It's funny how Celsius gets grouped in with the metric system, even though it really has no benefits over Fahrenheit.
It's time for the US to use the metric system
121–130 of 210 posts
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#122It'll be -40 in hell before that happens
Was that -40 F. or -40 C. ?
Now -40 K., I'd like to see that!
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#123I wonder if a successful TTIP agreement would be the catalyst for this? It's inexplicable that the EU/ EEA would allow for non-metric goods to freely flow into the market.
Should it also be illegal for the UK to teach Imperial units? I find the European attitude that government should ban everything they don't like perplexing.
> Should it also be illegal for the UK to teach Imperial units?
Yes. It's a waste of children's time (and there is a massive market failure in education, so laws are the only way to make changes).
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#124Hearing Fahrenheit in Toronto does surprise me on the few occasions that it happens (usually either retirement-age seniors or American visitors). Recently I noticed the medical profession has come on board with cm/kilos for measurement which is pretty surprising since hearing inches/pounds is still fairly common. Having grown up in the 70s and 80s I still find I float between the two fairly easily but I sure did find…
Scotland (as part of Britain) is not metric as far as I know. The imperial measurement system was created by the British after all. The rest of the EU is metric, but not Britain.
I don't think you can blame the UK for the imperial system: that goes back as far as Rome at least.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#125I 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…
It reminds me when we moved from national money (Franc) to Euro in Europe. The conversion rate was something like 1 Euro was 1.67 Francs (IIRC). I don't remember how long it took for the shops to remove the dual price tags, and when people stopped using converters or doing the conversion in their head. I decided just to forget about Francs from day one of Euro.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
It's the standard in Japan at least.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#127Some 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 dislike having to own wrenches in both standard and metric units I think you mean "I dislike having US customary and standard metric units". When it comes down to it, everybody else in the world managed to buckle down and just switch to standard metric units and ISO/DIN paper sizes. There is nothing special about the US that makes it any more of an imposition for them to switch over. Many of the issues you've out…
What is special about the US is that it has a huge population that uses a single set of units of measurement. Europe had zillions of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ell) units, often multiple ones per country.
In some sense, the metric system was a blessing, as it was foreign to all countries. Countries would never have switched to, say, the German standard of measurements (counterpoint: they did just that for paper sizes)
And the UK started metrification in 1965 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_of_British_transpor...), but has not completely switched to metric yet; it still uses miles for road signs. Because of that, I wouldn't say the UK managed the switch.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does most of this apply to newer things (cars, clocks)? My car has a clock but I have no method of changing anything but the hour/min. The speedometer is analog...I guess I could try to read the small print that displays in km...my alarm clock doesn't even have options for 24h. With the cooking one (assuming you meant recipes from books); all the cookbooks I've seen have nothing in metric so I have to do another step…
I have a car imported from US here in the EU and while driving it I just look at the smaller print in km/h, I honestly don't even notice the larger letters in miles now, it just became natural to look at the smaller print.
It still doesn't make much sense here though. I assume that where you are the speed limit is in km/h. Here it's mph. No matter what I have to know how fast I am going in mph so it makes no sense to bother knowing what I'm doing in km/h. If they changed all the signs to km based speeds (overnight) then I would probably do it but more likely I would remember where on the mph gauge the common km speeds and use those anyways.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#129The strange thing about articles like this is that they seem to assume that converting between units is something that happens all the time, such that doing so is a huge drain on the economy and engineering time. I don't know if my experience is the common one - but with a few exceptions (inches/feet, oz/pounds) such conversions seem kind of rare. Instead, you pick an appropriately sized unit to begin with, and stick…
I am not sure if this fully answers your questions, but one of the places where unit conversions happens a lot when doing customary unit engineering calculations is dealing with various constants/properties. For example, you might get the specific heat capacity of some material in terms of gallons, but you're dealing with ounces of fluid, and so you stick a conversion in there. It's certainly kind of niche, but it's…
Shouldn't a bottle of pop or beer prioritize a sensible number of servings (1,2,etc.) over a round number of units?
It's not like "I need 42 liters of beer for my guests, how many cans is that" is going to be a common thought process.
Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system
#130I would like to see the USA switch to the metric system. However, I will point out, just because a "new" (the metric system was developed during the French Revolution) measuring system is more rational, does not mean that it will catch on. I'll offer a hypothetical example of another change that would be rational: We currently divide the day based on time a system of time developed by the Babylonians roughly 4,000 ye…
"...does not mean that it will catch on."
Said every country, ever, that switched to metric successfully.