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The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

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Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#171

Post by MisterTea »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #77

"Back when I was a Catholic-school kid in northern Wisconsin, my school lessons briefly focused on the metric system. This was in the late 1970s." Man, the progressive school (Comanche Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas!) must have had a huge impact on my life. In addition to open classrooms (I was in Unit 5, not 4th Grade), team teaching, a focus on experimental science, a circular layout to the school with a sunke…

> I've been missing it my entire life since.

Childhood Zeitgeist is a perfect term for this. We all pine for it.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#172

Post by taeric »

bluGill wrote: post #42
ecommerceguy wrote: post #28

Aren't imperial units considerably easier to calculate on the fly in construction and when squaring? They seem to come more natural for me.

Depends. they are designed so the whole units are easy for the common things you do with that size. this is a common case for things will still do today like we did 200 years ago (like build houses). But even in those areas a lot of things are not round units. When things are not nice round units though both systems are equally hard. This is common in the modern world where we do a lot of things impossible 200 years…

Related to this, I find the "default to round numbers" influence interesting on things like minimal speeds. Where my understanding is many metric based systems have a smallest max speed of 30km/h. Which is between the common 15 and 20 that I'm used to seeing as the lowest.

I tried asking on a forum once on how this impacted default room sizes. I see standard ceiling size in the US is moving to 9 feet. I am assuming places on metric would not standardize on that number, but curious if they would just stick to the nearest half, or go to the nearest whole meter. (I "tried" asking, as people seemed to think that you would just design the room to be 2.74 meters and call it a day. That strikes me as very unlikely, as design tools really love "snap to grid.")

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#173

Post by nayuki »

ericmay wrote: post #86
JKCalhoun wrote: post #77

"Back when I was a Catholic-school kid in northern Wisconsin, my school lessons briefly focused on the metric system. This was in the late 1970s." Man, the progressive school (Comanche Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas!) must have had a huge impact on my life. In addition to open classrooms (I was in Unit 5, not 4th Grade), team teaching, a focus on experimental science, a circular layout to the school with a sunke…

> Yeah, we went over the Metric System that whole year. I can still sing the "Metric Family" song from the film on metric units ("Kilo", "Milli", etc.). And to my young an impressionable mind, the U.S. was joining the rest of the world "Free World" in a kind of Star-Trek-like casting aside of the old things that divided us—joining each other with a focus on progress, science, space… I’ve always found this peculiar be…

> I find the imperial system fits in better with that warmth of humanity

Right, so you enjoy warmth such as: 1 foot = 12 inches, 1 stone = 14 pounds, 1 pound = 16 ounces. Lots of useless names and numbers to memorize compared to kilo = 1000, milli = 0.001.

> in favor of cultural uniqueness and fun over conformity

You're writing in impeccable English. As we know, English is an international language and most definitely not the pinnacle of cultural uniqueness or non-conformity. Why not adopt a more esoteric and fun language for yourself such as, who knows, Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon, etc.?

> in contrast to [...] the cold calculation of the more “scientific” metric system

Decimals are optimized for cold calculation, yes. Would you like to use a monetary system based on pounds, shillings, and pence - like the UK and Australia right into the 20th century? Did you know that the New York Stock Exchange traded in increments of $1/8 and later $1/16, before fully decimalizing?

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#174

Post by Symbiote »

ghaff wrote: post #66
bluGill wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is what you are used to for both of you. you could make your own measurement system and it would work fine once you get used to it - until you need to communicate with someone else who isn't used to it.

A big part of it is certainly what you're used to. The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute t…

This is just your familiarity.

Someone from the tropics might say 8°F is really darned cold, or 15°F, or whatever.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#175

Post by sowbug »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #144
etiennebausson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not switching to metric for time is reasonable, because there are already two existing 'natural' units for time (the day and the year), and they don't align on each other in metric (a year of exactly 1000 days would be so much easier, but we'll have to deal with reality as it is... or accelerate the rotation speed of the planet I suppose). So long as we live on earth, metric time won't make much sense.

A year and a day don't line up at all, so we get weird leap days.

Is there any reason they should? Unless the Earth were tidally locked to the Sun, I'm not aware of any reason a day would have any relationship to a year.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#176

Post by direwolf20 »

master_crab wrote: post #165
antisthenes wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (From my viewpoint as a millennial. Gen Z might think the golden years were during Obama, or just pre-COVID. To some extent every generation has a point in time that they see with rose tinted lenses.) Of course they do. It's the formative years & youth. Roughly from the time you form a mature consciousness (12-14 yo) to roughly your late 20s or maybe early 30s when all your tastes, preferences etc. are formed.

