# Japan to stop using metrics (Origin: Sir Motor of Dakka Dakka)



## Purge the Heretic (Jul 9, 2009)

Source

GW Appears to have found a loophole which will allow them to standardize their game's measurements in Japan to match what most of the world is using. The Inch. 

By calling it MV, and claiming it is a new system of measurement, they seem to be able to avoid a law which had forced the British based GW to use metrics for their Japanese products and gaming.

If true and the new rules are adopted by the Japanese community there, it will mean great things for international competition. As we all know some nerds are just set in their ways, so I expect some Japanese nerd raging about how metric was better, the only good way to play, and it never should have been devoured by Hive Fleet English Weights and Measures.


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## slaaneshy (Feb 20, 2008)

Rule Britannia!


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## Loli (Mar 26, 2009)

Yes the British Empire is reborn!


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## Old Man78 (Nov 3, 2011)

But everything sounds bigger in metric!!!!!!!


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

no no, we invented the inch for a reason!! you can't just get rid of it, who do those Japanese gamers think they are?!?!


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

Um, the metric system is vastly superior to the imperial system for two reasons.

1) Most of the world uses the metric system

2) The metric system is based on standards that _make sense_. What is a "foot" (imperial system)? It's an arbitrary length of some now dead guy's foot. What are centigrades (metric)? At 0 degrees celsius water freezes and at 100 degrees it boils. Perfect sense. A standard that is uniform. Miles, Fahrenheit, inches etc. are all arbitrary measurements while everything in the metric system is based on scientific constants...

However, it seems that this has nothing to do with Japan's actual standards, but GW Japan. To be honest, none of this thread made enough sense to extrapolate what the message is.


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## rich11762 (Jul 18, 2010)

Id say stick with the imperial measures, years ago Europe even tryed to convert the clocks to metric, but I can't see any real benefit is in loosing imperial measures.


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## Rhino 88 (Jan 1, 2012)

Royal with cheese.............


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## Silens (Dec 26, 2010)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> Um, the metric system is vastly superior to the imperial system for two reasons.
> 
> 1) Most of the world uses the metric system
> 
> ...


All measurements are pretty much arbitrary in that context.. It doesn't matter that the inch was some guy's thumb segment, now it's a constant measurement used a lot. I personally think that celsius and fahrenheit should be scrapped for Kelvin, which makes sense (0 actually means no temperature). A foot is twelve inches - 12 times Henry VIII'ths thumb segment. Sometime's it's easier to work in imperial measurements rather than metric. I'm not saying either of them is better. The fahrenheit system was made by a physicist, based on scientific constants he had at the time.


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## slaaneshy (Feb 20, 2008)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> Um, the metric system is vastly superior to the imperial system for two reasons.
> 
> 1) Most of the world uses the metric system
> 
> ...


Based on science? witchcraft more like! 
Rule Britannia!


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## Jezlad (Oct 14, 2006)

Oldman78 said:


> But everything sounds bigger in metric!!!!!!!


Absolutely, I've been telling the missus mine is a lengthy fifteener for years...


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## SilverTabby (Jul 31, 2009)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> 2) The metric system is based on standards that _make sense_. What is a "foot" (imperial system)? It's an arbitrary length of some now dead guy's foot. What are centigrades (metric)? At 0 degrees celsius water freezes and at 100 degrees it boils. Perfect sense. A standard that is uniform. Miles, Fahrenheit, inches etc. are all arbitrary measurements while everything in the metric system is based on scientific constants...


Aaaaaand the metre wasn't invented by some bloke going "lets make it *this* big #waves arms#", then chopping it up / multiplying it by 10 / 100 / 1000 instead of 12, etc?


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## slaaneshy (Feb 20, 2008)

Rule Britannia!


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## docgeo (Jan 8, 2010)

I am not sure why a country like Japan would care about how any of us measure the distances of our plastic crack???!


