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USMA: Going the Extra Kilometer For Metrication
EagleHasLanded writes "The U.S. Metric Association has been advocating for metrication since 1916 – without much success. In the mid-1970s, the U.S. government passed the Metric Conversion Act, but now it seems the time for complete conversion has come and gone. Or could U.S. educators and health & safety advocates put this issue back on Congress' radar screen?"
Geez, they got rid of latin, why can't they leave the romans alone, it's as if they want to purge all traces of them from history.
Cut out the intermediary step. Adopt the units of the future world superpower now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement
What's taking us so long?
It just makes sense
Pissing the rest of the world off is just a bonus.
Track 14 "[Lord It's Hard To Be Happy When You're Not Using] The Metric System" by MC Lars off his new CD "This Gigantic Robot Kills"
LYRICS:
12 inches per foot
Two pints per quart
Why don't we make it easy?
The English system of measurement must relate to history
We can use units of 10 and convert with ease like all the other countries
I am in command yes I am taking a stand from this disease we must be free
Good God!
You're drunk with your tradition that has no validity
Well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics, we want it now,
We know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make you thin
Bam
True players
Atom Goren
Here we go
Verse two okay
All cool things are in metrics
For example here's just one,
I've got my 9 well that's 9 millimeters,
Sounds cooler than my point two seventy inches gun
The president will not exist and they will call me communist and call me scum
But its worth it, Canadians will think we are smart or at least they will think we are not as dumb
You're drunk with your tradition that has no validity
Well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics we want it now,
We know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make you thin
The revolution is here
We must overcome at last
As we symbolically stick their 12 inch foot up their antiquated ass guitar!
I wanna say peace, but here comes the chorus one more time from the West to the East!
You're drunk with your tradition that has no validity
Well I'm intoxicated with sports in metrics come drink a decaliter with me
We want metrics we want it now we know we can win
I weigh 170 pounds that's 90 kilograms see metrics can even make me thin
perhaps the people have spoken...many times...
All you have to do is convince the male congressional leaders that they will gain manhood size once we convert over to metric! 15 is a whole lot bigger than 6 :)
trying to figure out what this had to do with West Point, before I realized USMA here is an acronym for "U.S. Metric Association."
Are the Colonies really still using Imperial units? - thought they must have stopped doing that yonks ago, after losing all those space probes to erroneous conversions between foot-slug-poundals and furlongs-per-fortnight.
Or is it like their refusal to use global standard paper sizes, or basically follow any other international standards - if it was invented in Europe it must de facto be Communist and therefore can't be touched with a barge pole?
When was the last time you purchased a 128-ounce carbonated soda?
When was the last time you purchased medicine by the dram?
When was the last time you heard car or truck engine sizes measured in cubic inches?
After all, Imperial (in the US flavor) is better for computing than metric since it's at least partially base 2.
Ths slashdot summary doesn't seem to be based closely on the linked articles:
but now it seems the time for complete conversion has come and gone.
The linked articles don't discuss a "cold turkey" government-mandated switch to metric (which was never a realistic possibility given the nature of American culture and politics). They discuss incremental government-mandated measures. Some of these measures have already been carried out: requiring food labeling to be in both US and metric. Some have been stalled legislatively: eliminating the US units from food labeling.
It would be great if we could get road signs to be switched over to dual units. E.g., congress could pass a law saying that on the interstate system, any time an old sign is replaced with a new one, it has to have dual units.
These incremental measures would be incredibly easy, and would require no new taxes or increase in government regulation (just changes to existing regulations). That's why it's so pathetic that the pace of implementing these measures has been so slow.
I teach physics at a community college. My students are a bell curve, extending from folks who are very bright and will transfer to elite four-year schools, all the way down to people who really shouldn't be in college. The bottom half of this bell curve is probably pretty representative of the population of the US.
Some characteristics of people in this range: (1) They tend not to understand at the conceptual level what the operations of multiplication and division are about. (2) They tend not to have any habit of checking whether their answers make sense in order of magnitude. (3) When they learn some new mathematical concept, they memorize it as a rote procedure, and therefore when they don't use it for a month, they forget it completely.
My students are mostly science majors, so they end up developing some facility with the metric system, but it's an uphill climb. For most people, what happens is that they learn the metric system in grade school, and then they never use it in everyday life, so they forget it completely and utterly.
Find free books.
They'll never take my pints.
I have no idea why we in the US steadfastly refuse to convert to metric. Seems like that would have been an excellent economic stimulus - every one from sign painters to surveyors to engineers would have been given work, it would have been a nationwide initiative, and the nation would be far more competitive economically afterwards.
Oh well.
There would be so much to change that the cost would prevent it - just think of how many road signs there are for example.
taking 5 gm and dividing or multiplying by 10s isn't quite metric system, neither is taking 1.03 L for base volume unit.
you'd better take steps to educate yourself lest our new not-quite metric asian overlords be displeased
When they tried pricing gasoline in liters at the pump in the 70's, folks were convinced that it was just a big scam to jack up the prices. They were probably right. And in the 70's we were going through the OPEC crisis, as well. That didn't help.
The same thing happened in Europe with the introduction of the Euro. Folks perceived everything as being more expensive.
If these folks want the metric system in the US to succeed, they had better think up a good solution for this problem.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
We already use the metric system, where people find it convenient. Anyone even starting down the path of engineering is likely to never even touch imperial. There are notable exceptions where isolated idiots muck things up(that nasa incident comes to mind) but do not confuse the mistakes of the few with a policy the whole society follows; we use metric. The only places it isn't used is where the cost of adoption aren't worth it. Measurements for travelling, cooking, weather temperature and small craftswork have no convincing reason to be changed. The narcissistic need to do things 'my way' are the only real driver as you can see from the bitter derision aimed at people who say they are 5'10'' and 160 pounds rather than use the metric units.
I had to equip my shop, and among other things picked up a set of socket wrenches, in both SAE and metric sizes. One thing I noticed, though, was that the socket drives were all in English measurements (1/4", 3/8", 1/2", 3/4") and that there were no metric-drive sets around anywhere. Just curious, are there any metric drive standards in Europe, and why haven't they found their way to the US? I'd expect at least some metric size sets from China to sneak in...
What exactly is gained by change in units? As a metric "native" I can tell you that metric units are not based on real-world criteria. There is no way to naturally define an "approximate" centimeter or a gram (as opposed to approximate inch, foot or ounce, for example).
