moonrockmushy said:

I am campaigning to bring imperial back to the world Since when do America's customs need to make sense before we force them onto the rest of the world?  Just consider this: 9/10 socialists prefer the metric system.  That is far too compelling to be written off as coincidence.

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Imperialist dog!

Sophistic Radiance said:

The metric system isn't exactly spotless either. I still want to know how it can make sense that the amount of energy required to raise a gram of water by one degree celsius is the same as the amount of energy required to accelerate such an arbitrary number of kilograms as 4.18 by one meter per second squared over the distance of a meter

(I know it's because calories are actually based on the specific heat capacity of water. I'm just making a point)

And why the hell is a liter equal to a cubic decimeter? Who uses decimeters?

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Sophistic Radiance said:

The metric system isn't exactly spotless either. I still want to know how it can make sense that the amount of energy required to raise a gram of water by one degree celsius is the same as the amount of energy required to accelerate such an arbitrary number of kilograms as 4.18 by one meter per second squared over the distance of a meter

(I know it's because calories are actually based on the specific heat capacity of water. I'm just making a point)

And why the hell is a liter equal to a cubic decimeter? Who uses decimeters?

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Sophistic Radiance said:

Why isn't a liter of water equal to a gram?! This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

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Patlal said:

Sophistic Radiance said:

Why isn't a liter of water equal to a gram?! This is the sort of thing I'm talking about.

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A gram of water contains 1 cubic centimeter of water exactly

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Why doesn't a gram contain a liter of water

See, the metric system isn't perfectly systematic like you metric supremacists say it is... It's based on many arbitrary extraneous factors, namely the physical and thermodynamic properties of liquid water at an arbitrary "room" temperature corresponding to that which most humans find ideal at an arbitrary "atmospheric" pressure which corresponds with the average air pressure on the surface of the earth. And let's not even get started on how units of mass have been standardized.

Metric is still the most rigorously systematic system of weights and measures but it's not perfect. If we ever became a space faring species, a new system would have to be devised or it would end up being as ridiculous and arbitrary as the imperial system is now.

psi said:

Yeah but why give the unit we know as a "kilogram" the "kilo-" prefix instead of no prefix at all? It's the base unit for mass.

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Citizen X said:

Now I'm on Farenheit and Celsius conversions. I'm reading there is a formula but I'm not there yet.

I like it so far. 0 Celsius is freezing and 100 Celsius is boiling.

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Dam it! Algebra..

Sophistic Radiance said:

Ah I see now.

That would fix the consistency issue on earth, but not in extraterrestrial environments. As soon as we start colonizing other worlds the metric system will unravel at the seams in the face of radically new environmental systems and become impractically arbitrary and quaintly obscure, just like the imperial system.

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koods said:

The mass of an object is independent of its weight. Mass doesn't change. Weight does. One grams of water on earth is one gram in zero gravity.

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koods said:

One gram of any substance is made up of exactly 6.022×10²³ molecules or atoms.

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Quote:

It just so happens one gram of matter weights one gram on earth.

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Sophistic Radiance said:

In pretty much any extraterrestrial environment that isn't tightly controlled to mimic the conditions found on the surface of the earth, a gram of liquid water doesn't correspond to a milliliter. And, an object that weighs a gram on earth would not actually weigh a gram anywhere offworld, even if its mass measurement corresponded to the equivalent weight of a gram on earth. See, it all just falls apart.

It would be an intolerable pain in the ass to use metric if you were living offworld. It would be completely arbitrary, like imperial.

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