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Petition For Metric In US Halfway To Requiring Response From the White House
fsterman writes "Without any prompting from the U.S. Metric Association, a We The People petition to standardize the U.S. on the metric system has received 13,000 signatures in six days. That's half the number needed for an official response from the White House. It looks like ending the U.S.'s anti-metric alliance with Liberia and Burma (the only other countries NOT on the metric system) might rank up there with building a death star."
"Liberia and Burma (the only other countries NOT on the US metric system)"
Right. And now the Metric system itself is from the US? Who writes this stuff.
Metric is the tool of unbridled liberalism creeping into our once-brave country. Introduced by a Negro in 1962, the Metric system is the favorite of politically correct pansy-boys everywhere.
Why won't people think of America first for once?
-- Ethanol-fueled
I don't see how a country that drives in miles, weighs in stones (pounds for other things), and sells things by the gallon counts as metric.
I can not believe that the metric system was invented by the US. I guess you meant IS metric system.
-- Cheers!
For this to even remotely succeed, at least two generations of kids need to grow up with the metric system (or at least have it along side imperial). Then, when they enter the workforce, metric will seep into common usage.
Meanwhile, what of the generations of existing trades that rely on imperial? I.E. Carpentry, plumbing etc... It isn't just a simple matter of teaching metric either. All these industries and their supporting industries must switch or provide parallel measures (of course, the old timers will stick to imperial in that case, since it's there too). That's very, very, very expensive both in material and time.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
... thank you.
13,000 American signed? That's like 20,000 in metric! (or airplane seats)
As a more libertarian society (yes, we are, like it or not) the government can't just tell us or any private entity what standards we will use, which was the barrier to entry it had the first time we tried to adopt it. Right now the USDA mandates that food and drug labels use metric, and various government organizations internally use metric (we used it exclusively when I was in the Army) but that's about as far as you can go. Things like road signs are also up to the individual states, and given that most of them are bankrupt, it would be hard to convince them to add that to their budget.
Personally, I prefer that day to day decisions like that remain ones that individuals make for themselves (or who knows what else the government can tell us what "thou shalt do") but it's just something that you need to consider.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Comment removed based on user account deletion
they are a total joke. between the death star silliness and the dismissive answers anything useful got lost.
When is the rest of the world that is "on" the metric system actually use it?
You know, measuring things in Mm (megameters) instead of saying 1000km? or saying he's 1.82m instead of 182cm? (Heck, I'd even be satisfied by 18.2Dm).
When the rest of the world actually shows me that the "benefits" of metric are actually benefits, we 'murikans might think about switching.
Until then, it's substituting one arbitrarily sized unit system (based on the size of a person, or the amount of land an oxen ploughs in a day, or some other measurement we actually interact with) for another arbitrarily sized unit system (based on the size of the earth).
People do a couple calculations in college and then they think they know something. It's not simple like multiplying by 25.4. Start with a quarter inch bolt of which there are several thousand on an airplane. Then consider the hole for that bolt. Then consider the drill bit for that hole. Then think about the washer and the thickness of the sheet metal used to make the washer. Work your way back to the rollers that press out the sheets. Think about all the mistakes that are not made due to well understood measurement systems. There is so much to change.
Metric is nice. No doubt about that. Changing over is a gargantuan undertaking. Don't underestimate the difficulty.
Adopting the metric system will eliminate a lot of confusion and ease standardization of container sizes and other such things, which in the long run will save a lot of money. Indeed, the Death Star will be cheaper to design and build, and more likely to work, if all of the work is done in metric.
The Mayans actually predicted that the U.S. will switch to the metric system in 2013.
I would hate to see the other units disappear as well but, as far as I'm concerned, someone should always be able to order a pint of ale. Any metric twaddle that threatens that should be thrown out with the other trash.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I don't have much of a problem with metric, but I don't think in metric. My children might be young enough to make the transition to metric thinking but this isn't going to happen in their lifetime because...
1. Baby boomers are the biggest demographic group and they will reject a metric transition.
2. If we have to wait for the baby boomers to die off, Gen X and Gen Y will be too entrenched in imperial thinking to make the transition.
3. When the baby boomers die off Gen X and Gen Y will be the demographic groups driving elections and when we're in our 50s, there's no fucking way we'll go along with a metric transition.
4. A lot of Americans like to keep doing things our way precisely because the rest of the world doesn't.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
.... then why'd you switch to metric?
Check out the big brain on Brett! And say goodbye to the quarter-pounder.
The US is in the process of metrication. Slow, but then again even France took a long time to convert.
For example all of US units are now defined in terms of metric units. The foot is 0.3048m.
http://www.nist.gov/pml/wmd/metric/metric-program.cfm
Then the metric system wouldn't make sense over the imperial system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xJfP7-HCc
Anyone taking stimulus money should have been required to convert over to all metric -- we could have actually gotten something useful out of all the "make work" funds that got wasted.
Too late, we're already on the metric system. The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 and designated the metric system as the "preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce."
hell, it probably won't happen in my lifetime bar a major change in our political zeitgeist that will put "American Exceptionalism" to bed for good.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It's like having a house on fire, as well as an empty gas tank. For some reason, the empty gas tank (the lack of the metric system in the US) is WAY more important......
If the gas tank had leaked, causing the house fire and couldn't be turned off because it had an Imperial thread instead of a Metric one... (gas gas, not gasoline gas)
Isn't there enough serious problems in the world that need attention and money? Who gives a fuck what measurement units are used!
Holy fuck i'm surrounded by pedantic morons.. Oh sure we'll continue to screw things up on an epic global scale. but we'll do it in metric!
I want everyone who signed this petition right now to line up. You all need a kick in the teeth.
I think you are making the falacy of taking an issue to be "important" because it is on slashdot. - I'll address that in relation to the issue of the metric system:
Firstly, Because you read about an issue on slashdot does not make an issue more important than any other issues that exist. In fact the converse is probably as likely.
Secondly, Condescension on an issue that you don't believe is important doesn't make the issue go away or the people interested less worthwhile. It is like saying to a father who's turtle necking, "don't go to the toilet, its not important, spend time with your kids instead, that is what is important." While I agree with the sentiment, I think the damage caused to kids by seeing their father shit his pants in their company all while saying "Kids I do this because I love you, one day you will understand" is severe.
Thirdly, The unification of measuring systems across the states of america is a good live test of the health of the democracy. If you can't implement a measuring system, how can you even think that the important things will ever get fixed. Something like this is good to keep the system lubricated.
Fourthly, this is the first step in how we can begin to reach the utopian human culture as described by Gene Roddenberry. And I want my holo-sex, not just for me but for my grand kids.
Yes, the one in New Jersey, had metric signs back in the 1960's. I don't know if it still does, though.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
People are confusing standardizing sized with standardizing measurements. Metric is already a standard. It already exists. Likewise with customary/imperial. When the speed limit is 60 miles per hour that means that the speed that is describes as 60 miles per hour is the speed limit. That speed is a concept independent of the units being used to describe it. If your speedometer measures only in kph then don't go above 96.56 and you're doing the same thing. You can choose to describe the same thing multiple ways, and indeed, we already do. Add two cups of water 250 grams of milk, a pinch of salt. Heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 300 seconds.
