounce that seems universal on bottles here.
1 cup = 240 mL instead of 236.6 mL*
1 pint = 480 mL instead of 473.1 mL*
1 quart = 960 mL instead of 946.4 mL*
1 half-gallon = 1.920 L instead of 1.893 L
1 gallon = 3.840 L instead of 3.785 L*

* To the extent that one is able to break the 8 fl oz to a cup model, one can just redefine the cup as 8 1/3 fl oz or 250 mL or 1/4 L.  That would be a significant breaktrhough as if we replace quarts for liters and gallons for 4 liters, the metric system is simply adopted without even having to think of it.  Heck a lot of drinks are already sold in metric, a standard wine bottle is 750 mL, not fifth-gallon, and large soda bottles are 2 L, not half-gallon.  Milk and gasoline seem to be holdouts to the gallon.


Miles, on the other hand, would be very hard to give up.  60 MPH = 1 mile per minute, using milepost markers and speed to estimate the time to your destination is quite easy.  And it is especially hard to do in so much of the Midwest and West where the largest streets in the city are on a mille grid.  If every major street were a mile apart, you'd put your freeway exits a mile apart.  Each exit would be mileage based and also sequential at the same time.  How long to travel from Ave A to Ave B?  Well, they are exactly a mile apart and I'm driving 60 MPH on the freeway, so I will pass each exit about a minute later.

That doesn't translate as nicely with kms.

[kphoger]

Milk and gasoline seem to be holdouts to the gallon.

And every size of soft drink smaller than a liter.  You know, like normal bottles (24 fl oz) and cans (12, 8, or 7½ fl oz).

Miles, on the other hand, would be very hard to give up.  60 MPH = 1 mile per minute, using milepost markers and speed to estimate the time to your destination is quite easy.  And it is especially hard to do in so much of the Midwest and West where the largest streets in the city are on a mille grid.  If every major street were a mile apart, you'd put your freeway exits a mile apart.  Each exit would be mileage based and also sequential at the same time.  How long to travel from Ave A to Ave B?  Well, they are exactly a mile apart and I'm driving 60 MPH on the freeway, so I will pass each exit about a minute later.

That doesn't translate as nicely with kms.

1.  As for major streets and roads being spaced one mile apart in the Midwest and West, you are correct.  Converting to kilometers would disrupt the simplicity and ease of calculating distances based on the grid.

2.  As for estimating time based on distance and speed limit, you are incorrect.
  150 kilometers at 100 km/h is just as easy to estimate as 90 miles at 60 mph.
  235 kilometers at 110 km/h is no more difficult to estimate than 145 miles at 65 mph.

[kkt]

1.  As for major streets and roads being spaced one mile apart in the Midwest and West, you are correct.  Converting to kilometers would disrupt the simplicity and ease of calculating distances based on the grid.

In the midwest, yes.  In the far west, it's iffy.  The land has to be pretty flat and the roads aligned north-south, east-west.  In most of the west it's mountainous and the roads are aligned to the mountains rather than NSEW.  Even in the California Central Valley, a lot of the smaller roads are NSEW aligned but the main highways I-5 and CA 99 and some others are aligned with the river and the railroad NNW to SSE.