271–280 of 547 posts
What is the cost of replacing every machine, every factory, every load tolerance specified in every standard? Every screw, every nut.
Things that need to work, in place for decades, which we can't arbitrarily take down. Power plants, water filtration systems. How would you roll it out?
It's because the US is so large and industrialized that makes it expensive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the units don't matter. What matters is picking a system and sticking to it That is exactly the problem with the imperial system. You have multiple units for the same thing, and when they are multiples of each other, it is in base 12. You could settle on feet and have kilofeet and millifeet, and you'd have a sensible system (apart from being incompatible with the rest of the world).
> That is exactly the problem with the imperial system. You have multiple units for the same thing, and when they are multiples of each other, it is in base 12. That's when you're lucky, can also be 3 (yard to feet), 22 (chain to yard), 10 (furlong to chain), 8 (miles to furlong, and that's why a mile is 5280 feet), 5 (gill to fluid ounce), 4 (acres to rod, gallons to quarts), 14 (stones to pounds) and probably every…
From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here: "The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country…
The word "imprecise" is also factually incorrect. AFAIK, all Imperial units are now defined in metric. An inch is not "approximately" 2.54 centimeters, it is defined to be 2.54 centimeters, or, if you prefer, 2.540000000000... centimeters. A pound is defined as 0.45359237 kilograms.
It may be very precise specification of a value that is unpleasant and hard to work with, but there is no more and no less precision in the Imperial system than there is in the metric system, because technically Imperial is now just a flavor of metric. In that sense, we are metric already. This is definitely not the sense that people mean, but it is not entirely invalid, either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But aren't things like road signs in mph defined by law?
My understanding of speed limits in the US is that each state defines it. There is no national speed limits (hence why Montana is famous for its high speed limits on motorways, but not much else). But I doubt that Washington D.C. uses kph on its speed signs, though.
This hasn't been true for years. Our current speed limits are in line with the rest of the country.
Every item you buy in the stores will be measured in metric units. Just because we call it a gallon doesn't mean it isn't actually 3.785 liters. And just because the serving size is a cup, doesn't mean it isn't actually 240mL. And check the nutrition label sometimes. It's all metric.
http://www.fda.gov/ucm/groups/fdagov-public/documents/image/...
So what's the problem again?
From the petitions.whitehouse.gov petition kindly submitted for comment here: "The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the world uses, we stubbornly still adhere to using the imprecise Imperial Unit - despite the fact that practically every other country…
That's a typical case of theory and practice. Yes, in theory the US is a country that supports metric. In practice, go and ask anybody in the country outside of the military for the following: - An M10 bolt - a 16mm wrench to drive it with - a 3 meter long 50 mm od pvc drainpipe - a tape-measure that measures only in metric - a highway sign that is posted in km And so on. See how many people can point you to any of t…
Simply deprecating customary units won't be enough to make the switch, you would actually have to make it illegal, and Hell will freeze over before you'll see that pass in the U.S. ("Doesn't Congress have actual problems to fix???")
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…
To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how…
Example: 195/60R15 - 15" diameter, 195 mm wide, and 117 mm sidewalls (60% of 195)
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.
You think there are no advantages to easy divisibility? 16 is divisible by 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16. 24 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 24 10 just has 1, 2, 5, 10
I recommend base 11, since it's the closest prime base to the customary base 10.
