please use meters
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Boissal wrote: Obtuse at best.I never said I am funny. Just hoping. |
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Marc801 wrote: Much more recent than cams. Friends were the first spring loaded cams that worked well and were reasonably light (there were earlier attempts and there were also passive devices) - they first became available in 1977. The widespread use of meters instead of feet for rope length really became noticeable circa 2000. The common rope lengths were 150' in the 70's which transitioned to 165' in the 80's and continued into the 90's. Many of those historic routes were indeed done with 165' ropes, and, no, they were not sold in 164' lengths - 50m is close enough to 165' for all but the most anal retentive, especially with the length variance in ropes. Going further back in time the "standard" rope length prior to 150' was 120', which explains some of the curious intermediate anchors on some historic routes.sweet. its cool to see how climbing history has progressed. time to move on to the next stage in climbing history the cubit... |
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matt c. wrote:time to move on to the next stage in climbing history the cubit...We could express distances in terms of the height of famous climbers: I fell just 2 Sharmas from the anchors. At 45 Hills it's quite an endurance route. |
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Marc801, I started climbing in 89. The conversation was always about converting the meters to feet in regards to our ropes. Possibly around 2000 I broke down and bought a 60 meter (all that weight?), so maybe that was something to support a turning point. I've never seen one sold in feet. Sorry to nitpick. |
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With the awesome guesstimation of pitch lengths on here, does it does it really even matter? |
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I started climbing in 1994. I have never once seen a mainstream climbing rope measured in anything but meters. 2000 for the time ropes became metric? No, not even close. |
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What's the big deal? Smart phones, on-line converters, only an idiot can't figure it out. |
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Have you ever told a gal "I'm a third of a meter, baby!" |
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Maybe I'm just used to translating on the fly. 1m is about 3 feet, and its very nearly the length of my stride, so that's as far as it goes. |
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Feeters |
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Brian Scoggins wrote:I still think that the use of the pound rather than the slug was the most impactful decision ever made regarding the establishment of a unit. Sure, a kilogram (or a slug) is the more fundamental unit. But the fact that a pound is what we actually measure, while a kilogram is always derived...Huh? |
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Marc801 wrote: Huh?There is an object that weighs exactly 1 lb. They use that object as THE standard for weight. Anything that doesn't weigh the exact same as the object doesn't weigh 1 lb. That's it in a nutshell. |
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Eliot Augusto wrote: There is an object that weighs exactly 1 lb. They use that object as THE standard for weight. Anything that doesn't weigh the exact same as the object doesn't weigh 1 lb. That's it in a nutshell.A radiolab I recently heard stated exactly the opposite. The only unit of measurement left that uses a physical object to weigh against is the kilogram. radiolab.org/story/kg/ |
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A kilogram is a measure of mass. A pound is a measure of force. Because gravity is assumed to be constant on earth they can be converted. The conversion would be different on the moon for example. You guys all probably knew that though, carry on... |
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Tyson Anderson wrote: A radiolab I recently heard stated exactly the opposite. The only unit of measurement left that uses a physical object to weigh against is the kilogram. radiolab.org/story/kg/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y That's how I learned about it, I just remembered the pound being still the main unit. But they did make those balls. |
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Eliot, |
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Marc801 wrote: Huh?A gram (and by extension, a kilogram) is a unit of mass. Thus, its tied, objectively, to the total number of protons and neutrons in a given object. A pound is a unit of force, and is therefore tied to the forces acting on it, and the more objective number, the mass. The equivalent metric unit is a newton, of which is about a quarter pound. Its very strange that in countries using the imperial system, the force required to support a person is how their bulk is measured, whereas in countries using metric, its a measure of how many atoms their body contains. Nobody talks about mass in terms of slugs (1 slug weighs 32.2 pounds, at mean surface gravity), nor do they measure human size in newtons (1 newton is about a quarter of a pound). You can see, based on my parenthetical for slugs why the force measure is problematic. The official pound, no doubt kept under lock and key at one of NIST's laboratories, weighs differing amounts at, for instance, the equator vs. the north pole, or over large deposits of coal vs. large deposits of granite. |
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Jason Todd wrote:I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure the science community as a whole, including aerospace, use primary metric units? Us included... |
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This has been a fascinating diversion into the units of force and mass, but I vote +1 for the conversion of the entire site to meters, and MKS in general. If we think of this as an international web site, we should use the units overwhelmingly used by almost all countries. |
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I object to the Base 10 numeral system. I suggest we use Babylonian Numerals Base 60. |