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Why Does the US Cling To Imperial Measurements?
PhunkySchtuff writes "As one of only three countries on Earth that hasn't converted to a metric system of units and measurements, there is a huge amount of resistance within the US to change the status quo. Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world (except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system) With one of the largest organisations in the US, the military, using metric units extensively, why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?"
I think its alright to have a few different systems in the world. Sure, there is an attractiveness to consolidation. But what are we going to do when we encounter aliens? Demand that they switch to the metric system? I'm actually serious. I'm not saying it will happen tomorrow or even in the next decade or century, but eventually it will. There is a lot to be said for having a tolerance for the differences among cultures and retaining those differences.
Because Kimmy Carter was a Pu$$y and Reagan was a Luddite.
Stubbornness. Most people in America see no problem with keeping measurements the way they are. People have far more important things to concern themselves with.
Really.That's a decision Ronald Reagan made in 1982, when he shut down efforts to convert the US to the metric system.
Now, of course, the US has trouble exporting to a world where nobody has Imperial-sized tools or fasteners.
It'd smack too much of you giving in to the French.
Seriously, it's really frustrating when watching American science documentaries and all of the units aren't SI units. Scientists should always, always use metric.
Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home!
Heh ... even though I live in a country that uses only SI (only really understand metric myself) and personally think that the US should definitely make the switch (for any of the many clear, oft-repeated reasons that any Slashdotter has heard a hundred times before), I'm not touching this thread with a 40-foot (huh huh see what I did thar?) pole.
It's one of the most flame-ridden topics you see on this site, and it gets brought up any time someone gives imperial measurements in a summary or post. So I expect nothing new to be discussed here.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe measuring in 'miles' and 'gallons' is still common in the UK.
Obviously, because gringos are wonderful and superior, so they can't use what the rest of the world use because that would make them weak, and after that we the evil rest of the world will conquest the US and create a New World Order with no freedom (Palpatine laughs)
In 1988, Congress passed the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, which designates "the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce." Among many other things, the act requires federal agencies to use metric measurements in nearly all of their activities, although there are still exceptions allowing traditional units to be used in documents intended for consumers. The real purpose of the act was to improve the competitiveness of American industry in international markets by encouraging industries to design, produce, and sell products in metric units.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
Because people are afraid of change. Not just Americans (clang_jangle if you're reading this, USian is still not a term). Most current metric countries had the metric system forced on them by the government, so they had no choice but to adapt. Until the US government makes a similar move (which it will eventually) the anachronistic imperial system is there to stay. Just as in the UK.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Too many old timers who will rail against it and too many idiots who will have a hard time with the concept.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for getting away from two systems and dropping the one that makes the least amount of sense but there will be hard resistance from a majority of people. Like anything else that is hard, Americans don't want to cut the cord but hope the future generations find a better way to deal with the problems it presents. It will be disruptive to society and that's just too hard a nut to crack for Joe Sixpack.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
to do business with us. Just like our approach to treaties we can do something unique and dickish because we can.
Because we're a bunch of idiots. Next question?
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
I wrote a blog post on this same topic.
http://www.4boca.com/?p=29
I was an analytical chemist. Couldn't picture doing science without the metric system.
Why do our kids fall behind in math and science? It's as if they were being intentionally hobbled or something. The imperial system is an all-to-evident example of one of the ways this hobbling is maintained.
Who wants to order a 30.48 cm sub at Subway?
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
I'm not saying the US shouldn't change, but when I was in the UK about 5 years ago, I saw they didn't want to change either. The TeeVee told me the weather in Celsius, but the people with whom I spoke often talked in Fahrenheit. Also, most street signs indicating distance still showed yards. The myth that only 3 countries still use non-Metric is specious. England is not on that short list. I wonder how many other countries that are "officially" metric are not metric in practice. The UK has not been fully metric for more than a dekayear!
Because we can
I think this is a nontrivial task, beyond the expenses that are obvious, there are a lot that aren't. Since the imperial system has been in place for so long in the US, it's literally built into our buildings (16" on center stud distances, etc). I'm sure it's possible to change things but the longterm challenges would be significant. Everything we have is measured this way, think of all the cars that measure gas in gallons and the gas stations that service them, all the mechanical systems that are based on the imperial system. I'd be surprised if we changed it anytime soon.
Personally, the units to me don't matter, as I know the conversions for most important ones (or google the more obscure). Most schools teach sciences using the metric system, so people in the USA should be accustomed to both.
However, the difference of there/their/they're seems to be holding most students up.
I teach my high school Calculus class with Imperial units.
I love the looks on their faces when I have them find the magnitude, in meters, of an object with a velocity in fathoms per minute.
Americans like monosyllabic or abbreviated words wherever possible. Especially in commonly used words, like those involving measurements. We've got pound, inch, foot, yard, pint, quart, and gallon....gallon being one of the few multisyllabic words. Most metric metrics (lol...ya, I just did that) are multi syllable compound words, and most of them don't have any obvious way of being shortened. Americans just don't want to say "Kilometer" when they can say "mile. They don't want to say "centimeter" when they can say "inch".
The Metric System is elegantly simple and beautiful, in everything but the English pronunciation of said metrics. What a shame.
Just because my 'government' thinks it's a good idea doesn't mean I do, which is why all of my heaters, AC's, weather widgets, etc are set to Celsius. (My car, on the other hand, is another story entirely...)
My leading theory is that the reason is one of language. Miles, inches and gallons rolls off the English tongue much easier than Kilometers, Centimeters and Litres. It's much easier to ask what sort of mileage does your car get, the metric equivalent is far more clumsy linguistically. Even in Australia where metric was taken up many years ago and is part of everyday life, people often state their hight in feet and inches. When you ask for your cars fuel efficiency in Austrlia, you still ask for milage, although you might get an answer in km/litre.
I would suggest keeping Imperial measurements for carpentry (pretty much the only endeavor where the Imperial system beats the metric system) and move everything else to metric.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Because a "Royal with cheese" just sounds stupid.
We do use the metric system. Other than working on household nuts, all my automotive tools are metric.
I would prefer a mixed system, somewhat like the Brits use.
Distance - I prefer Km over feet / miles.
Weight - Kg's are much better than ton / pound / oz
Power - I prefer HP to KWH's
Temperature - Keep Fahrenheit. Celsius is good for Science, but I much prefer a 75 F degree afternoon to a 24 C degree one...
The interesting thing about this is that Liberia is comprised of US ex-pats; slaves who populated the country when "Back to Africa" was embraced by ex-slaves. It's really amazing to study this area of history. Even their flag is Red White and Blue. It's weird that they share the same addiction to imperial measurement also.
...of our Imperialistic Overlords' measurement system. Time to throw the inches and feet over the yardarm...
I am currently residing in the very small country of Grenada. And here its definitely not metric, although not exactly imperial either. For instance speed limits are in kilometers and gasoline is in liters, but I have yet to see anything else on the island in metric. All other goods are sold by the pound, gallon, and yard. I once asked for a meter of cloth and they had to call the owner to find out that it was basically a yard.
From San Diego to Bangor ME (4330 km) and Nome to Key West (7250 km), everyone uses the same units of measure.
Thus, what others would see as an international problem, we see as not a problem.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I for one support imperial units, especially the Fahrenheit system-- it covers daily temps without going into negative numbers-- world average temp is apx 50 degrees, 75 is comfortable and 0 is very cold.
I've often wondered this very same thing. I grew up having learned both systems but it wasn't until I joined the Army that I realized how much easier the metric system is to actually use, not just on paper. Fractions are quite possibly the dumbest incarnation of math we humans could have ever invented; I could understand if it actually made things easier, but it does not.
Perhaps there are jobs created or money to be made with continuing to use Imperial and metric at the same time e.g., tools created in both systems.
On the other hand, how can we Americans continue our ethnocentric ways if we were to join the rest of the world? (ok that was a troll, but come on...it holds some truth).
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Something about saying I have a 0.2 meter penis that doesn't sound right.
All the CAD drawings done at my job will have to be in metric? How much will it cost to replace the millions of street signs and maps already in use?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Dunno about you guys, but whenever I have to actually design or build something, I use the metric system. I have foreign cookbooks where everything is metric, and my scales and measuring equipment all accommodate. Sure, sometimes i have to use imperial, such as when working on older cars, fixing someone else's handiwork, etc., but I also know a lot of common conversions off the top of my head. I've actually been called a "communist" once because of this. I consider it an accomplishment.
Besides, all the engineering, manufacturing, scientific and medical sectors in the U.S. have been using the metric system for decades. /dev/phaeton
do() || do_not();
Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world (except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system)
My request is to a Slashdotter to provide examples of especially what this "massive hidden cost" as mentioned above is .
One thing I know is that US car salesmen are stuck with their inventory and wish they could sell more of those cars to Canadians given the Canadian currency which is now stronger than its US counterpart.
The problem is Canadians employ the metric system, but with US cars calibrated in imperial units, they cannot be allowed on Canadian roads and the cost of conversion is prohibitive.
'As long as I am president of this country the great industries are secure. We hear about millimeters, kilograms and litres. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never hear a real American talk like that.'
-- President Dwight D. Rockefeller, 1950.
Call them American units!
I mean, we don't use Imperial gallons here anyway
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it." -Abraham Simpson
The US don't like anything French it seems (except the Status of Liberty), so SI units get refused a VISA ?
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
May I ask the counterpoint, is there a country anywhere that uses only metric ISO units?
Here in Canada we still put $/lb on food items, In the UK all the road signs are in Miles and speedometers are in Miles/hour and I do not know of anywhere that the weather report is given in Kelvin, as it should be. Is it just me or does a balmy 293K sounds much better that 20C.
The US successfully switched from analog to digital TV which in my opinion was more traumatic than switching units of measure. I think we can do this and while we are at it, we need to standardize on a national language. I vote for Java or Perl.
In these case, units of measurement are but one of many specifications for a part. Computers can readily convert sizes... it's like, saying, we should have one thing because division is too complicated, and, its just not. We could have 100 different units of measurement, and it wouldn't matter that much.
This is my sig.
No one has fully adopted a true metric system. Sure, most countries use metric for mass and distance, but I don't see anyone using kiloseconds instead of hours.
There's also a metric ton of local building codes and regulations that have to be updated to use metric units.
SSC
... at great cost to everyone concerned. If the US switched to metric, maybe the conversion code wouldn't be properly identified and ripped out from NASA's integration systems, and we'd lose another one.
I grew up in the 1970s when there was a big push to teach the metric system in elementary school. The teaching method was carefully designed to make kids hate the metric system. Instead of making it fun and practical, the focus was on memorizing *all* the prefixes, abbreviations, and conversions to & from imperial units. FAIL.
We cling to three things in America. Our guns, our religion, and our system of weights and measures. Come and take them, you commie bastard.
It's just tradition. Almost no American will know how many feet are in a mile, but they know how many meters are in a kilometer. Anyone who has taken algebra would have a pretty good idea why counting base 10 is simple to use when converting units. In before stup1d arguments inundate, like oh but the spending on speed limits, or poop laymen that can only count with 12inch rulers. All our rulers are measured 12inches with metric on the other side. No one ever follows the limits signs so it would be prudent you avoid making a fool of yourself in front of the judge.
Having grown up in the period when we were trying to slowly convert, I believe that all the stupid conversions formulas that they were trying to teach everyone doomed the change over. If the United States had just set a date, and then started using metric exclusively, we all would have gotten used to it quickly, the way everyone is perfectly fine with 2 liter bottles of soda.
As an electrical engineer, I would point out something rather funny: even European electronics (in majority) are still specified in thousandths of an inch as the primary dimensioning measure, as almost all surfacemount (and PTH) footprints are still in thousandths of an inch. Is this what we get for inventing it?
First they came for the 3x5 cards and i said nothing
Then they came for the 8 1/2 x 11 paper, i was too afraid to speak
Then they came for my pound cake, i let them take it
When they came for my 10 inch... .
Seriously, it's really frustrating when watching American science documentaries and all of the units aren't SI units. Scientists should always, always use metric.
Science documentaries? OK...
Cookery shows!
American cuisine may get a bad rap, but you make some of the greatest cookery shows around. I'm a voracious consumer of Food Network. Speaking for the rest of the world, we do want to watch this stuff!
But converting from degrees F to degrees C, and from ounces to grams, and from pints to litres. It sounds like small stuff (and it is), but it's often the difference between staring at a recipe, and getting off the couch to make it. So. Metric?
The conversions as not that hard? I understand the potential for some incongruities but I was a machinist by trade for about 5 years and we had to slip between metric and empirical for the medical industry. Not that big a deal.
Americans are stupid
Pride, stubbornness, and a general dislike for Jimmy Carter killed the metric system in the U.S.
Computers have perpetuated our ability to use imperial units without suffering too much - and I think vendors like the confusion that comes from making things with mixed metric/imperial parts.
Good answer. Good answer. I like the way you think. Im gonna be watching you.
It can be worse - for example Hong Kong is an area where both systems are used.
Flat sizes are measured in square feet. Ground areas usually square feet, sometimes square meters. Screws and the like are usually metric sized, drill bits sometimes metric (diameter in mm) sometimes imperial (diameter in 8th of an inch). Distances on road signs are in km, miles are not used.
Weights is even more fun. Imported pre-packed goods are often measured in grammes and kilograms. Some are measured in pounds (1 lb = about 452 gr). Vegetables are usually sold by the catty (1 catty = 600 gr). Seafood also by the catty, sometimes by it's derived unit the tael (16 tael = 1 catty, so 12 tael is about 1 pound). The latter conversions took me really long to figure out as most locals use the units but do not know how to convert to one another.
China is fully converted to the metric system (having a dictatorship has it's advantages). They still use the catty, but they have defined a catty at 500 gr. Something the Hongkongers don't seem to know - the thing is you just get some 18% less in mainland than in Hong Kong in your catty.
As a working chemists, I'm pretty much ready to change over. But, although I use the metric system day after day and am completely comfortable with it, I still can't figure out what to wear by looking at the outdoor temperature in centigrade (or is it Celsius?). I also like my pressure in psi if it's high and mm Hg if it's low and in atm if it's near one.
I think we could get used to the metric system pretty fast, so that theory, cited above, about caving into the French is probably the real reason we haven't changed.
like the Atlas Maior by Joan Blaeu , it often comes with 3 or maybe 4 different keys... one for 'german miles', one for 'french miles', etc etc.
it was published around the same time Newton invented calculus.. just sayin. its not that big a deal.
> Why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?
You've answered your own question. It's because this:
> the cost of switching would be huge
is absolutely right, and
> there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching when dealing with the rest of the world.
is wrong. Or at best greatly overstated. The "general public", as you've phrased it, in fact does not incur a cost, hidden or otherwise, in dealing with the rest of the world. We, the general public, are perfectly fine dealing with kilometers, liters, and grams in Canada, Europe, or anywhere else we need to go. Frankly, it doesn't come up that often, and when it does, it's not really a big deal.
Compare that with the huge cost of switching. Practically everything we, the general public, do in our daily lives would be affected - distance measurements, fuel pricing, grocery shopping, cooking, building, travel... everything.
"But you'll be in line with the rest of the world!" you say. To which we, the general public say, "So?"
So, laugh at us ignerent 'mericans if you must, but until the disruption to our lives if we don't make the switch is at least as severe as the disruption that will come if we do switch, we're not going to bother.
To me it seems like it is a matter of pride and inconvenience. It is inconvenient to give up what you are used to and also one may feel that they are being forced to give up something they have used all along just because rest of the world is using a different system. This ostensibly hurts pride of some people. If you tell an average non science background, non-technical American (this will probably exclude most slashdotters) your weight in kilograms, you can't help but notice the look on their faces. It is clear they are at a complete loss and have absolutely no sense of that number at all. It is a matter of simple approximate multiplication or division that is taught to everybody in school. Regardless of what system you follow, or what country you live in, you should be able to at least do a rough calculation in your mind and have a some sense of at the least the scale being talked about. I am not talking about converting electron volts into Joules, but common units that are used in every day life.
You don't really think that a "unit of measurement" problem "lost" a Mars rover do you?? Neither do the little orange men on mars.
I don't have time to make a sig
A lot of our common units are nicely practical for day to day use. A cup or a foot for instance. In fact, even in countries that use the metric system, it's not uncommon for people to borrow these sorts of measurements just for the sake of convenience. We also have an advantage in that our measurements typically break down into divisions more cleanly - 12 (inches) for example divides evenly into halves, thirds and quarters. You can't say the same for 10.
Ummm, there are still plenty of countries that use Imperial units. Go to the UK and the beer is sold in pints and distances are measured in miles. Likewise, the use of the metric system is pretty widespread in the US.
So what's wrong with this being our "thing". Being bilingual costs the Canadians a fortune, but I don't see anyone telling them to knock it off. In fact, people seem to think that speaking two languages makes people smarter and better cultured. So why can't knowing two systems of measurements?
I was born and raised in a country that is firmly and decidedly "metric". I finished school and college knowing nothing but metric system. So, you could say that metric would be my "natural choice".
Then I moved to US. At first non-metric units were a PIA. Admittedly, conversions are not nearly as convenient - you can't just shuffle a decimal dot around.
After a while, though - it really started to "grow on me". The first shift occurred when I started driving a lot - both in US and in Europe. For reasons, that are purely subjective, I began to feel like a mile (statutory or nautical, your pick) is a more "natural" unit of distance. Kilometer always fell short. In a way mile represented what I feel a "decent distance" should feel like.
Then, as I took up a hobby (or a waste of money, depending on your take on it) that required significant amounts of engineering, machining and manual work - I started to feel the same way about other units. Inch is exactly what a "small but human scale" distance should be (it is unusually pretty close to what you'd get if you were to show a "very short distance" by making a semi-circle with your thumb and index fingers, like a slightly opened O), so did the foot, the ounce for "a small amount of weight" etc. I also began to appreciate division of inches into powers of two (rather than centimeters into powers of ten etc).
In time, conversions became a non-issue. In fact, it probably helps keep my "doing arithmetic in my head" skills less rusty.
I still occasionally use metrics as a way to do "thru conversions", in particular between volume and mass (because one deci-meter of water is one liter of water is approx 1 kg). I also use metrics where they are the only units - such as electricity, for example.
But at this point, I would not voluntarily go back to metric system for anything that's related to weights and dimensions.
YMMV. That said, perhaps there are other people who feel like me. If so - that's your answer as to why Imperial units are still here (and, hopefully, going to stay for a while)
Because most Americans can't count to 10?
I was taught metrics in 1st grade, that was back in the 70s, and it's so easy a 7 year old can master it.
This imperial crap almost everyone else in the US uses is rather incomprehensible.
Your foot is divided by 12 inches, which are divided by 16ths, yet it's 3 foot to the yard, and god only knows how many yards in a mile. Here's a fun trick to do, ask some of your friends or relatives how many yards are in a mile. How many of them will actually give you an answer, much less the right one. Bet more than half can't, at least without someone else how many feet are in the mile. And let's not forget the long delay as they try to divide by 3. Not very impressive is it.
Now, ask some kid who knows metric how many meters are in a kilometer. How many centimeters are in a kilometer. Bet you that prepubescent child that know metric will give you an answer really fast, and be right every time. It's because metric is a concise system based on 10 that even an imbecile can understand it, and smart people make far fewer mistakes because it's a consistent system.
You want to screw over the country when dealing with the rest of the world, keep using imperial.
We've lost people and multi-million dollar machines because of imperial, is it really worth it?
As a side note, you could probably create a rough metric for measuring time based solely on the frequency of posts about why the US doesn't fully embrace the metric system. I swear these posts are like clockwork.
yes, i would like a 30cm tube, with aubergines, poutine, and mramite. thank you!
It really depends on the measurement and what it's being used for. For tools, it's not uncommon at all to have a set of metric and a set of imperial units. The smaller the distance the less it seems to matter. But when it comes to units of distance you're going to have a VERY hard time of people giving up miles. It's what everyone here has grown up with and are very VERY used to, and since the US population by and large doesn't travel to different countries as casually as Europeans might, km seems very alien to us.. Also buying gasoline by the liter would just feel downright wrong in comparison to gallons. Meters are very close to yards, so people can kind of estimate that in their heads, and people seem relatively comfortable with cc's as a unit of volume measurement.
Basically what it comes down to is can we estimate the measurement in our heads with no real effort, and that takes some serious exposure. I believe the US will get there eventually, but the populace doesn't take kindly to having to re-think everything they've basically known since they were children. Each generation is a step closer but mark my words.. miles will be the last to go, as it's well too ingrained in the culture.
While we are at it why doesn't the rest of the world jump on the Mandarin Chineese bandwagon, its way more used than the rest of the languages....
Why does it matter what measurements we are comfortable with? Does it effect your daily life that I use miles instead of kilometers? No it doesn't.
In case you want to bring up the, oh but why do we have to convert your system for our use argument, guess what we have to translate to.
Totally serious. I'm not defending Imperial units, but the same argument can be made of why we don't all speak American, or British English, or Australian English, or whatever variant of English. Foreign languages like Chinese are used by far more people, but we can't tell people they should all know Chinese.
Why don't we all use the US dollar, or go back to the Gold Standard?
There's a lot to be said for standardization, but there's a lot of heel dragging because of business expenses or political manipulation.
The vast majority of 'measurers' are building contractors that frame houses. The construction industry will be the last to change a 4x8 sheet of plywood
The US is a big country so it takes a while to change things.
We started teaching the metric system to kids in elementary school in the 1970s.
All the signs would need changing ...
I recall a lot of the signs were changed, displaying both imperial and metric for a while, then a decade or so later they went back to just imperial. Also if we had only changed signs on the normal replacement cycle we would probably have been done by now.
, all the measurements in laws ...
Trivial effort is required to convert, far less than what is expended interpreting the law. Also note that in many contexts, units on packaging, imperial and metric are still side by side.
, all the schools, ...
Done in the 1970s.
and much of the culture ...
If we had stayed on course it would be over by now.
:-)
The sig doesn't mention it but yes the calculator does metric.
...why do they still (informally) use customary units for food weights, or (more formally) for gas and driving speed (gallons and miles per hour).
Old habits die hard.
People are too stupid to use the metric system here, but they understand how to use the Starbucks units for ordering coffee. Go figure!
Who cares, it works.
And we already have lots of existing stuff that's not metric.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
...are stupid. That's why we don't use metric.
What is even worse, is scientific shows like Mythbusters use BOTH systems...
They are just trying to help the kids learn to convert. :-)
tell a carpenter to use a metric tape measure... not gonna happen.
sheet goods come in 4'x8' lath boards came in 4' (48") studs on 16"
Honestly, why do you (individual using the metric system) even care what the United States uses? I'm an American, and yes, I comprehend the metric system and all of its benefits (shift the decimal place, etc. etc.) but I've grown up all my life using inches, pounds, miles, Fahrenheit. Just as confused as you are trying to "visualize" a mile or realize that 95F is a little warm, so am I when trying to figure out how heavy 20kg is or that 20C is, hell, I don't even know what it is.
My point is, if it doesn't have to do with international trade or standards (which is done in metric anyway), why do you even care? Are you really that irritated when you visit the United States and you can't get a grip on how much a gallon is? Well, I don't particularly enjoy trying to stay under 100kmph, but I cope.
PS - I love all the "pride," "arrogance," insults hurled at the US. I don't measure things out in cups and teaspoons because I'm arrogant, it's because I'm used to it and its largely inconsequential what system is used.
It seems foolish to continue using a measurement system which is so at odds with what 99% of the world uses. What's even more odd is the variance in Imperial measurements, including the use of "troy ounces" (vs ounces), and the differences between the US implementation and the English - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems Australia moved from Imperial to metric in the late 1960s and it was quite a smooth transition.
Either in Roman times, or about 30 years ago, by the Frantics. If you like that, the rest of the album is on YouTube as well.
Well you'd need to get most americans to pass grade 12, I hear that is hard to do now with the shambles their education system is in
Imperial measurements are more intuitive. I can visualize common measurements in inches, feet, and miles *FAR* more easily than centimeters, meters, and kilometers. Don't get me wrong, I can usually process metric measurements reasonably well, but it still takes me a few seconds to go from "42cm" to "about this long"; if I hear "about 16 inches", I don't even have to think about it, my brain just visualizes it with no noticeable effort.
Granted, that's probably because grew up using a lot of Imperial and almost no Metric, but it's still a valid point. Until the US gets a generation of people, a significant portion of which grow up using just as much Metric as Imperial, we're going to stick to what's easiest for us to use.
Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
I'm an architect, and I'll tell you that the building industry is so entrenched in imperial measurements I haven't used my metric scale in five years. Every single product is based on imperial dimensions, meaning design, coordination, and calculation require the same.
Some examples: joist spacing tables display span lengths for 16" and 24" on center spacings. These tables are everywhere and they've been around unchanged forever. All the plywood sub-flooring is in 48" x 96" sheets. Works great for either joist spacing and in either horizontal or vertical orientation. If you buy a house in the US, standard is an 8' ceiling, "up scale" is 9', exclusive is 10'. (Who would know the status of a 2600mm ceiling?!) Studs are already available and pre-cut to accomplish these heights. Drywall is sold in these lengths. Concrete and soil are measured in cubic yards, roofing by square, carpeting by yard, ceiling tiles in 24" squares, etc. The International Building Code (what most of us use) gives dimensions in Imperial dimensions, including sprinkler head spacing, floor loading requirements, floor-to-floor, allowable areas, etc. Think about it, every plumbing, gas, and sanitary drain system connecting your building to infrastructure is calculated in imperial from engineering tables more than fifty years old. Tape measures are all imperial as is surveying equipment. The entire commercial real estate market is in imperial, changing to metric would crush every agent and developer trying to calculate pro-forma for all real estate in the country. Lumber mills and woodworking equipment that has been around for years and that produce moldings, doors, boards, handrails, furniture, etc., are all imperial. Existing surveys, architectural drawings, engineering calculations, and every other kind of specification, calibration, documentation, regulation, etc. in the building industry is imperial, doing a simple renovation or addition (actually >50% of the building industry) would require the overhead of converting all existing information prior to proceeding.
I've worked on several metric buildings. It takes about two days to get into the swing of it. From an architect's view, scaling and plotting drawings is much simpler than imperial. Not having to deal with foot-inches is easier, too. (Although everybody seems to disagree about whether to use m, cm, or mm. We have native metric users that can't even agree on that.) But it doesn't take long before somebody starts discussing "hard" vs. "soft" metric and wondering if buying 900 mm doors will cost 50% more than 36" doors, if a wheelchair can still fit through it, and where they might come from in the local market if they can even be found. About a day later the whole endeavor goes down the tube when one party in the process gets nervous. We usually switch to "soft" metric for a few weeks (designing in imperial but also stating metric on the drawings) and then abandon the entire metric effort in favor of imperial. The only way a project will stay in true hard metric is if it is being built overseas.