What does it mean to bring the metric system to the US? Have we not heard of it? Can I not right now describe myself as two meters tall? Is this all about which unit the government puts on road signs?
The easiest fix would be to change ALL the road signs to metric and ALSO remove all the mile signs at the same time. The first time they tried this, they left both up, and this basically killed the initiative. If all road signs read kilometers, everyone will learn kilos pretty damn quickly.
Up your 4 inch american ass.
Americans are too damn stupid to revolutionize Aeronautics, put men on the moon, explore the outer planets, and police the entire world making it so other countries need not spend significant portions of their GDP on defense.
If we are going to build a Death Star, it would be entirely appropriate to build it with Imperial units.
If a politician came out and suggested a wholesale push to metric, that politician will face a difficult reelection.
If Congress slowly and quietly switched things over to metric, then things will slowly transfer, with minor disturbances to the general public.
I would focus on NASA and Aviation worldwide (yes, the world is metric, but aviation uses imperial measurements.)
1) the White House never responds substantively to any of these stupid petitions. They are to convince the gullible about "change".
2) everyone that needs metric uses it already.
3) 14,000 300 million. Like, by a lot. Like, not EVEN a drop-in-the-bucket amount.
-Styopa
Is US metric different to metric used in every other country? As was done with Imperial, has US defined their own, slightly incompatible, metric systenm?
Why even have stories about these petitions anymore? The government has proven repeatedly they don't give a shit about them and they will NOT give a meaningful response. In theory they're a great idea but in practice they are a complete waste of time.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Every time I read one of these articles, I sense this bizarre attitude that getting 25,000 signatures somehow means that a law will be passed or that something meaningful has been accomplished or that it's important to sign/not sign whatever bit of garbage is being bandied about at the moment. The "We The People" site is about as important, useful, or relevant as a pop-up poll promising you a free iPad for responding. The "response" from the White House is virtually always "We've read your stupid petition. Here's your response: It's stupid.". Laws are not passed in America by direct democracy, and, even if they were, you'd need about a hundred million votes, give or take, not 25,000. 25,000 signatures -- in a population of 300+ million -- are nothing. You can get 25,000 people to sign virtually anything. To get a law to the President's desk, you need to convince 50% of Congress to do something -- actually, more than 50%, given the many procedural obstructions that exist. Absolutely NO MEANINGFUL, CONCRETE, OR SIGNIFICANT ACTION WILL EVER BE TAKEN SOLELY AS A RESULT OF A PETITION ON THAT WEB SITE. Every time a web site or news service acts as if signing a petition on "We The People" is somehow different from writing "I wish the magic fairies would give me a pony!" on a scrap of paper and then keeping it under your pillow, it adds to the "slacktivism" of the American people and undermines any actual progress towards any desired goal, regardless of your political leanings. THE SITE IS A JOKE. It means NOTHING. It will not influence a single vote in Congress. It will not cause the President to take any action he was otherwise not going to take. Every moment wasted signing a petition, asking someone else to sign a petition, asking someone NOT to sign a petition, etc, is a moment wasted from your life (yes, like the moments I wasted writing this). You would accomplish more for yourself watching "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo", because at least you'd be entertained. (I assume, I've never actually watched it. If I want to see drunken redneck idiots, I can drive a mile to my local Wal Mart.)
What do they actually want? The US government is already using metric in most areas. I suppose printing kilometers on road signs would be possible. But what more is the US government supposed to do? Whipping with a wet noodle for people who don't use the metric system? Fines? Hard labor?
The US will never go metric for the same reason many other things don't get done and just end in a shouting match - Americans HATE being told what to do.
Suppose the death star gets about halfway done, and the requirement to convert to metric kicks in. All those parts machined to imperial units will have to be scrapped and the whole thing rebuilt.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I'm not saying we should or shouldn't switch, but it needn't be at the expense of the "WAY too many other issues" you're concerned about. It would actually be very inefficient for the country to devote 100% effort to a single "most important" thing at a time. We have lots of people who can be doing a lot of different things.
"Your Mileage May Vary" may become "Your Kilometer-age May Vary"
"Acreage" and be changed to "Hectare-age"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
or the amount of land an oxen ploughs in a day
'scuse me, mate, how many bullocks to an oxen?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Why should we do that to be "receiving the advantages of it"? Surely it's advantage enough that it doesn't matter what you're measuring, you know how big a litre is.
Notwithstanding, the metric system has crappy sized volume units. You're almost always talking in many hundreds of millitres because you really want to talk in vulgar fractions of litres; 250 mL, 330 mL, 375 mL, 600 mL, 750 mL and 1.25 L are so common in metric Australia and show the utter failure of that part of the system. Planning like that never works; just standardise/simplify what's done.
Usually, as part of metrication, countries redefine traditional units. So, you might define: a pound = 500 g, a gallon = 4 l, and a pint = 1/2 l.
If the reason why the house is on fire is because you dumped the gas on it, then only having a litre would be a little bit better than having a gallon.
Really. What does "going metric" mean for the USA? The only possible thing we can do is change the highway signs. Or seriously over-complicate the Public Land Survey System (even Canada never metric-ized their version).
Or do we take away people's free speech rights and tell them they can't communicate in US standard units? We make it illegal for bank clocks to show degrees F? Force publishers to print metric recipes?
Just WHAT does going metric mean?
In any case, the wording of the petition is full of slop and doesn't actually *propose* any meaningful specific action. "[W]e ... still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit." Someone know doesn't understand "precision" doesn't even stand to benefit from metric units!
--Jim (me)
Why not teach both?
The concept of conversions, be it mathematical, or symbolic, is a useful language skill in and of itself. This is more than just about base10 extrapolation and it's relationship to US established social conventions.
It's also about the US' staggering childish behavior when it comes to social change.
Yes, we still use Imperial measurements informally, but the majority has been switched over without any major troubles, (though it does take time, you have to start it SOMETIME). Anything produced in just US measurements will have extreme difficulties being sold anywhere else in the world. The industries that do ship outside the US already use dual measurements.
Also, there is no need to know how numbers convert into each other, as it's always a factor of 10.
Have gnu, will travel.
Industry does not require White House permission to measure things in millimeters. Fasteners on American cars, for example, have been metric for many years.
On the other hand, it would be hugely disruptive and pointless to change residential construction practice in order to satisfy what is primarily an aesthetic fetish on the part of the petitioners.
Please stop trying to help. Two systems is not that big a deal. Really.
P.S. Somewhere around a quarter of the world's economy is conducted completely or partially using Imperial units (25% is the percentage represented by the U.S. GDP). Not so obscure when you look at it that way.
Metric is better not because of some terribly intrinsic quality but because it's everyone else uses it. That's the whole point of a standard--cnce a unit system becomes standard, it is no longer arbitrary. Metric was invented by scientists to do physical calculations more easily, and everyone else changed to match them because there wasn't any point in maintaining separate standards for science or engineering or everyday life.
