[UPDATE: Vote Passed!] Holy Mole-y - Metric redefines 4 units of measurement

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, XenosTech said:

lmao, oh yeah... She's a bit brutal tho. "I'd suggest you don't get shot." - FailSafe

Exactly, she's so sassy. Think about it though, GLaDOS would definitely also say that.

[MoonSpot]

On 11/13/2018 at 3:07 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

I thought that everything besides the kilogram had already been redefined to properties (not physical objects)?  And in fact, I thought that had already happened recently... so the Ampere, mole, and Kelvin still were based on physical things then too?  And what exactly is happening to them now? 

 

Personally, I'd like to see the amp completely removed as a fundamental unit and replaced with the coulomb.  Makes a lot more sense to me.  After all, when it comes to other fundamental units, we have distance and time, not speed and time.

Change to an SI unit is good if there's a natural, repeatable, fairly incorruptible means to do so.

The meter is tied to the distance light travels in 1 second(albeit divided by 300 million).  The second isn't a particularly good thing as it's derived from Earth's day/night cycle, and that does not get derived the same way on another planet(or even on this one).  But at least the speed of light is the speed of light.  Normalize other factors and a meter should always be the same.

 

Thought the kg was tied to water at 4⁰C (waters max expansion temp); how much water at that temp in the volume = kg (1 liter of water = 1 kg.  1ml of water = 1gram.  1000kg of water is 1m³), but that relies on particular air pressure.  Then there was some hoopla about the kg being tied to a shinny ball in someone safe, which seemed like a step back to me compared to pure water/vol @temp & pressure. 

I suspect that it'll be the most insignificant of changes in everyday grocery shopping & filling up at the gas station of the one one thousandths of a quarter pennies worth sort of thing; which just means that the mole is still going to be a pulled out of arse BS unit.

[poochyena]

I'm watching a show from the UK, and they said this guy weighed over 30 stone
then they weighed him and said he weighed 212 kilograms
then they weighed him the 2nd time and said he lost 12 pounds

They literally use three different forms of weight measurement in the UK?? I can't believe people say the US is bad when it comes to measurements...

[mr moose]

58 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I'm watching a show from the UK, and they said this guy weighed over 30 stone
then they weighed him and said he weighed 212 kilograms
then they weighed him the 2nd time and said he lost 12 pounds

They literally use three different forms of weight measurement in the UK?? I can't believe people say the US is bad when it comes to measurements...

US influence on media, everyone tries to appeal to the largest market.

[poochyena]

40 minutes ago, mr moose said:

US influence on media, everyone tries to appeal to the largest market.

But they used all three in a single episode.

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, poochyena said:

But they used all three in a single episode.

yep.   a very long time ago I worked with an old bloke who only used imperial ,  As a result I still call a cubic meter of sand a yard of sand sometimes. 

 

 

[lufihengr]

On 11/12/2018 at 7:48 PM, Dissitesuxba11s said:

 

 

FYI, imperial measurements like yards and lbs are based on the metric system

 

The United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations agreed upon common definitions for the pound and the yard. Since 1 July 1959, the international avoirdupois pound (symbol lb) has been defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg

[Dissitesuxba11s]

8 minutes ago, lufihengr said:

FYI, imperial measurements like yards and lbs are based on the metric system

 

The United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations agreed upon common definitions for the pound and the yard. Since 1 July 1959, the international avoirdupois pound (symbol lb) has been defined as exactly 0.45359237 kg

That is their current conversion rate. Imperial units were based of the commonly used measurements that they had back in the middle ages ex. 1 pound (Avoirdupois pound) is equal to 7,000 grains. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

 probably wasnt produced to mm standard lets be honest, but for a wartime mass production vehicle. such accuracy seems rather pointless doesnt it?

It does, but Hitler probably wanted to show off his big wartime peen.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

2 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

It does, but Hitler probably wanted to show off his big wartime peen.

OMG!!! Did I just witness Godwin's Law in action?! 

[Mira Yurizaki]

38 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

OMG!!! Did I just witness Godwin's Law in action?! 

Remember kids, Hitler liked metric and being precise

 

(Pls don't ban me mods)

[GoldenLag]

9 hours ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

That is their current conversion rate. Imperial units were based of the commonly used measurements that they had back in the middle ages ex. 1 pound (Avoirdupois pound) is equal to 7,000 grains. 

Which was later converted to metric values, this was done for imperial to be consistant and accurate. 