Oh that is definitely part of it. But new generations also don’t have a point of reference. I certainly don’t know if the 70s or the 80s were truly that great. Outside economic and social indicators (income, life expectancy — all of which should arguably carry more weight anywa) it’s difficult to argue against something if you never experienced it.

[dead]

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#177

Post by FeloniousHam »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #77

"Back when I was a Catholic-school kid in northern Wisconsin, my school lessons briefly focused on the metric system. This was in the late 1970s." Man, the progressive school (Comanche Elementary in Overland Park, Kansas!) must have had a huge impact on my life. In addition to open classrooms (I was in Unit 5, not 4th Grade), team teaching, a focus on experimental science, a circular layout to the school with a sunke…

I understand existing-tool-holder opposition to a new measurement system, but sweet mother I hate fraction math.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#178

Post by nayuki »

threemux wrote: post #92
modo_mario wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything packed into this tight range. AS someone that grew up with metric that feels fairly natural and not tight at all? >Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. I used ruler tapes with both metric and imperial on either side and i always wondered how one could use the inches since they're so big and didn't always have the same minute subdivisions.…

I mean it's mathematically a tighter range. I think part of this comes down to the more mild and less variable European climate. There is just less emphasis on air temperature so you don't see the drawbacks. Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? Sounds like a bad tape measure (or really just one where US Customary was an afterthought). As for science, well, most people don't do it.…

I would be highly concerned if I saw a 1/3 division of an inch instead of 1/2.

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#179

Post by nayuki »

jeppester wrote: post #96
threemux wrote: post #62

I'd part with cups and teaspoons/tablespoons and the like, but you'll pry inches/feet/yards and fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands. They're both more convenient for daily use. I think I'd prefer to keep miles as well but I don't have a good reason for that one. Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals for the thing 99% of people are using temperature measurements for: air temp. Where I live, we generally…

I like this! I wonder if there's a place on the internet where I can find more of this sort of seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective (if not just inferior).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/

Re: The super-slow conversion of the U.S. to metric (2025)

#180

Post by ericmay »

nayuki wrote: post #173
ericmay wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, we went over the Metric System that whole year. I can still sing the "Metric Family" song from the film on metric units ("Kilo", "Milli", etc.). And to my young an impressionable mind, the U.S. was joining the rest of the world "Free World" in a kind of Star-Trek-like casting aside of the old things that divided us—joining each other with a focus on progress, science, space… I’ve always found this peculiar be…

> I find the imperial system fits in better with that warmth of humanity Right, so you enjoy warmth such as: 1 foot = 12 inches, 1 stone = 14 pounds, 1 pound = 16 ounces. Lots of useless names and numbers to memorize compared to kilo = 1000, milli = 0.001. > in favor of cultural uniqueness and fun over conformity You're writing in impeccable English. As we know, English is an international language and most definitel…

> Right, so you enjoy warmth such as: 1 foot = 12 inches, 1 stone = 14 pounds, 1 pound = 16 ounces. Lots of useless facts to memorize compared to kilo = 1000, milli = 0.001.

Most of life is just useless facts, I think it's fun and I enjoy it.

> You're writing in impeccable English. As we know, English is an international language and most definitely not the pinnacle of cultural uniqueness or non-conformity. Why not adopt a more esoteric and fun language for yourself such as, who knows, Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon, etc.?

I've been learning French actually and have really enjoyed it. When I was in France recently I was able to put some of those skills to the test and found it fun and interesting to see how both difficult, and in some other cases, incredibly easy to fit in even with knowing maybe a hundred or so words and basic grammar. I speak English since that was what I grew up with. English is actually pretty fun as a language too because of the chaos of the very language itself. Read vs read, &c.

But all cultures have some things that are unique and also not very unique about them. I'm not sure why we can't just have our measuring system like we do today and that's just one unique thing about the United States.

To turn this around the other way, maybe everyone should just eat at McDonalds and conform to what's most popular and efficient?

> Decimals are optimized for cold calculation, yes. Would you like to use a monetary system based on pounds, shillings, and pence - like the UK and Australia right into the 20th century? Did you know that the New York Stock Exchange traded in increments of $1/8 and later $1/16, before fully decimalizing?

Yea sure. How many basis points is $1/8?

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