So far having lived in Kentucky and Ohio both states have metric and english mesurements for distance and speed.

Can anyone list more?

I'm glad to see, Kentucky and Ohio are turning to the french system of mesurements :D

ha ha Arizona has an entire interstate thats all metric mesuremnts

Puerto Rico, a United States territory, Posts distances in kilometers, but speed limits in MPH.

I've seen a few in Nevada...and California for that matter...

I'm glad that Canada is all metric...

Puerto Rico, a United States territory, Posts distances in kilometers, but speed limits in MPH.

Why?? Do they like confusing people or something.

All imperial here in MN. :( (I think)

I never even knew that highways with metric signs existed in the US. Here in NJ, and the entire northeast for that matter, I have never seen any metric signs, except a few closer to the Canadian border.

New Hampshire started putting signs on all new construction in dual units, I'm not sure if that's still the standard but I think we're still doing it. Ironic considering we were the third to last state to ditch metric and turn back to imperial for design work.

I also know the northern end of I-87 in New York is dual units, in fact bi-lingual as well.

I like the U.S. Customary measurements better for our highways and everything else. Screw the Metric system.

This web page has images from around the US of metric signs.
Go look (http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/signs.htm)

I like the U.S. Customary measurements better for our highways and everything else. Screw the Metric system.

Why because everything American is better? :|

Why because everything American is better? :|

Yes, everything in the United States is better. That's why everyone wants to come here. :)

It'd make sense for states bordering Canada and Mexico to have metric signage, but Ohio?

Arizona has road signs in metric system, if you drive south from Tucson.

Yes, everything in the United States is better. That's why everyone wants to come here. :)

Im sorry
But that is one of the most ignorant and arrogant things i've ever heard. I love you for it though, because YOU satisfy the American Stereotype that occasionally exists in my mind.

Imperial is nonsensical and redundant. Metric is logical and the way of the future. I think it is absurd that the US still used Imperial.

Yeah for metric. :cucumber:

Im sorry
But that is one of the most ignorant and arrogant things i've ever heard. I love you for it though, because YOU satisfy the American Stereotype that occasionally exists in my mind.

Imperial is nonsensical and redundant. Metric is logical and the way of the future. I think it is absurd that the US still used Imperial.

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Plus when you grow up with a certian measurement you just grow fond of it. When I drive on the Interstate I already know that 1mile I have time to think about exiting, 1/2 mile I better start thinking about getting in the right lane, 1/4 mile I should be in the right lane and at the "-->" the exit is there.

When I was driving to El Paso the sign said "El Paso 518", yeah, I know what 518 miles is but if it said some thing like "1000 km" me and most other people would convert that shit to miles before we comprehend what it really is.

So when I look on this forum and someone posts something about a 400m skyscraper, I honestly have hardly a clue what they mean so I go to www.google.com, look up a converter and convert that to feet......and get 1,312.34 ft which in my head makes much more sense than 400m. I know meter is around a yard but I don't use yards that much since I use feet much more often.

I also think it's funny and ironic how people put down Americans when we boast about how great the U.S. is because when people tell an American the U.S. isn't all that we honestly don't care and just laugh it off. I mean, how can you say the U.S. is not the best? It might be ignorant or arrogant but we honestly don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

If some worldwide law was made that said you had to pick one country and never leave it for the rest of your life I bet many people would pick the U.S. You'd be stuck here for the rest of your life but you can still visit places in the U.S. like the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Saipan, Guantanamo bay and some other territories I can't think of off hand. Plus we pretty much own Afghanistan and Iraq right now but that's a different story.

Anyway, yes I may be an arrogant American but back to the topic at hand, I think the metric system is best used for soda bottles. I know what 1, 2 and 3 liter bottles are but when it comes to milk I like gallons. Let the U.S. keep our measurement system, look how far we've come using it.

I like the U.S. Customary measurements better for our highways and everything else. Screw the Metric system.

But the foundation of physics is based on the Metric system.

But the foundation of physics is based on the Metric system.

Maybe so but for all drivers in the United States, we're just used to our customary system. If we changed over to Metric for our highways we'd be screwed. We'd have to replace all our exit numbers, billboard will have to change their exit numbers. Distances would have to be replaced, our maps would have to be redone. Our cars are based on miles so we'd be in a mess if we have to convert our car mileage into kilometers. We buy gas by the gallon and everyone here knows what a gallon is. Our speed limits are in miles and people would be weirded out if we saw something like "Speed Limit 100 kilometers/hr"....it's like "What?", just give me miles. I weigh 230 lbs, we just know LBS stands for pounds, why? Most people don't know but if you told someone kilograms you'd be speaking another language.

You'd tell someone..."Los Angeles is only 55 kilometers away..." and I bet you'd get this question next "How many miles is that?"

So miles, feet, gallons, inches and whatever else is just engrained into our society and it's not going to change. Maybe it is like language. I think English is better than French or Spanish, why? I can understand it and it makes more sense to me since I understand it. Ask a Spanish speaking person and they'd think Spanish is much more efficient and better.

So if we tried to change our highway system to the metric measurements, it would not go too well in the U.S.. I know 5280ft = 1 mile or freezing at 32 degrees may not line up perfectly as 1000meters = 1km or freezing = 0 degrees but even with temperatures we know that 90=hot, 80=very warm, 70=very nice, 60=cool, 50's=getting cold (In Texas) and under that it's just COLD. Our measurement system isn't holding us back from anything so why change it? Like I said before we're doing very very well as a country using our measurement system and we'll continue to use it for a long time to come.

Sure you are doing well, but you cannot deny that it is completely illogical. Sure you are used to it, as was Australia, and all nations essentially, but they came into line, bit the bullet, and learnt a new system as to line up with a more logical and practical method. The new generations coming through would learn it and be more integrated with the international community, and the older generations would just have to tough it and learn. It is not exactly hard to learn when you are immersed in a culture. Take exchange students, typically in one year, they can come back from another country and be nearly fluent in a language if they apply themselves and take interest. Adjusting miles to kilometers is not exactly rocket science - 1km=1.6mi. Adjusting Kilo's to Pounds is not either, 1kg=~2.2lbs.
People living in metric nations typically know the breakdown, yet the US remains ignorant (according to you, and from my observations). We see the light, ackowledge your system, but deny it because it is flawed in an international context.

And BIG DEAL if you had to change your highway signs. For gods sake, to share the load between the nation and its highway/road workers, it would involve 5 minutes work for any one person. Even if you dont eliminate miles, if you integrated them into displays (as previously mentioned) the transition would be much more seamless and progresive as people get used to both systems.

I also think it's funny and ironic how people put down Americans when we boast about how great the U.S. is because when people tell an American the U.S. isn't all that we honestly don't care and just laugh it off. I mean, how can you say the U.S. is not the best? It might be ignorant or arrogant but we honestly don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.


You are too funny. People put you down because you are so arrogant. So how do you react? By being more arrogant and dismissing their complaints. Yet you dismiss them by being more arrogant, hence accentuating the problem. You not giving a shit is why people hate americans. And this isnt about America being the best. Sure its a beautiful country and has a robust economy (although the future is going to be a nice funny rollercoaster), so there is a chance that it may be the best, but it, in conjunction with your fucked up attitude, makes it far from.

Please note that in Star Trek, the future is METRIC. Mixing-up Imperial and Metric has created some costly incidents in real life now, such as a Marslander lost and a Canadian Boeing 767 running empty in mid-flight (the "Gimly Glider" incident). The UK partly and the Philippines almost completely have changed to Metric. Scientific research in the US also more and more in Metric. So pls USA, follow the real world - Metric is not french anymore but universal.

Metric measurements is ok, I guess

But the Celcius so-called "temperature scale" is dangerous and evil :(

I havnt seen a single metric sign in the UK....our country is mixed with metric and Imperical!

We buy our petrol in gallons and our drink in liters!

The pool is 25 meters long, the man is 6 feet tall!

The man weighs 14 stone...the car weighs two thousand kilos!

Temperature is strange over here aswell...every other time its in 'C....but when it gets over 35'C the media suddenly convert to 'F...its no longer 38'C its 101'F!

And we still measure everything in inches!

But 'C is deffinately the correct way to do temp.

water freezes and 0 and boils at 100....cant go wrong with that!



Some info there for you ;)

At high school in the UK I learn everything in metric, but I dont know my height in metres but I know it in feet. Same for my weight.

BTW FM 2258: What a stereotypical American you are! Calm down man!! It's only a measurment system not the end of the world. :weird:

Oh and seeing as you "Own" Afghanistan and Iraq then we Brits own it too :tongue:

The Système International d'Unités is the best :D

http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/metro/aquoisert/si.htm

http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/metro/aquoisert/si2.htm#ume

http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/metro/aquoisert/si3.htm#uri

The only thing you guys might dislike is that it's French ;).

http://www.industrie.gouv.fr/metro/aquoisert/prefixe.htm

So when I look on this forum and someone posts something about a 400m skyscraper, I honestly have hardly a clue what they mean so I go to www.google.com, look up a converter and convert that to feet......and get 1,312.34 ft which in my head makes much more sense than 400m. I know meter is around a yard but I don't use yards that much since I use feet much more often.

You answer your question yourself here. You say you don't understand why people should learn the metric system when they are used to the imperial one but at the same time you say you don't understand the metric, when it's widely used here (on SSC).

i wish the US would change over to the metric, much easier than imperial but...i 'think' in miles, farenheit and pounds

Neither system is better than the other.

Metric is the way of the world, and the system of science. This makes sense because equations are easier to calulate when dealing with 1,10,100 and so forth. This alone explains the merits of the metric system.

However, foreigners need to understand, that the US is just different. This isnt just a country, but a continent. 60% of its inhabitants will never cross its borders, and most only travel to Canada, Mexico, or perhaps a Carribean island. People here are set in their ways. They are used to building with inches, and cooking with teaspoons. They know that 80 deg. is a nice warm day. So why change? Not only would the conversion costs be high (all those signs add up), but there would have to be a national campaign to educate the population. Why bother?

I am not saying that the US system is better, but I have never heard a sensible explaination for why the US should change. Remember our R&D and Science uses the metric system like everybody else, so why make my grandmother learn that her quart is now 0.91 liters?

On a side note, Great Briton changed its imperial system to meet metric standards. Talk about a mess. In the US (the original imperial system) a gallon is 3.8 liters, and a pound is 454 grams. In GB, that same "gallon" is 4 liters and that same "pound" is 500 gram. Talk to an older butcher in GB and you wont hear the end of it.

You answer your question yourself here. You say you don't understand why people should learn the metric system when they are used to the imperial one but at the same time you say you don't understand the metric, when it's widely used here (on SSC).

I have no problem with people learning either system but I wouldn't want everything to go to metric when it comes to highways or our every day measurements in the U.S.

Yes I see it alot on SSC but I'm always converting in my head or calculating it back to what I'm used to. Like I said I think it's comparable to language. We use the language of imperical while the rest of the world seems to use the language of metric. It's easier for me to spout out imperical units because I'm used to it and so is everyone else here.



To the others talking about me being typical American, how come other countries aren't as proud and boastful of their own countries like people in the U.S. If I was in China, U.K., Canada, Greece or any other country why would it be bad if I said "China can kick your ass", "Canada is the BEST!!!!" or "There's NO better place than Greece." Come on, people should be more proud and arorgant about where they're from and not be ashamed of it. Americans boast about our country with NO wussy apologies and NO shame, why should anyone be ashamed of being proud of where they live?

One thing I think is interesting are automobiles and trucks. I used to work on cars, and the older American cars are all standard, but the newer ones are metric.

For working on vehicles, I prefer metric. It's a lot more simple to work with 13 mm, 16 mm, 17 mm, etc. than 1/2 inch, 5/8 inch, 7/8 inch, etc. I had to work on American cars and Japanese, European, etc., so I had to learn both. But I have to agree with FM 2258 that it wouldn't make any sense to change over the speed limit, gas station, and odometers to metric in the US.

To the others talking about me being typical American, how come other countries aren't as proud and boastful of their own countries like people in the U.S. If I was in China, U.K., Canada, Greece or any other country why would it be bad if I said "China can kick your ass", "Canada is the BEST!!!!" or "There's NO better place than Greece." Come on, people should be more proud and arorgant about where they're from and not be ashamed of it. Americans boast about our country with NO wussy apologies and NO shame, why should anyone be ashamed of being proud of where they live?

You haven't been around here that long huh?

At least here at SSC, UK and Canadian arrogance absolutely annilihates US arrogance. Blows it away.

Wow, I never knew that there were Metric signs in the U.S, and some of those signs displayed Km' as PRIMARY units, lol. In Kentucky, Delaware, Colorado etc??? Wow.

I love the Metric System much more than the Imperial System. However, I measure my height in feet and inches (6'3), I measure myself in pounds (160lbs), and I measure elevations in feet, not meters.

It's kind of like being bilingual! lol.

Also, for car performance times: I use 1/4 mile times and usually 0-60mph instead of 0-100kmh

At least here at SSC, UK and Canadian arrogance absolutely annilihates US arrogance. Blows it away.
Ouch. :cry:

Americans use millimeters to define the barrel of a gun...and a penis seems much larger when put in centimeters compared to inches...

I think the metric system on the whole is a more comprehensive system and easier to learn then the other way around.
1 Kilometer is 1000 meters is 10.000 decimeters is 100.000 centimeters.
One can replace the meters with liters and it still makes sense, or kilograms. 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram. Aint that easy?

Cart,

You haven't been around here that long huh?

At least here at SSC, UK and Canadian arrogance absolutely annilihates US arrogance. Blows it away.

