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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.
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.
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.
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?
His stupid wife couldn't bake her recipes if car companies had to use metric robots.
Who wants to order a 30.48 cm sub at Subway?
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
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.
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.
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...
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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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 US don't like anything French it seems (except the Status of Liberty), so SI units get refused a VISA ?
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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.
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There's also a metric ton of local building codes and regulations that have to be updated to use metric units.
SSC
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.
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... .
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.
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.
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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)
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!
Um, everything shipped these days is metric. I work on cars for fun. Sometime in the 90s, everyone was using metric on domestic vehicles. As far as I know, the only complicated machinery still in production using imperial units are lawnmowers.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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.
Australia has been on the metric system for yonks but McDonalds still sell the Quarter Pounder (unfortunately)
Yes, but you can be sure she keeps her astrologer and ouija board handy to do the conversions.
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.
Yep. Just to give more background for the young-uns, I was a very young school kid in the 70's. We were told to learn the metric system and get used to it, because before we were out of high school, the country was going to be converted over entirely to the metric system.
That proclamation from our teachers was after congress passed The Metric Conversion Act in 1975. They created the U.S. Metric Board to oversee the conversion.
1979 - The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms required wine producers/importers to switch to metric.
1980 - The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms required required distilled spirits producers/importers to switch to metric.
1982 - Reagan disbands the Metric Board, and fires everyone associated with it.
So we have Reagan to thank for our reliance on an outdated system of measurement. As well as the new trend for Republicans to deficit spend like mad, ballooning the National Debts as never before, and getting religious nut wings involved in politics like never before.
...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.
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. :-)
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.
Fahrenheit is a more useful system for day-to-day use, because it gives more gradations than celsius. Wait, this is slashdot..umm...Americans dumb, everyone else smart, etc. etc., any difference between how America does something and how other countries do something is because Americans are dumb, etc. etc., have I conformed my post to the groupthink yet?
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...
All this shows is that the process of metrication takes a long time. You don't just change all the sign in the country in one go and have everyone speak the new system. You start the process off gradually, like in the UK where you purchase goods using the metric system.
Then you teach the metric units to school kids as the main system. In the UK, they are taught how to convert between imperial and metric units, but not how to manipulate the imperial units and do calculations in that system. Once those kids start graduating then you can move to changing things like road signs.
I live in Australia, which has already gone through this process. It took over 20 years to do it. Even now you will still find the occasional mix of metric and imperial measurements, for example in the building industry where you have to deal with structures built long before the change.
As you have found, people will still use the old system in informal conversations. That is to be expected, and it is not something that you can (or would even want to) legislate to prevent. I grew up with the metric system and I still use phrases like "I can see for miles" even though I would actually measure it in kilometres. I choose photo sizes as 6x4, even though I measure things when I am printing in millimetres. This informal usage is no reason to give up on officially going metric.
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.
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Quite a few things here in Australia are measured in imperial units.
The way they measure TV sets and monitors is strange.
Most CRT TV sets I have seen are measured in cm (mine is a 51cm CRT) yet LCD/Plasma/flat panel TVs are measured in inches (e.g. 32", 40" etc)
Monitors on the other hand are always measured in inches (I have a 17" CRT sitting next to me right now for my Gentoo box and a 19" LCD for my main machine)
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.
Now, of course, the US has trouble exporting to a world where nobody has Imperial-sized tools or fasteners.
Not to mention your weird "Letter" size which is inexplicably the default in all your word processing programs when all the rest of the world uses A4.
I don't think I've ever seen Letter paper in my life, but I just installed LibreOffice and whoops, Letter, and measurements in inches. Grrr.
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.
Then we think about all the nuclear reactors and rockets you built using feet and inches and get night sweats.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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!.
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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.
(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
Seriously?? A "Metric" board???
Look, all US measurements are already based on SI units. The so-called, "standard" units are defined as constant multipliers of the SI ones. We're already metric, we've just "customized" it a little...
But since our measurements are all just constant multipliers of SI units, why should we need a whole bureaucracy to implement it? Just make it the law that all new official business will be done using SI units, and have a period where road markers and so forth are posted with both.