Metric units primary convenience in common use is to make shorthand in writing easier by avoiding decimal point or additional places of 0 and replacing them with predefined short prefixes. I suppose it may be useful to those who have good memory for greek-derived words but can't multiply or divide by 10, but are these people a majority? There are more convenient unit conversions when it comes to scientific use, but as far as I can tell, scientists do use metric quite universally.
More importantly - if you like metric system, just use it. I can't think of many (any?) products sold in US that are not dual-labeled. Virtually everything has either both imperial and metric weight/size etc. marked on it, or sold in metric and imperial versions. If metric system is superior in day-to-day life - market will no doubt prefer it without the need for government intervention.
Do you really want to be able to have a calculator around? When I need to consider units, it is absurdly easy to convert them. Do you realize that the United States does not use the English system? It uses the United States customary units (variations exist between it and the English system). 'Imperial' in fact has no many variations around the world. I think the best reason to change it, is because it is one of only three countries in the world that doesn't use the SI system. For the world to interact with the United States it would be much easier if everyone used SI.
A few years ago I was driving on a road somewhere south of Raleigh NC (route 1 somewhere between Raleigh and Southern Pines ) and my jaw dropped when I noticed a short stretch of the road had distances marked in km. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why this one bit of road in the middle of nowhere was marked that way.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
give 'em an inch, and they'll take over 2 kilometers.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Fact is, the general public will continue using the customary system for a long time.
What should be focused on, is converting various branches of the government that do not deal with the general public into metric, such as the military, and NASA. This has already partially happened. The automobile industry has gone metric.
Who cares whether you're 100 feet deep in shit or about 30 metres?
For the fun of it I put a petition up on the White House's website. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/finish-implementing-metric-conversion-act-1975-country-can-rest-world-use-metric/jB0xMlmP Who knows it may go somewhere, but it would be interesting to see how many Americans would be for this.
So you'd actually be going the extra 1.609344 Kilometer.
This is a highly subjective thing as you can get used to whatever you have been taught. I was taught in metric, but I'm also familiar with American units. I find metric vastly superior for math and science purposes, owing to the ease of conversion between units.
However, the problem with metric is that for the everyday things, metric units just aren't convenient nor easy for humans to estimate. For example, the centimetre is really too small to be useful for estimating dimensions, and the metre is too big for small things, like rooms, desk dimensions. A decimetre may work, but even that is a bit too big of a unit. An inch is just about right for many things, though. Likewise, for intermediate distances, feet vs metres. I submit it's easier to estimate one's own height in feet and inches than it is to use metres.
For other things like roads and fields (I happen to farm right now), the land was surveyed years ago in miles and acres. That's unlikely to ever change in Canada or the US. Grid roads are in miles here in Canada. After 150 years, we're really good at estimating in miles. Not so great in KM.
All this said, American science courses, from my experience, use metric in the worse possible way. So it's no wonder Americans grow up with a distaste for it in their minds. In college I remember doing physics where the inputs and calculations were all done in metric, and then they wanted the final answer in some bizarre mix of metric and imperial units. Granted I farm now and everything I do seems to end up in metric units per acre. ahh well.
The U.S. Military is almost completely metric. They made a great leap when they switched 5 gallon water cans to 20 liters, which were one of the big hold outs. Still weighing aircraft fuel in pounds, and speed limits are miles per hour, but they are moving forwards. At least we only need one tool set now.
Torr isn't metric. None of metric systems (CGS, MKS, MTS) use Torr as a pressure unit.
But if you insist.
760 Torr = 1 atm = 101.325 kPA
1 kPA * (760 Torr/101.325 kPA) * (1000 mTorr/1 Torr) = 7501 mTorr.
(I didn't look-up any of this stuff. I remember 1 atm was 760 Torr from manometer experiments in high school, and 101.325 kPA from physics.)
Everything on grocery store shelves is labeled in metric.
Cars are built with metric nuts and bolts and have been since the mid-70s.
The National Weather Service posts temps in F and C.
A few states post speed limits in both mph and kph; Congress should withhold federal highway funds from the states that don't until they do.
What else is left to do, other then convince the average yob on the street to actually use it? Heck, the Brits still sell beer in pints – if they can't be convinced, why does anyone expect us to be much different?
But–– Kids go through 12+ years of school being taught with American/Imperial units for the most part. Except for those who join the military, where I'm told metric is used extensively, most people just don't get that much exposure to it. We have No Child Left Behind, where the feds have dictated how states will teach – they could just as easily dictate that metric be used exclusively in schools. (And then the usual tea bagger knobs will complain about federal government sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong, big government, blah de blah de blah.)
The main justification for preferring the metric system over the 'english' system, at least for everyday non-technical use, was that the metric units were generally in multiples of 10 and were therefore easier to mentally manipulate to convert between mass, volume, and length. Now, with digital helpers everywhere, the ease of managing unit conversions is irrelevant and the impetus for changing to the metric system is gone. Moreover, we like the familiarity of our psi, pounds, degrees fahrenheit, miles per gallon, ounces, and teaspoons, etc for everyday use. Scientists and the military switched over to metric units years ago.
I simply don't see the point in adopting a "standardized" system that is still unable to metricize time measurements. I'll accept the Metric system when they give us 10 second minutes, 10 minute hours, 10 hour days, 10 day weeks, 10 week months, and 10 month years.Until then, its just an elitist hypocrisy.
If American companies used the same units of measurement as most of the rest of the world I would guess that would lead to more sales.
The metric system is also used by the sciences and science leads to MONEY.
I was fortunate enough to be a small child in the 70s. I learned the metric system in elementry school and it helped me greatly in my science classes.
I never learned the standard American system until I studied architechture in college.
The metric system is much, much easier to use.
I'm surprised we haven't seen a push since food manufacturers are already repacking in smaller units to hide inflation. Remember when salami, chocolate, ice cream and coffee were purchased by the pound?
If we switch to metric the confusion would probably so great as to mask even smaller package sizes.
...for weather. I'm going to punch the next person who tells me that it's super hot at 45 degrees out in the face.
My other sig is extremely clever...
Nobody buys weed by the ounce or pound, they buy it by the gram or kilo. Same with cocaine. Charlie Sheen only buys it by the kilo, never by the pound. Let's face it, metric is already here, just nobody wants to admit it.