:lol: I guess I should read more. Hey, if I lived in the UK or Canada, I'd be proud as hell to be part of those countries. Plus for some reason I really do admire the British. Look at all the cool stuff they've spawned just from their little island like Hong Kong, the United States, Australia, Singapore, South Africa and others I can't think of off hand, plus they've got the whole world speaking their language.

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Plus when you grow up with a certian measurement you just grow fond of it. When I drive on the Interstate I already know that 1mile I have time to think about exiting, 1/2 mile I better start thinking about getting in the right lane, 1/4 mile I should be in the right lane and at the "-->" the exit is there.

When I was driving to El Paso the sign said "El Paso 518", yeah, I know what 518 miles is but if it said some thing like "1000 km" me and most other people would convert that shit to miles before we comprehend what it really is.

So when I look on this forum and someone posts something about a 400m skyscraper, I honestly have hardly a clue what they mean so I go to www.google.com, look up a converter and convert that to feet......and get 1,312.34 ft which in my head makes much more sense than 400m. I know meter is around a yard but I don't use yards that much since I use feet much more often.

I also think it's funny and ironic how people put down Americans when we boast about how great the U.S. is because when people tell an American the U.S. isn't all that we honestly don't care and just laugh it off. I mean, how can you say the U.S. is not the best? It might be ignorant or arrogant but we honestly don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

If some worldwide law was made that said you had to pick one country and never leave it for the rest of your life I bet many people would pick the U.S. You'd be stuck here for the rest of your life but you can still visit places in the U.S. like the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Saipan, Guantanamo bay and some other territories I can't think of off hand. Plus we pretty much own Afghanistan and Iraq right now but that's a different story.

Anyway, yes I may be an arrogant American but back to the topic at hand, I think the metric system is best used for soda bottles. I know what 1, 2 and 3 liter bottles are but when it comes to milk I like gallons. Let the U.S. keep our measurement system, look how far we've come using it.


Then why does the science community in the US use Metric? Simply because it is more logical in it's primers and how measurements work. That's simply a fact rather than a subjective opinion.

I think Ireland also just changed their system aswell?

i think it basically comes down to what ur used to really, being from Australia i find the use of the metric system much easier and find imperial measurements confusing but thats just cos i have been raised with the metric system.

And as for FM 2258, US doesnt mean better, and not "everyone" wants to go to the US, its just those unfortunate South Americans that have it a lot worse than those in the US, that doesnt mean the US is better than every country in the world, far from it. Just another example of American ignorance, its people like FM 2258, that give u yanks a bad repuatation the world over.

New Hampshire started putting signs on all new construction in dual units, I'm not sure if that's still the standard but I think we're still doing it. Ironic considering we were the third to last state to ditch metric and turn back to imperial for design work.

I also know the northern end of I-87 in New York is dual units, in fact bi-lingual as well.

Is that why that one random road sign on I-93 for Tilton/Laconia has 1 Mile (1.6 KM) on it, but no signs before and after that have metric conversions?

New Hampshire also has English/French bilingual welcoming signs into the state, even coming from Mass

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

You may like the imperial system and be used to it, and i understand why you wouldn's want to switch to imperial, being used to imperial.
But by saying metric isn't a more exact and a more advanced system, your simply being dumb, because it it, and that's a FACT. Not a subjective matter.
That's why scientists in US use the metric system, like others mentioned.
Because 1 km = 1000 meter = 100000 cm... And 1m^3 = 1000 L... and so on, and so on.

So please don't make a fool of yourself saying that imperial system is as good or better as as metric system, because it isn't... it's much worse.

Still, for what you use it on a daily basis, imperial system is enough, and works very well, so, as I've said, you may like it, and I understand why you wouldn't like it to change....
It's never easy to change our habits.

I havnt seen a single metric sign in the UK....our country is mixed with metric and Imperical!

We buy our petrol in gallons and our drink in liters!

I buy my petrol in litres and my drink in pints! :)

Oh, and I'm 1.80m tall and 70kg, and I don't measure things in inches...

On a side note, Great Briton changed its imperial system to meet metric standards. Talk about a mess. In the US (the original imperial system) a gallon is 3.8 liters, and a pound is 454 grams. In GB, that same "gallon" is 4 liters and that same "pound" is 500 gram. Talk to an older butcher in GB and you wont hear the end of it.

Great Britain didn't change the imperial system to meet metric standards - a UK gallon was always different to a US gallon because in the UK there are 20 fluid ounces to the pint rather than 16 as in the US, which means a UK gallon is 4.546 litres as opposed to 3.785 litres in the US.

A UK pound is also 454 grams.

Great Britain didn't change the imperial system to meet metric standards - a UK gallon was always different to a US gallon because in the UK there are 20 fluid ounces to the pint rather than 16 as in the US, which means a UK gallon is 4.546 litres as opposed to 3.785 litres in the US.

A UK pound is also 454 grams.

Oh snap, I stand corrected. I must be wrong, but I have some recollection of there being a system change in the UK about 30 years ago.

regardless, thats off topic. Few would argue the virtues of the metric system, but no one has yet come up with a real reason why the US should switch.

^^^
Why should the US switch? To get with it maybe? Just like the learned US scientifc community has. Change can be a good thing you know. Imagine the ease of teaching measurements at school. A liter of water weighs 1 kg, 0 degree C is the freezing temp of water (why is 32f equal), 100 degree C is the boiling point of water, The Kelvin degree is exactly the same amount as a Celsius degree, 100cm makes a meter (12in makes a foot, why?), and we can go on and on and on. It is simply a more logical and better thought out system so therefore it is silly not to adopt it just like the US scientific community has.

the world changed to the french metric system because its so much easier to learn and use.

unlike trying to remember weird things like homeriods said, metric is easily converted from one unit to another, and most of them are in units of to 10^x . Also metric prefexs help.

i get lost in imperial measurements....

Again, two responces preaching the merits of the metric system. Like I said before, I see the logic in the metric system. Please stop talking about it.

The only responce I got to my question is so the US can "get with it." Oooohhh, what a great reason! Like you said (and I did earlier) the US scientific comunity has gotten "with it" as have the engineers etc.

Why does everybody else need to "get with it????" Our imperial system works fine, and obviously people here have no trouble knowing that a pint of fluid is a pound (16oz). The imperial system can be taught and learned just like the metric system. Meanwhile we have 300 million people that have measuring cups, clothes, cars, and just about everything else in imperial. Also while it is easy to teach a school child about the metric system, good luck teaching it to a disenfranchised 55 year old who doesnt want to change. The is no overwhelming need for the system to be changed, it works fine the way it is.

Now if someone has a thought that is more than to "get with it" please share, I am all ears.

lol. I really don't understand the resistance to change. It's simple, if a better system comes along and makes more sense then why not change? That's all we are saying. It is like the decimal system for currency. Australia changed to decimal for currency in 1966 for logical reasons and nothing more. 12 shillings made a pound I think and I don't know how many pents made the next unit. It was weird and basically adhoc.

It's the same with imperial measurements obviously. Australia made the change to metric in 1972. Why? Simply because it made more sense. This is the only reason why and this is not an emotional persuasive reason. So, when I say "get with it" I mean in the context of adopting a system that is simpler to understand, more logically laid out, and just makes a lot more sense. Just like deciaml curreny did over none decimal currency.

Old people don't like change, but change, if good shouldn't suffer because old people don't like it. You can run concurrent for sometime you know. Get with it simply means those who can accept change when it makes more sense and when it is an improvement over the old.

we have 300 million people that have measuring cups, clothes, cars, and just about everything else in imperial.

But all the immigrants from Latin America and Asia must understand metric as it was used in their original countries.

The imperial system is ridiculous, even most people who say they prefer it and know it well can't tell you how many feet are in a mile or how many noggins are in a quart.

To see the real arcane complexity of the system just take a look at these links :ohno:

http://www.answers.com/topic/imperial-unit

http://www.answers.com/topic/u-s-customary-units?method=5

As a person who designs highways and signs them in the US, I can say that I was disappointed the US switched back to Imperial from Metric. There was a big push in the 90s to switch to metric, and all highways began being designed that way until they made us switch back. Designing in metric was much, much easier and simpler. For a while there we still signed the road in Imperial Units, but the whole thing was designed in metric for all practical purposes.

Yes, and just how many of those imperial units of measurement do people use in their day to day life or sincerely even know:

* 1 poppy seed = 1/4 barley corn = 2.11 mm
* 1 barleycorn = 1/3 inch ~= 8.467 mm
* 1 inch = 25.4 mm = 2.54 cm
* 1 foot = 12 inches = 304.8 mm = 3.048 dm
* 1 yard = 3 feet = 0.9144 m = 9.144 dm
* 1 rod, pole or perch = 5 1/2 yards = 5.0292 m
* 1 chain = 4 poles = 20.1168 m
* 1 furlong = 10 chains = 201.168 m
* 1 mile = 8 furlongs = 1.609 344 km
* 1 league = 3 miles = 4.828 032 km

Maybe inch, foot, yard, mile? Furlongs in horse racing maybe? League is quite redundant.

With metric, due to the logic, it is easy to learn each scale of measurement since there is firstly, consistency in naming standards and secondly, consistency in each level or scale due to powers of 10. Ram memory for example, technically not metric, borrows from metric in that it is strictly powers of 2 but at their 10th iteration. 2^10 (1024) = KILObyte, 2^20 (1048576), MEGAbyte. It also uses naming prefixes the same as metric. Obviously for computers the power of 2 is significant.

My point being, it is a consistent and logical scale. Imperial is not. We all know this and therin lies the reason why it is a good reason to change from imperial to metric.

Put it this way, if we were to sit down around a table and think up a system to replace Imperial that made more sense and was easier to learn (our reasons for change) it would be metric.

The US scientific community and engineering companies use metric now, and have done so for decades.

It's the US common culture that sticks to imperial because the measurements themselves for the circumstances tend to be more convenient and most conversions aren't necessary. Americans have a clearer picture of how long a mile is as opposed to km, and I actually find it easier to measure the height of people by feet and inches because most people are either 5'X" or 6'X." You don't have to convert miles into feet much at all, nor gallons into quarts or whatever. The only conversion of great importance in everyday life is feet to inches, and that's easy enough (1 = 12).

Now granted, I know a lot of the rough conversions from imperial to metric as it is (1 mile = 1.6 km, 1 gal = roughly 4 liters, etc.), so I would not care as much as most Americans if we converted, and every once in a while in most states, you'll find random road signs with metric measurements. There's one on I-24 right outside of Chattanooga. In fact, in grocery stores, most food products are put in metric as well. A coke can is 12 fl oz and 355 ml, etc. The US is slowly converting as it's not government endorsed, but rather embraced by private enterprise, something Americans tend to feel more comfortable with for better or for worse.

I'm a proud Central American who uses the metric system, but I'm cool with the imperial one, cause part of my family is from the U.S. I guess you get used to the system you grow up with, whether it's metric (honestly the best), imperial, measuring with a rock or a stick, ...

But if either the metric or the imperial system had to take over the world, it would definitely be the....metric one!
But everyone should feel free to use the system they personally are OK with.

But all the immigrants from Latin America and Asia must understand metric as it was used in their original countries.


Ha!! Try selling that one to the American public. I personally am not resistant to change, but many people (everywhere in the world) are. Everybody on this thread who doesnt like the US using the metric system doesnt actually live here. As mentioned earlier, its been tried, and the repeated attempts have failed. The imperial system is fine, and people here have the attitude that if it aint broke dont fix it.

In fields where metric truly is advantagous (where lots of calculations need to made) the US is already using the metric system. Farthermore, like someone else said, every product sold in a US grocery store has the metric measurements next to the imperial ones. If youre a tourist who cant figure out what it means to be 80 miles from the city, just look at your speedometer. It will have KM under the miles and if you look at 80 mph you'll see the 120 km/h that will tell you how far you have to go.

I wouldnt mind seeing the metric system here, but it will never happen, people here are too set in their ways.

Ha!! Try selling that one to the American public. I personally am not resistant to change, but many people (everywhere in the world) are. Everybody on this thread who doesnt like the US using the metric system doesnt actually live here. As mentioned earlier, its been tried, and the repeated attempts have failed. The imperial system is fine, and people here have the attitude that if it aint broke dont fix it.

In fields where metric truly is advantagous (where lots of calculations need to made) the US is already using the metric system. Farthermore, like someone else said, every product sold in a US grocery store has the metric measurements next to the imperial ones. If youre a tourist who cant figure out what it means to be 80 miles from the city, just look at your speedometer. It will have KM under the miles and if you look at 80 mph you'll see the 120 km/h that will tell you how far you have to go.

I wouldnt mind seeing the metric system here, but it will never happen, people here are too set in their ways.

Sounds like a similar situation to the UK.

Sounds like a similar situation to the UK.

I have found from Britons my age that most of them know quite a lot of imperial measurements for everyday tasks like Americans... they say someone is 5'10" or whatever and weighs 170, and some know how long a mile is relatively speaking. However, they tend to be more aware of the metric system than we are and use it a lot more. It seems that while Britain and the US are both behind most of the rest of the world, it seems Britain is about 15-20 years ahead of the US in making a gradual conversion.

I have found from Britons my age that most of them know quite a lot of imperial measurements for everyday tasks like Americans... they say someone is 5'10" or whatever and weighs 170, and some know how long a mile is relatively speaking. However, they tend to be more aware of the metric system than we are and use it a lot more. It seems that while Britain and the US are both behind most of the rest of the world, it seems Britain is about 15-20 years ahead of the US in making a gradual conversion.

