Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to Is The Metric System Actually BETTER?" video.

  1. Absolutely no argument for me, metric all the way. As far as converting a country to metric, that only takes impossibly long if left optional like the US did. When our family migrated to Australia from Germany (metric) here it was Imperial measurements, mile, furlong, chain, yard, foot, inch, pound weight, ounce, gallon, pint, fluid ounce pound money, shillings and pence. But Australia chose to go metric and set a legal obligation that units be changed within 5 years, all industry and community were required to change, especially weights and measures, road speed, distances. Though for a long time even now old generation still often talks about pint of milk, though for very long time over 50 years all fluids are in liter measurement. Oddities do occur, old generation still talk about pound of some goods, still eggs are sold by dozen (6 12 or 18 pack), beer cans by the dozen or 6 pack. But building materials by meters, volume cubic meter soil/concrete/gravel/ rocks, driving is by kilomter as is speed in kph. Fuel consumption is in Liters/100km, not the old MPG miles per gallon , old drivers still have some hangup thinking in MPG. Money as you know we changed in 1966, and other than ridding the of old pound, shillings pence and half pennies, Guinea (21 shilling vs 20 for a pound), this latter was common in shops pricing in Guinea's as it made yhe price look smaller say 120 guineas for B/W 17 inch screen TV, which thus in pounds cost 120 shillings higher, at 20 per pound, raising price to 6 pounds higher, 126 pounds. Worse still at car yards and enormously for house prices. In realistic terms much improved and all was basically achieved by the set time span, all school kids and adults have had easier time. Only UK and US imports have for quite sometime caused need for two sets of many spanners, sockets an special tools for persisting imperial parts, mainly bolts, nuts screws. Industry really adopted it almost as fast as retail fixed registers and scales promptly. UK did change as part of EU membership though they still have strong old generation trying to hold to old imperial measures in shopping particularly beer for example, as far as I am aware, is still mainly in pint and half pint volumes. For mechanics the need for mix of spanners and sockets is mainly to support US supplied cars and machinery. The UK things are very metric now. It is possible to com ppl late a change but while optional with no formal deadline the change is not going to happen and problems /dangers will keep cropping up.
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  2. Sadly while US did adopt metric it chose to leave it optional, rather than setting a time span to fully adopt the one unit system. The real problems occur between different companies one uses meteric the other imperial leading to regular errors and mix ups. But quite different still are not the length, weight, volume , area measures, these have clear conversion factors. There are in imperial system adopted units that are in fact non dimensioned. Take wire gauge, in order to know current carrying capacity power dissipation based on wire material resistivity and cross sectional area are important. For high frequencies even skin effect, where current crowds to surface layers based on frequency of current becomes critical, calculable by well defined formulae and wire gauge can be chosen to optimum diameter knowing skin depth. In meteric countries wire is dimensioned in millimetre diameter and multi strand by strand diameter and number of strands. Given wire material and diameter frequency of current, length of cable, all critical matters are calculable. A smaller diameter has a smaller dimension a larger wire a larger dimension. The US, use AWG, American Wire Guage, defined as a number, the BIGGER the number the SMALLER the wire. So 26 gauge is smaller than 20 gauge,which is smaller than 10 gauge. The entire table defined long ago, dos not run 1 to some bigger number say 44. NOOO, at the large end sizes increase 0, 00 and 000. Is there a 0000? Probably,not actually sure now. Now the problem, what is the physical size of the wire gauge of g8ven gauge number, given say 20 gauge is in stock, but tested is under dimensioned, also 15 gauge and 10 gauge are in the warehouse. The tech wants to get double the diameter, is 15 gauge good enough or will 10 gauge be double the diameter. Is 10 double the size of 20 gauge? No! In fact you need tables of gauge data to handle choices. Same problem you need a special insulation,and try to get a AWG gauge size wire in US, but no supplier has that insulation, you need to buy on the world market, and find a Japanese supplier has the insulation and all data is in mm diameter, you know from engineering specifications only the AWG number and existing insulation type. Now first you must search the tables and existing supplier data for wire diameter and insulation thickness, then relate that to world common specification dimensioning. Worst being gauge number and dimension are somewhat unrelated. Forcing dependance on published tables, not all giving all details, and rarely are all needed tables close at hand, costing time, frustration and leading to errors and inefficiencies. Other measures also cause confusions and errors Calories vs kilojoules, thermal factors, hardness, strain factors, magnetics Oerstead vs Teslas, pressure Torr vs Pascal or Bar. Even everyday measure temperature, 0°C as freezing point of water and 100°C as boiling is to most of the world far easier than 32°F for freezing and 212°F for boiling.
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