Benchmark tables for BL, Damage, Damage Resistance?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

No. The thing that's useful about mksA is that it's all powers of ten. No twelve inches to the foot, three feet to the yard, 1760 yards to the mile, or 20 pennyweight to the ounce, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, eight stone to the hundredweight, 20 hundredweight to the ton to memorize. Let alone the weird specialized units like ells and furlongs and fathoms and horsepower.

I agreed with the powers of ten part, but I've seen many people claim that metric/SI is superior because "it isn't based on the length of some long dead king's foot" as though we regularly dig up that particular king to calibrate our measurements.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I agreed with the powers of ten part, but I've seen many people claim that metric/SI is superior because "it isn't based on the length of some long dead king's foot" as though we regularly dig up that particular king to calibrate our measurements.

"Bring forth the standard foot from the sepulchre!"

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

I know! I've sometimes considered creating a fictional measurement system that start with the "common" Imperial units (pounds, feet, gallons [US as I know them], etc.) and then tacking on the metric prefixes to have "kilopounds" and "centifeet".

If it makes you feel better, an occasional measurement in US telecoms is the "kilofoot". (It's used for specifying lengths of cable, particularly in access equipment like the phone lines from your house to the central office or some intermediate box.)

Originally Posted by RyanW

I've seen many people claim that metric/SI is superior because "it isn't based on the length of some long dead king's foot" as though we regularly dig up that particular king to calibrate our measurements.

I know what you mean. Metric isn't scientific in basis at all. Why is g 9.8 m/s^2 instead of 10? The only reasonable value for c given 20th century science is exactly "1". Shouldn't two grams attract each other with a force of one Newton, given why Newton is most famous? The units don't even go together well with themselves, which is why we have both cgs and MKS, with different prefixes hacking together a more practical set of effective base units, rather than just using mgs all the time.

It's not a coincidence that (as seen upthread) a meter is about the same as a yard, and that a liter is about the same as a quart or bushel, and that a kilogram is about a integer multiple of a pound. Most of the basic units were all chosen to be convenient for humans and their existing practice, not because they're fundamentally rooted in scientific constants. (That's why the constants are all even wackier values than the unit relationships in the English units.) The universe doesn't fundamentally care about the distance from the Earth's pole to equator on the meridian through Paris, or how long this one planet among all the others happens to take to rotate on its axis.

[ericthered]

Estimating measurements is a skill that takes some practice. I used to wonder how my father expected me to know how far 20 yards was, then I realized that he'd been practicing estimating sizes his whole life, and he expected me to as well. Its a skill that is really nice for gaming, but its fairly useful in daily life as well, and once you have it, you'll use it all the time... except when others don't have the skill.

Its fun to pay attention to the details of the world around you, and hugely informative. Once you start, you'll start picking up skill. Be patient and keep working at it: it doesn't take much time, but it does take remembering to do it when you're in new places. Estimate the size of rooms you are in, the weight and length of objects you are picking up, check the time it takes you to do things, and things start sliding into place.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

I

It's not a coincidence that (as seen upthread) a meter is about the same as a yard, .

Actually it is. The meter was orignally supposed to be 1/10,000th the distance between the Equator and the North Pole on a longitude passing through Paris.

The French Revolution guys who invented metric got that measurement wrong and for a long time the "official" meter was a specific measuring stick kept in a vault.

In some future settings of mine I have people using the Really Scientific Measuring System (RSMS) which uses the Planck interval as its' fundamental unit of time and distance.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Actually it is. The meter was orignally supposed to be 1/10,000th the distance between the Equator and the North Pole on a longitude passing through Paris.

"Hey, look! If we take 1/10,000th the distance between the Equator and the North Pole, it comes out close to one yard!"

"Okay, let's call that a meter."

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If it makes you feel better...

Eh, it's mostly a case of metre and gram feeling like less-relevant-to-everyday-life measurements then foot and pound. But that's me being arbitrary.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I agreed with the powers of ten part, but I've seen many people claim that metric/SI is superior because "it isn't based on the length of some long dead king's foot" as though we regularly dig up that particular king to calibrate our measurements.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

<snip>

I know what you mean. Metric isn't scientific in basis at all. Why is g 9.8 m/s^2 instead of 10? The only reasonable value for c given 20th century science is exactly "1". Shouldn't two grams attract each other with a force of one Newton, given why Newton is most famous? The units don't even go together well with themselves, which is why we have both cgs and MKS, with different prefixes hacking together a more practical set of effective base units, rather than just using mgs all the time.