Unfortunately though, the UK is only making a half-hearted attempt to convert - most people my age, who will have been taught metric all through school, still talk in feet/inches, stones/pounds, miles etc. because outside of school that's how their parents, the media etc. still speak...

From a highways perspective having the US switch to metric makes little sense. Imperial works very well (as well as metric imho) from a highway standpoint, and the actual switch from imperial to metric would likely cost a fortune. (Look into how much highay guide signage actually costs and you will know what i mean).

However, switching to metric still might make a fair amount of sense for other reasons. It has been suggested that school children in the US are forced to learn about fractions too early, causing students to have more difficulty with the concept that they otherwise would later in life. Countries still using imperial measures need to teach children fractions early in life, since they are so prevelant in the imperial system. Other metric countries have started teaching fractions later which apparently has proved to be most beneficial, resulting in overall better math skills.

Personally I think the US would be wise to switch to metric even despite the large cost of doing this. Most other Western Countries have switched to metric, and the results have proved favourable, it seems that American residents would also benefit from this switch.

Cheers!

I used both at the university: The subject is in imperial units, I calculate with metric system then I write the answer in US units. Very interesting! ;)

The metric system is based on the observation of our environment.
The imperial system is based on the observation of "me" (very practical to measure a body...and that's all).

According to you, which will disappear?

I find it quite amusing the mix in the building industry here in the UK. Architects, engineers and even contractors use metric for everything. The clients and agents etc all use imperial. It depresses me a little that I know off by heart that 1 sq.m. is 10.764 sq.ft.

I had a situation only yesterday when I gave the density of a development in terms of residential units per hectare. The client emailed me back requesting it in square feet per acre, i.e. the length of a legionnaires foot squared per area of field one man can plough in a day.... when you think about it it is ridculous.

metric system will dominate one day in the US. otherwise it just doesn't make any sense!

I had a situation only yesterday when I gave the density of a development in terms of residential units per hectare. The client emailed me back requesting it in square feet per acre

I very nearly replied pointing out that the number of square feet per acre is a constant :bash:

metric system will dominate one day in the US. otherwise it just doesn't make any sense!

It will probably happen a week after Soccer is voted America's pastime. :)

I like the U.S. Customary measurements better for our highways and everything else. Screw the Metric system.

yeah right. You think US measurement system is the best only because you aren't familiar with the metric system. You are used to it, but believe me, the metric system makes much more sense. It's the same with england where the driverseat is on the right, while the rest of the world has the driverseat on the left. I doens't make sense, but the UK just likes to be different and doesn't give a fuck about compatibility with the rest of the world. same story goes with their currency. most countries over here have the euro except for the UK.

metric system will dominate one day in the US. otherwise it just doesn't make any sense!

probably. good thing is that already use the second as their time unit http://images.fok.nl/s/clown.gif . Would suck if the UK and the US would maintain an other time unit than the rest of the world http://images.fok.nl/s/bonk.gif

i personally am familiar w/ both systems and find the metric system easier to use, but i wouldnt like it if the US changed systems mostly because people are used to it, why change it if it isnt causing any problems?

I move that metric time should be introduced worldwide:
http://zapatopi.net/metrictime.html

It will probably happen a week after Soccer is voted America's pastime. :)

That shouldn't be too far off - isn't it already the biggest sport at child level in terms of numbers of participants?

That shouldn't be too far off - isn't it already the biggest sport at child level in terms of numbers of participants?

It is, but only because the lawyers have deemed baseball and football (american) too dangerous for kids. Too big of a chance of a liability lawsuit. On a pro level, there are very few people interested in soccer. When the world cup was here in 94, people didnt even know about it. Baseball and Amer Football will always rule in the US.

Until you convince the average person to switch, it will never happen. People here acknowledge the merits of the metric system, but they wont give up their imperial units. Afterall, they have gotten this far in life without it, why would they change?

Alas, I believe we are now talking in circles.

I HATE METRIC

Metric is a logical system and I hope the U.S. will switch over one day. Even NASA uses metric system in the U.S., well pretty much the whole world. All calculations at a University where I was were done in the metric system.

I HATE METRIC

Me too.

I love metric system :)

I HATE METRIC
The metric system is the tool of the devil!
My car gets 42 rods to the hogshead and thats the way I likes it!

Damn backwards hick

Alabama used to have metric "mile" markers on all interestate, US, and state highways. They put these up in anticipation of the Atlanta Olympics (Birmingham was a soccer venue) and had them up for a few years. Unfortunately, they took them down a few years later (which was a waste of money, IMO)

The metric system is the tool of the devil!
My car gets 42 rods to the hogshead and thats the way I likes it!

Damn backwards hick


:lol: :lol:

I HATE METRIC

Do you wan't to come up with a better system?

The US system makes no sense. What the hell is a mile? 1,760 Yards, Whats a yard 3 feet, a foot is 12inches you cant messure closer then that.

Metric is easy to understand. 1km = 1000meters, 1 meter = 100cm, 1cm = 10milimeters.
Tempature is even easier. 0 is freezing not 32, what the hell is that 32 where did that come from?

Any way the USA should change to metric, since they are currently the only major country that doesn't use it.

...what the hell is that 32 where did that come from?
The German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) developed precice thermometers, invented the Mercury-thermometer and in 1924 he proposed his mathematical exact defined temperature scale.

There are different versions how Fahrenheit came to the 0-point:

- adoption of the scale of Ole Christensen Rømer in Cobenhagen, at which water freezes at 7.5 degrees, and multiplying the value by 4 in order to eliminate the fractions.

- the melting temperature of an equal mixture of ice and salt he used for calibration.

- the lowest temperature in Winter 1808/09 in Fahrenheit's home city Danzig (today Gdansk/Poland).

The second value for calibration he took from his own body temperature. First his scale had only 12 equal subdivisions between the two reference points. Later he subdivided each division into 8 equal degrees ending up with 96. He then observed that water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212 degrees.

Adjusting miles to kilometers is not exactly rocket science - 1km=1.6mi. Adjusting Kilo's to Pounds is not either, 1kg=~2.2lbs.
People living in metric nations typically know the breakdown

Actually people in metric countries usually don't know what the breakdowns for imperial to metrics are. We don't use imperial in our every day life.

i personally am familiar w/ both systems and find the metric system easier to use, but i wouldnt like it if the US changed systems mostly because people are used to it, why change it if it isnt causing any problems?

Well it is causing big issues. Just ask NASA. Since the science community needs to use a system based on logic, they use metric but some nut at NASA forgot that one day when they were going into an entry orbit for a MARS probe which fatally came in at a trajectory, oh about a ratio 1:0.609 out because some employee still thought in imperial. That probe came in hot and burnt up. True story. That cost over 100mill. :)

Well it is causing big issues. Just ask NASA. Since the science community needs to use a system based on logic, they use metric but some nut at NASA forgot that one day when they were going into an entry orbit for a MARS probe which fatally came in at a trajectory, oh about a ratio 1:0.609 out because some employee still thought in imperial. That probe came in hot and burnt up. True story. That cost over 100mill. :)

What happened was that NASA had contracted the building of the probe to a private contractor, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin had done all their measurements in customary (or Imperial, or w/e) units, but NASA had assumed they were in metric. The thrust that the probe had been designed for was in pounds instead of Newtons and 1 lb equal 4.5N, so the probe burned up in the Martian atmosphere because it didn't have enough power to stay in orbit. :bash:

Commenting, one of the scientists said: "This is going to be the cautionary tale that will be embedded into introduction to the metric system in elementary school, high school, and college science courses till the end of time." :)

Something I use metric for is for a 2 liter of pop. Actually now that I think about it, everyone I know says 2 liter. A lot easier than saying can I have a 2.1 fl oz of pop.

Yes, everything in the United States is better. That's why everyone wants to come here. :)

Go there for what? To be Ignorent. No thanks.

IMPERIAL SUX!!!!!!!!!!!





TORONTO 2016

Im sorry
But that is one of the most ignorant and arrogant things i've ever heard. I love you for it though, because YOU satisfy the American Stereotype that occasionally exists in my mind.

Imperial is nonsensical and redundant. Metric is logical and the way of the future. I think it is absurd that the US still used Imperial.


what do you guys use in Australia?

Here in the US: there's 1 liter cokes, except smaller ones, then they come in fluid ounces and wierd stuff like that. Then doctors talk about cm: a woman is 10 cm dialated, etc.

What is wierd is that in Spanish TV here they use Farenheit, when all spanish speaking people think in celcius.

Sorry about my previosu posts, they were a bit harsh...

But fcarvall,
In Australia, we use metric exclusively. The only time we roughly use imperial is to say height, say 6 foot, although all official things etc are in metric. We changed over in the 60's i think. Only metric is taught in school now. Infact my sisters, when they see "lbs" (as in pounds), they call the units "libs" because we never come in contact with them.

It'd make sense for states bordering Canada and Mexico to have metric signage, but Ohio?


HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED CONSULTING A MAP? OHIO MAY NOT BORDER CANADA BY LAND...IT DOES BY WATER THOUGH...BUT IT IS NOT VERY FAR FROM THE BORDER...IT MAKES SENSE TO HAVE METRIC SIGNS...FURTHERMORE, THE UNITED STATES IS OFFICIALLY A METRIC COUNTRY.

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Plus when you grow up with a certian measurement you just grow fond of it. When I drive on the Interstate I already know that 1mile I have time to think about exiting, 1/2 mile I better start thinking about getting in the right lane, 1/4 mile I should be in the right lane and at the "-->" the exit is there.

When I was driving to El Paso the sign said "El Paso 518", yeah, I know what 518 miles is but if it said some thing like "1000 km" me and most other people would convert that shit to miles before we comprehend what it really is.

So when I look on this forum and someone posts something about a 400m skyscraper, I honestly have hardly a clue what they mean so I go to www.google.com, look up a converter and convert that to feet......and get 1,312.34 ft which in my head makes much more sense than 400m. I know meter is around a yard but I don't use yards that much since I use feet much more often.

I also think it's funny and ironic how people put down Americans when we boast about how great the U.S. is because when people tell an American the U.S. isn't all that we honestly don't care and just laugh it off. I mean, how can you say the U.S. is not the best? It might be ignorant or arrogant but we honestly don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

If some worldwide law was made that said you had to pick one country and never leave it for the rest of your life I bet many people would pick the U.S. You'd be stuck here for the rest of your life but you can still visit places in the U.S. like the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Saipan, Guantanamo bay and some other territories I can't think of off hand. Plus we pretty much own Afghanistan and Iraq right now but that's a different story. [THIS IS VERY IGNORANT OF YOU]

Anyway, yes I may be an arrogant American but back to the topic at hand, I think the metric system is best used for soda bottles. I know what 1, 2 and 3 liter bottles are but when it comes to milk I like gallons. Let the U.S. keep our measurement system, look how far we've come using it.


MY FRIEND, THE UNITED STATES IS OFFICIALLY METRIC!!! WAY BEFORE CANADA!!! CANADA JUST WENT THROUGH "SOFT CONVERSION". BASICALLY, THEY HAVE PRETEND 12 OZ CANS BUT THEY WRITE 355 ml ! I, TOO, GREW UP WITH MILES & GALLONS...BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS BEST! I LIVE IN EUROPE NOW, AND I OFTEN DO SOME CONVERTING....BUT THAT IS FOR ME...NOT BECAUSE IT IS BETTER!! YOU MUST REMEMBER THAT ENGLISH UNITS WERE FORMED BY MEASURING FROM TIPS OF NOSES TO FINGER TIPS....C'MON NOW...LET'S BE REALISTIC!! AND FURTHERMORE, WE DO COUNT IN 1's....ONE SECOND, MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, YEAR ETC., YOU GO TO SCHOOL AND YOU MOVE A GRADE ETC., EVERYTHING IS IN ONES! FOR CONVENIENCE WE THEN GO TO TENS, HUNDREDS AND FINALLY THOUSANDS....AND IF THIS IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE THINK OF UNITED STATES CURRENCY....HOW MANY CENTS TO A DOLLAR?..............WHY NOT 112? I THINK YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THAT THINGS GO BETTER IN ONES AND TENS...

PS. CAUSE THIS IS AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM AND THIS PLACE IS NOT YOURS OR OURS....WATCH WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT US ACTIVITY ABROAD. THINGS ARE BAD ENOUGH WITHOUT HAVING IGNORANT COMMENTS LIKE YOURS! THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK PLEASE! :bash:

Sure you are doing well, but you cannot deny that it is completely illogical. Sure you are used to it, as was Australia, and all nations essentially, but they came into line, bit the bullet, and learnt a new system as to line up with a more logical and practical method. The new generations coming through would learn it and be more integrated with the international community, and the older generations would just have to tough it and learn. It is not exactly hard to learn when you are immersed in a culture. Take exchange students, typically in one year, they can come back from another country and be nearly fluent in a language if they apply themselves and take interest. Adjusting miles to kilometers is not exactly rocket science - 1km=1.6mi. Adjusting Kilo's to Pounds is not either, 1kg=~2.2lbs.
People living in metric nations typically know the breakdown, yet the US remains ignorant (according to you, and from my observations). We see the light, ackowledge your system, but deny it because it is flawed in an international context.

And BIG DEAL if you had to change your highway signs. For gods sake, to share the load between the nation and its highway/road workers, it would involve 5 minutes work for any one person. Even if you dont eliminate miles, if you integrated them into displays (as previously mentioned) the transition would be much more seamless and progresive as people get used to both systems.



You are too funny. People put you down because you are so arrogant. So how do you react? By being more arrogant and dismissing their complaints. Yet you dismiss them by being more arrogant, hence accentuating the problem. You not giving a shit is why people hate americans. And this isnt about America being the best. Sure its a beautiful country and has a robust economy (although the future is going to be a nice funny rollercoaster), so there is a chance that it may be the best, but it, in conjunction with your fucked up attitude, makes it far from.