The only real difficulty is with tooling: bolts, screws, and other parts designed for Standard units that are a close, but not quite, match up with preferred number metric counterparts, and no nationally funded "board of metrics" is going to solve that problem....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Really? That is what you're going with? Now, I don't care about the measurements one way or the other, and I'll never understand why people get so worked up about it, but there are many things wrong with the US school system. Measurements have absolutely nothing to do with it, and frankly that has got to be the shittiest argument on any topic I've ever heard. Kudos, sir or ma'am; I work in retail and have for several years, so that's really quite an accomplishment.
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!
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
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...
As well as the new trend for Republicans to deficit spend like mad, ballooning the National Debts as never before, and getting religious nut wings involved in politics like never before.
I call shenanigans here. EVERYONE deficit spends like drunken sailors. Bush doubled the debt in 8 years. Obama is on target to double it again in 4. If McCain had won, the debt would be going up as well.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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".
If your local university has a copy, there is the
44-page U.S. Metric Board Summary Report
http://catalog.library.colostate.edu/search/?searchtype=.&searcharg=b1397485&sortdropdown=-&SORT=D&extended=0&SUBMIT=Search&searchlimits=&
This was their report right before they were disbanded in 1982.
Among the recommendations:
The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 should continue to be administered.
National policy on metric conversion should be reassessed.
Research should be conducted on economic sectors where metric capability may be critical.
The Federal Interagency Committee on Metric Policy and the National Council on State Metrication should be continued.
The functions outlined in the Board's Private Sector Planning Guidelines should be continued.
Government public awareness, consumer and education programs should be continued selectively.
The States should consider enacting uniform metric conversion legislation.
Note: The first recommendation was that it should continue to be administered. Not disbanded. Yes, I blame Reagan. He gave them a $0 budget, defunding them and killing the project.
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.
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.
That's a silly argument, and flatly wrong. Where our products are good, we have no problem whatsoever importing our products to the rest of the world. Where our products suck, we have a hard time selling them here, let alone to export markets.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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?!
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.
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.
How many of them can fathom that?
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.
Power - I prefer HP to KWH's
...what?
The kilowatt hour isn't a unit of power. It's a unit of energy. Watts are power. The Kilowatt Hour is a bastardization of the Joule (energy), and a Watt is a Joule per second.
And I can't think of a single reason to prefer horsepower to watts, unless you just like the idea of comparing your car to a horse. For everything else, watts make a lot more sense. Even for energy, much as I prefer Joules for science, everything electrical is already in watts, so it's a lot easier to figure out how many Kilowatt Hours a given appliance will use per month than how many Joules, or how many... horsepower-seconds?
Temperature - Keep Fahrenheit. Celsius is good for Science, but I much prefer a 75 F degree afternoon to a 24 C degree one...
I don't know, a lot of those intermediate ranges are useless. Can you really tell the difference between 40 F and 42 F? But the difference between 22 C and 24 C is a bit more significant.
That said, I never was able to properly train myself to use Celsius. I gave up and just use Fahrenheit, for now.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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!
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
tell a carpenter to use a metric tape measure... not gonna happen.
It's been a long time since I've seen an Imperial unit tape measure that doesn't have metric on the other side.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Just as it was for EVERY OTHER nation on the planet. They all coped.
http://www.edinformatics.com/investor_education/us_debt.htm
Where does it start skyrocketing? Reagan.
http://www.lafn.org/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart-2004.gif
Obama is spending to try stave off another Great Depression brought on by deregulation and shenanigans pulled by a previous administration that started 2 wars and tried to keep them off the books.
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.
This is the one that bugs me as a Canadian. We can keep up the metric for a lot of things, but being this close on a hard good means using their crappy paper size. You have no idea how much I wish could use metric paper.
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
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.
The UK is one of the slower to convert other than the US, so it's not a representative example. (you can check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication#Exceptions)
Canada is mostly metric, especially if you're under about 40 years old. Humans will be weighed in lbs and their height measured in feet and inches, but human-sized things will be in kilograms and meters -- go figure. Other than that, imperial measurements mostly come into play for interop with American units. If I hear something in fahrenheit on TV, I do a conversion in my head; people who aren't good at math just ignore what they don't understand.