There are benefits for the engineers and technicians who design and build machinery. Not having to convert units every time you get a drawing from a supplier overseas. Not having to re-train employees to work on a foreign-market version of your product. Not having to plan ahead to make sure your domestic foreign suppliers are using the same units, or pay extra for one of them to use one system or the other. Not having to stock your machine shop with two complete sets of tools, and waste mental effort switching back and forth, because half the stuff you do is in metric anyways.
Then there are the ancillary benefits, like not having our citizens look like complete idiots when they try to read roadsigns in kilometers in Europe. Or the ridiculousness of having to divide by 5,280 feet to get miles, or how our roadsigns say "1/2 mile" and then "1500 feet" (0.284 miles).
Yes, that's the same excuse detractors of the space program use. Why waste $20 billion / year on NASA when that could be used to feed and house the poor?
Never mind that such social programs already add up to around $1.5 trillion a year, and things never seem to improve.
There will always be other issues to "address first", but those likely already have metric shitloads of money devoted to it already, plus you can do things in parallel instead of just sequence everything one right after the other. Your analogy is flawed because it assumes only one issue can be addressed at a time, or that every single resource of the US can be channeled into addressing a single issue (and that the issue will utterly wipe the US from the map, no less).
It's convenient for political organizations to pretend everyone agrees with them.
As of this writing (January 2013) the United Kingdom still uses MILES to measure distance, MILES PER HOUR to measure speed, STONES and POUNDS and OUNCES to measure weight, and FLUID OUNCES to measure volume.
There is no way that anyone short of a politician would claim that the UK is "Metrified" (or metrificated) and yet they do.
Sorry, I know it's great to paint the US and Liberia as "holdouts". The truth is there are a lot of houldouts that JUST DON'T GET COUNTED.
E
that in American science education, you use SI units for everything. You might use American customary early in elementary but that is the end of it. Also you get a lot of beverages in liters (2 L soda, but only in the stores, also wine and spirits).
If America has any hope of staying on top of scientific innovation henceforth, it needs to learn how to deal with metric in everyday life, and not just in academic scenarios.
Since the simplest answer to every question is "It was God's will.", Occam's Razor says, yes. It was God that crashed the craft into Mars.
In the meantime, virtually all manufacturing is done in metric, and almost every product that is sold includes metric weight, capacity, or dimensions, since that's what the rest of the world knows and expects. But even if the current petition inspires action (highly unlikely), it will take another 40 years before the majority of people use the metric system, and longer for Honey Boo Boo.
Q: "How many inches are in a foot?"
A: "Twelve."
Q: "How many feet are in a mile?"
A: "A lot."
Q: "How many votes constitute a consensus?"
A: "More than we've got."
The point is that they know the answers that matter.
Yes, it's dumb that we still use the Imperial system (actually, our own slightly different version of it). It's also dumb to fight this political battle at this time. There are a lot more important reforms on the President's agenda that will be hard enough to pass through Congress. Trying to push through some metrification program at this point is just going to make progressives look out of touch in their ivory towers.
The time will come, be patient. There are more important battles to fight now.
Spending all that to change many of the road signs and all of the exit signs would cost a lot for little benefit. I'd like to but lots of better ways to spend that money.
You will never get rid of the imperial system in the US for automobiles.. I can guarantee you Americans will balk at switching to km/h to say nothing of buying gas by the liter! mph and the price of a "gallon of gas" are hallmarks of US culture. Plus you have a segment of the population who's mindset is... "Metric!? what are we, Europe!?... and Europe is socialism!!!!!"
or people that can only count with their ten fingers and ten toes. That is the only reason that base 10 could be superior to base 12. Next thing they will want us to give up Fahrenheit for Celsius temperature.
And that worked out so well, mandating the use of Ada for govt programs.
In a coherent system, the mass-energy system is just E = m. There is no c.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
If we're going to change, we ought to change to something fundamentally correct. We could be the first nation using Plank units.
Base 12 is a much better choice; divisible by more base integers than any "smallish" number other than 60, which is too large.
I'm gonna petition them to keep what we have until 12 wins.
Go 12 !
Table-ized A.I.
(Literally)
How many major nations around the world began the transition from Imperial to Metric only because it was once thought (in the 1960's, I think) that US was going to?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sure, there are issues migrating to metric system.
But if you never face these issues, they'll never go away.
So that's what, 1/3 the petition rate for the "Let Texas/Alabama/Dakota/Wyoming leave the United States" petitions?
Get a life. This is as likely to happen as steampunk pacemakers. Something like this has absolutely no incentive in the US. The only people who want this are know-it-all urban univeralists who think what's good enough for Europe is good enough for everyone.
While I will fully admit that standardizing on one thing is good and proper, it must first be appropriate. It is not appropriate to need to use two systems of measurement indefinitely, particularly when there is absolutely no way to cease using one of them. This is precisely why using Metric units has never caught on, and why it is never likely to do so. You'd have to completely rezone the entire US, which might as well be mile after mile of acre, each owned by an independent and sovereign country willing to fight to the death (due to how hotly contested/defended land/water/etc. rights can be in the US). You've got too many things which depend on those measurements; it's not going to happen.
Ah, the Metric System - yet another pie in the sky, long-lived and idealistic, but ultimately unrecognizable Socialist dream.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I guess the White House succeeded in creating the impression that we have a bigger voice than before with this site running; that someone is actually listening to the concerns of the people. Just look at this article. Half the votes, guys! We're so close to metrification! Lets all just ignore that when this petition inevitably gets the required number of signers, the White House will say "Switching to the Metric system is definitely something we want to do!" and that will be it. Petition over. Nothing actually happened. Nothing was committed to.
There are a few things this type of system is half decent at. Pushing issues like switching from imperial to metric on a country-wide basis is not one of them.
Change your shorthand date to be dd/mm/yy.
Every time I hear 9/11 I wonder what's so important on the 9th of November
Seriously.
While not a bad thing for the US to move to the metric system, there are WAY too many other issues that should, but won't be addressed first.
It's like having a house on fire, as well as an empty gas tank. For some reason, the empty gas tank (the lack of the metric system in the US) is WAY more important......
Ah, when is it a good time? I've been hearing the same argument since the 60s! Did you know the major sticking point is the same one as for getting rid of the paper dollar? Groups like gas station owners squawk about having to change their pumps. I've heard that whine since the 60s. Basically if it costs $0.10 to implement some one will be against it. Canada bit the bullet decades ago. The problem is if we had done it in the 60s the cost would have been negligible but each year they go up so now the switch will be painful. How hard is it? When's the last time you bought half gallon of soda? Soda companies made the switch decades ago and people barely noticed. They did it to standardize to foreign markets. Gasoline and mileage are easier to avoid changing. Metric doesn't work as well in some things like construction. Most of the world still uses imperial measurements in lumber and construction. I've had to work metric and it's a headache. For everything else we need to switch and not look back. The longer we put it off the harder it will be. I spent some time in France 20+ years ago. When I got there I thought, wow gasoline is cheap here! It was only like $0.60. That's when I noticed it was in liters. Now that we are in the 21st century it's time we came into the 20th century!
I wonder if you could take the "We The People" site and change it slightly, so that anyone who signs the petition is legally bound to vote against the incumbent at the next election (on pain of perjury or, at least, having your vote disqualified) if the petition's demands are not met.
