Does your delay when modified by haste, round up / down?

[Juevento]

As someone in a technical field, I hate the metric system. I have absolutely zero frame of reference for metric units (i.e. length, force, pressure, energy, etc). With imperial units I have an innate understanding of what a lbf, psi, btu are.

Having said that milliseconds aren't necessarily metric as they are used in all unit systems.

[Haynar]

And the best non-metric measure of speed is:

Furlongs per fortnight.

H

[Rkelly]

Originally Posted by Juevento [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As someone in a technical field, I hate the metric system. I have absolutely zero frame of reference for metric units (i.e. length, force, pressure, energy, etc). With imperial units I have an innate understanding of what a lbf, psi, btu are.

Having said that milliseconds aren't necessarily metric as they are used in all unit systems.

how is a foot pound or a british thermal unit more intuitive than a joule

[Juevento]

Because I have a sense of what magnitude those values represent.

If you tell me something has a tensile strength of 120 kPa, I have no idea of that's high or low or somewhere in the middle. Tell me it has a strength of 31 ksi, I know that's a fairly weak material.

Same thing for moment/torque. If something's got an applied moment of 120in-lbf (or 10ft-lbf) it's easy to imagine someone cranking a 1 foot long lever with 10 lbf or applied force and have a good sense for the resulting deflection, stress level, etc. For something like N-m, I don't even know where to start with that as I have no idea how heavy a Newton is with respect to a lbf. I could look it up but it's not nearly intuitive for me.

Perhaps that comes with being in a country (America) and an industry (aerospace) that heavily utilizes the imperial system, but that's my perspective and has generally always been even back in college where both methods were taught.

[Daldaen]

Medical professionals and Engineers fall under the scientist category.

[fadetree]

I agree with Juvento....and its not just because I grew up used to imperial. The metric scales for the most part seem too fine grained and too small to have a good intuitive grasp on. A joule is very small, but a foot pound is macro enough to have an analog in my primitive brain. Of course, this same quality makes metric better for actually doing math.

[myriverse]

Originally Posted by Juevento [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

As someone in a technical field, I hate the metric system. I have absolutely zero frame of reference for metric units (i.e. length, force, pressure, energy, etc). With imperial units I have an innate understanding of what a lbf, psi, btu are.

Having said that milliseconds aren't necessarily metric as they are used in all unit systems.

Frame of reference is familiarity. Once you get the frame of reference, no prob.

Originally Posted by fadetree [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I agree with Juvento....and its not just because I grew up used to imperial. The metric scales for the most part seem too fine grained and too small to have a good intuitive grasp on. A joule is very small, but a foot pound is macro enough to have an analog in my primitive brain. Of course, this same quality makes metric better for actually doing math.

A Joule isn't that much smaller. It's almost 3/4 of a foot-pound. And if ever there is a huge difference, then just increase the size of the unit.

[fadetree]

Man, I'm wrong all over. I thought a joule was teeny. Maybe I'm thinking of erg or something.

[Daldaen]

Pascal, unit of pressure/stress, is one that is extremely small. That's why most pressure readings are in kPa or MPa

[Juevento]

Yeah there is rough an order of magnitude difference between Pa and psi.

Any time I have to think in metric I find myself doing mental conversions to get to the relevant english unit. 1mm = 0.039", 2.54 cm = 1", N = whothefuckevenknows lbf. I think one of the stupid things about metric is that the mass term is extremely prevalent, whereas with imperial units you deal more with weights. To me that's one of the reasons it is more useful for everyday (earth-based) work.