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Make the Metric system the standard in the United States

petitions.whitehouse.gov

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

#391

Post by abrahamsen »

randomdata wrote: post #160
emiliobumachar wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everyone who works on my farm has a foot that is approximately 30cms, so it works great. If we all had 15cm feet, then we'd say you need to step off 60 feet in the aforementioned example. It is not strictly bound by the imperial system, it just so happens that the imperial system maps fairly well to what is practical in the field without any tools, so it is what we reference. I see no benefit to introducing the metri…

A metric user would measure the same distance to "approximately 9 meters" by taking 9 large steps. This is a very common informal method of measuring distances.

It seems more practical (and certainly faster) than to measure the distance to "approximately 30 feet" by putting one foot just in front of the other 30 times.

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

#392

Post by chernevik »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #109
javert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The working of any given balance of liberties and social protections is a phenomenon observable only in time increments over centuries, or possibly millenia.

There are many examples of "liberal" and even "democratic" or "republican" governments / societies that lasted for centuries before failing into tyranny and / or to foreign domination. The US Constitution attempts to correct the failings of each of those examples. Saying it has worked so far is declaring the weather today, all day long, was great -- at 9:30am.

Saying the French or Germans have demonstrated their solutions, at that time scale, is just nuts.

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

#393

Post by andrewdubinsky »

Don't we have bigger problems than this right now?

Our schools are so badly mismanaged that we're not even graduating people who can use either standard.

We've got millions of people unemployed who would love to turn a wrench regardless of metric or standard.

(Not to cast aspersions at either party, they are both very nearly equally to blame)

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

#394

Post by seandhi »

jacquesm wrote: post #259
tokenadult wrote: post #198

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…

I worked in oilfield and petrochemical construction and manufacturing for almost ten years, and I can say that we almost never used metric. I think in the ten years, I worked on two projects that required metric bolts and fittings, both of which were for Japanese companies. Retraining the workers to use metric for these projects was a battle in itself.

We built structures and equipment that went around the world... all using imperial.

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

#395

Post by archangel_one »

xiaoma wrote: post #258
aidos wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the year MMXIII is sentiment really a good reason to continue using an inefficient system :)

Those numbers are used for Superbowls, not years. Get it together!

After some time agonising over those in the last year, I can assure you they're still used for Superbowls and years, as well as name ordinals and many other things :)

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

#396

Post by jacquesm »

DannyBee wrote: post #372
jacquesm wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to see that the situation is improving. The more the US imports the more stuff will be in metric, it's unavoidable. But I'll believe it when the construction industry let's go of the foot and the inch. A 12.7 mm collet is not a metric collet. A metric collet would be a 12 or 13 mm.

My point was exactly that the construction industry and others already deals in metric whether they know it or not. Yes, they spec 2x4's, and 3/4" CDX sheathng, but every piece of sheathing they use is actually made to millimeter specs, not imperial specs. This was my point about the collet, too. It's true they collets are not meant to be holding metric sized end mills/etc, but the collet itself is milled using metri…

Good. So that's the source of your confusion then.

I'm glad we got that cleared up. Since the Inch is specified as 25.4 mm you can convert any measurement in Inches into an exact equivalent in metric. But that does not make it a metric size.

Inches: 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 1" etc and various measures in between (5/32nd for instance).

Metric: 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, etc. and various measures in between (5.5 mm for instance).

So you buy your lumber in Imperial measures (apparently except for thickness), and the rest of the world buys theirs in meters (or mm). That's the difference between 'working in Imperial' and 'working in metric'.

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

#397

Post by [deleted] »

dmoo wrote: post #226

Ireland has converted mostly to the metric system, we switched to kilometers for speed limits in 2005. To be honest you get used to it pretty quickly. There are a number of items, particularly those that are traded with our neighbours in the UK that are shown as both metric and imperial. You still get a pint of Guinness in the pub but all bottles and cans of beer are in metric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metricatio…

[deleted]

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

#398

Post by javert »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #339
javert wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate Europe. For example, high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor immigrants from Latin America. For another example, high rate of incarceration is largely to be blamed on the "War on Drugs," which has the same effect as the prohibition on alcohol did. For another example, low rate of doctors is largely to be blamed on…

> Most or all of which would not be helped by liberal attempts to emulate Europe. You mean the rest of the industrialized world, not just Europe. > high child poverty is to be expected in a country that harbors many poor immigrants from Latin America. You mean unlike a country that harbours many poor immigrants from Northern Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe? > high rate of incarceration is largely to be bla…

> despite spending only 40-70% of what the USA spends on health care

Right. And if the USA tries to emulate Europe in healthcare more than we alreay do, we will end up wasting even more money. There is no solution to be had here through more regulation.

> value human rights

> ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living

Contradiction. But providing a moral basis for individual rights requires understanding a complete philosophical system, which is out of the scope of an HN comment.

> ensure everyone has an adequate standard of living and the opportunity to work hard and prosper

You're asking something that may be outside the scope of reality.

> Poor Americans are more trapped in their poverty

As someone from a poor part of rural eastern North Carolina, all I can do is LOL at this, because it's utterly, utterly false. That is a complete myth. I mean, we already have free universal education, de jure through high school and de facto through college.

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

#399

Post by lhnn »

acangiano wrote: post #255
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…

Much better visual evidence: http://signword.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/423399_101506340...

mm/dd/yy makes sense to those who use it, given our cultural adjustment.

My father's argument for imperial is how easy it is to divide measurements. In woodworking, especially. 10 is divisible by 2 and 5. Powers of two are more flexible for division.

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

#400

Post by tolmasky »

fatbird wrote: post #381
tolmasky wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, never understood the "problem" with Fahrenheit. When I ask people to tell me why Celsius is better, many will tell me because its "decimal", and then I point out to them it is no more decimal than Fahrenheit, there are no "kilodegrees". They will then point out the water freezing/boiling, as if they regularly have to set that temperature to accomplish that (you don't, you just put water in the freezer or a kett…

In Celsius, a negative temperature means snow instead of rain, or icy streets instead of wet. Whether the ambient temperature is below freezing is pretty useful knowledge, and more clearly expressed in Celsius. As for the difference between 16 and 17 degrees, the only people who give a shit are people who know how to use decimals for their measuring purposes. In everday use, the finer gradation of the Fahrenheit scal…

The way to know whether it is going to snow or rain is to check the weather report, mainly because more factors go into that than just the temperature (for example, amount of moisture in the air, cold/warm fronts, etc -- which can lead to anything from snow, hail, sleet, or freezing rain). I imagine you are generally getting your temperature from a weather report anyways (unless you are looking at some sort of personal thermometer before heading out the door?) so the information will be presented to you there alongside it, not requiring you to do any mental calculus to figure this out yourself.
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