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from the How-many-slugs-to-the-stone? dept.
AnonTechie writes:
"I have the following requests to members of this new forum:
1) Please use SI Units wherever possible. Alternative comparative units such as swimming pools, size of Florida, cars, libraries of congress, etc are also welcome ...
2) Please cover tech/science related stories from around the world. Please do not make this a US only website !!
Cheers and best wishes,
AnonTechie"
[ED Note: We as a community welcome submissions from around the world, as befits our international userbase. The Editorial team in particular is looking closely at including voices from outside the U.S. as we continue to grow. As for the units question in particular, stories will certainly arrive with a variety of units depending on the origin of the submission. We encourage, though do not require, submitters to include conversions where appropriate for clarity out of courtesy to your fellow readers. Though we try to use a light touch when making edits to story submissions, Editors may add these from time to time as well, should clarity demand and time permit.
Soylentils, does the current ad-hoc approach meet your needs, or do you favor a more formal approach from your news discussion site?]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by jb on Monday February 24 2014, @04:00AM
But the trouble is it often isn't.
The metric system only begins to approach useful as "one true system" if one makes use of all available prefixes. Very few countries that have metricated actually did it that way, preferring instead to "dumb it down" by using only a small smattering of prefixes for each unit.
Here in Australia, for example (where we decimalised currency in '66, metricated weights & measures in '76, and metricated everything else in '86), only a few select prefixes ever seem to be used with metric units -- and it's quite common for something to be described as being 1219mm despite the metre itself being the most obvious metric unit to use.
For measuring the sorts of things the average person comes across on a daily basis, the imperial system did not suffer from that problem, as the units were based on real-world things that people were familiar with -- the metric system doesn't to either, but by making silly choicese (like using millimetres when metres would make more sense; or considering deci- or deka- anything virtually taboo), it has ended up that way (although I understand that in Europe at least metric units tend to be used more sensibly)
Now the imperial system wasn't perfect either -- it had serious short-comings when dealing with extremely small or extremely large quantities (a problem which the metric system solves nicely).
In a world where the most influential nation uses an almost [absent proper gallons] imperial system and most of the rest of the world uses the metric system, thereby ensuring that people everywhere still need to be familiar with both systems, surely when posting in an international forum it makes most sense just to pick whichever unit (from either system) fits best with the quantity being measured?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @05:04AM
US economy went down and Aussie economy stayed fine, mainly because a certain nation imported iron ore and coal like crazy.
US economy on a (slow) track to recovery, Aussie economy goes down because that above mentioned nation restructured its imports.
Seems to me that the most influential nation (at least for Australia) is using other [wikipedia.org] units system
(Score: 1) by beckett on Monday February 24 2014, @05:04AM
it's faster and easier to convert 1219m, divide by 1000 to 1.2km in your head than take 1 mile, and somehow remember there are 5280feet in a mile.