We're going to have to go metric one system at a time. First was soda bottles. Then automobiles. Science is there, and a lot of SI units are becoming comfortable on food packaging. The building industry is going to have to do the same, I predict in places where highly manufactured components interface with imperial ones in a relatively unimportant way. (Think windows cut into a wall.) Commercially, roof membranes are specified in mm and many other components are manufactured in hard metric dimensions with proximal imperial values (like thicknesses of drywall and plywood). But things like bricks, lumber, and plumbing pipe may take a while.
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
Obviously america knows best........its just waiting... in the dark like chuck norris..... to convert the entire world back.... ha!
But on a serious note, they are worried about the economical issues. Probably scared that the americans who make tools in the ancient scale, will be out of jobs.....that cheaper overseas tools will flood there market.
But im pretty sure most tools have both measurements that are made outside of america. In australia tape measures have both metric and imperial! llol
There are however notable exceptions.
The UK is metric with the exception of speeds that are still marked and posted in miles / miles per hour.
The US is imperial with the exception of powdered drugs which are measured and sold metrically.
And no matter where you live, a penis is always imperial, never metric. I have no idea why, but saying you have a 12 inch cock sounds better than saying its 30.48 cms.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
I think we should go back to the old system, where things were measured in terms of barleycorns, shaftments, cubits, furlongs and leagues.
For example, a Butt is twice the volume of a hogshead, which ends up being 128 gallons. That's what Wikipedia says anyway, and I'm too lazy to convert it to liters. :)
Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
WAR WAS BEGINNING
You give them an inch and they take a mile.
None whatsoever.
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
...You can have my Imperial system of units when you pry it from my cold, dead 10.16cm.
The real reason is that, subconsciously, US citizens woe the day they left the British empire. They have a deep, age-old yearning to go back into the fold, and thus cherish this last remnant of britishness.
Last I heard, they are also starting to have those quaint tea parties, too. I'm holding out for the day they trade pancackes for scones!.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Finnaly someone with some dammed brains, who isn't caughtup on the USA is stupid vs all Europeans are flags dialectric. I nominate the turd as the universal unit of mass on the planet earth. 1 turd is equivalent to 2.2 pound Or exactly 1 kg. This will make everyone happy because turds aren't gay. Also it is based something that is eminatley relateable.
Also rather then use base 10. We should use base 60. That way in a few million years everyone would have 60fi
fingers due to evolution. People with extra fingers would be better at counting, and we all know that mathematicians get all the chicks.
Â
Because they were good enough for Jesus!
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Because the imperial system was such an unbelievable bitch to learn in the first place that we don't want to know anything else. We're like the emotionally scarred wife who stays with her abusive husband.
Manufacturing also. Most pcb etchers require and do business in imperial measurements. Many extrusions and dies are imperial. Just look at cyclists who get their fancy Italian bicycle parts and are all confused about if their 31.8mm handlebars will fit in their 31.7mm stem. Well... they are both the same size: 1.25 inches. Big money is tied up in manufacturing equipment and will dictate what industry uses. Common people are really irrelevant here.
The governments of the rest of the world simply regulated that the metric system must be used on all products and signs by a particular date. This is what happened here in Australia and no one really cared. All of the speed limits changed, milk started coming by the litre instead of the pint, car engines quoted in Kilowatts etc...
If the US government did this I think Americans would see it as an attack on their freedom to choose. It would be seen as socialism.
Australians and I think most of the western world don't see this type of thing as socialism, more just sensible regulation to put them in step with the rest of the world.
So since the people will always have the freedom to choose and are not regulated by standards, they will stay with what they know. For the US to move to metric would probably require quite a substantial cultural change.
(except for Liberia & Burma, the only other two countries that don't use the metric system)
Maybe we just like the sophisticated company.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Although complicated to convert units, one reason for it's success is how practical the units are. Such as a foot, and inch. Most objects in everyday life can be estimated easily with a few inches, or a few feet. But not with the metric system. Then you are stuck with something being 15 centimeters, which isn't easy to deal with or estimate. Maybe if people used decimeter, but they don't.
pounds measure weight...grams/kilograms are a measure of mass...my mass is the same whether on Earth or Luna...but my weight differs...
No. A lot more than three countries use the Imperial system of measurements. From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_measurement_system#Other_countries): "Petrol is still sold by the imperial gallon in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Burma, the Cayman Islands, Ecuador, Grenada, Guyana, Sierra Leone and the United Arab Emirates." But hey, those other places don't matter! It's only three countries!
Enough said!
Weight is measured in kg, force in Newton. There is a difference between the two, you know.
Weight is a force and is measured in newtons. Mass is measured in kilograms. There is a difference between the two but clearly you did not know!
In the US, the spirit of rugged individualism is held up an an ideal to aspire to. In the US, the government imposing mandates saying "You WILL use THIS system." is likely to result in a backlash. More so than in many other places.
Look at the recent health care legislation. There are arguments pro and counter, but Americans hear that they won't have a choice and they freak the fuck out. So much so that they gave one house of Congress to the opposition party just to slow that kind of thing down.
Personally, I still don't *think* in metric. I am 6'1". I would have to do math to figure out exactly how many meters that is.
I have to mentally convert km to miles to get a mental picture of distances.
I don't expect the US to convert in my or my childrens' lifetimes.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
.. that if they give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile.
Three Squirrels
troll no, rude yes, true yes, over-generalized yes; he forgot moron politicians, and many other people who are to old to ever see basic math becoming easy enough to justify the change
warning pointless sig
Bit late now, but it's rather a pity that the Metric system couldn't have had imperial equivalences. There is no good reason why the metre couldn't have been 100 inches, or why the gram couldn't have been defined as 1/1000 pound. Actually, some engineers do: the "mil" is 0.001 inch - most electronic components use a 0.1" pin-spacing.
But I admit it doesn't matter whether you call it centimeter or inch or measure the distance by the eyebrow length of the great communicator Ronald Reagan.
Call it the freedom fighting anti-communist inch of the greatest empire on earth, if you wish. And make it twice as long as every other country's unit.
Doesn't really matter.
What matters, is the fucked up unit system within the imperial system.
Let's say you want to convert 1/8 inch rainfall to gallons per square yard? Yes, doable, sure. In the metric system however it's just counting zeros and shifting a decimal point.
A meter has 100 centimeter, so a square meter has a 100x100 square centimeter, or 10000. Easy, just count zeros. Liters in a cubic meter? Easy. Kilograms per square centimeter to tons per square meter? Easy, just counting zeros.
But square inch to square feet? Square miles? floz to gallon?
And if that isn't bad enough, add all the competing units used in the US. Air pressure is a different unit when the air is in the atmosphere or in the tire. For energy, there are different units depending on whether it is an air conditioner, a furnace, a car, what company I get the energy from, and whether the second Friday after Lincoln's birthday falls on a full moon.
The difference to the metric system is not, that inch and cm are different. The beauty of the metric system is that you have a consistent system. And that's why scientific calculations are usually done in metric and the result is then transfered back to imperial, so the US public won't get worried that the French took over, communists gained control of the class room, or that their politicians betrayed the greatest conceivable nation on earth.
Well it's way too late to posting anything you want anyone to actually read, but I remember my grandparents had a brochure in their car from some gas station that was titled "America's Switching to Metric!" and explained how the gas station was switching to selling gas in liters and how that didn't affect the price of gas, etc. etc.
That must have been from the mid-70s sometime.
Well for dumb asses such as above in construction (excepting industrial) all of our materials are imperial. A condo for example the plans are in metric then you have to sit there with a calculator for a week and convert all the measurements to imperial. Why? Because it is easier to work with. All engineering for concrete (except for compression tests which are in Mpa) as well as wood structure is done in imperial. It is much easier to add/subtract fractions than decimals whether expressed as a traditional fraction or in the following format 12-6-6 representing 12 feet, 6 inches, 3/8 inch (6/16) . Most job site calculations are done with pen and paper rather than calculators.
Just learn both systems. It isn't hard to learn both.
the Political Inquirer
Because they are, by and large, human derived. It's a system that, like most 'native' systems, arose from daily human uses and generally reflect daily human needs, and the scales appropriate to them.
The anonymous post that is the parent of this comment is marked as a troll, but, honestly, it's just a statement of fact. The truth is that in the U.S. politicians are afraid of offending the majority of people, and a significant amount of them are just a bunch of redneck morons. We tried this in the 1970s, when the President was from Georgia and we thought we might be able to sell it to the rednecks, but they went apeshit. The only thing we got out of that was soda in two-liter bottles. (Glass in '76 ... plastic in the early 80s.) But you can't blame this problem on urban drug dealers. They sell their coke in grams and kilos.
Same reason I spend 15-20 minutes shaving every other day with a straight razor rather than use a 20 cent plastic blade. Because we can. What is this fervor for homogeneity in every aspect of our lives? Countries have differences. Maybe there is some hidden cost adding up to billions but the same argument could be made to those stubborn European countries refusing to switch to English as their national language... If nothing else think of it as adding little local flavor to your trip should you come to visit us in the states...
god man, dont you know your history?
From the episodes of Top Gear I've seen, Britain is still using imperial units.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Volume and mass are defined based on a cube (length^3) of water and its specific gravity. Doesn't sound too specific to our planet.
Well I don't know which planet you are referring to as "our" but here on planet Earth the SI units of volume are defined using the length unit (metre) alone. Mass is based on a lump of platinum-iridium alloy kept in Paris. However there is an attempt to replace this with a more fundamental measurement based on a perfect sphere of pure silicon.
If there's a huge cost in switching to metric, then according to the logic the world has been putting into action in recent years - it should stimulate the economy to switch everything over. It should increase spending, as everyone has to buy new stuff. So, is the lack of switching, a sign of some type of logical fallacy or hypocrisy when it comes to what is believed to be our economic needs?
Well, we shouldn't be measuring fuel in volume anyway. It's the mass that's important, and in the thin layer about the earth where we actually drive, weight is a decent proxy for mass and can be measured with simple pressure transducers or strain gauges. No need to have a buggy mechanical float literally in the tank...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Everyone seems to be missing something really obvious to me. Look at the wall, and point at the place that's 1/3 of the way up from the bottom. Now look at the wall, and point at the place that's 6/10 of the way up from the bottom. You are likely to be both faster and more accurate with the former than with the latter. Humans seem to naturally think in base 12, and have to be taught how to eyeball in base 10. So because our numerical system is decimal, it is relatively easy to do mechanical measurements, and thus engineering and scientific work, in decimal - which immediately makes metric easier. But for human estimations, imperial measurements are often easier. In the end, whatever you are taught is what you know best, and I tend (because of my engineering training) to think in metric more than in imperial units. But it's not as if there's no reasonable basis for using imperial units.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Even the most ultra-hard-core, metric-leaning Slashdotter prefers to measure his hard drive in units of Libraries of Congress,. . . Some things just work better,. . . ;-)
When they, the SI crowd, start using metric time I say it's "time" the USA switches to SI/metric for everything also.
Others have noted Canada as having switched in the 1970's. But even with almost 2 full generation, it is still far from a "metric" country. The examples in the comments talk about km vs miles. And we do buy gas by the litre. But folks in this country (even kids in elementary) will tell you how much they weigh in pounds (not kilograms) and how tall they are in feet and inches (not centimeters) . The "square footage" of the house you live in (not the square meters). Recipes are in cups and teaspoons and we cook at 375F. Coke is in 2 litre bottles - but it is in the US as well. Other than long distances driving in kilometers and temperature in degrees celsius, 40+ years has not converted the country. And even when we buy gas by the litre and drive in kilometers, NO ONE knows what the hell X l/100KM means - EVERYONE talks "miles per gallon".
Well that would be an amazing coincidence.
Hardly. Given that there are only two countries, other than the US, on the planet not using metric I'd have actually thought it would be an amazing coincident to meet an alien who did NOT use metric. Since I used to have a green card I even used to be one of them. ;-)
Throwing out old stuff that "still works" and "relearning" and "starting over" and "migration" and "dependencies" (both upstream and downstream) and the confusion of transitional periods are all fears from decision makers that prevent progress.
The reason we don't move on to "better things" in general is easiest to describe as critical mass.
For me, the resistance has always been that I have an intuitive understanding of the translation between the imperial system and the real world. This is something that I, despite repeated attempts over many years, have never been able to truly develop with the metric system. I can tell if something is half a mile, a mile, or ten miles away. But I can't ever seem to tell if something is a kilometer or five from me.
Se vi advocate por a single sistemo da measurement al esti
used en la mondo, fari vi ankau advocate por a single lingvo
al esti used tutmonda kiel nu?
danki vi por any information.
Who cares we all speak diferent languages anyway so if con't convert to your sytem- who cares
Joe
I recall in school they tried to get us to think metric, the math books had the conversions, and we had the class supplies for metric education... Its amazing they finally got liters in soft drinks.
I also remember for a time many California Mile signs had both metric and imperial distances, those have been replaced back to imperial it seems.
Nowadays I think more in pixels or points than inches.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
that's funny, because in ours (Australia uses metric) our drug dealers sells in ounces and pounds.
I was considering this comment rude before I read other comments about pros and cons and finally it is somewhat accurate.
Achille Talon
Hop!
As a Canadian, I wouldn't mind the US converting. We have to be on this half and half system where I can tell you how many feet and inches I am, but have no idea how many centimetres tall I am. I can tell you how many square feet in an acre (which, btw, is one furlong by 1 chain!), but not a great idea of the size of a hectare (I mean, I know how big it is, but when estimating sizes, I have no idea).
On the other hand, I quote weather in Celsius, know how relatively fast 100 Km/h is, and I know how much 1 Litre of cola is.
I would think that working in metric would be much easier and less error prone especially in engineering and construction:
Off the top of your head which set is faster:
1/4" + 3/16"
24" + 6.5'
7/8" + 1/2" - 1/4"
Or
6.5mm + 4.5mm
60cm + 2m
2.2cm + 1.2cm - 63mm
Given that you can convert millimeters to centimeters to meters by just moving the comma or adding 0's I would recon it's much faster than calculating/remembering how many inches is in a foot, how many foot is in a mile or how many miles in a hogshead.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Just as it was for EVERY OTHER nation on the planet. They all coped.
the utter irony...in the US only rednecks use the term "recon"
Companies stick with obsolete software despite much better options...it's a royal PITA (and expensive) to convert from a system that still "works" for those using it.
Along the same lines, you'd think someone would develop an "international standard" measurement of time that is base 10 instead of 60 x 60 x 24.
The US is a big country so it takes a while to change things....but for a larger country like the US it would be very expensive and take a long time.
Sorry but that's no excuse. Canada switched relatively quickly and if you care to check we are somewhat larger than the US. If you want to talk population have a look at India. Both did it over about 7 years. So as a smaller country than Canada with a far smaller population than India surely the US could manage to switch in even less time than that?
I'm for the us. I graduated high school last year. If you asked me how to convert standard units to other units forget about it! We did everything in metric at school. We also leaned standard but i didn't bother remembering any of it, and we never used it in the science classes, etc. Heck i know soda is sold in fluid onces. (which by the way makes no sense) But, i have no idea what a fluid once is. Yet, under that it says 500mls. I'm like okay i know what that is. Besides speed, and working on cars, temperature, and gallons (sorta), i have no use for the standard / American system, and I'm dead serious. I also know a gallon is about 3 liters.
Can you please just stop calling it the English System? The English don't use it and here, and most places I know, it's called the Imperial System.
Hell, if you called it "British Imperial", you'd probably dump it into Boston Harbour within 5 years...
Most people keep only a handful of measurements in their heads. Their height, their weight, the volume of their gas tank maybe a few more. Is it really that much harder to remember "my car takes 45 liters of gas" than "my car takes 10 gallons of gas"?
Or SI (which I hear is technically different) is how they have screwy prefixes. I mean take 10^3 which is kilo. You'd think that'd be upper case 'K' and that the inverse would be 'k'. Actually it's 'k' and 'm' respectively.(You wouldn't believe how many times I confused milli with micro. Yes I know milli is latin for a thousand but why did they use that then turn around and use Greek kilo?) Yet for other prefixes, yotta for example, they do exactly this. (Doing a quick look on wiki it looks like they used latin for the negative powers and greek for positive powers but why they got rid of all those weird imperial gotchas that were known by common folk just to turn around and start chucking in latin/greek gotchas is beyond me.) To be even more confusing Mega (10^6) is M which makes you think upper case means positive powers.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The french were instrumental in bringing about the metric system and we oppose all frog initiatives.
Because hitting a home run 122 meters over a center field wall just doesn't sound right. Go America!
A system (Imperial) that requires a tiny bit of thought isn't automatically bad, it may actually be good. Besides, as you may have noticed, we all seem to be able to deal with 60 seconds in a minutes, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and ~365 days in a year. If you can do time, you can to Imperial units!
There's nothing wrong with the imperial system as long as you passed 8th grade math an understand fractions. If you're into particle physics... yea, metrics the way to go because that's what all the papers are written in. If you're anywhere in-between, you'll do fine with whichever systems handy.
U.S. Interstate 19 is the strangest thing to come out of our failure to convert to metric.
Because we can.
One part of metrics includes the use of Centigrade over Fahrenheit. I don't know why other countries use C over F as F defines apparent temperature quite well compared to C. Instead of having to remember odd numbered temps, ironically, Fahrenheit can be broken into ranges of 10. Below 20 frigid, 20-30 freezing, 30-40 very cold, 40-50 cold, 50-60 very cool, 60-70 cool, 70-80 comfortable, 80-90 warm, 90-100 very warm, 100 and up hot. I haven't a clue how to remember these ranges in C and I imagine most who use F are confused as well by C.
The UK system is arguably worse - they use an ugly hybrid of metric and imperial. Weights and volumes are in metric, but distances are imperial.
As with the U.S., it just needs a government with balls to make the change.
>> why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?
Is it the general public that clings, or Corporate America? Granted, the average citizen might be confused for a year or two, but if mfgs used both units on their packaging for a year or so, and Corporate America committed to convert, it could be done easily. Stop blaming the poor slob, and put the responsibility where it belongs - on the mfgs!
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
People confuse what is complicated, they think metric system is, while only conversions are. Let me tell you - you already use metric system when it comes to buying goods: $1 = 100 cents.
Measuring in 1m is way easier than adding weird numbers like 1/4 + 7/32 + 3/64.
On the same note I am glad we do not buy things using imperial system: 12c = $1, 36c = $3 = $10.
I mean, sure, the rest of the 'Western' world evolved from eating with sticks centuries ago. Why does China cling to this archaic form of food consumption?
I'm an American physicist, but I don't care if the country ever switches. And to my ears, outsiders who complain about our usage of Imperial units sound a lot like the stereotypical American tourist who asks "Why do all the street signs have to be in French?" Or "Chinese would be so much easier if they got rid of the tones, or wrote everything in Roman script."
Every educated American should be familiar with the metric system, just as every educated human nowadays probably needs some passing familiarity with English. But I'm perfectly happy to be "bilingual".
(And who the heck decided that it was a good idea for the tiny little "gram" to be the basic unit of mass? Or that the connection between length and volume isn't 1 cubic meter = 1 liter, no; it's 1 cubic centimeter = 1 milliliter. Sure, that makes buckets of sense. And no one's rushing out to define a decimal second either. The metric system might be slightly more convenient, but it's hardly the apex of human invention.)
It's people like you that make me mad... we give you an inch and you take a kilometer!
What's up with this box everyone has to think inside of or outside of? Why does there have to be a box?
I use metric. If something's 30 degrees, I say so, and let the imperialist take the time to figure out the conversion. Sort of a douche that way, but whatever. This is Earth. We Use Metric Here.
Because we Americans are lazy and under educated and ignorant and God says we're always right so fuck everyone else and grab a beer and watch TV and shut the fuck up, you hippy liberal.
Don't worry, we don't think the less of you all in the States for it. Well, that's not actually true, we think it's kinda cute and sweet that you have your precious little antique measurement systems - aww, how retro! - but we figure eventually you'll grow out of it and become a proper country.
Speak for your self. I'm twenty. As far as I care teaching Imperial measurements is a way of giving Alzheimer's syndrome to children.
The real reason is that there's nothing special about base 10. Base 16 would do just as well, if not better.
Let me give an example. The whole world ships stuff in containers now.
These containers are all 20 feet, 40 feet or 46 feet long (the US defined the sizes, so they are in feet).
Do you know how much cost all the countries incur shipping stuff in these "odd size" containers?
None. It's just not an issue.
It's the same in reverse. Every American should know both systems and use what's appropriate for each case. There's just not a huge advantage to changing systems, which is probably why so many things haven't changed.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I am a scientist 1st, but an amateur chef a very close 2nd and I live in the US.
In my scientific life, I of course use metric. Nothing else makes sense.
In my cooking life, I've adapted recipes from the 2000s, 1900s, 1800s, 1700s and, yes 1600s. It's bad enough interpreting archaic English wordings and "gas mark" oven settings to degrees Fahrenheit. If I had to translate my 100s, if not 1000s of recipes to kg, ml and celsius as well, I might as well give up and just order Pizza Hut the rest of my life.
Other "specialties" I've heard with similar concerns. Try breaking down a '68 Mustang with a metric wrench. Try measuring for a replacement truss on the Golden Gate Bridge with a metric tape measure.
I don't see it as a concern, anyway. I "grok" that a liter is "a little more than a quart," that a meter is a "little more than a yard." Celsius I usually need to do the math, but that comes up less often. What's the big deal?
I was considering this comment rude before I read other comments about pros and cons and finally it is somewhat accurate.
Accuracy is often rude, at least to some.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
What gets me knotted up is the fractions of an inch. Having to continually try to figure out what is 1/64" more than 7/8". That kind of thing is much easier in metric: what is 0.5mm more than 16.5mm ? No sweat.
Could they really not have defined 1" = 25.6mm ?
Nullius in verba
And why do we still use QWERTY keyboards?
We're used to it. The very recognizable pain of changing it outweighs the perceived benefit to most people.
All US scientists use SI. For the rest of us, we have as much right asking why all the other countries don't use the dollar as their currency.
Pride. Cultural inertia. No perceived need for it.
But that's just familiarity. If you grew up under a metric system, were taught metric in school and saw metric measurements in everyday objects (other than the 2 liter soda bottles...) then you'd be able to visualize 1 kilometer just as easily as you could visualize 1 mile today.
The issue here is that it will take a generation (or more) to make that transition, during which time all the big nobs will feel increasingly isolated as they're more quickly overtaken by these 'new math' thinkers. Inertia is comforting.
-- Always borrow money from a pessimist; they don't expect to be paid back.
What's really funny is this is exactly how I learned how to convert from metric to imperial and back again.
Off the top of my head, I know that there are 28 grams in an ounce, 16 ounces in a pound and 2.2 pounds in a kilo.
If we want to deal with fractions really quickly,
Kilofeet, centipounds, deciyards and my favorite milliacres.
How many nanopints in a kilogallon?
The military says "klik" for kilometers. It can be done
I don't think you're allowed to say "klik" or Nam with the a sounded as in ham, unless you were in "Nam". Of course I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek here; but "klik" really does seem to crop up mostly in the context of vets talking about their Vietnam experience. It seems odd for anybody else to say it.
Obviously this is a sensitive issue for many Americans. I think "kay" is just fine. I wouldn't touch "klik" with a 10-foot... err.. umm. 3.3-meter pole.
metric is a concise system based on 10 that even an imbecile can understand
That's why metric is a good choice for imbeciles. Sorry, you left yourself wide open on that one.
metric is a concise system based on 10 that even an imbecile can understand
Funny, but in the US 7 year olds master imperial units too. At least they did in the 1950s when I was 7.
P.S. - relax, I know metric is better for today and I don't have any problem with it. But I'm also not hung up on it. Either one works, and it's trivial to convert using calculators or computers. Actually, if you start with a knowledge of imperial, it really is child's play to learn metric, but not so much vice versa. Hmmm, maybe, just maybe, brain exercise is a Good thing.
Base 12 has 6 Factors: 1,2,3,4,6,12
Base 10 has 4 Factors: 1,2,5,10
I'll stick with the system which has more factors.
Let me know the next time you need to divide something by 3 or 4.
Because fuck you, that's why!
hits and wipes out the metric system? Hmm? Those of you that know how to measure in feet and what an uplifted middle finger means will rule the world, again!
"why does the general public in the US still cling to their customary system of units?" ...?
Is this a rhetorical question
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
We all know the issue is the US think they are the best. Not......
Yes we all know they are dragging the anchor
Anyone know why they are so Slow...
Come on US wake up and get in the real world not your own as no one wants to be in that one...
Being a US resident from birth I have asked myself this same question many many many times. Why do we not change over to a simple system that everyone can use and understand. Lets make the change and spend all this great "stimulus" money on changing out road signs for the next 5 years. Make them dual metric/imperial when you change them and then slowly faze them out to just use the metric system in 10 years or something.
Try being in aviation in the US. At any given time I can be juggling: Distance: statue miles, nautical miles Speed: miles per hour, feet per second, feet per minute, knots, mach, feet per mile (climb rate) Pressure: inches of mercury, millibars, PSI, Pascals (very rarely) Weight: pounds, tons, gallons Everything uses a random unit. It's a mess but it works, and I suppose that's why it's stuck around.
Etienne: One kilometer. Françoise: Two. Etienne: Richard? Richard: I dunno; I'm American. Etienne: So? Richard: I think in miles, not kilometers.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
I'm not sure if Americans are aware of this, but imperial units are actually used almost worldwide in some circumstances. For example in aviation, altitude is measured by feet (except in Russia?). Television and monitor screens are measured by inches in many (most?) countries.
So the concept of imperial units like inches is not totally unfamiliar to us. Especially inches. But most units like yards, feet, pounds and gallons are only familiar from American television and cinema.
I've seen this argument many times. A popular argument for the metric system vs the imperial system is asking to convert furlongs to inches or something like that. But you never really need to convert furlongs to inches because they are used for different things. It's nice to have twelve inches to a foot because you can get halves, thirds, fourths, and sixths of a foot easily. Most liquid measures are powers of two, 2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon. Sure, most people who don't deal with binary have trouble figuring that there's 16 cups to a gallon, but how often do they need to know that?
Granted, there would be many advantages to having a single standard around the world, whether it was the metric or the imperial, but I don't really think the metric is inherently superior.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Base 10 is a convenient scale to use mathematically, it eases calculation. It is not, however, necessarily the best base to use for representing the real world. For instance, A decimeter is 10 centimeters, and you can easily split it in half at 5 centimeters each or into fifths at 2 centimeters each. A foot with 12 inches can be split in half, thirds, quarters and sixths while using whole numbers. For fractions of an inch, the measure seems a bit inconvenient but at its root is base 2 and presents some very convenient division. Fluid measure is also mostly base 2, with a gallon being 4 quarts, 8 pints, 16 cups or 128 fluid ounces.
And the US officially uses SI/Metric anyhow. We just use Imperial measure as well. And those units are still understood and used by people in Canada and the UK -- probably other places as well. The little stripes that tell how tall someone is when walking out of a bank or convenience store in Canada measure in feet and inches, not centimeters. At the folk level, these are the units that have been used for a whole lot longer than meters, and will continue to be understood by anybody who has ever read a book/song/poem/play/film that talked about miles, gallons, quarts, cups, pounds, etc. Those references happen with surprising frequency, and I've not seen a Canadian (in particular) ever ask for help converting a reference from those units because they didn't get the reference. And do you ever hear the cry in a pub in London for someone to come over and have 500 ml, or are the offered a pint?
