On Friday 01 April 2011 12:32:03 Paul Rittman wrote: > My main problem with the metric system is trying to use it > in my daily life (I live in the southern California region in the United > States). I don’t really have a problem > with kilometers or liters, but with the shorter units of length that I > would be using in my daily life. I guess its easier to visualize 6 feet > than 180 or so centimeters. I read Pat’s article on using the millimeter > (perhaps he was simply saying that businesses should use mm, with > individuals using what they prefer?), but it just seemed a bit too much to > continually tell myself, “I’m sitting 150 mm from the window,” or something > like that, or that I’m 18,500 mm tall.
Are you a tree? I'm 1500 mm tall - but height varies by several millimeters in a day. > Even cm seem to small, but decimeters seemed good—about the > width of my hand. But then I looked around and saw that pretty much nothing > was measured in terms of the decimeter (except pools in metric countries). There's nothing wrong with measuring in centimeters or decimeters, or visualizing lengths in those units. The reason they're avoided is that, if you're calculating and you get the unit wrong, a factor of 1000 error is a lot more obvious than a factor of 10 error. Also, if you multiply or divide those four prefixes, you're likely to get a nonexistent prefix. A gram millimeter squared per centisecond squared is what? > Any suggestions on ingraining the metric system in your > personal life? This isn’t the only question I have, but it’s the most > significant. Honestly, I think I’d rather speak in terms of “I’m a third of > a meter away from the window” than any other metric way of speaking—a meter > is pretty easy for me to visualize, as are simple fractions like that—but I > keep getting the idea that one isn’t supposed to use fractions in the > metric system. Or is this simply in a professional setting, where > calculations need to be used? I did use fractions in statics calculations, and I'm currently designing a house which I'll build with dry-stacked blocks whose actual dimension, expressed in millimeters, is 396+7/8. But the statics results are rounded to decimals, and the dimension I'm allocating to the block is 398 mm (so that half of it is an integer). The blocks could be as much as 3 mm longer or shorter; hopefully I won't get pallets full of long blocks. When I cook potatoes, I weigh them, divide by 3, and add that much water. But I don't keep the third of a gram. If the water is within 10 g, that's fine. You could build something in metric. When I was young, my mom asked me to make partitions in a cupboard. I took four pieces of wood 45 cm long, drilled nine holes at 5 cm spacing in each, and put dowels in them. Pierre -- Jews use a lunisolar calendar; Muslims use a solely lunar calendar.
