Should D&D be more American?

[Mathew_Freeman]

The metric system is inconsistent. How come Europeans strongly prefer the metric system for linear, mass and volume measurements, for instance, but nobody has every proposed metric time?

Apart from the obvious...

Apparently when time was being sorted out by the dominant society of the, er, time, they realised that you could split 60 more ways than you could split 100, and that's why we have 60second minutes and 60minute hours.

Presumably it was decided that 24 was a good number too.

 

[Allanon]

Just my 2 cents but dwarves definitely should talk with a Scottish accent.

 

[kenjib]

The metric system is based on an error of incompetency driven by ego:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/12/02/alder.measure/

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The metric system is inconsistent. How come Europeans strongly prefer the metric system for linear, mass and volume measurements, for instance, but nobody has every proposed metric time?

The second is the only unit of time measurement you need for scientific purposes.

Anyway, I blame the Phoenicians.

 

[Desdichado]

Speaking of which, can anyone explain to me how to convert between the following units?

feet, yards, and miles

ounces, pounds, and those weird tonnes you have over there...

1 yard = 3 feet
1 mile = 5280 feet

And, although you didn't ask for it, 1 league = 3 miles. Normally.

1 pound = 16 ounces
1 ton = 2000 lbs. Except when used in internal ship capacity to convey 100 cubic feet, to convey 35 cubic feet of displaced sea water (also a shipping term, as you can probably guess) or the cargo volume equal to 40 square feet. However, it's usually used as weight, not volume.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Err... those units of measurement ere originally called (and still called over here) the "Imperial System". Guess why "Imperial"? They existed long before America did!

(Insert joke about America being the Empire of the modern world... )

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

The metric system is based on an error of incompetency driven by ego:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/12/02/alder.measure/

Well, that's at least one less than the Imperial system, then...

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

1 yard = 3 feet
1 mile = 5280 feet

"5280 feet"?

I rest my case...

 

[Henry]

The metric system is based on an error of incompetency driven by ego:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/12/02/alder.measure/

*a-HEM*:

On October 20 (1983), the meter was redefined again. The definition states that the meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The speed of light is

c = 299,792,458 m/s

The second is determined to an uncertainty, U = 1 part in1014 by the Cesium clock. The General Conference made the iodine stabilized Helium-Neon laser a recommended radiation for realizing the meter at this time. The wavelength of this laser is

lHeNe = 632.99139822 nm

with an estimated relative standard uncertainty (U) of + 2.5 x 10_11.

In all of these changes in definition, the goal was not only to improve the precision of the definition, but also to change its actual length as little as possible.

source: http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/timeline.htm

 

[Henry]

Speaking of which, can anyone explain to me how to convert between the following units?

feet, yards, and miles

ounces, pounds, and those weird tonnes you have over there...

very good page to explain this:

http://www.ex.ac.uk/cimt/dictunit/dictunit.htm#history