The meter was a division of the distance between the north pole and the equator I think, and the centimeter is just a division of that.

Yes one horse might pull longer than another, and one persons stride is longer than another. But it's an average, and this average was taken as a datum stride, or a yard.

Metric is much more arbitrary than metric, and I KNOW BOTH HAVE PROS AND CONS. I can work happily all day with either/or. I'm just trying to put in an argument for Imperial, as 99% of people are only brought up with metric, and can't think in imperial.

My point with the units dividing is that in real life you often DO want to know fractions of the dimension.

And no-one says "Eleven Sixteenths of an Inch". You'd just say "Eleven Sixteenths", which takes the same time to say as 17.5 millimeters (to one decimal place).

What annoys me most is not that people prefer one system or the other. Thats obvious, because people use what they are brought up with. What REALLY irritates is when people don't consider the merits of the other system with serious thought. From what I can gather most people look at metric and just tear it to threads without knowing anything about it. That's not fair. I could take the mickey out of all of you without knowing anything about you, but that wouldn't be fair as I don't know you.

All I am asking is give the discussion of both systems a chance. Metric is more widely used world-wide now, but that doesn't make it better!!! Belgium state we are not allowed bananas with more than 5mm bend per 5cm (or something), but that doesn't make them better. Look beyond the usage, and look at the facts behind it.

People say they don't know where imperial came from, and it's silly lengths so it must be rubbish. But then they post saying they don't know what a meter is either. So surely, that makes both just as silly as each other? Neither is more valid than the other, neither is 'better' than the other. One is sometimes more suitable for certain situations. Both have a right to exist. Using both makes my life easier, and if more people learnt how and when to use the imperial system as well, then they might reap the same benefits from it that I do.

Quote from Hankstar :

And you'd think the distance from the pole to the equator would be constant, regardless of which meridian you travel down..

The earth is not perfectly spherical, so there are differences in length down different meridians.

Funny, the inch hasnt got any real standard like metre, (equal to the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum during the time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second) that meridian defenition of metre was based to calculations and estimations many hundred years ago, by the french, and they did make a standard metre which was somekind of piece of railroad rail. To create 1 inch you actually need metric: "The international inch is defined in terms of the metric system of units to be exactly 25.4 mm"...someone offcourse could say that you need 1 inch to make 25,4 mm...

But what is inch? How did it born? Something to do with human bodyparts?

Quote from Blackout :

But what is inch? How did it born? Something to do with human bodyparts?

Probably the human foot wouldn't you think?... when someone says something is "inching" along.. What does that mean?



The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly equal to 299,792,458 meters per second -approximately 186,282.4 miles per second.. 11,802,852,864.000001 inches per second... One no more accurate than the other in expressing the speed of light.

Quote from Blackout :

But what is inch? How did it born? Something to do with human bodyparts?

Quiet you.

OK, one thing that irritates me is the 30 day month thing. If you say the month is 4 weeks (much simpler), then you simply have 13 months in a year, since 28 * 13 = 364. Then only one month needs be a day longer, and everything is simpler. I think it was originally like that but millennia ago somebody decided 12 months was "much better", and we've all been using this messed up system since.

Ah, this whole thread makes me feel geeky.

It's the leap year man.

Year 2008 is the next leap year, with 29 days in February. February 2008 has five Fridays - it starts and ends on a Friday. Between 1904 and 2096, leap years with same day of week for each date repeat every 28 years which means that the last time February had 5 Fridays was in 1980 and next time will be in 2036.


A leap year is a year with one extra day inserted into February, the leap year is 366 days with 29 days in February as opposed to the normal 28 days. (There are a few past exceptions to this)
Which years are leap years?
In the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar used by most modern countries, the following rules decides which years are leap years:

Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year.
But every year divisible by 100 is NOT a leap year
Unless the year is also divisible by 400, then it is still a leap year.
This means that year 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2500 are NOT leap years, while year 2000 and 2400 are leap years.

This actually means year 2000 is kind of special, as it is the first time the third rule is used in many parts of the world.

In the old Julian Calendar, there was only one rule: Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year. This calendar was used before the Gregorian calendar was adopted.

Why are leap years needed?
Leap years are needed so that the calendar is in alignment with the earth's motion around the sun.
Details


The mean time between two successive vernal equinoxes is called a tropical year, and it is about 365.2422 days long. This means that it takes 365.2422 days for the earth to make one revolution around the sun (the time is takes to orbit the sun).

Using a calendar with 365 days would result in an error of 0.2422 days or almost 6 hours per year. After 100 years, this calendar would be more than 24 days ahead of the seasons (tropical year), which is not a desirable situation. It is desirable to align the calendar with the seasons, and make the difference as small as possible.

By adding leap years approximately every 4th year, this difference between the calendar and the seasons can be reduced significantly, and the calendar will follow the seasons much more closely than without leap years.

(One day is here used in the sense of "mean solar day", which is the mean time between two transits of the sun across the meridian of the observer.)

Is there a perfect calendar?
None of the calendars used today are perfect, they go wrong by seconds, minutes, hours or days every year. To make a calendar even better, new leap year rules have to be introduced, complicating the calculation of the calendar even more. The currently used Gregorian calendar may need some modification a few thousand years ahead. A tropical year is approximately 365.242199 days, but it varies from year to year, because of influence by the other planets.