I like SI/Metric, and am relatively conversant in it. It's great for technical uses for all of the reasons everybody has already mentioned. Base 10 measures are great in a base 10 number system. But base 2 measures aren't that hard to deal with, either. 8 oz in a cup, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon -- not that hard. Pretty life-sized stuff, really.
I use metric (Australian) but I do believe the old Imperial measures have better sounding names.
It's much easier to say "mile" than "kilometer", "inch" instead of "centimetre", "pound" over "kilogram".
Get the syllable count down to a manageable number and folks will flock to the new system. Seriously. Best-used words have a low syllable count.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Because the US secretly wants to be invaded by the British and pay big tax!
sure, why don't we all just use the Euro too. yen and dollar are so 1998
How could you sell "5 dollar foot longs" ??
or advertise your product that it is less fattening "Don't Pinch More Than an Inch"
how about that pint of beer ?
or the quarter pounder !!
if metrics was the standard we would not have these jingles ingrained into our heads and just maybe we could relate to a kilogram or a decameter .
while doing some basic research for this tripe i came across 2 articles that i thought shined a better light on why imperial has been with us for all these years .
the pounds and ounces man hits it right on the head . feet and pounds are more human and just work when asking for something .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/3794278/Pint-of-beer-and-the-metric-mile-safe-after-Europe-backs-down.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-454095/Hes-pounds-ounces-man-So-does-Tom-Utley-doubts-EU-victory.html
You get 1/2 1/3 1/4 1/6. Try doing that with Metric without having lots of decimal points. Shoot lets change our numbering system over to base 12!! We can make up 2 new symbols or use some existing ones... I suggest the one Prince used and and $ since Ka$ha is using that one. Then we just need to get the world to do that as well. A carpet bombing campaign would work nicely.
Actually six fingers on each hand would help as a lot too. Science needs to work on opposable thumb #2!
So in conclusion I and probably think of at least $ reasons why we should switch to base 12. Plus we could keep inches. ... But screw the mile thing... 5280 or in the new system 3080 is not rounded enough. 1728 ft would be better.
I firmly believe that the metric system is really superior in a lab, and maybe in artificial units but i find the fact that the SI system is based off of an easy to relate to system. maybe i am an oddity, but i am an average size american male, just shy of 6 foot tall, 5foot 11 and 3/4ths from when i bought life insurance. I wear a size 11.5 shoe and i find the standard system to work quite well for me in real life. my foot is actually with in 5% of the SI foot unit so guess what if i want to measure something i can walk it heal to toe and get a good idea of what it is. also my stride is almost exactly 3 feet, now i find it very easy to pace off large distances and be fairly accurate. i also can walk 1 mile every 20 minutes, and have it be almost on the money. at the same time i can walk up to a horse, pick a part on my body where its sholder is and use my hand to get how tall the horse is with in a half in every time... (hands are not very common SI units but they are very useful, again my hand is almost 4" wide) again i think that the metric system is very useful for converting between units, but i think standard units are much easier for mere mortals to relate to
Not sure what their reasoning was for putting on the brakes, but sadly I was taught metric and not imperial, then they never switched. Thanks Jimmy Carter for nothing.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
It's frustrating for us though when you air your documentaries in Canada, and are quoting ounces, Fahrenheit, yards, etc, since I honestly have no clue what you are talking about. I think it would be a nice gesture for us if you could at least subtitle the imperial measurements in metric or use both, if you must.
Actually Canada isn't as metric as you think. Due to our proximity to the U.S. (and our historical use of Imperial units), we've adopted a kind of a schizophrenic approach to units, and we've grown comfortable with it. Yes, we measure temperature in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, but I'm sure you've noticed that produce/meat/fish are quoted in lbs (some grocery stores use kg, and a lot of people are thrown off by that). We measure distances in meters and kilometers, but colloquially, we say a person is 6"2' 180lbs (very few people know their height and weight in cm and kg). Our air conditioners are rated in Btu's rather than Watts. Canadian football fields are measured in yards. We buy 2 x 4s from Home Depot. And while our store bought beverages are in 350ml packages, at a bar we buy our beer in pints. Flat screen TVs? The Best Buy brochure says they're 52" instead of 132.08 cm.
In engineering, imperial units are still widely used. In engineering school, we spent 1/3 of a course in first year becoming familiar with both the SI and Imperial systems, and learning to convert between them (i.e. dimensional analysis... it's not as trivial as you think when you have to convert vapour and liquid compound properties, e.g. from SCFM to m3/s, you have to know what the standard conditions are). I think personally it's great that Canadian engineering graduates are trained in both systems.
The fact is, imperial units are just more natural for some things and less so for others. The same can be said of metric... especially for very small or very large quantities (e.g. Intel's 45nm process instead of 1.77165354e-6" process).
With America's bond rating about to hit the shitter and rising deficits due to outsourcing and corporations moving money in tax heavens why should they switch?
What cost savings would it save? Companies already invested in systems that do the conversion so there is no cost savings anymore to change the status quo. Infact, many systems would have to be rewritten and it would actually cost money to change.
America has more important problems like paying health care and reducing the deficit then to make a few nerds happy.
Argue all you want about the metric being somehow superior, it is not. It is only a set of measurements. Nothing less and nothing more. It is not really that big of a deal regardless of what the universities say. Numbers are numbers.
http://saveie6.com/
Imperial units are convenient. Not convenient to convert between but convenient within their domain. Inches are handy for measuring small lengths; feet and yards for somewhat longer lengths and miles are good for large distances. Same for cups, quarts and gallons; ounces, pounds and tons, etc.
I don't want 250ml of coffee; I want a cup of coffee. I don't want half a litre of beer; I want a pint of beer (the Brits were smart about not forcing this one).
Imperial units evolved to their current values because the quantities worked out well for the things people needed to measure. Recipes make a great example. Lots of recipes call for odd quantities of various ingredients when given in metric but the same recipe is straight forward in Imperial units like fractions or multiples of cups and teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, etc. The result of the recipe (using either units) works out to a nice serving of whatever. The required Imperial units are easy but the metric units aren't to achieve that result.
Metric is great for conversion between units but I don't usually need to scale up a recipe by a factor of ten or one hundred.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I'm more worried about all those Arabic numerals in front of the units...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
<sarcasm>
For that matter, why does the whole world still insist on keeping track of time in a non-decimalized fashion? I mean 24 hours to a day, 60 minutes to an hour, whats that all about? Why not have a day divided into 10 units, and further subdivided on a base ten system? If it works for length, weight, area, and volume, why not time?
</sarcasm>
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
I have had too many students tell me an electron that passes through a weak field will end up with a velocity of something times 10 to the 9th power m/sec....faster than the speed of light. So even with ease of conversion between units, it is very easy to screw up if your brain is not turned on. Meanwhile, outside the classroom or engineering firm, it is very unusual to have to convert from miles to inches for anything practical, or for that matter from km to mm. The point about exports is also incorrect. The US and Canada are each others' largest trading partners, and I see no serious issues due to the fact that one country uses metric and the other doesn't. Finally, if a country converts, there is still the matter of legacy measurements, especially in areas like real estate, so the population needs to learn both metric, US units, plus the conversion factors between the two. So the argument that metric is simpler in this case won't hold.
Metric is easier. The big thing that put a big halt on the adoption was the gas crisis in the 1970's when gas creeped to $1.00 gallon. The difficulty was having to compare two standards against each other and the new standard was much more expensive for consumers. As gas pushed $1.00 per gallon. the display on many pumps could not display the higher prices. To prevent buying new pumps, some switched to Liters. Consumers soon found the cheap 35 cent / Liter gas was more expensive and later quit trying to compare prices as common knowledge was the metric gas was more expensive.
In products where we are not comparing metric and US, the metric standard has become the standard. Soda pop is only sold in metric sizes now. 12 and 16 oz are pretty much gone with 1 Liter 500 ml, 2 Liter etc sizes. Most bottled water is now in the 500 ml bottle. All hardware for mounting your flatscreen TV is all metric. Car engines are almost all metric. Serous, when was the last time you wanted to know how much your soda was in price per gallon? All comparison shopping is done is price per Liter for soft drinks except at the soda fountain where the cups are still 16, 32, 48, 64 oz.
The slow conversions is in entrenched measurements such as gasoline, kitchen recipes, temperature, etc where one is the standard and people still try to convert units. You tell them it is 24 degrees out and they want to know what that means in F. Having lived in another country I'm fine with metric as I was immersed in it and did not bother to convert. 21-24 is comfortable. 30 is really hot and 10 is time to grab a warmer coat.
If we started tearing down miles signs and mile markers and replacing them with Metric KM signs and changed the speed signs to 90, the country would soon adopt it. Most cars now can display either clicks or miles.
The truth shall set you free!
We just don't want to pay $4.00 for a liter of petrol
Pound is a good sized amount of food, while kg is too much and 100g is too little
Foot is the length of a human foot - makes it really easy to measure short distances
Inch is about the length between the tip of a man's thumb and the first joint
All other units of measure in the imperial system should be killed with fire.
Cant we just all switch to the LOC system?
1/4" + 3/16"
24" + 6.5'
7/8" + 1/2" - 1/4"
If you know a little VERY simple math these are nearly instant.
4/16 + 3/16 = 7/16
2' + 6.5' = 8.5'
7/8 + 4/8 - 2/8 = 9/8
It took me about the same amount of time to do as the metric examples. If it takes someone any significant time to work out these examples then they should go back to school and re-learn basic math.
Sapere aude!
In Canada, everything you buy is labelled in metric, road signs use metric units, doctors and hospitals use metric *but* ask the average Canadian what they weight and they'll give an answer pounds, ask them how tall they are and they'll give an answer in feet and inches. Go to a hardware store and they'll look at you blankly if you say you want so many metres of dowling, and we still use 2x4s, etc. Drives me freakin' batty. I always give my weight and height in metric, when asked, and I get a lot of blank looks (at which time I give an internal sigh and repeat them in imperial units). Engineers here still use imperial units; architects use 'em, too.
I much prefer metric, both because I'm used to thinking in those units (science background) and because it is more rational, but using them both concurrently is what I find most annoying....
FWIW, the imperial units were redifined in terms of metric units a while ago. So, officially, a foot is 0.3048m, a pound is 0.45359237kg, etc. Not that makes imperial units any more rational.
Blah (0.345 of an imperial meh)
Celsius is too imprecise compared to fahrenheit. To get the same precision you have to resort to fractions which is annoying when speaking or programming thermostats.
Celsius may be more standardizable but fahrenheit was designed to accomodate people rather than state transitions of water.
All of the other measures I have no opinion about. I think we should all at least have a rough idea of the scale and conversions between systems.
America (US) is special, you can't have a 2x4 up your ass in a metric system and the rest or the world will soon convert to the Imperial system anyway, so why bother?
Ease depends entirely on which system you're more comfortable working in. If you talk to a US carpenter who's been working in the trade for years, even if they dropped out of school and were "never any good at math" -- imperial will be easier for them because that's what they use on a daily basis.
Personally, I find adding and subtracting fractions to be second nature, since my my main hobby over the last decade has been woodworking, and that's what most everything here uses.
On the other hand, anything dealing with units at work is entirely metric, and I have no problem with that either -- the metalworking (another long-term hobby of mine) side of my shop is set up entirely in metric, but I tend to only use millimeters there.
The only thing I have a real preference in is temperature -- I like Celsius better than Fahrenheit. No real reason, though.
There's an easy way to combine the best of both worlds (metric and imperial): just start using base 12. We'd just have to invent digits for 9+1 and 9+2 (10 and 11 in the old base 10). Then suddenly we could have 1000 (actually 1728 in the old base 10) meters in 1 km, and yet be able divide a meter by 3 without having repeating decimals. Remember, now 3*4=10.
The only problem would be that people wouldn't be able to count to 10 using their fingers. Also, keyboards would have to be a bit wider to accommodate the new digits. But other than that, it should be a simple change!
I don't particularly like imperial measurements, but I'm not about to start throwing stones. My house is made of glass.
-- 'The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from' - Andrew Tanenbaum
What I never quite understood is, that you fought for independence with Britain and
yet you are clinging to the measurement system of your former owners (who
actually made the switch also already a while ago).
I say we measure in kellicams!
What is the stickiest part of this sort of migration? Property deeds.
If you think that inches, ounces, and acres are the least friendly of measurements, I suggest that you meander down to your local Hall of Records or a title insurance company's plant and look at how parcels of land are described. First you have have your "township" a six-mile by six-mile square identified normally by a grid location using a benchmark as the origin. Next comes your section: which one of those 36 square-mile bits is the property in.
Now it gets ugly. Each section is composed of 640 acres. You'll notice that this is not the square of an integer so you can't lay a grid out on it. Instead you get references to the "SW 40 acres of the NE quarter section". Eventually, you get to a point where square chunks of land can no longer be used to describe the parcel in question. Then comes the metes-and-bounds definition which will almost certainly still use rods and chains as the lengths of measure. I'm sure you can imagine the joy of describing a curved border via "w degrees of arc with a radius of x rods and an origin y rods distant from the SE corner of the NW quarter section along a bearing of z degrees W of N."
Finally, imagine the headache of switching to another system and having to resurvey every piece of property (presumably the next time it changed hands).
Where MILs is thousandths of an inch.
Even though the pins spacing on chips are described in millimeters, board fabrication in the US is still in MILs. The board designs are also in MILs. A switch to millimeter would potentially require a circuit redesign, but would most certainly require the board to be redesigned. It isn't enough to just convert to millimeters because the width of the trace is precisely controlled in units of MILs. The width of traces and the shape and placement of pads underneath chips on a circuit board are critical. It is a bit of a fudge to get pad placement in MILs to attach themselves correctly to a chip with lead spacing expressed in millimeters, but that is possible. There is already a lot of mechanical variance.
I have to ask myself why such a modest and plausible argument gets modded down from +4 Insightful to 0, Troll in less than one hour.
I think the reason we ( the USA ) does not switch is quite simple: Why fix what's not broken?
From a logical view, yes metric is easier to calculate in.
From a global view, yes metric would help us interact with other countries better.
But at the end of the day, I get by just fine with inches.
I don't care what other countries are doing simply because I don't deal with other countries. Not because of any prejudice or arrogance, but they are far away and whatever I'm looking for can usually be provided by someone closer to me, and that person doesn't use metric either.
If I could throw a switch, and make the US metric, I would. But switching requires doubling my costs. Two sets of drill bits, measuring tapes, screws, etc One in Metric one for SI. As a business, it does not make sense, financially, for me to change. (I know my use of it feeds the cycle of the next business using SI too, but the bottom line comes first.)
I think Douglas Adams answered this question best. There are three reasons:
1) Ignorance
2) Stupidity
and
3) Nothing else.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
Type into Google "7 miles to feet"
that was easier than thinking.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
A friend from Europe was giving me a hard time about the U.S. not switching to the metric system. He said the imperial system is just plain stupid. It doesn't make any sense. I told him that's why Europeans use the metric system. They aren't smart enough to figure out the imperial units like Americans are :-).
The units for the most part are logical. A foot is the length of your foot. Teaspoon, tablespoon. An inch is a joint in your finger, etc. I want to see a switch, but the adjustments will be deeper than changing road signs.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The metric system is the tool of the devil my car gets 40 rods to the hog's head and thats the ways i like it.
Real scientist here... astronomer, actually. And while we often use metric, and we never ever use Imperial units, we do often use units that are the natural scale. Mass is usually in solar masses; length can be in Astronomical Units (=the radius of the Earth's orbit around the sun), parsecs, or solar radii; power is in solar luminosities. And there's a good reason - knowing that a mass-to-light ratio is 2 M_sun / L_sun tells you a lot more than knowing that it is 10000 kg / Watt.
[TMB]
Metric is decimal because it was easier for people to convert that way. Well I say we switch to binary because it's easier for computer programmers to code that way.
Imperial is more "humanly" practical...
- For inches to feet, 12 is a really nice number. You can halve it, quarter it and third it. With base 10, you have a hard time with thirds -- and even quarters are not integers. Such measures are better for building.
- Miles are 8 furlongs (a furlong being the amount of distance an ox could plow before taking a rest), and the mile is also roughly equivalent to a roman measurement of 1000 paces -- that's a nice way to think about how far you should walk before taking a sip from your canteen. Sorry, but kilometers don't do it for me.
Imperial is simple for a human being to "visualize"...
- Inches are about a thumb-width -- it's a nice physical measure, and a nice rule of thumb.
- There are about 4 inches in a hand -- which is roughly knuckle to knuckle.
- There are three hands to a foot.
- The measure of a man's arm from fingertip to elbow is approximately a foot and a half -- a measure also known as a cubit.
- Yards of cloth in stores used to be commonly measured by hand -- by stretching out the cloth an arm-width away from the center of the body... When I was young I saw women at the cash register measuring out cloth by hand -- it was common-place.
- Teaspoons are teaspoons -- is there an convenient equivalent measure in metric for a sip of something?
- Tablespoons are tablespoons -- same again as teaspoons... Is there a ready replacement even on metric kitchen tables?
Imperial is better on the human stomach.
- A cup is a nice amount for your coffee. I don't want to ask for 225ml (or whatever) measure of coffee -- I want my darned cup.
- A pint and a quart are really nice measures for beer in the tummy. I DON'T WANT a Liter of beer. I want to "mind my pints and quarts."
- An ounce is a nice shot of liquor. I know three of them will put me down for the night.
With one of the largest organisations in the US, the military, using metric units extensively,
Not sure what your source is (personal anecdote? movies?), but I can't think of a single instance where we used Metric in the Navy, except where it is used exclusively (volts, amps, "9mm", but not power (sometimes watts, sometimes hp)). I'm speaking cross discipline as well (I was an electrician/nuclear operator, served time with security and qualified diesel and surface warfare). Not that your intent is wrong, but your appeal to authority is a bit weak. More curious is the fact that many of our American units have been redefined based on Metric measurements (e.g. a yard).
Speaking of units, why are nuclear bombs measured in tons of TNT? Then we get these silly numbers like a 100 megaton bomb. That's like like one hundred billion pounds of dynamite! Wow!
And I'm like, how much destruction does a pound of TNT do anyway? What the fuck does a megaton look like? How much space would a million tons of TNT take? Why don't we just use joules?
It's a common misconception, everyone says that everyone sticks to it, so they do. It's cultural inertia but there's no reason not to switch, and NOW. I'm all for switching.
Network effects, and the fact that the U.S. can be looked at as one of the most isolated countries (in terms of geography and culture) on Earth.
(Personally, I think there are advantages to both imperial and metric: estimating easier in the former, conversions easier in the latter.)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
There's really only reason: because, every year, some dipshit has to ask an inane question on Slashdot, and, barring any other inane news for the year, this question is available.
Why does Europe cling to socialism?
Why does China cling to social imperialism?
Why does Africa cling to poverty?
No, seriously. It's for the slashdot quota.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It works, why change it?
In addition, it would make the US much, much bigger. Most countries are small, and if measured in metric seem bigger (blah is x kilometers from end to end). In the US the area measurements would become ridiculously large, and might rupture people's brains.
112 kph. That's sounds fast, but that's a normal highway speed (70mph) in the Western US for people that don't consider themselves to be speeding.
All the mile marker signs will have to get 3-4 times bigger to fit the extra digits.
Exit numbers will be ridiculous. "I'm exit 784 on the NJ Turnpike."
All the glasses will have to be recalibrated. "I'll have a quarter liter of soda, please."
All the hamburger sizes will change. "I'd like a 100-gram burger, please."
Luckily illegal narcotics tend to be metric already, so at least that won't change.
There are some many hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and highways in the United States, and according to US Law, at the very least, the Interstate Highway System requires 1/10th Mile markers, with a reassurance sign every 10 miles or so (to remind you what road you are on, and considering New Jersey's mess of Interstates, that's an important feature) not to mention all the other road signs in the United States that AREN'T part of the Interstate Highway System. Speed limit, distance indicators, warnings, there's JUST LOTS OF SIGNS.
Now consider the cost of replacing that. That alone, even if staggered over many years, would cost the country billions. That alone is a single point at which metric would never ever take off in the United States.
The UK is going backwards, they have started teaching Imperial units again in schools, and use of imperial measurements is now allowed again in shops that weigh produce. The general justification given is that we are somehow more stupid than the Irish, Australians, and many other countries who have switched. We "wouldn't understand it" and would be confused.
There may be some justification in that because one of the arguments given for using imperial measures was that people would not know how much sugar was in a bag if it was sold in Kilograms - despite the fact that it has only been sold in kilograms for many decades.
You do realize that only about 3% of Liberians are descended from ex-slaves? Americo-Liberians are historically important and powerful, but by no means are they the only people in Liberia.
School won't help them. Basic math is no longer taught.
>>The fact is, imperial units are just more natural for some things and less so for others. The same can be said of metric
That's true. Fahrenheit gives a better range of usable temperatures than Celcius. "It's in the 60s" vs. "It's in the 50s", etc. There's no scientific reason for using Celcius instead of Fahrenheit, either. Unless you are boiling water on a day to day basis, there's really no excuse not to be using Kelvin for everything. If you're not using Kelvin, then STFU about people using Fahrenheit. You can pick any arbitrary number above absolute zero to be the zero of your temperature scale, and it's still just as useless for doing thermodynamic calculations. There is NOTHING more scientific about Celcius than Fahrenheit. We defined a calorie as the amount of energy to raise a gram of water +1C - this could have been defined in Fahrenheit, alternatively, without saddling us with a useless third temperature system. Dooming millions of people to reading XX*C/YY*F everywhere they go in the world.
The power of metric in scientific calculations is the base-10 system, but Celcius doesn't take advantage of it.
Likewise, the fuckers could have kept one Imperial units for distance, etc., and simply tacked base-10 onto it (kiloyards, centiyards) instead replacing them with arbitrary units like meters and saddling us with a secondary measurement system that is no more scientific in terms of the base unit than the Imperial. IMO, the base unit for distance should be the distance light travels in a second, or some fraction thereof. Saving millions of hours for physics students.
The SI units that are derived from other ones (the gram, the calorie/joule, etc) make sense. But the base units chosen are no more scientific than the Imperial units they replaced. All you metric purists that aren't using lightseconds and Kelvin, should really check your sense of superiority at the door.
In a nutshell, the base units for SI are no more scientific
I have to travel a lot. If I forget to take the right plug I am in trouble.
Why just not make the sockets and plugs the same, for goodness sake.
Next the currency.
Why don't all these other stupid countries speak English! Duh! Standards!
As a scientist, I use metric all the time. In the 70's, when I was in school in the US, we were told metric was the future. This seemed to last for a few yrs (road signs in km and miles, etc), but then it all died. This was a big mistake - continuing to use feet, miles, inches, etc leads to many problems, from simple tools (e.g., wrenches - 1/4" or 6 mm), to space missions, when a recent Mars mission crashed because someone failed in feet to meter conversion. This idiocy must stop - get with the system, and the system is metric!
Bed sizes are not measured in cm or inches. They are twin size, queen size, and king size. Those are the most ridiculous length units I have ever encountered. And no, two twins do not fit in one twin size bed. Also, getting a buzz cut, you tell the hairdresser you want a no. 1, 2 or 3 haircut. The hairdresser has no idea what that is in cm or inches.
I think the same thing (why not change) when I see people using Windows Vista. But if it works for what you do, what is the difference?
Plus, we would have to convince all 50 different states to change. Odds are, that is never going to happen. Weights and measures are handled by states (I think).
I knew about U.S. and Liberia, but I had never heard before that Burma used the Imperial system. Can anyone shed light on why they are one of the Imperial Three? Is it because, as Wikipedia implies, they really use their own unique system, so that metric and imperial are only used by the government?
My foot, you say?!
Many already have. You don't have to take your cues from Ronald Reagan. Folks who won't convert don't measure anything and don't believe the rest of the world exists. It is probably safe to not let them influence what you do.
There are longer-lasting things built using inches, like houses, rail tracks, lots of roads and highways, car engines. The metric versions are more fun.
So rather than let the free market do its job , you prop up the firm indirectly by adding barrier to entry to your market.
The "real world" includes every other person outside of the US. Most metric users have an understanding of feet and inches too, but as far as scientific stuff goes, trying to make imperial work is the old square peg/round hole situation.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The US is slowly sliding into irrelevance.
The growing economies all use metric and are beginning to take measures to no longer use the USD.
Congress Members rail against technology
And the Many people in the USA prefer to put up barriers to protect themselves against the rest of the world - just like using imperial measurements.
What it means is its becoming easier to look elsewhere when you want to trade.
In short its another example of the general decline of the US - the inability to adapt - and thus survive.
The UK, US, Canada and Austrailia all set out to go metric in the early 1970's. In the US and the UK, they widely distributed all sorts of gizmos with logos stamped on them full of charts and tables that basically said, a centimeter is the same as 0.54 inches. Growing up in the US in the 70's, I have conversion factors burned into my brain. My cousins growing up in Canada were taught a centimeter is a centimeter. The same was taught in Austrailia. The UK is semi-metric. Road signs still use miles but weather is metric and beverages are sold by milliliters.
Distance is just a number. What anyone really cares about that number is how long does it take to cross that distance. 200 miles is about three hours by car. And 400 km is four hours by car.
Where the US failed is they failed to just say metric units are what they are. Feel it, don't think it. Like a Jedi.
This is a boring sig
This post is an example of autoplagurism.
A good system of units needs:
1) Base units which are well defined and independently reconstructible (i.e. a suitably equipped lab can calibrate their equipment purely from the definition of the units.)
2) Logically constructed compound units (e.g. units of force are derived from the units of mass, time and distance.)
3) Logically constructed convenience units (e.g. kilometres for use for distances which would be an inconveniently large number of metres.)
4) To be widely used.
The initial choice of your base units is largely arbitrary - whether it was a from a not-very-accurate measure of a king's foot size or from a not-very-accurate measure of the Earth's circumference. Item (1) can be satisfied equally well (or, in the case of mass, badly) by the metric or imperial systems. The definition of the metre has long since changed from the size of the Earth to quantities measurable in a lab (as has the definition of the foot.)
The SI system (based on metric measures) beats the imperial system hands down on items 2 and 3, and because of this now has a large advantage also on item 4.
Item 2: In Imperial you might measure (heat) energy in BTU and mechanical energy in some mixture of foot-pounds-seconds, but then you need a conversion factor to compare the two. Such conversion factors are never needed in SI.
Item 3: Imperial also messes up the convenience units by having lots of weird conversion factors (e.g. an acre is (I think) a furlong by a chain. How many square feet is that? How many ounces in a ton?*) Metric uses convenience units constructed from base units via consistently named factors of 10 or 1000.