Maybe they are waiting on the rest of the world to fully go fully metric! It's no use in half adopting decimalization of units... Why are there 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
The US uses SI where it makes sense, but in some areas, it simply doesn't - there is no reason why e.g. drywall should switch from 8x4 ft sheets to some metric equivalent that differs by just enough to create problems for instance.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
The main justification for preferring the metric system over the 'english' system, at least for everyday non-technical use, was that the metric units were generally in multiples of 10 and were therefore easier to mentally manipulate to convert between mass, volume, and length. Now, with digital helpers everywhere, the ease of managing unit conversions is irrelevant and the impetus for changing to the metric system is gone. Moreover, we like the familiarity of our psi, pounds, degrees fahrenheit, miles per gallon, ounces, and teaspoons, etc for everyday use. Scientists and the military switched over to metric units years ago.
Even without computers and similar to assist in conversions, the fact of the matter is that the average person doesn't do unit conversions very often. I can only think of two cases where I do it regularly. The first is cooking, since sometimes it's useful to be able to switch between teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups. Maybe metric would make this simpler, and maybe not -- I haven't ever used metric-labeled measurings spoons or cups for cooking, so I don't really know.
The other time I have to convert between units is time -- and, of course, the time units aren't base-10 in the metric system either.
There's a good argument for switching, but trying to get people to switch because it will make conversions easier isn't going to go anywhere. As you noted, people who actually frequently do unit conversions -- scientists, engineers, and so forth -- have generally moved to metric already.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
It's doing fine in some parts of the country.
Why aren't we metric yet? Because schools fail to expose the fallacy of the the current US pseudo-Imperial system of measurement. How many times must you calculate the number of gallons in a cubic foot and the weight of water contained therein to see the genius of the Metric system?
Since we've obviously solved all other important problems here in the U.S. (there's full employment, the economy is booming, the rest of the world loves us like a long-lost brother, there is no crime to speak of here, everyone enjoys a high level of education, everyone is healthy and lives a long life due to easy access to inexpensive health care and medication, there is no corruption in our government, global warming is under control and environmental damage is being reversed and repaired, there is no hate, there is no greed, etc) then certainly we should take steps to unify the way the U.S. measures things. It's not like it'll upset everything and create confusion, certainly not! I'm sure everyone will willingly embrace it without reservation and overnight it'll all be done.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The problem is it's just too expensive. All of our road signs are in imperial. All of our building codes are in imperial. All of our tools are imperial. Many standard building materials like pipes are measured in imperial and then converted to metric for the rest of world anyway (if you've ever wondered why they sell weird sizes like 31.8mm, it's because it's 1 1/4 inches).
First the United Nations, then Darwinism, then Galileo. If they force us to use litres, we'll all be living in the USSR before the decade ends.
could U.S. educators and health & safety advocates put this issue back on Congress' radar
Not a chance. Educators and advocates lack two things: Lobbyists. Jesus.
The US should have a push for "hard metrication", which means using metric-sized components, to improve exports to the rest of the world. The military and auto industries are already metric. Electronics is mixed; newer components are metric pitch, but there's still a lot of 0.100 pin spacing around. Construction is still mostly inch. This is more important than the units consumers use.
(I restore old Teletype machines from the 1920s, which use inch fasteners, but fine thread; 6-40 instead of 6-32. Those are rare today. Gun parts suppliers still have them, but the selection of lengths and head styles is limited, so matching old parts is tough. On occasion I've had to buy long bolts, cut off the threaded part, and thread the base part myself. Despite this antique stuff, there's no reason that the US should not be routinely using metric screws for almost everything. Outside the US, getting non-metric screws is hard.)
A meter is something that you use to measure things; e.g. a yardstick. A metre is a unit of measurement. Go the extra kilometre!
Sigh; even American culture is so dominate that they always win, even when they don't know or care.
Because the US/Imperial system is awful when working in fractions or doing rather important things like having to translate depth or hight into pressure differences.
The biggest problem is for companies and people being forced to work in both systems, yes some of us do travel or sell abroad.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Cooking is one place where a change to metric would be a really big pain in the ass, and i know this from experience. A cup is a cup is a cup, but in metric cooking, everything's by weight unless it's a liquid, in which case it's by volume. It makes more sense if you're thinking of chemistry and preciseness, but it's a PITA for adapting Grandma's recipes.
Obligatory Oatmeal reference: http://theoatmeal.com/pl/senior_year/science
Besides the fact that it's pointless (why does it matter that my 180km drive is 180,000 meters?) there are reasons to not change. I'm from Brazil, IN:
http://goo.gl/maps/GQt46
Take a good look at all of those squares. Want to guess how big they are? The land is platted in acres, of which there are 640 per square mile. Normally in that area, the townships are 36 square miles - known as sections - and individual pieces of land go down to 1/16th of that. Obviously they can be subdivided smaller, but the 40 acre plot is common. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_(United_States_land_surveying)
People who advocate for changing to all metric don't know what kind of clusterf*ck they're wishing on themselves.
Do you have ESP?
when shopping sites ask us for our height and weight.
Now we have to do a metric conversion on our lies?
Printers are prone to default to letter size paper at the most inconvenient of moments.
So, here I am, wanting to print an A4 sized document on a printer loaded to the gills with A4 size paper, but because of some retard in the device driver division of the shitty printer manufacturer the printer will guess that now is really the time that I mean to print on weird-ass paper formats, I'm not getting any output.
First printer manufacturer that includes a button that does "print the fucking document on the fucking paper that is in the tray, and fuck that noise" gets my business first thing in the morning.
Well they don't have to, It would be almost effortless to simply start describing the drywall (and all other building materials) in metric terms using precisely the same sizes. Then when new designs are made people will naturally use whole numbers in metric sizes.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Please read this, it explains it clearly:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
No, computers and calculators are designed for decimal entry. Entering fractional of inches into a calculator is several times harder than entering decimals. It often requires using the memory or parentheses functions on the calculator if several numbers are involved. Then you have to convert the decimal output back to fractions, which is yet another otherwise unnecessary step.
That's one reason I always buy dual-scale rulers and tape measures, and I always use the metric side unless I'm dealing with pieces that came pre-sized in inches. Metric is both easier to do in your head, *and* easier to use with computing tools.
As a retired physics teacher I can tell you that we are already a metric nation. There is no such thing as a standard foot, pound, or gallon. Our standards are all defined in terms of the metric system. NIST maintains a standard kilogram but is working to replace it with a physical measurement that anyone, with enough money, could perform. The meter, and thus also the foot, is defined in terms of the wavelength of light and the gallon is defined in terms of the liter which is derived from the meter. The second is a metric unit defined in terms of light. There are no "English" units for electrical units; the volt, ohm, amp, etc, are all metric.