Doc


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## MetalHandkerchief (Aug 3, 2009)

SilverTabby said:


> Aaaaaand the metre wasn't invented by some bloke going "lets make it *this* big #waves arms#", then chopping it up / multiplying it by 10 / 100 / 1000 instead of 12, etc?


Quite right.

The metre (meter in the US), symbol m, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Originally intended to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole (at sea level), its definition has been periodically refined to reflect growing knowledge of metrology. Since 1983, it is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1 ⁄ 299,792,458 of a second.


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## Achaylus72 (Apr 30, 2011)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> Um, the metric system is vastly superior to the imperial system for two reasons.
> 
> 1) Most of the world uses the metric system
> 
> ...


Sorry to spoil such a wonderful answer but according to sciene that the higher you go into the atmosphere the lower the air pressure, the lower the air pressure water boils at a lower temprature (sic) at the top of Mt Everest water boils at 50 degrees celcius


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## mcmuffin (Mar 1, 2009)

Achaylus72 said:


> Sorry to spoil such a wonderful answer but according to sciene that the higher you go into the atmosphere the lower the air pressure, the lower the air pressure water boils at a lower temprature (sic) at the top of Mt Everest water boils at 50 degrees celcius


At standard air pressure and altitude, water boils a 100 degees celcius. Celsius is based on the measurement of 100. hence its other name- centigrade. No need to be pedantic.


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## Wax (Jan 6, 2010)

MetalHandkerchief said:


> Since 1983, it is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum in 1 ⁄ 299,792,458 of a second.


Sounds pretty arbitrary. Why not use the distance light travels in 1/299,792,457 of a second?


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## itamshredding (Jan 5, 2012)

Oldman78 said:


> But everything sounds bigger in metric!!!!!!!



Yes. You are right.


--------------------
Data Destruction
PC Recycling


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

mcmuffin said:


> At standard air pressure and altitude, water boils a 100 degees celcius. Celsius is based on the measurement of 100. hence its other name- centigrade. No need to be pedantic.


I am sorry to tell you, you are wrong, they are different scales

Celsius is based on a scale fixed at the freezing and boiling points of water at standard temperature and pressure (STP). (Or it might be fixedon the triple point, never did nail that bit)

Centigrade is a scale based on taking the freezing and boiling points of water and dividing it by 100.

One degree Celsius does in fact stay fixed, whereas one degree centigrade varies depending on conditions.

Another well known scale of temperature measurement is Fahrenheit, for the life of me I do not know if that is fixed to STP point or if it floats (I would guess floating), it is interestingly based upon the expansion of mercury.

This is rarely explained well in text books (recalled from a physics lesson where we all tried to work it out)


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

You don't measure your member in metric!

Although some might for an esteem boost.


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## mcmuffin (Mar 1, 2009)

Bubblematrix said:


> I am sorry to tell you, you are wrong, they are different scales
> 
> Celsius is based on a scale fixed at the freezing and boiling points of water at standard temperature and pressure (STP). (Or it might be fixedon the triple point, never did nail that bit)
> 
> ...


You are confusing  Centigrage  with  Kelvin . Trust me on this one :wink:


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

SilverTabby said:


> Aaaaaand the metre wasn't invented by some bloke going "lets make it *this* big #waves arms#", then chopping it up / multiplying it by 10 / 100 / 1000 instead of 12, etc?


OOOOO First Post ! and it is about my profession.

The metre was originally defined as a 10 000 000th of a line of longitude from the pole to the equator. Determining a line of longitude was fairly easy at the time it became a means by which anyone anywhere on the earth can create a precise standard to which measurements can be compared. 

This is the fundamental principle of the metric system, it's units are defined by measurable constants rather than empirically, which is a comparison to physical objects. The exception to this is the Kilogram.

So a yard was defined by a standard length of invar metal in Greenwich but a metre is defined by longitude or nowadays by light a given number of oscillations of the photon emitted from a Krypton electron dropping from a given shell to another.. which is easy to replicate and measure ..... apparently.

Ironically an "inch" as nowadays defined as 0.0254 metres so in reality the inch etc no longer exists but is still used for other reasons.