One could go a step further, and define your fundamental units in terms of fundamental physical constants (i.e. the Plank mass, Plank time and Plank distance, charge on an electron, etc.) In such a system of units, the speed of light is 1, the formula for the energy of a photon doesn't need a constant in it etc. In practice, we can't use such a system, because we can't measure (in particular) the universal gravitational constant G with sufficient accuracy. Every time we got a better measure of G, our entire system of units would need to be updated. (I.e. with current technology, this system can't satisfy requirement (1) above.)
* And how many different sorts of ounces and tons are there? It is quite a few.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Except you're incompatible with the rest of the world. Metric also gives you easy conversions between say, cubic metres and litres. Rather than cubic feet to gallons.
1 cubic meter = 1000 litres. 1 cubic foot = 7.4805 US gallons or 6.2288 Imperial gallons. I know what I'd much prefer to work in.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The truth is that in the U.S. politicians are afraid of offending the majority of people, and a significant amount of them are just a bunch of redneck morons.
Making friends everywhere you go. Just making friends.
This passage from the Wikipedia seems relevant:
In his 1998 monograph Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott argued that central governments attempt to impose what he calls "legibility" on their subjects. Local folkways concerning measurements, like local customs concerning patronymics, tend to come under severe pressure from bureaucracies. Scott's thesis is that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to succeed, they must take into account local conditions, and that the high-modernist ideologies of the 20th century have prevented this. Scott cites the enforcement of the metric system as a specific example of this sort of failed and resented "improvement" imposed by centralizing and standardizing authority.
Metrication opposition
The geek tends to see himself as anarchic-libertarian. But technocratic and elitist would be closer to the truth.
The solution imposed from on high.
The vast majority of U.S. customary units have been defined in terms of the meter and the kilogram since the Mendenhall Order of 1893 (and, in practice, for many years before that date).
United States customary units
The question then becomes why it should anyone but the architect or mechanical engineer particularly care that room temperatures continue to be displayed in degrees Farenheit.
I felt I made my point pretty clear when my math teacher gave me a test that used Imperial measurements and I handed it back with the short length answers in light-years and the long length answers in Ångströms.
The US clings to the imperial system because it can. The rest of the world is mostly irrelevant to the average person here in a way that an outsider would find difficult to comprehend.
The US was an early adopter of a lot of technologies, and any change is hard. Lots of imperial stuff is ingrained in engineering and industry too. (For example: any railroad person here knows that a mile has 5280 feet in it and thinks of track widths, etc. in feet -- you'd be in for some chaos if you tried to get them to think in meters all of a sudden).
When you have the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the world, you can justify all sorts of nonsense to yourself (Fahrenheit feels more natural, feet are easier to eyeball, etc.)
This is a testament to both how powerful the US is, and how the average person is unimaginably far from having (or even needing) a global mindset.
My advice to anyone who moves here: do your calculations in metric in the privacy of your own mind, but don't even think about mentioning grams or kilos anyone else unless you're a scientist or a drug dealer :)
I think it depends on which system you use daily.
I'm used to metric and don't know that 12" is 1' without thinking, so that makes working with the two units a bit slower. I also have to do 1/4 > 4/16 for the first example. It's not a particularly difficult step, but unless you do this on a daily basis, it IS an additional step.
I think it's much harder to switch from metric to imperial than vice versa, as metric is just more of the same decimal math and imperial requires thinking in powers of 1/2 and 1/12th fractions.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They're criminals.
They don't obey any other rules, so why would they obey rules of measurement?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The International Building Code (what most of us use) gives dimensions in Imperial dimensions
This "International" Building code can hardly be international when it still uses pre-metrix crap.
You could not even sell stuff measured in furlongs and whatnots in civilized countries nowadays.
For the average user, there will be no advantage. And years of a confusing transition. Sure, future generations may benefit, but what are the clear advantages? Do you remember the aborted transition in the 70's with highway signs in kilometers. Failed.
We didn't win double-you double-you two using kilograms and centimeters. The North American P-51 Mustang was built using pounds and inches, goddammit, and you all better not forget it!
the problem has always been that it would cost too much to change -- all the tooling (i.e. steel dies, taps, etc) would have to be changed. It would also make it more costly to replace components. Instead of just buying a 9/16" socket head cap screw for $2.00 it would mean re-tapping the hole for 14mm for $45
Where it's free and painless it has already been done, e.g. soft drinks come in liters
I teach English in China, and one of my most (apparently) interesting lectures comes when I teach tongue twisters. I almost inevitably end up teaching "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," which is a pretty fun tongue twister for the students, but they don't understand peck, and I don't blame them. I explain it the way my great Uncle explained it to me after he told me that everyone should eat at least 2 pecks of dirt in their lifetime: You know what a barrel is, right? (I usually end up explaining that visually) A peck is just 2 barrels. Ok, so his explanation is not really accurate since a peck is actually 8 quarts, or 2 gallons, or a little more than 8 liters, but it gets the point across. When the kids ask me why it's 2 barrels, I tell them, again, what my uncle told me: I haven't the foggiest. It's a completely inane system of measurement. Even the British abandoned the Imperial system, so why can't we? It's even more fun when I explain to them that a mile is 5,280 feet. Again, they ask why, and again I tell them that I have no idea why it's that long. The sad thing is that I remember that number. I have no reason to know that number, it comes as if snapped up from the air somewhere, and yet there it sits, in my brain, wasting however many bits it does. It took me all of a day to figure out the metric system when we learned it in school, and a lifetime later, I'm still mystified by the strange numbers of importance in the Imperial system, many of which I'm sure I can't remember correctly.
The aircraft being referred to was a Canadian aircraft operated by a Canadian airline flying between Canadian cities.
On top of that, the mistake wasn't made because of the use of the Imperial system - it was made because of the switch to the Metric system.
2 minutes, 40s in.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The reason to use the metric system is to make unit conversion easy. There are two contexts where this comes in handy: scientific research and money. And indeed, we do use the metric system in that context just like everyone else. We also use 5, 10, and 100-based denominations in our currency. However, there's no reason to do unit conversion at other times. Maybe this wasn't true in the 1970s when the UK switched, but these days, with embedded electronics installed in everything, all tricky arithmetic has been automated out of our day-to-day lives. (For example, this is why unit conversion is no longer important in navigation-- we have GPSs now.) Unlike a lot of people here, I don't reflexively see this as a bad thing. Now, take a moment and think about how much work it would be to switch an entire country over to the metric system, especially one the size of the US. Think about the expense involved in replacing all the relevant signage-- both public expense and private expense. Think about the expense (and possibly even loss of life) originating from the confusion (Oh hey, the speed limit is 100...) I don't think you can really justify that, just so you can figure out that if your house was a fishtank you'd need 6 million liters of water.
Okay I know it sounds gross.. but hear me out first..im 15 btw.
so my teacher let me sit at her desk cause she's cool like that and i raised my hand first. im on my period (sry TMI i know) and i have a heavy flow. i could feel the blood coming out and i didnt get a chance to change my tampon that day. so i pretended to drop my pencil and i went under the desk and i slipped on a tampon from my purse. i believe in female rights and i support breast feeding in public, etc.. so i dont see a problem with this, as long as no one else sees anything. but as i was taking out the used tampon the guy that i kinda like (who im also friends with) came over to get a sheet of looseleaf and he saw everything. i mean i shaved and everything but he saw blood running down my leg and it smelled fishy. and he told EVERYONE and he wont talk to me and people are saying that im grimy, a whore, unclassy, white trash, etc. and i dont know what to do, advice?
Yes, we old-timers all know how to add and subtract fractions, and convert feet to inches. And it's pretty easy if you're good at maths, and particularly if you're typing into a text box rather than doing it in your head.
It's not easier than metric though. With imperial you have to find the lowest common denominator AND add or subtract. With metric you just have to add/subtract. And metre/centimetre/millimetre conversion are obviously easier to do in the head than yard/feet/inches conversions.
And even if it's not too challenging for you, it's challenging for the average person. You know shop assistants today have trouble working out the change to give it the till doesn't help them. A few days ago one had a lot of difficulty giving me change from â3.27 out of a â5 note.
> a centimeter is the same as 0.54 inches
You have either weird centimeters or weird inches where you live.
That's a very compelling argument for scientific research. But we already use the metric system in scientific research, so that's not in discussion.
The UK is semi-metric. Road signs still use miles but weather is metric and beverages are sold by milliliters.
Actually, in the UK, beverages are served in millilitres except for beer in pubs which will always be served in pints even if legally it has to be priced in units of 0.568261485 litre.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Anyone remember when the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost due to an imperial - metric mix up between Lockheed and NASA?
Maybe interesting to count the hybrid countries too. The UK is still mainly imperial. I believe they use the litre for fuel, but everything else is imperial. Distances, speeds, even drink bottles are labeled 284 or 568 ml. Which conveniently is a 1/2 or full pint.
And what about Australia?
Both countries use the metric system, right? Well, yes. in theory.
But I had to get used to distances and speeds on the roads being presented in miles/yards and mph. That bit is simply not metric yet.
In shops the metric system is used.
In the Netherlands, you buy milk by the half a litre- 500 ml, or multiples of half that.
In the UK it's in convenient 568 ml measures or multiples thereof.
In the Netherlands you might buy half a kilo (500 grams) of something.
In the UK, you'll get 454 grams instead.
So the UK went through all the trouble of converting to metric, but aren't getting themselves much of the convenience as they're still clinging on to the old measures nonetheless. Sort of gives one a feeling of "Look ma, we do metric now". But it doesn't give you the feeling they "get" it.
US migration to metric hasn't moved an inch....
No. really, we are on the average. I've been been an American all my life and we aren't real bright.
The stupid thing is that we here in the Netherlands measure TV and monitor sizes in inches. I know what to expect from a 32" TV, but when they advertise it as '81cm' I need a calculator...
It suffers from decimal creep. You can only divide it in half a couple times before you have either a lot of digits, or you have to start rounding. That system is non-sensical. Maybe if it were base 8, or 16 I'd be willing to ditch english units, but as it is you can usually get better numbers with english than with metric. Seriously, why is our numbering system in base 10? The only way it could be worse if it were based on a prime number like 7, or 13 (2 would be better, but the resulting numbers would be too long). How come they didn't change that when they were changing all the measurements to match the base of the number system? It seems like a pretty obvious flaw to me. Also, the article is wrong. Great Britain still uses pounds and gallons and miles per hour. I know because I watch Top Gear.
I think the more appropriate question is, "Why does the rest of the world insist on clinging to the Metric system....?"!!!
In the UK we are actually a bit confused with measurements. We do use metric in nearly all places but there are exceptions:
- All road signs are in miles.
- Many recipies give weights in lb/oz
- When we talk about the weather (a national pass time) use Fahrenheit when talking about hot days (they do happen, honest) but Centigrade when referring to cold temperatures (for people reading in Canada "cold" in the UK is less than 5c).
- We often refer to rainfall in inches rather than cm.
So in conclusion saying that the US is one of only three countries not to move to metric is a little misleading; perhaps it is one of only three who officially still use imperial.
Source:
www.metricationmatters.com/docs/MetricationTimeline.pdf
Quote: ... ... it took only two lobbyists and political insiders, Republican Lyn Nofziger and Democrat Frank Mankiewicz, to sabotage the metrication effort in 1981 (see below).
In the USA, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act of 1975
There are still imperial leftovers in Europe. Lumber is called 2x4 and 2x6 even though 48mmx97mm and 48mmx146mm is stamped on the wood. Also, plumbing fasteners are called 1/2" or 3/4" with M12 stamped on, and they fit US threads. Houses are built with 600mm stud spacing (2') and most building materials are divisible by 300mm or ~1', like plywood (1200x2400mm)
Anyway, Some mechanics were trying to figure this out a 200 h.p engine drives a hydraulic pump against 7000psi, and to get the flow in gallons/minute.
This is easy with metric values 150kW against 50MPa. What is the flow? Answer:150kW/50MPa=3 liters per second.
I got some anti-metric guys convinced.
Somebody up for the imperial calculation to check my math?
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
1 Degree Celsius is not a small enough unit of thermal measurement. Humans have the tendency to round decimals so I feel it is a poor choice for everyday use.
As for the rest of it I'd be fine using it.
You'd usually want to use "convert" in front of that, although it looks like they're supporting it without now, at least for some functions.
I use it a lot, because I work with people of different backgrounds. I may have a rough guess at some things, but the familiarity simply isn't there. I got pretty good at judging kilometers, and kph when driving around foreign countries. Still, because the USA doesn't measure in kilometers, it's easier for me to do miles in my head. 60mph is one mile every 60 seconds, so if my GPS says it's 1.5 miles, I have 60 seconds to get into the proper lane without upsetting anyone. That is the main reason I use my GPS. Everything looks the same where I live, so I need that accurate measure to warn me.
If the USA finally switch o the metric system, I'd adjust in about a week (the same time it took for me to adjust to driving in foreign countries. I'd suspect most people would adjust just about as fast.
Then again, I have become used to both systems. I was discussing the temperature with someone a cold state. She said her thermometer read 7C. I said it was about 40F. I was cold enough for us both to say it was cold. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Reviewing your comment history, you attempt to construct a "geek" straw man. You're a douchey troll.
For confusion of units, try this story:
I was born and raised in Europe, using metric measurements. Among my hobbies are computer programming, sailing, and aviation.
I measure many things in metric, but in sailing and aviation, distances are measured in nautical miles, and speed in knots. Depth is measured in meters. Length of the ship is usually expressed in feet. Altitude of airplanes is usually measured in flight levels or feet above mean sea level, but in meters above ground level in Russia. To top it all off, I have a friend in Canada who uses imperial units ... in French.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Sorry, but it's not just the USA. The UK may have been forced to adopt the metric system in the 1970s but Imperial is still used here. I still measure in inches, feet, yards, miles; I still buy pints of beer and milk; I know my weight in stones and pounds. I haven't got a clue what a kilogram is, or how far a kilometre is. Even the 'metric' weights used in supermarkets are actually chosen to mirror the old Imperial units.
When will we use decimal system also for time measurements ? :-)
it could be fun to have days of 10 hours of 10 minutes of 10 secondes (ouch the "e" bust me as a french)
A good point I've heard about imperial system is that it's nearly an hexadecimal one.
There's a lot to be said for the metric system making things easier, but there is one benefit to having everyone working in imperial units - it automatically makes everyone better at basic mathematics.
Having imperial units in use, you have to know how to multiply and divide by 12 and 16 in your head. Decimal systems are easier, but ultimately make people lazier.
I reckon we just use genetic manipulation to grow more fingers. Then we can all count in base 12 easily.
Problem solved.
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
Umm just like to point out that in the UK all speed limits are in miles per hour. All traffic distances are in miles as well. Most places still display both measurement scales.
In the US there are approximately 160 million residences and 100 million commercial/industrial building that have been built over the last 250 years based on the US system of measure. To maintain so many structures with metric based parts would really be a massive exercise in lying, as the parts would have to be produced to US measures, but labeled in metric dimensions. For instances where prior investment has little impact, such as beverage containers, metric units are in wisespread use. Since many more Americans are involved in living in and maintaining housing and industrial/commercial buildings based on US units, the most common perceptions are US unit based. While the situation may not be "elegant," it has been extremely effective and is not likely to change for a very long time...
Think of compound units like moment of inertia, moment of torque and things like that.
It seems to me that one of the misfeatures of this 'other system' is that you
have several units for one thing, for example ounce (oz) and slug. The
latter seems to be needed to be able to write
F = m * a
1 pound-force = 1 slug * 1 ft/s^2
Something like this makes clear how easy and comfortable SI is.
To me imperial vs. metric is not about fractional vs. metric, but about having lots of incompatible (compound) units.
... I mean, if one meter gets you about three feet, why the hell not ?
because we own the tools. You pay the retooling costs.
1. 1964
2. Dodge
3. Dart
This is a great car. I'm gonna need the ratchet a while longer.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
American construction practices standardized and matured before the metric changeover was attempted. Make a proposal for how to change 2x4s, 4x8 sheets of plywood, and 16/24" centers into interchangeable and easy to understand and use metric equivalents and you'll be a hero. Failing that American industry needs to get off its ass and improve its products and get Americans to start believing--like Scandanavians--that manufactured housing is superior to stick built housing. Until then no conversion is feasible or likely.
Actually, in the UK, beverages are served in millilitres except for beer in pubs which will always be served in pints even if legally it has to be priced in units of 0.568261485 litre.
No, in the UK draft beer legally has to be sold (and priced) in multiples of 1/2 or 1/3 or a pint. Price it in any SI unit and it's a finable offence.
> This made them great when making exact measuring devices was extremely difficult.
No. As you pointed out yourself: A foot in Belgium is not the same distance as a foot in America
People were forced to create exact measuring devices for all units. Else, they will be cheated. There's a reason why every old church in Europe has circles etched on their front-side. People could hold bread to them to verify they were bought the correct amount. Etc pp.
> However, none of these units are remotely useful EXCEPT when measuring natural phenomena (which never happen in convenient SI units).
Celsius comes to mind.
> then do all the SI internally
Last I checked, computers used base 2, not SI units.
And while we're at it why oh why does the US, along with a few other countries, still drive on the wrong side of the road? I mean, come on chaps! Why cling to an outdated and illogical side of the road when the rest of the world, or at least the bit that counts, drives on the left?
Actually, in the UK, beverages are served in millilitres except for beer in pubs which will always be served in pints even if legally it has to be priced in units of 0.568261485 litre.
No, in the UK draft beer legally has to be sold (and priced) in multiples of 1/2 or 1/3 of a pint. Price it in any SI unit and it's a finable offence.
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric_1_mars-orbiter-climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team?_s=PM:TECH
And I think it is not the first one, actually I was searching for another one, bout found this. Aren't there any scientist in US to put an end of this?
One must think of money earning out of this metrics problems. I totally vote for SI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units
You know, those terms aren't mutually exclusive.
Anarchic libertarian technocratic elitist. That's me!
PS. If you're calling someone an elitist it usually means that they refuse to sink to your level.
I work in the environmental engineering field, and we use decimal feet all the time. It actually makes life a lot easier if you just do away with inches, and nobody really cares about yards. It helps that a tenth of a foot is approximately an inch. So then you're left with miles and feet. But then we measure contaminant concentrations in micrograms/liter while measuring how much water we pump out of the ground in gallons. Contaminant mass removal can be pounds or kilograms. I guess we got half the memo?
The anonymous post that is the parent of this comment is marked as a troll, but, honestly, it's just a statement of fact. The truth is that in the U.S. politicians are afraid of offending the majority of people, and a significant amount of them are just a bunch of redneck morons. We tried this in the 1970s, when the President was from Georgia and we thought we might be able to sell it to the rednecks, but they went apeshit. The only thing we got out of that was soda in two-liter bottles. (Glass in '76 ... plastic in the early 80s.) But you can't blame this problem on urban drug dealers. They sell their coke in grams and kilos.
Britain is quite resistant to metric too. It still maintains miles, pints, acres but most other things are now in metric. One can understand that pints (as in pints of beer) and acres have little significance to international trade. I would think that miles do though, especially for tourism. Ireland converted from miles to kilometers virtually overnight (all speed limits changed instantly and road signs were changed in under a week). Civilization didn't collapse as a consequence.
The funny part is watching so-called "metric martyrs" in Britain. It's usually market traders getting themselves fined or thrown in jail by selling goods in pounds & ounces on illegal scales. In Britain weights & measures are set by law (so traders can't sell people short with dodgy scales) and if you use illegal scales you can be prosecuted. FFS how stupid do you have to be to do this? It's not like the law requires customers to ask in Kgs, they can ask for goods in pounds and the trader weighs out the equivalent in grams.
Imperial means an unequal economic/cultural/territorial relationship, based on domination and subordination.
So that'll be America then :)
Those folksy measures are actually based metric system. Inch = 25.400000×103 m Rod = 5.029210 m Pound = 0.45359237 kg
According to James Randi in a recent talk in Trondheim, it is the religious lobbies that push the US not to switch to a system invented by the French. And frankly, I would not see any other reason. Otherwise that would be a total mystery why they do not switch.
Vehicle wheel (rim) diameters are all in inches, as far as I know- worldwide.
In the EU, we still use inches for monitors and TVs sizes. We also use miles for nautical measurements.
when I suggested that the US was behind the race because of imperial/metric conversions that resulted in a Mars probe hitting Mars rather than landing on it. Having gone through a metric conversion her in Oz in the late 60's. early 70's, I can assure you that the only places you will hear non metric references are : 1 - babies wtf are they still measured in lb - 2 - old cockies (farmers) who measure their holdings in acres/ miles etc, and 3 - monitors( computer/TV/mobile screens etc) . Your ex president did the US no favours by disbanding the metric board - frankly he was a fool who had no understanding of global science let alone the usefulness of a common system throughout the world.
I'm a Brit so metric is our thing.
However I realised a long time ago that imperial units are better for people. Not better for science, obviously. Not better for engineering, of course. But better for people.
5 foot is a much more human number than 1.5 meters.
The difference between 15 and 20 celsius is the difference between a cold and a warm day. The temperature varies 15 degrees here in England through out the year. 15 units is not enough to convey meaning! Fahrenheit, as totally weird a scale it is, has a greater meaningful range when it applies to knowing if you should go to the beach or not.
500 grams of mince? 500 units for cooking?! Give me cups and pounds anyday.
A foot is a good unit of measurement. I can pigeon step to measure things.
Please start calling them 'American units'. Two reasons. Firstly in the UK most people work in metric (at least if they're under 30) for weights and measurements. The exceptions being that we measure large distances in miles (car speed in miles per hour) and person weight in stones (st & lbs) rather than just pounds like in the US. You're supposed to sell fruit & veg in metric, but in reality shops show both imperial and metric measurements along side each other for the sake of older people. Food packets and drinks are in litres and grams/kg. The second reason is if they're called American units that other remaining countries will want to change over to metric, leaving you to use them on your own.
An odd aside, I remember as a kid, seeing an American recipe for cookies years ago and it had mysterious measurements like 'a cup of flour'. WTF? How big a cup? You take these things for granted, but I had no idea. Most recipes call for so many grams of flour and there's no confusion.
In addition, no one else has lost a space probe due to the difference between imperial and metric, only you guys.
driving side choice, and coke formula.
The coke formula thing is my favorite. The rest of the world went - ok whatever, a new taste coke. They shrugged and moved on.
In the US, there was outrage, and the subsequent re-introduction of the old formula as coke classic.
Units, date formats, coke, etc will never change because changing stuff is clearly anti-american.
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... All hardware for mounting your flatscreen TV is all metric...
Oh, the irony: at least in the metric countries I have bothererd to check, flatscreen sizes are measured in inches.
Just to note, Americans have funny recipes where they use table spoons, tea spoons, cups, etc. But you need to buy special spoons and cups for cooking. Otherwise you do not get the right amount of ingredients. In Europe, we use grams and sometimes milliliters, and we make better food. Maybe food is a good argument to switch.
Same in South America as far as I know. Everything is in metric except TV displays (or any kind of display)
The Imperial system was established in mid 19th century Britain. The system used in the US is the "US Customary System of Units" which is over a hundred years older than Imperial.
Those clever Brit louts went to the Imperial system in mid 19th century so their pints of beer would be bigger.
The claim that only 3 countries use imperial is misleading - I'm curious as to how many countries are in a halfway house stage. What do I mean? Officially metric but plenty of things (both offical and matter of daily use) imperial.
For example in the UK you have:
Speed limits (still mph)
Road signs (distances still miles)
Lots of food/drink (e.g. milk sold in 4 pint containers, have to be labelled 2.273 liters but still referred to as pints and also have pint amount on label)
Petrol is priced by the liter but everyone refers to their car's mpg
etc.
Obligatory Usenet Oracle
There are two legitimate reasons for the imperial system.
a) Certain things will have to be renamed, like one of the main food supplies in the US (quarter pounder with cheese) which would result in a lot of confusion.
b) As an Empire it cannot use this filthy European consensus metric system, they need an imperial system
And of course: The US is the leading nation (at least the say so), so why should they follow the rest.
And in the end when the metricies win they will change flight altitudes as well from feet to meter. Like the Chinese and those evil Russians. This has to be prevented. Therefor keep that system.
We're number one! We're number one!
(And if we keep yelling that, it'll come true, right?)
puts a man on the moon, we'll stick with our proven measurement system.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Argentina is not 'everywhere'. You ask for a 25 mm pipe in china, russia, europe, japan, which constitute approx 3 billion total of the world.
Read radical news here
As an American, I am familiar with both systems. They teach us metric in school, and we use metric exclusively in high school science classes. I memorized all those high school physics constants in metric (the acceleration caused by gravity is 9.81m/s^2). I can convert between miles and kilometers, feet and meters, and pounds and kilograms approximately in my head. The reason Americans use standard units is because all our recipes are in standard units, our major roads are spaced 1 mile apart, our speed limit signs are in MPH, our cars report speeds in MPH in large characters (k/h in smaller characters), our thermostats give temperature in Fahrenheit (digital ones have a non-default option to switch to Celsius), and food in the produce and deli departments are sold by either the pound or ounce. It would be very inconvenient to switch to metrics while nearly everything sold in stores and all our infrastructure is in American standard units. We would have to convert everything everyday. It's much easier to say the speed limit is 40 mph (rather than 64 k/h) since all the signs are in mph. Why should anyone go through the extra work of dividing by 5 and multiplying by 8 to get k/p when the signs are listed in mph and all your friends are used to mph? Metric would eventually be used by in everyday language if all of our equipment, speed limit signs, etc used it. When I go to Mexico, I use k/h because all the signs there use it. When in Rome and all. We don't have to use metric just because nearly everyone else in the world does. We're free to use whatever system we want.
Additionally, you may think a federal (national) law could get all our speed limit signs converted to k/p, but I believe each state (similar to a province) has authority over its own roads. Over the history of America, the federal government has become more and more powerful - assuming many powers of the states. States don't like the federal governments taking their rights and powers from them. If the U.S. government really wanted us to switch our speed limit signs to metric, they would have to pay the states lots of money. In the past, the U.S. government enforced a national speed limit of 55 mph by giving lots of money to states who kept all their roads speed limit at or under 55 mph.
Congress could force manufacturers to label products in only metric if there was a rich special interest lobbyist group that was really in favor of metric. A rich metric lobbyist group would be the most important thing to get our country to convert to metric. Large-scale public support would be second. Without either of those, congress doesn't have much interest to care. Many congress member are older people, and older people tend to have contempt for change. And perhaps more importantly, a large number of their constituents may see banning American standard units as interfering way too much in their day-to-day lives.
tl;dr - we use metric because all of our stuff and nearly everyone we know uses it. congress has no reason to enforce change.
my opportunity to freely express myself with the potential persecution and hangings and such
'is there a country anywhere that uses only metric ISO units ?'
what kind of fucked up, self-involved, ignorant question is that ?
china, russia, europe, japan. you already got 4 bil people and countless countries there.