I don't know about you but when I buy gas, I just fill up my truck; I don't go for a certain number of gallons. Also, most things sold by the yard would convert easily to meters.
Some fears about increases in price are justified. A friend who was in Australia when they changed over said she saw skeins of yarn that were 2 oz (56.7 grams) later changed to 50 grams for the same price. Vigilance is our only way to prevent this.
I'm somewhat intelligent, and I can use a meter stick (approx three rulers in size). If I have to use centimeters instead of what's on hand, I just remember that there are 2.54 cm per inch. English units are dumb, but the fatuous professorial types who can't abide using them are being stupid as well. Sooner or later the other dipshits who think that obscure units were put on earth by G*d will die off, and people who feel the need will gravitate to SI units for everything or most things. In the mean time, one can type something like "2.3 picoseconds to fortnights" in google and get an instant conversion. Whoop. But why does the government need to be involved in mandating a system at all? Yes, if they've been buying widgets from private contractors in lbs since time immemorial, then they should do whatever is needed to minimize pain on the taxpayer, but the completely private sector should do what it damn well pleases. NIST is a wonderful organization because it's good at what it does and has a somewhat limited mandate, but if we're relying on Congress much less the even the whole federal and state bureaucracy to make decisions about the inner workings of the entire private sector all the time, it doesn't bloody well matter what system of units our country uses. Today's headlines should make that abundantly clear to people who are still capable of thinking for themselves.
Bad choice of target for your "hurr american cars use old tech" attack.
Especially when there is a better example of an even older technology that american cars use: the wheel. It predates the Romans by several millennia at least.
The old-time reporter kept files of stories that could be dusted off and re-cycled as filler for slow news days and the traditional annual New Year's wrap-up. Metrification is one of the oldest of these winter hardy perennials.
What excites the geek is the persistence of common weights and measures in circumstances where metric precision isn't wanted or needed and has no political constituency. The desire to impose your own sense of order on everything and everyone around you is the stuff of high comedy. What the geek lacks is a sense of the ridiculous.
Torr is a metric unit: it's MILLIMETERS of mercury. Millimeters are metric.
Sorry but that is simply wrong. A Torr is defined as 1/760 of one atmosphere of pressure. This ratio is chosen to as to be approximately equal to 1mm of mercury. So the definition is non-metric (1 atmosphere is not a metric unit) and the result is not metric because it is not equal to 1 mm Hg. In fact even if it were defined as 1mm Hg (which it is NOT) I would argue that it is still not a metric unit any more than an inch is a metric unit because it is defined as 2.54 cm.
The USA has already gone metric for scientific and industrial uses. That's where it's needed; there is no need at all to shove it down the public's throat for ordinary uses like what was done in the UK.
Ten millimetres to the centimetre. Ten centimetres to the decimetre. Ten decimetres to the metre. Ten metres to the decametrr. Ten decametres to the hectameter. Ten hectametres to the kilometer. I now some of these prefixes isn't in common use, but it does show that all you have to do is to mulitply by ten.
Twelve inches to the foot. Three feet to the yard. One thousand, sevenhundred and sixty yards to the mile - or more correct; eight furlongs, each of which is ten chains, each chain is four rods, each of which again is twenty five links. And just to show how well thought out the system is; each link is 7.92 inches long... So you either have a progression of 12-3-1760, or one of 25-4-10-8.
Tell me again why the so called Standard Measures are better than SI?
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
like the construction supplies industry, which benefits from using measures and sizes different to everyone else in the world.
Having to deal with multiple measurement systems is nothing but a cost with no benefit - which is why metric is not commonly used here in the US. There is a HUGE cost to switching which is why it hasn't been done but there is no actual advantage to having more than one measurement system to the construction industry or any other industry. Furthermore all the skilled trade workers are trained in imperial units and don't use metric much and there is a lot of resistance from them since they'd have to re-learn a lot of how they do things.
It effectively acts as a trade barrier against the Chinese.
I assure you it does not. All those commodity bolts, fasteners, etc are made in China. Construction companies are often Chinese.
Oh DRIVE!
Now grand parent makes sense. MOD PARENT UP
-
I don't think we have made a car in 30 years that wasn't mostly metric.
My company makes car parts and the supply chain for US car makers still commonly do not specify parts in metric. Drawings from Japanese or European auto parts suppliers are typically in metric but from US manufacturers we normally see some form of imperial units. Lengths are specified in inches, wire gauges in AWG instead of metric, etc. Most of our tooling is in fractions of an inch instead of millimeters. Not to say metric doesn't get used but it's not as much as it should be.
but then you also have issues of say a 2x4, which is neither 2" nor 4". Same with a 1x6, 2x6, etc. They average something like 1.5 to 1.75 by roughly 2.5" anymore
Engineers already mostly work in SI
In my industry (wire harnesses) engineers mostly do NOT work in SI here in the US if the drawings we receive are anything to go by. They will if the customer needs/demands metric (usually for Asian or European customers though sometimes for domestic customers) but mostly the engineers I've dealt with are an old fashioned lot that cannot be bothered to use metric. We have a few customers that use metric but most of the drawings we receive use inches - not even decimalized inches.
Continuation of the gradual change to metric needs to begin. Labels should all include metric - including all new street signs. Many things are labeled for both already, especially products not entirely bound for the USA. Internationalization already pushes many things towards metric; cars and science being examples.
I would make the predominant number metric; flipping the order in many places and adding metric where it was excluded. Would people complain? Sure, call them morons for not being capable of reading. Not that this would work on many Americans who have no problem with stupidity, especially if it conflicts with traditional beliefs. By having both people are "free to choose" to thoughtlessly use what they were raised with (oh the irony...)
As for estimation, that is all bunk - you use what you learn to use. I like inches, but 2cm is good enough I estimate by even numbers and it comes out good enough to ball park; over time I got more accurate. Besides, if there was something to gain by a unit between inch and yard we'd see more decimeters being used.
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There are people out the smoking cigarettes, for crying out loud. Not to mention saving injured woodpeckers and selling fresh milk.
Seems like there are more important things for the government to be doing rather than changing speed limit signs.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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things are measured in spoons in european kitchens as well (but i guess, US-spoons are generally bigger, just because everything is bigger there :-) - and the last time i checked, all my measuring cups were labelled in ounces and litres - so no problem here either.
Why not simply skip metric and simply go to natural units and get rid of many historical constants (like Avogadro constant).