As for temperature, Celsius and Centigrade (older name) are two names for the same thing, all based on boiling/freezing water at STP (although Scientists are moving more so to the triple point thing and or Absolute Zero). Kelvin is based on absolute zero being the zero point (-273 C). Fahrenheit was based on the temperature of a chemical reaction of a solution of water and other stuff that was always constant. It is not based on the expansion of mercury, Hg is just a convenient way to measure temperature, not define it.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

actually i invented the Meter or as i original spelled the word meater, it was a way of measuring meat, millimeater as it was is the thickness of ham, any thinner its pointless any thicker and you risk the meat being too heavy and dropping out of a sandwich and into your lap, and centimeater comes from the number of slices i envisioned being in a pack.


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## ThoseKrazyKasrkin (Aug 2, 2011)

Metric is divided by 10s much easier than Imperial


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

ThoseKrazyKasrkin said:


> Metric is divided by 10s much easier than Imperial


i designed it that way , a loaf of sliced bread generally has 20 slices so thats 10 sandwiches so i figured i should use base 10


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

bitsandkits said:


> i designed it that way , a loaf of sliced bread generally has 20 slices so thats 10 sandwiches so i figured i should use base 10


No wonder the Japanese hang onto it so tightly then, must have taken them ages to work out how to eat sandwiches with chopsticks.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Magpie_Oz said:


> No wonder the Japanese hang onto it so tightly then, must have taken them ages to work out how to eat sandwiches with chopsticks.


i invented chop sticks, they have changed a bit, they were originally made from lamb


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## SilverTabby (Jul 31, 2009)

The Inch and the Meater have more in common than you know. The Half Inch is the measure by which you gauge the success of your cat stealing ham from your sandwiches...


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

mcmuffin said:


> You are confusing  Centigrage  with  Kelvin . Trust me on this one :wink:


Trust is a very poor thing to pin knowledge on...
But just wikied it, seems to have changed since the late 90s, at that time text books were pretty unclear but the majority went with my above definition (not to say that the books had firm grasp tbh).

I would guess that our interpretation as based from reading a range of text books was dated even at the time, some of the text books were a bit dated, and that the definition has been cleared up in the last 20-30 years.

I am not confusing it with Kelvin, I am in engineering and have been for a while now so know what the Kelvin scale is.

So now it seems centigrade has been retconned to the previous incarnation of Celsius, what a shame as they used to be quite a nice way of demonstrating how scales fixed on non-fixed points could move - the first scientists to look at centigrade were of course all performing their experiments at similar atmospheric pressure, within a margin of error.

Guess I have to adopt newskool centigrade.. or of course (as you suggested) banish this scale and use the much less arbitarily fixed Kelvin scale.

On the subject of manhood measuring - metric is a pretty poor way to measure your manhood - I would guess unless you are seriously deformed (or one of those wierd porn stars) you dont have a cock of even 1 metric unit i.e meter. A good 12incher would only be 0.3048meters.

Stick to inches for cock comparison.

Or of course use the Fermi, in which case the 12incher is 304,800,000,000,000 Fermi long, my cock is bigger than yours


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Bubblematrix said:


> But just wikied it, seems to have changed since the late 90s, at that time text books were pretty unclear but the majority went with my above definition (not to say that the books had firm grasp tbh).


What a lot of rubbish mate, 

W. E. Knowles Middleton.
A History of the Thermometer and its Uses in Meteorology.
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966.