You'd get much, much fewer signatories, but it would also make the petitions matter and only be used for serious matters. And death stars, which for some are a serious matter.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
Why an american that can't do math or read or learn of course as the unmetric stuff is too hard to learn.
That other arbitrarily sized unit system is what the rest of the world uses (OK, there's a couple of exceptions). Since the entire idea is communication why wouldn't that be a benefit?
numbering system. Numberphile has a compelling explanation with it's useful and easy to use though it's not pushing for it like this bunch.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
If you don't design products you may not see why. First of all fasteners are a big one, you can't just shut off an entire supply chain over night, and who really wants to print 1.27mm on a wrench. "Hey could you hand me that 1.27mm wrench?" Seriously, no rational person would say that. What are you going to do? tell all the manufacturers that they can only make metric sizes?. No one would want a metric speed limit system, trust me on this one. The tickets get rounded off to the nearest 5km/hr, which is smaller than 5mi/hr which is 40% smaller. This leaves a much smaller margin of error when your driving. Guess what the residential speed limits in Canada are? 30km... (25% slower) it makes driving crazy. Circuit board design happens to be in both because of international standards most datasheets are printed in metric. The change of measurement systems will happen gradually for market reasons, if it happens at all.
This isn't to say I'm for or against metric. I really don't care. The only point I'm making is that its a unit of measure and the system you use for measuring units doesn't make you more or less advanced.
The US designs autonomous space probes in imperial units that are superior to anything any other country could produce in metric.
I have nothing against metric. It's fine. But neither do I have a problem with pounds, inches, horsepower, or fahrenheit. It's just units of measure and one is generally as good as another so long as they communicate the needed information.
I had a room mate once ask if I had a tape measure. He needed to know if something was roughly the same size as something else. I handed him a bit of string. He didn't understand. I put the string against one side of the first object and then measured it against with that same piece of string against the second object. How big was each object? I'm not exactly sure but it didn't matter. What mattered was their relation. And that bit of string showed us exactly how the two items related to each other.
You have to understand that that is all units of measure are really. It's not important where you divide them into units. How big an inch or how heavy the pound. How they divide or how many makes another. It's just not important. You can make it simpler but it's not better if it isn't actually more useful. And it isn't. It's the same.
As someone that deals with metric and imperial units all the time... let me tell you... I don't care. I've got it down. You could honestly add a dozen more measurement systems and it still wouldn't matter to me. Get a conversion table and use it. It's not a big deal. No one is suffering technologically or scientifically for lack of a conversion table.
If THAT is what is holding you back you're either stupid or lazy.... and you'd fail in science and engineering regardless.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There's your exact problem with the Empirical system. If you expect to be dividing, you take powers of two, but if you expect to be multiplying, you take twelve as a base. That's not consistent to work with. It gets worse once you are starting to talk about fractions that weren't relevant when the Empirical system was devised. How much is 3.19383"?? Does that divide into some kind of 1/32768th part, or did it turn metric all of a sudden? Where's the consistency in that?
You may say it's arbitrary and that's the only problem, but there are more problems with the Empirical system than just being arbitrary in the base factor. The consistency once you do more than one simple operator is usually completely gone and you need icky constants to make calculations feasible without a programmable calculator. Try calculating the mass of liquid in a container 3 7/8th inch by 4,382 inch by 8 15/16th inches. The mass, not the amount of water, so not fluid ounces, but Lbs. Which country's definition of Lb is up to you, since there doesn't seem to be an agreement how much that should weigh either. Now, tell me again, the metric system is just as arbitrary as the Empirical system and has no advantages you say???
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Why do we talk about metric system there are more pressing standardization issues? For example the electrical systems. For example these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets
What do people hope to see? Is this just about road signs and weather reports?
Why does it matter? How long did it take you to do the conversion?
People say 182cm because it feels more natural to use whole numbers and a single unit. If you prefer to think in metres, then it's easy to work out how many metres that is. Megametres? Now, For some reason Mega doesn't seem to be a very popular. So we use thousands of km. If your using miles you use thousands of miles for these long distances so I fail to see the difference.
It will take generations to switch, but that is the point. You want to replace things as they wear out. That 30 year old tool will still have a lot of legacy value regardless.
* When electrical standards change in the US, we don't immediately replace the outlets in every existing house with a 3-pronged one (or any other building code for that matter.)
* When the walk signs were converted from english to symbols, they weren't all replaced immediately. Some still exist.
* Most of us have both SAE and SI tool by now because of "foriegn parts".
It is a very different time from when metric was initially intoduced. Most other countries have bitten the initial bullet for us as the first adopters. Because of it, our US cars all show kilometers in some form. Even US cars will have some metric bolts. Furthermore, because of schooling, metric is no longer the scary monster to anyone born within the last 30 years or has ever traveled remotely outside of our borders.
We, the US, have saved ourselves money short term by avoiding metric. But because of having to duplicate our tools over time for foregn parts, stripping parts by using the wrong tool, and avoiding economies of scale, I don't think we have saved so much long term.
We've waited long enough in the US for the metric switch that when it happens... I don't think it will be so much our own choice as something forced upon us by the Chinese economy pulling ahead of ours.
You want to use metric? Use it. I do. Don't try to fix the crime of forcing a standard in the first place by doing it again. If you're so right your job is to convince everybody else, not use force.
I don't mind it been presented as an american invention if it can help bring the US in the 20th century.
Not a moment too soon, seeing that we're in the 21st centurey now.
A very large number of Americans, mostly located south of the Mason-Dixon Line and/or in low-population states that are grossly over-represented in government, are too willfully ignorant, too stupid, too inbred and too ill-educated to adapt to a different system of measurement.
They're simply not up to the job, and due to the current political system in the United States, they call the shots on anything involving change.
So this is a dead issue.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I'd rather do it without government intervention, but... who am I kidding...
THROW ALL PEOPLE WHO STILL USE THOSE STUPID IMPERIAL UNITS INTO CONCENTRATION CAMPS!!!
Yup, even this radical AnCap is on board.
--libman
Since zero degrees is the triple point of water it is as easy to maintain for a long time as a jug of water with a pile of ice in it. That's within less than a degree of precision from drinkable water just about anywhere. Boiling is about the same around sea level, once again an error less than a degree from whatever you'd call drinkable plain water.
For those others who don't know, the lumber is cut into even inch measurements. But it is then dried, where it shrinks, and then is planed smooth, or 'dressed', which takes more off. So a 2x4 is 40mmx90mm, and, indeed, in metric countries, is generally sold as such!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
"5280 inches in a mile."
That's why you posted it AC. Read that again and cringe.
They should schedule it for implementation immediately after completion of the death-star
There ARE NO unit conversions within the metric system.
km to m IS NOT A UNIT CONVERSION.
However, the more idiotic fluffers for metric (and seriously "everyone else is on it" is sufficient reason to move to it, why the fuck do you need to bring up complete bollocks like that?) keep running this because they don't know anything about units (one reason why imperial will still be wanted: to teach kids things that they need to know, sadly, you remain untaught).
There are no unit conversions in imperial yards either.
It's 1.006 something kg of water (pure, STP).