Read radical news here
I don't think Google has ever required you to say "convert" ever since they introduced that feature. If it sees units, it'll mostly figure it out.
to prove themselves their country is an empire and they don't have to listen to anyone
In Australia, (some) retailers do both (some do inches + metric, others do just metric, no-one does just imperial), but I still have an easier time with inches when it comes to screen size. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that they're made for American markets, so the model number will usually have the inch measurement in it (eg, an AL2216W is 22 inches across).
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
I'm currently renovating my house in Belgium.
I drew all my plans in metric units and in the building materials shop all sizes are metric as well. (you would greatly confuse them if you order a 50 pounds of cement or a metal bar of 3 yards).
One noticeable exception is the width of sanitary pipes; these are measured in inches and quarter inches. (which greatly confuses me)
Why does the US cling to a broken for-profit health care system? We're the only industrialized country that does that, as well. Sometimes we seem to take pride in being different, even when there is nothing better about it.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The worst was my bathroom renovation: everything in imperial units except tiles which were imported from Europe and were in centimeters. The result was a lot more cutting and conversions to convert to imperial units.
I was raised in metric and moved to Canada about 13 years ago. I still can't read/convert imperial properly: when I see a big piece of plywood I expect a measure in feet, but it's given in inches and then I gotta divide that by 12, to then convert in meters in my head because I still rely on that.
Anyway, I think it's just plain stupid. It's just like the cups/spoons when I cook. I don't know if these were originally used to "dumb down" the recipe process but I find it a major pain in the ass as well. Seriously, I have half and quarter tablespoons of stuff... I just have a small scale where I can measure up to the gram when I refer to European recipes. And then if I want to make less, I just divide to get an absolute number, not just a 16th of a teaspoon or something...
In my lifetime, most of the Imperial -> Metric conversion were done. I didn't learn imperial measurements in school, by then we were being taught metric (centimetres, decimetres, metres, etc). I did learn them from my mother, though, so I know that there are 16 ozs to the lb, and 14 lbs to the stone (a measurement most American don't know). While we learned metric, distances and speeds were all still in miles and miles per hour, and petrol was sold by the gallon (UK gallon, not US gallon - the UK one is bigger!).
I remember road signs in miles (and sometimes you still see some of them that were never removed - ah, nostalgia!). And I remember when they were all replaces with distances in km. Speed limits were still in miles, so we all got used to converting from km back to miles (80km=50miles), so we could work out how long it would take us to get to our destination.
A few years ago (7 or 8), the switch was made to speed limits. Now, everyone thinks in distances in km and speeds in km/h - the two match, so the switch just clicked in our heads. We now didn't need to convert from km to miles to see how long it would take, 'cos we were thinking about speeds in km/h. The switch happened in our heads very quickly - you quickly get used to the feel of 50km/h (~30mph), 60km/h (~40mph), 80km/h (~50mph), 100km/h(~60mph), and 120km/h (~70mph). The actual differences are minutes - 120km/h is faster than 70mph (it's about 73 in reality), so motorway driving got faster (wu hoo!).
While the change took many years (distances were all changed about 15 years before the speed limits, if not more), it was easy to do. The logistical part was harder for the speed limits than for the distances, as all speed limits had to change countrywide at midnight on a particular date, while distance signs could be changed gradually.
I used to have a good feel for what a mile was, and not have a feel for a kilometre at all. Now, I have a feel for a kilometre, but I don't have a feel for a mile. In just a few short years.
In all, the switch is easy, when planned right.
I still know the imperial measurements, and how they convert to metric. When following a recipe, I prefer to follow it in metric rather than imperial, but the conversions are generally easy. A decision was made that 25g = 1oz for recipes - can't get easier than that. (In actuality, 1oz = 28.something g, but is rounded down to 25g for convenience).
There are some things that I still think of in imperial, but only because I don't use the values anywhere else, or don't really understand them. I fill my tyres to 31psi. To me, I don't really care what that means. I know that my tyres should be at 31psi, and the tyres on my bike should be between 40 and 50psi. It's just a number on a guage.
In other European countries, tyre pressure is in other units. They don't have psi there, so if I have to fill my tyres in, say, Germany, then I need to do a conversion. Until then, the gauge has psi and that other measure on it, and I just look at the one I'm used to.
So I have understand the reluctance of some people to change - they are used to looking at number and understanding what they mean. And they may feel that they would not get used to looking at the numbers to get a different meaning. But they would be surprised at how easy it is.
Here, the weather is in degrees C. During my life, it has always been degrees C. During my parents life, it was degrees F, so they had to get used to that change. For a number of years, the weather forecast was given it both units, typically degrees C first, then degrees F...
"Over Dublin today, temperature should reach about 22 C. That's 72 F."
Very simple - that way, people learn over time what both numbers mean. They become somewhat interchangeable, without having to do the calculation. Then, gradually, you drop one and leave the other.
To me, it makes more intuitive sense to talk about sub-freezing temperatures in terms of negative numbers. I know that 32F is freezing point, but it doesn't seem intuitive to me that 20F is indeed very cold. It does make sense that -7C is very cold, though.
Is the question why does the US public "cling" (that's a loaded verb these days) to the system of measurement with which it is happily familiar and uses every day?
...
Probably because no one forced them to change. It's not like the people in other countries rose up spontaneously and demanded the metric system. I could care less myself, and I'm sure that after a period of time I could do metric in my head just as well as Imperial. All that being said I'm doing just fine, thank you.
No statement is true, not even this one.
dispute what there pres got elected on
The geek tends to see himself as anarchic-libertarian. But technocratic and elitist would be closer to the truth.
That's brilliant. Should be the footer on every slashdot page.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
are the major resistance to change. Torch them all.
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Puts all manner of people to work, aligns us with rest of world, would force some old factories to retool.
Makes too much sense - it will never happen.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!
Twitter: @dainsanefh
One example I can think of is television/computer screens - atleast in Germany they are measured in inches, and despite also displaying the size in cm as well, the Europeans I've talked to are more comfortable using inches for screens.
The first one, by a long shot.
Now I have to qualify this.
I'm from Canada. I learned everything coming up through school in metric. Absolutely everything. Imperial is still easier. For programming computers etc, metric is easier. For engineering, Metric is easier.
I work in the contsruction industry and on a job site, Imperial blows metric completely away. Not because of understanding/lack thereof, but because of how everything is built.
A roof has a 12:3 pitch. Ok, thats fine, it goes for 12 feet and goes up 3. Now jackasses, do that in metric. It goes for 4 meters and goes up 1? Nope. It'll be something like 22.6 degree roof pitch. You have to be pretty damned good at math to figure it out from there. I can, most job site foremen can't, and not just the old ones, the younger ones too. Adding 3/4 + 1/16 is faster in your head than adding 2.7 + 17.8. I'm used to both, I use both on a regular basis. 3/4 + 1/16 is faster, and thats about as complicated as it gets for those measurements.
Everything with metric is full of decimal points and fifteen different units of measure, which self important engineer assholes seem to want to use all of at every turn(yes, this is pretty much ALL of them). Imperial? 2 and then fractions thereof. Engineers don't have a choice except to keep it simple as there are no other units of measure available.
Its getting so bad I'm seriously about to start a company where I do nothing but charge a fee to fix engineered plans into easy to read proper measurements for job site construction.
The actual cost to the Canadian people of switching to metric was estimated at 3-4 billion(up from what they called a looney bin maximum cost of 1 billion) back in 2000 or so. The rate of cost is only increasing and I can completely understand why Americans don't want to switch. Other than purely scientific or mathematical pursuits, metric is by far the inferior system. IMO Metric should be reserved for trained professionals in super high precision practices.
As an aside, for construction purposes. MM lines on a tape measure are actually hard to distinguish from each other because they're so small. Imperial has even smaller ones if you really need them but 1/16th is as far down as you get on most measuring tapes, and is 50% larger than a MM, making it easier to identify by eye. In my opinion, this and things like it are the prime cause of the US not switching. People actually tend to listen to their work force down there. Crazy thought, I know.
I've lived in the US all of my life and have only ever traveled out of the country for a total of about 4 weeks, to Quebec.
:P
I started converting myself to "the rest of the world" a while ago but metric still eludes me. This is largely because of the frames of reference. Celsius was easy to convert to since the only time you ever look at temperature is when you want to know what temperature it is. Same with using a 24 hour clock (which I also use on all of my devices when I can).
However, converting myself to metric is far more difficult. I use "miles" every day without really thinking because my car is "60 miles per hour" on the highway, and I know "it'lll take about a minute to go a mile".
Trying to convert my driving to metric would involve extra conversions I can't really do on the road while driving.
THAT SAID, if the signs were in metric and my speedometer had larger metric numbers it'd be easier to do. It's just the initial "conversion" that's hard when you're reading street signs.
I do convert time regularly to people, temperatures not so much. I usually just say "it's about X degrees" (converted to F) outside, but I don't do the actual raw conversion from Celsius anymore mentally.
What helped with that was using frames of reference rather than a formula:
5C ~ 40F
10C ~ 50F
21C ~ 70F
27C ~ 80F
40C ~ 100F
I just guesstimate everything in between for people
I don't have a problem with metric measurements as the only time I deal with them is with speed and weights. Speed in kilometers ( not kilometres by the audacious French who accept American dollars then spit in our faces) multiplied by 0.6 gives you miles. kilograms multiplied by 2.2 give you pounds. Americans love miles and pounds. Get over it.
I don't think they would .. I think they would revolt. As soon as someone figures out they are getting hosed even worse by the gasoline companies by being forced to purchase the get less for more liter .... and as soon as no one could figure out how far anything was anymore because of some fool calling it a meter instead of a mile ... people would go nuts and demand a return to normal measure. And don't even get me started on the lunacy of C vs F ... nope ... Leave it all imperial until after I'm dead thank you very much.
Hurricane Island Outward Bound
OB
it will take a generation (or more) to make that transition
It definitively took much less time for me and the other hundred of thousands of immigrants in the USA to adapt to the Imperial system. And adapting to the metric system is easier, as you don't have to care about many unrelated units for the same concept (as miles, yards, feet, etc.)
The following work pretty well for day-to-day use:
1 qt = 1 l
1 yd = 1 m
2 lbs = 1 kg
3 ft = 1 m
1 gal = 4 l
2 mile = 3 km
3 oz = 100 ml
3 oz = 100 g
4 in = 10 cm
1 grain = 1/20 g
Americans like monosyllabic or abbreviated words wherever possible.
It's about quick clear communication, not just a fetish for monosyllables. Polishing things down to single syllables without obscuring them is the ideal. But a two- or three-syllable term that rolls from the tongue rather than twisting it, and that doesn't collide with something else, is quite acceptable.
Metric PREfixes a power of ten to the unit. This doesn't just lengthen the term. It also puts the designation of WHAT KIND of unit you mean at the end, rather than the beginning. Bad enough that you have to work through the count before you get to the unit in "United States customary" (NOT Imperial, by the way) units. With metric you also have to get past the power of ten before you find out what you're talking about. Notice that, when abbreviating metric units, they shorten differently: A kiloMETER is a "K" or "klick", for instance, while a kiloGRAM is a "key". The tendencies of language and the centrally-planned systematization are at odds.
Then there's the issue of scale: Imperial and US customary units are mainly human-sized. A pound, for instance, is something that you can hold in your hand, with just enough heft to give you the impression of weight, while a gram is an anonymous pebble that has to be scaled up by three orders of magnitude to be comparable (about 2.2 lb). Yet a litre is about a quart - a handy bottle size for serving four. (And a litre is a cubic DECImeter? Why isn't it a cubic METER? So much for consistency...)
Then there's the use of the decimal system when scaling. Convenient for doing arithmetic for scaling. But the cardinality of the human brain is about six, not ten. So the scaling also is not easily imagined. Meanwhile the common units jump in steps that take you from a human-scaled unit convenient for one purpose to one convenient for another: Inches and feet for measuring objects, miles (a thousand paces) for distance travelled. Quart, gallon, barrel - convenient sizes for trade in liquids. Peck and bushel for dry farm produce. And so on.
But those are just possible reasons for popular distaste for metric units. The core issue is freedom.
The metric system was IMPOSED by governments. The people of the US tend to resist such impositions. As was pointed out in other postings, Regan canned the Metric Board and let the market decide - which means let the people chose which they prefer. The people preferred to stick with the common units. So the common unit markings on food packaging grew big and the metric units grew small and hid inside parenthesis. The states stopped re-signing the roads and the car manufacturers marked the speedometers with MPH in big numbers and a little metric scale inside for reference. And so on.
Seems to me the FOSS ideology fits right in with the one that led to the people of the US sticking with common units.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
the ease of using the metric system for unit conversions and the like would empower people too much; it'd make them too smart and able. So the US government clings to it to make sure that denizens of the US are out of touch with the rest of the world and then tries to fill the gap created by that feeling with nationalism and notions of US superiority. Then it recruits these folk to the military where it promptly teaches them to use the metric system - a must, really, since even for someone capable of doing the conversion in their head the split second it takes to do so could mean life or death for fellow soldiers when setting a mortar for downfield 70m to take out a pill box laying heavy fire on your comrades. Plus, most tinfoil hats are sized only in imperial units.
Yay, getting 1300 comments 50 pieces at a time is so much fun!
Fucking morons.
Imperial Units are beautiful for teaching people number systems: For base2 or binary you can use cups/pints/quarts people understand them. For base16 one can use ounces to pounds. Inches to Feet give you base12, but feet to yards are base3. When I taught people binary and hexadecimal systems at a career college, I found the fact that our measurements are never in base10 to be a beautiful thing.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
That's the basic truth. We don't have to switch. There is no financial or political motivation to do so.
-Xen
We use them because we are the MOST STUBBORN country in the world.
BTW it is called SOCCER, not "futbol". Stupid.
A yard is convenient, but so is a meter. However, a foot is better than them both. Feet are GREAT units, just the right size.
One degree F is far superior to one degree C- it measures a smaller chunk of temperature, and has meaning at more understandable ranges.
The imperial units were developed to be easily perceptible and user friendly. The SI units were developed for accuracy and ease of conversion. The general idea that American=dumb just doesn't hold water- these units are better for any times you don't need to convert.
the baby boomers, they are the largest segment of the population with the most money and they can vote. As with all things they only embrace the things they want- and they don't want the metric system! Since the baby boomers don't want it we won't get it.
I'm sure that others have pointed out, we've tried converting. It's a waste of money and time. As there is no real need, only a perceived notion that we'll save money and other nonsense.
This reminds me of the 1970's and how everybody should learn to speak French as it was the language to replace all languages through out the world. Well, just like than, there is and was no need to.
Tant pis!
What about the British? They still use the imperial system all the time. Hell they invented it. Does that make you feel any better?
...an ounce of perception is worth a pound of obscure.
No, what killed the conversion to metric system was RONALD F@#$ING REAGAN and his 'Morning in America' crap. He ordered the conversion process to stop because metric wasn't American. Somewhere I'd like to think there is an alternate reality where the actor Reagan is forever known as playing second-fiddle to a chimp and we have liters and meters, decent schools, a smaller military, and less dependence on oil and coal. Yeah, I know, it sounds like science fiction. Sigh.
People dont like change. So if there is not a great reason for them personally to change then they wont.
Local fruit and veg sellers here still cling on to ounces and pounds, refusing the change. Especially if they are of a more senior generation. Ignoring the fact that everyone under 40 have been taught metric since school.
Whip: The government could force a conversion but they will not get re-elected.
Carrot: You can gradually introduce it in schools, science, consumer products which is what is happening. Until people have grown accustom to metric and then to the last whipping change.
Cost: Secondly the whip will be unpopular even if converting to metric would mean more exports, more efficient manufacturing and engineering. That benefit is too long away and not personal enough for average Joe. He only cares if foxnews or equivalent will shout that the budget cost for this immediate conversion is X Billions. Irrespective of much large gains after X years.
As a person born and initially raised in an SI metric country but also lived the past 15 years in a imperial measurements country, I wish the last whipping change happens soon. I still convert miles into km (or roughly 2/3 or 50% more depending on which way). I still have no idea if im 5'8" or 5'11" but I know I am 1.75m tall. I know I am 95kg heavy, but never remember exactly how many stones or pounds that is.
Maybe that is metric snobbery but as a scientist I just don't see the point of imperial. It is frustrating to see the inefficiency and nonsense of it. Which usually means confusing conversations with my inlaws which are too old to have been taught metric in school and still refer to fahrenheit, ounces and feet for everything. Mentioning I need 2dl of milk or 1.5 hectograms of flour perplexes my mother in law :)
My other Sig is very funny.
the same reason they don't take hold of linux... they're mired in 'i don't want to learn something new that will make my head hurt'. the post at the top could be changed almost word for word from metric system to linux and make the same sense.
soylentnews.org Go there to enjoy the people!
Get r done!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Around the time of the US bicentennial, I recall hearing that in each and every of those 200 years, Congress had passed a resolution saying that THIS is the year the USA will convert to metric.
And don't even get me started on the lunacy of C vs F
Please do get started. The couple of times I looked at Fahrenheit, it didn't seem to make any sense. 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling water makes a lot of sense to me..
which is totally what she said
I watch some BBC, but I caught an early episode of Top Gear where the presenter (Jeremy?) said that there was at least 8 inches of headroom in the car. Struck me as odd coming from a British TV show.
Me, I'd just like to buy only one set of socket wrenches and be done with it.
While I see a lot of objections to this, there is a lot of truth in it. As part of my job I do CAD drawings of steel structures. Metric is super convenient - you can make a plate 100mm x 100mm x 6mm. I can draw that all day long.
The problem comes when we actually send those drawings off to the shop. Since all the materials (and I'm actually in Canada and not the US) are in metric, the fab shop will either charge you a lot more, or will use a plate that is 102mm x 102mm x 6.3mm. Sometimes these differences can be ignored, but sometimes they add up and will make the design not work quite right because the holes won't line up.
Nuts and bolts are the same story - metric bolts are a lot harder to come by, whereas you can get imperial ones quite readily.
Even with government jobs (which are always in metric) and other projects that are in metric, the advantages of metric are lost to a huge extent because you still have architects/others who are innately designing the building in imperial and converting. You will see things that are 6096mm long which if you were actually thinking in metric, you would make 6000. Again, the materials are often available in 20' lengths and not the metric sizes.
This move has to be made, but it's one of those things where people will have to suck it up and do it, IMO, because although there is short term pain, there are long term gains to be had.
except it was DVD vs Blu-ray
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Because we're Americans, you insensitive clod!
I was at Costco, Melbourne yesterday - it has only been open for a year.
They were advertising that galleons of ice cream were on special.
And I don't know how much that even is - isn't that like, a shipload?
And then I was trying to fix some products that were manufactured in America.
Really - it drove me nuts! (pun intended) Had to go to Bunnings to buy ANOTHER set of spanners.
In weird sizes. Like - a quarter of an inch, a sixteenth of an inch, a thirty-tooth of an inch......
But at least when temperatures are reported, it makes global warming sound more or a serious problem for the Americans.
Since we americians are the most self absorbed and arrogant SOB's on the planet we are obviously waiting for the rest of humanity to switch over to OUR system, just they same way we expect everyone to learn to speak English.
Are they all stupid or what?
because I use a 3/4 inch socket to remove my mower blades :-) If you look at any socket sets you will notice missing sockets in metric -- that is because there are standard (SAE) sockets that tend to work for those metric ones.
Top Gear regularly re-records certain segments for other markets, particularly in the US, which is why sometimes if you watch the exact same episode for 2 different markets, they will have some variances, usually the re recorded spots, where they may use imperial measurements, and dollar amounts as opposed to metric and Euro/Pound/Whatever currency.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Actually, we say "reckon" - as in "I reckon that's not the way you spell that word."
Learn about Photography Basics.
A roof has a 12:3 pitch. Ok, thats fine, it goes for 12 feet and goes up 3. Now jackasses, do that in metric. It goes for 4 meters and goes up 1? Nope. It'll be something like 22.6 degree roof pitch.
Degrees have probably been around for longer than most imperial units. SI angles are measured in radians. If you'd prefer to work angles out from distance/height rather than an angle that's fine, get the architect to do that, I don't see why it's a problem specific to the metric system though.
which is totally what she said
The metric system imho requires you to convert everything to a fraction of 32 as I think 9/32 is one of the common sizes so the common denominator is 32. Given that many people can't do basic fractions I would say a lot of mistakes are made without a calculator. Also the different units depending on measurement is difficult to learn and requires you to multiply and divide by 12, 3, 36 or 1760 depending on the measurement.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
1/28th of an ounce is about the minimum for a joint and costs $10 or less in Denver. Appeals to teenage budgets.
Some stuff was burned in, but seems to have become muddled! 1 inch is 2.54cm
which is totally what she said
... and printer/scanner resolution, and photo print sizes are about the only other ones. Of course, the Americans couldn't come up with increasing sizes of print media that have the same ratios, so depending on whether you're printing your digital photos at 4x6 or 5x7 or 8x10 you have to crop them differently :-(.
I was born in Australia where everything is metric. I now live in Canada. Having just gone through a major renovation, I totally agree with you that imperial measurements in construction just "make sense", although it was a bit foreign to me at first. Everything lines up, things divide evenly and goods are purchased in convenient sizes to match building code requirements.
However, that's because the whole system is set up that way. Joist spacing, sheet sizing, lumber dimensions are all sized to fit into a building-block and match the building codes.
If you ever look at a metric building code, you'll find that everything changes (except the stupid Canadian ones where they just converted everything to metric). They don't keep the same actual dimensions and then just switch everything over to metric (although, that's what they did in Canada, probably why it's so confusing). 16" spacing becomes 400mm spacing, 24" spacing becomes 600mm spacing. Those are not difficult numbers to work with (compared to the 'exact' conversion of 406.4 & 609.6). Standard sheet goods come in 1200x2400mm (look at that, 1 sheet perfectly covers two 600mm spaced studs, or three 400mm spaced studs).
Point is, the argument that the imperial system "works better for construction" is a straw man argument. I agree, using the imperial system to perform construction work to a building code that's designed to use it makes perfect sense. However, a perfectly reasonable equivalent can (and has been) developed for metric systems and switching over to *that* is what metric conversion is all about, not just changing units. There's so much investment in equipment that matches the imperial-style building system that it's going to take a long long time for it to happen.
Sounds like Taiwan, where also old Chinese units are used. Flat sizes are measured in pings, and they have their own definition of catty (smaller than a HK catty, but larger than the Chinese market catty...)
I'm an american and I use both units. It's somewhat agrivating because I have to carry two sets of tools as I never know what I'm going to encounter. The UK switched years ago. How smooth was the transition in the UK? Are they still using any imperial tools. One thing that would help in the transition would be dual dimensions on everything. As people got used to seeing the "new" units (metric) they'd become more comfortable with them and start using them more.
The USA does use the metric system: watts in light bulbs and amplifiers, amps in circuit breakers, engine displacements and nuts and bolts in modern cars and motorcycles, 2 and 3 liter bottles of soda, wine and liquor bottles, medicines.
It is strange that we use metric so effortlessly in so many areas and resist it so strongly in others.
Well, now no politician would have the nerve to propose the change.
I work as a mechanical engineer and all of the old tooling for stuff is in inches. You don't realize how much stuff you use everyday is designed in the 1950's.
To just re-tool all the fixtures, inspection guages etc. is very wasteful so as it wears out then you try to do new stuff in metric.
There isn't any version of pipe threads in metric that I know of besides o-ring boss ports.
Also to be politically correct, most drawings made are dual dimension (english and metric) if you design it in inches. So what is the big deal?
It is easy for somebody in another country to read dual dimension drawings.
One thing I will say I hate about metric is that if you design a part in inches then the conversion to metric is okay.
If you design a part in metric, the conversion sucks because it is common to display inches as 3 place decimals and mm as 2 place decimals.
This leads to all kinds of arguments during inspection and part approval.
"Whilst the cost of switching would be huge" What's more to discuss....
Doesn't it make good engineering sense to have a redundant backup system? What if the metric system fails? We'd need the American/Imperial system as a fall-back position.
The Metric system is the official US standard and has been for some time. It's taught in US schools and used in US industry, so I'm not certain WTF yiour rant is really about.
Ok, but who drives 60? In Canada, where the highway limit is 100 km/h, the actual speed is closer to 120, or 2 km/min, which is easy enough. You try figuring it out at 75 mph.
My understanding is that one reason for the persistence of the imperial system is that the units are better for dealing with day-to-day measurements. The classic example is temperature. Increasing the temperature from 68 to 74 is a better scale for comfort than 20 - 23.
Same in Italy and probably all around the world, but if I want to know if that TV set fits in the available space on my wall I don't look at the screen diagonal (inches) but at the TV set dimensions expressed in centimeters on the spec sheet. Actually the diagonal is not that useful. All it does is impressing your friends: "my one is 2" larger than your one", it's all the same old story.
This topic comes up quite often and I always assumed that the US was an outlier and the only country using imperial units.
Then, I took a trip to England and all of the road signs are in miles. It turns out it isn't quite that simple.
The real reason the US "clings" to the Imperial system is because we love hearing everyone else complain about it constantly.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Officially Canada and the UK have both switched to metric, but in both countries much of the public still uses the imperial system. Given the history I'd guess the same is likely true for Australia and New Zealand, but I haven't been to either one.
In Canada we measured distance in kilometers, fuel consumption was officially in L/100KM but in conversation MPG (Imperial Gallon, not US Gallon). Temperature units depended on the age of the person speaking. In the UK speed and distance are also officially in kilometers but I've never heard metric units mentioned without being converted to imperial.
My sense of temperature is based on the various countries I've lived in. I comprehend warm temperatures in F and cold temperatures in C, and bitterly cold so that hell froze over temperatures in F (although as you approach -40 it doesn't matter). For distance and speed I don't care, both make perfect sense to me and I can work out time and fuel requirements in either one just as easily. For construction sizes, it's imperial all the way, before going to university I worked at a lumber mill that sold to Japan, the SI board sizes were just strange. However I can comprehend and convert cubits and spans just fine.
When it comes to engineering, SI is the only way to go. Board designs that use parts with imperial pitches are a real pain as nothing lines up. Once you get to silicon then I don't see how you could use imperial units.
If the aliens conquer us, we use whatever they want.
If we conquer them, we force them to use whatever we want.
*Ahem* It goes for 12m and goes up 3. Wow, that was fucking easy!
www.wavefront-av.com
The are not based on the metric system. They have been, in recent times, defined as metric equivalents, but no one ever said. "Hey! I've got this great new measurement, which I'll call an 'Inch'. It's 25.4 mm." If I recall correctly, an inch was originally defined as 3 barleycorns in length.
So we still use the Pound, Gallon and Mile? People in the UK (I think, I just hear it now and then) use "Stones" for weight. I don't know what a fucking "Stone" is.
But beyond that, we're mostly metric. Machines we use are usually metric sized bolts and nuts. Our small measurements are metric, drugs are mostly metric ("Give me 20 cc's of amblofrastamine, stat!", TV Doctor), our drinks are 1 Liter and 2 Liter (with some Ounces thrown in there for odd sizes).
The change has been happening for a while. But I don't know how many Kg I weigh, I know how many lbs. But I know were my metric socket set will remove my car battery cables. Unless you are working on some older equipment, it is metric.