"In 1741 Anders Celsius, professor of astronomy at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, introduced a temperature scale with 0 the temperature at which water boiled and 100 the temperature at which water froze. No later than 1745 his colleague and close friend, the botanist Carl von Linné (Linnaeus of taxonomic fame) introduced in his greenhouses thermometers with 0 at freezing and 100 at boiling, and Linnaeus would later say he invented the scale. In 1743, in Lyon, France, Jean Pierre Christin introduced a thermometer with a 0 freezing, 100 boiling, scale, although his understanding of the role of fixed points in a thermometric scale was probably faulty. The Réaumur scale remained the overwhelming favorite in France, but a number of thermometers graduated in Christin's scale were exported to England, where they were known as “Lyon thermometers.”
Celsius died in 1744. Perhaps Linneaus refrained from changing the scale while his patron was alive. By 1747, Celsius' successor, Märten Strömer, was hanging thermometers with the inverted scale. On 13 April 1750, the Swedish records began to be published in the inverted scale (0 degrees the freezing point of water and 100 degrees its boiling point at atmospheric pressure) which we now use. The scale became known as the centigrade scale.1
In 1887 the International Commission on Weights and Measures adopted “as the standard thermometric scale for the international services of weights and measures the centigrade scale of the hydrogen thermometer, having as fixed points the temperature of melting ice (0°) and the vapor of distilled water boiling (100°) at standard atmospheric pressure, the hydrogen being taken at an initial manometric pressure of one meter of mercury.”
*The Celsius scale is the centigrade scale with one change.* Defined in 1954 at the 10th General Conference of Weights and Measures, temperature on the Celsius scale is the temperature on the Kelvin scale minus 273.15. This definition makes values on the Celsius and centigrade scale agree within less than 0.1 degree. For everyday purposes, the scales are identical. One reason for doing away with the word “centigrade,” was that it might be confused with one-hundredth of a grade, a unit of plane angle."


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

Excuse me, but until you spend 10-12hrs cross referencing textbooks, reading round the subject, collecting the range of view together and don't simply jump at the first book you find and quote it then you have less rubished a view and more made yourself look silly.

Furthermore, read what you quoted and think about what it says...

By your passage, the original centigrade scale was based on the difference between frozen and boiling water, and was a 100 division scale.

Later the Celsius scale is agreed as being based on the same two points AND that this is at STP.

Therefore the original centigrade scales had no such stipulation.

Further, the bit you so kindly hilighted in bold: "The Celsius scale is the centigrade scale with one change."

So... they aren't the same, to get to Celsius there is one change, and it is exactly what I wrote.

My argument stands, I spent a good few days consulting multiple sources at the time to try an untease this, I probably even still have the notes I wrote at the time.
So please don't try to rubish me.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Bubblematrix said:


> Excuse me, but until you spend 10-12hrs cross referencing textbooks, reading round the subject, collecting the range of view together and don't simply jump at the first book you find and quote it then you have less rubished a view and more made yourself look silly.
> 
> Furthermore, read what you quoted and think about what it says...
> 
> ...


Nope, centigrade was never a system based on moving reference points by its definition, sure in the early days users of the system did not understand that the frames of reference could change because of the conditions but as time went by and our understanding increased the scale was refined to what we know it to be today. 

Temperature is a measurement of the average kinetic energy of a substance so why on earth would you want a system that gave differing readings of the kinetic energy for a substance that was in the same energy state?

The change of referring to the scale as Celsius rather than centigrade occurred in the early 50's and the definition of the scale has not changed 1 iota since the 1700's when the thing was thought up much less the 1990's as you said earlier. Merely the method of defining the scale has improved, much the same as the definition of a metre is much more consistent today than in the 1800's because our measuring equipment is better, but a metre is still a metre.

In modern times therefore:

*The Celsius scale is the centigrade scale with one change*

but only because we can define it more accurately now.


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

Ok, for one thing - late 50s means that the text books used in schools during the 90s were highly likely to include a confused version of the difference. Even those printed in 2000 seem to have the occassional passage alluding to the past difference. Again I refer back to actual experience, you can say all you like but at the time this was how it was presented and we spent a reasonable amount of time - me and several other students who (those that I know of stil) went into degrees and jobs with a high physics element - looking this up and teasing out the inconsistencies.

Yes, now Celsius and Centigrade are to all intents and purposes the same, no debate here.