Freezing point isn't 0C for BRINE. Only pure water. And it's very hard to get pure water. It's a lot easier to make brine. Keep adding salt until it precipitates out and decant.
Seriously, "everyone else is using metric" is entirely fine a reason for moving to metric.
Don't talk bollocks about other fake reasons just so you can think yourself cleverer for not knowing how the units are defined.
Go on.
Or the diameter of a circle 1m across?
Go on, accurately mind.
See, if you work hard at making a problem hard, you can make the problem hard.
It's not difficult.
It IS stupid of the one thinking they have a "GOTCHA!" moment, though.
The problem with this entire debate and the petition is that it assumes that the US has not adopted the metric system.
Let me start by quoting the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST a division of the US Department of Commerce]. Appendix B "Units and Systems of Measurement Their Origin, Development, and Present Status" to their publication Handbook 44 "Specifications, Tolerances, and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices"[pdf] states:
Perhaps the petitioners want non-metric units to be outlawed. That is not US policy (see above).
The title of the petition is also erroneous in that it refers to the "Imperial system". The Imperial system was adopted by the UK in 1824. It was never used in the US. The differences between Imperial and US customary systems are described in Section 2.3 of Handbook 44. They chiefly relate to units of volume. E.g., the UK Pint contains 20 ounces while the US Pint contains 16. The ounces are also different. 1 Imperial fluid ounce = 0.961 U.S. fluid ounce.
I think the most interested in this are those who sell things to america and tourists
I think the US can cope with doing more than one thing at once. There will always be "more important" issues, that doesn't mean that all progress in less-important areas should be infinitely postponed.
Legally binding someone to vote in a particular way? How could that possibly go wrong...
And unless you give presidential powers to freely implement policies based on these petitions, you still have the congress and the senate. So which incumbent?
I don't know, but I usually say 1.82 m, because one-eighty-two is simpler/faster to say than one-hundred-and-eighty-two.
In forms you'd usually use cm since that indicates the desired level of precision.
I'm not entirely sure what it is you are trying to prove here.
You are supposing that an arbitrary unit based on the stamina of an ox is a better basis for area calculations than the meter?
Wouldn't want them to build the Death Star with a mix of units anyway.
Also, it's much more impressive to say you have a 18 cm schlong rather than 7 inches.
as much as I love metric during daily usage, there's one thing that drives me nuts. Also while developing & testing Boost::Units library.
Think of kilogram. This is the base unit. Not gram, but kilogram. It means, that
F=m a
Newton = kilogram * meter/second^2
look at the second formula, where did the "kilo" disappear? Why it isn't a kilonewton ?
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
"US metric system" sounds like the "Microsoft® Metric System"... ;-)
Without knowing it, Americans are already on the metric system, albeit indirectly, as the US customary units are defined in terms of metric units. The inch is formally defined as being exactly equal to 25.4 mm. There is no "standard inch" or an independent definition in terms of so many wavelengths of light or something like that. Same for the pound, which is defined as 453.59237 g.
Common guys, metric is not a communist plot.
We, Americans, are stubbornly proud of our ignorance. Additionally, adoption by the rest of the world has the opposite affect on us. We won't use your UN black-helicopter, atheist, communist, baby-killing, freedom-hating, pussy-ass, pinko, bullshit metric garbage. Jesus came down and gave us the imperial system, because that's what man was meant to use, you fucking heathens!
Seriously, metric may take hold in America, but it won't be in my life time or the life time of anyone who is alive during your life time.
Simple, no?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
on all the other times whitehouse petitions have had any effect. oh wait never.
Everybody hear already uses metric, but most of them are to stupid to know it.
Watts, Volts, and Amperes are all metric units.
WTF..just my mind switched to metrics and Fahrenheit years after moving to USA. Now again ?
WE should convert to a metric time system too. The 60 seconds - 60 minutes - 24 hrs - 7 days etc stuff is just as screwy as 12 inches - 3 feet - 1760 yards
And get rid of daylight saving.
Why do we need the whitehouse to tell everyone what system of measurements to use? This seems to me like it should be the choice of whoever is doing the design, it isn't the government's business. If I want to make up own units and use them in my shop I should be able to! That would be stupid of course, but whose business is it?
Don't get me wrong, standardizing on one system would be nice. Only needing 1/2 the wrenches sounds good. Sure, metric is easy to convert between units and in many cases would be easier to use. Decimals aren't always easier than fractions though.. For example, need 16 pieces? Would you prefer to use the 1/16 tick on your ruler or do you want to go with 0.0625?
Ultimately I see more and more stuff is metric even here in the US. We will eventually get there without any action of the President or Congress. Let's let people do this themselves.
Not having to have two sets of wrenches and not crashing landers into Mars come to mind.
The average american probably owns less than one set of wrenches (I myself only own a couple of metric sets...yeah, so I round off a bolt every now and then, I don't care) and I'm pretty sure that the average american deals with zero mars landers.
Recently I visited IKEA in Milton Keynes, where halogen and LED GU-10 light bulbs were next to each other on the same shelf. To help me decide between them, the brightness of the halogen light bulbs was clearly indicated in candelas, and the brightness of the LED light bulbs was helpfully indicated in lumens.
(Perhaps what I'd really like to see is a percentage efficiency, the brightness as a proportion of the maximum that is theoretically obtainable with the power consumed and the colour temperature produced. Though obviously this would have to be defined a little more carefully ...)
(I modded this thread already so I'm posting anon)
One of the most difficult hurdle to overcome is the choice of words. People in North-America (Canada included) don't like to say 'kilometers'. Partly because they don't know where to put the emphasis (is it ki-LOM-eter or KIL-o-METer?), partly because it's 4 syllables instead of 1 syllable as in miles, etc.
One solution would be to informally rename all units. The US army does it partly I think (kliks for kilometres for instance). I am proposing something simpler: "new vs old". A "new mile" is in fact a kilometre. A "new quart" is a litre. A "new inch" is a centimetre, etc.
Labelling the imperial system as 'old' and the metric as 'new' will subconsciously push progressive people toward adoption, and at the same time hiding the origin and its perceived negative connotations.
Would you people in the US just get it over with already?
Your stubbornness on this problem is causing us to backslide into the old imperial ways, a lot of people still talk about price-per-pound at the grocery store .. it's dumb, the flyers will advertise price-per-pound, and then at the till they will charge us price-per-kg, so it's hard to say whether they are misleading us with their advertising. Many products come up from the US in "odd sizes" because they are simply directly converted from imperial sizes that 'make sense' south of the border. People still like to talk about distance in miles, and give their weight to each other in pounds (excluding the ladies of course). Lots of commerce is done in imperial because of the US influence. And generally speaking there's a bunch of people here that seem to think that "well if imperial is good enough for the US, it aught to be good enough for Canada".
In short, you're making it hard for us. And I suspect a bunch of other countries that do business with you as well. It will save everyone time and money in addition to America.
So, make like NIKE and "just do it".
There is no reason to repeat the same mistake twice. 15 - 20 years ago, there was a big push to get the USA on the metric system. It failed miserably, as the average American refused to attempt to think in terms of the Kilometers to Kansas City or the millimeters a wrench was measured in. THE PEOPLE just flat rejected change. They just didn't want to be bothered. Get over it, we are stuck with English measurements.
