How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System?

thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

Comments

What's stopping you?

[porkchop_d_clown]

If you want to use the metric system in your research, then use the metric system. What's stopping you?

Why do you need the government to change the speed limit signs if your problem is interoperating with scientists?

Re:What's stopping you?

[ChowRiit]

If children aren't taught the metric system, they'll have to learn it. As a scientist, I can attest to the massive superiority of the metric system for scientific measurements et cetera, after all, that's partly what it was DESIGNED for. (1cm^3 of pure water doesn't weight 1g at sea level for no reason, for example...).

I like in England, where we're mostly metric (although a lot of Imperial units are still used), but ALL scientists use metric for everything. It's not because of some magical superiorty science that normal people need either, it's mostly because multiplying by 10 is a lot easier than multiplying by 12 then 16 then 8, or whatever!

Re:What's stopping you?

[neiko]

I have only one hold out personally for the Imperial System and that's the measure of temperature. Celsius is all fine and good when using it in a scientific scope, but when talking about the weather, the units are TOO big. The difference between 12C and 13C is too great. A degree in Fahrenheit is about the right size when thinking if something is hot or cold. It may just be my lack of thinking about the temperature outside in Celsius, but being comfortable with both measurements, Fahrenheit allows me to predict a little better what it will feel like when I walk out the door.

Re:What's stopping you?

[robinjo]

The difference between 12C and 13C is nothing. Wind and sunshine/lack thereof affects way more than half a degree Celsius.

Re:What's stopping you?

[Mex]

Well, to me, Farenheit seems ridiculous. Why is 40F "Very Cold" or Freezing? Shouldn't it be 0? or 100?

You're saying that because you grew up with it, but ask anyone who uses the Centigrades and they'll be able to tell you what temperature they are at (ballpark number, at least).

The units are not "Too big" either. Can you use decimal points? 22.5C

To me, Farenheit units are ridiculous and nonsensical.

Why change....

[wiit_rabit]

What is the reason for this change? As another poster has said, if you want to use the metric system, just use it.

Most, if not all of the problems I deal with (mechanical engineering) have systems and specifications that are in metric units now. Most (nearly all) national standards I deal with are already in metric units. CAD and analysis systems can switch units without problems.

What use is it to change units for the general population? Is there a need to buy apples in Kg? Or gasoline in Liters? Medicine is specified in Mg. Engine displacement is shown in Liters. Should 2x4's be 50x100's?

Re:Why change....

[Guppy06]

"Because the US needs to pull its finger out and get with the program."

What, that's it?

We're getting along fine, our units of measure are, by definition, exactly as accurate as SI units. SI doesn't have a monopoly on using either decimals or prefixes, so even decimalization isn't a particularly compelling reason. There is no technical reason for a compulsory switch.

great arguments...

[JamesTRexx]

From a link on the freedom2measure site:
Sexist
The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units. Perhaps, if they had, the value of the practical units used in those tasks undertaken by woman at the time would have been recognized.

I can understand trying to make a point against the metric system, but this!? Any other real arguments won't be taken serious anymore..
Not to mention that I doubt women had any say in the current system.

School and Law

[lazysonofab]

Start with the schools. It will require quite a bit of initial investment, but it is the only way to introduce a new mindset to the public. You'll need to replace a LOT of textbooks (maths problems will need to be posed in metric terms, same for science books, etc) and all of your measuring devices will need replacing with metric versions (throw out those yard sticks and replace them with metre rules). If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.

Then comes the tricky part: legislation. The resistance from the lazy public and business will be incredible - it'll be seen as one extra unnecessary expense - but it has to be done. It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.

That should be enough to get the ball rolling, but it's a long process, and - as the poster above pointed out - it may not stick right away. The UK has used metric officially for many years now but go into a hardware store and they'll still sell you a length of 2-by-4.

It may take many years to kill off Imperial measurements, but I think those are the two most important steps to affect the change.

Re:Pipe dream.

[Dunbal]

Old houses don't go away.

      Right, because there are no old houses in Europe. This is why they have successfully converted to metric.

      Your argument is flawed.

Re:Funny, but lame

[1u3hr]

Put into Slashdot terms, note that if you get rid of the Imperial Inch, say goodbye to "point" font-sizes; no more will you be able to specify a simple 12pt (ie, 12/72 of an inch), but rather 4.233mm! Selection boxes just got wider, eating up all that valuable screen real-estate. Speaking of, no more DPI or PPI resolution metrics.

