John Hart wrote:
>
> The Metric system is just as idiotic as the English. Metric
> measurement is good for people limited to thinking terms of ten, but
> it's hard for the eye to divide and a millstone around the neck of
> carpenters not using CNC. So What! Please keep the left wing
> political rants off the list!
Why is it harder for an eye to divide than imperial? Most of those who
rant about the metric system are those who've never bothered to learn
it. I was also opposed to it, when I first came across it in high
school science classes, but having worked with it for many years, it's
superiority is clear. In the old "imperial" measures, there are a few
different ounces. An imperial gallon is larger than a U.S. but a U.S.
ounce is larger than imperial. And a U.S. gallon is 128 oz, but
imperial 160. Does that make sense??? It's also a lot easier to scale
from, for example, centimetres to kilometres, than inches to miles. In
metric, that's a simply multiplication by 10,000, but inches to miles
is × 12 × 5280. Or do you prefer × 36 × 1760? Power of 10 conversions
make is a heck of a lot easier to do mental calculations than
multiplying all sorts of different numbers for the various units.
Lessee now, it's 12 inches to a foot, but 3 feet to a yard and 1760
yards to a mile. Or 8 ounces to a cup and 4 cups to a quart. Or is
that 5 cups to a quart? Yeah, that makes for real easy mental arithmetic.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: ooo-users-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: ooo-users-help@incubator.apache.org
|