... except it isn't anywhere but the US which uses sub-standard pints. Outside the US, "A pint of water weighs a pound and quarter."
Instead of spending effort on pushing metric, the US govt should have tried a pull approach.
Mandate that all contracts and business with the government be conducted in metric units. All public construction project bids will be submitted in metric, from public restroom to public subsidized football stadiums. If it starts in the construction industry, it will spill over to the rest of the society. Within a decade, all new Home Depot & Lowes hardware store inventory will follow.
10 days to a week, 10 hours to a day and 100 minutes to an hour. The only reason we use the current system is to do with the Babylonians and their love of base 6. They tried to get something like this started in the French revolution but it never caught on.
Mustang does that better as well. German cars are for cunts.
So Steve McQueen was a cunt? You should go tell his son Chad... I'm sure he will react well, he's a Porsche owner like his dad and therefore (according to you) a cunt.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
OK I even read TFA which outlines some of the history -- there is lots of pro-metric legislation in America, yet still the system hasn't been officially adopted. I don't care about whether one system is better than the other, or what the relative merits are of each. I'd like to know:
Are there any explicitly stated reasons out of the US government or industry, specifying why the metric system has not (or cannot) be adopted??
The linked article seems to imply that simply inertia or lack of will is the reason, but I'd like to know.
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Sure, metric makes everything simpler and it's a great benefit to idiots who failed basic math classes ....... but it continues to fail in the US after even an organized propaganda effort in the schools for one very basic reason: SIZE
Simply put, an inch and a foot are very natural and convenient SIZES; we like them; they're convenient. If the guys who came up with the metric system had simply defined a cm to be the physical size of an inch, then the cm would be a handy size... a decimeter would be about a foot long (another human-friendly size) and a meter would be about 10 feet (so things like levels of structures would be by rule-of-thumb approx 1meter..... another friendly size for quick estimates) They chose, however, an arbitrary cm size that is stupidly inconvenient and unnatural and then later tried to pass-off the story that a meter was defined as a particular fraction of the circumference of the Earth, as though that meant anything or added some legitimacy (they got it wrong anyway). People who keep trying to push metric in the US always seem to think it's just a cultural issue that will be overcome by "education" .... it's not. Education is for introducing new ideas, not for training people to give-up something that works and which they like, in favor of something that somebody else thinks those people need to learn to like more. Average Americans tend to just be practical and they have a system that works fine and has convenient sizes ..... and it was good enough for us to use as we invented aviation, the light bulb, radio, tv, the internet, etc and as we won some World Wars, put a man on the moon, etc (in other words: the system is not just comfortable, but it has been perfectly adequate for everything we've used it for). We buy inch-thick lumber (we don't want to need to by 2.54cm-thick lumber). We like to use two-by-fours .... 5.08-by-10.16's would just be strange (while providing not enough benefit to offset the annoyance).
The simple truth is that now we all have computers and/or calculators that can easily do the math for us to convert from any system to any other system and most modern engineering is done with CAD systems that support both inches and meters, so the supposed advantage of just being able to move the decimal pt are not that important.
It has helped me many times when arguing about the best way to do something.
Someone will confidently say
"we should do it this way, because that's how they do it in the US",
and I can just reply
"You mean those people who measure distances in inches and feet?".
I love your imperial system.
Personally I found degree F annoying. Change that first!
For length and weight measurement, at least I can multiply it a fixed ratio to convert, which is within the capacity of mental calculation/estimation when done often. However, degree F conversion to degree C is a nightmare. 32F for water melting point? 212F for water boiling point? This is crazy! In all other places on Earth, we have 0C for water melting point and 100C for water boiling point. Simple :)
Don't believe everything they told you in primary school. It is true that the kilogram is a measure of mass. It is also a measure of weight...
It's great to hear that they taught you this at primary school. However had you continued in your physics education beyond this level you would have learnt that mass and weight are not the same thing: mass is a scalar and an intrinsic property of an object; weight is a vector and is the force acting on an object due to gravity.
It is true that people use both terms interchangeably in common usage but that does not make it correct to say weight when you mean mass any more than it is correct to say "your" when you mean "you are". The meaning is probably clear but not always: "Your ignorant friend" vs. "You're ignorant, friend". The same with weight and mass. So long as we all live in an environment with the same gravitational field you can get away with being wrong because a particular mass implies a particular weight when you assume a common gravitational field. However this is not always the case. For example the Voyager 1 spacecraft has a mass of roughly 720kg but a weight far below what a 720kg mass would have on Earth.
A balance scale is used with calibrated weights of known mass; it's measuring mass, not force.
Not a bad argument for primary school level physics but unfortunately not correct. A balance measures force not mass: the forces acting on each arm have to balance, not the masses. This is easy to illustrate: take a balance with 1kg of lead and 1 kg of aluminium on opposite arms. This balances in air but the moment you put it underwater the lead arm will drop because the higher density of lead means that it has a lower buoyancy force due to the smaller volume of water displaced compared to the aluminium. This actually also happens in air but with a density ~1,000 less than water the effect is 1,000 times smaller.
IThe temperature scale is too imprecise to be practically useful. You loose a lot of precision using celsius vs fahrenheit without resorting to having to communicate fractional values. It is something like a few degrees f for every c.
Kilometers are just as arbitrary and useless as miles. If you want to standardize on something non-arbitrary I would rather see the world standardize on nautical miles which represents a minute of arc on the earth. Something much more useful for navigation than either the metric or imperial options.
The metric order of magnitude conversions are nice. There is also value in consolidating systems I just don't think Metric is necessarily better in cases that matter to me but what you are most familiar tends to override all else.
The "one of three countries that doesn't use SI" argument doesn't make sense to me.
Especially given that, even with countries that have adopted SI measurements, that doesn't mean that the people actually use them. In the UK, people drive in miles per hour and weigh themselves in stone.
Not to mention dimensions into volume. A 4' x 2' x 2' container holds fuck-you gallons of water.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It's doubtful you could ever convince the tea party set that metric conversion is a good thing, given what just happened in DC with this hilarious farce of a government, but I digress. I'd love to see Obama do this jst to annoy the !#@$ out of the 20th century brigade.
A cup is a cup... except when you try to cut a recipe calling for a third cup in half. Stop obsessing over precision if all you care for is approximates. Also, once you've nailed grandma's bread recipe, recording to the nearest 5g-10g will really help you repeat it.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The failure to convert falls squarely on the government. See building codes for examples. So long as your construction industry is using imperial units, society is not going to change.