I HATE GETTING CAUGHT UP IN THIS..BUT.......IT'S NOT REALLY HIS FAULT HE IS IGNORANT...REMEMBER, IGNORANCE IS NOT A SIN...THAT HAS TO DO WITH THE EDUCATION SYSTEM ..YOU MUST REMEMBER SOMETHING..WHEN I WAS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA..I REMEMBER ONE NIGHT ON JAY LENO IF I CAN RECALL, AND GEORGIE W. BUSHIE WAS ON..AND HE WAS ASKED ABOUT CHICAGO..SOMEWHERE IN THE CONVERSATION, THE QUESTION ABOUT WHICH OCEAN CHICAGO WAS LOCATED ON...AND THE MAN DID NOT KNOW! IT IS BAD ENOUGH THAT HE DIDN'T KNOW THAT ISTANBUL WAS NOT THE CAPITAL OF TURKEY AMONG OTHERS BUT WHEN HE DIDN'T KNOW THAT THE NATION'S 3RD LARGEST CITY WAS SITUATED ON A "LAKE" AND HE WAS SCRATCHING HIS HEAD ...YOU KNEW THAT YOU MUST FEEL NOTHING BUT SYMPATHY FOR THE NATION WAS IN THIS MAN'S HANDS!!

AS FAR AS CHANGING THE SIGNS...IT MIGHT HELP THE UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS! WHO KNOWS? WHO CARES? SHEEEEEEESH!! :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash: :bash:

DON'T WRITE IN ALL CAPS IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A FCKING ASSHOLE!!!11

The three or four people that they show during Jay Walking on Jay Leno are EXCEPTIONS to Americans. They talk to, literally, hundreds of people. They only get a few that answer like that. They choose the most comical ones. Many people also know what Jaywalking is and will answer dumb on purpose to get on the show. BUT IGNORANCE IS NOT A SIN!!!

I am fluent in both measurements, I can think in both, measure in both, understand both, and convert them in mere seconds. It isn't hard to know two systems of measurement.

What happened was that NASA had contracted the building of the probe to a private contractor, Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin had done all their measurements in customary (or Imperial, or w/e) units, but NASA had assumed they were in metric. The thrust that the probe had been designed for was in pounds instead of Newtons and 1 lb equal 4.5N, so the probe burned up in the Martian atmosphere because it didn't have enough power to stay in orbit. :bash:

Commenting, one of the scientists said: "This is going to be the cautionary tale that will be embedded into introduction to the metric system in elementary school, high school, and college science courses till the end of time." :)

^^The Nasa incident is exactly the reason why the US should change to the metric system, it avoids confusion with scientists and also non Americans.

About the difficulty in changing to the metric, the "menu" costs would certainly pay itself especially if costly incidents such as the Nasa Mars mishap could have been easily avoided, if measurements were standardised to all from brainy rocket scientists and technicians at Nasa to the average American Joe, everyone would be on the same page, understanding each other. How many more measurement mistakes must there be till the US realize the wisdom in standardizing measurements.

In Australia, my green grocers was telling me how decades ago, it wasn't all that difficult to change to metric from British imperial measurements, people adopted it rather quickly and saw the instinctive logical nature of the metric. So changing to a completely new measurement system is not as difficult as some would make it out to be, if only the American public specifically non-scientific community would give it a chance.

Why not give it a chance? Afraid that the US would adopt a "French" system? A system used thats used by the rest of the world?

Anyways, "Pounds" and "feet" are still used by Aussies at times though the context is usually things said in passing, say a persons height. Thats habitual however, but shows it isn't hard to think in both systems. In terms of everything else, official calculations, statistics, map scales, signs, its standardised to the metric for simplicity. It saves measurement problems, avoids confusion.

Bleh, that said, if America still wants to keep its current measurement system, then so be it, its her choice and is what makes the country unique.

Great Britain didn't change the imperial system to meet metric standards - a UK gallon was always different to a US gallon because in the UK there are 20 fluid ounces to the pint rather than 16 as in the US, which means a UK gallon is 4.546 litres as opposed to 3.785 litres in the US.

A UK pound is also 454 grams.


DIFFERENCES ARE ONLY IN LIQUID MEASURE, TONS; SHORT TONS ...BUT THE REST IS BASICALLY THE SAME. 6 FT IS 6 FT. 1 LB IS 1 LB AND THAT IS ALWAYS EQUALS 454 GRAMS .

DON'T WRITE IN ALL CAPS IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A FCKING ASSHOLE!!!11

The three or four people that they show during Jay Walking on Jay Leno are EXCEPTIONS to Americans. They talk to, literally, hundreds of people. They only get a few that answer like that. They choose the most comical ones. Many people also know what Jaywalking is and will answer dumb on purpose to get on the show. BUT IGNORANCE IS NOT A SIN!!!

I am fluent in both measurements, I can think in both, measure in both, understand both, and convert them in mere seconds. It isn't hard to know two systems of measurement.


FIRST OF ALL, I ALWAYS WRITE IN CAPITALS...IT'S EASIER FOR ME. AND I DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN WHY. IF YOU ARE FLUENT IN BOTH THAT'S NICE...I AM TOO...I NEVER SAID THAT IGNORANCE IS A SIN...BUT WHEN YOU GO AROUND TALKING LIKE OUR TEXAN FRIEND, START AT THE BEGINNING...THEN IGNORANCE AND ARROGANCE IS DEFINITELY A SIN. IF SOMEONE IS IGNORANT ABOUT SOMETHING THERE IS DEF. NOTHING WRONG...WHERE I LIVE, ILLITERATE PEOPLE CAN SIGN WITH A CROSS, AND THERE'S DEF. NOTHING WRONG OR NOTHING TO LAUGH AT. I RECENTLY GOT MAIL FROM CANADA SENT TO ME IN GREECE AND ADDRESSED ....ATHENS, ATTICA, ALABAMA, GREECE. NO BIGGIE...BUT, LIKE I SAID BEFORE, WHEN ONE GETS ARROGANT HEY THAT IS WHERE MOST PEOPLE DRAW THE LINE..AND MY FRIEND, I KNOW THAT IT IS HARD FOR YOU ..BUT THERE IS NO REASON TO SIT HERE AND CALL ME AN ASSHOLE! ...IT SHOWS YOUR UPBRINGING AND A LACK OF VOCABULARY IN YOUR WORD BANK TO CONSTRUCT A SERIES OF WORDS TO MAKE A SENTENCE. AS FAR AS JAY LENO IS CONCERNED ..I THINK WE EXPECT SOMETHING MORE FROM THE LEADER OF A COUNTRY! IF THEY CAN'T TAKE THE PRESSURE OF THE JOB THEY SHOULD STEP DOWN...NOW IF YOU FIND NOTHING WRONG WITH HAVING AN IGNORANT [AND ARROGANT] LEADER[I KNOW HE'S NOT YOURS, BUT HE IS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT]..THEN I EXPECT THAT YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE WORLD...AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK ABOUT WORLD EVENTS..AFTER ALL, THEY ARE ALL DONE IN GOOD TASTE...THERE'S HUMOR TO THEM...SOMETHING TO LAUGH AT SITTING COMFORTABLY IN YOUR LIVING ROOM AND LAUGHING AT THE POOR SOULS THAT ARE BEING SLAUGHTERED AT THE HANDS OF THESE POOR IGNORANT SOULS WHO ARE ONLY DOING SO JUST FOR THE SAKE OF HUMORING NORTH AMERICANS. GOOD POINT. I REALLY SYMPATHIZE WITH YOU.

For the most part, Americans HAVE unofficially adopted metric measurements... particularly where it avoids fractions. I happen to think that Fahrenheit is a far more "relevant" scale to the daily experience of people, and I'm not fond of measuring distances with meters or kilometers... but I'm also one of the first to use millimeters instead of fractional inches, milliliters instead of fractional ounces, and grams & milligrams instead of fractional ounces and pounds. Like most Americans, I see nothing weird about saying that something is 11 inches x 17 inches by 3mm thick, weighs a pound, and accelerates at 9.8m/S^2 when dropped, impacting the floor with ${n} newtons of force, and causing a gallon-sized bucket full of zero-degree fahrenheit ice cream to spill and make a mess as it melts into a 10-inch diameter pool . :)

The big problem with Celsius is that the freezing and boiling points of water are largely irrelevant to daily life, so half the scale is effectively wasted and unavailable for use. The temperatures where it becomes extra-dangerous to be outdoors (below zero, above a hundred degrees) are, however, quite directly relevant to daily life. Water might freeze at 32 degrees, but a freezer REALLY needs to be kept colder... usually, right around zero degrees Fahrenheit.

The British (and, I think, Chinese) redefinition of "pound" as "500g", and "gallon" as "4 liters" were fairly sensible compromises that recreated nice single-unit values for things that people like to think of as whole single units. Let's face it... 500mL just isn't quite the right size for a can. For some inexplicable reason, 355mL/12oz just happens to be one of those sizes that "work", just like 2 liters is a good size for bottles... a gallon-jug of diet Coke would feel unwieldy, but a liter-bottle of diet Coke is too big for one serving, but not big enough for two.

The British (and, I think, Chinese) redefinition of "pound" as "500g", and "gallon" as "4 liters" were fairly sensible compromises that recreated nice single-unit values for things that people like to think of as whole single units. Let's face it... 500mL just isn't quite the right size for a can. For some inexplicable reason, 355mL/12oz just happens to be one of those sizes that "work", just like 2 liters is a good size for bottles... a gallon-jug of diet Coke would feel unwieldy, but a liter-bottle of diet Coke is too big for one serving, but not big enough for two.

I believe 355 is only used in North America. 350ml is used elsewhere.
Of course in France, youll be using a 22dl bottle at resteraunts (I think it was 22 when I went)

I buy my coke in 2.5liter bottles

It's the same with england where the driverseat is on the right, while the rest of the world has the driverseat on the left. I doens't make sense, but the UK just likes to be different and doesn't give a fuck about compatibility with the rest of the world. same story goes with their currency. most countries over here have the euro except for the UK.

Thats wrong. Around 1/5 of the world population drives on the left. UK, India and Japan are the major countries.

And at least the pound is in decimals. No shillings and such

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Plus when you grow up with a certian measurement you just grow fond of it. When I drive on the Interstate I already know that 1mile I have time to think about exiting, 1/2 mile I better start thinking about getting in the right lane, 1/4 mile I should be in the right lane and at the "-->" the exit is there.

When I was driving to El Paso the sign said "El Paso 518", yeah, I know what 518 miles is but if it said some thing like "1000 km" me and most other people would convert that shit to miles before we comprehend what it really is.

So when I look on this forum and someone posts something about a 400m skyscraper, I honestly have hardly a clue what they mean so I go to www.google.com, look up a converter and convert that to feet......and get 1,312.34 ft which in my head makes much more sense than 400m. I know meter is around a yard but I don't use yards that much since I use feet much more often.

I also think it's funny and ironic how people put down Americans when we boast about how great the U.S. is because when people tell an American the U.S. isn't all that we honestly don't care and just laugh it off. I mean, how can you say the U.S. is not the best? It might be ignorant or arrogant but we honestly don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

If some worldwide law was made that said you had to pick one country and never leave it for the rest of your life I bet many people would pick the U.S. You'd be stuck here for the rest of your life but you can still visit places in the U.S. like the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Saipan, Guantanamo bay and some other territories I can't think of off hand. Plus we pretty much own Afghanistan and Iraq right now but that's a different story.

Anyway, yes I may be an arrogant American but back to the topic at hand, I think the metric system is best used for soda bottles. I know what 1, 2 and 3 liter bottles are but when it comes to milk I like gallons. Let the U.S. keep our measurement system, look how far we've come using it.


Hey bud, while I do agree with you on most of your reasoning, we don't "own" Afganistan or Irak. We are there to fight the war on terrorism and to help them establish free, democratic societies. Those folks who hate us are just jealous hypocrites, forever mouthing off against us, then they go home in their jeans, eat a hamburger and watch MTV. So chill...we have most of the world as good friends. :)

United States got more international at last.

FIRST OF ALL, I ALWAYS WRITE IN CAPITALS...IT'S EASIER FOR ME. AND I DON'T NEED TO EXPLAIN WHY.

I think I've figured out the reason for myself. You post in all capitals because you bought one of those cheap keyboards which only has capital letters on it, didn't you?

The big problem with Celsius is that the freezing and boiling points of water are largely irrelevant to daily life, so half the scale is effectively wasted and unavailable for use.

1. The freezing point of water is very relevant to daily life, unless you live somewhere hot where it never snows!

2. The Celsius scale doesn't have an upper limit, so how can half of it be wasted?

The British (and, I think, Chinese) redefinition of "pound" as "500g", and "gallon" as "4 liters" were fairly sensible compromises that recreated nice single-unit values for things that people like to think of as whole single units.

3. The British redefined a pound as exactly 453.59237 grams, not 500.

It's the same with england where the driverseat is on the right, while the rest of the world has the driverseat on the left. I doens't make sense, but the UK just likes to be different and doesn't give a fuck about compatibility with the rest of the world.

Bollocks. Seven hundred years ago everybody drove on the left (Pope Boniface VIII even made it law for pilgrims heading to Rome) - it was the Americans that decided to be different (the first driving-on-the-right law was made in Pennslyvania in 1792)...

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/images/driving%20on%20the%20left.gif
India, UK, Japan, Australia, South Africa, afew other African Countries, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc all drive on the left. Thats well over 1 billion people.

