Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Veritasium" channel.

7:40 ...which is why America’s Cup yachts were doing 45 knots in winds of 18-20 knots. We call it apparent wind. Sailors deal with it all the time.
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@vexu- The “too expensive to convert” is false. Every other country that converted has done it. It’s becoming too expensive to not convert. For example, unless you drive a car from the 1970s, all of your sizes are already in metric. You might be able to find an imperial socket to fit but do you really want to risk damage? Converting for Americans, even within the United States, is rapidly becoming uneconomical for businesses. I do a lot of woodwork and I’ve noticed that even the most traditional of American tool companies now make metric measures. The F-22 fighter is 100% metric. I’m pretty sure the F-35 is too. The American government tried to go metric in the 1970s and made a dog’s breakfast of it. They entertained every crackpot push back argument from “not worth the effort”, to “unconstitutional” and they referenced the conversions badly. Worst of all, they didn’t complete the job. No school kid in the US today should be using anything but metric. I suppose someone will cite “personal Liberty” but a society’s ability to function together depends on its ability to communicate.
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@vexu- I don’t mind people using imperial in their own time as long as they don’t expect the rest of society to believe their “commonsense” arguments that metric is harder because it’s harder to divide by two… yes someone really said that. There are always holdouts.
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@alexsmallwood9895 So, in a 10km/h wind it will do 20km/h. that's 30km/h across the deck!
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@robertheal5137 That comes from being asked by granny how tall you are and watching Americans on television and the internet. Nothing broken because all those kids can use metric instinctively.
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3:08 There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The flop technique doesn’t buy you anything you can’t get with a straddle because all the important work is done on the ground. Theres very little difference in efficiency between a competently executed straddle and an equivalent flop. There’s no point worrying about getting a couple of centimetres out of bar clearance technique if you can get 20 centimetres out of a better take off. At that point a well executed straddle take off has the advantage but it’s harder to learn and execute. The reason the flop is universal these days is that it is easier to teach and learn. I suspect flop jumpers also suffer fewer injuries too, though both are hard on knees.
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Well, as someone said, the imperial system of weights and measures was invented by people who married their cousins…
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@CaliMeatWagon Tell it like it was. The US used both systems to go to the moon. The rockets were built in both systems and the engines were 100% metric because all those German rocket scientists used it exclusively. ALL the calculations for the flights were done in metric but had to be converted for the astronauts so the cockpit representations were in imperial. The amount of computing power wasted on conversions and the opportunities for errors was extraordinarily high. So high, in fact, that most people who know the story are simply amazed there were no fatal errors.
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When the internet is run by people who never leave their basements.
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@alexsmallwood9895 Good questions, all of them.
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@alexsmallwood9895 This is also a factor in limiting the maximum speed of helicopters. As the helicopter goes forward, the speed over the forward moving blade increases and the speed of the aft moving blade decreases, meaning that the helicopter tends to roll in the direction of the aft moving blade because it is producing less lift. But again, it’s a matter of apparent wind.
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