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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #131
EliRivers wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'd rather be with the metrics! I'm about to graduate with my design engineering degree, I'm so used to SI units that imperial drives me crazy, but I need to live with it. Regarding the steak point, do you never ask for the 8oz or 10oz steak? For curiosity, I'm just outside Glasgow, where are you? Edit: Gordon Ramsay recipes: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ Butter update: Butter is measured in knobs.

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by sterna »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #104

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 mi…

Mecanical parts are the most difficult thing to switch because there are many things defined in relation to one another. For example the american UNC threads have different angles than the metric ones do and therefore it is impossible to replace one with another. For this reason alone it will take very long time to do a full switch from one unit system to another. However, many "metric" units are actually slightly adapted imperial ones. For instance you can get a lot of 25 mm stuff in Europe that is almost equivalent to the 1 inch stuff you get in the US (1 inch = 25.4 mm) and similarly there is a lot of 30 cm and 60 cm stuff in stead of 1 foot and 2 feet stuff.

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

#144

Post by ubernostrum »

stdbrouw wrote: post #78

I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating. 2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but…

My experience has been that the US and Canada are still "mixed" enough that it's highly noticeable. And I hear it's similar in the UK. The main differences are absence of an official government position (UK and Canada both have that, but with exceptions and/or significant numbers of people just ignoring it), and we still use Fahrenheit for temperature (amusing since the degree Celsius is arguably less "metric" and more just SI).

Otherwise, it seems a largely arbitrary toss-up as to what will be metric in any of the three countries and what won't.

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

#145

Post by krschultz »

Most of the comments in this thread are talking about the units for personal height, weight, local road signs or for the weather forecast. Those are by far the least important things to be worried about. All of those things are local and there is no carrying cost for them. There would be a cost to change all those signs and forecasts - for no real gain.

However, dimensions of physical goods are a constant recurring cost to the economy. Anything that crosses the borders for trade (all resources mined/farmed, everything manufactured) has to be dealt with in both sets of units. There is massive redundancy in fasteners, components, scales, paperwork, etc. It requires companies to keep two sets of tools (and not just wrenches, also drills, taps, dies, cutters, etc).

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

#146

Post by jamesjguthrie »

nathell wrote: post #130
mootothemax wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I had the very same problem, only in the opposite direction, living in Poland for the first 27 years of my life and moving to the UK just over a year ago. Just bear in mind that 6ft is approximately 180 cm, anything above is above, and anything lower is lower. This gives you a first approximation with only remembering one number. Also, 4in is about 10cm and is easy to add/subtract both ways. This might not be very ex…

One note I like to remember is that a foot is the length of a school ruler, everybody remembers the size of a school ruler.

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

#147

Post by VaedaStrike »

Ironic that a post designed to attempt to rid the world of obfuscation and confusion has a UI that commits the cardinal sin of auto loading the signature list so that it's virtually impossible to get to the footer without letting all the signatures load. :)

Reminds me of getting classes on water conservation in High School only to walk outside of class and see that they are watering the High School's parking lot.

How very often the government evokes the classic hypocritical parent of the old anti-drug campaign commercial of the 1980's where the son finally breaks and yells at his Father "I learned it by watching you Dad!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo

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

#148

Post by randomdata »

rohern wrote: post #132
randomdata wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We are constantly needlessly introducing math across all of our industries that have international partners by keeping our current system. Your point to which I was responding was that you feel it is more natural to measure in units of feet. I was pointing out to you that you can make the same measurement in a convenient unit in the metric system. We can have ease of use in both cases with the metric system. But it d…

Communicating the number of steps to, say, position your tractor in the field is a long way from having international partners and dual labelling. It is still not clear to me why one would introduce the metric system into the specific case when the simplest form, the length of your foot, will do perfectly.

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

#149

Post by emiliobumachar »

randomdata wrote: post #77
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.

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.

I disagree. A meter is a reasonable approximation of most adults's step length, but a foot is not.

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

#150

Post by tych0 »

veidr wrote: post #114

It's obviously a great idea, and obviously (to Americans) unlikely to happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this forum. Does anybody else from America remember being taught the metric system in public elementary school, and being told that we'd be switching to it over the next few years? I was taught this around second grade (1981), I think based on the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

Sorry, but how is that picture evidence that the US system sucks? I don't disagree that we have a poor system, but "everyone else is doing it" has never been a justification to do anything!
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