All wheels with pneumatic tires measure in inches. Bicycles, cars, motor bikes, wheelbarrows, etc. I grew up in a metric country and often asked that question of the local bike shop owner. He said it was the English who invented the bike and they determined the wheel size.
It’s even used in countries that have never heard of or used the English system.
JosephEMeehan — "Frankly I can't understand why someone would chose to have water freeze at 32º and boil at 212º while most of the rest of the world has water freeze at zero and boil at 100º"And you probably can't understand why a baseball game is nine innings rather than ten. And why do you keep writing "tire" as "tyre?" Where are you from, if I may ask?
The graduations of temperature on the Fahrenheit scale are closer together and are more representative of how humans experience climatic temperature. The outside air temperature digital display in my Honda reads 70, 71, 72; the corresponding temperatures displayed in my BMW reads 21.0, 21.5, 22.0 (the display increments by 0.5). How cool is that? Outside of a lab, I’ll take Fahrenheit any day.
Docnick — "All wheels with pneumatic tires measure in inches."http://www.nashbar.com/bikes/Product_10053_10052_163882_-1_202642_10000_202354 (Click on "Specs.")
inches anyone? anywhere?
Outside of a lab, I’ll take Fahrenheit any day.
Outside of doing calculations I’ll take SAE over Metric. WHY?? Because I’m use to it.
And you probably can’t understand why a baseball game is nine innings rather than ten.
I don't know why. Do you? It sounds like it might be an interesting story.
And why do you keep writing “tire” as “tyre?” Where are you from, if I may ask?
Sure you can ask, Tyre is a British spelling. My first car was made in Scotland, there for the British spelling.
The graduations of temperature on the Fahrenheit scale are closer together and are more representative of how humans experience climatic temperature.
The _closer_ graduations are not a matter of US vs Metric. Either can have as many graduations as the writer wants. An inch can have 10 graduations or 64 or as many as can be read, Like wise so can a meter.
The outside air temperature digital display in my Honda reads 70, 71, 72; the corresponding temperatures displayed in my BMW reads 21.0, 21.5, 22.0 (the display increments by 0.5). How cool is that? …
Well it is about about 21. If it were were 21º C I would say it is a nice warm day about 69.8 or would you rather say 69 4/5 ☺
MikelnHN: “Outside of doing calculations I’ll take SAE over Metric. WHY?? Because I’m use to it.”
That makes sense to me. Use what works for you.
Somehow I just can't get use to the idea that we should measure something base on the distance from some English king's nose to the tip of his finger. It must have been fun when a king died,I have no idea if the attached links’ explanations are true. .But they ARE interestting.
The metric system came in handy during the Korean War. When GIs captured someone he always tried to tell them he was SOUTH KOREAN, not an enemy NORTH KOREAN. An army doctor solved the problem by using a Celcius thermometer on the prisoner; if it read higher than 38 degrees he was obviouxly a NORTH KOREAN!!
I can remember “converting” to the metric system when I started teaching, 40 years ago. It still hasn’t happened as a part of our daily life. That it has had an impact on us financially is without question. Our unwillingness to change, but instead, kling to an archaic system of hodge podge numerical relationships that for years, that we and Yeman had refused to do, pretty much tells you the dichotomy that the United States views itself with respect to the rest of the world.
Typically…“the United States can always be counted upon doing the right thing, …after exhausting all other possibilities”. Sadly, I won’t see anything but mile per hour signs, never own a practical electric car or see universal single payer healthcare in my lifetime.
dagosa — "the United States can always be counted upon doing the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities"If you use another's words, at least give them credit.
dagosa — <font color="blue" face="times"Sadly, I won't see anything but mile per hour signs ...That should not be your biggest problem.
dagosa — <font color="blue" face="times"... and never own a practical electric car ...I don't think that is true. How old are you? 102?
dagosa — ... or see universal single payer healthcare in my lifetime.Well, that is probably true. He had the largest voter mandate in the last quarter century, and the wimp handed the blll to Ben Nelson of Nebraska and disappeared for a year. Talk about using his bully pulpit and explaining the situation to the American people!. We would not have the Catholic church contraception problem today with a single payer system, and the insurance companies are still high-fiving over the forced mandate. I voted for him last time, but never again. I hope he wins, considering the GOP clowns he'll be running against, but I'm staying home in November. "Fool me once, ... I can't be fooled again." (— GWB, giving credit where credit is due) Sorry for the rant, but you touched a chord.