The distinction between the two scales is exactly what you have alluded to:

Celsius is based on particle kinetics, is a true temperature scale and takes much more into consideration than the original centigrade scales. The experiments conducted by Celsius ended up taking into account far more than just the expansion of water.
Indeed you would not want a system based on moving points, it wasn't even a system, it was a grade scale on a tube nothing more and hence the frame of reference issue was not important, a centigrade scale thermometer is useful in a lab context - change the location and it is no longer valid.

The first centigrade scales were based upon liquid in a tube, marking two points and dividing by 100 divisions. It would be pretty pointless to make a centigrade scale thermometer today as it would only be valid at the place it was created and under those conditons, centrigrade is more a point of history than science and not that important even then. Take from this what you will.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Early 50's not late, If you read your texts as accurately as you do the posts it would explain a lot.

"centrigrade is more a point of history than science and not that important even then" or put another way centigrade is just an old name for what we now call Celsius, which means that "whereas one degree centigrade varies depending on conditions" is rubbish. QED


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

> Early 50's not late, If you read your texts as accurately as you do the posts it would explain a lot.


Please don't lower this to insults or I will stop contributing to this thread, it is highly un-necessary.

Ok. last attempt here:

centigrade - expanding fluid in tube, mark water freezing point, mark water boiling point, add 100 divisions, take to top of mountain and scratch head

Celsius - do similar except account for air pressure, be much happier at top of mountain, get in with the hip science crowd rather than be left back in the 1700s with thier silly varying thermometers.

"whereas one degree centigrade varies depending on conditions" - it does as centigrade is only valid in the conditions of air pressure in which the thermometer was made.


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## mcmuffin (Mar 1, 2009)

Wow, this has gone severely off topic, from penis measuring to the difference between centigrade and celsius (very minor difference). 

So what about those crazy japanese and their metric measurement eh?


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

To be honest I have completely blanked that 40k is played in inches since the early days I played, there was the initial discussion about it between friends - and then it just seemed normal.

Playing in cm would now seem weird.

It will be interesting to see how a japanse measure is marked up with these quasi inches, if it looks cool I might have to adopt one for my gaming


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Bubblematrix said:


> Please don't lower this to insults or I will stop contributing to this thread, it is highly un-necessary.
> 
> Ok. last attempt here:
> 
> ...


It wasn't an insult merely pointing out that I said early 50's and you said late. 

But your still kilometres off track, your confusing calibration of thermometers with the definition of a scale.

Centigrade and Celsius are different terms for the same thing, a scale based on the boiling and freezing points of water, the means of determining which has improved over the years and is now defined with reference to a baseline that is more accurately determined than ever before.


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## mcmuffin (Mar 1, 2009)

Magpie: The shit. You are stirring it, please stop.

I don't know if i could play 40k in metric, it would just seem so wrong to me. your lascannon has a range of 120cm. No, it has a range of 48"


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Bubblematrix said:


> To be honest I have completely blanked that 40k is played in inches since the early days I played, there was the initial discussion about it between friends - and then it just seemed normal.
> 
> Playing in cm would now seem weird.
> 
> It will be interesting to see how a japanse measure is marked up with these quasi inches, if it looks cool I might have to adopt one for my gaming


Something like this maybe? 

一 二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十

It would be kinda cool and quirky to have a Kanjii tape


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

we used to play epic in cm as far as i can remember , we had blue measuring sticks, but makes very little difference in the end, if your rule books have everything in metric then you wouldnt notice the difference


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## Grogbart (Aug 29, 2010)

Yay, throwing in my opinion into a never-ending argument!


Magpie_Oz said:


> The metre was originally defined as a 10 000 000th of a line of longitude from the pole to the equator. Determining a line of longitude was fairly easy at the time it became a means by which anyone anywhere on the earth can create a precise standard to which measurements can be compared.


Couldn't have been quite so easy or else they wouldn't have made a *meter prototype*!



Magpie_Oz said:


> This is the fundamental principle of the metric system, it's units are defined by measurable constants rather than empirically, which is a comparison to physical objects. The exception to this is the Kilogram.