Bollocks. Seven hundred years ago everybody drove on the left (Pope Boniface VIII even made it law for pilgrims heading to Rome) - it was the Americans that decided to be different (the first driving-on-the-right law was made in Pennslyvania in 1792)...
Actually, most of the right-driving was caused by Napoleon, a left-handed man that insisted on changing the rules in all the territories he conquered. The United States changed its own rules, but did not impose right-handed driving upon other societies.

FM 2258: Stop shaming our country. You sound like a small-town redneck talking about this stuff. Using customary measurements is "easy" because we're used to it, not because they are inherently easier to use. There's nothing wrong with asking someone's height in feet, but we're talking about crucial industrial and military processes being screwed up by conversions.
The big problem with Celsius is that the freezing and boiling points of water are largely irrelevant to daily life, so half the scale is effectively wasted and unavailable for use.
Not if you cook. The entire scale is very relevant, plus some more. :lol:

1. The freezing point of water is very relevant to daily life, unless you live somewhere hot where it never snows!

2. The Celsius scale doesn't have an upper limit, so how can half of it be wasted?



3. The British redefined a pound as exactly 453.59237 grams, not 500.



i agree

1,2) if the temperature is around zero degrees celsius, i know that glaze is possible

furthermore a difference of 1 degree celsius is one kelvin (which is more scientific, but it's easier to say we have 20 degrees celsius than we have 293 kelvin out there)

3) but a german pound ("pfund") is 500g or a half kg



every engineer or natural scientist in the world would prefer the metric sytem because it's more logical and all other si-units are based on meters, kelvin and grams, so it's much easier and faster to convert a unit into an other

if the temperature is around zero degrees celsius, i know that glaze is possible

Not quite. Outdoors, wind chill throws a huge wrench into the whole scheme. Indoors, water's freezing point is largely irrelevant too... you have a refrigerator that's probably physically incapable of getting cold enough to freeze water, and a freezer that's almost guaranteed to be cold enough to freeze water at any temperature it's capable of operating at. I have never, in my life, seen anybody genuinely care about the precise temperature of their freezer. It's either "cold enough" or "not cold enough".

Ditto for the boiling point of water. You put water on the stove, or in the microwave, turn it on high, and wait until it starts boiling. There's no temperature measurement involved. When it starts to boil, it's ready. ;)

I maintain that for the specific purpose of climate description, Fahrenheit is superior to Celsius, because its zero and "100" values convey information beyond mere temperature. Negative doesn't just imply "cold" -- it implies "dangerously cold". Likewise, 100+ doesn't just imply "hot" -- it implies "dangerously hot".

Now, for lab work, Celsius might make life easier. But for answering the question, "how miserably hot is it outside?", Fahrenheit wins.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing magic about Celsius. The SI units defined in terms of it could just have easily been defined in terms of Fahrenheit. The fact is, water is basically the ONLY thing that has a freezing-boiling spread in the 0-100 degree C range anyway. For everything else, Celsius is as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. If the French hadn't been determined to make a clean break with everything and stuck with Fahrenheit as the metric temperature scale, America would probably be metric today (ask Americans what they dislike about the Metric system, and "temperature" almost always comes #1 in the list.)

It's a mixed bag in the UK for sure. I've never seen a metric sign here. Same as the US, except for right when you cross the border from Canada (or Mexico, I guess).

Actually, most of the right-driving was caused by Napoleon, a left-handed man that insisted on changing the rules in all the territories he conquered. The United States changed its own rules, but did not impose right-handed driving upon other societies.

FM 2258: Stop shaming our country. You sound like a small-town redneck talking about this stuff. Using customary measurements is "easy" because we're used to it, not because they are inherently easier to use. There's nothing wrong with asking someone's height in feet, but we're talking about crucial industrial and military processes being screwed up by conversions.

Not if you cook. The entire scale is very relevant, plus some more. :lol:

Does that mean I can say most people drive on the right as an inheritance of the French Empire?

I'm left handed too, so I won't complain.

Does that mean I can say most people drive on the right as an inheritance of the French Empire?
More or less. France and all the countries France conquered established colonies with right-side-drive. Some countries switched around in rebellion, such famously anti-Western China (did you know Chinese stock-tickers are red when up and green when down?) and America.

http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20on%20the%20left.htm

I don't get what the big deal is about converting to metric. Australia is a metric country but that doesn't mean you are prohibited from using imperial if you want to. You won't be put in jail for measing your olive oil in teaspoons. My grandparents have an old Holden and the speedo is in miles which my grandfather stuck a little sticker on it with conversion. The car doesn't automatically become unroadworthy because the speedo is not in kilomtres. Measuring jugs practically always have mls on one side and cups on the other. If you buy a thermometer it likely to have both scales on it. Tape measures and rulers also usually have both. Most people here naturally think in metric but most people are also familiar with inches and feet. That is probably the extent of it though. Otherwise it's litres and celcius and kilograms. Everything official is printed in metric but doesn't stop ordinary people from using imperial for their own uses so I don't see why a changeover would be such a dramatic earth shattering event.

http://www.freedom2measure.org/

I didn't get to read all the responses since there was a lot of attacking and it frustrated me, but the bottom line is the metric system is no more precise, or logical, or a way of the future than the Imperial system--and anyone who said it is is just confused that somehow powers of 10 are somehow more logical than powers of 2. And I don't know how you can say "because America uses it it's better". Not the case. The English invented it, and if they had a brain on their shoulders and some balls, they'd still be using it.

In America we're used to imperial, and I don't know where the pro-metric lobby gets its jollies, but it should quit trying to make the entire world think alike. Celebrate our differences, fools.

By the way, dividing things into 8ths and 16ths is much more logical than into 10ths, if you think about it.

A foot is a unit of measure that evolved over hundreds of years of human experience. A meter is the distance light travels in a vacuum in as much time as it takes light to travel a meter (since the definition was invented to fit the distance, not vice versa...)

Hmm... which seems more logical?

The one which could be divided in an easier way, in 10, 100, 1000... to get always the same units :)
Units have to be used by common people, not defined. Who minds of the scientific definition of the meter in everyday life! :scouserd:


Don't take this as an offence, but what kind of modern measurement system can still use those "strange" units?
Yard, feet, inches, why not an arm or an hand? Why don't we use an elbow for measurements? :lol:
I know that those are fixed as standards... but the question is that they don't work in a simple way.

Gosh, I can divide in a moment some kilometers by centimeters... try to divide miles by inches, what a mess!!

1 foot = 12 inches. Then, 1 mile = 5280 feet.
1 square foot = 144 sq. inches. 1 square miles = ... oh, WTF! :bash:

So, tell me without a calculator how many sq.inches there are in 1 sq. mile!! :runaway:

100 cm = 1 meter ... 1000 meters = 1 km
10000 square cm = 1 sq. meter, simply because it's 100^2!

Our original question:
1 km = 10^5 cm
so, simply 1 sq.km= 10^10 cm!

You only have to cut and add some zeros! That's so simple! :)
Once you get one, you get the whole system... I really never understood the existence of the imperial system in a modern, science-based world :|


A little note to point out. When describing a car's performance usually is used the 0-100 km/h or 0-60 mph time.
Even if it's totally useless... car experts prefere 0-1000 meters time, or the 0-160-0 km/h time, but that's another story.

0-100 km/h time can be slightly different from the 0-60 mph one: that's because 60 mph is exactly 96 km/h and not 100.
Some cars (for example, the Alfa Romeo 156 GTA) reach the maximum for a certain gear between 96 and 100 km/h, and of course while shifting you lose some time to reach 100 km/h...
So they can do a good 0-96 and a lousy 0-100!


That's probably the only good thing with imperial measures... but since the 0-100 or 0-60 time is basically useless to describe a car's real performance, the imperial should be erased with no regrets! :baeh3:


But we should be honest: there's only one problem about the imperial system in the US for foreigners. That's PORN.
In Europe we are tired of converting a 9" to 22.86 cm any time we want to watch some porn! :lol:
US citizens: convert the porn industry to metric system, and we will leave you in peace with your damn imperial highways and weights, forever!! :lol: :lol: :lol: ;)

You just have to jump the decimal points when switching inside the metric system. But YOU CAN'T DO THIS in the imperial system! USE METRIC IN THE US ASAP!!! ;)

When I began reading the Dubai forums about a year a go all the building heights (in meters) appeared foriegn. I was brought up using feet. As time went on however, I become more and more used to recognizing meters until by 2006 Iwas begining to convert building heights in feet, to meters because I had become so familiar with it. Just like learning a language we don't learn it until were forced to by circumstances.

I do think Farenhiet is much more useful than Celsius however. It's much more precise to say it's 33 degrees F than 0 degree Celsius.

By the way, dividing things into 8ths and 16ths is much more logical than into 10ths, if you think about it.

no.


A foot is a unit of measure that evolved over hundreds of years of human experience. A meter is the distance light travels in a vacuum in as much time as it takes light to travel a meter (since the definition was invented to fit the distance, not vice versa...)

Hmm... which seems more logical?

There meter was invented during the french revolution (around 1789) and they didn't know the speed of the light at that moment. The definition of a meter changed after and scientists choose the distance light travels because it is not something that can change.

The metre was originally defined to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to either Pole.

This reminds me of a poster my 10th grade chemistry teacher had on the front of her desk:

"If we were meant to use the metric system, we would have 10 fingers and 10 toes."

^^ the US might be more used to the imperial system, but it does not mean its better. and why would you not want to be familiar with both systems? what would be so horrible in having to convert? i guess as someone who knows both im just smarter than you and rest of the nation who struggles figuring out that one meter is a little over 3 feet and can figure out without using google that 400m is around 1300ft

Temperatures especially. After a while the formula becomes unnecessary. You remember that 68=20, 86=30, etc. and extrapolate from there. It's very useful this week, talking to European friends about their heatwave. :P

Gosh, we reached 40 degrees here in Italy! That's too much for me! :D

Some say a transition from imp. to metric would be too difficult... remember, four years ago, how many europeans had to change thier value!!

And the quantification of money is more based on personal "feeling" than measurements... I mean, when I use a different value for the first time, I'm never sure of how much money I'm spending.
How much for a can of Coke? Some bread? A tiny car?

...while for everyday measurements it's not so "vague", you learn soon how much bread is a kilogram of bread.
On the highway, if you see the "1000 meters" sign and then the "500 meters" one, you can easily figure out where your exit is, even without stopping and measuring the remaining space with a ruler :)


So, I we've been able to swap to EUR, it will be much easier for the americans to get acquainted to metric system ;)

Temperatures especially. After a while the formula becomes unnecessary. You remember that 68=20, 86=30, etc. and extrapolate from there. It's very useful this week, talking to European friends about their heatwave. :P

One thing (of many!) that bugs me about most UK newspapers is that they always talk about "sub-zero" temperatures when we have a cold snap, but then trumpet the fact that it's "101.4 degrees!!" in a heatwave. Fucktards.

Metric is SI, so if your learning somthing in the scientific area of study you have to use it, unless you want to be ignorent.

I don't understand Imperial, it's not logical, I know more about Chains and leauges and fathoms then Imperial, from books and stuff.
And about the cost, it wouldn't cost much, when a roadsign needs to be replaced just chuck up a Metric one instead, when foods get a new package design just convert the diet table into metric ect.

One thing (of many!) that bugs me about most UK newspapers is that they always talk about "sub-zero" temperatures when we have a cold snap, but then trumpet the fact that it's "101.4 degrees!!" in a heatwave. Fucktards.
Fucktards make the world revolve.

I think they say "101.4 degrees" to trump the same temperature "39 degrees" they have in France. :P

what are the physical definitions of foot (inch, yard) and fahrenheit?

what are the physical definitions of foot (inch, yard) and fahrenheit?

In the UK and USA at least, a foot is defined as exactly 0.3048 metres (so an inch is 0.0254 metres, or 25.4mm, and a yard is 0.9144 metres). A degree Fahrenheit is defined as five-ninths of a Kelvin.

EDIT: Just remembered that there is a slightly different definition for the "survey foot" in the USA, namely 1200/3937 metres. Note however that in both cases the definition of the foot is derived from the SI metre :)

I don't understand Imperial, it's not logical, I know more about Chains and leauges and fathoms then Imperial, from books and stuff.

Chains and fathoms are Imperial units:

1 chain = 100 links, 66 feet, or 22 yards, or 11 fathoms.
1 fathom = 6 feet or 2 yards.

Anyone have the story on why the US started making highways imperial and then stopped? Who was responsible?

Anyone have the story on why the US started making highways imperial and then stopped? Who was responsible?

I think you have it confused. US highway signs have historically always been in US customary units (which in terms of distance are the same thing as Imperial), with a few, mostly temporary, metric exceptions...

I think you have it confused. US highway signs have historically always been in US customary units (which in terms of distance are the same thing as Imperial), with a few, mostly temporary, metric exceptions...

I must have been asleep when i wrote that

According to this thread, there was a time when US highway laws directed new roads to be built to metric standards (1993). Why was this changed back to imperial?

The one which could be divided in an easier way, in 10, 100, 1000... to get always the same units :)
Units have to be used by common people, not defined. Who minds of the scientific definition of the meter in everyday life! :scouserd:


Don't take this as an offence, but what kind of modern measurement system can still use those "strange" units?
Yard, feet, inches, why not an arm or an hand? Why don't we use an elbow for measurements? :lol:
I know that those are fixed as standards... but the question is that they don't work in a simple way.

Gosh, I can divide in a moment some kilometers by centimeters... try to divide miles by inches, what a mess!!