We're getting there...
I8-D
Why? It's a perfectly valid word (at least when spelled correctly).
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
One noticeable exception is the width of sanitary pipes; these are measured in inches and quarter inches. (which greatly confuses me)
Same in Italy. We have pipes (sanitary and gas) in both metric and English sizes and there are different set of tools to work with them. That's the power of legacies. We never had Imperial units but evidently we heavily imported pipes and tools from the UK at some point in our history. After all Industrial Revolutions happened there first.
And the rest of Europe serves them in centilitres, which really sucks. Unless you're buying by the barrel or keg, in which case it's hectolitres. Yes, conversion is easy enough, but it's not SI.
I think it is more because it is a low priority but a high political visibility action.
As States are strapping for cash do you think it is a good idea to change all the street signs in the state. Could that money go to something more useful like fixing bridges and clean up the potholes?
Do you want to be the elected official in charge when those signs for 60 MHP go to 100 KPH the people will start driving 100 MPH on these roads creating accidents.
Do you remember all the complaints when Pluto has been declassified as a planet, now you add a larger group of angry people who just want to be angry about stuff.
If you are going to move to SI. You may need to save distance to last. Volume would be the easiest,then temp, then weight/mass, then distance.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Because this is America dammit and we do what we want!
We already have "gone a step further". The meter *is* based on the speed of light.
How does the metric system require you to convert to fractions of 32?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
hogshead is a measurement of volume not distance.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
nope. which is why when you search for the phrase " once in a blue moon" , the answer comes back in Hz ...
What's more impressive, telling a girl you have 6 inches, or telling her you have 15 centimeters?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The fact that 2/3 of all American don't have a passport would explain it.
Its more a problem specific to how engineers that work in metric are trained to be honest.
Are you kidding me? The metric system is centered on a base-10 computation model, so all units are just powers of 10 of each other, with very few exceptions. One exception that I know of is time measurements, which are based on 60.
Temperature has its own scale too, but it is still based on powers of 10. Furthermore, it is directly related to the physical changes of state of a metric unit of water. This is a more natural scale, since everybody can intuitively recognize that boiling water is hot and frozen water is cold, and that both are diametrically opposite.
As far as I know, humans normally have 10 fingers, which is why our numeric system is based on powers of 10 also. Hence, the metric system should be easier to use for the general populous.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Its easy really. Americans don't have the mental capacity to convert like the rest of us.
Actually, the UK has a weird mix of Imperial and metric. Road speed is recorded in miles per hour, but petrol is measured in litres. The distance on all the road signs is in miles, but anything related to building is done in metric.
As for height clearance above a car, the signs that measure headroom are often in both. Clarkson was probably educated under the imperial system, and being a journalist not an engineer sees little reason to change.
Some of this comes from a generalised resistance to change - particularly when it feels like its been dictated to by Brussels.
Perhaps we should ask Boeing why they haven't gone over to the metric system - and never will
We cling to the imperial system specifically for penis jokes.
I mean, come on, "3 inches of fury!" loses something when you convert it to "7.62 centimeters of fury!"
Although a society used to the imperial system does make for another good penis joke- "My penis is a stout, proud, nine [dramatic pause] centimeters."
Ahem, quote only part of my sentence. Thanks.
Yes, if it were done that way, it would be great. As it is you need University level algebra to build a freaking building to the specs on these plans.
At the time of writing this, there are over 1500 comments. I am not going to read them all, nor expect mine to stand out from among the crowd. However, it seems to me that the biggest reason why the US still "clings" to imperial units is because they can. When it comes to markets, they are BIG--even with the recession. When you are the only 800 lbs gorilla in the room and everyone wants to play with you, there are a lot of things you can get away with not doing. As the status of being the only 800 lbs gorilla that everyone wants to play with changes (whether the gorilla goes on a diet, or other gorillas get just as large or larger, or the number of smaller gorillas proliferate to such a degree that the big one is no longer needed, or whatever), then you MIGHT see some changes to metric. Until then, don't count on it, simply because it does not have to do so.
You are not unique. We also have people in the UK who have been taught that using medieval units of measure makes them special. These people here tend to ignore foreign news on the TV, be very wary of what they consider "foreign" foods and boast that they do not speak any other language. Many tend to have politics that I consider 'right of centre' and want to remove this country from the EU.
I am a bit to young to be much good with most non-metric units. I am only 51. I know my weight in kilogrammes (note the correct spelling) and my height in metres. I know the latter is 6 feet because my mother told me. I know that water freezes at 0 degrees and boils at 100. I do however know what a pint of beer looks like - 0.568 litres, because that is what it is still sold in.
There is no valid reason to still use units that were outdated in the time of Ben Franklin. Getting rid of feet, inches, gallons and acres would do nobody any harm except those who feel that anything not from "around here" is nasty.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
What *really* confuses me about sanitary pipes is that a 3" pipe is 3.5" wide. Errr .... what? Its not even that the internal diameter is 3 inches either, although I supposed it is possible that the internal diameter used to be 3" back in the day when they used steel pipes instead of ABS
A girl whose measurements are 36-24-36, or one who is 90-60-90?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I don't know. Why do the English persist in driving on the right side of the road?
I wish I had answers. I wish that people behaved logically.
So...what?
Actually beer is still sold in pints in the UK
what the fvck is a kilometer?
lose != loose
A liter isn't a cubic meter because the hangovers would be crippling.
you would be surprised, if you use it everyday it is not that hard. I have met carpenters who can work with fractions like that with less thought than it takes to breath.
lose != loose
FTW. Obviously, we are a bunch of retarded rednecks. And, the rest of the world is so smart - let them do the calculating and converting. FTW again. We're American, we don't have to conform. Starting way back at the dawn of time, the conformists stayed in the jungles and forests of Africa. Later, the conformists stayed in the villages of Africa. Still later, conformists stayed - well, everywhere. It was people like us - NONconformists - who settled northern Europe, Asia, then walked across that land bridge to Alaska. A bunch more noncoformists found their way to Australia and New Zealand, and all those Pacific islands. Still later, all the nonconformists left Europe and came to America.
Face it people. You wish you could be like us. We don't give a rat's ass what anyone things, and you're jealous!!
Now, get back in queue, and blend in with your mates. People are looking at you, you know you don't want that!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It isn't just US, Liberia and Burma that use imperial, the UK does too! We use mph for speed limit signs, we use pints for our beer and milk, we use feet, yard and miles for most measurements, we use pounds & stones for weight. We use metric for very little.
The fact is that the US has already 'officially' adopted the metric system.
In many ways, the metric system is more convenient.
However, the US populace is (or at least used to be) far less likely than others to do something simply "because the government says so". Beyond that, there's simple mulish contrariness.
What metric 'evangelists' can't seem to accept is that there ARE times and places where the Imperial system is useful, and even handier to use than metric. Metric is decimal, which makes up and down conversion many, many times easier, as well as far simpler to use with computers/calculators. Temperatures? Let's remember that Celsius, for example, started with zero as boiling and 100 was freezing. If we really want a non-subjective, science-based system, Kelvin would by far be the right choice. Further, I'd argue that Fahrenheit is again, more humanly useful....0-100 is a much more intuitive measure of the range of typical human temperature experience, and besides, in normal daily life does the freezing/boiling point of perfectly distilled water matter that much? I don't encounter pristine water all that often.
But in HUMAN terms, most people on a daily basis don't commonly need to deal in hundredths or thousandths of anything. It's hard to remember, but for the bulk of human history, precision didn't necessarily outweigh utility. Further, the units of measure of the metric system are as grossly arbitrary as the imperial system. Sure, the meter has been rationalized down to the distance light travels in an (arbitrary) amount of time, etc. But measuring out a room without a tapemeasure, I bet I can get closer to the footage than you can to the square meters - I just use my feet.
Time is a good example. If decimalization is so precious, why not go to a day with 100 time units, each 100 subunits long? It would certainly ease calculation and increase precision - how absurd is it that we're using a, what, ancient Sumerian/Babylonian base-12 system? I'm being facetious of course - we use it because it WORKS. Why replace a system that works?
And ultimately that's my point.
First - the segments of the US that find it useful, has moved to the metric system - science, military, etc.
Second - it's needless busybodyness for someone to look over your shoulder to tell you how to live your life. It's nearly parallel for smarmy Euros to assert that the US "should" switch, mainly because it would be easier for them. Tough noogies.
Third - and this is entirely a utilitarian argument - one might look at the growth of the US economy and dominance of the US culturally, and objectively assert that the Imperial system is "clearly" more conducive to economic success. I think that'd be a dumb argument, but it's out there.
-Styopa
The only place that doesn't server beer in pints....
---
The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms. A knot of others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were watching the scene.
'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'
'And what in hell's name is a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.
'Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'
'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half litre -- that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front of you.
'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'
'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other customers.
There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry seemed to disappear. The old man's whitestubbled face had flushed pink. He turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught him gently by the arm.
'May I offer you a drink?' he said.
'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his shoulders again. He appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls. 'Pint!' he added aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of wallop.'
The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter. Beer was the only drink you could get in prole pubs. The proles were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of darts was in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten for a moment. There was a deal table under the window where he and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous, but at any rate there was no telescreen in the room, a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in.
"E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.'
'You must have seen great changes since you were a young man,' said Winston tentatively.
The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though it were in the bar-room that he expected the changes to have occurred.
'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper! When I was a young man, mild beer -- wallop we used to call it -- was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.'
'Which war was that?' said Winston.
'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely. He took up his glass, and his shoulders straightened again. 'Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!'
Get off my lawn.
Basic math. Yeah, tell me about it. You learned to count to ten, and you mastered all the measuring units - distance, volume, everything. Take a look again at the imperial and/or US measuring system. Throw in a few specialised measures, like the engineer's scale. Oh - you're so smart with your ten base system. WE have mastered base 8, base 16, base 12, and so much more. But, go on - feel superior. I'd hate to stand in the way of children having fun.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Why dumb it all down? Keep both. Sometimes it's convenient to describe something in Imperial, sometimes SI units, what's the big deal? People must be pretty stupid to not manage both. There is as much to be said for the human-scale Imperial measurements as there are for the easy-to-calculate metric system. Keep them both and get on with it and just "do the maths!"
Why? It's a perfectly valid word...
And a cromulent word, at that!
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Fact is, Radio Shack has had calculators out for a long, long time. I lost one, around 1985, and replaced it. Another fell into some concrete, around 1990, and I replaced it. The last one I bought, around 1997 or so was "appropriated" by my son. I don't do much construction anymore, but I'm sure Radio Shack still has them, if I need it. Texas Instruments has another.
And, no, the results don't come out in engineer scale, unless you PROGRAM it to do so. You punch in 2 3/4 inches x 6 3/8 inches to get the area in inches and fractions. You can figure the cubic yards for concrete as well.
I almost never used pen and paper when I was working construction, unless I was working on an estimate. In which case, I commited everything to a notebook, THEN checked my math with the calc.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Not steel pipes, cast iron pipes.
And you can't find cast iron pipes anymore where I live, it's all ABS. But I don't see that as a bad problem since the plastic pipes are less prone to corrosion. And all are metric here except for some threading which are around in imperial units for historical reasons.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Here in Sweden non-metric nuts and bolts are on special order only unless you happen to find an odd hardware store that actually stocks imperial sizes.
But you can get just about any variant in metric form.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Why can't the rest of the world just shut up about it. Fine, we get it. The math is too hard for you. Leave the complicated math to the Americans and use your simple metric system. WTF do you care what system we use?
Now is the time to change... I am sure people would much rather pay $1.06 per liter of gas than $4.00 a gallon
Imperial is a local optimum. A 100% metric system may be easier than a 100% imperial system, but a 100% imperial system is way easier than a 90% metric + 10% imperial system. You can't get there from here, without paying a heavy price in the short term, and if there's one thing Americans are good at (USA! #1!), it's avoiding short-term costs without thinking about long-term costs/benefits.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The Imperial Measurement system is thoroughly entrenched into the world of aviation too (except the Russians and their immediate neighbors/allies).
Altitude is measured in feet.
Atmospheric pressures are measured in inches of mercury.
Airspeeds and windspeeds are measured in knots (nautical miles per hour).
And furthermore, the official language spoken worldwide in all commercial air traffic control radio frequencies is (Gasp!) ENGLISH!.
I always enjoyed calculating foot-poundals per fortnight. How much did the Mars probe cost? The one that Lockheed crashed because they used medieval units? For more fun with furlong / firkin / fortnight units, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
Communist!
(No, seriously, that's why. We're afraid to admit we've been essentially wrong for the last several hundred years)
And an inch has had different meaning depending on country in past times:
Sweden: 24.74 mm replaced by the decimal inch of 29.6904 mm
Denmark: 26.2 mm
Norway: 31.4 mm
Germany: 26.1 mm (but Sachsen had 23.6 mm and there was also the Prussian decimal inch of 37.6625 mm)
So inches varies by which inch you mean...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
University level algebra? What the hell is that? Algebra is high school stuff. And if your job involves figuring out how to do a 22.6 degree pitch, you'll learn the necessary trig quickly.
Or maybe imperial measurements are evil?
Or maybe discussing the whole thing is evil?
Yeah, that has to be it:
Read the 1666 comments
Well, speaking as one who came of age in S.C. in the 1970s, I'd like to point out that this quintessentially redneck state had highway signs at that time that gave distances first in kilometers, then, in smaller print, in miles. The problem was that the leaders failed to follow through and go the rest of the way in the conversion. I personally blame the Reagan administration.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Wood dimensions, both nominal and actual, really stink in metric. This might be true in other real work things that I don't know about.
In theoretical physics we mostly use neither system and pick ones that are simplest for the problem at hand. (h bar = c = 1).
How are construction materials bought in metric countries? is there a 2x4 (actually 1 1/2 x 3 1/2 x some length piece of wood)? How is plywood sold, we have 4x8 foot sheets. Everything else is based on and fits into those "standards" (16in on center spacing of 2x4 studs for exterior walls and so on covered with a 4x8 sheet etc), the thickness of the drywall standard and the electrician leaves his boxes exposed that much. Shingles come in a "square" which is 100 sq foot (10x10 feet).
I have no problem with changing to metric and I fully understand it as i used it it my nuclear power and electronics background but i don't think it would ever be easy to switch in the US.
Price comparison is not done in 'liters' or 'milliliters' but in 'ounces'. Check the labels at the grocery store.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
LOL
It's not insightful. It IS funny, though. :-)
If the best argument you can muster for clinging to a particular measurement system centers around tolerance, you've already lost the debate. Tolerance is a perfectly good reason for adjusting social and even economic policy, but it is not a reason for choosing one measurement system over another.
While metric is better for it's internal scientific consistency, the imperial system is better for use of 2 as the divisor. Speak with carpenters that have used both systems and see which they prefer. Most will take imperial.
:T:R:A:N:S:
Convert gas signs to metric.
Why? It looks like just a ratio to me. They taught that in fifth grade when I was in school.
www.wavefront-av.com
why do other countries cling to the metric system? why does some jackass bring this topic up periodically? why does this stupid post exist? there are so many why's in the world, why don't you come up with something more interesting to wonder about?
As challenging as Imperial measurements are, it could be so much worse. We could use Slashdot units of measurement like Libraries of Congress (LoCs), Volkswagon Beetles (VWBs) and StretchToTheMoonAndBacks (SttMaBs)
Because we are not queer.
Because we are awesome and exceptional, that's why. We shouldn't have to change for anyone. In fact, they should change for us! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
You know it really wouldn't take much from the right place. If the president would just mention it in a one line speech, possibly repeat it in a few of his radio addresses and even tout the cost savings there really wouldn't be much need beyond that. News outlets would have a hay day with it writing numerous stories about the pros and cons and so would bloggers and the scientific community.
/. or some site like Reddit come up with a "Metric Day" to help it catch on.
TL;DR, have the president say so and just encourage it (March is Metric Month or something) would push it forward. Let the states and communities do the rest. Have
While the US system has it's roots in the British Empire system, they are NOT the same.
The US system broke off and established it's own measurement standards after gaining independence in the Revolutionary War (known in England as the War Of Stupid Snotty Idiots Over There) in 1783.
The Imperial System was not standardized until 1824, and there are differences.
The US still is standardized behind-the-scenes on SI units, and are used in science, medicine, by the US government, military, etc.
There was a heavy-handed push to suddenly convert everyone to metric in the late-1970s and was handled so badly that the backlash is still felt now; things like gas stations suddenly sold fuel in liters, but the old mechanical pumps read in gallons. Some changed had been made to make the pumps count in liter fractions, but at a lot of stations you had to do some math (before everyone had a handheld calculator) to figure out what you actually owed (multiply the price by 1.4 or something) and a lit of small stations certainly "rounded" things to there favor. Grocery stores, and other places often had similar problems, and consumers left feeling like
I remember filling my mother's car and the total in liters was like 3l more than the tank could hold in gallons.
Americans don't like the government telling them how to live. That's why we left Europe in the first place. And once they felt like they were being cheated--the metric conversions always seemed to work out in favor of the seller--the government had to back off.
degrees C is not SI, Kelvin is. It is just another "traditional unit."
You're begging the question by assuming that the only good things are those that French revolutionary units are superior to English units at. I could just as well state that a good system of units needs:
In which case English units are demonstrably superior by my two criteria (e.g., no-one will ever confuse an 'inch' with a 'foot' in speech in a noisy environment, compared with a half-dozen long-winded variations on 'metre'; and it's far easier to divide a quart into fluid ounces (halve to pints, halve to cups, halve to gills, halve to jacks, halve to fluid ounces)).
To answer your item 2: just do all your work in whichever unit makes sense, and convert at the end if necessary for some other purpose. Egads, you'd think proponents of the French revolutionary system are mathematical simpletons who find it difficult to multiply by a constant!
To answer your item 3: those 'weird' conversion factors tend to make it very easy to concretely manipulate quantities. The focus on powers of 2 makes doubling and halving useful; the focus on 12 makes it simple to offer a multitude of sub-units (12 having 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 as factors, while 10 has but 1, 2 and 5). Even an acre is based on a useful agricultural standard--which, given its use in measuring farmland, makes sense.
French units try to impose a uniform scheme on a non-uniform world.
What's even funnier is that these metric superiority trolls will do a quick 180 (see, gasp, a non-metric unit again!) when it comes time for them to argue over whether customers are getting full value when marketing uses a Metric Gigabyte (1GB=1,000,000,000 bytes) instead of a "Real Gigabyte" (1Gibibyte=1,073,741,824 bytes) when stating the capacity of storage media.
I agree with most of what you said, however would argue that the "Real Gigabyte" is a metric unit in the computer realm. computers operate in base 2, you can't have half a bit so it makes most sense for the measuring units to be expressed in base 2.
That assertion mostly only makes sense in cases where you're saturating your address space.
For instance, if you've got 16-bit memory addresses, it makes sense to have an amount of memory that corresponds to that address space (64kiB, assuming no paging or other mechanisms to get more).
With hard drives and other secondary storage, it doesn't matter. Manufacturers offer a wide range of capacities, and whether they're measured in GB or GiB, they are very rarely at a power of two. (800GiB hard drives don't neatly fill a binary address space, right? So it doesn't matter if they say 800GiB or 860GB, so long as they're clear about which definition they're using.) The nature of a rotating disk (with different data density on outer sectors than on inner sectors) doesn't naturally yield a power of two either. And, of course, filesystems have long since learned to cope with the situation.
I can sympathize with those who feel that the traditional definitions of kB, MB, and GB (etc.) have been hijacked - but at the same time I appreciate that there's now a way forward that disambiguates the situation.
Bow-ties are cool.
The simple fact is that in order to convert the US to Metric, the costs will not be substantial... they will be downright astronomical. It will damn near require a reinvention of the wheel. Architecture, liquid volume, distances, cooking instructions, price by weight, a massive change in the way people in the US think.... If you start with switching out the little things... you soon see that all of the other things that will have to be changed just constantly compound. Take roads for example: If you change the way distances are measured, the following must occur:
Mile markers to be replaced by KM markers
highway exits to be renumbered (exit numbers are currently based on approximately what mile marker they are at)
Odometers changed and recalibrated ON EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE in the US
Instrument clusters recalibrated/enumerated, possibly major transmission work involved
rewrite owners manuals in cars en masse to comply with the new measurement system
change the measurement system used to calculate fluids in cars
change the way fuel is measured and sold
change fuel economy calculations
rewrite maps
reprogram GPS devices
Recalculation of speed limits and replacement of the signage.
Anyone want to guess at the cost to the American consumer on changing that system alone? I certainly don't. The corporations and US Government sure as hell ain't gonna pay for it. Go ahead and throw the changes to Architecture into the mix and see how quick those costs compound. While you're at it, change the way food is measured and sold by weight,
As a Brit, I don't get to see too much of US sports, but I make a point of watching the Superbowl live. It occurred to me that, if the US went metric-only, all the sports that Americans have invented over the years would have to be redefined. Moreover, all the sports records would, effectively, disappear. Well, maybe not disappear, but I think, given the amount of statistics used in American sports shows, it'd cause such a monumental headache, not necessarily to convert all the figures, but for the pundits, many of whom have reams of this stuff memorised, that the sport networks are willing to stick with what they've got. The commentators would first have to agree to use the "new system" - and, let's face it, how likely is that to happen? These are often ex-players, full of good ol' "America Rules!" attitude and, given the comments I've seen about the "SI is French" vibe, I imagine the response would be a big "No f***in' way!". And even if you got the networks and all their presenters to go for it, it might piss off a large number of viewers who have the same anti-metric sentimentalities. And you can't annoy the punters, for fear they'll switch off. And we all know where that line of reasoning ends up.
The biggest stumbling block to the adoption of the metric system in the US was the way it was presented to the American people. They were shown how to convert from imperial to metric units and everyone thought it was much too hard. Now the soft drink industry just started producing liter bottles of soda and everyone is fine with that. When you ask how much a liter is no one tries to convert back to imperial units. They just imagine a liter bottle of soda.
Dimensional Analysis does matter, and real science is not non-dimensional. We don't need to have Length in meters or furlongs to prove the model works, but we do need the dimensions. for example, the relationship between distance and speed is Length/Time, v = d/t. We must consider the dimensions to know the algebra or calculus is correct.
Heh. My screen was sold as a 0.004545 furlong model.
Teaching kids Metric doesn't cost anything.
In Canada we learned it along side imperial, and the only headaches were those from kids constantly calling our elders dumb for having such an archaic system.
You want to know how fucked up living with both systems can be. Come to Canada.
Distance: Kilometers
Height: Feet & Inches (Except at the doctors office: cm)
Weight: Pounds (ditto: kg)
Volume: Litres / ml (Except all the volumes are based off of American sizes, so we have 255 ml & 350 ml cans, but 1 & 2 Litre bottles)
Construction is all still imperial with metric units so we get 2x4's (38mm x 89mm's for sale) and 4x8 (foot) board's. Wood is bought & sold in board feet.
Baking is in either or both.
Measurements are taken in either or both.
Hair is measured in inches
Speed is in km/h (or in science m/s)
In law the inch is defined as 25.4mm.
People use 'quart' to mean litre and gallon to mean 4 quarts (aka 4 litres)
The younger generation probably has it better since the conversion was done before their time.
As far as proportions go, the golden ratio is better expressed in decimals (metric) than fractions (imperial) since you don't need to try and express the roots in a series of ever smaller fractions.
Pipes are weird in all measurement systems, they are generally rated for strength and the particular material they are made of will then dictate wall thickness for a particular strength. As materials have changed so have wall thicknesses so that even if one diameter is a sensible number (internal or external) the other diameter is invariably a strange and inconvenient number.
At least in the US the pipe sizes have remained the same for quite a while so there are fewer combinations of fitting sizes to juggle. The fittings already take up an entire wall at my local home depot, adding a new standard to the mix might double the number of combos.
Nullius in verba
Mr. Fahrenheit probably wouldn't have agreed. Similarly, I work in an industry where it is useful (for me) to add some ingredients in UBHs (Unified BrokenHalo Handfuls) - obviously with the middle initial changed to protect the guilty.
Personally, I find the plethora of obscure units still provide a sort of anchor point. For instance, I know exactly what a shit-ton means, while none of us will have any problem visualising a Sydharb as a unit of capacity.
What is even worse, is scientific shows like Mythbusters use BOTH systems. Usually they use metric, usually it's F but sometimes it's C. Weighs usually pounds, but they also have used (kilo)grammes. Distance is usually inches and feet, but when bouncing a baseball they were measuring the bounce in cm - while other parts of the same experiment were using inches and feet.
There is no consistency, and that alone can give rise to errors. It doesn't really matter whether one uses cm or inches, or C or F as long as it's consistent. Forget to write down the unit once, and it's guesswork that's left. Have a thermometer with both scales - oops which scale were we using again this time?
You write "(kilo)grammes," so it's possible you're watching it on UK television. The US and Europe (in countries that don't dub or lector) have two different voiceovers, and the European one translates all the US customary figures to metric. It's not as unnatural in the US broadcast.
It's still pretty jarring television; you're right about that.
Well its not just the "geek" who prefers metric. Go to any country in the world besides the usa and everyone, even down to the most uneducated brute prefers metric temperature, metric measurement and metric distances.
Its quite a bit harder to add fractions than decimals. I am pretty sure thats like a universal, and americans have simply "learned" to be proficient at fractions.
Base 10 is ALWAYS easier than what, base 16? base 12? even the units arent the same base numbers!! madness!!
Your wikipedia passage only really applies to the usa as most other countries all converted at some point to metric and the populations didnt revolt against their centralized authority.
Perhaps the problem of americans distrusting their government so much wouldn't be such a problem if they converted to metric. Perhaps their distrust of government would be diminished if the government successfully pushed through these measures, held your hands and said "see its not so bad!" Perhaps it will lead to a social revolt in that americans will finaly realize that their government is THEIRS. Not some opposing force in a manufactured duality.
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
The standard system is not too bad, especially if you do a lot of rough measurements and are near average size (which most of us are).
Do you walk a lot? Ever notice that a mile is about 1000 paces? :)
A yard is about arm's length, a foot is, well, as long as your foot.
Many things, like inches and ounces, are good because you take a parent unit, split it in half twice, and then take a third... if you are cutting something with a not too precise method, the way these break down is about as close as you are going to get to equal parts... try sawing a piece of wood into ten equal pieces.
For the gallon, well I guess the best argument is that it fits nicely into the slot in your fridge.
One thing that engineers tend to forget is that most people are not engineers, and the types of direct relation between the world they live in and their measurements is important. It doesn't make sense if you do a lot of math, but to be frank, most people don't.
The simple truth of the matter is that there is, contrary to unverified claims, no economic incentive to change. Metric will prevail where it makes economic sense and it will not where it doesn't.
If you look at industries where we must cooperate with international partners metric is used. In purely domestic industries, we still use imperial units.
For example, Coke and Pepsi are huge conglomerates whose engineering teams span the globe. As a result, we buy soda in liters. The dairy farm sells into a domestic market only so we buy milk in gallons.
