The metric system vs. the US
 

I have no idea why this question popped into my head, but after all, this is the OT board.

Has the US completely given up on ever converting to the "international" measurement system, or what?

Discuss, or not, I don't actually care that much but since a large portion of my job is related to tracking of measurements, I am mildly curious :cool:

no, we are " special "

we will continue to follow the world ( one of these days )

I prefer the metric ..

1 chicken = 2 pigs - 2 rabbits ( only on thursday )

how many Oz in a rabbit again ??

:D

Don't forget, we aren't the only ones. England uses miles and pounds too. Some guy in England got fined a large amount because he was still selling fruit by the pound, but since England is in the EU they are supposed to sell by the kg. (if I remember the story correctly)

Yep, I don't think we are going to change anytime soon. Most people are just barely smart enough to get the measurements that we already have without having to learn a new system even though it's actually easier.

Try doing chemistry without the metric system. Its probably just about impossible. Lets see, what's the molecular weight of water in ounces?

I think the Metric system has great merits, but tradition is a powerful force. I'm sure most of us could get used to the idea of kilometers instead of miles, but we'd still be doing the conversions in our head!

quick, how many times does a 30cm tire rotate per KM.

now, how many times does a 22inch diamter tire rotate per mile.....

Metric is so much easier to use and makes a lot more sense than imperial measurements.

I grew up in a metric country and could figure out most conversions in my head when i was in the second grade. When i worked in a grocery store after moving the the US, i was frequently asked to help convert oz/quart/gallon etc for folks that obviously grew up in the US.



alf

Who here doesn't own a complete set of tools in both?
steve

Yeah, just this week we were using feet, meters, degrees, radians, feet per second, knots, meters per second, and miles per hour ............... Some people don't want to change. I am OK either way, but would prefer to pick a reference and stay with it.

Several years back we wrote a document we thought nobody would ever read for some Spacelab data acquisition software. We added FPF to the acronyms list just for fun. Nobody noticed it.

It stood for Furlongs per Fortnight, a measurement of distance over time (speed).

As for conversion time for a population:

Canada went metric in the early 70s. Adults my age + or - were schooled non-metric but we shop with it, drive it & feel it (temps). We still convert, but are getting better at actually using it. It depends what you need all of the time.

Our children are metric. When we mention miles or Fahrenheit now, they look at us blankly & start talking about dinosaurs.

Ian

Jimmy Carter formed a department of metric something or other to convert the U S to the metric system.

A few years later (After seeing no progress), Ronald Reagan said thank you very much for your effort, but you're no longer needed.

Other than having to buy 2 sets of tools, I don't much care one way or the other...metric should be easier, since everything divides by 10...but hey, 3/4" and 19mm are close enough for those wrenches to swap. ;)

Rob, I bet not many people even know what a fortnight is. ;)

But how long is a furlong? hehehe

Well, since you asked......... I had to look it up because I had forgotten myself. Just don't use it very often. I wonder how hard it would be to get a speedometer recalibrated for this. Top speed would be close to 400,000 for me. Woohoo. I have gotten pretty good at kph to mph conversions with my Euro speedometer so I guess I'd get used to it eventually.

Cut my pizza in 6 pieces. I'm not hungry enough for 8. Man, I'm such a geek.:D

Wikipedia is great.
"An absurd unit of speed often misquoted is the furlong per fortnight, which converts to:

0.0001663095 metre per second (in SI units)
0.0005456349 feet per second (in Imperial units)
Thus:
a car travelling at 60 km/h (37 mph) is travelling at a speed of 100,214.7 furlongs per fortnight;
a Boeing 737 cruising at 420 knots or 216.2 m/s (i.e. typical 0.8 Mach cruise) is travelling at 1,300,013.7 furlongs per fortnight;
one furlong per fortnight is 0.166 millimetres per second, which would be barely noticeable to the naked eye.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong""


Furlong - equivalent to 660 feet, 220 yards, 1/8 mile, or 201.168 meters

Fortnight - 2 weeks or 14 days. Funny enough the wikipedia entry says that the Vax VMS operating system actually had some parameter specified in microfortnights (one millionth of a fortnight, or approximately 1.2096 seconds).

Yeah, I googled 'furlong' and found it to be a horseracing term for 220 yards. ;)

I understand there is still a very small part of the Federal Government tasked with the conversion (2 people) and they both gave blank stares when asked by a reporter, "How tall are you....in centimeters?" :D

In times of global warming, the metric system works much better, since the temperature rarely climbs over 40 degrees.

On the other hand, the 7/16 wrench really comes in handy when you can't find an 11.

