SAE and Metric

[SpiderGearsMan]

haha , I like the cars - metric makes things too easy - danged centimeters

 

[Stuey]

only a nerd likes metric
please stay miles and miles and a few feet away from my property

Metric is just easier to deal with regarding "nerdy" activities. In engineering and most sciences, the metric system is the default.

When you think about it, the SAE system of everything is just weird. Inches are broken up into 64ths, feet into 12 inches, yards into 3 feet, and miles into 5280 feet. How many 32ths in half a mile? Sure that can be calculated by pen or silently in one's head in a moment, but it's cumbersome.

How many millimeters in half a kilometer? 1,000,000 millimeters in a km, 500,000 in half a km. Bam, no calculations necessary.

The only easily expressed unit smaller than 1/64" is a mil. Who uses mils anymore! Half of the people who experience it think that one is talking about mms.

What sounds better? 1.42 millimeters, or 0.00559 inches? Oh you want scientific notation do you? 5.59 x 10^-3 inches. Yup, the metric system sure is useless.

From elementary school, we're so surrounded with the SAE and imperial system though that it's hard or damn near impossible to shake loose. I cannot think in terms of anything but miles, gallons, and mostly inches and the such in the shop.

 

[ZRX61]

From elementary school, we're so surrounded with the SAE and imperial system though that it's hard or damn near impossible to shake loose. I cannot think in terms of anything but miles, gallons, and mostly inches and the such in the shop.

I was in high school when the UK changed from Imperial to metric. As a consequence I frequently measure things in "feet & inches, to the nearest mm" or "2ft short of 15 meters" etc.

And I possess a full set of Whitworth/BS tools for working on RR Merlins etc

 

[Uncle Buck]

I have metric tools cause I have no choice, but I dislike the metric system, I have since high school, I really never totally grasped it and likely never will, nor do I really care to, and fortunately my job will never requre me to have to apply it to anything and it would not hurt my feelings if it just went away! I do not like much foreign stuff including tools, machinery and equipment and to my mind the metric system is just some more foreign ****. (oh yea, that will happen!)

 

[wantedabiggergarage]

But there are some addicts, who like the metric system. Just another excuse to buy more tools.....


Remember that excuse the next time you tell your wife you need to run down to the store for a (censored) specialized......