Not entirely sure I'm qualified (scientifically and linguistically)to argue here, but pretty much all unit definitions are somewhat random, even the metric ones (like the original meter). Constants like light speed are nice, but you can't take it to define a length, unless you have defined a time beforehand...(I hope you get my point, as I'm not able to express my thought any deeper) So you can't base a system on universal constants alone. (Let alone they're not best for everyday practicality)

Yet, what was quite successfully done with the metric system, is keeping those needed basic units at an necessary minimum and redefining them in a way, that makes it possible to precisely remeasure them anywhere.
(I don't know if similar attempts were made for the imperial system?)

As such the main advantage of the metric system for me is, it consequently only has one unit per magnitude, of which all can be universally altered by the same prefixes (Kilo, Mega, Terra, milli, mycro, nano...) which quite conveniently are multiples of 1000. (convenient with Arabic numerals at least!)
So 374 meters are 0.374 km are 374000 mm. Not quite that easy with 374 Yards in Inch and Miles, I think.
The exception being time and angles, but that's the same for both systems. (damn those Babylonians:angry

Having the meter replaced as unit by something else, I wouldn't mind. But having to use a calculator to simply convert a length from one unit to the other, I definitely would!

To get back somewhere near the topic, since 40K is played with Inches only, I don't see any of the differences between the systems even matter.


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

@B&K yeah I remember that, I miss epic scale, but can't get motivated to try a game I can't jsut buy stuff from the shop for

@Magpie_Oz Kajii tape ftw


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Grogbart said:


> Yay, throwing in my opinion into a never-ending argument!
> 
> Couldn't have been quite so easy or else they wouldn't have made a *meter prototype*!


Perhaps but the point was that if you lost that bar you could remake one exactly the same by laying out on the ground the defining distance using star observations. A long and expensive, but not difficult, process in the 1800's 




Grogbart said:


> Not entirely sure I'm qualified (scientifically and linguistically)to argue here, but pretty much all unit definitions are somewhat random, even the metric ones (like the original meter). Constants like light speed are nice, but you can't take it to define a length, unless you have defined a time beforehand...(I hope you get my point, as I'm not able to express my thought any deeper) So you can't base a system on universal constants alone. (Let alone they're not best for everyday practicality)


Light is a constant, time is a constant. Time is measured by radioactive decay of elements (Caesium Clocks) so timing and therefore counting the wavelengths of light out of Krypton is a constant.



Grogbart said:


> To get back somewhere near the topic, since 40K is played with Inches only, I don't see any of the differences between the systems even matter.


I agree, the only trouble I have is estimating distances, if I am trying to guess ranges etc I think in millimetres, but that just extends from a lack of familiarity with Imperial and remembering 25mm to the inch solves it.


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## SilverTabby (Jul 31, 2009)

Epic was played in cm, but simply because it's so much easier to do distances when the figures are that tiny, in smaller units. Also, scaled down models, scaled down units of measurement so it was roughly equivalent 

40k in cm never made much sense to me, the number would all be too big. Smacks of compensation :wink:


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## Grogbart (Aug 29, 2010)

Magpie_Oz said:


> Light is a constant, time is a constant. Time is measured by radioactive decay of elements (Caesium Clocks) so timing and therefore counting the wavelengths of light out of Krypton is a constant.


Firstly, I hope you meant, 'speed of light' is constant.
Secondly weather or not time is constant, it's a magnitude, to measure it you need to define a unit to compare it to. While I may have to admit that there more processes that use a fixed amount of time, than I initially thought of, its still no difference defining the unit of length in comarison to a certain piece of metal in Paris or Greenwich, than it is to define the unit of time in comparison to to the time a certain process takes in a certain Isotope of a certain element. Not to mention you multiply that period by 9,192,631,770 to get a second.
I hope you get my point!


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Grogbart said:


> its still no difference defining the unit of length in comarison to a certain piece of metal in Paris or Greenwich, than it is to define the unit of time in comparison to to the time a certain process takes in a certain Isotope of a certain element.


But that is the whole point of using scientific processes, I don't have to travel to Paris or Greenwich to make myself a standard metre and I don't have a huge problem if those standard lengths are lost. That's why we use experiments that are consistently repeatable.