It's not a coincidence that (as seen upthread) a meter is about the same as a yard, and that a liter is about the same as a quart or bushel, and that a kilogram is about a integer multiple of a pound. Most of the basic units were all chosen to be convenient for humans and their existing practice, not because they're fundamentally rooted in scientific constants. (That's why the constants are all even wackier values than the unit relationships in the English units.) The universe doesn't fundamentally care about the distance from the Earth's pole to equator on the meridian through Paris, or how long this one planet among all the others happens to take to rotate on its axis.

Metric isn't "more scientific" as a system of measurement, but it is a more useful system of measurement from a scientific point of view.

To recap from my grade 9 science class, where the metric system was being introduced to students who had heretofore only used the Imperial system (that was the assumption and usually valid), the metric system has three features which recommend themselves. First, unlike other systems of measurement it is universal in its nature, i.e. there is no Italian metre, no Spanish metre and no French metre, only the metre, and if you were to prefix the metre with an adjective such as French to indicate that you had measured it in France it would still be the same length as a metre designated as Italian. This isn't true of the previous systems of measurement. One of the Asterix stories noted that the Greek foot was based on Hercules and worked out from other Greek measures of distance that that gentleman took a size 11 shoe. While a foot is a foot, speaking broadly and generally, it would be too much to hope for that the King Edward of England and King Louis of France coincidentally wore the same size shoe. I'll note that a quick look for old European feet (covering Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden) turns up 64 different standards for that measurement.

Second, basic metric units (time aside) are interrelated to a degree that other systems are not. "A pint's a pound the world around." (measuring water.) Good luck figuring out from that how much a cubic foot weighs based on that. On the other hand, a cubic metre of water weighs one metric tonne. One cubic decimetre (tenth of a metre) of water weighs one kilogram, and since we're measuring a liquid volume, also occupies a volume of one liter. If we take a cubic centimetre (0ne-hundredth of a metre) of water, it weighs one gram and also occupies one milliliter by liquid volume. Finally, since water has a density of 1g/cm^3, if you know the specific gravity of a material, you need only add g/cm^3 or tonne/m^3 to find the density of the material.

Third, if you are stranded on a desert island with a well-made metrestick and a good timepiece with a second hand, you can, at least theoretically, reproduce the entire metric measuring system.

The metric system is used in science for the same reason that scientific notation is used for numbers. Up to a million, everyone is on the same page, but that stops when someone writes a billion. If the writer is from the U.S. or Germany, he quite likely means a thousand millions, but if the writer is from the U.K. or France, he more likely means a million millions. If he writes 1 x 10^9 however, we don't need to remember that what he means depends on where he's from and we don't need to know where he's from, we know exactly how big the number he wants to convey is.

No, the universe doesn't care how long it takes our planet to rotate on its axis or how far it is from our equator to one of our poles. However, since an anthropomorphized universe is, at best, a disputed idea, we may add that it is a dubious proposition that the universe actually cares about anything including the speed of light and Planck's length. OTOH, how long it takes our planet to rotate on its axis is a useful, observable and measurable phenomenon from our point of view.

As to the units named in honor of scientists not always matching up with what they are famous for, they are not always well-chosen, but they are also not really necessary to the metric system. If I say 5 kg-m/sec.^2, nobody is going to be lost as to what I mean, although it would be quicker/shorter if I had said 5 Newtons instead.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

"Hey, look! If we take 1/10,000th the distance between the Equator and the North Pole, it comes out close to one yard!"

"Okay, let's call that a meter."

That still means it was a conicidence. If the distance for a meter had been chosen so that average humans could easily pace out measurements in meters the meter would probably be shorter than a yard. A yard is a long stride for me and I'm 6 feet tall. Stepping heel-to-toe to get distances in feet works better. 10% longer than a yard means I can't accurately pace out metric distances.

Now if we were doing Gurps Middle Earth we'd be in better shape since the Numenorians (who averaged 6 foot 4 and may have been long-legged) measred things in "Ranga" which were based on one of their strides and were 38 inches long. the enxxt time you see "yards/meters" usedas a distance cross it out and write in "ranga". :)

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That still means it was a conicidence. If the distance for a meter had been chosen so that average humans could easily pace out measurements in meters

No, I'm suggesting the distance for a meter was chosen because it was very close to a yard. I don't actually know the reason, but being 1/10000th the distance from the pole to the equator isn't any less arbitrary than any other standard.