Comments by "GH1618" (@GH-oi2jf) on "Why Don't We Have Metric Time? | Answers With Joe" video.

  1.  @olsmokey  — You should have also changed the notation to use 10th notes.
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  2. Do you mean “peck”?
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  3. We have never used the Imperial System in the United States. It was introduced half a century after independence, when our Customary units were well established. We used to call our units “English.”
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  4. Early calendars were based on both the moon and the sun. The moon gives 28-day months, which the Babylonians divided into four weeks. Their calendar was more complicated than that, though, because they had to add corrections.
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  5. Decimal does not imply Metric. The whole idea of Metric time is is fallacious unless you find a way to tie it to le mètre. That isn’t going to happen, because changing the definition of the second would cause worldwide chaos without any benefit.
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  6. People know what they need to know. Everybody learns that, but in daily life it never comes up. We use feet to measure things like the rooms in our homes. Miles are for distance between towns and cities.
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  7. We don’t use Imperial units in the United States.
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  8. It’s ten million. That has not been the definition for a long time, however. It was just the method used to set the scale. Once it was measured and a physical standard meter manufactured, that became the definition.
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  9. We do not use the Imperial System. US Customary units were taken from English units in colonial times, before the adoption of the Imperial System by the British Empire. We have always known very well where our units originated, because we used to call them “English” units.
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  10. Not a math error but a conceptual error.
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  11. That is a common way of recording time. Lawyers also charge by tenths of an hour. Time clocks used to punch in and out use tenths.
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  12. In base 8, you don’t have “8.” It’s “10.” After “1” comes “0.4”.
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  13. Average people everywhere know little about science.
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  14. About the same as a verst.
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  15. It isn’t either. It is a legacy unit.
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  16. The synodic lunar month is 29.5 days, which gives about 12.4 months per year. That’s why we have 12 months.
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  17. There are many non-Euro currencies. There are even a few in Europe, so it is hardly “seamless.”
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  18. The “seam” is the boundary between (for example) Czechia and Slovakia. I don’t know what you mean by “seamless.”
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  19. ISO time is useful for sending data over computer networks worldwide. It has nothing to do with how time is displayed on my kitchen clock. The only improvement I want in timekeeping is the abolition of Daylight Saving Time.
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  20.  @JustinWarkentin  — By far, we make the most use of time and date locally. It would be a burden to force everyone to universal time (although China uses just one time zone). When communicating across time zones, we just specify the zone, when necessary. When General Eisenhower reported the signing of the German surrender to Washington, he just used the qualifying term “local time.” It was sufficient.
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  21. Even Europe has 4x8 sheet goods, but they label them in mm.
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  22. Kilosecond is not useful if you keep hours and minutes.
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  23. The second is an SI unit, but not derived from le mètre, so not really metric.
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  24. No, it wouldn’t. It would be a mess. The day has to be synchronized relative to the sun, but the solar day actually varies a little bit. That requires inserting extra seconds in the day now and then, so you don’t have the purity that metric mavens like. But you could ignore that and have ten-hour days. But then you have a scheme which can only be divided one way: five and five. Our 24-hour day can be, and is, divided several ways. For example, the U. S. Navy divides by six to get 4-hour watches. Then there are years, which must be synchronized with seasons. There is no way to get weeks or months which are a multiple of ten days. The whole idea of decimal time is impractical, which is why it failed.
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  25. That isn’t the point here. By the way, the US has never used the Imperial System.
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  26. You would have to give up the 30-60-90 triangle, which is a useful thing.
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  27. I wonder if that is partly influenced by smart dashboards in modern automobiles. They can be configured to report fuel economy in Imperial or metric units, but not a mixture. If you want miles, you get miles per gallon.
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  28. Seconds are S.I. but not Metric. The second is a legacy unit which is not derived fron le mètre. Joe explains here the failure of Metric time.
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  29. They have been around for more than 300 years, so are not likely to go away soon.
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  30.  @BedsitBob  — They do, but are not recent. It is just that recently people who are not historians have discovered them.
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  31. NASA has been managing the problem for some time, even out past Pluto.
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  32. There must be a practical way to make reference physical objects from the standard. How do you propose to do that?