The French messed it up in the 1800's. When setting up the metric system, they had to come up with a distance for the meter. Their approach? Take a measurement of the longitude of the earth and divide by 10,000.
This single, idiotic, lazy-ass decision made life hellish for people around the world. How? For units of weight, volume, or even long distances, it really doesn't matter if a kilogram is 2.2 pounds or 2.3 pounds. It also doesn't matter if Pepsi comes in 2 litre bottles or 1.9 liter bottles. It also doesn't matter if you buy fuel by the litre or by the gallon. You buy all this stuff essentially in bulk, and the quantities are arbitrary.
What does matter is small distances, specifically for machine tools. The French made the inch equal to 25.4 mm. If instead they made the inch 24.0 mm or 25 mm, then everything would be okay today. But with 25.4 mm, you end up with 1/4-screws and M6 nut. They look the same to the naked eye but they don't fit together and need different wrenches to drive them. This is where distance is critical; for small distances, you have a lot of fixtures and hardware out there which is designed to match specific distances at close tolerances. Since the metric and SAE units are off by just a little bit, you end up with a world where everyone needs duplicate sets of tools and stuff that's incompatible with each other because they were fabricated to different units.
Sure, when everyone is on metric the whole problem goes away, but the laissez-faire, overromanticized decision of the French will continue to be a pain in the neck for years to come.
Can we now stop bitching about the measurement system and solve the real problem, electrical sockets and voltage? The harmonization of plugs would go a long way. Where are the international trade organizations, that make a deal with the US congress, to standardize the plugs in Europe (if need be to a totally new one, so that no one has the benefit of keeping the old) for the US adopting the metric system (and the new plugs and voltages). Get Asia and South America on board and we are talking about a solution for the common man.
I'm only half joking. everyone traveling knows the problem. Anyone manufacturing electrical products world wide knows that the only difference is often the power supply or the cable that connects it to the wall.
And lets also work on frequencies used for various radio/tv/mobile technologies.
If we want to make the world better for our children, lets do it.
Best troll of 2013 so far, A+++ timothy.
Expecting a bunch of Americans to rationally discuss scientific measurements is like asking a bunch of religious nuts to rationally discuss the origins of life. They're just not intellectually equipped to do it.
1) Why is the common base unit of mass the KILOgram? Rename the kilogram so that you can attach metric prefixes to it properly: kilokilogram doesn't cut it.
2) 1 g of water = 1 cm^3 = 1 mL? Can't we come up with units of length, volume, and mass that agree with one another?
3) The names are cumbersome: kilometers vs miles, etc. Prefixes should be one syllable long so that the words can be shorter.
#1 and #2 could be fixed by defining the unit length to be 1 decimeter (about 4 inches): 1 cubic decimeter is 1 liter, and 1 liter of water weighs (roughly) 1 kilogram (which would get a new, better name as per #1).
And oh yes, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day? What the heck? Decimal time, all the way. (We're stuck with 365.25 days in a year, but portions of a day are under our control.)
I suppose the argument against all of this is that people are used to the metric system the way it is.
...I pretty much use metric extensively and nearly exclusively in the work environment. At home I shift back and forth depending on what I'm doing.
People who want to "force" change are just being silly. Over time the nation will probably move towards metric, or the rest of the world will move back to Imperial units....whichever is fine.
It's a poor excuse for an engineer of whatever nationality who can't handle a couple of different measurement systems in the time being. Chillax....it'll happen over time.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
Metric remains best for science and engineering because it makes unit conversions and math easy. But daily usage of unit doesn't involve much conversion and math.
The inch isn't just a more familiar unit, it is a common sense unit that just seems to work in practical application, and it emerged over the course of time by consensus of craftsman measuring small lengths. Looking at the golden ratio and fractals should teach you that life is built on patterns and those patterns aren't base 10. Using inches and feet result in objects that both lend themselves to mental estimation/math and are aesthetically pleasing and sized appropriately for the human body.
Let's look around the room and estimate switching the brain between units. The doorway. Looks to be about 2 1/2 ft. What is that, like .7 or .8 meters? The meter is too big and unwieldy for me to round up to 1 that is too big a gain or down to a half. I could go cm but it isn't practical to estimate things in terms of 70 or 80 units. That just makes the process worse, Using those small units I might be off like 10 units. My laptop, looks like about 1 1/4ft. I guess we could call that half a meter but again, the meter is just too big for this scale and that feels like too much imprecision while again, the smaller unit is just too small.
One could say "of course those things come out right in standards, they were made using the standards system" and that is a fair point. But it is also a fair point that these objects are all about the right size relative to the human body now. If you scale them up to fit nicely in even increments of .25 .50 and full meters the scale relative to the people in it just wouldn't be right.
therefore it's stupid
- american public
If they want it to be adapted, it needs to be painted on the walls in the schools, so the kids see it every day. It needs painted on the side of each swimming pool, and it needs to be on every item that normally has an imperial measurement on it, and no more printing imperial unless the metric is included, Metric measurements need to be the larger, easier to see measurements, and metric needs to be the bases for everything. No even numbers for the imperial system, use even numbers for the metric measurements.
I always hated the imperial system, and still to this day have no idea how many ounces are in a pound, and no idea how many quarts are in a gallon, etc. etc.
Metric is all base 10.
10 mm= 1 cm
10 cm= 1 dm
10 dm= 1m
10 m= 1 Dm
10 Dm= 1 Km
10 Cubic CM = 1 Liter.
1 Liter of water weighs 1 kg.
much better than
12" - 1 foot
3' = 1 yard
5280' = 1 mile.
etc. etc.
I feel sorry for the Grid Iron player. A national game! :)
Could be a mind f**k for the players, coaches, fans, owners, etc.
How will the game be changed?
If the length of the field is increased to 100 metres, then they will have to run approximately 28 feet more for a touch down, which equates to an extra 2 feet 4 inches for a down.
If the field length remains at 100 yards - approximately 91.5 metres, do you keep 10 downs of 9.15 metres to get from one end to the other, or do you have 9.15 downs of 10 metres? The latter looks like a problem for a keen observer to solve.
Would the stadiums have to be rebuilt to allow the increase in length to 100 metres?
And what about the statisticians - how will they cope with any measure based on distance?
Get ready to cream your pants:
http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_52_0/doc/html/boost_units/Examples.html#boost_units.Examples.DimensionExample
and http://se.ethz.ch/~meyer/publications/OTHERS/scott_meyers/dimensions.pdf
Base 12 would be a much nicer base for measurements because it evenly divides 3 and 4; something 10 cannot do.
