Talk:Metrication/Archive 1

message: What is "gyproc"? Sheetrock? -phma
:Yes, gyproc is synonymous with sheetrock or drywall.  Steggall 14:13, 13 Jul 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gyproc 

message: The example of the 1-inch bolt that is different from an M24 bolt is unlucky. Metric (iso) threads have a different angle than American bolts. For example, M4 and #8-32 have the same diameter, but they don't match anyway. Han-Kwang (talk) 16:28, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bolts 1 in vs. M24 

message: This article features phrases such as "as opposed to the awkward nature of the SI system". I think this article either needs cleaning up, or to be deleted and supplemented to Metrication#The_anti-metrication_movement.
: Please sign and date your posts, user 82.43.193.15. There's certainly some cleaning up to do. Ideally, IMO this would remain as a separate article, with a summary and wikilink at the article section you quote. It's a major topic. Even if you think that the anti-metric people are a lunatic fringe, they are a significant movement. Personally, and having lived through the fiasco over stage lighting suspension bolts in Australia, I think there are some good arguments on both sides, and by implication also some lunatics opposing them! Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See comments below concerning JPL and screw threads. Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

text: Actually, by god, this article needs NPOV'ing. "A dozen eggs cannot be metricized." --TVPR 22:14, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Should this be a separate article?

message: Useless comment: The machine shop of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used "imperial" units until about ten years ago. At the time the machinists were dead set against changing. They were experts at what they did. One was quoted in the Los Angeles Times that he knew that 1/32 of an inch felt like, and that the loss of that kind of knowledge would someday lead to a critical mistake. I recalled that quote when a Mars mission went astray due to a faulty unit conversion (not the same problem, but a related issue). I can't find the reference, so I only mention it to remind editors that anti-metric isn't synonymous with "anti-science". -Willmcw 05:04, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
: Anti-metric is not synonymous with "anti-science", but it definitely makes the labor of the scientist and engineer a bit more complicated. --Luiscolorado 14:35, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: JPL

message: Some screw threads have proved extrememly resistant to metrication (Australian English metrification). AFAIK even German and Japanese moving coil meters always used BA threads, and the ones on the most recent equipment I have examined still do. A current series Elmo overhead projector bought by my church recently has three BA screws, used to mount the lens, although all other threads appear to be ISO standard fastener threads.
In Australia, we had a real fiasco over stage lighting suspension bolts, and in both this and in the bolts you can buy in your local hardware store, we have now reverted to Whitworth (BSW) threads in practice (after a period in which they were illegal). Part of this is that the ISO fastener threads which were the recommended (or mandated) replacements are much finer threads, and just don't work as well in many applications. When you're at the top of a ladder hanging forty or fifty lights, a bolt that is harder to start and slower to do up doesn't win any friends. Andrewa 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Screw threads

message: :In travel, an average highway speed of 60 miles per hour (97 km per hour) results in an instant conversion to one mile per minute. The number of miles to your destination is hence the number of minutes until you arrive. This useful rule of thumb works only in Customary units, because 60 km per hour is equivalent to 37 mph, a speed seldom seen on any standard highway.
Can anyone explain to me how this is not complete rubbish? It works perfectly in metric, where 60km per hour results in an instant conversion to one km per minute. The only difference is that 60mph is a speed one might find on a highway (a 'standard highway' according to the writer), whereas 60km/h is a speed one might find driving on the main roads in towns and suburbs. Both rules are equally useful in different driving situations, and so the paragraph strikes me as both absurd and POV-ridden (unless there's an ISO standard highway?). Unless someone can tell me what I've missed, I'll cut this point (and its subsidiaries) soon hereafter. -- Perey 15:37, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Because people don't usually try and figure times that way on short distance drives; you play games like that on long tedious tasks, not short attention demanding tasks like city driving.  Even if they did, it would be useless. You can drive at 60 mph on a highway for a hundred miles without having to change speed, but in the city you'll run into stop lights and school zones and random changes of speed limits all the time. --Prosfilaes 19:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I use it quite a bit when I'm not in the city (where, you're right, traffic is pretty much unpredictable). The speed limit is 60km/h for most of the distance between the town where my family lives and the larger one next to it. Clawed's point below is also a good one — maybe it's just a metric way of thinking, but I find it easy on the highway to convert fractions of 100km to fractions of an hour, knowing I'm going to be doing 100km/h. Essentially, whatever the usefulness, I don't see any way to neutralise the point of view of this paragraph. -- Perey 02:05, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's an argument encountered in real life, which is what the article is recounting. You can't make it go away just by calling it POV.--Prosfilaes 13:20, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It might be a real life example but I do not think it deserves a mention in the article. There is no real advantage to calculating time remaining to a destination using distance in miles, as it is reasonably simple to calculate it at any speed. --Clawed 13:52, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not simple for the average person or even this math major to calculate time remaining at any speed. I think it very POV to dismiss any arguments against the metric system because you don't like them.--Prosfilaes 21:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Ah, but the paragraph as written does not merely document the argument, it makes the argument. It calls it a 'useful rule of thumb [that] works only in Customary units'. In doing so, it crosses the line from documenting a POV to taking a POV. And then it has further bullet points tacked on after it to try and present counterarguments. The whole thing should be reduced to a single, merely documentary paragraph, or — as I believe — cut entirely: it may be an argument encountered in real life, but that doesn't make it significant. -- Perey 16:46, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

text: If there was 230km (or miles) to a destination with a 100km/h (or 60 miles per hour) speed limit, then I think about 2 and a half hours would be better (working with metric) than 230 minutes which I would have to manually convert into hours because 230 minutes does not mean much to me.--Clawed 22:19, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nonsensical speed argument?