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  33.  @David-di5bo  — Yes, there are still physical reference objects. If you are a manufacturer of rulers for school, you don’t want to have to build a laboratory with lasers and such for quality control. Similarly, if you are selling test masses for school science classes, you don’t want to have your own Kibble balance. The National Institute of Standards has the Kibble balance, and they can use it to calibrate physical reference masses. Those reference masses will be sent where they are needed, just as has always been done.
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  34.  @David-di5bo  — I didn’t say impossible. There was an alternative to the Kibble balance proposed which was something like what you suggest. I suppose they settled on the method for practical reasons.
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  35. Please do.
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  36. No Imperial in the USA. We use US Customary units.
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  37. It is harder to remember the date that way.
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  38. Th math is so trivial you can do it in your head. If humankind had never been able to do anything requiring math, what sort of life do you think we would be living? A rather primitive one I suppose.
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  39. We don’t use Imperial units. We use Customary units for everyday purposes because it is our custom.
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  40. It’s because the distances are marked in miles.
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  41. But the SI second is not actually derived from le mètre, so not really metric. It’s a legacy unit.
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  42. That’s a niche. It’s a computer thing.
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  43. Time zones are not such a big problem, but Daylight Saving is.
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  44.  @udowagner9199  — The “freedom fries” thing was a joke from a particular time when we had some minor disagreement with the French that most people have forgotten or never even knew about. Its shelf life has long since expired.
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  45. Approximately.
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  46. Better leave the cooking to someone else.
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  47. SI is just a fancy way of saying metric.
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  48. I get it, but a lot of people won’t. Decimal fractions don’t imply metric system. We use decimal fractions with US Customary units when it suits us.
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  49. It is. Its niche is networks of computers. I don’t know anybody who displays Unix time on his kitchen clock, but I suppose there is some Unix nerd somewhere who does.
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  50. Only ignorant Americans call our units “Imperial.” The Imperial System was introduced half a century after the American colonies had left the British Empire to become the United States of America. “US Customary” is the correct term for our system of units, although other terms are used. We once said “English” units. “Imperial” is a recent error for people my age. Not only do many people today not know the difference between US Customary and Imperial, they don’t even know how to use the apostrophe correctly. Civilization is in decline.
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  51. No, they are generally stated in decimal notation. “Decimal” does not imply “metric.” “Metric” in the sense you seem to be using it means part of the system based on le mètre. Time, as we use it, is based on the second. The second, while an S.I. unit, is not derived from le mètre, hence is not “metric.” It is a legacy unit.
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  52. I also spent 45 years in the computer business. I have always felt that the computers should adapt to human ways rather than the other way around, so that is a good example of what that entails. The decimal notation itself is something that every computer must be adapted to. Some far-sighted individual long ago (whose name I’ve forgotten) realized that machine computation would be easier in base eight, and suggested that humans should switch to base eight to facilitate the development of computing machines. He didn’t forsee that the change of base would turn out to be not a big problem.
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  53. The astonomical unit is not metric.
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  54. That’s decimal, not metric.
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  55. A lot of people have noticed. Why haven’t you read the comments?
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  56. Not brilliant, in my opinion. They could have just set it to a length considered to be convenient for the purpose, and saved themselves a lot of trouble.
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  57. Joe overlooked Tolkien’s calendar in The Hobbit. Twelve months of 30 days plus five or six miscellaneous days.
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  58. For example?
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  59. I think they just mean it was lower compared to the derivative standards, which probably gained mass.
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  60. And the Big Unit threw absolute Ks. Ironic.
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  61. In the United States we use US Customary units. We have never used the Imperial System.
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  62. We have a system that works well, so there is no point in messing with it. However, for scientific purposes SI recognizes only the second as a unit of time. So one can measure events for scientific purposes in seconds and decimal fractions and should be satisfied with that.
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  63. That would break a lot of things. It has always been the policy in metrology that adjustments should have minimal practical effect so everything keeps working.
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  64. That’s a niche.
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  65. No, because we also use decimal fractions with feet and inches, and nobody thinks that counts. The metric system ties all the units of measurement to le mètre. There is no way to do that with time, because the “second” is already rigorously defined in SI and can’t be changed without breaking a lot of other things.
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  66. The United States adopted the metric system in 1866 and was a party to the Convention du Mètre in 1875. US Customary units have been defined relative to metric units for a long time. We are officially bimetral. What is your point here?
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  67. It’s his channel. He may do what he pleases with it, as far as I am concerned.
