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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?"
About 4 kilogulags worth of forced punishment for not using the metric system would do it!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Looks like *somebody* is about to get a visit from Homeland Security...
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?
Clear, Dark Skies
...nobody here uses metric. Everything is in miles rather than kilometres such as all of our traffic signs for distance and speed and I don't know anyone who uses metres and centimetres for measurements - it's always feet and inches when buying anything in hardware stores for example.
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?
Well, I am an American living in the UK. The UK officially uses metric but all the road signs and speedometers in cars use Miles per Hour, all distances on signs are also in miles, people still count their weight in Stones, and I can still buy pints at the pub. I wonder if we should still count the UK as a metric using nation.
Canada.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I'm currently studying Physics in the UK but come from one of the most SI countries in the world, Luxembourg. When talking to people I discovered that even though the UK has officially gone metric most people still think in imperial units when it comes to body weight and height, liquid volumes, speeds and distances (long and short) and those who I asked said they found it hard to picture 170cm or 70kg, very common numbers which I find extremely natural, much preferring "feet/inches" and "stones".
I must admit however that the foot is a very appealing unit in that it can be easily measured using common body parts such as the hand-elbow distance or the foot.
I think the problem is that the parents who grew up with imperial units use them in day to day conversation, hence associating different benchmark sizes with specific words in their children's developing minds, making a natural transition to metric quite difficult, but certainly not impossible... i guess the situation will improve once britain follows ireland in getting the traffic system metricized.
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.
home
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.
Your penis may only be five and a half inches long but thats 13.9 centmeters!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
No one will ever know.
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.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Canada switched to the metric system decades ago. Being a British commonwealth for such a long time, of course most of us were well accustomed to Imperial units. I still remember as a kid, how my Mom was one of the holdouts for the Imperial system for a long time. She would tell me to get a quart or gallon of milk, and I would have to ask her how many liters that was.
The thing is that the metric system is officially used everywhere. Road signs, groceries, public schools, the works. The only basis that we have for even knowing the Imperial system is our parents. I've used the metric system my entire life. I know my height and weight in feet and lbs, but couldn't tell you what it is in metric units. But I can guess fairly accurately how much something weighs in kilograms, but I'm not so good with pounds. Likewise, I'm more comfortable with measuring things in meters, rather than feet.
A rather amusing story though. I am currently living in the US, trying to get by without using the old ways. I am not always successful. But I try. Anyways, I was on the phone with my Mom the other day, and she asked how warm it was here. I googled the answer, and got it in Fahrenheit (46F). I laughed, and said she would be right at home here, and gave her the answer in Fahrenheit without doing the conversion. I was rather amazed at her response. She told me that it's been so long since she's used the Imperial system that she's forgotten it. She honestly didn't remember what 46F was.
Anyways, my point is that it doesn't matter if the older people don't use the metric system. Teach it to the young, and switch the entire country to the metric system on all official items. It will all sort itself out in time.
231. To quote a line from a certain video game, "Twenty-three is number one."
"Since he calculation using the metric system is really easy"
A US gallon is made up of:
- 4 quarts
- 8 pints
- 16 cups
- 128 fluid ounces
- 256 tablespoons
If you can't see the pattern and do that kind of math in your head, you don't belong on Slashdot.Of course, there's nothing wrong with using decimal gallons (I fill up my car's gas tank with decimal gallons of gasoline all the time), but using binary in SI is strongly frowned upon by BIPM.
Or are you trying to focus on the conversion between volumic and cubic-linear measurements? First off, there's little point in it since converting between two such units is hardly useful in day-to-day operations, but even if it is, you're better off using using the US gallon than the liter because it has been far more consistent: 231 cubic inches since the eighteenth century. Initially, the liter was defined as a cubic decimeter, but then somebody had the idea to define it as "one kilogram of water," and despite protestations from metric fanbois, they're not the same thing. It was eventually changed back to "cubic decimeter," but now you're left with a system where "one liter" today is non-negligibly different from "one liter" a century ago.
This is why BIPM is trying to deprecate the liter outright.
Depends... if you're in Milton Keynes it's entirely possible to drive more than 800 miles.
Tomorrow, I may eat another house plant
I mean, we're inching towards it all the time!
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
A school district in Massachusetts today voted to remove all references to "imperial" and "metric" from their science and mathematics curricula, after complaints from a parent that 'cubits' were not receiving equal time in the classroom. A spokeswoman for the district board said today that if scientists themselves cannot agree on the matter...