The Gregorian calendar has a 400 year long cycle and the calendars have the same week days -- February 29, 2008 is a Friday and February 29, 2408 is a Friday.
The Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years during those 400 years.
The longest time between two leap years is 8 years. Last time was between 1896 and 1904. The next time will be between 2096 and 2104.

http://www.timeanddate.com/date/leapyear.html

Quote from Blackout :

But what is inch? How did it born? Something to do with human bodyparts?

The inch is the AVERAGE length between the tip of a thumb and the first knuckle on that thumb. It just so happens that ON AVERAGE this length is 1/12th of an average foot. And it just so happens that both the average stride (of someone many many many years ago) and the length between your nose and the tips of your fingers on an outstreched hand.

Crazy really, but it confirms that the origins of the system are based on either the human body or human lifestyles. Not silly things like the distance between random points on an imperfect sphere :P

Quote from tristancliffe :

Crazy really, but it confirms that the origins of the system are based on either the human body or human lifestyles. Not silly things like the distance between random points on an imperfect sphere :P

Now we get to a philosophical level

I think, that the "distance between random points" is more "lifelike" than those originating out of the body or lifestiles.
That's because those measurements are based on "average" lengths and so on. Now, if we regard that "average" closely, we will find that there can not possibly be anything which would be more artificial: nothing is "average" by nature. You get the "average" by adding up every length and then divide them through the number of lengths.

So, lets take an "inch" which is the last bit of you thumb. If we would add the length of the thumbs of all people in this forum and then divide the result through the number of thumbs, we would propably get an inch as a rsult. But still the chance that there is one single person here, who's tip of the thumb is exactly the length of an inch, is approximately zero. Thats why the length of an "average" thumb is something very artificial.
Also, it is not the true "average length of a thumb". If it was, with every chilld born and every deceased person, the average would have to be recalculated. Thats why the length of an "inch" is just as random as any other number.

A meter though, is definded by the very distance between the north pole and the equator if you would go in a straight line with a route through paris.
No matter how many thumbs one has, or how many meridians there are, or how large strides you make, a meter is still the same length.

Quote from tristancliffe :

The inch is the AVERAGE length between the tip of a thumb and the first knuckle on that thumb.

I was thinking something like that, wasnt sure...

edit: Northpole and Paris arent random points

Quote from Blackout :

edit: Northpole and Paris arent random points

Well, Paris IS in fact a random point. But both the equator and the pole are not.
The pole is (depeonds on which kind of pole) a point of the turning axis of our planet, and the equator is exactly at half the distance between both poles.

On a perfect sphere, it wouldn't even matter wheer you'd go from pole to equator, because it would be the same distance. Our world thoug is not perfect, thats why we need a third (random) coordinate to fix the distance.

Quote from tristancliffe :

The earth is not perfectly spherical, so there are differences in length down different meridians.

They didn't know that in the 18th century People were still getting their heads around the Earth not being the centre of the universe..

I really don't think metric measurements are any more or less arbitrary than imperial ones. The distance between knuckles, the length of a stride or the distance from the equator to the North Pole .. it really makes little difference, as you're doing the same thing for the same reason: choosing a common reference point in order to establish a system of quantifying the universe that everyone can use.

I certainly don't wish to assault the imperial scale, as I said before I use it frequently: talking to old people, describing heights/lengths, playing GPL, propping up bars ..

Quote from BWX232 :

Yeah and 12 months, 365 days in a year, 7 days in a week, 24 hrs in a day.. What kind of nutty numbers are those??

Oh, forget 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour! that is crazy, we should use "metric time".. something based on 10 would be easier.....

Not..

Metric time does exist and is pretty cool if you ask me. It's brought to you by Swatch. I've been using it over at SCORE the last year cause it's an easy way to overcome the difficulty of timezones. Metric time or "Internet Time" works and is the same all over the world, no matter what

Quote from Hankstar :

They didn't know that in the 18th century People were still getting their heads around the Earth not being the centre of the universe.

That may apply to the 'common man', but sailors knew, dispite what what the stories claim, that the Earth was round for hundreds of years before that.

The point of the imperial system makes it easy for everyday estimation, and with th aid of measuring equipment, just as accurate and easy to work with (once you're used to it) as metric. Say someone hands you a book (and pretend you'd never heard of either system). Rather than using a length based on the pole-equator distance, you'd use part of your body to 'measure' it. That's the beauty of imperial. If you want to measure a room, but don't have a tape measure, then pace it. Not small paces, or artificially large ones, but natural paces (compensate if you are really tall or short). Chances are your pace is within 10% of a yard, and hence the room measurements will be close enough to order your carpet/bed/curtains etc.

http://www.swissarmy.com/Watch ... ai&product=24220&



Hehe- I will stick to my watch..

In this age of global communities, more useful than a unit translator ,would be a language translator. There are often several different languages spoken here on a server, and if these could be displayed in your relevant language (correctly) communication would be much easier.
and I apologize in advance for being ignorant , as I only speak English, and I find most other nationalities have a grasp of a least 2 different languages