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  68. That’s over the top. No one has such an obligation. There are worse things. I don’t like it when people use acronyms, unless they are universally known, but I don’t take it personally when a writer is lazy. Even though I do not use metric units regularly, what I need to know to convert most things in my head is minimal.
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  69. True, but there is general agreement on the CE calendar, neverthless. That’s why it is called “Common.”
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  70. The American revolution was not about units. After independence, Great Britain was still our largest trading partner. No purpose would have been served by changing the system of units. The metric system was not well developed and widely used at that time anyway.
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  71. bimetral
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  72. It is a mass standard.
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  73. Standards are based on the speed of light in a vacuum.
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  74. The clock in my truck has no external connection, so I doubt that is Unix time. More likely, it’s just a clock chip somewhere.
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  75. That was one of the proposals for replacing the physical standard, but it lost out to the Kibble Balance method. It isn’t sufficient that it be well-defined. It must be practical.
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  76. Not I. That would cause huge disruption. It is common practice when refining the definition of units to minimize disruption. Miles are approximately equal to minutes at highway speed. That is far more useful than the equivalence you propose.
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  77. That would break a lot of things. By the way, the day is not constant.
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  78. “Metric” in “the metric system of measurement” means derived from le mètre. The second is not so derived. It is a legacy unit.
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  79. I don’t think you have thought through the implications of such a change.
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  80. Decimal time clocks are convenient because payroll can multiply hours by wage more easily. But a hundredth of an hour is not a “minute.”
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  81. CE and BCE have been around for 300 years or so, but mostly used by historians and archaeologists. I commend Joe for using the scientific nomenclature.
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  82. The bushel is a convenient unit, so continues to be used in language. For example, crop yield is given in bushels per acre. But for marketing large quantities of grain there is a standard conversion to metric tons for each grain. Grain elevators, which receive grain from farmers, weigh the grain as they receive it.
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  83. The United States adopted the metric system in 1866. In 1875 we participated in the Convention du Mètre. We were the first to define our customary units relative to metric units.
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  84. It is one thing for a group to adopt standards for its own use but quite another to seek to impose them on others who are not a part of their group.
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  85. Timekeeping isn’t Imperial. Our system of timekeeping is much older than the British Empire.
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  86. Rare, but not the rarest.
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  87. It seems to me the lazy people are those who are unwilling to learn two systems of units. I often see comments from metric maniacs saying “why don’t you give (whatever) in metric units?”. So they, too, refuse to convert and are therefore (by your standard) lazy.
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  88. Yes, he botched that part. He needs to go back and study the Kibble balance theory more carefully.
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  89. You are wrong there. Historians started using the term “Common Era” in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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  90. He used the term “niche” correctly for those various systems used by computers. It doesn’t matter how many computers are using a particular method. A niche, as used here, is about specialization.
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  91. For that matter, why say “footage” when shooting digital video direct to memory chips? Because it is a convenient term, that’s all.
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  92. The United States has never used the Imperial System.
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  93. Do you mean software developer? The only thing I ever thought was a nuisance was Daylight Saving Time.
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  94. You may call it either. “Kibble” is a nod to the person who thought of the concept.
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  95. The problem with that scheme is that it does not accommodate increases in population and in real wealth. It is better to leave monetary policy to experts. In any case, the discussion does not belong in this forum.
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  96. Correct. A lot of meterheads are confused on this point.
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  97. You omitted completely the period during which Alexandria (named for Alexander the Great of Macedonia) was the center of learning in the Mediterranean, when Greek culture dominated.
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  98. It isn’t a mess. The reason wheels are still measured in inches is because it would be a far bigger mess to try to change it. You just have to think the problem through from the viewpoint of a tire or wheel maker. Then you might understand. I remember when we (in the USA) had no Metric designations on our tires, so I lived through the transition and had automobiles before and after. I don’t recall anybody having a problem with this. Most people who buy tires just buy what their manual specifies, or what is already on the car. Many people just go to a tire shop and have them take care of it. People who actually have to work the numbers understand the system. We are bimetral in the USA. There is nothing wrong with mixed units. People elsewhere who have a problem with it should just get over it.
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  99. They both failed.
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  100.  @wernerviehhauser94  I checked this reference: United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service Chapter 1 Part 650 Engineering Field Handbook Surveying Looks like degrees, minutes, and seconds to me.
