Advantages of the metric system

[Jack Goff]

A binary motorcycle has 10 wheels. ;)

[krw]

NO, there is no "right answer" and it's Bush's fault anyway.

[krw]

Right. Then forget the 16ths part. Just do the remember and do the arithmetic on the 96 and 3 parts.

I figured it out myself some time ago. It's not rocket surgery.

[DerbyDad03]

Zero Dark Thirty is easy to understand if you are used to using military time.

[Tegger]

Vic Smith wrote in news: [e-mail]:

^^^ THAT was my point.

[Tegger]

Jack Goff wrote in news:-

6Sdndnzg_xf4szPnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

And the Can-Am Spyder has 11.

[The Daring Dufas]

There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who speak binary and those who don't. The real weirdos speak BCD. O_o

Oh yea, check out this mono-cycle. ^_^

TDD

[Metspitzer]

Wouldn't that be 1 kinds of people?

[hrhofmann]

Works like this. Say your plank is 6". Your plank is 96/16. Your saw kerf is 3/16". Let's say you think getting 3 slats from that is about right. That's simple eyeball work, and your feel for what looks good. You'll lose 6/16 from the 2 kerfs. Leaves 90/16. Divide by 3. 30/16 is 1 7/8" per slat. Mark the plank, and cut there, with the kerf outside of your mark. Repeat. No scrap. You can get real close to same sized slats. If you need more precision, use 192/32 as you plank starting number. But getting anything to 1/32 precision is about the best you can do with a typical saw and that kind of material. It's not micrometer metal working. Doesn't matter at all if it's metrics or inch. You just have to be able to multiply and divide. They taught that in grade school when I was a kid.

I agree that anything smaller than 1/32 is WAY down in the noise, but the e ngineer in me wanted the numbers to crunch perfectly. Anyway, the slats ar e cut, they look to the naked eye to be the same size, now I have to disman tle the old park bench with rusted-on nuts on the screws and clean things u p and reassemble it all.

[hrhofmann]

Now I need to bend two of the Trex pieces to make the curved armrests. I am hoping that immersing the precut (to length plus a little extra) armrests will soften up in boiling water so I can shape them.

[krw]

But a binary unicycle still has only 1 wheel.

[DerbyDad03]

When I rebuilt a bench for my wife, I took one of the original slats, used it to set the fence on my table saw and ripped all the new ones in a matter of minutes.

I then used one of the originals to determine which router bit would make a matching round over and ran them all through the router table.

Then I drilled the holes for mounting them to the frame, again using an original slat as a template. I made a dipping tube from PVC pipe and used a piece of wire in the holes to dip them in stain and then hung them up to dry.

The old bolts were so rusted that I just snapped them off and replaced them. A pretty simple weekend project.

[hrhofmann]

DerbyDad03 8:51 PM (1 hour ago)

Other recipients: When I rebuilt a bench for my wife, I took > Works like this. Say your plank is 6". Your plank is 96/16.

When I rebuilt a bench for my wife, I took one of the original slats, used it to set the fence on my table saw and ripped all the new ones in a matter of minutes.

I then used one of the originals to determine which router bit would make a matching round over and ran them all through the router table.

Then I drilled the holes for mounting them to the frame, again using an original slat as a template. I made a dipping tube from PVC pipe and used a piece of wire in the holes to dip them in stain and then hung them up to dry.

The old bolts were so rusted that I just snapped them off and replaced them. A pretty simple weekend project. Show trimmed content

I am sure many of the bolts will shear off when I try to remove them. The problem I had with the slats was that I could only get 2 slats per piece of Trex if I made them exactly the same width. If I made them a little (3/16 ") narrower, I could get 3 slats per piece. And since Trex is not cheap, a nd I am, I wanted to get 3 slats per piece.

I hope the boiling water will make it possible to bend the two armrests.

[Harry K]

engineer in me wanted the numbers to crunch perfectly. Anyway, the slats are cut, they look to the naked eye to be the same size, now I have to dism antle the old park bench with rusted-on nuts on the screws and clean things up and reassemble it all.