[Andreas Lilja]

12 hours ago, poochyena said:

I'm watching a show from the UK, and they said this guy weighed over 30 stone
then they weighed him and said he weighed 212 kilograms
then they weighed him the 2nd time and said he lost 12 pounds

They literally use three different forms of weight measurement in the UK?? I can't believe people say the US is bad when it comes to measurements...

French Canada uses both.

 

Lbs, inches, feet, still widespread.

[RejZoR]

6 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Remember kids, Hitler liked metric and being precise

 

(Pls don't ban me mods)

He also liked puppies, oh and he also drank water. Let that sink in  

[Technous285]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

He also liked puppies, oh and he also drank water. Let that sink in  

What does that sink want now?!

 

Being an Aussie who only officially learnt Metric in school, learning Imperial at home, I can say this on the whole thing: Metric is best for being precise and large numbers, Imperial works best for being "horseshoes and hand grenades" close where you need a rough figure that is somewhat easy to intuit in general or colloquial speech.

 

Like, I know the ceilings in my current house are roughly 10ft ones, but the size of the block the house sits on is 18m wide and 50m long (oughta be 20x50, but about a decade ago a neighbour on the corner basically stole a 2m-wide strip due to poor measurements from a surveyor not accounting for GPS drift relative to the ground).

 

Personally, I'm glad these specific measurements in the start are getting redefined to cosmic constants of some kind, though I wish they went to the amount of Silicon-27 atoms in a perfect sphere as the definition of a kilogram. Oh well.

[Canada EH]

Where does weight in stone fit in the imperial and metric?

[CarlBar]

On 11/13/2018 at 7:02 PM, poochyena said:

I'm watching a show from the UK, and they said this guy weighed over 30 stone
then they weighed him and said he weighed 212 kilograms
then they weighed him the 2nd time and said he lost 12 pounds

They literally use three different forms of weight measurement in the UK?? I can't believe people say the US is bad when it comes to measurements...

 

The issue is we only went to metric fully a decade or so ago. A lot of adult still haven't ever learned metric and many middle ground people like myself can use both. The again i think the whole way they brought metric in fully was rat arsed backwards but thats me.

[dangeredwolf]

On 11/12/2018 at 12:48 PM, Dissitesuxba11s said:

[snip]

 

US imperial units are defined using metric units and have been for over 100 years. So this affects the US too, technically.

[Dissitesuxba11s]

2 minutes ago, dangeredwolf said:

US imperial units are defined using metric units and have been for over 100 years. So this affects the US too, technically.

Yup, this was addressed a couple of post ago but thanks for the input.

[rcmaehl]

6 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

@rcmaehl

 

Mind if I add this to the original post?

[rcmaehl]

3 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

just go add, LOL. no need to ask me for something I didn't make o_o

But if I don't ask then I'm a dirty reddit forum reposter who just wants upvotes post likes

[rcmaehl]

Update! It appears the vote has passed! Death to Kg, Long live Kg!

[ARikozuM]

HUZZAH!!! THANKS TO THE VOTE, I'M 0.2 GRAMS LIGHTER! THANKS, OBAMA!

[Dash Lambda]

On 11/12/2018 at 12:48 PM, Dissitesuxba11s said:

In all seriousness, I wonder how this will affect commonly known equations like calculating Celsius from Kelvin by subtracting 273.15. Maybe it will be subtracting it by 273.14?

Even if they were changing the measurement like that, they would be far more precise. Changing the hundredths place would wreak utter havoc.

But the way they're changing it isn't by changing the unit itself, they're just changing what it's based on.

On 11/13/2018 at 1:45 PM, MoonSpot said:

-The second isn't a particularly good thing as it's derived from Earth's day/night cycle, and that does not get derived the same way on another planet (or even on this one).

 

-Then there was some hoopla about the kg being tied to a shinny ball in someone's safe, which seemed like a step back to me compared to pure water/vol @temp & pressure. 

The second is defined by the frequency of radiation emitted by a specific process in a Cesium-133 atom, which I believe is exact. That's why we can have atomic clocks that are orders of magnitude better timekeepers than even the Solar system.

 

And that thing with the ball actually has very little to do with the physical object. The point of the ball is so that the reference is reproducible -If you want to measure precisely a kilogram, then you make a sphere to the specifications and it weighs precisely one kilogram. The definition we just dropped, however, is based on the weight of a specific block stored away in a room somewhere.

It was originally defined with water, but that's just too volatile. Physical systems have countless little things that you just can't control enough to make good, rigid definitions from them.