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  101. No, it isn’t, and the United States does not use Imperial units. Laziness is not learning that fact.
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  102.  @BabyMakR  — Metric units are taught in US schools. We continue to use customary units for everyday purposes because we have never compelled the use of metric units. We use metric units when we have a good reason to.
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  103. Yes, it is. It has its place, but you don’t display it on your kitchen clock or use it for airline schedules.
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  104. What you probably mean is that time clocks which record when workers go on and off their shifts record time in tenths of an hour or something like that. That’s decimal, but not Metric. “Metric” means units derived from le mètre.
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  105. The second is SI, but not really “metric.” It is a legacy unit which is indispensable.
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  106. You don’t have to double your tools. Do you need a metric hammer? Metric pliers and screwdrivers? You need metric sockets, but the square drive tools are the same.
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  107. Who do you mean, “we”?
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  108. There is no reason in principle why you should not cut 2x4s to metric lengths. The designation “2x4” is just a nominal size. If you had panels cut in metric sizes it would make sense.
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  109. No. He botched that part. Look elsewhere for the theory behind Kibble’s balance.
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  110. That is decimal, not metric.
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  111. Actually, the navigation was done in metric units but converted for display.
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  112. There is no year “zero” anyway. The notation C.E. and B.C.E. is used to disassociate the calendar from religion. The “C” stands for “Common” and refers to the fact that the calendar is accepted as the standard around the world. The notation was originated by historians a few hundred years ago, because they realized that the date of the birth of Christ could not be determined precisely. Trying to get the whole world to change to a different calendar would be chaotic.
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  113. I’m a programmer and I think it is reasonable to call it a niche. It isn’t a form that you would display as the time.
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  114. He botched that part.
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  115. That’s not really true. Our Customary units are defined relative to metric units, but that is merely for convenience. The system is complete even if it were defined another way, which it was as it predates the metric system. Users of Customary units don’t need to know anything about the metric system or even that it exists. Only those working in standards who set the conversions to Customary units are using the metric system.
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  116. Unix time may be everywhere in computer networks, but that is still a niche. Not many people have a clock on their wall showing Unix time. Perhaps some Unix geeks do. Why so sensitive about this?
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  117. BCE is in widespread use. It isn’t a matter of rewriting history, just using neutral notation. All the history books remain intact.
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  118. The way Unix time is used is a niche. The clocks on our walls don’t display it. It is only a computer thing.
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  119. We (in the US) didn’t come up with any units that I can think of that aren’t taken directly or derived from English units. Early American culture was British.
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  120. In the US, “foot” (without qualification) means the international foot, based on the internation inch of exactly 2.54 cm. The US survey foot is obsolete and is being phased out.
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  121. Sure we do, but we are at a disadvantage in learning them well. Where I’m from, it was a thousand miles to a place where another language was commonly spoken. I studied French, but didn’t stick with it. It was a couple of thousand miles or more to places in the Americas where it was spoken, and much farther to France. Je regret.
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  122. Doesn’t matter. It is great that we have a calendar which is accepted world-wide. There aren’t many things we all agree on.
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  123. Do you know what a 30/60/90 triangle is and why it is useful?
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  124. Metric promoters can be just as nasty as metric resisters.
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  125. It would be better if you left such things to physicists.
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  126. Doesn’t matter.
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  127. The United States does not use Imperial units.
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  128. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant by definition.
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  129. It is an artifact of the calendar having been modified long ago. It is nothing to get mad about.
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  130. Since most people are not brain dead, we don’t need to change the timekeeping.
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  131. Theye were the same species, after all.
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  132. Agreed. That’s idiotic.
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  133. Lawyers charge in units of a tenth of an hour. Same idea.
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  134. Nevertheless, standards people want stable standards. When small errors are cumulative, they eventually become significant.
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  135. I’m a (retired) computer professional. That’s a niche to me. I wouldn’t want my kitchen clock displaying Unix time.
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  136. In our case (in the USA) the Customary units are well-defined and nobody feels a need to change them. That would cause huge confusion with no benefit at all.
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  137. “Niche” is not pejorative.
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  138. It is easy to divide a circle into 12 equal segments using Euclid’s theorem about 30/60/90° triangles. That’s all there is to it. Then you double it for night and day for greater convenience. Straight up on the clock is when the sun is at its highest point (until time zones were invented). It is all highly logical.