1 foot = 12 inches. Then, 1 mile = 5280 feet.
1 square foot = 144 sq. inches. 1 square miles = ... oh, WTF! :bash:

So, tell me without a calculator how many sq.inches there are in 1 sq. mile!! :runaway:

100 cm = 1 meter ... 1000 meters = 1 km
10000 square cm = 1 sq. meter, simply because it's 100^2!

Our original question:
1 km = 10^5 cm
so, simply 1 sq.km= 10^10 cm!

You only have to cut and add some zeros! That's so simple! :)
Once you get one, you get the whole system... I really never understood the existence of the imperial system in a modern, science-based world :|

No kidding! Imperial conversion, when I have to do it, drives me BONKERS! Very colourful example too, made me laugh.

I have another example similar to the one Wilhelm275 posted. Today somebody was joking about how he would probably "drink his body weight in beer" on a stag weekend, so I instantly wondered how much beer that was.

Well, in S.I. units it's easy. I weigh 70kg, so that would be about 70 litres of beer.

In imperial I weigh about 11 stones, which is 154 pounds, which is (and I had to think for a minute how many ounces were in a pound) 2,464 ounces. 2,464 fluid ounces equals 123.2 pints. Not quite as easy!

I know one thing that killed kilometers in the US: the government's habit of rounding speed limits down to the nearest whole multiple of 10. I guarantee that there would have been a groundswell of popular support for metric signage had the metric speed limits been higher than the imperial ones.

The funniest one I read about, though, was a "44km/h" sign that was vandalized into oblivion within a matter of days by enraged drivers (this was back when the speed limit was still 55mph and about as close to universally detested as a law could get).

44mph? Where was that? That's such a random-seeming number!

I've kindof wrapped myself around the centigrade system. kindof

44mph? Where was that? That's such a random-seeming number!
I think it was 30mph. Had they marked the metric speed limit as 50km/h, people would have been happy.

Oh right, 44kmh. That's 27.5mph, isn't it?

Remember our R&D and Science uses the metric system like everybody else, so why make my grandmother learn that her quart is now 0.91 liters?

Because the grandmothers of the world are on their way out. Don't hold back the kids of the world and accustom them to obsolete, archaic units to keep them compatible with them.

On the other hand, we can destroy all the modern technology in the world, so that the grannies won't have to stand puzzled, confused and dumbfounded whenever they have to withdraw money from a newly upgraded bank machine.

Mind you, I'm one of those hyperprogressivists who types on a Dvorak keyboard. I have a feeling I'm quite alone on this.

In America we're used to imperial, and I don't know where the pro-metric lobby gets its jollies, but it should quit trying to make the entire world think alike. Celebrate our differences, fools.

The Romans, their European subjects, and their modern descendants in the Western world should have continued to use Roman numerals, whereas only those Arab Islamic camel jockeys and terrorists should use decimal digits.

http://www.metricsucks.org/ramblings.html

I LOVE this website

What would life be like if the English standard system didn't exist?

The Indy 500 would be the Indy 804.67; there would also be the Daytona 804.67

A football field would be 91.44 meters long

Jules Verne would never have written 96561 kilometers under the sea

A 9 pound hammer would be known as a 4.0823 kilogram hammer

Peter Piper would have had to pick 7570.8 cubic centimeters of pickled peppers

14515 kilograms and what do your get? Another day older and a deeper in debt.

Top fuel drag racers would be doing the 0.40234 kilometer in under 5 seconds

Give him 2.54 centimeters, he'll take 1.6093 Kilometers

You'd have to order 236.58 milliliters of coffe

Because the grandmothers of the world are on their way out. Don't hold back the kids of the world and accustom them to obsolete, archaic units to keep them compatible with them.

On the other hand, we can destroy all the modern technology in the world, so that the grannies won't have to stand puzzled, confused and dumbfounded whenever they have to withdraw money from a newly upgraded bank machine.

Mind you, I'm one of those hyperprogressivists who types on a Dvorak keyboard. I have a feeling I'm quite alone on this.
How much do they cost???

Metric measurements is ok, I guess

But the Celcius so-called "temperature scale" is dangerous and evil :(

Celsius is better than Farenheit in that it is based entirely on water (ie: 0 degrees is the temperature water freezes at, while it boils at 100)...but it still makes no sense to have negative temperature because--and i am getting very scientific here--it doesnt make sense to have negative particle movement.

In short: temperature should be measured in Kelvin :D

It is now 301 degrees outside

http://www.metricsucks.org/ramblings.html

I LOVE this website

What would life be like if the English standard system didn't exist?

The Indy 500 would be the Indy 804.67; there would also be the Daytona 804.67

A football field would be 91.44 meters long

Jules Verne would never have written 96561 kilometers under the sea

A 9 pound hammer would be known as a 4.0823 kilogram hammer

Peter Piper would have had to pick 7570.8 cubic centimeters of pickled peppers

14515 kilograms and what do your get? Another day older and a deeper in debt.

Top fuel drag racers would be doing the 0.40234 kilometer in under 5 seconds

Give him 2.54 centimeters, he'll take 1.6093 Kilometers

You'd have to order 236.58 milliliters of coffe

It's completly silly. If the English standard system didn't exist, these expressions would not have existed... It would have been Indy 800. A football field would be 90 meters long, etc.... And I feel francophobia on this page http://www.metricsucks.org/history.html

"It is IMPOSSIBLE to divide a meter by three, because you get
0.333333333 etc meters"

Are these guys completly retards ? It's just like saying you can't divide a mile by three, because you get 0.333333333333 miles. :scouserd:

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Until you can spell "imperial" correctly, i will continue to question your credibility.

What many people here fail to realize is that the metric system has not completely taken over in many countries (well this is from a canadian's perspective). We measure speed and distance in kilometers, volume in litres. Officially we measure weights in grams/kilograms, but everyone still measures themselves by feet/inches (i am 6'1"), and pounds for weight. I have yet to meet someone who is 214cm tall and 70kg.

How much do they cost???

Nothing at all. The Dvorak keyboard layout option is available on the operating system with the exact same keyboard that you already have. You'll just have to familiarize yourself with the key arrangement of the characters, since the keycaps won't match them.

Well, even in the non-metric USA, metric measurement firmly exists in some applications:

* measurement of weights where greater precision than a half ounce is required (grams or milligrams)

* measurement of volumes where precision greater than a half ounce is required (milliliters or cubic centimeters)

* basically, wherever an imperial unit specific to the use in question doesn't exist and fractions would otherwise be necessary. In America, there's nothing unusual about specifying the displacement of an engine in liters, but expressing its power in horsepower. Diamonds are weighed by the carat, but dimensioned in millimeters.

It's completly silly. If the English standard system didn't exist, these expressions would not have existed... It would have been Indy 800. A football field would be 90 meters long, etc.... And I feel francophobia on this page http://www.metricsucks.org/history.html

"It is IMPOSSIBLE to divide a meter by three, because you get
0.333333333 etc meters"

Are these guys completly retards ? It's just like saying you can't divide a mile by three, because you get 0.333333333333 miles. :scouserd:

Obviously you don't understand that those expressions are jokes.

A while back (I am not sure if it is still in effect) the US gov't decided to convert everything into the metric system. In school, we are definitely taught the metric system. Since 7th grade, ALL measurements for ANY science class must be in metric, I am sure that this is consistent with most schools in the US. Even with that, I still cannot relate 300m to whatever its US customary system equivalent is. With temperature, I am a little better, because I remember that 98.6' = 37'.

Also, for the Britons, about what percentage of the time (in normal, non-scientific, everyday life) do you use the imperial system? I thought that only the US used the imperial system. That's pretty bad, too, as my grandma was born in the UK.

Also, for the Britons, about what percentage of the time (in normal, non-scientific, everyday life) do you use the imperial system? I thought that only the US used the imperial system. That's pretty bad, too, as my grandma was born in the UK.

Most of the time. Its worse than the US too. They weigh themselves in stone, but luckily avoid slugs.

Of course, Im sure you grandmother will be able to recite the old money system, which was also not decimal based. Some things take time, unless the government wants to go as far as to ban the mention of the imperial system in media and so on. Obviously, theres no real need to do so.

Nobody is being hurt because theyre using the imperial system in daily life. Pounds, farenheight, inches, its fine. The problem comes when you need it for industry or science, when inches just arent convenient and you need something smaller or bigger.

i have never seen a single sign in metric system..

I'm a proud Central American who uses the metric system, but I'm cool with the imperial one, cause part of my family is from the U.S. I guess you get used to the system you grow up with, whether it's metric (honestly the best), imperial, measuring with a rock or a stick, ...

But if either the metric or the imperial system had to take over the world, it would definitely be the....metric one!
But everyone should feel free to use the system they personally are OK with.

In Nicaragua they still using the imperial system, i heard that the nicaraguan government wanted to switch to the metric system but people got confuse so they preffer the imperial system.

i have never seen a single sign in metric system..

Interestingly, there are metric distance signs on the 580 between the 880 and the 680 in California, I have no idea for what reasons, but the "distance to city" signs have mileages in miles and kilometers

Interestingly, there are metric distance signs on the 580 between the 880 and the 680 in California, I have no idea for what reasons, but the "distance to city" signs have mileages in miles and kilometers

i havent seen it yet.

Here are some examples of signs that use both metric and English measurements in Maine and New Hampshire...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/410506143_e10cebd8e0_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/410506152_175404ea96_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/177/410506165_7dea8a2b7e_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/410506172_f63e8ba572_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/410506176_d37c533cfd_o.jpg

Man its just hte stupid old people holding the US back from joining the rest of the world. Most of my cousins in the US have no problem understanding metric since you can't do science without metric and hence they are quite proficient with it. And also, all you people saying its the US's business whether they switch to metric or not, you really need to go learn how this world works. Since the US uses imperial, students all over the world taking engineering are also forced to learn imperial in order to take out the risk of not understanding a measurement if something comes from the US. And learning to use such an illogical system where they basically just came up with random numbers for moving between units is very annoying.

I don't make a big deal out of it. I was born and raised in a country that adopted metric system some 80 years ago, so I think in metres, kilogrammes, litres, etc. After coming to the US, I found out that I would be perfectly fine staying metric since all the products sold in stores have metric units, and at home we always measure everything in metric system. Besides, I replaced my Imperial speedometer with the one that measures only in metric, so no matter where I drive, my speed is always in km/h :)

In Nicaragua they still using the imperial system, i heard that the nicaraguan government wanted to switch to the metric system but people got confuse so they preffer the imperial system.
Dude, are you really from Nicaragua? :lol: Because you know... Nicaragua has been metric for about 100 years! All the signs there are posted in metric units:

http://www.1-costaricalink.com/costa_rica_pictures/nicaragua_penas_blancas_san_jorge_picture/nicaragua_penas_blancas_san_jorge_picture_11b.jpg

http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Nicaragua-Reise/Grafiken-Nic/Verkehrsmittel/02-Porto-Cabezas.jpg

Same for me, I've lived in both places, and I can readily interchange the two systems (weight, length, volume)... all you really have to remember is 1 mi = 1.6 km, 1 kg = 2.2 lb, 1 gal = 3.9 L, 1 in = 2.54 cm, and that's pretty much it, I guess I can do mental calculations for rough estimates pretty well.

Delaware uses metric "mile markers" on Route 1, the expressway going from the Wilmington/Newark are to Dover. President CLinton decided to use Route 1 as one of the test sites into using the metric system on roads back in the mid 1990's, when Route 1 was built. Exits are not numbered in increments or by mileage, but by kilometers. I believe that distances were also in kilometers ("SMYRNA 5 KM", for example), but those were switched to miles if they were.

Gladisimo
Being comfortbale with both systems is understandable, but do you think in metric or customary units? For instance, when someone says "50 metres", would you immdeiately know how far it is? Same for 150 feet? As for me, I still need 1-2 seconds to convert from feet to metres in order to understand what length it is.

Interesting notion, I suppose for me, it depends on the context of what is being measured. For example, for volumes, I often think in gallons for fuel, rather than liters, but for most other things (mostly for drinks and engine displacement, I'm used to thinking in liters and milliliters. For lengths, I'm almost indifferent in terms of height, (I'm both 5'10" and 178 cm) and for distance I'm more used to miles and inches, while for weight, I'm more used to pounds.

I suppose this is a result of the context of daily life I'm exposed to, since drinks usually come in 500mL or 2 L bottles, whereas distances are measured in miles, and height in feet and inches, while weight around here are usually in pounds.

Dude, are you really from Nicaragua? :lol: Because you know... Nicaragua has been metric for about 100 years! All the signs there are posted in metric units:

http://www.1-costaricalink.com/costa_rica_pictures/nicaragua_penas_blancas_san_jorge_picture/nicaragua_penas_blancas_san_jorge_picture_11b.jpg

http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Nicaragua-Reise/Grafiken-Nic/Verkehrsmittel/02-Porto-Cabezas.jpg

but they use pounds haha

I've never had a problem alternating, I have to use the metric system extensively in science.

The reason why not much people support going metric is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the reason. People don't want to change to a new system that is different than the one that they learned when they were little. It will take years for the transition, if it ever happens, to be successful.

The U.S. will not switch unless they have to right now. It would cost an absolute fortune to change all the signs, text-books etc...

The most logical way of doing it would be state by state, all at once would be too much.

The U.S. will not switch unless they have to right now. It would cost an absolute fortune to change all the signs, text-books etc...

The most logical way of doing it would be state by state, all at once would be too much.

You'll have to count on some of the more progressive and cosmopolitan states (eg. California) to take the first steps on this, and the hick red(neck) states to catch on last.