This thread reminded me of the day my neighbor showed up with several 1x4". Asked me to cut them in half. Couple 'about there' nicks on the saw, flo p/check and I had it. Cut them all. He returned shortly and said they are two narrow - he wanted them 2" wide!!.

I had to educate hime that a 1x4 is not 4" wide to start with and he also h as to allow for saw kerf.

Of course he is also the one who planted a whole row of saplings in his pas ture and wouldn't believe me when I told him the cows would eat them if he didn't fence them off.

And that was a country boy who had lived on a farm all his life.

Harry K

Harry K

[harryagain]

In the UK we changed to the metric system years back. There are no significant advantages. Everything that is changed to metric sizes is always that bit smaller so you end up getting less for your money. The kids become dumb at arithmetic.

There are no exact divisors for problems in tens. Eg what is a third of a metre? No answer. What is a seventh of a kilometer? No answer.

Why are there 360 degrees in a circle? Why are there 2240 pounds in a ton? Why are there 1760 yards in a mile?

You can blame the French and Napoleon. They even wanted a ten day week/ten month year.

[The Daring Dufas]

Chart.pdf

Back in the 1970's during the Arab Oil Embargo, service stations switched their pumps over to liters because the price in dollars overwhelmed the mechanical measuring systems which couldn't handle higher fuel prices in dollars and cents. I remember the absolute confusion among drivers when confronted by The Metric System when trying to fill their car's fuel tank. ^_^

In The U.S. we use the short ton which is 2,000 lbs, Folks will usually give a mile as 5,280 feet instead of 1760 yards. Our military has been using The Metric System for many years. I recall interviews with soldiers back during The Vietnam War where the soldiers described distances in meters rather than yards. I suppose the switch to metric in our military was necessary because of NATO. ^_^

TDD

[DerbyDad03]

...snip...

So you chose a product that is more flexible than wood and then cut the slats narrower.

Do let us know if the bench feels more like a hammock when you sit in it.

[Higgs Boson]

say is military practice.

hat is virtually alone in the developed (and underdeveloped) world.

t up signs giving the speed limit in Olde English and metric. Big mistake! Of course most people went with the familiar, and the experiment died.

streets. The older Aussies adjusted in time and the younger ones never kn ew anything different.

ss might be business -- especially the Big Business that really rules the c ountry. Maybe they don't want the expense of converting. But aren't they c utting off their nose to spite their face? A short-term view.

The yard was established after the Norman conquest of 1066. According to t radition, King Henry I decreed that the yard should be the distance from th e tip of his nose to the tip of his outstretched finger, thus defining the yard as exactly 1/2 fathom. Whether this actually happened or not, it does seem that the yard and the English foot were set at close to their modern l engths during or around the time of Henry's reign (1100-1135). The length o f the oldest known standard yardstick, believed to date from 1445, agrees w ith the modern length within less than 0.1 millimeter. Today one yard is of ficially equal to exactly 91.44 centimeters or 0.9144 meter.

HB

[Nate Nagel]

It's a great tale, and rather believable. The only flaw obvious on the face of it is that that would imply to a casual observer that Henry I had a wingspan of six feet and therefore was six feet tall give or take a RCH (or else was quite disproportionate.) A little taller than average today; probably would have been freakishly tall 900 years ago.

BUT. the tale says measuring from the tip of the nose not the center of the breastbone. So then assuming his nose tip would be ~9" higher than his straight outstretched arm, then that 36" is the hypotenuse of a triangle with a short leg of 9" so his height would have actually been appx. 2(sqrt(36^2 - 9^2)) or about 5'9" - 5'10" - average height today; regally tall back then (one would assume that the Royal Family ate better as children than the average rabble; also genetic predisposition to increased height might make a family more likely to be leaders.)

don't know if anyone's ever 100% confirmed or denied the story, but it actually seems plausible. The only fly in the ointment is that when I tried to find a reference for his height, he's consistently described as either "average height" or "short." D'oh!

nate

[gfretwell]

He was the king, maybe he simply lied about his height.

I have heard all of my life that a fathom was the distance between your outstretched arms. Something a sailor could do quickly while pulling up a sounding line.