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  139.  @chrisg3030  — Euclid proved that for a 30/60/90° right triangle, the short side is one-half the hypotenuse. You need 12 segments of 30° to make a circle, so you just need two lengths: the radius and 1/2 the radius. A square is useful if you want precise marks at 30° steps. With a compass and straight edge, the classical tools of Euclidean geometry, you can construct the circle and line equal to 1/2 the radius. It’s straightforward. You are correct that you can construct 16 segments, but then your angle is 22.5°. Whole degrees are nicer and the 30/60/90° triangle is especially nice. If the people who like circles of 400° had been in charge, we would likely have 16-hour clocks.
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  140.  @chrisg3030  — Yes, 12 partitions nicely in multiple ways. It has worked out well for hours on the clock, and there is no need to change it.
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  141. Decimal does not imply metric. For time to be metric, the second would have to be related to le mètre by a power of ten.
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  142. In general, there is only one unit for anything in SI. They want you to use scaling factors rather than multiple names.
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  143. Had they insisted on a change of base, they would have failed as they did with time. There was once a farsighted gentleman who anticipated machine calculation and realized that it would be simpler if we used base eight to represent numbers. Naturally, the idea went nowhere. He was right, but also wrong in that representing binary numbers in base ten notation turned out to be no great impediment. I should know who he was, but I’ve forgotten.
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  144. He is sloppy in his terminology, but it doesn’t affect his argument here.
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  145. It wasn’t a random choice, which is what “arbitrary” means. The metrologists made a deliberate decision to change c (the speed of light) from a measured quantity to a defined constant, then use it to define le mètre. They had reasons for doing so, which are explained elsewhere.
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  146. The United States has never used the Imperial System, which was introduced well after the American revolution. “SI” is just the formal name (abbreviated) for what is commonly called the “metric system.” There may be some technical differences, but they don’t matter here.
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  147. They may remember when the Eurocrats tried to force the UK to give up their pints. Who needs that kind of interference in one’s personal life?
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  148. No, that was an alternative method proposed but not adopted.
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  149. No, that was an alternative method proposed for the new standard.
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  150. You are misrepresenting that issue. What the UK will do is simply be tolerant of the use of Imperial or Metric units. This is the way it has always (since 1866) been in the USA, where both US Customary and Metric units are legal for trade. It is also that way in Canada. After first trying to force the elimination of Imperial units, a change of policy caused the penalties to be dropped.
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  151. Curiously, one verst is very close to one km. That’s 2/3 mile to us Usanians.
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  152. He ought to know better. We used to say “English” units, but have never used “Imperial” units. I don’t understand why this anachronism caught on.
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  153. The problem isn’t decay of the atoms, but losing mass through erosion, or gaining mass by adsorbtion. There is also the problem of having to go to France to calibrate your standard. The mass balance allows national laboratories to calibrate masses independently.
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  154. The United States has never used the Imperial System.
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  155. If everybody were that far out of it, nothing important would get done.
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  156. It’s impossible, for two reasons. The main reason is that the solar year is not exactly 365.25 mean solar days. The other is that the mean solar day changes slowly by a measureable amount. Leap seconds don’t affect anybody except the people who maintain the master clcks.
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  157. I forgot the obvious: If we distributed the extra quarter day throughout the year, then the new year would not always start at midnight. Every year it would be six hours later. Would that be confusing? You should also consider that a significant change in the duration of a second would render millions of clocks obsolete. It would cause global chaos.
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  158. Ironic that a video about going fully metric would be “footage.”
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  159. You just haven’t been paying attention.
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  160. No, we cannot. The calendar must be synchronized with the seasons.
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  161. Go ahead and print up some of your calendars. Offer them for sale and let us know how it worked out.
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  162. If that were a world-wide convention, we would have two different calendars. Think about it.
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  163. Actually, the Imperial System is newer than US Customary units.
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  164. wrong
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  165. right
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  166. Le mètre is easy because it’s just a litle more than a yard.
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  167. “Newton” is not a unit of energy.
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  168. Units are arbitrary. Multiplication and division have nothing to do with units.
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  169.  @joshuadixon2240  — You mean division of a whole number into smaller whole numbers. That’s a different matter.