Canada also sometimes uses some cups & spoons measurements for cooking, but they aren't the same as US cups & spoons, which are both different from the UK, and they are all different from Australia.
Other countries often have one or two things that they hold out on for various reasons, but for the most part, metric.
Lots of European countries are much more solidly metric.
U.S. Interstate 19 is the strangest thing to come out of our failure to convert to metric.
>> 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
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?
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.
I grew up in Western Europe and have used nothing but the "A" paper formats for most of my life.
I even know its background/reasoning etc. due to my printing/publishing education.
However, I have been in the US for the past 10 years and I actually like the letter paper size better than A4 nowadays.
The proportions of a letter size piece of paper is actually nicer than A4. A4 "feels" incorrect.
Now "legal" is a whole different thing, "legal" paper size is strange.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
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.
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.
"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
Irony?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
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.
Obama is spending to try stave off another Great Depression brought on by deregulation and shenanigans pulled by a previous administration that started 2 wars and tried to keep them off the books.
How does deregulation bring on a Great Depression? Wait, don't bother - I don't even accept your premise that far. As far as spending to prevent a depression....WTF?
Dark Reflection
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'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
Not to mention your weird "Letter" size which is inexplicably the default in all your word processing programs when all the rest of the world uses A4.
This probably won't matter much in a few years - documents will be prepared to fit a standard display size.
Funny thing about "Letter" size - it is exactly 215.9 by 279.4 mm, granted the 215.9mm could be rounded up to 216mm without anyone noticing, but rounding 279.4 to either 279 or 280 will cause people to notice. The dimensions for A4 are only approximations as the "true" dimensions are irrational numbers.
As for reactors - pipe and tubing sizes have been standardized for decades.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Interchangeable and machine parts are also a huge consideration. Metric sizes and Imperial sizes for machine parts are completely different, and changing away from 1/4-20 and 10-32 (or 1/4-16 and 10-24 if you prefer) screws is a major pain in the ass.
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/
The important thing is that all the stuff they use (like plywood sheets) comes in sizes that are convenient numbers in Imperial units. It's easy to figure out how to get a 2' x 4' rectangle out of sheet of plywood. There is a ton of stuff that all fits together that already comes in Imperial-unit sizes. Changing all of their sizes is prohibitively expensive, and switching to referring to them by their inconvenient metric sizes is a waste of time.
You end up in the situation that American machinists end up in -- having a set of tools and parts that are in Imperial units and a set that are in metric, because they're incompatible (both sets of tools being in sizes that are convenient in one system or the other).
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!
You're right, 33x33 must be what I thought (9 33x33 tiles, spaced 3mm from each other, on a 3x3 grid, take exactly 1x1m). 30x30 is almost exactly 1x1 foot.
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.
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!
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?
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
I say we measure in kellicams!
Seriously, and that isn't a new trend; Republicans have been growing the government faster than Democrats for the better part of a century.
Actually, I have to retract. I just dropped a package off at FedEx, the guy had a tape measure there. I asked to see it and it was inches/feet only.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I think Douglas Adams answered this question best. There are three reasons:
1) Ignorance
2) Stupidity
and
3) Nothing else.
Conventional wisdom is that when your debt is as high as your GDP and you're budget deficit is still 20% of GDP that you have problems. There may be "bad things" happening in banks but frankly I'm a little more afraid of the bad things happening in government. $120,000 in debt for each taxpayer (rich and poor) is not something we should just ignore in the name of preserving fantasy spending land.
Here you go, start from 0 (freezing) and go up by 5' and you have the same ranges:
Sub-zero: Freezing
0-5 Very cold
5-10 Cold
10-15 Very cool
15-20 Cool
20-25 Comfortable
25-30 Warm
30-35 Very warm
35+ Hot
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Type into Google "7 miles to feet"
that was easier than thinking.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
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!
Overall I agree that estimations are easier in (reduced) fractions than decimals. However, it's silly to say "humans seem to naturally think in base 12". The fact that 1/3 is easier than 6/10 is simply that the former deals with smaller numbers -- there's lots of cognitive research than people compare and think about smaller numbers more easily (as if that wasn't totally self-evident). The fact that 12 is nice is a result of that (divides by 1, 2, 3, 4), not the cause. Same goes for the Babylonian magic value of 60.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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]
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).
