You miss the point:
I am teaching students how to read and understand any plan they may strike anywhere in the English speaking world. The students need to know there are odd units in all languages left over from our movement from agrarian to industrial - if you do not know ask There are two different inches in the USA – pre 1864 and post 1864 – if you do long roads you better know the difference I am not here to teach the students – this is metric – it is all that will happen for the future – it is not I am here to teach students – build a road in an area that has not been surveyed since 1720 by the Spanish or 1880 by a bunch of guys who were the lowest bidder and knew how far a cigarette was. Of course there is an error in a cigarette if measured statistically – but a judge decided and we are stuck with it. If you go into a lumber yard and talk in inches you are known as tenderfoot in their language and the lumber language has the kerf allowances built in -- it is archaic but I use that language most days in a woodshop I teach my students that archaic language to . Metric is the best – but the USA has a government system that resists change *John Nichols* Construction Science, College of Architecture | Texas A&M University ph: 979.845.6541 | [email protected] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - *https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamu.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Cada0ecf6f11c49e67e7208d7f5d5dcef%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248171203107461&sdata=RfHNhV03%2FZHhzx7mrk1eDwqEH%2BC70G9ImscamCnJIM4%3D&reserved=0* <https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tamu.edu%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Cada0ecf6f11c49e67e7208d7f5d5dcef%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248171203107461&sdata=RfHNhV03%2FZHhzx7mrk1eDwqEH%2BC70G9ImscamCnJIM4%3D&reserved=0> *From:* John Steele <[email protected]> *Sent:* Monday, 11 May 2020 12:16 PM *To:* Mark Henschel <[email protected]> *Cc:* USMA List Server <[email protected]>; John Nichols < [email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [USMA 1372] Re: Teaching students I sincerely hope you didn't take my comment as a defense of Customary units. I agree metric is easier and preferable in all cases. Unfortunately some professions and employers insist on using the damned things. (I was fortunate to work in automotive, which metricated in the 70's.) My post was about using obsolete, ill-defined, traditional units that aren't even part of US Customary (or SI). Apparently a llath is or was a Welsh synonym for *a* rod or pole, not *the *rod or pole(16.5 ft | 5.0292 m), so it doesn't have a real definition, and a cigarette is worse, being the distance a man with variable walking speed can walk while smoking a variable length cigarette of variable burn rate, caused by variable inhalation rates. Male bovine droppings. It can't even be used indoors anymore. Hard to convert ill-defined units to anything meaningful. As bad as it is to work with the mixed-base math, all Customary units at least have strict SI definitions. In your two examples, do I have to pay for the saw kerf too (~1/8"), or just the cutoff piece. On Monday, May 11, 2020, 8:25:10 AM EDT, Mark Henschel < [email protected]> wrote: Pretend you walk into a lumber yard to buy a piece of wood, and the workers offer to cut a piece the length you need. The original piece of lumber is 12 feet, four and 5/16 ths of an inch long. You need a piece 8 feet, seven and 3/4 of an inch long. How long is the waste piece (that you still have to pay for)? Now you are transported to a metric universe. The lumber in the lumber yard is now 2.6 meters long, and you need a piece 1.83 meters long. How long is the waste piece now? Note these problems are not conversions in any sense, I just made up the numbers to illustrate a point. To subtract fractions using the inch-pound system one needs to do three or four steps, including borrowing twice, once from a whole inch and once from feet, turning it into 12 inches. Plus one needs a common denominator to do the problem. The inch problem takes much more time than just subtracting the decimal numbers. MArk Henschel <https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.proofpoint.com%2Fv2%2Furl%3Fu%3Dhttp-3A__www.avg.com_email-2Dsignature-3Futm-5Fmedium-3Demail-26utm-5Fsource-3Dlink-26utm-5Fcampaign-3Dsig-2Demail-26utm-5Fcontent-3Dwebmail%26d%3DDwMFaQ%26c%3Du6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg%26r%3D2z9QGiy5Dxy8_0qMMqfA98Bie-nGD-VfgJgfw4byoU4%26m%3DJW5U08qTu4xT-fJgwQvxVEVHrCTJmrTSb5YcvP9IIXM%26s%3Dk5G8NpYLQs2YMQvzqrtzyEwMgVkTzFC0nYot5f4oTuI%26e%3D&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Cada0ecf6f11c49e67e7208d7f5d5dcef%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248171203117450&sdata=3xb4j3l7eGzQneznMqlFjdt9iutwhcHmlbEDpRe%2BtGE%3D&reserved=0> Virus-free. https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.avg.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Cada0ecf6f11c49e67e7208d7f5d5dcef%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248171203117450&sdata=Hg36f8P02zqzkpm885LGX%2FDID5m9VtF7K9LjnG4r7Ww%3D&reserved=0 <https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.proofpoint.com%2Fv2%2Furl%3Fu%3Dhttp-3A__www.avg.com_email-2Dsignature-3Futm-5Fmedium-3Demail-26utm-5Fsource-3Dlink-26utm-5Fcampaign-3Dsig-2Demail-26utm-5Fcontent-3Dwebmail%26d%3DDwMFaQ%26c%3Du6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg%26r%3D2z9QGiy5Dxy8_0qMMqfA98Bie-nGD-VfgJgfw4byoU4%26m%3DJW5U08qTu4xT-fJgwQvxVEVHrCTJmrTSb5YcvP9IIXM%26s%3Dk5G8NpYLQs2YMQvzqrtzyEwMgVkTzFC0nYot5f4oTuI%26e%3D&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7Cada0ecf6f11c49e67e7208d7f5d5dcef%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248171203117450&sdata=3xb4j3l7eGzQneznMqlFjdt9iutwhcHmlbEDpRe%2BtGE%3D&reserved=0> On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 5:28 AM John Steele <[email protected]> wrote: Seriously, I hope this is just a bad joke. Students should be learning two things: *To think *Material that will be *useful* in the profession the course relates to. It is bad enough students need to convert between metric and the Customary units still prevalent in some professions in the US. Teaching (and examining them) on units too obscure to even be defined in Rowlett's Units of Measure, moreless actually used in the US is torture, not teaching. As a potential employer, students who have wasted class time learning nonsense like this would be less useful to me than students who have learned more useful material. I think this needs to be rethought. While being pedantic, I need to point out that the kilogram is a unit of mass, not force (the concept of kilogram-force being entirely deprecated in the SI) so kg/bc² can not be a unit of pressure. You need to multiply by local gravity (as the building likely is designed to stay put) and use N/bc². Also, we use Customary, derived from more obsolete British units, not Imperial. We were independent when Imperial was conceived and adopted none of its changes. Only units which did not change in 1824 are common. I have to ask. In Texas, is a cigarette the length of the tobacco product or the boat? On Sunday, May 10, 2020, 4:46:41 PM EDT, John Nichols <[email protected]> wrote: It is very easy to demonstrate to a class of Freshman the stupidity of the Imperial System used in the USA. 1. Teach then about a cigarette – a legal length in Texas 2. Tell them about stones once in class and the use it in the exam 3. Use barley corns 4. A llath is a great UK unit – it is legal in the UK so I tell me students it is acceptable here 5. Do all board work in feet and change to inches in the exam -- Then set a math problem – A building weighs 4000000 stone, what is the ground pressure if the building is 2/3 of a cigarette by 200 llaths in kg/ squared bc. 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