I wonder if it would be in violation of any federal laws for any states to go ahead and change their street signs and school curriculum to metric.

They teach metric in science, by the way (no math books, but any quantifying science, eg Chemistry. Physics use both systems)

Why?? Do they like confusing people or something.

It's like asking Americans why they use the imperial system, very confusing confusing to the entire rest of the world.

^ I think right now we just have the "sorry, it's not our problem" take on the situation. It takes some sort of incentive to make people go through a change like that, and today we just don't have anything MAKING people want to change.

Here are some examples of signs that use both metric and English measurements in Maine and New Hampshire...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/410506143_e10cebd8e0_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/170/410506152_175404ea96_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/177/410506165_7dea8a2b7e_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/131/410506172_f63e8ba572_o.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/410506176_d37c533cfd_o.jpg


That's interesting but as a U.S. driver I would totally ignore the metric measurement. I "know" and can "feel" what a mile is like but if you tell me 1.6km I have to convert that shit back to miles.

Canadian here, who gets influenced by the american media enough to be able to convert most.

however, you ask for my height or weight in metric. I honestly couldn't tell you. Temperatures I think in Celsius but can get over to Fahrenheit with relative ease. Distance, metric of course (Getting used to distances in the longer mile is a pain in the butt, merely cause its much longer than a km)

I think metric in the USA will happen eventually, as the younger generation gets educated and familiar with metric, some states (like the aforementioned California) may make the switch on their own, causing other states to follow suit eventually leading to one state to be the only imperial state left and be the stubborn one out, but yet celebrated and noted for staying with tradition (kinda like Saskatchewan in Canada not participating in daylight savings time)

I don't see the logic in the mile-system, there are no 1000 yards in a mile but some 1760. That's doesn't make sense. The metricsystem is more logical i guess, a 1000 meters is one kilometer.

But, i can imagine, when a whole country is adjusted to the mile system, you don't throw that easily overboard, and pick the metrical system.

I don't see the logic in the mile-system, there are no 1000 yards in a mile but some 1760. That's doesn't make sense. The metricsystem is more logical i guess, a 1000 meters is one kilometer.

But, i can imagine, when a whole country is adjusted to the mile system, you don't throw that easily overboard, and pick the metrical system.

It's not logical but it's what works for the U.S. It's like saying English is more logical because it only has 26 letters in the alphabet vs. the many characters in the Chinese "alphabet." If you grew up speaking Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) it would be easier than English. When we grow up thinking 1 mile = 5280 feet, it's easier to comprehend than 1km = 1000m.

In the U.K. I was surprised to see that they also use miles on their highways but instead of measuring in fractions and feet, they used yards for exits and other short distance measurements. Since I'm not used to seeing "yards" on the highway here in the U.S, it was still hard for me to get a feel for how much time I had when the sign said the exit was 200yds. Now tell me the exit is 1 mile, 1/2 mile, 2500ft, or 1000ft and I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's not logical but it's what works for the U.S. It's like saying English is more logical because it only has 26 letters in the alphabet vs. the many characters in the Chinese "alphabet." If you grew up speaking Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) it would be easier than English. When we grow up thinking 1 mile = 5280 feet, it's easier to comprehend than 1km = 1000m.

In the U.K. I was surprised to see that they also use miles on their highways but instead of measuring in fractions and feet, they used yards for exits and other short distance measurements. Since I'm not used to seeing "yards" on the highway here in the U.S, it was still hard for me to get a feel for how much time I had when the sign said the exit was 200yds. Now tell me the exit is 1 mile, 1/2 mile, 2500ft, or 1000ft and I know exactly what you're talking about.

That's why they try to standardize it in terms of science, when having those kind of units would be immensely frustrating to work with.

I think your example is perfect, it 1) illustrates the inconvenience of the Imperial system, since a mile is 1760 yards, its harder to get a feel for how much 200 yds. is, than if it were base 10, and 2) it shows that even with the same measurement system, the acclimatization of the way in which those units are portrayed and used also plays a factor.

Well to all the people in the US, saying they are just used to it, didnt they have same opposition in the UK when the UK currency wasn't base 10 and instead had some random numbers going from pence to dines to pounds and shit. Once the change was forced on them, people (even the old people) got used to it and realized how much more logical base 10 is and how much easier it makes everyday work. And on top of that, foreigners could ifnally understand british money. US using imperial is the same problem. The majority of the world can hardly understand it and the only way to really get a sense of it unlike base 10 is if you were brought up with it.

FM, have you ever driven anywhere except USA and UK? ;) Based on your own account, you get extremely frustrated if the distance is in kilometres and if there are more major cities indicated on the directional signs than you are used to :D

Well to all the people in the US, saying they are just used to it, didnt they have same opposition in the UK when the UK currency wasn't base 10 and instead had some random numbers going from pence to dines to pounds and shit. Once the change was forced on them, people (even the old people) got used to it and realized how much more logical base 10 is and how much easier it makes everyday work. And on top of that, foreigners could ifnally understand british money. US using imperial is the same problem. The majority of the world can hardly understand it and the only way to really get a sense of it unlike base 10 is if you were brought up with it.

then the problem is that there is not enough of a drive for the system to change, i suppose, its not a major problem that needs to be addressed immediately

Why is metric the way of the future? I think Imperical is better. The world isn't divided up in 1s, 10s and 1000s. Things are imperfect and I think Imperical (U.S. Customary or whatever) fits our country better.

Sorry, but the truth is, the world is divided into 1s, 10s, and 1000s. The reason metric makes sense is because humans use the decimal system. This reason alone makes metric much more systematic and easy to use. Let me ask you this, when you learnt the multiplication tables, which did you find easiest except for the 1s row? The 10s, because all you have to do is add zeros.

And the argument that the system fits your country better is all in your mind. As you've said yourself, you've been raised on it, and it makes sense for planners to build things to whole number measurements, so what is 1 mile turns out to be 1.6.... kilometers doesn't happen because metric "doesn't fit."

But its the US's choice anyways. You can't blame them for loving or being raised in the Imperial System. That's the only legitimate reason you can claim for choosing miles over kilometers.

It's not logical but it's what works for the U.S. It's like saying English is more logical because it only has 26 letters in the alphabet vs. the many characters in the Chinese "alphabet." If you grew up speaking Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) it would be easier than English. When we grow up thinking 1 mile = 5280 feet, it's easier to comprehend than 1km = 1000m.

In the U.K. I was surprised to see that they also use miles on their highways but instead of measuring in fractions and feet, they used yards for exits and other short distance measurements. Since I'm not used to seeing "yards" on the highway here in the U.S, it was still hard for me to get a feel for how much time I had when the sign said the exit was 200yds. Now tell me the exit is 1 mile, 1/2 mile, 2500ft, or 1000ft and I know exactly what you're talking about.

A little tidbit of info: Chinese, in fact, will sometimes use a character to mimic a sound instead of abstractly representing that character's meaning. Also, Chinese characters are composed of smaller elements that can add to the meaning, therefore, if you're able to break down the composition of a character, you can sometimes deduce the logic behind it.

As for the English alphabet, I once read an analysis that presents a spectrum of entirely phonetic to entirely symbolic languages. English was nowhere near being entirely phonetic, so to compare English with the metric system is fallacious.

Anyways, languages are a different issues entirely, but it was an interesting comparison you've made, FM. BTW, I've got no problem with the US not being metric, its entirely their choice.

Sorry, but the truth is, the world is divided into 1s, 10s, and 1000s.

Nah, it's divided into halves, thirds, quarters, eighths, etc. much more easily than tenths. If we had a different number of fingers other than ten, we would certainly use a different base counting system, not to mention a different form of the metric system (though it would probably be similar in mechanism). Face it, mathematically, ten is not a very useful number, evenly divisible only by itself, two, five and one. Twelve, for example, is evenly divisible by itself, six, four, three, two and one.

The customary system makes a lot of sense for the time it was invented, with the units based on easily identifiable everyday things, and then pared down to the ones most readily useful (we use feet and not hands because feet are more useful). Not only that, but they use the most common ratios, very important for a time when there weren't calculators. You have a foot-long length of string, you know how long a foot is, four inches (fold into three), three inches (fold into four), two inches (fold into three, then fold again), etc.

Metric might make more sense today, but before the modern era, customary/imperial, at least in linear measurement, kicked its ass. That's why no one used base 10 until the French.

^ With the advent of binary logic based technology, you suppose we'll switch over to a numeric system with a base that's a power of 2?

^ With the advent of binary logic based technology, you suppose we'll switch over to a numeric system with a base that's a power of 2?

Nope, we've been using our fingers to count for too long. Besides, do you think anyone could read this: 100011101011011010011001, without having to think about it?

Nope, we've been using our fingers to count for too long. Besides, do you think anyone could read this: 100011101011011010011001, without having to think about it?

How about base 8 or 16?

How about base 8 or 16?

Then the metric system doesn't work so well, and we're back to where we are today.

Nope, horribly inefficient base 10 is going to have to stay.

I was born Canadian and grew up with metric. I always think distance in km and speed in km/h. I have no clue about miles until I went to the states 2 years ago; one very nice American lady explained it to me on the airplane. She said "think of a clock with 60 minutes around the clock. 60 mins = 60 miles if one drives 60 miles/hour." I thought to myself "DUH!!!" So it makes it easy to determine how far cities are...like if seattle is 180 miles away, that is 180 minutes drive or 3 hours drive. And, if an exit is just 1 mile away, then it's just another minute till one reaches the exit. Pretty simple...I can understand why the States is quite stubborn to change to metric. If it works, it works...for transportation anyways. But of course, every 100 km is 1 hours drive if driving 100 km/h. That's easy too. I still haven't found a good way to understand Fahrenheit though unless I convert to Celcius. But I guess it's what one is used to when growing up.

By the way, I find one mile quite far...too far...compared to having one kilometre left till the exit. LOL :)

Cheers

The truth is that today's science uses only metric system. Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Engineering - they are all metric. Some units that Americans use in daily life such as Volts and Watts are derivatives from metric units. All electrical devices use integrated circuits that are measured in micro- and nanometres and that use same Volts and Amperes. Hell, all customary units are defined in terms of metric and not otherwise.

I do understand that an average Joe Brown would not probably give a damn about all this scientific nonsense as long as his metric car can drive him to work and his 100 Watt 120 Volt bulb produces enough light and his metric computer can take him to his favourite adult entertainment sites :D But then he also can't call metric system the Devil's tool :lol:

The truth is that today's science uses only metric system. Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Engineering - they are all metric. Some units that Americans use in daily life such as Volts and Watts are derivatives from metric units. All electrical devices use integrated circuits that are measured in micro- and nanometres and that use same Volts and Amperes. Hell, all customary units are defined in terms of metric and not otherwise.

I do understand that an average Joe Brown would not probably give a damn about all this scientific nonsense as long as his metric car can drive him to work and his 100 Watt 120 Volt bulb produces enough light and his metric computer can take him to his favourite adult entertainment sites :D But then he also can't call metric system the Devil's tool :lol:

The thing about it is, in classes (in high school) they still use imperial units for simple problems (eg If a car is going at a speed of 200 ft/s and it slows down at a constant rate of 20 ft/s^2, how long will the car travel before it comes to a complete stop?) Of course in a case like this unit is not an issue, but i think it would be best to standradize that in science classes.

Nah, it's divided into halves, thirds, quarters, eighths, etc. much more easily than tenths. If we had a different number of fingers other than ten, we would certainly use a different base counting system, not to mention a different form of the metric system (though it would probably be similar in mechanism). Face it, mathematically, ten is not a very useful number, evenly divisible only by itself, two, five and one. Twelve, for example, is evenly divisible by itself, six, four, three, two and one.

The customary system makes a lot of sense for the time it was invented, with the units based on easily identifiable everyday things, and then pared down to the ones most readily useful (we use feet and not hands because feet are more useful). Not only that, but they use the most common ratios, very important for a time when there weren't calculators. You have a foot-long length of string, you know how long a foot is, four inches (fold into three), three inches (fold into four), two inches (fold into three, then fold again), etc.

Metric might make more sense today, but before the modern era, customary/imperial, at least in linear measurement, kicked its ass. That's why no one used base 10 until the French.

It isn't horribly inefficient. True, tangibly halves, quarters, and eights are more realistic. But who in the world today measures stuff using their feet? Even today, you use a yardstick, a ruler, etc.

When you bring those measurements on paper, it makes perfect sense to use metric because our numbering system is decimal. True, fractions make inches and feet more versatile, but when its on paper, it doesn't help you calculate at all. Whereas in meters, you don't mind ugly decimals because you can just move the decimal point to suit whatever your scale is.

I suppose if we taught kids how to be acquainted with binary or hex before decimal, an alternative form of metric could be utilized.

The thing about it is, in classes (in high school) they still use imperial units for simple problems (eg If a car is going at a speed of 200 ft/s and it slows down at a constant rate of 20 ft/s^2, how long will the car travel before it comes to a complete stop?) Of course in a case like this unit is not an issue, but i think it would be best to standradize that in science classes.

Those were a pain in the ass as I remember. I always had to have those conversion tables at hand, whereas with metric...

Time is another scale that makes calculations difficult.

It isn't horribly inefficient. True, tangibly halves, quarters, and eights are more realistic. But who in the world today measures stuff using their feet? Even today, you use a yardstick, a ruler, etc.

When you bring those measurements on paper, it makes perfect sense to use metric because our numbering system is decimal. True, fractions make inches and feet more versatile, but when its on paper, it doesn't help you calculate at all. Whereas in meters, you don't mind ugly decimals because you can just move the decimal point to suit whatever your scale is.