Table-ized A.I.
I realise that the headline is meant as a joke anyway, but I think it can reinforce a misconception that may be to blame for much of the resistance against metrication: Contrary to what many people think, you don't have to suddenly change the way you speak. Nobody wants to do that.
The really extreme style of metrication where 7-mile-boots would become 11-kilometre-boots was tried during the French revolution. It went so badly that they had to revert to a complicated system of customary units that was a compromise between metric and the old units. Only decades after that were metric units accepted by the population.
Here is how metrication has been done everywhere ever since the French realised that even a revolutionary terror regime couldn't make people switch units directly: For the most important units you introduce informal customary units of roughly the same size but with a nice factor. Say one (metric) inch = 2.5 centimetres = 1/4 decimetre, 1 yard = 1 metre, 1 mile = 1.5 kilometres, 1 gallon = 4 litres (a compromise between US and imperial, closer to the US gallon), 1 pint = 1/2 litre (a similar compromise between US and imperial pints, very close to the US pint), 1 pound = 1/2 kilogramme (close enough for everyday life, and equal to the informal pound of Belgium, Netherlands, Germany etc.). Of course even those units which are not treated this way remain in common parlance in expressions such as "miles and miles". In Germany, hardly anybody knows how much a Meile is or was, but it doesn't matter when we still say "meilenweit" to indicate a long distance.
Wouldn't it be more costly when a US trained engineer screws up a measurement in an international project? I mean, it could mean a lost Mars orbiter or something...
I cannot emphasize it enough.. what failed in the seventies was because people were converting to and from SI units back into empire units and back again. Don't do that, just the the SI units and remember and use them for things around you.
See here, the obligatory xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/526/
As in using base 12 system, it'll make everything easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12 - it's why we use 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour, why western classical music is written with 12 tones in an octave, and if you want to count 12 on your fingers, you can count with your thumb the phalanges of your other 4 fingers.
so it's just a matter of time we move to the better system of 12!
We all know that the number one reason to convert is because metric stormtroopers are so much more accurate than imperial ones.
The company I work for makes custom equipment for OEMs - mainly off road. Only a few ever ask for to make anything in metric, though quite a few times we've reverse-engineered metric equivalents back to inch.
Why? Mainly the cost of the custom steel we have to use. Sure, you can get metric sized - if you commit to buy a few literal tons per size. Or, you can just convert and use the existing inch-based materials we already have in stock or in the pipeline with the steel mills.
Another example: SAE J1926 specifies that new designs should use the metric version of these ports. I've never *ever* seen one specified or requested.
And all I can say is that anyone who is Canadian can get off their damned high horse.
Know what is worse than imperial? A random mix of metric and imperial based on which country the components were bought from, how the old engineers are "used to" doing things, and the cycle of the moon. Which is exactly what our software had to handle when we started selling it in Canada.
In reality, the US does have a dual system of measurement, and that is what's costing the US so much. The general population may think everything is in USC, but a lot of engineering is done in SI units, or in some cases, in a mixture of the two systems.
For example, PCB boards in the USA are designed in mils (1 mil = 0.001 inches), and yet many electronic components are sized in metric. This results in rounding errors and parts that don't quite fit and need a lot of manual corrections. More info here. http://themetricmaven.com/?p=454
Actually, there's also a third system in use too, but that's mostly hidden from the general population. Roads in the US are measured and constructed using Ramsden's chain, which is 100 US survey feet, where a survey foot is slightly different from a regular foot. Each foot is divided into decimal fractions. But then, for long distances, they actually measure it with GPS, which gives readings in metres that then need to be converted for entry into the design software. It gets even more complicated that that, and that's explained in more detail here. http://themetricmaven.com/?p=465
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Back in the 1990's my father's factory, they made train parts, was bought out by a German firm. After a while all measurements had to be done in metric. They had special classes to teach these men, most 40+ year old with high school educations at best the metric system. He said once you allowed yourself to change how you thought, it was no big deal. This was from a man that only finished high school because his parents wouldn't sign the paperwork for him to enter the USMC before he was 18! He's close to 80 today and still uses metric for most of his work around the house. I always felt if someone like him could be converted then anyone can learn and use the metric system.
You nailed it. The running cost of maintaining dual systems is less than the cost of repurchasing and retooling all the equipment. It's amazing how much equipment is in use in America that would be cost prohibitive to refit to metric or SI.
The US is SLOWLY (as in glacially slowly) making it's way to metric. The more we open our borders and tariffs to outside trade, the more we slide into step with the rest of the world.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
to http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/, i.e. a faculty website of http://www.cira.colostate.edu/people/view.php?username=Hillger of Dr. Don Hillger, a Colo St meteorologist.
As long as the "U.S. Metric Association" continues to run out of the digital equivalent of a man's garage, and with a ~1999 web design to boot, it will not be taken seriously.
This is the definition if you're doing physics. It is not the definition if you're buying and selling stuff.
There is only one definition each for mass and weight and that is the physics one. This is the definition behind laws used to govern trade - or at least you had better hope it is because otherwise the first lunar colonists are going to be able to fleece earth-based merchants!
my point is that 'g' cancels and all that you're left with is mass
Actually your point clearly was that a balance measured mass as opposed to a spring scale which measured weight. I quote:
A balance scale is used with calibrated weights of known mass; it's measuring mass, not force.
Which is wrong - it measures force (weight) by comparison and uses it to calculate mass assuming a constant gravitational field and no other forces acting. This is a less stringent requirement than a spring scale - which assumes a particular value of a constant gravitational field - but the essential idea that you are using weights, not masses, is the same.
Watch out. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
A 1yd board is divisible into many more integer values of inch or feet than 914.4mm board which doesn't even come to 1 meter (the metric unit).
But you'll get 33cl bottles and cans.
Imperial were made for people. The merging of these sizes into a consistent set of measures fiddled with them massively to get them easily divisible by people who can just about add and subtract (because you didn't have electronic calculators in the 16th Century).
When you DO have electronic calculators, no need to be "easy to calculate" so might as well use emtric which has no conversion because you use meters or meters or meters. You can get the same benefit by using yards (kiloyards, centiyards, etc). But the meter was defined as some fraction of the distance from the pole to the equator through paris (it was invented by the french this definition if you can't tell), the fraction used was such to make the meter ***about*** the same size as a yard because the yard is pretty human a distance and popular. That the length of the distance between the pole and equator through paris was calculated incorrectly is why the meter isn't defined that way any more.