Millimeters are a real pain in the butt. They're so friggin' small when you're trying to measure something. Sure you can use centimeters or .something meters or whatever. You just need good glasses I guess.

Of course, the: is that a 32nd line or a 16th . . . oh, it's the 3/4 . . . no, it's the 5/8s . . .

Ian

here's one for ya :

There are 10 people in the world, those that know binary and those that don't

:D

Don 944: That should read: " There are 10 kinds of people..."

About the UK. They travel in mph, pay for things in pounds and weigh things in grams and kilograms, except for people. If someone asks your weight, you give it to them in stone. I weigh about 14 stone. My wife likes England. She weighs 8! ;)
Les

LOL!

While I'm not Ian's kid, I'm a generation (maybe 1/2 a generation) younger, and he's exactly right. Canada's kind of screwy that way (well, it's not the only way...)

When people talk weight here, it's almost always pounds. I have no idea what my weight is in kilos without converting, but if you told me it was 70 degrees out, I wouldn't know whether to get a jacket or shorts, honestly. Then again, if you told me pool water was 22, I wouldn't know if I should creep or dive in, but that's because i grew up with a fahrenheit thermometer in our pool, so I'm just weird... In everyday situations, Canadians measure distance in feet and kilometres - no *****. Something is 10 feet away, or a house is 20 feet tall, but Montreal is about 550 km from Toronto. Most people (my age at least) wouldn't intrinsically know how far 20 metres is, but they also wouldn't know how many miles it is from one place to another. Maybe that will change with another generation.

Metric does make more sense, and is more universal, strictly speaking, because it's based on the most common substance on the planet - water. One millilitre of water weighs one gram and occupies one cubic centimetre of space. It freezes at zero degrees and boils at 100 degrees, and it takes one calorie to raise that millilitre one degree. Everything from there is just based in multiples of 10s or 100s.

And while yes, a millimetre is small, trying to measure something that's twenty-nine thirty-seconds of an inch has always just seemed silly to me :D

I've read that a dual system exist, and it costs your economy millions if not billions a year.

Any truth to this?

I don't think the "average" american is up to switching to the metric system because they can't handle the English measurements now. A couple years ago I was in a market at the fish counter. I asked for a piece of Halibut that was 6-8 ounces, and the guy behind the counter told me he didn't know the metric system. His elictronic scale wighed out hundreds of pounds, and that's all he knew. So I told him half a pound, and he got me a nice piece. I never corrected him so he still probably thinks ounces are metric.

I was plotting flight lines last week for a helicopter and we have to give the pilots Lat/Long degrees and decimal minutes (49* 45.34 minutes), flight path length in meters and altitude in kilofeet. It's bloody weird.

I don't really see any reason to switch. Sure, the conversions are easier in metric - so I use metric as much as possible for 'real' work, aka science and engineering, but I'm good enough with mental math to convert english measurements as well.

Being British, my Aston Martin's power output is measured in StoneFurlongs per fortnight.

Yes, it cost. I'm sure an accurate figure has never been calculated. The winners are:

1. The civil service
2. Packagers & printers - everything must be relabeled & instructions rewritten in both systems during a transition period.
3. Companies selling measuring devices.

Christian: You sound metrically schizophrenic. Just like the rest of us.

Ian

Americans will metricize inch-by-inch...............

Here in SA (an ex-colony of the British empire :rolleyes: ) we went metric in 1961. My parents (both in their 70's) will still occasionally talk about inches & feet, and about buying a pound of butter. Most other younger people give blank stares.

The best way to convert, is to go all at once, not like the silly English who went about it bass-ackwards in typical English style. I guess they like being half-pregnant, just like they are half-EU but remain oh-so very british.

I believe that Sweden converted from driving on the left (like the UK) to driving on the right fairly recently, like in the 70's? Can you imagine the chaos if that were to happen today in say India, UK or Japan? Why we still have this foolishness is beyond me.

One of my kids recently did a school assignment on the metric system. She found information that a Mars probe crashed because someone programmed some control software in metric units, but the NASA operators forgot and provided imperial input data, sending it off-orbit to a fiery death :D .

Le Roux

I could do with you people move over to the metric system. It´s a bugger of arithmetics every time I try to figure out how many miles, gallons, inches and so on you mention in your posts. ;)

There's more than just Lat/Long even after figuring in whether it's decimal degrees, degrees and decimal minutes, or degrees, minutes and decimal seconds.

We were looking at some data recently and some components were in Northing, Easting, and Altitude. Others were in North, West, and Up or North, East, Down components. Then you have to decide whether your altitude is referenced to sea level or one of the myriad of ellipsoids like WGS-84, WGS-72 etc. We had some of each. :(

Metric is a load of crap. Glad to the see the Limeys still using miles, and the Canadiens have been sensible enough to keep feet and inches.

