[conspire] pipes, imperials, and metrics [was Re: Watering automation: an edge case cautionary tale]

[Ivan Sergio Borgonovo]

On 03/28/2017 07:15 AM, Paul Zander wrote:
>> I really want to fire this reality and hire a metric one.
> The thing about this reality is that plumbers and plumbing suppliers all
> have a stock of parts that they are familiar with.  A new reality would
> cost them real $ to scrap the parts they have.

Here we use metric system but pipes are measured in imperial system.
That's certainly true for small pipes, I don't know if they use metric 
system for city sewage, ‎aqueduct, centralized heating...

I think the only other things we measure in inches are screen diagonals, 
floppies and hard disks, horse power.
But it has been several years all publications about cars report power 
in kW and *then* in HP.

If there are 5cm of clearance in a wall and you need to know how many 
half inches pipes are going to pass, carpenters and plumbers are already 
used to do conversions.

Pipes measured in inches or centimetres won't make better pipes and 
there is no economic incentive to build adapters to move to metric system.
Producing 2.5cm pipes in spite of 1" pipe is going to add costs in 
several places and people here simply prefer to call a quarter of an 
inch pipe a quarter of an inch pipe rather than a 6.35mm pipe.
And they stop there eg. they measure capacity and flux in liters, liters/s.

Rewriting software is different.

We could just set G, c and ħ to 1, cut two of our fingers and...
After all, not too many people type with their pinkies.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it http://www.borgonovo.net