It's time for the US to use the metric system • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#101

Post by Havoc » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:25 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #79

williwu wrote: post #63

While you are at can you change the date format as well? DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY (US). It should go from small to big. The other way around makes my head hurts every time.

YYYY-MM-DD is a much better choice. It sorts like a number, and it's unambiguous in standard usage.

>YYYY-MM-DD is a much better choice. It sorts like a number

Not sure I disagree. Sure the sorting by numbers is of interest to the HN crowd but has little value to anyone outside of IT.

In most cases I'm most interested in the "day" part so its convenient if thats first (which it is in 90% of the world).

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#102

Post by gcb0 » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:26 PM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

Where i came from farm land is still measured in acre and hectare, even though everything is metric.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#103

Post by blencdr » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:28 PM UTC

bane wrote: post #56

k-mcgrady wrote: post #5

In US schools are children taught metric or imperial? For example when measuring a liquid for a science experiment are measurements made in millilitres?

When we're young we're taught the imperial method since it's the customary system. Once we start getting into science classes it's all metric. Still, outside of science classes (and the military) we don't use it at all. Which means we don't have a good working model in our heads of what a kg feels like or how warm a 30 degC day is...that sort of thing. I think most Americans have a pretty good feel for what a liter i…

"But g and kg continue to stupify me since I can't seem to find a useful frame of reference for those measures"

actually 1kg is 1000 cm3 of water (1 cm3 for a gram). The idea behind that was purely scientific, not pragmatic.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#104

Post by talideon » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:29 PM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #59

sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

I am not sure, if the paper sizes (A4, ...) are belonging to the metric system ... but of course, here a standardization would be nice. At least software producers seem to know (most of them) now, that there are also other formats as the "standard US formats".

They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it. The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely, and the other series are such that an Ax sheet fits nicely into a Cx envelope, and a Cx sheet fits nicely into a Bx envelope.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#105

Post by smackfu » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:31 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #94

sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

US already has many "slightly dissimilar" paper sizes, this Letter, Legal, etc... so at least for A4, one more couldn't hurt right?

Currently you use letter unless you are required to use legal. When would someone use A4?

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#106

Post by talideon » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #16

zimbatm wrote: post #9

It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.

> It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system It is, but it can be done in just one generation. The generation that is raised metric finds it even harder to think in imperial measurements, since the imperial measuring system is significantly more complex. Source: I grew up in a fully metric country. I just looked it up, apparently the conversion to metric happened around the time that I was born. I…

We here in Ireland were the same in that regard. A few years ago, we just decided to abandon the use of dual units and switch to using km everywhere. Within a short amount of time, people had mostly switched over to using km for any non-trivial distances.

It can be done; it just takes the determination to just do it.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#107

Post by gcb0 » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

headShrinker wrote: post #90

sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

You touched on what I see as the biggest most long term piece to transition, American tool and die companies, foundries and fabricators. A lot of these companies are based around giant machines with 20 or thirty year life cycles. Switching to metric would be a factory's worst nightmare short of blowing the place up.

If we switched today, they would still sell the same amount of sae tools for 30yrs.. It's not like the old fasteners would disappear overnight.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#108

Post by Fuxy » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #65

I challenge you all to make two changes today with regard to this. First, switch your phone to give you the weather in Celsius. It gets super simple fast: 0 and below - Freezing. Wear a warm jacket and closed toe shoes or boots. 1 - 10 - Cold. Wear an overcoat (a light one if you are used to colder weather) 10-15 - Early spring time. Long sleeves are probably in order, maybe even a sweater. 15-20 - Late spring. Wear…

You forgot the most annoying part inches, feet and all that crap.

I get people telling me measurements in inches sometimes here in the UK and I always tell the to measure it again in centimeters.

It's just easier and more accurate.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#109

Post by lispm » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #95

ds9 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusingly, the areas where the most US Americans are familiar with SI are gun calibers and recreational drugs. [n] (OK, I may have a warped sense of humor, but it's true) n. (not taught in schools)

Car engines are in liters over there I think. On the other side, TVs are in inches all around the world.

I also see centimeter for TV screens here in Germany.

Example: LED TV, 98 cm (39 Zoll), Full HD, 100 Hz, DVB-T2/-C/-S2, Piano-schwarz

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#110

Post by astrobe_ » Fri, May 30, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

blencdr wrote: post #93

sjwright wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am deliberately not giving conversions to Fahrenheit But I spent all that effort learning what temperature water boils at in Fahrenheit. Who the hell is going to remember what that temperature is in Celsius??

100°C , that should be simple enough :)

Nope. It depends on atmospheric pressure. Do your own units for that too? ;-)