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.
Admittedly it might be nice to have a version of that latter chart specifying what party controlled Congress at which time (granted Congress has the budgetary power).
But as far as Presidential debates go, certainly that is on-topic.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
He's also politically prevented - by Republicans - from ending the giant Bush tax cuts that are causing so much of our current deficits. The contribution to the deficit of the stimulus is miniscule compared to Bush's tax cuts.
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.
Huh? Look at the pie. Split the whole pie into 1/2. Now split the whole pie into 1/3. You are likely to be both faster and more accurate with the former than with the latter. Humans seem to naturally think in base 2, and have to be taught how to eyeball in base 3. Now what is 1010 1110 1101 + 1101 0101 0111 (hint: it's 2792 + 3415)?
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.
Switch your system locale. OpenOffice.org is smart enough to start using centimetres when I did that.
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
I concur
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
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
Weird, South Africa is exactly the same
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!
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.
... that, and milk sold in 1.98 litre cartons. (At least, when I lived there for a couple of months a decade ago).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Yes, we're better at estimating 1/3 than 3/5 (your example) - but that is because the denominator '3' is smaller than '5'. For your claim that people think in base 12, you'd need to show we're better at estimating 7/12 than we are 3/10.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
EVERYONE deficit spends like drunken sailors. Bush doubled the debt in 8 years. Obama ...
That remark is offensive to drunk sailors! They stop spending when they run out of money.
I'm in Australia, and was taught metric at school, but we only converted in 1966 (I think) when decimal currency was introduced to replace the British pound and pence we had. So my parents were all taught imperial, and growing up my dad referred to everything as miles, feet and inches. So, when asked to estimate the length of something, I'll use either imperial or metric depending on whichever will give me the closest to a whole. eg. I'll estimate a foot, or half a metre, or an inch, or a centimetre, whichever is most appropriate. If America "converted" to metric, you'd all have an extra method of referring to the measurements of everything. It's not going to stop everyone from thinking imperial. At least not for a couple of generations.
Dont bother. It all boils down to Republican spending=bad, Democrat spending=good to some folks. Personally I think its (Almost) All spending=bad.
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 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.
About the circuit board: I believe you could define 2 grids in Eagle, one for metric and one for imperial (of course this was the coarse and fine grids. You could switch easily across these grids). I work at a different company now so I can't check (and my memory sucks).
What I mean: I would be surprised if the old crap we used was somehow more advanced than modern software.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I'm an American (scientist), and I have trouble with the goddamn Imperial units in American cookbooks. No, I don't know how many ounces are in a pint off the top of my head, or how many tablespoons are in a cup.
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
What do you think an economic depression is? Money spent by you is money earned by someone else. You spend less, someone else necessarily earns less. When they earn less, they have less to spend too. Eventually businesses lay people off or fail, and the economy grinds to a halt, like what's been happening recently. When you tighten your belt, everyone else around you whose income depended on your spending loses. You stop going to Starbucks, Starbucks loses. You cancel your expanded cable service, your cable company loses. You stop paying the kid on the corner to mow your lawn, he loses. When everyone tightens their belts, everyone loses. Government should spend more because nobody else will, because it's in the national interest to prevent that vicious cycle of belt-tightening from getting out of control and ruining everybody, until the private sector recovers.
The economy grows and contracts in a cycle sort of like a sine wave, it's called the business cycle. The growth period is caused when everyone spends a bit more, giving everyone else a bit more money to spend, the contraction period I just described. The contraction period is usually precipitated by some shenanigans caused by some critically-placed actors, such as the banks in the current case.
How can deregulation bring on a great depression? In this case we used to have a regulation that said that banks which borrow and loan money cannot also trade in securities. Why? Because of what happened when we deregulated them and allowed them to do just that. They traded securities and they also bribed the ratings agencies in to overvaluing their securities. When they were caught the values of their securities assets plummeted. These assets are what they used to be able to lend money, and they had to stop lending money. When banks suddenly stop lending money, there is none to borrow, and credit dries up. If the economy is a well-oiled machine, credit is the oil. If businesses can't borrow, they have to lay people off or fail entirely. If people can't borrow, they have to tighten their belts and spend less. See where I'm going? That's how deregulation can bring on a depression. It doesn't necessarily bring on a depression, some deregulation is good, but in this case it was not wise.
