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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?"
To force a switch to the metric system,first we remove all the u.s. standard nuts and bolts from vehicles and machinery,retap them for metric and replace with metric nuts and bolts.
Next, we bonfire all standard measuring devices,rulers,scales,moms measuring cup,and force people to buy new metric ones.Don't forget moms recipe book!
This must be done by force of law because integration,doesn't work as evidenced by foreign cars,speedometers,measuring cups,rulers,many scales which all have metric units alongside u.s. measure.
Sure,I'm a smartass,but I think you get the point.It's pointless.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
What is the reason for this change?
Because the US needs to pull its finger out and get with the program.
Imperial is here to stay. I hate to say it, but in things like construction, where a 2x4 is standard, you're always going to use imperial measurements. Old houses don't go away. Having said that, everything that's "serious" aka, science and NASA ought to be done in metric.
Tell that to dubya and he'll change the system in a heartbeat.. The war in Iraq failed to prove how big his is!
I drink to make other people interesting!
My wife tells me she can't feel the big 25.4 cm, but she can feel the big 10 inch.
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
Folks, unit conversion is not that difficult or uncommon. For anyone thinking that a conversion from English to Metric would magically obviate all unit conversions, and therefore eliminate the need to check for units, think again.
Anyone familiar with dec/bin/hex? Which of those should we "ban forever" because it's SO DIFFICULT to convert between them? How about deg/rad? Spherical/Cartesian? FRD/NED/ECEF/WGS84? Get a grip, people.
Also, it's not like the metric system solves any of the truly DIFFICULT unit problems. Length and weight are easy. Tell me, what's the metric unit for time? Well? So we're stuck with the bloody hour, 24 of which make a day, divisible into 60 minutes of 60 hours, with all those lovely leap years and leap seconds thrown into the mix. Or how about currency conversions, where the scaling factor changes minute-by-minute?
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.
At the end of the day, can you imagine how many millions of man-hours of effort would go into such a conversion? For what? UNITY, so that every nation could be the same? I thought DIVERSITY was supposed to be the valued goal? Everyone who values their "non-standard" Linux or MacOS or whatever box should be concerned at the idea of forcibly moving everyone to The Same Standard because it would be Easier For I.T. that way.
I say, God save the Queen, and all her twips, arpents, and stones!
maybe, in the future, American people will know they're not alone in the galaxy. waiting this day, maybe they can use http://joshmadison.net/software/convert/ to learn other systems. welcome in Modern Age.
As a scientist, I can attest to the massive superiority of the metric system
Back off man I'm a scientist too.
You must be daffy or have only book leanrt experience to have such a clouded understanding of the issue. Walk in to any machine shop some time. It's filled with decimal measures. Every dial is calibrated in decimal inches down to thousanths of an inch.
Nothing prevents decimalizing any unit of measure
Your argument only hangs on the idea that metric units tend to be more derived other units. For example, you indicate that length measures can be turned into weight measures by filling a measured volume with water and weighing it.
That's an irrational argument for such a renouned scientist to make since the SAME is true of the english system. In your example you selected water to do the conversion. But if you had selected dihydro pentoxy sulfate as the liquid you would find that 1 pound of this is equal to 1000 cubic inches. Laugh but it's only slightly more arbitrary than water. Since we seldom actually use this fact, what matters more it how useful the ratio of unit measures is not how they were derived. English units have two properties that metric units lack. Namely most of them have rations that are commonly divisible by handy numbers. weight measures are mainly powers of 2: (2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon). Or by thirds and twos: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 second to the hour, 24 hours per day. How many hours are in your metric da, mr science? The second property is that they are created to be right sized for many daily human interactions. An inch is about the size of tip of a thump to it's knuckle. If your making something that uses hand work it's a pretty damn "handy" measure. A gallon of water is about what a soldier, field worker or seaman needs to drink every day, so if your provisioning it's a pretty useful measure. and so on.
there's no reason not to use decimal english measures and in most ways they are superior.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I grew up using imperial, then moved to a country where metric is standard. After 10 years, I moved back to the US.
Metric is superior. It's not even a contest. Imperial is kind of irritating in its naivety.
So, my A0 paper can be 1cm * 1000cm or it can be 100cm * 100cm and still work out to be A0? What a stupid system. I'll stick to my 8.5x11.
Layne