I grew up in Europe and thus learned metric first but I have been living in the US for the last 15 years. At first I really hated imperial especially the non 10 based units and going from one measure to another (length to volume etc.). However, imperial has grown on me. I think the places where I like it most are where it being human centric is useful. I find feet and inches to be very useful estimation units. I'm much more accurate estimating a measurement when I think in therms of these two units than I do in meters. I also like that Fahrenheit matches better with both the extremes of weather I see (I''m in the midwest) and the implications: 0 deg F - dangerously cold, 100 deg F dangerously hot. Now water's freezing point is still amazingly important and it was also nice to have that at 0 deg C.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think that the reluctance of the American people to adopt metric is purely a resistance to change. I think there is some charm and benefit in having a system them one can easily relate to their own body or experiences.
Listing those three countries as the only non-metric countries is questionable. Many countries that are officially metric use non-metric units internally (See wikipedia's articles on metrification. For example, Irish pubs will still sell you a pint. And England's fights with the EU on metric use are famous, chronic, and heated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6988521.stm
But I would say that the main problem with units like foot and inches is not the base per se, but the inconsistent bases across the spectrum.
I agree that is a very real problem. Base 2 or Base 16 or Base 8 is not inherently less logical than Base 10. But that is not the main problem with using feet and inches. The main problem is that it simply is not the same units used anywhere else in the world. This means there is a very real and significant cost to maintaining the tooling, signage, engineering time, documentation, conversions, mistakes etc between the two systems. It is a completely unnecessary and pointless cost. It means that we have to buy unnecessary tools, have engineers spend time on pointless unit conversions and rounding problems, we have to worry about unit conversion mistakes, we have to make extra gauges to measure the second measurement system. The real problem is needless cost, wasted labor, mistakes and confusion.
Now this could be solved by the rest of the world converting to the units used in the US but it makes a LOT more sense for those of us in the US to stop being a bunch of arrogant dickheads and switch to match the other 95% of the world population.
In piping. For example. This is a little irritating if you're not in touch with it on a day to day basis. But it's not a problem really, since you know the stuff is manufactured in metric (aka "real") units. And you can be sure it's been made with machinery with m-precision. So you always have a certain dependability.
You don't see it, but you know it's there. It's like ISO standards.
My point is, that customary units can stay around as long as people use them. But they had their time as official and formal measurements. The metric system has taken the stage single handed. And there's a reason for that.
I remember people constantly ripping on the French well before 2001. In America, the French have been known as rude/snooty, cowardly, unshaven (women), and unclean (failing to shower or use deodorant) for decades. People came up with more "creative" insults after the whole Iraq thing, but that is not when/where the animosity originated.
slashdot ate my "micro" sign...
There's nothing special about the meter.
There is one thing very special about the meter. What is special is that it is used by 95% of the world's population. That alone makes it special regardless of whatever other merits it might have.
Actually the US Customary Units are defined in terms of meters, liters, grams, etc so really we are just using an unnecessary abstraction layer because we can't be bothered to incur the (admittedly substantial) switching costs.
Its pure hipocrisy for cries of standardization to come from a bloc of countries with 23 national languages. The amount of effort that goes into spoken/written language translation is far beyond that of the languages of math. If simple was a swaying factor, English, Finnish, and Hungarian wouldn't exist. Conversion, however, is simple for the people who need it, so why bother? The cost/benefit of switching the US to metric guarantees it will not happen until another country or countries take over the world superpower role and the US becomes a follower. Don't hold your breath.
In medicine, the words microgram and milligram are so confused with deadly consequences that they now use the word GAMMA to indicate a microgram.
This is why I advocate changing the words micro and milli to now be platypus and doorknob, hence they will say give me one platypusgram of epinephrine which isn't confusing.
The metric system doesn't "solve any problems". We would solve more problems by standardizing on ENGLISH worldwide, but no one advocates that. It is funny that we have tolerance for everything except the British system of measurement which relates the measurement to the industry, not a meaningless standard of 10.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Considering the amount of work needed for a full conversion to metric, this could have been used as a stimulus program. Just think about the amount of work it would create to replace all the road signs, update and create new school curriculum. Provide training for teachers. Media campaigns to inform the public, etc. I am sure there is much more that would have to be done.
Not only would this put people to work, but at the same time would have brought the US into line with the rest of the world.
IN addition, dumping the paper $1 bill would also be a good idea, moving to a coin which would save the government millions. It only makes sense, as the dollar no longer has the same buying power that it once did.
I dont get why people hate the Imperial system so much, it works great for every day things. Height can be easily estimated in feet and inches, and miles can be easily guesstimated by just about everyone. Its common for humans to do this. Im sure all of you are in support of Astronomical Units, which is just distance from Earth to the Sun, yet thats not metric. Scientists use that all the time tho. The point of a measuring system is ease of use.
Assuming you're an American, how would the US switching to the metric system enhance your life?
Most of the benefits would be economic and mostly indirect. There would be less overhead for commerce and less need to buy redundant tooling, gauges, etc. Engineers could spend time doing useful work instead of pointless unit conversions. There is a very real and measurable cost which is in the billions of dollars annually. The economy is global and the US is incurring a pointless and unnecessary cost by not using metric which hurts our global competitiveness.
How would I notice? I wouldn't have to buy needless tooling for my company or for myself. I wouldn't have to waste time doing pointless and costly unit conversions. Virtually all our raw materials my company buys are produced outside the US so I would have to waste a lot less time making our engineering and production systems compatible. I wouldn't have to have two sets of gauges on my car's speedometer. I wouldn't have to have a measuring cup with 12 different arbitrary units to measure liquid. I wouldn't have to pay extra to have Fahrenheit on my thermometers unless I really needed it. I wouldn't need lookup tables in my cookbooks for units. I wouldn't have to wonder if the price of fuel is high when I visit Canada and the gasoline is sold in liters.
There obviously would be substantial up front costs to the switch and indirect benefits are hard to sell to anyone in the US. But we are paying huge amounts of money to use a system that is poorly compatible with 95% of the world's population.
AFAICT, American cars are metric and have been for some time.
I can assure you that many many drawings for automotive parts are NOT in metric. They might be specified that way from GM, Ford etc but that isn't the case all through the supply chain. My company makes wire harnesses, many of which are for automotive applications. Probably about 20% of the drawings I see (though the number is rising) are in metric. The rest are in inches. Wire gauges are not in metric either, they are usually American Wire Gauge. In fact I regularly see drawings where the lengths are in inches and the default tolerances are in metric, meaning the engineers are ignoring their own company standards. How's that for screwed up?
I need to first complain about how the petition is poorly worded and offers weak arguments. Regardless, the unfortunate reality is: switching to the Metric System is an impractical moonshot. It's a like building a mousetrap. Without all the pieces in place, it'll never work.
We like to make simple claims that if we change our roads and our cars then it'll all work out. Laypeople will then accept it and starting using. Besides having physical hardware in the real world that's measured with Imperial (or other) systems, other problems come from sectors where the inertia is too great. Could we convince the ICAO (an organization that sets global aviation standards) to use the metric system? I doubt it. We can't even find the institutional will power to fully embrace GPS for ATC. Same question applies for maritime activities. In that vein, certain systems are perfectly logical for the task at hand. For example, traveling at 1 knot along a meridian traverses 1 minute of geographic latitude in one hour. Why switch to something less elegant?