Bullshit. In almost every metric country, type is measured in points. Certainly from my personal experience, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India and the UK, which are all metric in most respects. There are proposed metric units to measure type, but they are not offically part of the SI. And the idea of a font "size" is actually fairly arbitrary and fuzzy. It's generally defined as the smallest line spacing so that the descenders of one line do not collide with the ascenders of the line below. But there are many cases where this rule is violated. Consider it more like women's dress sizes rather than relating to a specific dimension.

Of course, we can thank Adobe for embedding their definition of the point = 1/72" in PostScript (which is slightly larger then the older traditional point.) Page sizes however are often quoted in mm.

However, I suspect you are trolling. If so, well done. I also have to suspect that the site linked in the summary , http://www.freedom2measure.org/ may be a parody.

The metric system has been almost wholly created and standardized by male scientists and bureaucrats. At the time, during which women were considerably less liberated than today, woman had virtually no say in the creation and, in many countries, the imposition of these units.

... This is an utterly arbitrary way of fixing the size of a degree. In fact, under SI, water freezes at 273.16 K.

...Since the readership of most international US publications is majority American, American units should come first. (In survey after survey, clear majorities of all age groups in the US are more comfortable with American units.)

Could anyone write that stuff seriously?

both are illogical even

[r00t]

It should have been MGS. (meter-gram-second) The base units should not have prefixes like "kilo" and "centi".

Furthermore, there is nothing nice about the sizes of metric units. Nice units are ones that eliminate pointless numeric constants. Using natural units, e=mc^2 becomes e=m. Using natural units, the ideal gas law loses the R constant. Isn't that way better?

Metric is nothing special. For example, the meter is based on an erroneous measurement across France. This bad measurement was used to estimate the size of the Earth so that the meter could be claimed to have a tie to the size of the Earth. (which isn't unchanging anyway, even if it were perfectly round!) We might as well use a foot defined as the distance traveled by light in a particular amount of time, with that time amount chosen so that a foot just happens to match King George's foot.

Base 10 isn't special either. Binary is special, and trivially convertable to the more-compact hexadecimal.

Cultural preservation

[LihTox]

How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System? is like asking "How can we convert France to speaking English?" It would sure be convenient if everyone grew up speaking only English, but that's hardly going to convince the French or the Germans or the Chinese or.... "But people often have to learn English to participate in international life!" True...and lots of Americans learn the metric system for the same reason. Americans are actually rather "bilingual" with their units: we have gallons of milk and liters of soda, ounces of meat and milligrams of vitamins, 100-yard football fields and 100-m dashes.

Seeing Imperial units die out in the U.S. would be as sad as watching Welsh die out in Wales. (Knowing the sorts of people here, I imagine many of you wouldn't give a damn about either.)

Re:Metric Imperialism - Globalisation the goal?

[smenor]

Once one has both sets of tools, it ceases to matter what you're working on as you have the correct tool.

You say that as if having twice as many tools doesn't cost anything and doesn't take up twice as much space.

Also, how many bolts have been stripped because someone wasn't careful and tried to use an SAE wrench instead of a metric one? How much time has been wasted trying to figure out if you need SAE or metric?

there's really no advantage to either method

But there is a huge advantage to going with only one rather than both - and since everyone else in the world uses metric, why not use it too? And actually there is a pretty big advantage to metric - you don't have to remember that there are 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and some other random number of yards in a mile. Pushing a decimal around is just so much easier.

I don't expect us to ever switch, but much more because we're obstinate than because of any sort of rational cost-benefit analysis.

Re:Metric Imperialism - Globalisation the goal?

[ADRA]

You're own example proves the cost.

1. You, the engineer needed to buy two tools to do the same job.
2. Somewhere in a factory far far away, someone needed to develop two molds, one for the metric set, one for the imperial set and all the other overhead involved with selling two different products.

I agree the most Americans wouldn't want to learn something new and would rather begrudge the rest of the world (as per the norm) by doing things your own way. Think of yourselves as the Sony of countries. You only inter operate when its in your best interest.

Re:Euro-homos

[Selivanow]

It is not even so much as that the rest of the world doesn't exist. It's more like out of sight, out of mind. The grand-parent is correct that most Americans will never have any contact with people from another country (Outside Canada or Mexico). The same thing is true that most Europeans will not have any contact with Americans. Honestly, with a giant body of water between the two it isn't exactly easy. Planes don't count. Most people don't make day trips by plane :) I can easily get to Canada with in 2 hours, less if it is a slow day at the border. I can't say the same about France or Germany. But now I'm rambling. So I'll stop.