GM, Ford, Toyota sell cars around the world and tool their factories for metric because that's how cars are engineered. The U.S. lumber industry sells the vast majority of its lumber into a market of standardized engineered products that for historical reasons are based on the 4x8 sheet good. That's not going to change. Mills and machinery sold into that market to this day still use inches. There is no good economic incentive for that market to change.
Lumber however is an interesting case. The U.S. in general seems to build many more structures out of wood than most parts of the world. This makes sense as North America has vast forests. So what happens in Canada which is a "metric" country.
If you look at the wood products there, you'll find that the standard sheet size for metric is 1200x2400mm or 120x240 cm. This at least approximates the 4x8 sheet of the U.S. but I found in talking to Canadian carpenters, they utilize the fact that their metric sheet goods can be easily divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, & 12. Gee, is that why there's 12 inches to a foot??
Some aspects of metric make sense, some aspects of imperial make sense. Neither system is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
I'm still amazed that almost nobody seems to notice the fact that in Fahrenheit, there are 180 degrees between freezing and boiling (as in, degrees in a half circle, like a dial might use). Meaning Fahrenheit is based on the same physical constants as Celsius, not "human physical comfort" or similar misinformation.
The weirdness of Fahrenheit is that the 0 was moved from the freezing point of fresh water to salt (ocean) water, so now it no longer makes obvious sense.
Anyway, neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius make sense as SI units - temperature is a measure of thermal energy over density, neither converts directly to any SI (or imperial) units without a conversion constant (ignoring calories, you still need a constant to convert to joules).
. . . the Metric System just isn't as funny.
GUARD #1: What -- a swallow carrying a coconut?
ARTHUR: It could grip it by the husk!
GUARD #1: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A 141.747616 gram bird could not carry a 0.45359237 kilogram coconut.
See?
All I see is a bunch of luser neckbeards explaining the differences between metric, and imperial, talking about how metric allows easy base-10 conversion, and fluff-post after another all saying he same things. Almost 2000 comments. Jesus fuck, guys. Get a fucking life.
Imperial measurements are better for song lyrics.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Did you read what I wrote? If you did, you could have figured that Canadian buyers would at some point have to register their vehicles. That's where the problem comes in.
With all due respect, you don't have any idea what you're talking about. People import cars from the US into Canada all the time, and successfully register them. There are tens of thousands of US-built (and Imperial units primary) cars on Canada's roads today, fully legally registered. The only real complication comes with things like safety and emissions standards, which do vary by country. So some US cars cannot be registered in Canada. However most can, and it happens literally every day.
I worked at a vehicle registry for years, I know what I'm talking about. Please do not spout nonsense.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
... and have time of day measured in powers of 10, too?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yep, the Americans are indeed free; free to be awkward.
There is no such thing as "United States customary"; they are Imperial measures from the time of the British Empire, from the time when the current USA was still a colony of that Empire. There are still hold-outs who use Imperial measures in the UK and these people need a kick up the arse. While trying to compare guitar necks this week, the US company (PRS, for those who care) gave some of the neck measurements in 32nds of an inch. What earthly use is this when millimetres are so much more appropriate to the scale of the item being measured?
Have fun with your Imperial measurements. 32nds of an inch, indeed.
The point is that (particularly with regard to units of length), the Imperial scales were well suited to a life without calculators. The mental arithmetic is easy for us, while present-day adolescents have no idea.
For instance, I was at a supermarket checkout a few weeks ago, and the person in front of me had a couple of cartons of soft drink in her trolley. I overheard an exchange between 3 of the checkout-chicks along the lines of:
"What's 6 x 9?"
"Uhh, 32?"
"45?"
"Oh, I thought it was 108..."
Until I intervened and told them the answer. I was gobsmacked until it occurred to me that kids are no longer required to learn multiplication tables as I was, and thus they are incapicatitated for participation in any kind of life without a calculator as a crutch. (Slide-rules don't count: they require you to use vast arrays of common sense.)
they consider themselves an empire?
Not always. It's much easier to cut something in half than it is to cut it into tenths.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The main problem is how the metric system relates to reality. Estimates done in metric using small numbers are less accurate than the same in Imperial.
The meter is too big, the kilometer is too small, and here in the US I've never even heard anyone try to specify anything in decimeters.
The second issue is that when everything is divisible by 10, all the orders of magnitude look the same. Is it 1000 decimeters (no, see above), 100 meters, 10000 centimeters, or what? As soon as you want to use a bigger unit, you have to bring in a decimal value, and then it looks like you're trying for precision you don't actually have.
I'm actually not kidding.
car manufacturers marked the speedometers with MPH
if I need to know my speed in km/h, I simply read the m/h reading as if it were hexadecimal and convert to decimal in my head, something all techies should be able to do instinctively.
e.g. 40mph is about 64km/h.
Work on what became the metric system began before the Revolution; there was at the time dozens of regional definitions of common units in France (which you can still witness in such mind boggling vestiges such as "Troy ounce" or "avoirdupois ounce"). Starting over with an entirely new, rational base avoided having to pick a favorite.
Fahrenheit degrees are another story; they're just a fucking stupid unit. Using the human body's temperature as a reference point .. that's just retarded.
If that was all it was, it would be easy and it would be simple. As you're selectively ignoring the parts of my statements that reveal that this is NOT what they are doing with the new plans that are coming out in metric(and I've seen it from both Canadian and European engineers, so its not a localized problem) I am forced to assume you are a troll and I've been successfully trolled.
Good day sir.
Why is the rest of the world lagging behind in adopting the American Standard units?
Convert gas signs to metric.
...miles per liter as our measurement for fuel consumption in our cars :-\
The wine I drank at a London South Bank restaurant was filled to the 0.75l hash mark.
This is a boring sig
after they figure how to move Eight Mile Road.
And another question: "When are we going to quit using base 10 and move to hex?"
I, for one, welcome our metric overlords.
I worked for the military for 10 years and only stopped working for them about 5 months ago. They use non metric all the time so I'm not sure what this post means.
Aircraft altitude and speed are measured in ft and nothing else, unless there is some kind of international operation, etc etc..
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
Fun, useless fact of the day: :-)
There's an old English unit called the Pottle that is two quarts.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pottle
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
12' along and 3' up will give you the same pitch as 4m along and 1m up. The units make no difference as it's just a ratio. The pitch would be about 14 degrees either way.
How were you getting ~22.6 degrees from going along 4 and up 1?
Almost all systems of weights and measures used in trade are imposed and regulated by governments. Certainly the ones in the United States are.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Is anyone here old enough to remember Jimmy Carter trying to get the metric system in the US.
Get off my lawn.
It's called football because you kick the ball, right, with your foot. Unlike American HandBall where you run around with it.
If any country has the wrong meaning for 'Football' it's the USA, not the rest of the world.
Speaking as a person raised in a metric country, the problem that's going to prevent the switch forever is: you can't just convert from imperial to metric, you have to throw away everything you have and start from scratch with metric tools and metric parts. Every single new object you touch and see is going to have different sizes than old ones. Other posts already demonstrated that you get weird measures if you convert standard manufacturing parts from inches and yards to centimeters and meters. Metric countries use totally different sizes: you want to have 240 x 120 centimeters boards and not some odd decimal number that no metric ruler will be able to measure. So, conversion from imperial to metric is useless.
Think now about what it means to reboot an economy as large as the US one whilst being able to service all the existing stuff built with imperial measures. Two different tool chains, two different manufacturing chains, two different servicing chains and that's an oversimplification.
My bet is that the US might switch for not very important things like measurements of foods and liquids. That could even be good marketing: having a 0.5 kg beef might sound slimmer than a 1 pound one (it isn't) and 1.05 USD per liter of gas might sound less than 4 USD per gallon (it's the same). No way they'll switch for more fundamental things like house building.
while this may seem elementary to you, construction requires a lot of tricks that are based on the old system and not the metric system
for instance all studs in a building are spaced 14.5 inches apart which allows for a load every 16 inches. (2x4 boards are 1.5 inches wide so you have 3/4 inch compensation between the board loads).
This is just 1 small thing, but imagine having to rework every blueprint for every house in America.
It's just 1 example, but it is a HUGE undertaking.
The Metric System is just a subset of the Imperial system.
I think there's a very easy answer to why Imperial has hung on as long as it has: the ease with which one can arrive at an estimate of a thing in Imperial units given no equipment other than their body. An inch is approximately the length of the first knuckle on most adult men's hands; many men have feet that are approximately 12 inches in length; two hands cupped together will hold about one cup of fluid...I have yet to find any similar correlations for any of the metric unit.
The US still use the imperial system because they are lazy (sorry if it sounds rude; I should have written "they appreciate convenience"). The US is the country of drive-in ATMs and easily digestible food (a.k.a. burgers). People don't want to change because they don't want to change.
The Britons did it, and it didn't lead to a major catastrophe. Except for the mile if I'm correctly informed, and that's understandable because it's not easy to have a smooth transition from mile to km as they are quite similar in magnitude, so using both in parallel for some time would probably cause confusion.
Funny, though, that the US still use "imperial" units after their independence from the British empire. And funny, too, that Liberia uses the same units even though it is the country whose reason to exist is freedom from US slavery.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Metric is used in construction. "Metric" feet. Sta 137+23.34 4.90' LT. Elev: 690.71
> Metric PREfixes a power of ten to the unit. This doesn't just lengthen the term. It also puts the designation of WHAT KIND
> of unit you mean at the end, rather than the beginning. Bad enough that you have to work through the count before you get
> to the unit in "United States customary" (NOT Imperial, by the way) units. With metric you also have to get past the power
> of ten before you find out what you're talking about.
My BS detector just went a few kilotons off the scale ;)
Your reasoning is completely flawed here. Metric units are short and sweet, very close to their imperial counter parts (ex. kilo, gram, meter). The prefixes you mention are to make the number shorter, not the unit longer. Instead of saying "10 THOUSAND METERS" you can say "10 KILOMETERS". Where in the US you would have to say "10 THOUSAND FEET" or somehow convert it into miles which despite living in the US for 12+ years I honestly still can't do off the top of my head.
> Then there's the issue of scale: Imperial and US customary units are mainly human-sized. A pound, for instance,
> is something that you can hold in your hand, with just enough heft to give you the impression of weight, while a gram
> is an anonymous pebble that has to be scaled up by three orders of magnitude to be comparable (about 2.2 lb).
Wow, more completely incomprehensible logic... A pound of *what* can be held in your hand? A pound of feathers? And I'm sure you aware that for dense people the metric system also has a pound (500g).
> Yet a litre is about a quart - a handy bottle size for serving four. (And a litre is a cubic DECImeter? Why isn't it a cubic
> METER? So much for consistency...)
Huh? A liter is 0.001 cubic meters. Again, you're mis-understanding the use of prefixes in the metric system.
> The metric system was IMPOSED by governments.
This statement is so backwards, I'm not even going to go there.... Just two clues for you: NIS ISO.
Whooooooooosh!
So, if we are discussing distances, and I say that something is 15 kilometers away, you are going to be confused and have to wait that extra 0.3 seconds to know that I am talking about distance in meters, and not weight in grams? How slow are the brains of Americans that they can't judge the unit based on context.
Also, You do realize that "klick" and "key" are slang terms, not proper abbreviations right?
And your complaint is that a gram is small and a kilogram is bigger and roughly equal to 2.2 pounds. So if I want to talk about something heavy, I use kg, and something light, I talk about grams, and the brain can quickly and immediately not only know that by referring to grams that I am talking small, but also precisely how it compares to something measurable, such as a single kilogram. But if you are talking ounces and pounds, ok, so what was the conversion factor again? Was this one a factor of 12 like inches and feet, no wait, this one was 16. let me instantly do that math in my head. I have 0.316 pounds, so that is... let me think... carry the 1... right, 5.056 ounces. Phew, that was so much easier than moving a decimal place.
As for the remark about a litre being a cubic decimeter, do you propose that the density of water be changed to accommodate a scale that is more to your liking? You could also simply state that a cubic meter is equal to 1000 litres. But you are probably right, the brain can comprehend so much easier that 1 quart is equal to 57.75 cubic inches.
Now, as for the freedom thing. People are always free to use whatever they want. People that use FOSS, tend to use it because it works better, AND because it has a freedom to it. Not only are people free to use the metric system, it works better too. I would argue that fear of change is a much bigger reason for the resistance than a choice of freedom.
As a scientist working in the United States, I use the Imperial system in day to day life, and metric on the rarer occasions when events happening inside of a cell require measuring.
You'll notice that the magnitude of the measurement always precedes the type of measurement, in both systems. The type of unit always follows the number which indicates its magnitude. Say, "10 inches," and I can say, "Oh my gosh, you have to read the number 10 with out knowing what you have 10 of!" This is just the way things go. This big difference, and advantage to the metric system. Is that there is a short vocabulary for the types of units and a short vocabulary for the magnitude of a unit; where as, in the Imperial system the magnitude of a unit varies unpredictably and it is combined with the type of a unit. In Metric, if you know that a meter is distance, you're done with learning the types of distance units. In Imperial, if you know what an inch and a mile are, but not a yard, reading "23 yards" leaves you completely ignorant, and even if you did know, you'd still have to read the word yard in order to know it was distance and you'd then have to recall from some data table in memory that a yard is 3 feet or that there are 1760 yards in a mile.
Literally yesterday, I had an Indian co-worker in my lab ask me how many yards were in 60 feet when we were talking about Baseball, and 60 is even cleanly divisible by 3: he just didn't happen to know this particular unit magnitude specifier. Advantage: metric.
In the UK we a weird mix between the two. Filling up a car with petrol, we use litres but when you walk in a pub your order a pint. I only know my hight and weight in feet and pounds but if you asked my how long and heavy a soft was, I would tell you in kilograms and meters. And then you have distance and speed in miles and miles per hour. I wish we would choose one system and stick with it ...
What you say makes a lot of since, but why not completely define a truly make it an American system and use an updated version of Jefferson measurements and have the best of both
worlds:http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html
Besides. we could use the work.
-Gene
That was a very well written and well thought-out post, but now I'm going to point out the Achilles heel in it.
In a sterile lab, with nice clean white papers, humming machinery, and the ability to measure the circumference of the earth or the wavelengths emitted by radioactive atoms, metric is very convenient - especially for people who find mathematical operations more difficult than moving a decimal place bothersome. It satisfies your (excellently stated) conditions well enough, and is highly appropriate for laboratory science.
But in a sweltering pit, surrounded by creaking shoring, with thunderheads on the horizon - the world of the working man, not the scientist - give me a system with more whole divisors, based on an accumulation of pragmatic measures derived from real use over centuries. I don't want to have to use a fragile, battery-dependent calculator in order to revise a foundation plan that some egghead architect specified incorrectly from his air-conditioned office - when I was an excavator 20 years ago I couldn't even wear a wristwatch for a week without it being pulverised, much less carry a calculator.
Inches, feet, acres, rods, chains, furlongs, dayworks, dozens, all these measures are optimal for the individual citizen-farmer-statesman - the land owning free man of the original American Dream [tm].
And in America, we still respect our tradition of "rugged individualism". Sure, it's kind of a joke nowadays with both major government factions promising to keep standing armies to protect us from ourselves, and local municipalities issuing tickets to people who repair their water heaters without a permit, but don't underestimate how powerful this meme still is among the mass of American citizens. There are many Americans who have never called on the services of a mechanic, electrician, carpenter or plumber their whole lives. I know whole families who have never hired anyone more skilled than a farmhand since their forefathers came to this country 250 years ago.
A "furlong" is one furrow long and it's a pragmatic measure related both to the amount of work a plow team can do in a day (without compromising the health of the draft animals) and to the optimal length of a crop row being tended by humans on foot. Just so with acres, chains, ricks, cords and perches - all of which are usefully related to things like the standardized length of a rod (16'6") and the turning radii of plows and harrows. Feet and inches (and sixteenths, of course) allow thirds and sixths to be expressed as whole units, which is pragmatically optimal when working outdoors with hand tools while covered with sweat and dirt. Read wikipedia's "anthropic units" entry for more information on this.
Given the unstoppable collapse of the petrodollar, the non-specialists may actually be the citizens best prepared for America's future; unemployed people can't afford to hire carpenters, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, etc. but the stereotypical American farmboy can do all these jobs and more.
And that all-American boy uses feet and inches. Because, frankly, they are better suited to his needs. And when he measures the amount of water, gasoline or diesel in the family tanks, he's likely to be using a bright yellow stick, either ten or sixteen and a half feet long, clearly marked in inches.
It doesn't make sense to use a system that is optimal for people who have the skills and tools to convert numbers trivially, and sub-optimal for people who have neither the tools, the training or the proclivity to do complex math. Use a system that works best for the manual laborer in the field, and let the highly educated science johnnies suck it up.
Or, use both systems, each one in its proper place. That's mostly what we do in the USA now, although I'd argue that metric would be better for the kitchen nowadays, since we're no longer hanging our own hams and scalding chickens inside our houses.
Some kid is going to ask his daddy why the heck something is 30.48 centimeters long, granddad will pip up with a rambling story about feet and inches and miles... The kid will either think the past was insane or that granddad is starting to lose his marbles!
Soda is absolutely still sold in English units in the U.S. The 12-ounce aluminum can is one of the most common containers for soda and will continue to be due to the large number of vending machines that are designed to work with that specific container. (Okay, maybe they could call it a "355 mL can" but that's just a conversion; it would be the same exact container.) The 20-ounce plastic bottle is also extremely common, and 8-ounce cans, 12-ounce bottles, and 24-ounce bottles are seen with some regularity. Other consumer products are a real mismash of English and metric sizes, as well as some "made for a particular price point" sizes that don't come out evenly in either English or metric units. Your engine example is a good one. The displacement is measured in liters and the fasteners used on an engine are typically metric as well, but power and torque are always given in horsepower and lb-ft rather than kW and Nm, and the efficiency is in miles per gallon rather than liters per 100 km.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Best. Satirical post. Ever.
thank you.
FTW! Let the Frogs keep their bloody metrics to themselves!
Funny how you turned a comparison between customary units and SI into a Tea Party rant. Sometimes customary units may be a little more convenient to work with and vice versa, but the sore point is the U.S. has become one of the few hold-outs. This makes dealing with an international audience more complicated, and honestly I can't even say I know most of the conversions between customary units. How many feet or yards are in a mile? I have a rough idea, but I'd have to look it up. Since I don't cook often enough, I have to look up conversions between pints, quarts, tablespoons, etc when I do. Still, I do get a better feel for customary measures of, say, distance and temperature because that's what I always hear used.
Do I personally feel that my freedom has been infringed if the government sets up a standard set of weights and measures for trade and commerce? Not really. Actually, I see it as a nice thing that measurements like "pound" and "kilogram" have a standard meaning and not whatever the manufacturer decided on. Your complaint is empty rhetoric.
Also, historically, during the French Revolution, the metric system was devised because, even within France, measures like a pound varied significantly from market town to market town (e.g., "the Troy pound"). The standardization used in French eventually became an international standard: SI.
What *really* confuses me about sanitary pipes is that a 3" pipe is 3.5" wide. Errr .... what?
It's intended to fit a 3.5" hole. The inside is standard (so you get smooth joints with other 3.5" pipe), the outside depends on how thick the wall is, which depends on the material it's made from. All you really care about is that the inside can smoothly join with other 3.5" pipe and the fact that it's 3.5" or less in diameter - so it can fit existing holes and conduits, and replace existing 3.5" pipe. If this is all a grand revelation, then I strongly suggest hiring a professional rather than DIY...
People complain about US job losses, but you want to see the destruction and undercutting of thousands of US jobs by foreign producers then convert the US economy to metric.
International trade helps the transacting parties. Legislation that protects domestic industry (and has an effect) benefits the industry at the expense of its consumers. Since the protection has an effect, the buying side of the industry would have gotten a better deal elsewhere, presumably because elsewhere was more efficient at producing the good in question. In other words: protection does a zero-sum transfer between parties, and a negative-sum prevention of efficiency. If protectionism is applied broadly, it performs a big (and expensive!) zero-sum transfer while hurting everybody, most notably those people it claims to protect.
Imperial units keep countries like China from taking a 10 year plan of losses to destroy all US steel producers so they can take over the market and charge more later.
What prevents China from producing steel in imperial sizes? It's not like the length of an inch is top secret knowledge (or else we wouldn't have this discussion). But let's just pretend we're talking about the presence or absence of an effective barrier.
Why the hell would China run a plan of losses? How quick can the US steel industry get back on-line if the ones in China overcharge? Also, why don't the steel works in China compete for US customers? It seems to me one needs to be almost paranoid to think China would take long sustained losses to hurt the US. Maybe to gain (i.e. rational self-interest), but see "losses" and "sustained". Besides, what's to fear? That the US will stop being the most powerful country in the world? Have a look at England---they did OK, didn't they?
They plan to throw rovers at Mars until they capitulate! :)
I work purely on the nyan system.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
.You are missing the point of SI - the next unit down is a factor of 10 smaller. So while 10 doesn't divide by anything more if you go down to 100 or 1000 you have more options.
Right, it's just that base-10 was the wrong choice for SI. base-12 metric (e.g. a kilometer is 1728 meters base 10, but 1000 meters base-12 ) has all the benefits of base-10 metric plus you have lots of factors to work with for division.
The Egyptians and Babylonians knew this, it just got lost about 2000 years ago. Somebody (a Roman, perhaps) forgot that you didn't have to count on your 10 fingers, you could also count on the knuckles of the four fingers of each. Romans also had long-division as an advanced course of study in their equivalent of college. Roman numerals are bad, having them in base 10 made them even worse.
If only the Arabs had numerals for 11 and 12 we'd have been better off. Listen to the words, 'eleven' and 'twelve'. they're not One-Teen, Two-Teen, there's still a remnant of their former use in our language.
Humans will eventually adopt a dozenal metric system.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I am a native metric user but I had to work on some engineering projects that had formulas and constants in Imperial units (aerodynamics - trans-sonic domain). Any idea how fun is converting pounds per square inch when raised at power 1.7something? After two of these we gave up and converted the formula and everything to metric...
Whilst the cost of switching would be huge, there is also a massive hidden cost in not switching
Between a cost you see and one you don't, which one do you think most people will choose?
I didn't actually do the math, I threw out a random number that I figured was semi-sort of close. Didn't really have time at the time to think much about it. The point is the same. Pitch is often being provided with zero ratio.
What's worse, we American's don't always use the same Imperial measures that the British use. A US Gallon is smaller than a British Gallon. I believe the fundamental difference is that in the US 2 Cups is 1 Pint, and in the UK 2 Cups is less than 1 Pint. AFAIK, the other ratios (pints to quarts, quarts to gallon, etc) are the same, just not the cups to pint conversion.
Length is the same. Not sure about weight, as I'm never sure which Pound the British are talking about. Couldn't tell you about anything else.
The wine I drank at a London South Bank restaurant was filled to the 0.75l hash mark.
I hope you meant 7.5cl...
Fahrenheit is a perfectly logical system.
It's simply calibrated to how humans experience the climate.
0F - really fucking cold.
100F - really fucking hot.
Your average human doesn't care what the state change transition temperatures of distilled water at sea level are. But, oh so clever for scientists.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I just find it so much easier to picture how far away something is by picturing a sequence of bohr radii
I don't particularly care what system we use as long as it's consistent. I own a Harley -- what am I supposed to do, remove all the Standard fasteners and replace them with Metric? Shall I become a metric commando, tear down MPH signs on the highway in the dead of night and put up KPH signs?
Personally I'd like to own just one set of tools (and not have to sit there and try to remember what the next size is after 17/32) and have only one scale on my speedometer, but there's really not a lot we as individuals can do about it.
I know there are people out there who say "I tried to convert this recipe to metric but one tablespoon of sugar is 14.7868 milliliters and who can measure that accurately?" but if that's the best argument you can make, you don't deserve to participate in the discussion.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
you happy about a several million dollar lander making a crater simply because of the USA catering to the "their takin' my inches Yaaaaaa!" crowd?
You know that it was a US to US error here, right? Lockheed-Martin in Denver wrote the software that output foot-seconds, JPL in Pasadena was expecting Newton-seconds.
JPL wrote the spec, Lockheed didn't follow it, and nobody bothered to test their interfaces. This is the real problem. Doing a multiply at the end wasn't the hard part.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Your fractions I know of the top of my head its like memorizing multiplication tables or some such. 24" + 6.5' is a real oddball question and would never be expressed as such on a blue print. 5' 6 1/2" or 5-6-8 would be the typical layout on a blue print or engineering specs. And I've never worked on a project a mile big or even a hog's head condos just are not that big.
Item 3: Imperial also messes up the convenience units by having lots of weird conversion factors (e.g. an acre is (I think) a furlong by a chain. How many square feet is that?
That wasn't a question people cared about answering when those units were introduced. They cared about easily surveying land into useful parcels.
An acre is a furlong long and a chain wide. A furlong is 10 chain. A chain is 4 rods (the rod being easier to carry around than the 66 ft long chain). A mile is 8 furlongs. These are simple, well formed relationships that were sized in a way that made it easy for the people who actually used the units to do their jobs.
No one cared, outside of an academic exercise, how many feet (or inches) are in a mile (and pretty much nobody cares today). The rod manufacturer cared how many feet were in a rod, and the surveyors, civil engineers and farmers cared how many rods bounded their acres and miles.
e.g., no-one will ever confuse an 'inch' with a 'foot' in speech in a noisy environment
ONE KILO MIKE = 1 km.
French units try to impose a uniform scheme on a non-uniform world.
The imperial units try to assume a uniformity in the length of feet (or agricultural practices) which is not there in a non-uniform world.
Also, if one Smoot is 5'7", how much is ten Smoots (hint: not 57')? How much is three Smoots?
LOL
Cubic liter? You really have no idea what the hell you are talking about do you?
Americans like monosyllabic or abbreviated words wherever possible.
It's about quick clear communication, not just a fetish for monosyllables. Polishing things down to single syllables without obscuring them is the ideal. But a two- or three-syllable term that rolls from the tongue rather than twisting it, and that doesn't collide with something else, is quite acceptable.
Metric PREfixes a power of ten to the unit. This doesn't just lengthen the term. It also puts the designation of WHAT KIND of unit you mean at the end, rather than the beginning. Bad enough that you have to work through the count before you get to the unit in "United States customary" (NOT Imperial, by the way) units. With metric you also have to get past the power of ten before you find out what you're talking about. Notice that, when abbreviating metric units, they shorten differently: A kiloMETER is a "K" or "klick", for instance, while a kiloGRAM is a "key".
The tendencies of language and the centrally-planned systematization are at odds.
Well actually the standard way of shortening the word kilometer is just "km", and kilogram is just "kg". "K", "klick" and "key" may be used from time to time (rarely) in conversation but they are NOT standard by any means. Just saying...
miscommunication of dimensions can result in a decidedly diminutive relica of Stonehenge.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Unfortunately, metric vs. imperial is too similar to Linux adoption on the desktop vs. Windows or even OSX.
