Dear John, Thanks again for stirring my thoughts. I have interspersed some remarks.
on 2002-12-25 14.32, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > 2002-12-24 > > I disagree! The metre is very close to the yard. Yards are not used in > construction and manufacturing. It's use is limited. In the olden days in Australia, we used the following measures on our building sites for domestic houses: yards to set out the position on the block (I once used chains for this on a farmhouse job) feet to measure lengths of timber and sizes of rooms inches to moderate the lengths of feet halves were rarely used because when you got to this level of precision you were looking for greater precision so you might use quarters for framing (if you were rough) or more likely eighths. sixteenths for 'finishing work' such as architraves and cornices I suppose that thirty-secondths could have been used, but I never had the occasion to do so. In summary, let's say that we used yards, feet, inches, and fractions (lots of them in different sizes) � say four measures in all. These were replaced with metrication by two measures millimetres and metres, and of these you can go for days on an Australian building site without seeing a metre. As I said in a previous post: 1 There are no fractions 2 There are no conversions 3 All measurements are precise (perhaps too precise in some cases) 4 There are no decimal markers and no decimal conversions > If the foot and inch survive it is because they have not been effectively > done away with. By this I mean elimination of devices that allow them to > continue existing. You can never erase these units from peoples minds. As > long as it is easy to convert from old to new and vice-versa, the old will > be retained longer. Make it harder and the old either fades quicker, of the > old unit becomes corrupted. > > There is no proof that in order to metricate we have to find units > equivalent to the old ones. I agree completely. Metrication should be regarded as an opportunity to remove faulty practices from your industry. I believe that General Motors saved so much money with the rationalising of their parts inventories that they had to abandon the 'Cost of Metrication' project that they were, no doubt, going to bash the government over the head with. Many companies in Australia made loads of money by taking the opportunity provided by metrication to rationalise simple things like house design. One innovation that I remember was the change in wall stud spacings from 457.2�millimetres to 600�mm. > Those who don't want to learn the new will > insist on something like this. If you listen carefully, you can hear the bleating: "I don't want to change my mind. My mind is set. I don't want to change my mind. My mind is set. I don't want to change my mind. My mind is set. I don't want to change my mind". > Finding convenience in the new units comes > with use and experience, something that will not happen if the old is clung > to. And it takes surprisingly little experience, if the experience is well done (well done simply means no conversions and no dual measurements) > Those who insist that inches and feet are more convenient have never > used a millimetre tape long enough to get use to it. I reckon that you could use this as an opportunity. Measure some of your body parts, such as the width of your hand in millimetres, and then compare your results with mine. Thickness of my thumb nail = 1 mm Width of my little finger nail = 10 mm Width of my thumb nail = 20�mm Width of my palm (across the knuckles) = 100�mm My hand span (with a slight stretch) = 250�mm My cubit (elbow to long finger tip) = 500�mm My foot =�300�mm My foot with shoe = 330�mm My ordinary pace is 750�mm My stretched pace is 1000�mm Once you know these 'rules of thumb' you can guess a lot of things with reasonable accuracy without a ruler in sight. > Most likely, they > looked at it for 5 s, convinced themselves at one look it is too difficult > and gave up. I suspect that they didn't even look at it for that long. Experience is the death of conjecture � and conjecture can be such good fun! > Even if we gave them the decimetre, the FFU-ists would still claim it is too > small compared to the foot and too big compared to the inch. Let's ignore > those who would fool us with such nonsense or else we will start to believe > it is true ourselves. We need to convince the masses that once learned, SI > is better. Agreed. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia
