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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

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Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#101

Post by jamesjguthrie »

EliRivers wrote: post #66
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.

I'm British. I live in the UK. I'm in my thirties. I do a person's height in casual conversation (on forms I write it in metres) and driving distance in Imperial measurements (often; I use kilometres when I'm talking to someone I trust to know what a kilometre is, which is generally anyone under about 40). I do depth and altitude in metres, but sometimes I'll use an old chart that has feet (or sometimes fathoms, but…

I didn't mention buying anything in the shops. I mentioned cooking, as in recipe instructions. Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk.

Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy? Cars are still advertised with mpg values.

Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant?

Have you ever played golf or football?

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#102

Post by woodpanel »

dphnx wrote: post #15
yarrel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imperial is very visible in the UK (for road instances and for beer glasses in particular) but the country is pretty much metric now and has been for decades.

Funny you should mention beer – I've noticed an increasing tendency for pint glasses to be marked "568ml". Milk also doesn't come in pints any more, but does come in 568ml and 1 litre varieties. Still, as a nation we ask for and think of our beer and milk in pints.

That's another problem: you can re-label all you want, but the glasses, packings and tins are still the same size. Now if you are confronted with remembering 1 pint or fivehundredsixty... that compilcated other number, you will always opt for the easier one. Weather it's about remembering or mentioning. For the same reason we have more easily rememberable increments of 250ml, 330ml and 500ml.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#103

Post by goodcanadian »

Only vaguely relevant, but I grew up in a rural area in Canada which caused me to learn a strange set of units. For me, highway distances are measured in kilometres, but country roads are measured in miles. Groceries are priced per kilogram, but my weight is in pounds. I readily swap inches and centimetres for measuring small sizes and distances (sometimes on the same project). I am more comfortable with Celsius, but the thermostat in my parents' house was in Fahrenheit.

Just to throw an additional wrench into things, prior to official metrification (which technically predates my birth), Canada used "imperial" (i.e. British) units, not "standard" (i.e. U.S.) units. Because of this and the close proximity to the U.S., one had to be careful about just which gallon or pint you were talking about.

People younger and/or more urban than me seem to be 100% metric. I am starting to learn my weight in kilograms, but I still have no idea what my height is in cm without converting.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#104

Post by fennecfoxen »

There's a couple of things you'd want to consider converting to metric: long distances, short distances/dimensions, volumes, weights, and temperature come to mind.

Long distances: swap out a bunch of highway signs, consider that 60mph (a mile a minute) ~= 100km/h, not too hard on people but a lot of signage needs to change. Feasible.

Volumes: people are used enough to 2-liter bottles of soda, expect the 3.78 liter milk to stay around for a while because of supply chains. Gas prices will be modestly interesting for people, but really easy on the industry.

Short distances/dimensions: now things get tricky and potentially expensive. There are a lot of fractional-dimensioned parts out there in industry in different supply chains.

Weights: 2.2lb = 1kg and you're pretty good. Nobody really uses ounces anyway!

Temperature: Here's the thing about temperature: converting would be relatively useless because Real People don't do math with the temperature outside. Even scientists don't do math with the temperature outside all that much. For most people, a scale that starts at 0="civilization shuts down because you can't ice the roads" and goes up to 100="heatstroke territory" is a fine representation of humanity's day to day temperature. Why would we bother changing it?

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#105

Post by jamesjguthrie »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #94
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We ask for a footlong, a quarter pounder etc when we go out for fast food. Our fat friends are 16 stone, 17 stone. We live miles away from each other. Penalties in football are taken in the 18 yard box. We use cup measures for flour, sugar etc in cooking. The average penis is ~6 inches when fully erect. I've got two 4 pint cartons of milk in my fridge. I could go on. Imperial units are absolute muck and I cannot wait…

> We use cup measures for flour, sugar etc in cooking. We do? My cookbooks are in metric units. In fact I own no books that use "cups."

As an example go have a look at http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ which hosts a collection of Ramsay's receipes. All in tablespoons, teaspoons and cups.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#106

Post by yummyfajitas »

brudgers wrote: post #74
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #14

Before we start with the standard junk about "imperial measures are better because they are easier to understand / better suited to human scale / etc." can I say nope . The only advantage that imperial measures have (for some) is that they are familiar. That's the sum total of it. People where were raised metric find these apologies for imperial measures to be pure gibberish.

"Familiar" is a bit off target because it implies that use is a matter of individual choice. The system is embedded in standards, such as SAE. It is embedded in industries such as construction. It is embedded into statutes, regulations, and deeds for real property. Yes, the system is familiar, but wiping the slate clean and starting anew is not a feature of stable democracies.

The system is embedded in standards, such as SAE. It is embedded in industries such as construction. It is embedded into statutes, regulations, and deeds for real property.

I knew a civil engineer who first worked in the private industry and later got a job at the DOT.

At the construction company, they did everything in metric internally. Once a design was finalized, they would convert everything to imperial and submit to the DOT. DOT is behind the times, she thought.

When she got to the DOT, she learned their procedure. Before engineers got started reading the plans, a secretary would translate units from imperial to metric for internal use.

The fact that an old contract specifies units of rods and farthings is not an argument for anything other than defining official conversion factors between the old way and the new way.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#107

Post by sterna »

Regionalized units have the same damaging effect to manufacturing as closed software ecosystems has to software development. The only reason most US citizens do not feel the pain of this fragmentation is that they do not have to buy anything that is not adapted to the US market. Again, this is because the US is the biggest market on the planet and thus it is profitable for big companies to adapt their products to US standards.

However, supporting several unit systems is a huge tax on startup companies that work in manufacturing and therefore they reduce innovation and competition, causing harm to everybody along the way.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#108

Post by mootothemax »

ErrantX wrote: post #21
jamesjguthrie wrote: post #3

I look forward to everywhere using metric. I'm in the UK, 27 and still struggle at times to comprehend lbs, ounces, stone, feet, inches, yards, miles etc., when everything I was taught in school was in metres, litres, newtons and kilogrammes.

Also in the UK. Apart from lengths (feet vs. metres) I don't really find myself needing to calculate between the different units. I couldn't tell you how many litres in a 4 pint bottle of milk (or a pint of beer :)) but all other milk (or beer) is sold with those units, so I can easily compare. I mean, we are supposed to be metric - but there are plenty of imperial measures in use (height, is another obvious example)…

height, is another obvious example

Strangely enough, whilst I'm fine with lengths and distances in metres, the minute someone tries to tell me how tall they are in metres and centimetres, I'm completely thrown. It's the one conversion I pathetically still really struggle with (UK -> Poland in this case).

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#109

Post by RyanMcGreal »

javert wrote: post #62
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #12

Metrickery is a socialist plot to weaken America. First it's units of measurement divisible by ten, then it's universal health care, then gun control, and finally off to the gulag for the last remaining freethinkers. Sadly, there are people who believe more of less exactly what I just wrote.

Actually, the "Europe is better and the US is inferior" mantra, which is very widely held in the American left-of-center, is a significant factor in all of those.

As a Canadian, I'd be inclined to call it the "every other industrialized liberal democracy on earth is better" mantra. Countries tend to converge on an optimal balance of individual liberties and social protections because it measurably works.

The US is a notable outlier, and the various comparative social and economic indicators are pretty damning evidence that the continued American insistence on an 18th century approach to governance actually is inferior to a number of other approaches that have been more inclined to take evidence-based best practices into account.

Re: Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

#110

Post by randomdata »

rohern wrote: post #91
randomdata wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was raised metric, but still find utility in the imperial system under some circumstances. I use my anatomy to measure things all the time while out on the farm, for instance. You could say step off 914cms, but I think 30 feet makes more sense in the context since you are literally counting your steps. If you have precise measuring tools at your disposal, then I'm inclined to agree though.

This doesn't make any sense. 1ft is ~30cm. Just measure in units of 30cm. Doing the math in your head is trivial.

But why needlessly introduce the math, no matter how trivial it may actually be?
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