Does anyone ever need to resolve units of temperature less than one degree celsius? "Oop, it's 43C outside, so much hotter than yesterday when it was 42.5C, time to stay inside!"*
I suppose the only reason you'd care is with fevers, where 1C is a little too coarse.
*Yes, I understand how hot this is. It's going to be that hot here in a month or so.
20 cm sounds a lot better then 8 inches... even though it is somewhat less ;)
Sig?
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?
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...
True - I think this follows from the prime factors of 10 (5x2) and 12 (3x2x2). We can judge halves very well, and thirds pretty well, but fifths are much more difficult to judge, and the difficulty increases with larger primes.
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....?"!!!
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.
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.
In other words, it's not a problem with Centigrade itself, it's just that you aren't used to it.
- Chuq
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.
... I mean, if one meter gets you about three feet, why the hell not ?
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.
So then, cm is a more useful system for day-to-day use, because it gives more gradations than feet/inches for human height...
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.
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.
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.
We have footlongs, pints and quarter pounders in (metric) Australia as well. But they are just the names of things. They don't actually measure the subs to see if they are 30.48cm, or weigh the burgers to ensure they are 113 grams.
- Chuq
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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Now look at the wall, and point at the place that's 1/2 of the way up from the bottom. You're likely to faster and more accurate than pointing at the place that's 1/3 of the way up from the bottom.
Using your rather specious argument, I therefore conclude that humans seem to think naturally in base 2, and we should all move to a binary-based system of measurement.
... 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
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
Then we think about all the nuclear reactors and rockets you built using feet and inches and get night sweats.
And Mars probes. They always forget to mention the Mars probes...
"Hey, I know what we're gonna do today." -- Phineas Flynn
'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.
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.
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
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
Because slashdot's mod system is broken beyond belief, mostly.
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
Actually, I buy milk in 4L bags.
Aikon-
I live in Canada, and I had never been exposed to A4 paper so I had no idea what the big deal was. Then in undergrad, one of my friends from Dubai had his dad bring boxes of A4 paper for him when he visited to use in class -- holy crap, what a difference. Everything about A4 is superior to letter, except that you can't get it in Canada! At least for anything remotely resembling a reasonable price =/
A4 may have a strange number of mm per side, but the benefits of that paper size of letter are pronounced. Just try it.
Aikon-
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.
I would argue that in your wall example, it's not that humans work well in base-12, it's that when estimating fractions, we deal better with lower denominators. 1/2 is easier than 1/3, which is easier than 1/4, etc. Look at the same wall and point out 1/12 of the way up from the bottom, if you please. For me, that's harder than going 60% up the wall.
Furthermore, most of the fractions leading up to 12 are represented in decimal easily -- 1/2 (0.5), 1/3 (0.3,), 1/4 (0.25), 1/5 (0.2).
Aikon-
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.
You usually can't solve anything by doing nothing. Effort requires resources.
It's lovely that you are cheering hard for your team by knocking the other and pretending to be stupid and simplistic in the process but it just gets boring for those that don't care about either team. Remember that these people are in politics or lawyers first and Monarchists, actual Republicans or Democrats second. Obama is just acting like a lawyer solving a problem.
Politically he's in an awful position - even if by some unlikely combination of events he pulls off a spectacular solution to repair the US economy the hole is so deep and it will take so long to climb out that the President after him or the one after that will get the credit.
Get r done!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
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!
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.
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....
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.
...and 0.0398 rods is better?
.sig withheld by request
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.
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
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!
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.
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
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
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.
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
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? 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.
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!.
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.
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
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)
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
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 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."
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.
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.
Haters gonna hate. Write your own word processing software then.
Yes.
When you're adjusting your air conditioning to your comfort level it is.
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.
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.
Ahhh the ass fucking the Reagans gave us just keeps going.
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
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).
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
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)
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.
The wine I drank at a London South Bank restaurant was filled to the 0.75l hash mark.
This is a boring sig
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 difference is mainly not one of units. Metric recipes tend to measure dry ingredients such as flour by weight, whereas American recipes measure flour by volume.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
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?