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  170. “Niche” just means a specialized segment of the larger population.
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  171. Does anyone think the Gods care about how Earthlings measure things?
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  172.  @baileyravenwick  — Ok, I thought you were praying.
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  173. In the United States we have free speech. One may call oneself what one pleases. Anyway, scientists (as most people) do use metric, but not exclusively. There is a video on YT of Dr. Richard Feynman using the unit “inch.” Was he a scientist?
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  174.  @Meine.Postma  — Yes, Feynman was giving a public lecture to laymen. But he could use “inch” without apology or guilt because he was a practical man. I expect many US scientists are comfortable using Customary units in everyday life outside of their labs and offices. Real scientists know that units are arbitrary. Arguing about units is politics, not science.
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  175. You cannot impose one standard for every situation, unless you have totalitarian government. People will use what suits them.
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  176. We (in the USA) already do use universal units. Whisk(e)y comes in a 750 ml bottle. Aspirin comes in a 325 mg tablet. Now that that’s taken care of, we need to protect our democracy by defeating the fascists in our body politic.
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  177. In the United States, we do, except it is US Customary, not Imperial.
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  178. Nobody uses base 12 for anything. Perhaps you don’t know what “base” means.
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  179. Clocks are the invention.
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  180. The title should have been “Decimal Time” instead of “Metric Time.” To have metric time, you would have to define the base unit of time relative to le mètre. For example, you could define the second as the time for light to travel 100,000,000 meters. That would make it about 1/3 of our current second, which would be hard to count. If you defined the speed of light as axactly 300,000,000 meters per second, you would have one of those “ugly” numbers the metric mavens hate, and the error would still break everything pertaining to time worldwide. SI wisely adopted the second as is, but it is a legacy unit which can never be considered “metric.” The point I make here is that the metric system was not merely about decimalization, it was about defining a system of measurement tied to one standard, le mètre. Decimalization was merely one aspect of the system. Decimal notation is much older than the metric system.
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  181.  @chrisbaker2903  — The speed of light in a vacuum is now a defined constant, so you can stop fretting about it.
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  182. This is basic. The first century C.E. is the years 1 to 100, etc.
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  183. That sounds like a niche to me. It doesn’t depend on the number of units, but on the narrowness of the application. Nobody wears Unix time on his wrist or displays it on the kitchen wall. Computers don’t even display it to ordinary users, although they could easily enough.
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  184. Not his style.
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  185. It isn’t about the effort of conversion of the numbers, actually.
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  186. The screen convention is nothing. You could easily just use cm. Wheel rims are another matter, because you need a precise fit with tires. The United States is a huge market for tires. If European car makers used wheels with metric sizes, the tire companies would have to make twice as many tire sizes, a huge expense. On the other hand, if we just switched wheels everywhere, people with old cars couldn’t get tires, so they would need new wheels. That’s a big expense and a nuisance, so we aren’t going to do that. Wheel sizes in cm units don’t give you any advantage anyway. One inch steps are a convenient size. In cm, you would have to use 2 cm steps and need a lot more tire sizes, or 3 cm steps which might be too large. Using 2.5 cm steps would certainly work, but that’s a clumsy step size and you would still need more tire sizes because it wouldn’t be compatible with inch sizes. You could just give the wheels a nominal metric size without changing anything, which is what is sometimes done with square drive for tools, but that’s just silly. Sticking with wheels dimensioned in inches is the most practical solution. As long as you have metric hardware to hold the wheel on, you should be satisfied.
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  187. Universal (Greenwich) time or Pentagon time?
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  188. Radians to degrees will not come out easy under any base because pi is irrational.
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  189. No. Taking alternate days off, you would never get any actual work done.
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  190. “Metric” just means “measurement,” but has come mean a particular measurement system.
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  191. The United States has never used the Imperial System of units.
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  192. The second is an SI unit, but not really metric, because it is not derived from le mètre.
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  193. If the rest of the world changed the clock, the US would most likely just keep dividing the day the way we always have.
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  194. Why would you have to convert? Just use an ordinary watch to measure your break time.
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  195. That is odd, because “mileposts” is the usual term.
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  196. “Common Era” usage dates from the early 18th century C.E., and is widely used in scholarly work. It doesn’t matter whether it catches on in general use or not.
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  197. They will use Earth time. Nobody wants to live permanently on Mars.
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