Pirates of the Caribbean (Metric Edition) (2017)(nist.gov)
nist.gov
Pirates of the Caribbean (Metric Edition) (2017)
https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-metric-edition
82 comments
Countries which use the metric system: Everyone except the US, Mynanmar and Liberia. And kind of the UK.
As someone who grew up in a metric country and moved to the UK it sure doesn't feel like we use it here, but officially we use it. It's just we don't actually use it most of the time. So teaching in schools and tertiary education is in metric (including word questions about people travelling in a car on the motorway at "the speed limit of 112km/h"[1]), scientific stuff is universally in metric[2] and temperature is in C[3]. People measure distance in imperial, but volumetric measures and weights have come around to being sensible with just a bit of grumbling from extreme stick-in-the-muds like Jacob Rees-Mogg who have made a career out of living like it's still the 19th century.
[1] Which is not a number you will ever see on a speed limit sign nor is the answer that will be given if you ask an actual driver what the motorway speed limit is. They will universally say 70mph.
[2] Because of course
[3] Because also of course. F might be the second-worst unit of measurement after perhaps only degrees Rankine.
As someone who grew up in a metric country and moved to the UK it sure doesn't feel like we use it here, but officially we use it. It's just we don't actually use it most of the time. So teaching in schools and tertiary education is in metric (including word questions about people travelling in a car on the motorway at "the speed limit of 112km/h"[1]), scientific stuff is universally in metric[2] and temperature is in C[3]. People measure distance in imperial, but volumetric measures and weights have come around to being sensible with just a bit of grumbling from extreme stick-in-the-muds like Jacob Rees-Mogg who have made a career out of living like it's still the 19th century.
[1] Which is not a number you will ever see on a speed limit sign nor is the answer that will be given if you ask an actual driver what the motorway speed limit is. They will universally say 70mph.
[2] Because of course
[3] Because also of course. F might be the second-worst unit of measurement after perhaps only degrees Rankine.
> the second-worst unit of measurement after perhaps only degrees Rankine.
I see you haven't heard about Delisle scale yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delisle_scale
I see you haven't heard about Delisle scale yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delisle_scale
Oh my word.
F is better for use in human temperature comfort than C.
Nope, you’re just used to it. If you’re used to Celsius it’s basically no different…
F is 'human scale' in that 0-100 is basically the range a human can operate without having to take serious extra precautions. Of course that doesn't make it 'better' and I'm sure if we'd grown up using Kelvin we would find that easy and intuitive.
But your second sentence is entirely the point. Practically if you’re used to C then you know exactly what the habitable human range is, and Fahrenheit is meaningless to you (I literally have no intuition for it - I know that 32 is zero C and and 100 is around 40 C, so I know what that feels like, but I can’t imagine at all what any Fahrenheit temperature between that feels like without googling the conversion).
So 0-100 being ‘human scale’ is nothing but perhaps a bit of a fun novelty, the only thing that is important is either having or building the familiarity and intuition (which is mostly just from experience of everyday use).
So 0-100 being ‘human scale’ is nothing but perhaps a bit of a fun novelty, the only thing that is important is either having or building the familiarity and intuition (which is mostly just from experience of everyday use).
You can't imagine what 50F feels like? Or 80F? Come on.
Fahrenheit is also more precise. 2 degree F above normal body temp is a fever. 2 degree C is a trip to the ER.
Fahrenheit is also more precise. 2 degree F above normal body temp is a fever. 2 degree C is a trip to the ER.
Nope, no idea. If I plug in in numbers, I get 10°C and 26+2/3°C, both of which I can imagine, but neither of the Fahrenheit values have any meaning for me.
You could make the same argument for 0-30C.
Perhaps even more so, since 1F is a meaningless level of precision for most activities.
Perhaps even more so, since 1F is a meaningless level of precision for most activities.
C is much nicer for weather use because the transition behavior of water around 0 C is a significant factor to human comfort and preparation.
-20 to 40C isn't as nice as 0-100, but it's not terrible.
AFAIR 0-100 wasn't the goal anyway. 0F was just the lowest they could reach in a lab setting at the time. Then they chose to have 180 degrees between water freezing and boiling.
AFAIR 0-100 wasn't the goal anyway. 0F was just the lowest they could reach in a lab setting at the time. Then they chose to have 180 degrees between water freezing and boiling.
Which raises the question of what was the point of Celsius in the first place?
Fahrenheit had already existed for around 20 years when Celsius was proposed.
With units of distance, area, volume, and mass we commonly deal with a range of several orders of magnitude, and often need to subdivide larger values into equal smaller values.
Because of that immense range it makes a lot of sense to have names for specific multiples or fractions of some base unit.
The metric system made all those names derived units powers of 10 times the base unit, made those names all prefixes applied to the base unit, and used the same prefixes for length, area, volume, and mass.
That was a noticeable improvement over previous systems, where length, area, volume, and mass might use different multiples for their derived named units, the names might not be connected to the base unit, and the names were often only used with one kind of unit.
The only real problem with the metric system was that instead of defining the original meter as 10^-7 times the great circle distance from the equator to the North Pole, it should have been defined as some specific round integer multiple of some existing distance unit that was in common use and reasonably well defined.
But with temperature we almost never in ordinary life or business deal with a large range. We don't need names for specific multiples or fractions.
Fahrenheit's original reference points might not have been the best, but if you wanted to switch to basing on something else you can do that without changing the scale. Fahrenheit's original 0 point was the lowest temperature that could be achieved in the lab via a specific procedure. The other reference point was average human body temperature. On that scale water freezes at around 32℉.