Dag, having lived most of my adult life in industry I adamently disagree that our lack of ready conversion to metric was at all a factor in our economic problems or in our international trade issues. It never cost us a dime and never affected one single trade. Attempting to convert just for the sake of it would have cost countless mountains of money and accomplished nothing. I know we’ve had this discussion before, so I’ll spare everyone the paragraphs about the millions of design drawings out there that use the “archaic” systems and the countless mechines, machine programs, tool & die sets, molds, specifications, and even raw materials that would have to each be converted. And the countless opportunities for invalidating qualified and validated designs when doing so.
I’m honestly puzzled as to why anyone would consider any one measuring system as being superior or inferior to any other. A length, a volume, a weight, all remain exactly the same no matter what you use as a measuring standard. A kilometer per hour sign has absolutely zero advantage over a kilometer per hour sign. It’s just a comparative measure of your velocity against that which the state deemed safe. If your speedo were marked in furlings per fortnight and the signs were in furlings per fortnight, they’d serve the same purpose.
Re: the electric car. You may be right, but converting to metric measurements would have had zero effect on energy storage technologies. Measuring systems have nothing to do with the progress in electric vehicles.
Universal single payer healthcare would be great…but not the way we’re approaching it.
“All wheels with pneumatic tires measure in inches. Bicycles, cars, motor bikes, wheelbarrows, etc. I grew up in a metric country and often asked that question of the local bike shop owner. He said it was the English who invented the bike and they determined the wheel size.”
Well, that’s not entirely true.
Road bicycles had 27" wheels as their standard, then at some point (80’s?) there was a switch to 700mm wheels. These are close, though not exact, matches, and tires are generally not interchangeable (though tubes are).
Mountian bikes, however, never made the switch, and are demarcated in inches: generally either 26" or 29".
The weird thing: a 27" rim does not measure 27", nor does a 700mm rim measure 700mm! The “wheel” measurement is based on the assumed diameter of the whole rim/tire combo. The actual rim diameter of a “700mm” wheel is around 622mm.
Okay, stay with me: since the wheel is measured according to the final rim/tire combo, a 700mm wheel converts to either:
The meter was not quite based on a minute of arc on the earth. It was originally 1/10000000 of the 90 degree arc in latitude from the equator to the north pole (specifically, at 0 longitude, or through Greenwich). So 1 minute (1 nautical mile) is 10000000/90/60 ~= 1851.85 ~=1852 meters.
JosephEMeehan asks what the “minute” is based on (is it “scientific”?) As the earth travels around the sun in about 365 days, that makes the sun appear to shift about 1/365 of a full circle relative to the background stars. Very ancient astronomers were aware of this shift (without understanding the reason). So it was natural for them to divide a circle into ~365 parts. But they didn’t have decimals, only fractions, and fractions are easier to work with if the numerator divides into many smaller factors, and that’s probably the reason they chose to divide a circle into 360 degrees (this is so ancient the exact reasons seem to be lost in the mists of antiquity). They used other easily factored numbers for other conversions (note 12, 24, 60, used for time units), so they further divided 1 degree into 60 arcminutes, each of those further divided into 60 arcseconds. It was just a matter of making the math easier, which is of course the same reason the metric system was developed (long) after decimals were invented.
To MikeInNH: The philosopher in the 1600’s who found the size of the earth by measuring the angle of sun shadows at two locations 100 miles apart was almost 2000 years late to claim credit for the idea. Eratosthenes did this around 250BC. The ancient Greeks were so good at geometry that they not only determined that the earth was round, and found its size, they also found that the sun was much further away than the moon, and used the geometry of eclipses to determine the size of, and distance to, the moon.