There is a reason old English money and one foot are base 12 - divisability. In half, by three and by four.

And who is so narrow minded they want a temperature scale based in water rather than the human experience? Zero is cold! 100 is hot! And 60-something is a nice spring day..

Agree with both posts above. I work in UTM also, so we deal in Northing and Easting, and then have to figure out which convention we're using. It causes all kinds of problems I hadn't even begun to think about. Luckily our pilots have dealt with it longer than I have and were able to straighten me out.

And what's with Celcius? It's like someone with a decimal fetish just went to town without thinking about it. C is just as arbrirary as F, at least F conveys more information since the units are more precise. Use Kelvin if you don't want an arbitrary scale.

No it's not - read my post above. But you're right that for true scientific measurements you need Kelvins.

I stand by my statement. It's a subtle point, but I'll try to explain my reasoning. The unit size of celsius is well thought out and has much utility in the scientific measurements - 1 calorie to raise 1 mL of water 1 degree C (or 1 degree K). It fits in nicely. However, picking water as the 0 and 100 points is just abitrary as whatever Farhenheit used to pick his (commonality of water is not a good argument, IMO). And since the F scale is more precise and relays more information over the scale that most humans occupy on a climatic level, F is more useful when talking about weather. K is more useful when talking about science. C is the bastard child that is silly to use for either.

Ok, I see your point about picking water being arbitrary, but if you need to pick something to measure, water makes the most sense, as it exists everywhere in the world, so I guess we just disagree as to whether or not it's a good argument - I think it is. I don't know what F is based in, if anything. I'm not sure I follow your argument on it being more precise, unless you simply mean that the difference between a really cold winter and a really hot summer is maybe 60 degrees F whereas it would be only 40 C, so the measurements are smaller and therefore provides a more accurate measurement. I don't really buy this, as for all practical purposes, nobody that I know of has ever complained about a measurement of 22 degrees celsius as not being accurate enough :D Further, I don't think F is more useful when talking about weather as soon as you need to discuss anything with anyone outside the US - as far as I know there aren't any other countries in the world that use F - even in England they measure weather temps in celsius. And AFAIK, celsius/metric is the scientific standard the world over, including the US - it certainly is for weight, volume and distance, and I believe temps too. IIRC Kelvins are only used to discuss very cold temperatures. I believe it's because of the universality of metric and it's simple base-10 construct that it's become the accepted standard.

That is so typically american! So 90% of the earth's population is wrong?

Why dont we really screw things up and bring back the Whitworth standard? Try finding a wrench for that! Hugh R probably has some familiarity with that seeing his list of automobiles. By the way, how do they give a measurement for torque on David Brown's finest?
But seriously, lets bury SAE in the dark ages where it belongs, the metric system is just another form of progress to make our lives simpler not more difficult as most Americans believe. And since we are on a car forum, why do hi performance suppliers of cylinder heads and pistons give their volumes in cc and engine displacement, bore, stroke in cubic inches?

Oliver

Yes!

And the lines for US visas prove it! :D

I challenge you to find a substantial number of educted folks of middle class and above in those lines. Having grown up in both Brazil and here and seeing a very different picture, I have always found it strange how most Americans judge the world by the people they see at those lines.

OK, two more quick arguments:
1. The US sees temps as low as -20 degrees F in the Dakotas and Minnesota, and on up to 110 in Arizona. I don't think you'll find too many countries that have that broad of a range. We get along fine with F.

2. The reason why base-10 units are useful is because they are easily multiplied - just add a zero for an order of magnitude. The problem with the C scale is that while it's based on decimal, zero sits at an arbitrary point so that multiplication of celcius degrees is impossible. 100 C does not represent 10x as much much molecular movement as 10 C. You would never multiply C, so why bother basing it on a system whose chief usefulness is multiplication?

1. Fair enough. Like I said above (and I don't mean it sarcastically or to be antagnozing) nobody else cares about the accuracy, range, etc. You get along fine with F because you're used to it. We get along fine (well, at least the younger ones!) because we're used to C.

2. While I don't have the physics/chemistry knowledge to say for sure, I don't think F temps can be multiplied in the way you mentioned either (nor K for that matter).

My point about multiplication is the logic of the units:
1 kilometre = 1000 metres = 1,000,000 centimetres
1 tonne = 1000 kilogrammes = 1,000,000 milligrammes
I have no idea how many feet are in a mile, how many ounces in a pound, or pounds in a ton. let alone where those numbers derive from - it's completely arbitrary, is it not?