One is convenient, relatively intuitive, and commonplace, whereas the other one is built by engineers and scientists for ease of doing work.
The only difference is, Windows is used worldwide due to market forces, while metric is used worldwide due to government forces.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
22.5 degrees is a 5/12 pitch.
But why is 45 degrees a 12/12 pitch?
Yes that's what I thought; isn't this basically the same thing as asking "Who's your daddy?"
Everything we did in high school physics was in metric. I'm an avid biker and that's all in metric. I have no problem handling and using metric. But it still sucks. Imperial measures by and large are based around what they are actually used to measure, compromised with how they scale to other measurements. Relevance and utility in daily life, to me, is the single most important factor for a system of measure.
The meter was originally designed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator That is, without a doubt, the single crappiest basis for a system of measure ever. It has absolutely no relevance to daily life. Tell me, when in my life am I going to need to measure anything approaching that distance?
What are the most common things for which I need a measure for length? Distance in a room or a person's height. For that, meters and centimeters suck. Foot and inches are grand. They are the proper combination of large and small units, scaled correctly to one another, to deliver a number that a human being can distinguish and make sense of for what they are measuring.
Pound is another good example. A kilo is simply too large and a gram too small. Most people care about measuring their own weight, and a more granulated measure such as the pound makes sense over the kilo. Same holds for Fahrenheit vs. Celsius. A human being can distinguish a smaller temperature change in their environment than what a single degree in Celsius measures. The more granulated Fahrenheit is more appropriate for this most common use case of wanting to know what the outside weather will "feel" like. Though 0 does makes more sense as a freezing point than 32.
All that being said, I would not find the conversion to metric difficult. My internal view would change to compensate and I'd grok it better over time. However, that will not change the fact that metric is disjointed from your average person's needs and perception of reality.
Well I personally like the FFF (Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight) system the best.
Who doesn't like it when they can say "I can run 10,000 furlongs per fortnight" or saying "my car is so fast that I drive at 150,000 furlongs per fortnight" or "I'm a 1 firkin weakling!"?
"But the cardinality of the human brain is about six, not ten."
Says who?
Metric PREfixes a power of ten to the unit. This doesn't just lengthen the term. It also puts the designation of WHAT KIND of unit you mean at the end, rather than the beginning. Bad enough that you have to work through the count before you get to the unit in "United States customary" (NOT Imperial, by the way) units. With metric you also have to get past the power of ten before you find out what you're talking about. Notice that, when abbreviating metric units, they shorten differently: A kiloMETER is a "K" or "klick", for instance, while a kiloGRAM is a "key". The tendencies of language and the centrally-planned systematization are at odds.
I understand your argument that how the units are named and scaled does not work well with how we use language. I am not sure how that's an argument for a system of units that also does not have any convenient language constructs.
I live in 100% metric world (the heart of Europe). By now, I know an inch is 2.54cm and a foot is roughly 1/3 of a m, but anytime a few of these are involved and mixed in the same sentence I don't have a clue or really even a slightest hint of perspective of how much that really is. I usually just go...yeah 4 yards, 3 feet, 11 inches, whatever. Except when it involves technology. I know I have a 46" tv (no idea how much in cm that is, unless I calculate it before). I know if I need a 2.5" or 3.5" disk drive. Some clever bureaucrat decided recently that (crude) oil prices have to be quoted in litres. We're probably the only place in the world that has oil prices quoted in litres (crude oil that is, I do buy gas in litres, no idea really how much a gallon is :)). And apparently the same guy decided afterwards that my IT dealer has to sell me a 6.35cm hard disk. WTF?! Where can I put a 6.35cm disk? I was in a place that sells LCD monitors just last week...they had 54cm screens, 59cm screens, 61cm screens, I was so confused I didn't know what to look for...
Yeah, it's a strange world
Okay, now I understand. It is clear to me, then, that the new metric plans are being done wrong, especially if the pitch is being measured in degrees.
www.wavefront-av.com
Most measures are actually convenient sizes, so there really isn't that much difference, a 12 oz soda is about .33l, a half liter is about 16Oz + a tablespoon. A pound and 500 gm are interchangeable for most practical purposes, and when they aren't you should be using a scale anyways, likewise 30ml is an ounce, 15 ml a tablespoon and 5 a teaspoon so that isn't rocket science. Curiously Huntsville Alabama, home to the Marshal Scape Flight Center had metric speed limit signs since the 1970's so maybe it is rocket science. For the most part most people are brain farting over significant digits when converting; seriously a soda can isn't filled to 5 digits precision.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"Oh - you're so smart with your ten base system. WE have mastered base 8, base 16, base 12, and so much more."
Not enough to get to Mars safely though.
he said metric but obviously meant English or imperial systems, they traditionally use powers of 2 for fractional measurement, especially distance, yet this isn't rigid; car odometers often measure into tenth of a mile, electronic thermometers in tenths of a degree and rulers calipers and micrometers that measure in tenths/hundredths/thousandths and ten-thousandths of an inch are common in machining industry. The publishing industry uses points and pica.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I mean look at chemistry at how many symbols are really just from the latin/greek name for stuff. IE lead(Pb), Gold(Au), Silver(Ag), Sodium(Na), and Iron(Fe).
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Some reality-deniers in the US are doing just that.
Wasn't exactly much math involved. 3/12 = 1/4 so the 'jackasses' example you put out just proved how easy the conversion was to metric...
Is this a riddle?
What constitutes the basis for the proffered needs of a good system? Not that I necessarily disagree that they form a good foundation for such, but I would add that a good system also needs (above the others stated):
0. Logical base size (i.e., something akin to the inch for short measurements of length, etc.)
Most SI base units feel too small or too large. Yeah, this may be because I grew up using the American system, but I hear similar sentiments from people who grew up using the SI system. Some SI units seem reasonable to me, but the majority do not, with Celsius/Centigrade being the one I despise most.
But our Imperial units just help reinforce American Exceptionalism. We are the greatest country on the planet. Period. Full Stop. Therefore, our units of measurements are by implication the greatest units of measurement on the planet. Period. Full Stop. You can keep your nambly pambly liberal socialist metric system, thank you very much. Do you think Jesus used the Metric system? No! Did God tell Noah the dimensions for the ark in metric? No! He used feet and inches, as God himself intended.
QED.
Celebrity worship is a poor substitute for Deity worship and costs more to boot.
The biggest problem for me is the schizophrenia between 'everyday life' (buying things, around the home, and so on) which is in weird imperial units, and all my scientific knowledge, which is metric. This idiotic split does no one any good, and probably is a drag on americans using their knowledge effectively.
If you look at it from a viewpoint of "what do I wear today?", Fahrenheit makes perfect sense:
0 is bloody cold, 100 is bloody hot, each 10-degree change is one shift in how much clothing you need to wear.
The metric system was IMPOSED by governments. The people of the US tend to resist such impositions.
Damn right, bro! Now take off your shoes and step into the x-ray machine.
...that I just cannot fathom.
"Look, Smithers! I'm Davy Crockett!"
Guess it depends on what you're using it for. As weather goes, 0 degrees F is really cold, and 100 degrees F is really hot. Most weather falls within that range, and the weather that doesn't is usually considered pretty extreme.
Item 2: In Imperial you might measure (heat) energy in BTU and mechanical energy in some mixture of foot-pounds-seconds.
Those are called horsepower (hp) if the seconds are involved (550 ft-lb/s)
And as an engineer in the US, I am very comfortable working in both sets of units. Metric is decidedly easier for calculations, but I second the earlier point of the more natural feel to English units - I do a fair amount of hands-on work and machining and everything is still in English, so that may be part of it.
The unit conversion argument isn't going to win over a lot of normal people, however, because during a regular day, how many conversions do you need to make, really? Most people compare apples to apples: this is 10 oz., that's 15, etc. And even for units with the same scale, metrics are compartmentalized - natural gas is BTU, cars are HP and even if I was running my car on natural gas, 1 BTU gas per second won't give me 1 BTU/s of power out. If you're an engineer, know both systems because there's a lot of legacy designs and parts. If you're not an engineer, you know what you know and that more than suffices. Who cares that there's 1760 yds in a statute mile (2000 in a nm) if you can estimate the width of your living room in yds/feet and can imagine what having to drive 50 miles to grandma's means.
Lastly, I don't know who tells people the military is all metric, but it ain't. It's mixed, but my work has been in English units when dealing with mechanical engineers and metric (not SI) with chemists - liters per minute, etc. all require conversion factors too and whether my code has me multiplying by 1/60e3 to put lpm in m3/s or 0.3048 to put feet in m (and vice versa), I really don't care.
You are trying to create a problem that simply does not exist.
Even in metric you can make a simple diagonal length:side length relationship, sure for that exact angle the relationship would most likely be something that includes decimal points(for the angle of 22.6 degrees the relationship would be 13:5 meters/decimeters/centimeters or whatever you feel like using.
Even if the construction workers does not know how to convert angles into previously mentioned diagonal:height relationship whoever made the drawing that told the construction workers of the pitch that this particular roof should have could just as easily convert the measures into metric.
The reason engineers use angles and metrics isn't because they're self important assholes but because they have to calculate how much load that roof can bear etc and that is a lot easier using angles and metrics rather than imperial and pitch relationships.
Drawings are made in metric and angles because the industry needs an objective standard and metrics and angles are considered more precise and easier to read.
The strongest and most obvious evidence in my favor is simply this:
European construction workers does not need a PH.D in order to do their jobs, they have roughly the same basic education that their American or Canadian counterparts do despite using metrics so obviously it can't be much harder. Or do you claim that the average European is that much smarter than the average American?
The reason is not simply one of convenient units. Vast quantities of machinery, machine tools, mechanical parts, measuring tools, drawings, measuring devices, entire machinery production lines, etc. are based on the Imperial system. Even, for instance, metal stock (beams, plate, round stock, channel stock, etc.) that is produced from foundries and mills is sized in inches, feet, or fractions thereof. The retooling of all of this, coupled with the years and years of confusion and chaos that would be caused by the inevitable mixing of similarly sized parts and products does not justify the convenience or advantages of meeting more common global standards. Conversion is also currently unnecessary, as the USA is still the predominant industrial power in the world, and the world will accommodate our standards (at least for now).
Simply put, Imperial measurements are more "real" to most people. They were based on various measurements of rulers and other famous people. But normal people have similar body parts and can get a general idea. Ok, so the inch was based on the width of some king's thumb who's name I can't remember off hand. BUT if you want to explain to your four year old how big an inch is you can just hold up your thumb and he'll get the idea.
Metric measurements in general are entirely too esoteric. Take the Meter, that is it is based on how far a particular frequency of light travels in a vacuum in a specific time period. Kind of hard for a four year old to visualize isn't it?
Imperial units are often more precise as well. For example in Fahrenheit water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212. This gives us 180 divisions between the two while Centigrade only gives us 100. Yes, you can use decimal numbers but a lot of people still don't have digital thermometers outside their windows.
The foot is NOT based on the size of anyone's body part. It is EXACTLY 1/32 of the distance that ANY object falls in EXACTLY one second. The Second as a unit of measure has been around since Babylonian days and we still use it. Many people don't know that the original metric system had a metric second which nobody, not even the French, use. One Hundred degrees in a circle. Really! The system of measure used by the US dates back to Newton and the Royal Academy and is the only system that makes sense as it is based on Universal Gravitation. There is no standard "foot" on display anywhere, as there is with the meter. If the French loose their reference copy of the meter all is lost, since the meter is a completely arbitrary unit of measure. Multiply or divide it by 10 all you want. Arbitrary is still arbitrary. Anyone can make a perfect foot measure. Break out your astronomical toolkit, and observe the second. Once you develop a measure of time and calibrate it to the motion of the earth as it rotates in space, you will have your reference second. Next drop anything and measure the distance it falls in one second. Divide that distance by folding it in half five times and you have a perfect foot. PERFECT. Voila! And the Fahrenheit system is the span of temperatures required to freeze water at sea level depending on the degree of saturation of salt in the water. Zero degrees is the temperature required to freeze fully saturated salt water. Thirty two degrees is the temperature required to freeze pure water. You have two perfect reference points for temperature, the rest is interpolated or extrapolated. I am a degreed engineer myself. Nothing is more pleasurable than physics exercises calculated in the Newtonian system that we call Imperial. It still boggles my mind that people would want to use anything other than foot pound seconds. When God designed the universe He set acceleration due to gravity to EXACTLY 32 feet per second squared. God doesn't use Metric, and neither shall I.
1. Keep measurements for 2 different systems
2. Sell twice as many sockets
3. Profit!
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric_1_mars-orbiter-climate-orbiter-spacecraft-team?_s=PM:TECH
Imperial Units were invented and imposed by kings; all that tea taxation was done in lbs and ozs. The metric system was invented by a republic that beheaded its king and gave military assistance to the American colonists trying to get rid of theirs.
Sometimes Americans give the impression of being violently opposed to change for no better reason than they're violently opposed to change.
I believe there are a LOT of hidden costs, and a lot of cost because of mistakes. I think this scenario has happened a lot of times: A US company receive a order for spare parts. A big one, for some equipment produced somewhere in Europe, but the US company has a good price and solid know-how. The parts are produced, packed and shipped, lets say in Africa. At destination the engineers are unable to use them because the original equipment is metric, and the parts are imperial (think only of nuts and bolts). The US company scrambles and in under 2 weeks fixes the problem, but has to pay for 2 weeks delay and shipment, and is keeping the parts nobody can use. Sounds familiar?
I live in South Africa and work on maintaining Litho printing machines that are manufactured from all over the world, including Didde Glasers from the US. They are a nightmare. Literally. (What is 1 and 7/32 of an inch plus 1 and 5/7 of an inch?). Once we replaced an O-ring on the hydraulic pump system and had to use the metric equivalent which was ,1 mm (millimetre) smaller in circumference than the US produced one (6 weeks delivery time, 2,000 times more expensive). It ran OK for 3 minutes and then blew.
A day later I watched the Challenger take-off on TV with the first woman on board (my wife insisted - she's a woman!) and we saw THE greatest tragedy in the Space Programme ever!
It was due to the EXACT same reason, a metric O-ring in an Imperial channel.
I'm still a bit angry about that.
Well, US Electrical Engineers, at least, are fully metric in how we're trained and what we use for calculations. Our ME and CE brethren are not.
One possible reason: the USA (or should it be ISA) is an imperial power and has been for decades so it's only fitting to embrace the imperial unit system when everyone else using a democratically simple metric system.
Sure, converting units sucks in the imperial system, but imo the greatest strength is that the units are natural to a human being, not the universe. I've found that people who estimate who were raised under SI units only tend to be much worse at it than those that are used to using the inch, foot, etc. So while engineering in the imperial system might be a pain, using SI outside of easy measurement scenarios or those with effectively infinite time and resources is much more difficult.
Without the influence of great leaders from the USA there would be no metric system. http://metricationmatters.com/docs/USAMetricSystemHistory.pdf (PDF)
... hasn't existed in that name for over 20 years.
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
Because politicians think the public is too stupid. In Canada, they did it in stages. First it was the weather, where we went to centigrade. Then it was for gallons to litres, then from pounds to kilos and at the conclusioln, with dual signage, we posted both miles and KMs for 2 years. This last step avoided the huge number of traffic accidents that did not occur.
There may be hidden costs such as rewrite of some sections of laws, etc, But in the end, it will allow US products to have universal acceptance in the rest of the world. We in Canada, long ago stopped purchasing American tools, because our metric tools were compatible with the rest of the world, which taken together, was a much larger market. (Example, we have more foreign cars than US domestics, and that is partly the reason).
While I haven't had time to read all 2198 former comments, I think at this time it no longer matters. Philosophically, mankind has spend untold amounts of money on computers over the last 30 years, they permeate the planet nearly everywhere, and computers do instantaneous conversions. Let them do their job.
While it may have more important 40 to 15 years ago to make such conversions, the optimum time was to do it back then. It is no longer necessary. Now it no longer matters how the user wants to measure, whether it is Imperial Miles or Klingon Kellicams. In whatever interface the user is using whether it is a browser, an iPad, or a GPS, or a gas pump, computers will translate to whatever measure the local user needs.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I know about an inch, about a foot, about a pound, about a cup. I can use metric, but I can't guestimate a litre, 25 centimeters, or a kilo without first thinking what it would be in imperial. You can try the bring all the kids up with it approach, but world works on adult employees being able to estimate in some measurement system and, in general, they can't. Companies would lose a lot of money and business by inaccurate estimates and be out of business before the switch could be made.
Then there's the use of the decimal system when scaling. Convenient for doing arithmetic for scaling. But the cardinality of the human brain is about six, not ten.
Okay... what? We have about 6 to 7 "registers" in our short-term memory, but that's for 6 to 7 separate items. You're not going to be filling all of them when scaling something.
Your arguments are arbitrary and ridiculous. For starters your second paragraph discounts the argument of the first paragraph, that is that the words are too complicated. As you've denoted, people shorthand the more common terms to a point that even those who don't use the measurement understand the shorthand. Also prefixes make way more sense than placing the modifier at the end. It's pretty standard, for example 'vicet' modifies 'president'. I assume you've never argued in favour of switching verbiage to president-vice. The third paragraph is the worst. You conveniently pick pound and gram to compare instead of ounce or ton (of course specifying short ton versus the more established long ton). More over the convenient conversion factors allow ready visualization of more abstract quantities. Quick, visualize 1000 quarts. I have no idea what you thought of, but 1000 litres is a cubic meter. Simple. Also to clarify your confusion. The litre is a cubic decimetre because the foundation of the metric system is water. 1 millilitre of water weighs 1 gram and occupies a cubic centimetre. With the base unit being set to the more common lengths. You contradict yourself in the fourth paragraph (humans think in sixes, but somehow inch to foot makes more sense than dm to m). Also a mile isn't a thousand paces. It was, but that changed (but not the word) to 8 furlongs, a furlong being 40 rods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_measurement I understand the appeal of wanting to visualize measures but what is the imperial unit for measuring the atomic or the astronomic. They don't exist, but if they did, they wouldn't have visual meaning. In your existing method, there is one set of visualisations for weights, one for volumes another for lengths, which makes conversion a nightmare, as discussed above. As to your last paragraph, the imperial system was imposed on the British and consequently on you. YOU ARE USING REMNANTS OF THE BRITISH SYSTEM FROM A TYRANNY THAT YOU OVER THREW HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. Get over yourselves, it's not like America made some wonderful system and the evil French are out to get you.
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
i dont know how hot/cold my house should be in celcius.
thats the only reason i dont change.
We cant buy a kilo of sugar or liter of milk.
recipes call for cups still
and which weighs more, a gallon of water or a gallon of ice?
The Spice Girls, in their song "Stop", say, "You take an inch, I run a mile". I guess it sounds better than, "You take a centimeter, I run a kilometer".
Who says there has to be only one of measuring things? Metric in my opinion is stale and conformist but admittedly useful especially in scientific calculation. Imperial on the other hand is rich, cultured, arcane, complicated and has a certain inconvenient elegance that I wouldn't give up.
i shall name my firstborn son "Green Swizzle."
Why...? It is all those Craftsman tools from Sears with
lifetime warranty. And houses with 2x4 studs and plumbing
all cut to inches and feet.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Whats really annoying is that the rest of the world has to suffer imperial measurements in many areas, like TVs and Monitors...we classify them after their inch size and not centimeters, even though often we don't even know how big it actually is.
In the U.S., a gallon is 128 ounces. The Imperial gallon is 160 ounces (and Imperial fluid ounces are bigger than U.S. fluid ounces, too, so it's really more like 154 real ounces).
Get your nomenclature right: the U.S. uses U.S. Customary. The British used Imperial. They're related, but not the same. (And Canadian Imperial is not quite the same as Imperial either, but it's more similar.)
I believe we tried to do so 30 years ago(?) and it fell on its face.
Metric is fine but there is no need to change over to it, in my opinion.
If there were a compelling reason I am sure we would have heard about it then. Nothing much has changed since then.
We (the world) still disagree on just about everything. What is one more minor disagreement?
As to the aliens idea what ever system they have will be based on their system not metric. Who knows they might even have a US based measurement. It is useless to speculate.
Its a system, and the worst system ever is communism! The ZOG goverment created it and now they have the entire world using it. remind you of anything? give you a hint, THE ANTICHRIST!
...this little nugget again.
The answer is simple; America loves things American. So-called "imperial" measurements are now so unique to America, that switching from them and conforming to the global economy's systems of measurement would be... don't tell me... "un-American".
I would have to disagree with the "hidden cost" part. There's a real cost that's been happening for decades and continues today; conversion to-and-from metric as well as pointless cohesion to archaic ad-hoc standards is already an obstacle for overseas companies to do trade. The Trade Deficit is surely inflated by an invisible barrier of mathematics, additional (redundant) labeling and loused-up bills of lading. The only thing that exceeds the reluctance to trade with America is the high demand of Americans for imported goods. Who knows how many loopholes there are alone in the kilo-to-pound, litre-to-gallon and cu/ft-m^3 conversions?
Ask any car nut and they'll be sure to rattle-off the displacement of their engine in litres, unless it's an American build, then it has to be cubic inches. Those numbers are pretty pointless anyway, since there are engines under 2L that will easily blow away a small-block 350 any day of the week.
Conversion is inevitable, and most people don't even realize that it's already (in a glacially slow fashion) underway. Since the 80's, there has been secondary units of measurement on all consumer packaging. (X oz. = Y g; P fl. oz. = Q ml) Find me a car made after 1990 that doesn't also have KpH on the speedo.
It's down to having it both ways, but still having it the American way. Like other pointless bonds, metric will ultimately dominate out of simple attrition and negligence; one day, imperial measures will be dropped for being "unfashionable". That's just the way America does it.
You know how it will begin? Fuel prices. Cost-per-litre is just a bit more than 1/4 the cost-per-gallon. For the oil and petroleum industry, that would be a lucrative marketing move. When the numbers change at the corner pump, don't believe it too quickly. Your high school science teacher was right; units are everything in the equation.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Use second life a lot, use more virtual systems and things to gauge distance. It really helps. Video games are using metric more and more and it's the first thing that has made me really conceptually shift from the imperial system to the metric one in a sort of innate way. I really like it.
We can still keep old measurements around for songs and poetry, just like old names for places.
Metrication
Actually the United States has been "on the Metric System" since 1866. In 1893, our customary units of weights and measures were defined in metric units. In 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act "to coordinate and plan the increasing use of the metric system in the United States".
Careful observers will note that nearly every package they buy has both customary and metric weights and measures.
In the early 80s, I remember bossy people pushing metrication. Most of them couldn't distinguish between force and mass. Some of them were women whose argument collapsed when I asked them if they had converted their kitchens to metric :-) .
I thought the mixture of screw threads, fasteners and wrenches would prevent metrication on that front. But alas, I've lived to own cars that had a mix of threads on the same vehicle.
So let me try to answer the original question: ... the howls of mechanics who suddenly must deal with pressures in kiloPascals ... farmers used to buying fence wire in rods and barns in sq feet who have to metricate
1. We don't use Imperial units. Our customary gallon, quart etc. are different.
2. All of our customary units are defined in terms of metric weights and measures. In an exact sense, all of our weights and measures are metric.
3. Unlike many other governments, ours has, so far, not used the threat of force to make us abandon our customary units. (Google for "Metric Martyrs")
4. History is everything. People learn from parents, surroundings and schools. Since most people don't want to use two sets of units, they will continue to use customary units in the absence of coercion.
5. In the event that the know-it-alls in Washington do force the exclusive use of the metric system, I await the outcry of American housewives and cooks who have to convert their kitchens, recipe books, measuring cups etc.
6. In aid of what?
Whereas when you measure distance in km you measure in miles. You don't say "fifty-two miles and 3 furlongs, 1 yard, 1 foot and 8 inches" any more than you'd say the "thirtyeters, four hundred and ninety-seven meters, eighteen cetimeters".
You'd say 52.3 miles and 30.5 km.
NOTE you could say fifty-two miles, 3 tenths of a mile and then have a metric measurement that uses base 10.
Again some rogue moderator has down modded more or less all my posts in this discussion ... what a shame.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Exactly, that was my point. They are now based on metric system.
If they're scientific, they should be actually scientific, like Kelvin or Light-seconds, instead of faux-scientific like Celcius or Meters.
If you're complaining that meters are 1/299,792,458 of a light-second, or that temperatures are stated in offsets from 273.15 K, consider this: Why are kelvins 25/6829 of the triple point of water and not some other fraction? Why are seconds 9,192,631,770 cycles of cesium-133 radiation and not some other number? Why pi instead of tau?
unless you're boiling water on a daily basis, you really don't care about 0 or 100C
Let me guess: you don't cook. An ice-cold Coke is 0, and the boiling water for pasta or for the first stage of hard-cooking an egg is 100.
...math skills.
Quick! Calculate how much the cost per ounce is on a 2L of cola that costs $1.47.
Having to do frequent unit conversions to interact in the mixed system strengthens our ability to do basic maths in our heads.
See subject
Tooling is the reason why US manufacturers haven't switched to metric. I'm not just talking about wrenches... errr spanners either. Drills, mills, radiused cutters, every engineering drawing that calls out these tools all have to be changed. The basic sizes of available stock such as sheet metal, I-beams, round and square tubs all need to be changed. Then you have all the handbooks that call out the strength of those various stock sizes, they all have to be updated. You won't want to make a 12.7mm thick plate of aluminum, so you'll make it 12 mm. But 12mm is just a little less strong than 12.7. So your company will have to re-analzye everything you've built to be sure it won't fail.
It's easy to say it's just a unit conversion if you have never actually built anything or worked in industry. Once you try to specify, and then build your first all metric bit of equipment in the United States, you'll understand why US manaufacturers haven't switched over. It is happening. It's a slow process. The place where you can really see this process in action is in the ASME and SAE engineering standards. Much of the ISO standards are rebadged ASME and SAE standards and quite a few BSI and DIN standards too. These all need to be brought into concordance and every large manufacturer in the world haggles over their content.
The change is happening, but it will be slow. I predict that the very last piece of equipment that will be made to Imperial units will be the large commercial aircraft maybe about 50 years from now.
Regards,
Jason C. Wells
yeah, it seems cheap in metric measurements, but the US is still using imperial measurements, which means, it appears expensive.
but a yard is only 36 inches but a meter is 39 inches. I know it seems odd, but simpsons has taught me something.
recon - millitary term...
I reckon - redneck term for "I considered that to be of a statement to be of true nature".
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this was provided by your trolling neighborhood Spelling Troll
I forget the exact number, but i believe that both -44 c and -44 f are the same... or was it -40... it is around there somewhere.
1) Base units which are well defined and independently reconstructible (i.e. a suitably equipped lab can calibrate their equipment purely from the definition of the units.)
I'd add that widely used units should be re-constructable by a person who doesn't have a lab, as inches, feet, etc. are. Most people using the measurements won't be in a lab. I wonder what dimension of the human body varies the least among adults?
Also, a base 12 system would be preferred, so we can divide evenly by 2,3 and 4.
Other than that, I'm all for a metric-like system.