Is it time for the US to adopt the metric system?

[Husar]

Is there some problem I'm not aware of that this would fix? The term 'Metric' sounds like a nerdy loser in a SciFi movie. Ordering five hundred and sixty-eight milliliters of beer at the local wateringhole is also a nerdwuss move and might get you thrown right out.
If it ain't broke...

Enough of this nancy talk, be a man and march a mile and down a pint and refer to your unit of measuring system as IMPERIAL!

Spoken like a truly conservative old woman.

That you want to be a man worries me a bit as well but regardless of that you can get a 0.5 liter beer here as well, it's less scary than having a base of a dozen or something or to make it short, I can't really calculate in imperial very well and i don't see why anyone would want to as it's overly complicated and directly opposes (in name and degree of complication) the american ideas of freedom and democracy.

In other words, the USA are still lagging behind their former imperial overlords here.
Although it fits rather well with their being overall very conservative.

[Goofball]

It doesn't really matter if the U.S. changes or not. The scientific community and the military is already using metric so that they can play properly with the rest of the world. The rest of it doesn't really matter.

[Goofball]

Meh, I'm indifferent, but it WOULD be costly as all get out. Plus I have to admit, some things it's just about impossible for me to think in metric, temperature and distance being the two primary things. I'm sorry but the Fahrenheit scale is much, much easier to understand and more granular than Centigrade.

Really?

Celsius:
Water boils: 100 degrees
Water freezes: 0 degrees

Fahrenheit:
Water boils: 212 degrees
Water freezes: 32 degrees

Oh yes, I can see how it's much harder to figure out the Celsius.



Cripes, it's even harder just to spell Fahrenheit...

[drone]

Cripes, it's even harder just to spell Fahrenheit...

Not if you are German.

Celsius is actually a good example of the inherent flaws in the metric system. A truer measurement would be Kelvin.

[Yoyoma1910]

Really?

Celsius:
Water boils: 100 degrees
Water freezes: 0 degrees

Fahrenheit:
Water boils: 212 degrees
Water freezes: 32 degrees

Oh yes, I can see how it's much harder to figure out the Celsius.



Cripes, it's even harder just to spell Fahrenheit...

I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to list those in Kelvin and Rankine, as both Celsius and Fahrenheit are obsolete.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Really?

Celsius:
Water boils: 100 degrees
Water freezes: 0 degrees

Fahrenheit:
Water boils: 212 degrees
Water freezes: 32 degrees

Oh yes, I can see how it's much harder to figure out the Celsius.



Cripes, it's even harder just to spell Fahrenheit...

Who cares where water boils?

Fahrenheit is more closely related to weather...in most temperate climes the vast majority of the time it will be between 0 and 100 degrees fahrenheit.

[Husar]

So below 32 degrees you get snow and ice and above you get rain?

I prefer to know that everything below 0° means we get ice and snow and above means we don't, so much easier, when my blood boils I'm at 100° and should go see a doctor etc...

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
Yes indeed! I want my pipe tobacco in proper 50 g. packs instead of the stupid 1.5 oz. which is 42.x g.
.

[Husar]

What's oz anyway? I heard of some wizard of oz but never seen that movie. Something to do with Oztralia or so?

[Jolt]

I think Fahrenheit (Is it spelled this way?) measurement has to do blood temperature.
Humans are generally at 37º Celcius, while on Far Night mode, they are at 100º

[Lemur]

Actually, the core temp of a human should be around 36.8C or 98.2F, so there are no round numbers in either system.

[rory_20_uk]

Of course you are referring to pure water at STP (standard temperature and pressure). Deviate from this and the liquid will freeze and boil at slightly different temperatures. Indeed, get the temperature and pressure right and you'll get all three states coexisting.

[Hosakawa Tito]

It doesn't really matter if the U.S. changes or not. The scientific community and the military is already using metric so that they can play properly with the rest of the world. The rest of it doesn't really matter.

The voice of reason in the wilderness of global conformity. Consider having to do the conversions good brain exercise.