The litre was done much the same way. That's why it's 1000cc's rather than 100cc's of water or 1 cubic meter (which would be the SENSIBLE option for the definition of the litre in a metric system).
Weight (kilos) are because the size used for the base (1 cu cm water = 1 gram) was far far too light to be useful for humanity's everyday use. So that was faked up to kilo (thousand) grammes because that was a more useful handy (literally) measure.
Much like the reason for the pound weight.
Why do you need the weight of water when you have its volume? Is your cooking done under extreme high pressures?
1 cup = 1/2 pint
4 cups = 2 pints
1/2 cup = 1/4 pint
they aren't the same volumes, but hell, who cares. The fractions are still just as easy.
The nautical mile is based on the mile as written on the (flat) maps compared to the mile across the (rounded) ocean.
To remain a set height ASL, you'd still need a similarly bodged km to give you "nautical meters".
You have to convince "The man on the street" before we can convert. If you have to go through the conversions and listen to the complaining for ever transaction it will cost far more than we'd save by being standardized with the rest of the world. Until we are really standardized I'll have to put up with a mixture of the American and SI bolts and fittings in cars and much of whatever else I purchase and it's a royal PITA to fix hybrid instruments using multiple standards, or to have to explain what those metric units are in inches, feet yards, miles, grams and KG. Of course we still have parsecs, etc... Then you have to spend valuable time listening to complaints you can't walk away from even in industry. We may be able to force the official conversion, but it'll do us no good to get in sync with the rest of the world if we can't communicate with our own people!
What do you mean "faked up to kilo"? I know full well that I weigh ~90 kilograms (or 95,000 grams). That's the great thing about metric, that it's easy to just change orders of magnitude with a change of the prefix. There's no faking going on, it's working as designed.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
The currency is metric. The USA is not using pound, shilling,pense, half penny, etc.
The way to do it is to follow Canada's method.
start with posting dual temperatures (Celcius and Fahenheit)
next start with weights and some measures. Manufacturers will be happy because 3.8 litres is a equivalent to a USA gallon, so the price of gas will be cut by 25% and expressed as litres. Ditto for milk, and everything else liquid (such as booz)
After that, car speed indicators are essentially electronic and reprogrammable. Ergo, switch them to Metric display. Old bazoos will not have that option,so provide a sticker with conversion.
We drive at 100km speed limit on highways. That is 62.5mph.
There is a process to follow to join the world. Every significant manufacturer who exports from the USA to other countries needs to use metric.
The USA lost a satellite when it was constructed (programmed) in feet and inches, but the partners in the satellite program used meters and centimeters.
Meter, centimeter and millimeter how easy can it get?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
... of course I meant ~95 kilograms back there. :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
This is now no point to this process. Automated conversions are now done at the back end of systems and applications anyway, so a metric standard is no longer necessary. So what if you buy a liter of gas in France or a gallon in the U.S.? The value of the unit of measure is still charged to your credit card either way. Other units of measure such as distance for example, can be measured in Klingon kellicams for all it matters, and there is an app for that also.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
1) Penny wise and .454kg foolish .454kg of cure ...
2) Go the extra 1.61km
3) Give him an 2.54cm and he'll take a 1.61km
4) Came within an 2.54cm of it
5) An 28.3g of prevention is worth a
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
That's what kills me about these arguments. The USA is controlled by the people with money. Your money people decided it was time to change. If our money decides it's not cost efficient to convert, we will never convert since there is zero benefit in the daily life of an American. It makes since in scientific matters as uniformity and precision are a must. When I buy a pair of pants or a shirt, I need to know inches because that's what they're sold in. When I buy gas, the people that sell it to me measure it out in gallons. What's the chances a guy with $10k in tools is going to replace one tool at a time that is in a different system than the everything else he already has? Zero. On the personal scale, any measurement system, once learned is just as "simple" as any other because it becomes intuitive long before you're an adult. Talking shit to Americans because they use the system that our overlords demand us use is just pointless.
They think that if the country goes metric, their precious little caveman game will have to be converted as well.
Mixed unit labeling is now outlawed in the EU. If enough other countries do the same, it will not be economical for the US to export two versions of everything. We can only hope.
http://export.gov/spain/spainprofile/requirements/eumetricdirectives/index.asp
KILOMETRE
Another failed experiment from Europe!
Europeans get all snooty about speaking two or three languages. Of course they have to, every road sign is in three or four languages and if you miss your turn off on the way home you drive across two borders and have to show your passport before you can turn around. I know two measuring systems, quart or liter, yard or meter, I can convert to what ever fits best. It's like irregular verbs or word gender, you just know which one is right.
True, but misses the point. The point is that the word "weight" refers to a type of force in physics and to mass in trade and law.
No, actually that is not the case see this. UK law clearly differentiates between mass and weight but gives incorrect usage legal protection:
"the weight of any thing may be expressed, by reference to the units of measurement set out in Part V of that Schedule, in the same terms as its mass."
otherwise you could end up with lots of stupid law suits simply because people were not careful about mass vs. weight. So sorry but, at least in the UK, you are completely wrong. The law does recognize and understand the difference between mass and weight but, very sensibly, also realizes that many people remain ignorant of this and so gives them legal protection when they get it wrong.
According to Genesis 6:15 the ark's dimensions are 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits tall. That makes the total volume 450,000 cubic cubits. A cubit is generally understood to be approximately the length from elbow to finger tip, about 18 inches, just under half a meter. Whose arm is that based on? I don't know. In some countries it may have been the king's and varied depending on who was on the throne.
To estimate a distance to something.
Mostly they will still do it in meters 50 years later
When you want an artillery shell to land "where you're not at" these things sink in pretty well.
Anyone with a few functioning brain cells can cope with different units of measurement.
You can buy inch size Allan keys or spammers pretty much anywhere in the world, and metric one in the USA without to much trouble.
But try finding a particular 6-32 replacement screw anywhere outside the us - pretty near impossible !
Metric woodworking generally uses measurements which allow you to divide easily.
For example, a metric door would be 2100mm x 900mm (82.67" x 35.43" or a little less than 7' x 3').
You can divide both 2100 and 900 easily into halves, fourths, thirds, sixths, and twelfths. (2100/12 = 175, 900/2 = 75)
Metric panels (plywood, etc., drywall) are generally 1200mm (a little less than 4 feet).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
will be the 1/4-20 thread in the bottom of a camera.