SI system or Standard American Engineering?
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
How can you make a wisecrack about not confusing centimetres and inches?
And how could such a thing be taken the wrong way?
CoolBreeze
SOC-2
I love the way you say American and then give the real term - Imperial
Best thing the British Empire ever gave the world - a completely stupid system of weights and measures that has no internal consistency (without looking it up how many chains are there in a furlong?).
There are rumours that a few years back a Nasa mission to Mars missed the planet or crashed due to a mix up between imperial and metric units.
SI will be the only unit system in the future - until our robot overlords decide to use their superior base 3 system
Not rumors. Actually happened. Didn't convert properly and hit the atmosphere at too steep an angle. Smoking hole.
L
lordmalachdrim
Guest
I don't get metric and doubt I ever will. As for how many chains are in a furlong I believe its 10 (only because it's the only one that does the whole base ten deal). But I find that fewer people know how many pounds there are in a stone.
14 avoirdupois pounds.
Icosahedron
SOC-14 1K
QED.
As a Brit, I'm familiar with both. I was taught Imperial at school and Metric at college. I can think in both systems and interconvert numerically and by mental image.
Except when I make a mistake. Which happens.
I can sympathise with NASA.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Careful - you are giving your age away there
It's an odd thing with us Brits.
Even though most schools only teach metric these days the majority of kids still know their hight in feet and inches and their weight in stones and pounds (another difference between Brits and yanks - 13 stone sounds so much lighter than 178 pounds).
It's an odd thing with us Brits.
Even though most schools only teach metric these days the majority of kids still know their hight in feet and inches and their weight in stones and pounds (another difference between Brits and yanks - 13 stone sounds so much lighter than 178 pounds
).
When I was in school (UK, 70’s) I was only taught metric. My teachers assumed (so they said) that the conversion to metric would have happened by the time we graduated and thus there was no need to learn the old system. Didn’t quite work out that way, but as a result most of the old measures baffle me, while metric seems like child’s play.
As someone who writes a lot of software dealing with amounts of money, you have no idea how relieved I am that at least the money was decimalised before I entered the workplace.
But, bringing this back to Traveller, while metric is used a lot, there are some non-metric units too: “displacement tons” and “AUs” to name just two.
As someone who writes a lot of software dealing with amounts of money, you have no idea how relieved I am that at least the money was decimalised before I entered the workplace.
But, bringing this back to Traveller, while metric is used a lot, there are some non-metric units too: “displacement tons” and “AUs” to name just two.
At different times, working on various machinery, I have had to learn all three.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
Gotta love whitworth, try explaining it to a Chinese engineer, they're like what? And leery that you may be pulling a prank on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Standard_Whitworth
:rofl:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
Gotta love whitworth, try explaining it to a Chinese engineer, they're like what? And leery that you may be pulling a prank on them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Standard_Whitworth
:rofl:
I'm in the same time frame as you, but was taught in Imperial, and only introduced to metric. Following from an early desire to know exactly what 25mm and 15mm were, I became more familiar with metric. Now, I can use both (most of the time) mixed together. "Hmm. Looks like I'll need a 200mm square sheet of 30 thou plasticard"
As to the money issue.
My first computing job (mid 80s) was for a financial company that ran all of its processing on a big iron (and I mean Traveller sized plus) mainframe. Most of the programs had been written before decimalisation.
During the currency conversion process, someone decided that it would best if the internals were left alone, and initial input converted £p into £sd, with a respective conversion upon final output.
If a new system interfaced with an old, it had to follow the rules at that interface.
Your relief is probably equal to my expaspiration.
Heh
SI is used where I live, but over almost ten years of fantasy gaming I learned to think in either system. As a side effect of that, for me the Imperial system is now firmly associated with fantasy and medieval times.
Was a pleasant surprise when I found that Traveller uses metric system. Yay!
Also, as it was pointed out, Third imperium does not use SI exclusively, even in engineering. Acceleration is routinely measured in gravities, and volume in displacement tons. I guess dt is the only fictional unit there, right?
SI is used where I live, but over almost ten years of fantasy gaming I learned to think in either system. As a side effect of that, for me the Imperial system is now firmly associated with fantasy and medieval times.
Was a pleasant surprise when I found that Traveller uses metric system. Yay!
Also, as it was pointed out, Third imperium does not use SI exclusively, even in engineering. Acceleration is routinely measured in gravities, and volume in displacement tons. I guess dt is the only fictional unit there, right?
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Then I should warn you: Back in the day, GW (not GDW) used to produce Traveller items under licence. One such product was 15mm grid paper for drawing deckplans on. But when placing a design next to an official 15mm scale deckplan one day, my friends and I discovered the grids didn't line up. You see, 15mm scale means half inch squares (and 25mm scale means 1 inch squares). GW had made the mistake of thinking 15mm scale meant 15mm squares ... as did we all. Apparently this is normal.
o:
Ouch! I wonder if things like that explain why I sometimes got final demands (with threats of disconnection) from utility companies if I didn't immediately settle the outstanding zero balance on my bill?
Then I should warn you: Back in the day, GW (not GDW) used to produce Traveller items under licence. One such product was 15mm grid paper for drawing deckplans on. But when placing a design next to an official 15mm scale deckplan one day, my friends and I discovered the grids didn't line up. You see, 15mm scale means half inch squares (and 25mm scale means 1 inch squares). GW had made the mistake of thinking 15mm scale meant 15mm squares ... as did we all. Apparently this is normal.
I never bought any GW traveller stuff - always had a supply of graph paper (gridded at 1/10"), and worked out it should be 1/2 inch for 15 mm.
Also, (and not wanting to start a holy war about figure height / scale), my calculations give a 25mm scale deck plan sqaure of 0.8"
In my experience, its more likely that they they don't want to filter on criteria for what letters get sent out, as adding a filter might block a letter that needs to be sent.
There is little evidence to support that contention, Paul, especially given the independent reinvention of those units in multiple nations where metric was enforced.
The metric "foot" being different from the English, Chinese, or Japanese, it still exists (with competing definitions) in several nations... including France and China's 33 1/3 cm and the European 30 cm...
Inches likewise exist... in china, 10 cùn (inches) to their metric foot (Chi)
Such body-centric units are nigh universal, if imprecise as intercultural units
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cun_(unit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_foot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measures