[Ironside]

I'd be fine with meter, kilogram, and liter.

However, telling temperature is so much easier with Fahrenheit. While it's easy to say "20 degrees Celsius", I understand that 70F is gonna be kinda hot, but not too bad.

If anything, basing the system of measurement on the Earth seems very terracentric, and doesn't incorporate the rest of the galaxy.

You don't think that's more of a habit than anything else? I know exactly how warm 20 degrees Celsius is, while having no idea about 70F.

Can anybody come up with a decent galactic unit btw? Either they're very, very small (rest mass of a unbounded proton) or very, very large (speed of light).

[LittleGrizzly]

Can anybody come up with a decent galactic unit btw? Either they're very, very small (rest mass of a unbounded proton) or very, very large (speed of light).

How about sound years!

When did the UK convert ?

I remember something about a green grocer who refused to switch to metric back when i was a kid, was this the time when we switched ? about the late 90's ?

I find feet and inches easier for hieght, though i am slowly getting proficent at cm's and meter's for people hieghts, when it comes to other measurements (building hieght, how far away is that light) i use cm's and m's, i have been doing newtonian eqausions of motion and thats in m's and cm's

I find temperature more natural in celsuis, i am not used to farenhiet..

Litre and kilogram are natural to me, though milk and beer and i used to in pints.... less so with the milk though...

Consider having to do the conversions good brain exercise.

I agree, if may make things more complicated sometimes but you would expect it would benefit peoples mental arithmatic, i think the reason we learn our times table up to 12 is because of this..

[Lemur]

When did the UK convert ?

According to this handy chart, Britain converted in 1965, Ireland in 1967.

[Banquo's Ghost]

According to this handy chart, Britain converted in 1965, Ireland in 1967.

Yes, we had yards, so it was a bit longer.

[The Celtic Viking]

To quote what another guy said on this subject in a different forum:

The metric system is just a subset of the universally employed Systeme International d'Unites (SI units). Every engineer, scientist and mathematician on the planet uses SI units. Every single derived unit expressed in SI is derived from a set of seven base units, each of which is based on a fundamental and immutable property of the universe (these units are the meter, second, ampere, Kelvin, mole, kilogram and candela). As the units for all of these are defined in terms of immutable properties of the entire universe, the SI system is overwhelmingly superior in every way to any other system. Any quantity in the universe can be expressed in terms of the SI units. For example, If you want to measure charge, it is simply the current-time product in a region. Thus, 1C is one Ampere-second, or 1As. Magnetic fields are produced by moving charges, and the strength of magnetic fields (also called flux density) is related to the velocity, charge and the force exerted. Velocity is a derived unit (ms-1), so is charge (As), and so is force (kgms-2). The derived unit for magnetic fields (Teslas) are equivalent (in base units) to kgs-2A-1. Since every quantity can be expressed in terms of the base units, relating quantities is vastly easier, and entirely universal. There is no sense in not employing the SI.

So America, get out of the stone age already!

[lars573]

Science is already done in metric, so no real big problem there.

But for everyday use, metric units are kind of crap. Meters are too big, liters too small. And until we have fully electric cars as the majority, I don't want to see vehicles rated in kilowatts instead of horsepower. A car is not a light bulb. How can I even attempt to guess the 0-60 time (oh, sorry, 0-96kph) of a 175 kW automobile?

Watts and Horsepower are equivalent units. They were both created by the same Englishman in the 18th century.

1 hp=768 Watts.

[Mangudai]

O Fahrenheit is the temperature at which sea ice forms.

1 Horsepower is based on an average of how much work horses at a coal mine did in one day. A real horse could generate far more than that in a sprint. A teenage boy sprinting up a staircase can generate 1 horsepower.

[Papewaio]

If drug users can handle grams and kilos I'm sure the rest of the population can figure it out...

[Lemur]

If drug users can handle grams and kilos I'm sure the rest of the population can figure it out...