I'm a young fellow from Australia, and I guess from my perspective growing up in a metric society perhaps has given me biased for the way we measure things. Our Television so saturated with American television has acustomed me to seeing your world in imperial measurements. There's just something about an American house built on inches compared to an Australian building built in centimetres - I guess it comes down to culture. At the end of the string though, we are slowly moving to a globalisation - the ability to communicate, travel and live throughout the world without headance means that more than ever we need to communicate and collaborate together in the most efficient way possible. I know this is a very idealistic view on the world, but surely we will all eventually have to start working together to reach the same goals - renewable power, elimination of poverty, global harmony. There is certainly room for both standards and I'm sure if America moved to metric, Impreial would be a common association in describing physical characteristics. Almost all people in Australia know their height in feet and inches, building materials are still sold in inches - whatever happens, I'm sure the old way will not be forgotten with the incredible data collection of todays society it surely will not be forgotten. Perhaps we should look at what would be best for the world instead of what works for our country. Heck, if that meant the world went Imperial, I'd be all for it, it is just the time that it takes for our Governments to gell together enough to figure out what is best - for all I know, it may be better to keep going the way we are, really we have made it this far without any major short commings. Everyone has their beliefs, and it's my view that everyone has the right to believe whatever it is they want to believe. As long as this is the case, there will always be a fight about who is right and who is wrong.
The SI unit for time is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the Cs-133 atom.
If you can't remember this simple fact, you are not worthy.
Oh please. I agree with the rest of your post, but you can't argue that imperial vs metric is about diversity vs uniformity. It's quite clearly being argued because of the difficulties in conversion, not some assault on the brave USA, willing to stand alone from the metric crowd of sheep.
Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.
>>Ease of calculations is the key. If you don't do much actual mathematics in your daily life, you won't see the need for the metric system. If you're a scientist, you do, and you will.
Well, yeah, that's my point. I'm an engineer, and my American (global) Fortune 5 company is completely metric in its operations. So as a scientist (you) or engineer (me) we see the value of and use the metric system. There's no US law prohibiting us from doing so. Why, then, should we mandate that the country switch to the metric system? You and I already use it; why make Joe Blow purchase lunch meat priced at $x per 100/g?
Simply, what's the cost-benefit analysis of changing our society to the metric system?
--Jim (me)
Exactly. If I'm at the grocery store, and I need to integrate a trigonometric function in order to determine how much milk I should buy (seeing as how you can roughly approximate the demand during the day with a sine curve), and I'm stuck with degrees, it'll be hell to integrate, when compared to radians.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The snooty arrogance in this thread is astounding.
There is no doubt that if you are designing a system from scratch, the metric system is superior.
There is also no doubt that if you are in science and engineering, you should be using the metric system.
But for every day use? It does not matter one tiny bit. Whatever accurately supports commerce is really all that matters. And the Imperial system works in the US.
Some dirty secrets for you all who think the rest of the world has adopted: a lot of the Commonwealth nations have adopted the metric only in an official capacity. Go to the UK and see how often you see Imperial units.
So let my summarize by saying "Who will think of the rulers!" (And steel mills and pipe fittings and rolling mills and everything I'm ignorant of)
I'm guessing you're a norwegian. Am I correct?
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.
Could anyone write that stuff seriously?An alternative definition is 1/2,325th of the time it takes Windows Vista to finish booting up on a 2002-era PIII PC.
If you need to think about trigonometric functions to determine how much milk you're going to drink, maybe the problem is somewhere other than metric vs. imperial.
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).
Textbooks in the United States already use metric units, and have now for decades.
If the kids grow up learning metric terms, they'll see the benefits of simplicity, easier unit conversion, and so on.
Everybody in the United States under the age of forty grew up learning metric terms. Virtually nobody in the United States under the age of forty, unless such person has some specific technical reason for doing so, has any interest in using metric terms in day-to-day life.
It must be a legal requirement that wherever an amount is shown in Imperial, it must also be shown in metric.
This is already the case. A can of cola in the U.S. reads "12 fl. oz. (355 mL)". A bag of microwave popcorn states "1.5 oz. (42.5g)". A snack bar reads "1.59 oz (45g)". No consumer product is sold without both Imperial and metric measurements.
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.
If the public doesn't want it, and business doesn't want it, then who exactly is supposed to benefit?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
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.
Surely, everyone knows that the proper measure for fuel economy is the square millimetre (or millimeter for the other side of the pond). After all, we're dividing volume by distance here, so naturally we get an area. And this measure has an obvious geometric interpretation: Distribute the fuel needed to drive a certain distance as a very thin tube along that entire distance, and measure its cross section.
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.)
I'm sorry, but you didn't understand anything from all those units 'n numbers discussions. We need 16 fingers, not 12. Hex is the one true base.
Or cut your hands off, use your 2 arms and stick to binary.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Seriously, it is scary that it is possible for someone to reason so badly.