Thanks jmmahony
Mechaniker…you need to get a life. Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but nick picking for the sake of being argumentative means you definitly have too much time on your hands. Last time I looked, quotes do give someone else credit…if you can’t recognize old Winston, that’s your problem. Breath deeply and think carefully before you respond, it may be the first time you did.
Same…I adamantly believe that we have lost much in trade with our trading partners due to conversion costs over many years. Having said that, "has had an impact " is a far cry from being a cause of our economic crisis. That I feel metrics is superior to much of what we have done in the past is born out by one simple fact…we are using metrics now much more then we ever had to our benefit . I am having hard time counting the number of metric standard countries moving away to our or other systems. We ARE converting, but a snail’s pace. I can’t imagine the work I did in the military would have been as efficient in the medical field if we had not used metrics as much as we did. Be happy that the medical field has been “metricized” as much as it has to the patient’s advantage. As far as the electric car is concerned, I won’t “see” it because I’m loosing my eyesight and it won’t be long before I loose my license to drive.
“dagosa 12:32AM Report
Mechaniker…you need to get a life. Disagreeing with someone is one thing, but nick picking for the sake of being argumentative means you definitly have too much time on your hands. Last time I looked, quotes do give someone else credit…if you can’t recognize old Winston, that’s your problem. Breath deeply and think carefully before you respond, it may be the first time you did.”
Let the record show that I didn’t say that.
The time to move wholesale to metric was when everyone else was doing it, back when different countries had different measuring systems. At this point piecemeal is the only way to do it until it becomes a fait accompli.
Meanjoe,
You have to be very careful whwen you talk about diameters of tires and wheels. The tires have a diameter, but it is common to refer to wheel diameter instead of the overall diameter of the tires.
But the “700mm” is referring to tire diameter, not the wheel diameter. Bicycle wheels do indeed come in metric sizes, but they also come in inch sizes - and the overall diameter of the tire and wheel assembly will depend on the size of tire put on the wheel.
And as Mountain Bike says, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter much.
I am going to take issue with this comment that Mountain Bike made: “…It never cost us a dime and never affected one single trade. …”
I think that is wrong. I think our resistance to adopting the metric system has hurt US industry, but in subtle ways that defy measurement.
Let me give a reverse example. Does anyone else remember when foreign cars were rare - and a common phrase was “I won’t buy one of those because they use those metric bolts and will be hard to fix.”
Do I think our use of the English measurement system is the cause for our economic condition? No. Do I think it GREATLY affects our economy? No. But I do think it has a small, but negative affect.
Nearly all world trade (over 90%) is now conducted in the metric system. When Britain joined the European Common Market, it was a painful adjustment for them. For sentimental and political reasons they kept some “English” measures at home, such as the mile.
A country’s living standard is not a great deal affcted by the system it uses. Russia went Metric in 1917, and still has a lot of catching up to do. Argentina is a country blessed with natural resources and also has the metric system. Draw your own conclusions.
The factors that determine a country’s living standard are a mixture of quality education, skills training, entrepreneurial attitude, ingenuity, political stability, hard work, a non-corrupt and efficient civil service, fair taxation system and a few others. In view of the above, the US has most of these factors in abundance.
For some countries, like Saudi Arabia, very rich natural resources work to make them rich. But on average, Saudi citizens are less well off than those of countries without any natural resources, such as Japan.
Littlemouse…you’re safe.
Funny, I’m watching a piece on CBS Sunday morning on our failure to convert to metrics as a national standard…we are presently aligned with just a couple of what we consider third world countries. Something to be proud of. It really shows how strong and influential the US is that we could still exist outside of the rest of the world in this area. The military gets it…it’s better to shoot 9mm then .38 (.357). Before you guys jump on me, I get the official differences and why each is designated differently while being the same cal. for all practical purposes. No need to google a bunch of corrections.
I saw that piece, quite interesting.