Yeah, um, see, they're motivated. If they can't figure out the metric system, it's cramps, shakes and a long night of psychic bugs crawling out of their pores and telling them that Jim Morrison wants them to kill the President.

The rest of us can be lazy. Not so the average dope-head.

[rvg]

No. Why? Because screw 'em, that's why.

[Strike For The South]

No. Why? Because screw 'em, that's why.

this

[Tribesman]

1 Horsepower is based on an average of how much work horses at a coal mine did in one day.

Thats wrong since they din't use horses they had ponies and as a pony is 25 pounds that makes a pony a quarter of a ton but since a ton is 2240 pounds not 100 pounds its a good reason to turn metric .

[Strike For The South]

I love teh inrerwebz wit teh rezearch

[LittleGrizzly]

I always though horsepower was the average 'power' of a horse...

So i am guessing brake horsepower is not how many horses you need pulling the other direction to keep the car standing still....

[Louis VI the Fat]

The metric system is inescapably superior to anything the irrational anglo mind has come up with.

For four reasons:
1 Clear, well defined standards of measurement
2 Decimal
3 Uniform
4 International, codified

1 Horsepower, feet, teaspoons, stones. These standards of measurement worked well in the worldview of the Stone Age. When the largest distances that needed measurement could be covered by counting steps. When the largest objects weighed could be covered by lumping more stones on the other end of a scale. When a horse was the largest generator of power. Or, when the smallest objects that needed accurate measurement didn't exceed the width of a thumb.
In the modern world, these standards have lost their relevance. Rational, scientific standards of measurements are needed.

2 The most compelling argument: we count in a decimal system. Hence, measurements need to be decimal too. It is in the end not that important whether a centimeter or an inch is a base unit. What matters, is that ten centimeters is a decimeter. One hundred a meter. Etcetera.
This works much simpler than 12 inch to a foot. 3 feet to a yard. 5280 yard to a mile. For example: how many inch are there in 12.278 miles*? The simplest of questions, yet one can't work it out without pen and paper or a calculator. Unlike the metric system: in 12.278 kilometer there are 12278000 meters, or 1.227.800.000 centimeters.
*See point four. Meant here are Imperial miles. Not nautical, British or your aunt Polly's miles.

3 Likewise for all othe bases of measurement. If a thousand gram is a kilogram, then one thousand meter is a kilometer. Etcetera. Nothing could be more rational.
(The obvious exeption is time. The real units of time are not a second, but a day and a year. For this, the old system, including counting in 12 and sixty, has been retained.)

4 Currently, even while sharing a related language, Britons and Americans don't understand each other's units. Never mind when one considers Arabs, Chinese, Russians, Greeks. So there needs to be an international system for communication.
Because France won't accept any foreign system, this international system logically will have to be French. This is the Système International d'Unités, currently adopted by all countries save the three culprits mentioned earlier.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Spoken like a truly conservative old woman.

That you want to be a man worries me a bit as well but regardless of that you can get a 0.5 liter beer here as well, it's less scary than having a base of a dozen or something or to make it short, I can't really calculate in imperial very well and i don't see why anyone would want to as it's overly complicated and directly opposes (in name and degree of complication) the american ideas of freedom and democracy.

In other words, the USA are still lagging behind their former imperial overlords here.
Although it fits rather well with their being overall very conservative.

You could order Miller Lite or Budweiser (TM)s by the liter, by the pint, in truckloads or by mega-tanker load -- it would still taste like .

[Crazed Rabbit]

Every engineer, scientist and mathematician on the planet uses SI units

Um, no.

The thing is, converting to metric would cause a lot of problems - we are a huge country and you better believe there'd be all sorts of problems from this.

So that raises the questions - what would the benefits be? Not nearly enough, since we all understand our current system fine. We don't need to switch.

Really, all this fuss comes from Europeans and other insecure types who need the US to change so they finally feel vindicated. All this talk about how great the metric system would be is just to hide those rampant insecurities because the greatest nation on earth hasn't changed. And we are doing fine so they worry that maybe listening to a dead French kind wasn't such a hot idea.

CR