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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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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
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."
If we are going to adopt a decimal system of weights and measures at least we should go with an American one.
From your link:
"Jefferson proposed to divide the foot into 10 inches, 100 lines, and 1000 points"
This is exactly how land surveying is done today in the US. Steel and fiberglass land surveyor's tapes and leveling rods are graduated in 10'ths and 100'ths of a foot as the standard. It has carried over from the land surveying electronics revolution in the 80s to be incorporated into total stations.
On a total station, you can switch between metric and English at the press of a button, but since land surveying is "1/3rd measurement and 2/3rds law" as one former boss put it, doing measurements in metric when a deed calls out English is just nuts.
--
BMO
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
And this is the death knell of US Metrification as a likely future event: The irrational bigotry and hatred of the French exhibited by so many Americans, solely because when the US waged an illegal war based on false premises and deliberate lies, the French decided not to participate based on their own interests and their own democratic system.
Anything French must seemingly be spat upon the moment it is mentioned. Anything French must be inferior, cowardly, belittled etc, simply because its French, and they didn't want to come play in the first Gulf War when the US told them to. Its sad.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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)
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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)
Yep - I've always called that the "Engineer's scale". Not sure if that's an official designation, but it's what I heard it called when I was exposed to it, and that's what it will always remain in my mind.
Let's not forget that there are 96/16ths in a foot, and there are 100 x .01 in a foot. It's pretty simple to convert between the two, but I've met a lot of carpenters (and others) who seem to be incapable of doing so.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
We were mocking the French long before the Gulf war.
FOR SALE: Used French rifle, only dropped once.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Have gnu, will travel.
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).
Actually, the colloquial term is "klickage", not kilometerage.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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!!!!!"
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.
Why "kilometreage", and not "metreage", when "metre" is the base unit for distance?
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
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?
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.
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
Because it gives you large and unfriendly numbers.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
The whole point of metric is that your mileage does not vary.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Not sure. How many footage did you drive to get to work today?
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
They should schedule it for implementation immediately after completion of the death-star
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 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'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.
It also forgets that it's largely due to France that the US won its independence.
"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.
Um, no.
Problems like 9 times 7 foot 5 need three steps to complete.
8/37 of a meter? Not so many.
The other problem is you're constantly mixing units. You won't have to look very hard to see labels with the number of grams of fat are in a 12 ounce steak, etc. It's insanity.
No sig today...
Simple, no?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
I know you're an AC, but I have to reply:
When you do units conversion, there is always a chance to screw up the conversion. From chains and links to decimal feet or decimal feet to meters, there is always a chance to fuck it up for the client and take a hit on your liability insurance and a risk to your stamp.
Converting from chains and links to decimal feet or meters is justified since most lawyers have trouble with chains and links, as the old guys are either dead or retired. Converting from decimal feet to meters helps nobody, except people with a stick up their arse about whether metric is better or not for land surveying (protip: it's not unless a construction engineering drawing is also in meters, which is rare.)
--
BMO
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.
Oh please, metric is all over the US. We just don't use it exclusively yet.
You need to make no such change in verbiage. The proposal should include to change the length of a mile to be the same length as a kilometre. Same for all other units. This way, all the cultural references can remain.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
If it were perfect then there would be no opportunity to switch to Metric 2.0 some day. I'm sure all that retooling creates jobs!
There are 96 1/8"s in a foot
OMG - I screwed that up, didn't I? Yes, you're right. Next question, "Why in hell did I screw that up when I KNOW it so well?"
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
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.
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
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.
Anything French must seemingly be spat upon the moment it is mentioned. Anything French must be inferior, cowardly, belittled etc, simply because its French, and they didn't want to come play in the first Gulf War when the US told them to. Its sad.
So much cluelessness for a +4 insightful, sad really. In America, it has been cool to mock the French, since before the fouding of the United States, due to colonists fighting both the French and the Indians in a war(forgot what it was called...). Additionally, during the cold war, the French liked to try and play the US and the Soviets off against eachother, and then there was the whole French Indo-China fiasco that helped generate a lot of Oliver Stone movies. Not helping the cause was France's reticence to allow the use of their airspace when attempting to strike at Gaddafi post Lockerbie. The Gulf War and France not wanting to go against their client state while pretending to do so in the name of internationalism was merely the icing on the cake. Ditto sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
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.
Or the diameter of a circle 1m across?
Go on, accurately mind.
1m! Didn't have to think about that one very long...
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.
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.
So you are saying that the French don't do the same thing the other way around? I am ignoring your grandstanding about the gulf war, I mean that the French don't immediately dismiss as inferior, unrefined, or belittle something just because it is American? (Let me guess, they do but they are correct)
Also, this has been going on for far, far longer than since the gulf war. Your point doesn't fit.
"You metreage may vary" is an expresion, there are no related numbers!
I have no problem with the Metric system; but for Congress to adopt the metric system, there will be an amendment on the bill that mandates that the meter be renamed to the Freedom Foot, and that there be a grandfather clause for the oil industry because oil is measured in barrels that contain 40 US gallons, and not 151.416 litres. Oh, and an amendment that requires the highway department to continue to place mile markers alongside of kilometer markers, even though the miles will not be whole numbers, requiring twice as many signs to be printed.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
(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.
Yeah, you did.
You'd have spotted it if you had seen a levelling rod more often, as the alternating lines and white divisions are just slightly more than 1/8th of an inch.
To be more specific, there is an "Engineer's Scale" that is graduated in inches, 10'ths of an inch, and a short scale at the first inch in 100'ths. Various companies make them.
As a side note, there is something called a Lenker Rod. It's a levelling rod that has a tape that rotates around the length of it. It's so you can set a zero and read/set elevations directly instead of doing addition/subtraction at each point. The drawback to this is that it's easy to blow up elevations by 10 feet, as I have done on one job as an apprentice.
--
BMO
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
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.
Well let me respond by saying I am Canadian. English Canadian. I had the French language shoved down my throat in school (required courses in high school) despite never having met a single Francophone until Grade 12 when they hired a French Canadian teacher. In the meantime, all of my friends spoke German which would have been much more useful to me in the long run.
As a Canadian, it seemed to me that the American despising of the French started up with the Gulf War situation, so if its a much longer term tendency in the US, I guess it wasn't apparent to a nearby foreigner.
I am sure the French are just as dismissive - probably much more so - as Americans are of all things foreign. Personally I don't have much use for them either as a culture. I remember the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior.
My point was that adopting the metric system which originated in France is going to have to cross the major hurdle of American disdain for anything French. Whether that disdain started with the US Revolution or more recently, its still a factor. It seems to me that a lot of USians have this assumption that if something was invented in the US it is automatically superior to anything *not* invented there. Thats another major hurdle to overcome.
I can't say I have adapted to metric. I still think in inches, feet, miles, pounds and ounces, and when faced with a metric value I mentally try to translate that into a "real" measurement, but then I grew up when they were starting to introduce the metric system here in Canada. I think it takes generations to accomplish a change like this.
I do think the US should join the rest of the world in adopting it, its a more consistent system potentially than the Imperial or US measurement systems, but it needs to be very gradual to allow various industries to change their standards.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
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!