"40k in cm never made much sense to me"
Ironic then that our figures are classed as 28mm but we measure in Inches :grin:

I vote that we come up with a measurement system unique to the Imperium of 40k. 

1 Emperon = 0.0254m = 1 Inch = 0.125 links = 0.0547 Cubits = however many whatevers


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## ohiocat110 (Sep 15, 2010)

"Based on science" my butt. The official kilogram is just some random hunk of metal sitting in a French bank vault. Inches, pounds, and gallons forever! Yay America!


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

ohiocat110 said:


> "Based on science" my butt. The official kilogram is just some random hunk of metal sitting in a French bank vault. Inches, pounds, and gallons forever! Yay America!


Lol, delusional as ever

All measurement systems in the modern world are related back to SI units which are the metric system.

http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/metric-program.cfm


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## Anfo (Jul 17, 2009)

Magpie_Oz said:


> Lol, delusional as ever]


You expect more from us?


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Anfo said:


> You expect more from us?


LOL, no, but it is good to know some things never change.


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## Pandawithissues... (Dec 2, 2007)

rich11762 said:


> Id say stick with the imperial measures, years ago Europe even tryed to convert the clocks to metric, but I can't see any real benefit is in loosing imperial measures.


As a scientist, metric time would be among the MOST useful changes that could be made.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Pandawithissues... said:


> As a scientist, metric time would be among the MOST useful changes that could be made.


I don't know about metric time. In Oz a change to metric time is a fairly common April Fools day joke.

I know they do tend to work in Gon for angles, where there are 100Gon in a right angle. 100 being fairly close to 90 can lead to problems when the units of measure aren't clear tho'.

The main rationale behind the time divisions the way they are now is that 12 and 30 etc are divisible into smaller amounts without needing fractions or decimals, something the Babylonians didn't have. It could become a bit cumbersome if a quarter of an hour wasn't 15 minutes but 2.5 "Euromins"


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## Overbear (May 10, 2011)

Magpie_Oz said:


> Lol, delusional as ever
> 
> All measurement systems in the modern world are related back to SI units which are the metric system.
> 
> http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/metric-program.cfm


 
If metric is so great, why doesn't the most powerful country on the face of the earth (the US) use it? :laugh:


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## Grogbart (Aug 29, 2010)

Magpie_Oz said:


> It could become a bit cumbersome if a quarter of an hour wasn't 15 minutes but 2.5 "Euromins"


Why would you leave hours in existence, if you were to change the units of time?

The Second is our basic unit! 
Sadly, for the sake of everyday practicality, we'll have to acknowledge a day being a day and a year being 356.25 days. The Rest is just a question of getting used to, I think! 

So first of all, I'd define one day as 86.4 Kilo Seconds. (or 86.4 metric hours, call it what you like!)
You could still use four digits digital clocks, with the least significant digit switching every 10 seconds instead of 60. Noon then being '43:20' and on Silvester's eve you'd wait for '86:39' to switch to '00:00', instead of '23:59' or '11:59 PM'.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Overbear said:


> If metric is so great, why doesn't the most powerful country on the face of the earth (the US) use it? :laugh:


America does use it, 1 Inch is defined as 0.0254 metres

You just call it something else so that you feel special and Billy-Bob and Jeddediah don't get confused.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Grogbart said:


> Why would you leave hours in existence, if you were to change the units of time?
> 
> The Second is our basic unit!
> Sadly, for the sake of everyday practicality, we'll have to acknowledge a day being a day and a year being 356.25 days. The Rest is just a question of getting used to, I think!
> ...


I guess that is the rub, which ever way you go you're not going to get a neat system

100 Eurohours in a day 100 Eurosex in an eHr will still end up with an odd number of days to the year.

If you base time on 1000 eDays per year everything goes to hell. So why change when there is no tangible benifit other than having lunch at 43.2 o'clock ?