Firstly, he claims conversion is implicit and universal despite mars probes crashing because obviously people DO forget to do it sometimes. Then he throws up some rhetoric involving binary and hexadecimal, number systems which are only used in low level computing because of their affinity with hardware with having two general purpose unit systems used in parallel. Then he brings up seconds, minutes, hours and days when anyone who knows anything about metric knows that only seconds are part of SI, the rest should never be used in calculations. Then he claims that points are somehow better than millimeters because he likes his fonts at exactly 12pt and is not willing to have his fonts 5% smaller to make them 4mm but instead NEEDS that extra .233 millimeters to make his fonts JUST RIGHT but doesn't want to be bothered typing it in. Of course if someone wanted 4mm fonts they would need to type in 11.3394pt in the current system, but of course we all know that fonts are especially right when they are at even numbers of points rather than millimeters. What the hell is a point anyway? Millimeters are used in carpentry, particle physics and trade, points are just another unit made up for one purpose that doesn't really need its own system of measurement.
He summarizes in extolling the virtues of diversity. Diversity is great, don't you just love the Gnome and KDE flamewars on slashdot because any given application only really works properly and looks right with one desktop. And how you can't run OSX applications on your linux box. And how there are more BSDs that you can name but only one of them has proper SMP support but it is neither the one that is portable nor the one which is secure nor the one that is modular. You've gotta love the web pages designed around IE's quirks that don't quite look right under firefox. Oh, and how IPSEC has two types of header which can be used with either of the two modes and how nobody quite supports it because it's too "diverse". I can't begin to explain how having two types of high density optical disk has helped me enjoy high definition video so much quicker. Ever tried to hook up the tail lights of a friends trailer to your car and found out the plug is different? Ever bought some electric guismo from overseas but the plug doesn't fit without an ugly adapter?
In art, food and society you have diversity, in science and technology you have incompatibility.
Nobody could be dumb enough to truly think what the OP thinks, though I live in Australia where we switched to metrics in the 60s to the 80s and cannot imagine anyone having any trouble. That is why I think the OP is a troll or just having a little sarcastic joke that nobody got.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I think you mean the babylonian number system.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
You overclockers, always bragging.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I think that is the one that would bother me the most!! I know how to dress if it is 32F, or 40F, or 99F.
I'd be lost with whatever the equivalents in C are...(yes, I'm too lazy to look up a converter). But really...most people in the US seldom have a need for accuracy needed in science. For daily life...the mile, mph, mpg...temperature in F is all way too ingrained into the culture and just isn't going to change anytime soon. Most people in the US have very little if any contact with any else in the world besides possibly a chat room on the internet....so, no one here generally sees any reason to change to 'go along' with the rest of the world. They don't see or touch the rest of the world, so, it pretty much doesn't exist to them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Software Tech: Oh, damn, i knew we shouldn't have rounded the nearest milli-radian to 6400
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
My generation was taught both systems and taught in school that the metric system was superior and used by the rest of the world. My generation is between 25-30 now. That means we will start to gain power is about 10 years and will be the driving force running the nation in 20 years. With Gen X taking over the nation, and the baby boomers out, you will see quite a shift in US policy. The metric system will be part of that.
Unfortunately, Gen X is actually rather cold, logical, understands technology and does not share all the romantic notions of previous generations. This means that the romantic notions that most individual rights are based upon will likely be ignored in policy decisions. Our understanding of technology means that law enforcement will probably be much more effective. In short, life is not going to be much fun under gen x. I predict that we will sell out even worse than the baby boomers ever dreamed of. And the baby boomers are fairy serious sell outs. They went from being hippies protesting the man and the war to putting us into an even worse war and moving the nation to the closest it has even been to a dictatorship.
I'm a Canadian living in the US. Temperatures are about the biggest thing that bothers me down here. Most groceries have the metric equivalents written in smaller letters, and portion sizes are usually the same as in Canada anyways. So it doesn't bother me very often, unless I am buying fountain pop, and someone tells me the drink sizes in ounces. Then I will just give them a blank look for a minute, and ask to see the cups. I also had difficulty when mailing a letter. I was quoted prices by the ounce. But the guy working there converted it to grams for me right off the top of his head (I was grateful).
But I have a fast way of converting Fahrenheit to Celsius, with a reasonably small margin of error for common values. 100F is more or less the same as 40C. Every degree in Celsius is about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. So if someone tells you that it's 80 degrees, you can guess that it's about 30C. It isn't exact, but it's within about 5 degrees, which is good enough for the most part. It at least tells you what to wear.
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.
--
I'm an American who's trying to use Celsius. A dead-easy conversion formula is double and add 30 (for C->F). It isn't perfect, but it works well for most temperatures. Obviously, F->C, which is probably better for you is subtract 30 and divide by 2.