Wow, are people really that picky?
My air conditioning has three settings: "off", "low", and "high", which correspond roughly to "winter", "spring", and "summer".
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
Yeah, it's much better to say that you have a 0.21872266 yard penis.
Is anyone here old enough to remember Jimmy Carter trying to get the metric system in the US.
Get off my lawn.
I figure the first step in getting people to convert to metric is simply to get everyone using metric units for simple things at home like kitchen measuring cups and measuring spoons, rulers, measuring tapes, saw blades, wrenches, etc.
The problem with that is, "Grandma's recipe" for whatever is in the old units. Dad's books of plans for building cabinets or furniture or whatever are in the old units. Just because you decide to start using metric doesn't mean that hundreds of years of old resources magically get updated to the new units. Sure, they can be converted, but that's work people would rather not do if they don't have to, and prone to errors which can end up being costly or, in some cases, even fatal (think of a second or third story deck which, perhaps collapses, because someone made a conversion mistake and used supporting beams which were of too small a width, and so could not bear the weight which they were thought to be able to bear).
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 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...
Whooooooooosh!
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.
FTW! Let the Frogs keep their bloody metrics to themselves!
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?
Ah, the UK. Spent a year there. When I went for my first health checkup I filled out the electronic form with 220 for my weight, which it was in pounds. But they used stones and their nifty computer converted it to 22.00 stones.
Later, the nurse came into the room and took a look at me, a look at her sheet, a look at me, and another look at her sheet.
"Well, you don't look 22 stone."
Certainly glad I wasn't looking like 308 pounds to her. Of course, she started trying to figure out what I meant in kilos. Then I had to explain to her I meant pounds. Was a good 5 minutes or so of weight confusion.
Which really only goes to show the Brits are all sorts of confused. Ask an Englishmen how to pronounce Wymondham or Leicester and you'll see what I mean.
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.
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?
miscommunication of dimensions can result in a decidedly diminutive relica of Stonehenge.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Well I'm can't agree that they're doing a great job saving "future money" but yeah increasing revenue (taxes) is a valid way to reduce the deficit. I'm just not sure I trust these guys to raise taxes without pre-spending the new monies seven ways till Sunday.
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?
I'm not American, but wow, your kind of comment makes me ashamed of being European. American engineering in its heyday was really good. All right, a good chunk of it was boostrapped from the British, and a lot of it from imported German scientists, but the British used their own non-metric measurement systems too. Units do not make good or bad engineering. The best engineers in the world are the British, the Russians, the Germans and the Americans. Of those, two used to use non-metric systems, and two use metric. Your argument is ridiculous, arrogant and patronising.
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!"?
Even in Europe CRTs and LCDs are measured in inches. I don't know why.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
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
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.
Is this a riddle?
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.
...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.
I see this from the other side. I could never understand Fahrenheit at all. What kind of stupid scale is that, where 0 is not a logical 0 but some value where some dude decided that this is the coldest point. Celsius on the other hand is very logical. 0C water freezes, 100C water boils (at sea level of course). For me hearing of F just makes no sense at all. Lucky 99% of the world agrees ;)
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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
Obama is spending to try stave off another Great Depression brought on by deregulation and shenanigans pulled by a previous administration that started 2 wars and tried to keep them off the books.
You're making excuses. Devaluing the dollar by further increasing the debt will only make another depression more likely. And Obama has expanded one of Bush's wars then went on to involve us in a third.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
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.)
Should have asked to go to the bathroom. "Unclassy" would be accurate. My advice? Learn the lesson and suck it up. Nothing else you can do.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
...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?
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.
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".
--
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.
You missed the point on the National Debt issue. As everyone knows, US government income is calculated as height of $100 dollar bills stacked in feet, and expenses are calculated as height of $100 dollar bills stacked in meters. The politicians see that income is a larger number than expenses, and everything is fine.
In Europe, it is more complex. We use standard sized stacks 1 meter tall, but most countries still use income numbers in their pre-euro currency, such as Italian Lira or German Mark, and expenses in Euro. The result is complex, and is further confused by European banks playing pyramid games and chicken with government debt randomly borrowed between EU countries. Just like US, the taxpayers foot the bill. Or meter the bill, to be more accurate.