If you wanted to instead have the freezing point of water as your base, you don't need to make a new scale that defines the 0 point as the freezing of water. Instead you can keep the degree size the same, and define the 0 point as 32 degrees below the freezing point of water. Similar for the upper reference point. Define it so that water boils at 212.
That gives you a scale that is defined based on freezing and boiling water (which is what Celsius used, although originally Celsius went the other way--water froze at 100 and boiled at 0--but that was pretty quickly swapped), but that still matches the thermometers that are already in use.
Same thing when later you realize that freezing and boiling point of water aren't the best reference points. We've moved on from freezing/boiling to using the triple point of water, then to the triple point of water with a specific isotropic composition, and now it is based on the Boltzmann constant and has nothing to do with water.
Each time, we set the values so that the resulting scale matches the new scale to within the limits of accuracy that we can measure at the time.
Fahrenheit had already existed for around 20 years when Celsius was proposed.
With units of distance, area, volume, and mass we commonly deal with a range of several orders of magnitude, and often need to subdivide larger values into equal smaller values.
Because of that immense range it makes a lot of sense to have names for specific multiples or fractions of some base unit.
The metric system made all those names derived units powers of 10 times the base unit, made those names all prefixes applied to the base unit, and used the same prefixes for length, area, volume, and mass.
That was a noticeable improvement over previous systems, where length, area, volume, and mass might use different multiples for their derived named units, the names might not be connected to the base unit, and the names were often only used with one kind of unit.
The only real problem with the metric system was that instead of defining the original meter as 10^-7 times the great circle distance from the equator to the North Pole, it should have been defined as some specific round integer multiple of some existing distance unit that was in common use and reasonably well defined.
But with temperature we almost never in ordinary life or business deal with a large range. We don't need names for specific multiples or fractions.
Fahrenheit's original reference points might not have been the best, but if you wanted to switch to basing on something else you can do that without changing the scale. Fahrenheit's original 0 point was the lowest temperature that could be achieved in the lab via a specific procedure. The other reference point was average human body temperature. On that scale water freezes at around 32℉.
If you wanted to instead have the freezing point of water as your base, you don't need to make a new scale that defines the 0 point as the freezing of water. Instead you can keep the degree size the same, and define the 0 point as 32 degrees below the freezing point of water. Similar for the upper reference point. Define it so that water boils at 212.
That gives you a scale that is defined based on freezing and boiling water (which is what Celsius used, although originally Celsius went the other way--water froze at 100 and boiled at 0--but that was pretty quickly swapped), but that still matches the thermometers that are already in use.
Same thing when later you realize that freezing and boiling point of water aren't the best reference points. We've moved on from freezing/boiling to using the triple point of water, then to the triple point of water with a specific isotropic composition, and now it is based on the Boltzmann constant and has nothing to do with water.
Each time, we set the values so that the resulting scale matches the new scale to within the limits of accuracy that we can measure at the time.
It doesn't really matter what the exact reasons behind the Celsius scale was, it happened hundreds of years ago... The fact is that basically every field of science has settled on it for scientific use, and almost every country has settled on it for everyday use.
C predictions tend to be exact numbers. F predictions are typically "50, low 50s, mid 50s, high 50s" (four per decade).
10 C degrees are 18 F degrees. So in this interval, C has ten points and F has 7.2 points.
So maybe F better suits the accuracy of predictions (i.e. significant digits -type stuff).
10 C degrees are 18 F degrees. So in this interval, C has ten points and F has 7.2 points.
So maybe F better suits the accuracy of predictions (i.e. significant digits -type stuff).
Viewed from a non-American perspective, you're just rounding when talking about temperatures Fahrenheit because the numbers are uncomfortably large to be used directly.
In the rest of the world, the weather forecast is "21 C", not "low 20s".
In the rest of the world, the weather forecast is "21 C", not "low 20s".
But setting your thermostat to 67 degrees vs. 70 degrees is a noticeable difference, which is where F becomes a better measure.
As is setting your thermostat to 19C vs 21C which is what those convert to rounded to the nearest degree celcius.
Not really. It's not like there are no decimals.
It’s a well written story but I’m not convinced the metric system would have been adopted by the US even in the absence of pirates.
By the story’s own account, they were going to Jefferson who had already unsuccessfully lobbied for the metric system, and when the instruments finally did make their way to the Secretary of State they were unconvincing.
That said, I am still glad to have read the story and formed the opinion.
By the story’s own account, they were going to Jefferson who had already unsuccessfully lobbied for the metric system, and when the instruments finally did make their way to the Secretary of State they were unconvincing.
That said, I am still glad to have read the story and formed the opinion.
"""Montserrat is a lot nicer when you're not being held for ransom by pirates. """
"""Despite his qualifications, Dombey lacked one important attribute: luck."""
I love the writing style. It's rare to hit that right balance of sarcasm and academia.
"""Despite his qualifications, Dombey lacked one important attribute: luck."""
I love the writing style. It's rare to hit that right balance of sarcasm and academia.
[deleted]
Interesting article.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Grave” would have been a better title.
“Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Grave” would have been a better title.
As opposed to Living Man's Grave?
We've run out of titles that make sense a good decade ago.
I don't know. A prediction of mine that titles would degenerate to single generic nouns like Plane came true, but there's plenty left in the dictionary. Ship, I suppose, could be a Pirates of the Caribbean reboot?
So you have the film Tenet. If you wanted to make a version that ran the story in reverse, how would you name it ?
Well, if the sequel involves a scheme enacted by a male character on an artificial Central American waterway, do I have the title for you!
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lsh123(11)
I'm probably splitting hairs though. The popular opinion has always been "it's privateering when we do it, it's piracy when they do it". One man's terrorist and all that.