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?"

Comments

0.001km = 0.01hm = 1m = 10dm = 100cm = 1000mm

[Anonymous Coward]

It just makes sense

Re:0.001km = 0.01hm = 1m = 10dm = 100cm = 1000mm

[serviscope_minor]

The problem with base 10 as it is now used is that you get forced to an impractical scale right when you most need it.

That's daft.

Firstly, a 2400mm board is much more easily divisible than a 37 1/32 inch board.

Secondly conversions in imperial are just plain awful.

e.g.

10mm of rain falls over a 1km^2 drainage area. How much volume does the drainage system have to dispose of?

Now do it for imperial with inches of rain and acres of area. Oh, and did you choose gallons or cu ft?

Now convert to mass. OK, so you need to look up a conversion table. But you might have to change your volumetric measure, since imperial has plenty of totally different ones.

Re:What's the point?

[Idarubicin]

After all, Imperial (in the US flavor) is better for computing than metric since it's at least partially base 2.

Which would, potentially, be helpful and useful if the humans who program, enter data into, and use information from, those computers were also in the habit of working in base 2.

And I'm sorry, as long as there are 5280 feet in a mile - that's 2^5 * 3 * 5 * 11(!?) - I'm going to call bullshit on the computing usefulness of a "partially" base 2 system.

Re:What's the point?

[mspohr]

We do make buildings using feet and inches which is a nightmare.
Suppose you need to put a 2 feet 8 3/8 inch window in the middle of a 4 foot 7 3/16 inch wide wall.
How far from the left edge of the wall is the left edge of the window?
(I'll leave the math to you.)

Re:US Metrication

[arth1]

perhaps the people have spoken...many times...

Yes, and their voice was "Ooh, change makes my head hurt. Leave me alone and give me tax cuts and reality TV".

The last days of the empire, indeed.

Re:Leave the units alone

[Sique]

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).

Which is plainly wrong. Every unit was defined to be connected to the Meter (which is why it is called "meter", latin for "measure"). The metric ton for instance was defined as the mass of water in a cube of 1m x 1m x 1m. Thus 1 liter (1 dm) of water weighs weighs 1 kg, and 1 cm of water weighs 1 g. The meter was defined as the 10 millionth of the distance between Northpole and Equator. Only when the first units of Meter bars were founded and handed over to the national measuring bodies, one found out that there was a small mistake in measurement, and the new meter was about 2 millimeters short. But then it was too late to change that, and the meter was kept.

Re:Long Live Roman measurements

[Sperbels]

though even that holds its own against the M3

Drag racing hardly qualifies as holding its own. Real race cars have to turn sometimes.

Re:Boggle

[1u3hr]

2- You can shove your commie paper sizes up your "arse".

Fucking "Letter" page size default in every fucking installation of MS fucking Office I've used in the last 20 fucking years, and I've never even seen a piece of Letter size fucking paper.