Using one system in all applications is not practical, and whenever people have to juggle two systems in their head they're likely to fall back on whatever they're most familiar with and confident in using. We're in a self-reinforcing system of resistance. And, ultimately, it doesn't matter if Jane Smith thinks she's driving her car at 55 mph while the physicist observes 9.81m/s/s.
Just half ass it like us Canadians. Use Metric for some arbitary things, and US Imperial for others.
I mean our roads say 100km, but I still measure my hight as 5' 10" (though my drivers licence is in cm). Though some things change over time. My Dad always measures tempature in F, while I am used to C. Also the construction industry all pretty much still uses Inches/Feet as well. When I get a beer I ask for a pint, but when I measure volume I do use ml. Most still use lb for personal weight, yet likely use kg for weigh measurement otherwise.
I would say all of which is pretty common usage for Canadians. We sort of use a mishmash of both. As for why some things over another, that is probably a more complex answer.
I am convinced that the real reason Trudeau brought the metric system to Canada was that it would be easier to add taxes to the price of gas. Prime Minister Joe Clark was defeated in part based on the fact that he proposed a 17 cent a gallon tax on gas. Trudeau came in and imposed a tax of 10 cents a litre and no body said anything. Even today the price of gas can go up 10 cents over night. I can just imagine the uproar in the US if gas rose 40 cent/gallon over night.
While Canada has been officialy metric for 40 years most people I meet still think in imperial units and I have to explain to my wife what it means when 10 cm of snow is forecast.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I live in a mostly metric country where because of export, most building materials are done in both (at the same time). If you buy a 2x4, it is sold as 2"x4"x3.2 meter lengths (10.5 feet mas o menos). Why? because the lumber industry exports to the united states. Plywood of course is 4x8 feet, but sold in the metric equivelent. Why? because they export to the United States. Similar story with just about everything sold or imported related to building. my greatest piece of construction equipement is a calculator that can accept inputs in both to complete the calculation.
The biggest and most rediculus problem however comes when you get fractions or big decimals, that can cumulitavely add some really f---- up variations over great distances or areas. That .001 x (a house) = a foot or two of diffrence on the otherside. Being from the States myself, I just work completly with the U.S. system, but I still have to deal with contractors and purchases in metric.
Our citizens are already bad enough at simple math. Making it easier on them is not going to help the situation.
The reason why the US will not switch from Imperial to Metric is simple. Metric is based on strict mathematical principals, Imperial is based on ease of use (not conversion)
This is under the assumption that:
1. People like units that are easy to visualize.
2. People work well with things on a scale between 0 and 10 or 1 to 100 consider:
3. People scale things with 5 being average, [6,7] and [3,4] being large and small respectively, and [1,2] and [8,9] being exceptional.
Take for example:
Distance:
Inches: One of the sections of one of your fingers is almost exactly 1 inch long. On many average people the 'rule' is that it's their thumb.
The average hand is 5 inches long, if you have a 6 or 7 inch long hand, your hand is on average big, children or small adults may have 3 or 4 inch hands.
Feet: A person leisurely walking has a 1 foot stride. A brisk walk to slow jogs run about 1 to 2 foot strides.
The average person is just over 5 feet tall (today). Tall people are 6 or 7 feet tall while children or very small adults are 3 or 4 feet tall.
Yards: A person at a moderate run generally has a 1 yard stride.
Even in the US people don't use yards for much, but in American Football a down is 10 yards.
Miles: One mile is kinda an arbitrary distance until you consider that:
The average person at a brisk walk gets 3 or 4 miles in an hour, 5 miles at a jog, and 6 or 7 miles at a run.
Pounds:
A rock that fits in your hand (baseball sized) weighs about 1 pound.
While working weak people might have problems with a 30 or 40 pound box (law requires you to be able to lift 40lbs to qualify for any type of manual labor). The average person can pick up and cary a 50 pound box around as part of his daily work. A healthy adult could cary a 60 or 70 pound box.
For laptops, you have 3lb ultra books, 5lbs for a normal laptop (but that's rapidly shrinking, mac book pros are now high 4's), and over 7lbs is considered a desktop replacement.
Liquids: In the US we use metric and imperial interchangeably. It's the one area where metric has actually stuck because wtf is wrong with imperial liquids?
Milliliter: Generally medicine is measured in ml, but normally we fill the included cup to the specified line and don't care about the specifics.
Pint: When you "Could use something to drink" you want 1 pint of liquid.
Quart/Liter: When you're "Very thirsty" you generally want a liter of liquid. Most people have no idea how much liquid a quart is these days.
Gallon: Milk is measured in gallons, and the average American family buys 1 gallon of milk a week.
2 Liter: You go to the store for a 2 liter of pop/soda. In American vernacular the "Two-Liter" is a single unit of measurement because it's easy to visualize.
Petitions to put measures on the ballot, and local petitions (change the policy on children in the pool during mornings, etc) are the exceptions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iHsIjMPP2M8
Here's the petition:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/work-new-epa-administrator-ban-land-application-sewage-sludge-also-called-biosolids/1FKsqX5Z
Prioritize accordingly.
The nice thing about the imperial system is that it's based on measures we can relate to in everyday life. A foot is the size of a foot. A meter is some fraction of the circumference of the globe. Now use that information to figure out how tall your house is just by looking at it.
http://apt46.net/2012/08/03/why-fahrenheit-is-better-than-celsius/
While we're at it, let's please adopt a worldwide standard for decimal points.
In the USA one million and 16/100 is written 1,000,000.16
but in Europe it's written 1.000.000,16
Not sure about the rest of the world, but can't we all use one standard for this please?? I would be happy to switch to the European standard if it's the world standard.
Until the NFL agrees to change the field to 100 meters the US will never switch over.
My reason for not wanting to convert is simple, I'd have to buy a $1000 or more of new reference material. All my civil engineering text books and reference material from school were in imperial.
The volume of a kilogram of water is metricy enough.
The problem with this entire debate and the petition is that it assumes that the US has not adopted the metric system.
Let me start by quoting the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST a division of the US Department of Commerce]. Appendix B "Units and Systems of Measurement Their Origin, Development, and Present Status" to their publication Handbook 44 "Specifications, Tolerances, and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices" [pdf] states:
Perhaps the petitioners want non-metric units to be outlawed. That is not US policy (see above).
The title of the petition is also erroneous in that it refers to the "Imperial system".
The Imperial system was adopted by the UK in 1824. It was never used in the US. The differences between Imperial and US customary systems are described in Section 2.3 of Handbook 44. They chiefly relate to units of volume.
E.g., the UK Pint contains 20 ounces while the US Pint contains 16. The ounces are also different. 1 Imperial fluid ounce = 0.961 U.S. fluid ounce.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do! Who leaves Atlantis off the maps? Who keeps the Martians under wraps? We do! We do! Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star? We do! We do! Who robs cave fish of their sight? Who rigs every Oscar night? We do! We do!