The problem is that the amount of time it takes us to revolve on our axis (day) and orbit the sun once (year) aren't in proportion to each other and don't relate to the number of fingers we have.

I blame God


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## Grogbart (Aug 29, 2010)

I'd find it very neat, no longer needing a calculator to convert 'Hertz' into 'Revs per minute' or 'meters per second' into 'kilometers per hour'!


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## Bubblematrix (Jun 4, 2009)

If you truly wanted to go balls deep on metric time you need to start from scratch, redefine your day as containing for example 10 new hours and each of those hours containing 100 new minutes, each containing 100 new seconds.

The mess really occurs in how dependant other units are on the second, changing that would be a pain - but if you *really* wanted the benefits of decimal time it would be the only true way to start.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Bubblematrix said:


> If you truly wanted to go balls deep on metric time you need to start from scratch, redefine your day as containing for example 10 new hours and each of those hours containing 100 new minutes, each containing 100 new seconds.
> 
> The mess really occurs in how dependant other units are on the second, changing that would be a pain - but if you *really* wanted the benefits of decimal time it would be the only true way to start.


Problem is tho' that you'll always have a day that is 1/365 of a year.


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

its a sad day when our most active topic in the news and rumours section is that Japan is to stop using metric to play and that thread has turned into a discussion of metric time.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

bitsandkits said:


> its a sad day ...


Standard day or metric day?


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## bitsandkits (Mar 18, 2008)

Magpie_Oz said:


> Standard day or metric day?


either, both are equally upset


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## nevynxxx (Dec 27, 2011)

Bubblematrix said:


> If you truly wanted to go balls deep on metric time you need to start from scratch, redefine your day as containing for example 10 new hours and each of those hours containing 100 new minutes, each containing 100 new seconds.
> 
> The mess really occurs in how dependant other units are on the second, changing that would be a pain - but if you *really* wanted the benefits of decimal time it would be the only true way to start.


Except the second isn't an arbitrary length of time. It's defined such that it's a very specific fraction of the speed of light, or the amount of time it takes on average for a specific excited electron to return to it's rest shell in a specific heavy atom, depending on who you ask.

If you change the second, you change *almost* every physical constant along with it......

*don't break physics*!!


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

nevynxxx said:


> Except the second isn't an arbitrary length of time. It's defined such that it's a very specific fraction of the speed of light, or the amount of time it takes on average for a specific excited electron to return to it's rest shell in a specific heavy atom, depending on who you ask.
> 
> If you change the second, you change *almost* every physical constant along with it......
> 
> *don't break physics*!!


Yeh but that is just how we define it now, it is at it's base a figure plucked out of the air just like all weights and measures. If we wanted the length of a second to be different there is no real physical constraint to that.

As far as time goes the only thing that cannot be changed is the ratio of a day, 1 rotation of earth, to the year, 1 orbit of earth and the phases of the moon, which is the basis for a month. Everything else is whatever we choose to make it.

So you can easily have 100 hours in a day and 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute if you want but your always going to have 365 days or whatever you call it in a year.


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## Grogbart (Aug 29, 2010)

Just playing a bit smart-arse here!

A common misconception: One rotation of the earth is a stellar day. What we experience as a day is called a solar day and for the earth that is 1+(1/365.25) rotations. 

Furthermore the earths rotation isn't constant, but getting slower over time. As is the duration of the moon phase, due to the moon slowly drifting away from us.

I don't know if there is anything similar happening with the duration of the earth's orbit, but for now it's 365.25 days long, so don't forget February 29th!


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Grogbart said:


> Just playing a bit smart-arse here!
> 
> A common misconception: One rotation of the earth is a stellar day. What we experience as a day is called a solar day and for the earth that is 1+(1/365.25) rotations.
> 
> ...


Which is precisely why we measure time with atomic clocks and not the "old school" stellar observations. 

Even given the that Earths rotation and orbit are variable in the precise sense we still need to maintain a correlation between the measure of time and the passage of the seasons. 

Despite our modern disassociation from the natural world we are still very much beholden to it. Hence leap years and leap seconds.


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