Where has Engineering Gone In The Last 5 Years 2

[KENAT]

Just noticed faq730-700 and that it is (just over) 5 years old.

So to celebrate this milestone, anyone care to opine on where it has gone? How accurate were some of the initial ideas etc.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[KENAT]

I like a nice .57 of a litre from the tap myself.

Even when drinking a "Guinness Extra Cold", which is only done in a place that doesn't look like it knows how to store its beer, I never had a problem with the bottom getting warm. (The one litre Kronenburg in France almost got warm one time, then I corrected that problem by picking up the pace, with inevitable consequences.)

Of course, drink a nice cask ale or similar and you don't need to worry as much about it getting warm.

hokie, if you're going to get hung up on it would you rather beer was sold by the cubic meter? Maybe you'd enjoy a nice .000375m^3 bottle of fizzy cold gnats pi$$.

Sompting, might be that the Bud is in a matric 16floz bottle, which to colonials would be a pint.

As I recall per ASME Y14.100 date should be Year Month Day, I still have to think about dates in regular US format having grown up in the UK.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[ctopher]

I hate going to the grocery store and purchasing a gallon of milk and a two-liter of soda. This is very common in the US.
I would like them all to be the same units.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

 

[HgTX]

What is "not metric" about a centimeter?

http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter3/prefixes.html

Hg



Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[cranky108]

Am I the only one who's seen metric countries that sell Gasoline in Gallons?
And stranglely the hardware stores sell 3/4" drill bits.

If we were to change to the metric system would we have to change some of the way we speek.
Walk a kilometer in my shoes, or such?

 

[owg]

Although most of the SI prefixes are 1000 apart, the references that I have checked approve centi for a hundredth and hecto for a hundred times. So as far as I am concerned the centimetre or even the centimeter is alive and well. By the way who is the reigning hectometer champion?

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[SomptingGuy]

The real rogue is the dm3, otherwise known as the litre.

- Steve

 

[ctopher]

...or 'liter'.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

 

[btrueblood]

I'd like a litter of beer, please.

 

[hokie66]

All I was saying was that multiples of 10 and 100 only complicate the metric system, when it doesn't need to be complicated. Who would remember those prefixes in HgTX's link?

KENAT, I am not "hung up" on the way beer volume is measured. Millilitres meets my specification exactly. But so does a cubic metre, or megalitre.

 

[KENAT]

I remember most of them, I remember playing with 'decimeters' at school.

Anyway, t'was a but a light hearted jest.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[jmw]

Apsix, where did you learn math?
I've been worrying this around in my head and I can't see where you get it that Hokie66 is missing 45ml,
I make it 625ml he's missing from his stubbie.
Or am I missing something? Is he? Perhaps Sompting guy has it in his can.... er lets see. How many of somptings cans do we
Oh well.

multiples of 10 and 100 only complicate the metric system

Quite. It really messed up the money here. I'm all for going back to £.s.d (and Guineas).
No joking, every time they mess with the money we end up paying more for it. When was the last time anyone saw a 1/2p? I think they lasted about 2days before the manufacturers "rounded up" the prices.
Then they introduced the Euro. Same deal in all those countries where they had Marks and Lira etc.

Of course, now we have (for whatever reasons, biofuel production, drought or oil rpices) higher food prices so the manufacturers have provided the same size packaging and at the same price but with less contents.
Thing is, all those funny sizes are all part of what Scot Adams calls a "confusopoly".

Hmm, think I could do with a swift 330ml.




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[hokie66]

jmw,

No, apsix knows my drinking habits. An Aussie stubby is 375 ml, and a typical European one is 330 ml. I was griping about missing out on 45 ml, but if you want to contribute another 625 ml, I'll drink that too. In fact, as it is 1515 on Saturday 4 October 2008 where I am, it is time to crack one.

 

[carnage1]

58670 ml is a good beer size, and you never end up with warm beer in the bottom

Luck is a difficult thing to verify and therefore should be tested often. - Me

 

[cranky108]

So why do we see the 33% more free so much? Why not lower the price? "Same great product, now a lower price", like we sometimes see with gasohol.

Seems dumb to me to use alcohol as a car fuel, when it fuels humans so well.
Although these people who say they will work for food really won't, it's a thought that they might work for ripple.

 

[DonPhillips]

Cranky, in our "supersize" society, it is probably easier to sell "more" than collect "less".

Don Phillips

http://worthingtonengineering.com

 

[KENAT]

Also, I suspect if you look at what are more or less 'fixed' costs per packet of X, compared to those that scale with size/mass/volume (whatever) then they can probably provide 'more free' relatively cheaply.

For instance, maybe they can give you a 10% price reduction or give you 25% extra free, which sounds better?

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[HgTX]

A personal dispreference for the use of centimeters in calculation is not the same thing as others' claim (and I'm not pointing at anyone in particular, as I've seen this in several other places) that "it's not metric because it's not a multiple of 1000", which is simply wrong.

My experience in countries that really use the metric system to the exclusion of all others (as opposed to countries where the official system is metric but most people still think in imperial units) is that the centimeter is a very useful unit. Most thingummies between about the size of my thumb and maybe twice my height (i.e., those which in the "U.S. customary" system would be described using inches) are described in either centimeters, or meters and centimeters. Height, for instance. Someone's height might typically be described as a meter eighty. Or depth of swimming pool--go look and see what's painted on the side. It's either meters to TWO decimal points, or it's centimeters. Look at almost every metric ruler--centimeters. It's a standard unit, it's very popular, and it's very useful.

Centimeters even come up in an engineering context--although all the drawings are done exclusively in millimeters, when we're talking about the size of X-ray film we switch to centimeters because we're having a real-world conversation about a real-world object whose size is appropriately expressed in centimeters; millimeters offer too much precision for the context of the conversation.

The use of a system in formal contexts on paper is very different from its use in real life and conversation. For people who don't think in metric units, the "purity" or perhaps simplicity of only meters and millimeters in caluculations may appeal, but if you use the system in daily life, there is a real need for a unit of measure about the size of something that can be held in the hand and easily seen. Apparently there's only the need for one such, and not two, as the decimeter has pretty much died. But the centimeter is alive and well.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[KENAT]

In the UK I was taught primarily meters & centimeters until the age of about 16, while I knew what a mm was it rarely came up as a unit that was actually used.

I got introduced to widespread us of mm in Design Technology A level, kind of a highschool intro to Engineering.

However in maths and physics at that point it was all about metres with the appropriate exponent.

At university it was mainly meters with the appropriate exponent. We had one US prof who used US books and the concept of a 'slug' caused some concern!

Then I get to work and it's all millimeters & inches.

Fortunately I'd learnt inches at home so to me they were just lines on a ruler, however to apprentices just a couple of years younger than I inches were a major stumbling block.

Now I'm in the US, where it's mostly inches.

Anyway, while not my favourite there is a place for centimeters as HG points out.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[SomptingGuy]

Then there's the machine shop, where the thou' is still commonly used in conversation, even for machining components with metric sizes.

- Steve

 

[KENAT]

Well yeah, by inches I was including thou as that's what I deal with a lot looking at tolerancing etc.

Even if the US truely went metric there are so many pieces of equipment with 'inch' scales, components etc that they'll be around a good while.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?