Liberia, Burma and the USA are not the only tinpot backwaters to eschew metric. Belize is also a stranger to the power of ten.
Halved sales tax for everything marked only in metric units. I guarantee metric will be in widepread use inside a year.
(based on the size of the earth)
Actually, based on incorrect measurements of the size of the Earth that were set in stone (well whatever the standard meter was made of. Iridium?) before the error was discovered.
AWG is in even denominations for the most oft-used stuff, and is specified by cross-sectional area.
All wire is specified in cross sectional area, typically in either circular mils (thousandths of an inch) or, if using metric, mm^2. AWG is no different from any other wire gauge standard in this respect.
Metric stranded wire sizes, AFAICT, are specified too specifically: 7/0.2 means "7 strands of 0.2MM wire.
Metric sizes are usually just cross sectional area in MM^2. They're actually simpler in many ways. Double the metric number and you've doubled the cross sectional area. AWG sizes actually have three numbers if they are stranded. 22AWG 7/30 is 22 gauge circular mil with 7 strands of 30awg wire. Larger gauge stuff like you talk about below is specified a little strangely though.
Doubling is easy for AWG, too: It's a difference of about 3. Two 12AWG wires approximates a 9AWG wire
Doubling is even easier for metric if they are doing cross sectional area. (sometimes they specify metric diameters) Double the metric number and you double the cross sectional area. The formula for metric is a bit neater than the one for AWG. In practical terms it doesn't matter much but if I could throw everything out and start over I'd use metric. It's a little bit more sensible.
I could care less for how many strands are there for AC, DC, and most audio work, as long as it is stranded.
You probably care more than you think. More strands = more flexibility in the wire. A 7 strand wire will be relatively stiff. A 36 strand wire will be limp like a noodle. You may or may not care greatly for your specific application since you probably have a range of acceptable stiffness - maybe anything between 7 and 24 is fine for example. But at some level the number of strands usually matters.
But in Metric terms, even viewing these wires on a chart would have been difficult: One variation had a fifteen or so strands and was fairly stiff, one had a half-dozen or so and was very stiff, and one had seemingly hundreds and was quite flexible. Meh, and double-meh for trying to cross-reference the correct tool and die set to the wire I had on-hand today in metric terms: To me, in that application, they were all the same: 6 AWG stranded. Easy.
The number of strands is no simpler in AWG than in metric. If you work in the US pretty much all wire you can buy is AWG unless you specially purchase metric (which will come from overseas). If someone specifies a product in metric you use a conversion chart to work out the closest equivalent wire in AWG and use that. When you say "6 AWG stranded" you simply accepted a product with some number of strands but this is something you specified whether you know it or not. You can get 6 AWG solid wire or with strands and the number of strands tends to come in standard increments though you can have a custom wire built with an arbitrary number of strands. I have some 27 strand 6AWG wire sitting on my desk as I type this. There is no difference or advantage to metric or AWG here.
I will wonder for the rest of my life why it was that Ford bailed on Crown, who always did a fine job of making very safe, serviceable, well-supported, and well-documented harnesses for the previous Panther platform
Price. End of story.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42zOpPlPLY
Why should our nation of 311 million people have to change? Dr.Fehrenheight in 1710 invented the system we use because there was no system. For scientific work
a temperature system is necessary for control of processes. He chose the 0 as the temperature of water freezing. That is water saturated with salt. For 100 degrees
he chose the temperature of the human body which is constant throughout the world. Boiling/freezing temteratures of water changes with altitude and impurities. We should recalibrate the existing system as Farenheit missed the human body temperature by 1.4 degrees. Thermometers in 1710 were not too accurate.
G.Zimmer
As far as the metric system is concerned I find it is not as accurate measurement since the smallest it goes is 1 milimeter. and ours go down to a thousanth of and inch. I know both systems as well as Kelvin but I preferr the regular inch instead of metric. We can measure things more accurate with our system than with the metric system.
13,000 signatures in SIX DAYS? That is pretty pathetic. I think there were four petitions to make marijuana legal that got 26,000+ signatures EACH in less than five days.
So what this tells me is that as much as everyone makes noise saying we ought to go to the metric system, there just isn't any support for it. In my field, it's stupid as hell when someone uses imperial, but if they do we simply convert, presto chango, simple as pie.
The USA enjoys using the imperial system and intelligent people have no trouble working between the two (so long as it's METRIC most of the time).
The length of my foot (including big toe) is exactly 5 times the length of my big toe (30 cm and 6 cm). I put 5 toes in a foot, you at least 10. Chances are we don't agree on how long either unit is. No wonder that Mars lander crashed, we urgently need to standardize on something less inexact as body parts.
You are not addressing what I've written at all - the bit where you belittle elected representatives and suggest your voice is far more valid.
They didn't answer the Texas petition when it surpassed the required number of votes...
Think of all the jobs created! Only problem with Obama pursuing this is that they'll think it's some socialist ploy
What's up americans? Do you feel your 7 inches is too short? Do you prefer it to be 18 cm?
It is funny how in some of the Star Trek original series they used metric in some shows and empirical in others. It was like some writers were predicting the future use of it throughout the galaxy and others were just used to using empirical, so didn't bother to convert.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
It's not good pretending to be puzzled when I've expressed it very plainly above and you know exactly what you are doing and exactly what I mean. The childish "debating tactic" of pretending to be mentally deficient and then attacking critics by suggesting they are bullies for attacking the mentally deficient is not going to get you anywhere in this case. It's obvious that you are not as stupid as you pretend and that such pretence is just another little bit of the petty dishonesty that you so frequently spread on this site.
Imperial stuff does work in nearly every field. That why guys who know how to do fractions can hand build rafters in houses with simple tools. I have yet to see a metric version of the imperial roofers square that "just works".
In most of the building industry, very few things are the size they claim to be but they work together in a system. A modern 1/2 pipe has no dimension that is 1/2 inch (just like a modern 12 mm pipe or is that 13 mm?). Carpet is sold by yards but its width assumes normal installation wastage so a 12 foot roll will fit in a 12 ft room that might be 12'1" wide (which is typical).The metric world seems to be working hard on recreating the foot since nearly all building materials are based on multiplies of 300 mm units (what I call a "metric foot")
I've never seen someone confuse feet and inches but I've seen lots of people drop a an order of magnitude in the metric system. I've even seen furniture at Ikea that claims it was 8 cm wide. I've also noticed that people who can estimate in feet tend to get their numbers about +/- 2 feet when guessing at room sizes but metric people tend to be +/- 2 meters. I'm not convinced that humans and metric are such a good match anymore.
In short, use what works for you and shut the hell up, the adults have work to do. I'll standardize on Metric instead of Imperial if the French standard on English instead of French, as the latter will do far more to make trade easier than the US going metric for daily life.
People are always in favor of diversity, as long as it it's THEIR diversity.
We just have to wait for the current decision makers to die off. They will stop saying no when they are dead, and others can say yes. This is what happened with the Soviets, etc. It will happen, no need to hurry. Switching to the easier system takes little or no effort, just practice.
gosgog: Just curious do the other two countries, when using wood for construction use 2" x 4" lumber? and don't forget, its not really 2" x 4" in reality!