Did something a bit different last night.

Went to the speedway. Watching 460 big block late model sedans going around a dirt track sideways at 170km/h is good fun. My son loved it.

Reply to
Fraser Johnston
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170km/h whats that in proper old money? and whats a 460 in cc? all this metric s**te i'm all mixed up with this metric crap.
Reply to
Vamp

Fapping huge by UK money.

Reply to
Elder

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You can convert all sorts of stuff in google, it's pretty smart.

I prefer metric, I suppose it's whatever-you're-used-to really.

Reply to
conkersack

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Not as convenient or as simple to use as this little free prog IMO.

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All sorts of conversions instantly available offline.

Mike.

Reply to
Mike G

What's "offline" ? :)

Reply to
Lordy.UK

Apparently there is also an "outside"...

Reply to
Iridium

now calm the f*ck down i'm getting a nosebleed!

Reply to
Vamp

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oh didn't know google could do that, i've always gone to a site with a converter on it but i was just to idle to do that when i read the post!

i grow up with metric and non metric shit which annoys me a bit most of the time. i still don't get why car manafacturers still tell us MPG yet petrol pumps are in litres. mind you if they told me miles per litre i wouldn't know how far in petrol that was either :-P

Reply to
Vamp

Sounds new, different and exciting. Unfortunately I don't like change :)

Reply to
Lordy.UK

That's good.

Reply to
conkersack

Yeah, it's quite useful really. You can convert into weird things too, like parsecs per millennia and all sorts. You know, useful for the average motorist.

Eek! Are you generally quite angry then?!

Well, that's dead easy:

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%-)

Funny though, I was brought up with metric and imperial, but don't really have much time for imperial any more. Metric is just a bit easier to deal with, as far as I'm concerned.

Reply to
conkersack

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when i was at school in depending on what they was teaching. CDT used metric in mm but science used cm then you'd go to geography and they'd do it all in miles. then you'd go to chemistry where everything was ml oh and now and again when working with wood in CDT it would be in inches.

then in maths it was decimal but they'd teach fractions and eh. the stupid thing was is they taught you all the measurements but never how to convert one to another which i thought was dumb! sure a lot of it was dependant on how old the teacher was too as younger teachers tended to be metric.

funny thing when i went to the US is they use a decimal system but in florida a lot of the petrol pumps and the sale boards at the station gave it to you in non decimal. and they say quater instead of 25cents ect.

Reply to
Vamp

105mph and 7 and a bit litres.

Fraser

Reply to
Fraser Johnston

Yeah, I had the same kind of thing at school, but I'd just work in metric. Funnily enough, when I lived in Canada (all metric, officially) the building contractors I knew would refer to everything in imperial measures, but what you got was the nearest metric sized item. The US is getting there, but they haven't mandated anything metric.

Things like fractions though - that's pretty much mandatory which ever system you use. And things like 'quarter' for 25 cents is just the same thing as us calling a pound a quid, or a five pound note a Lady, just slang really.

Reply to
conkersack

Ah, but the majority of Brits use farenheit on a hot day and celcius on a cold day :)

Mix and match, you know it makes sense :)

Reply to
Tony Bond

The opposite of 'online' Mike.

Reply to
Mike G

Metric is OK as long as you're only interested in measuring in increments of

1mm, and with lengths below 1" or 25,4 mm, the imperial system is much easier to use IMO.

A thousanth is a convenient unit. 1 thou, 2 thou, 3 thou, etc, gives us

0.001", 0.002", 0.003". A logical and simple progression. The same measurements in metric are 0,0254 mm, 0,0508 mm, 0,0752 mm.

You can't simplify metric in the same way. You might say why not simply use

0.01 mm, 0.02 mm, 0.03 mm instead. Well you could do that but in practice, for most applications, that unit is too small. It's only 4 tenths of a thou in fact. Working in thousanths of an inch, if any greater accuracy is req'd, you simply add a decimal place or two. 0.0015", 0.00155", etc etc.

And I think the application of the metric thread system has left us worse off than our old Whitworth thread system. Under the Whitworth system we had a coarse BSW thread for castings, alloy etc, and a finer BSF thread which was more suitable for steel components. Now, although there are various pitches for each metric thread size. Most retailers only stock metric coarse. Finer screws have to be specially ordered, consequently they're seldom used in manufacturing. Mike.

Reply to
Mike G

It's only useable and simple because you are applying the metric method to the imperial system.

Why is that a problem? Why not use microns? '25 microns' is not an unwieldy unit, and has all the scope for improved accuracy that most people might need.

Er.

That may be true - I bow to your experience in the area, but it is a problem with the manufacturers of the components and the market forces at play, not with the metric system. Having units which mean something, can be readily related to one another simply by shuffling decimal points and which don't require reference to an arbitrary archaic external reference in order to make sense of them is surely a good thing.

Reply to
Albert T Cone

Not trying to nitpick, but in precision engineering, decimalisation of the inch has been always been included in the imperial system. Certainly for over 100 years. Even when fractions are used they're nearly always decimalised.

25 microns is near enough 1 thou. You also have to take into account the ease of using the measuring instruments. Frinstance a metric micrometer is not as easy to read as an imperial one, simply because the graduations on the thimble and barrel are that much smaller. Microns are really too precise for general engineering, apart from the fact that common w/shop tools like micrometers and verniers etc are just not accurate enough to measure them.

I agree. What actually seems to have happened, is that as far as screws are concerned, suppliers took the opportunity to only generally stock metric coarse screws, nuts, etc, rather than BSF 'and' BSW.

Having units which mean something,

Theoretically it doesn't make any difference. but in practice I think the imperial system is a much easier system to use. I doubt there are many engineers who can honestly say they've never misread a micrometer, and a metric micrometer increases that possibility. Mike.

Reply to
Mike G

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