English or metric?

[Walter]

Walter

You seem offened and if so i'm sorry, that was not my intention.

You obviously don't know me very well. I'm not offended at all, there's no need to apologize, but thanks for the concern.

But I never said the metric system was a 21st century innovation. I think you misread my post. What I meant to imply was that most if not all developed countrys converted to the metric system last century.

I understood you completely. I was pointing out that they switched for one old system to another. BTW, did you know France switched to metric twice? They switched, it didn't catch on, so they abandoned it. Later, they switched again.

I dont know what I said that makes you think I want to control people. All I was trying to do was explain why I think the metric system is more suited to diving and easier to make calculations.

So use it. I'll support your right to use it. I never said I thought you want to control people. Rereading my post, I can see how it came across that way as the rest of my post was directed toward you. I'm sorry for giving that impression. What I said was, "What I don't understand is the desire to control other people."

That was directed towards such statements as, "In my experience everyone in the water needs to be on the same scale."

Anyway now you have me confused. Is it a yard from your nose to out streched hand or a foot?

A yard or 3 feet. Are you sure you want to confuse yourself with imperial measurements?

Well, if I'm diving with you, I certainly care.

Why?

But do PADI do a specialty in cuneiform and do you get a free trip to Iraq to do the course?

Those two words should never be used in the same sentence.

 

[redacted]

We may not be metric yet. But we are inching our way toward it.

I believe our common denominator may be the price of gas. Doesn't the metric system have you pay the same price for a liter of petrol as we pay for a gallon of gas?

 

[Storm]

We may not be metric yet. But we are inching our way toward it.

I believe our common denominator may be the price of gas. Doesn't the metric system have you pay the same price for a liter of petrol as we pay for a gallon of gas?

Thats economics not measurement.

I kind of stayed out of this one as it was fun to watch the Brits and the US fight it out again , but allas we here in the land of the moose, we also convereted (back in the seventies) to the metric system.

I was part of the generation that caught in the conversion...what a nightmare.

My wife, a few years older than I, did ot have the same exposure to the metric system and as such she prefers the imperal system. You asked, why does it make a difference to divers and why should a buddy care that's simple...communicaiton.

Mt wife and I dive together. As she prefers the imperial system and I am well versed in both, I change over to the imperial for our dives. This way we're on the same page both during our predive planning and during our dve. It alos makes communicating underwater easier of you're both using the same measurement units.

 

[D1V3R]

I also prefer using the metric system
it is much eaier to do pre-dive planning when 10 meters = 1 atm, instead of
33.9 ft = 1 atm

 

[H2Andy]

We may not be metric yet. But we are inching our way toward it.

 

[Walter]

I also prefer using the metric system
it is much eaier to do pre-dive planning when 10 meters = 1 atm, instead of
33.9 ft = 1 atm

It's not 33.9, it's 33fsw.

 

[jeckyll]

I would say the people are usually more comfortable using whichever ssystem they grew up with.

Having said that, the imperical system is a mess. Give me metric where things make sense

 

[Scuba_Steve]

It's not 33.9, it's 33fsw.

He must be talking about metric fresh water, not imperial salt.....the no calorie kind of course.

I'm the half-way variety canadian that grew up getting screwed with both systems.......

my kids have no idea what a foot is, so I guess the assimilation is complete around my neck of the woods. Us old guys will die off soon enough. Then they will bury me slightly less than 2m under.

 

[gsxr1997]

when i was in school (70's-80s) we were told " you better learn this because this is the way the rest of the world operates and we wil have to conform to survive" well 2 decades later and we still use imperial for 90% of our measurements. so much for teachers being right

 

[Darnold9999]

when i was in school (70's-80s) we were told " you better learn this because this is the way the rest of the world operates and we wil have to conform to survive" well 2 decades later and we still use imperial for 90% of our measurements. so much for teachers being right

Tried working on your car with imperial wrenches lately - most (not all) have made the switch. As the economy becomes more global more things have in fact become metric. But for the US insisting on Imperial it would have died a natural death quite some time ago.

I too grew up with both. Really don't care most of the time, they both work and unless you are doing detailed calculations it doesn't matter. 20 C is "warm" 70 F is also "warm". A quart and a litre are about the same amount unless you have a lot of them.

When it comes time for the details metric is way easier. Hate working in imperial - wish you guys would make the switch so we didn't have to keep both one foot in the metric camp and the other in imperial. We ship way too much stuff to the US to make the hard switch so we maintain both which has become a real pain.

Dive both ways, make the mental switch to Full / half / time to go back pretty quickly. Both parties should be comfortable with the others systems to dive together however. All this IMHO.