I suppose if we taught kids how to be acquainted with binary or hex before decimal, an alternative form of metric could be utilized.

No, I agree. As I said, metric probably makes more sense today, with calculators and all. A foot has no real relation to anyone's foot size, it's mostly derived from a bunch of measurements that once had to do with someone's foot size. It's just as arbitrary as a meter.

One more thing, why is being able to move the decimal point all that important? In physics class, I would be docked points if I put 2.5 km/s as opposed to 2500 m/s (just for an example, not real life in the least bit). Same as if I put 25 cm/s as opposed to 0.25 m/s. It's almost as if the SI actually got rid of the biggest advantage of the metric system! Only way it really helps is when you have to convert to the base measurement, which in a real-life situation, isn't really all that important often.

The biggest true advantage of the metric system is that most of the other units of measurement in a scientific context are based on metric measurements.

One more thing, why is being able to move the decimal point all that important? In physics class, I would be docked points if I put 2.5 km/s as opposed to 2500 m/s (just for an example, not real life in the least bit). Same as if I put 25 cm/s as opposed to 0.25 m/s. It's almost as if the SI actually got rid of the biggest advantage of the metric system!

Regardless of the the point you would loose or whatever 2.5 km/s is just the same as 2500 m/s and 25 cm/s is the same as 0.25 m/s.


The biggest true advantage of the metric system is that most of the other units of measurement in a scientific context are based on metric measurements.

:crazy: :weird: :crazy:


Really man, you may not want to switch to metric, and that's ok... it would cost alot of money for the US to change to the metric sistem, but claiming that the imperial system is just as good as metric and that metric isn't obviously better in every regard is just stupid.

I think the metric system is a lot more logical than imperial, seeing as metric is base 10.

Granted, I can totally understand why imperial feels better to Americans, myself included. It's what we grew up with, and the units we think in. Conversions to different imperial units, like miles to feet or whatever, aren't very necessary in daily tasks. Any single task is associated with one or two single units... such as driving: miles and miles per hour.

I'm not adverse to the metric system though, as I was exposed to it when I was young and visiting relatives in Asia. I can do many of the conversions in my head.

Those signs in Maine are weird though... I could focus on one or the other, but mixing the two systems seems a bit weird.

No, I agree. As I said, metric probably makes more sense today, with calculators and all. A foot has no real relation to anyone's foot size, it's mostly derived from a bunch of measurements that once had to do with someone's foot size. It's just as arbitrary as a meter.

One more thing, why is being able to move the decimal point all that important? In physics class, I would be docked points if I put 2.5 km/s as opposed to 2500 m/s (just for an example, not real life in the least bit). Same as if I put 25 cm/s as opposed to 0.25 m/s. It's almost as if the SI actually got rid of the biggest advantage of the metric system! Only way it really helps is when you have to convert to the base measurement, which in a real-life situation, isn't really all that important often.

The biggest true advantage of the metric system is that most of the other units of measurement in a scientific context are based on metric measurements.

The advantage is the conversion as well. For building height its easier to deal in meters, or for distances its easier to deal in kilometres, and with these measurements you know the scale of everything in terms of everything else, maybe not in fractions like 1/3 or 1/8, but in powers of 10. But as Rail Claimore says, these units are rarely converted, but when they are, metric is much easier.

maybe not in fractions like 1/3 or 1/8, but in powers of 10.

Which is much easiear! That's why metric is a base 10 system.

Time is another scale that makes calculations difficult.

Indeed. The system we use to measure time is not logical, so it's not good.

I'm not saying we should change to another system, but the fact is that hours, minutes and seconds suck, when compared to the metric system.

We should have a day with 10 big time units, each big time unit with 10 medium time minutes, and so on and so on. :)

Anyway, I guess that we'il have to stick to what we got. ;)

Regardless of the the point you would loose or whatever 2.5 km/s is just the same as 2500 m/s and 25 cm/s is the same as 0.25 m/s.

Right, but it doesn't matter that you CAN convert between them, because you aren't going to convert between them. No one says they're 1730 mm tall... they usually say either 173 cm or 1.73 m. The fact that you can convert by moving the decimal point has no real advantage in day to day activities. Unless you can give me a counterexample where the conversion in metric is absolutely necessary every day. Likewise, no one says that they are 74 inches tall, they say they are 6' 2". There's no need for converting, since everyone's speaking the same measurement language in the first place. I can't think of any English-speaking country that uses (or once used) yards for height, for example.


:crazy: :weird: :crazy:


Really man, you may not want to switch to metric, and that's ok... it would cost alot of money for the US to change to the metric sistem, but claiming that the imperial system is just as good as metric and that metric isn't obviously better in every regard is just stupid.

What's crazy about what I said? SI is going to stick around because of the volt, the ohm, the ampere, the joule, the candela, etc. are all based on the meter, the kilogram and the second. There's nothing crazy about that, and it's the biggest advantage the metric system has; our entire scientific establishment cannot exist in its current form without it.

I know that you were probably taught that the metric system was a great advance over the reactionary customary systems that were in place beforehand, but that doesn't mean one cannot carry out their daily activities without using that system effectively; the United States does it every day. The metric system isn't better in EVERY regard, it has its particular advantages, as does the customary system. Metric probably has more advantages, but if I didn't have a calculator, I'd rather calculate in customary, since the division is usually easier, if you stay with one base unit (which you usually do until the end). Not to mention, I've never used decimals after I got past pre-Algebra, fractions are so much easier to deal with.

I know that you were probably taught that the metric system was a great advance over the reactionary customary systems that were in place beforehand

Nop... We just accept the metrical system as it's what we've been using from birth.... We basicly don't even say how much better metric is nor do we usually talk about other systems(imperial) at school.

Just to say that we aren't taught how great metric is... we just realize that when we get a glimpse of other systems like the US customary system. ;)

Nop... We just accept the metrical system as it's what we've been using from birth.... We basicly don't even say how much better metric is nor do we usually talk about other systems(imperial) at school.

Just to say that we aren't taught how great metric is... we just realize that when we get a glimpse of other systems like the US customary system. ;)

There's your problem, it's just a glimpse... come over here, live here for a couple of years, you'll be using miles and pints :cheers: and pounds like the rest of us... resistance is futile... :lol: :lol: :lol:

This all boils down to almost all Americans being completely comfortable and fine with our system, and having absolutely no reason to change. It would be a "hardship" to them.

I can obviously see the reason for a change, but to your average American it is the exact same as how the rest of the world would react to switching to our system.

Until someone convinces the masses that they SHOULD change, they just won't. It's been proposed many times before, but people just don't want to bother being the ones who have to learn the system over again.

They're not stupid or assholes, they're just going along with their lives as normal and don't see why they should change. We don't drive in other countries, and aren't exposed to metrics - it's basically alien to us as far as distance measuring.

There's your problem, it's just a glimpse... come over here, live here for a couple of years, you'll be using miles and pints :cheers: and pounds like the rest of us... resistance is futile... :lol: :lol: :lol:

Obviously if I went to live in there I would have to get used to it. ;)
Adapting to miles wouldn't be dificult... it's pretty easy to convert miles to km's.

What is really hard is for example to measure my height in imperial units... convert to feet... to an exact number of feet, and then just add some inches... It's nuts!!! :nuts:

Oh... and convert fahrenheit to celsius is very difficult too... you just have to have an idea of how muchs ºC's correspond to 70ºF, 80ºF, etc... apart from the basic: 0ºC = 32ºF.... 0ºF=-18ºC.

Obviously if I went to live in there I would have to get used to it. ;)
Adapting to miles wouldn't be dificult... it's pretty easy to convert miles to km's.

What is really hard is for example to measure my height in imperial units... convert to feet... to an exact number of feet, and then just add some inches... It's nuts!!! :nuts:

As long as you remember that a meter is about three feet, it isn't that hard. Honestly, when converting to metric in daily use, I don't even think about trying to be exact. If someone is, say, 195 cm, I'll just say he's about 6' or so, since that's pretty close. Same with liters, they're pretty much equivalent to quarts in my head (even though there is a difference). A kilo is about two pounds, so just think of a pound as half a kilo. This ended up working out last time I was in Mexico, when I was the only one who realized that we wanted quite a bit less than 750 g of ham!


Oh... and convert fahrenheit to celsius is very difficult too... you just have to have an idea of how muchs ºC's correspond to 70ºF, 80ºF, etc... apart from the basic: 0ºC = 32ºF.... 0ºF=-18ºC.

Yeah, that's tricky. Usually, the cheap, expedient way is to subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit and then divide in half. It won't be exactly right, but close enough. Rarely, does anyone here care about the exact temperature; usually someone will say on a nice day "It's about 75" or on a cold day "It's in the 20s" or on a really hot day "It's pushing 100". The differences in degrees are small enough where it's not as important to be exact as it is in Celsius.

Right, but it doesn't matter that you CAN convert between them, because you aren't going to convert between them. No one says they're 1730 mm tall... they usually say either 173 cm or 1.73 m. The fact that you can convert by moving the decimal point has no real advantage in day to day activities. Unless you can give me a counterexample where the conversion in metric is absolutely necessary every day.
Here is how people use the units of length: if it is under 1 cm, then they use mm. If it is longer than one cm but shorter than 50 cm, people use cm. Then, they may say "half metre" instead of "50 cm", but the latter in not rare. In terms of my height, I may say either "182 cm" or "1-82". Distances under 1 km (short or long) are measured in metres, no exception. These examples give a better taste of how people do conversions in a daily life. Now, some more. If we assume that most liquids have the density of water (1 g/cm³) then you can momentarily convert mL into grammes and litres into kg. If you come to a store, you wouldn't ask for a "1/8 kg of cheese". You would say you need "150 g of cheese".


I know that you were probably taught that the metric system was a great advance over the reactionary customary systems that were in place beforehand
If 6 or more generations were brought up with the metric system, they wouldn't need to reassure themselves that metric system is really superior.


I'd rather calculate in customary, since the division is usually easier, if you stay with one base unit (which you usually do until the end). Not to mention, I've never used decimals after I got past pre-Algebra, fractions are so much easier to deal with.
You've got to be joking. Don't tell me it is easier to calculate 3/4 + 3/8 than 0.750 + 0.375.

Obviously if I went to live in there I would have to get used to it. ;)
Nope, not necessarily. I came to the USA almost 7 years ago, and still use metric units except for the long distance (miles). I know how to convert some widely used units such as pounds, inches/feet and gallons, but my brain still needs 2-3 seconds to do that. I undestand Fahrenheits as long as they are above 50º, but in a daily life I still use good old Celcii. As for liquid/solid ounces, I still have no idea how much it is. :ohno:

If someone is, say, 195 cm, I'll just say he's about 6' or so, since that's pretty close.


In small numbers it matters, but not in bigger cases! 195 cm is actually 6'4/5, which when you're talking about height of a person, makes quite a difference!

You've got to be joking. Don't tell me it is easier to calculate 3/4 + 3/8 than 0.750 + 0.375.

Sure it is. 3/4 is 6/8 which plus 3/8 equals 9/8, or 1.125. Sure, putting the decimals in the calculator is easier, but when working by hand, fractions win out almost every time. That's why after we started Algebra in school, we never worked in decimals in math class again.

In small numbers it matters, but not in bigger cases! 195 cm is actually 6'4/5, which when you're talking about height of a person, makes quite a difference!

OK, you're right there. Those three extra inches do come into play, especially in height.


If we assume that most liquids have the density of water (1 g/cm³) then you can momentarily convert mL into grammes and litres into kg. If you come to a store, you wouldn't ask for a "1/8 kg of cheese". You would say you need "150 g of cheese".

That's how it was done in Mexico. However, given my already-stated love for fractions, I'm sure I'd still do it with fractions even if we converted. :nuts:

For the record, I appreciate these discussions. I certainly wouldn't have much of a problem if the US converted to metric; however, I think that healthy debate is very important, and that it helps us all understand each other better.

Distances under 1 km (short or long) are measured in metres, no exception.

I use hectometres and dekametres :)

I use hectometres and dekametres :)

:crazy2: :laugh: You've got to be the first one who does it.

:crazy2: :laugh: You've got to be the first one who does it.

We have hectometer posts along the motorway, instead of milemarkers. But Decameters?

We have hectometer posts along the motorway, instead of milemarkers. But Decameters?
I meant units that you use in your daily life. You would never say "3 hectometres" when you are giving directions to someone. Instead, you would say "300 metres", right? :lol:

No, I agree. As I said, metric probably makes more sense today, with calculators and all. A foot has no real relation to anyone's foot size, it's mostly derived from a bunch of measurements that once had to do with someone's foot size. It's just as arbitrary as a meter.

One more thing, why is being able to move the decimal point all that important? In physics class, I would be docked points if I put 2.5 km/s as opposed to 2500 m/s (just for an example, not real life in the least bit). Same as if I put 25 cm/s as opposed to 0.25 m/s. It's almost as if the SI actually got rid of the biggest advantage of the metric system! Only way it really helps is when you have to convert to the base measurement, which in a real-life situation, isn't really all that important often.

The biggest true advantage of the metric system is that most of the other units of measurement in a scientific context are based on metric measurements.

One reason why you probably got docked points off is
1) Because you didn't give the right units that was given in the question in the first place.
or 2) you didn't use the correct number of significant digits.

That's why metric continuous to be consistent.

One reason why you probably got docked points off is
1) Because you didn't give the right units that was given in the question in the first place.
or 2) you didn't use the correct number of significant digits.

That's why metric continuous to be consistent.

Then again, that's pretty pointless, isn't it? 2.5 km is the same as 2500 m, so why the need for conversion? It's just anal-retentive people having to get everything exactly right, and getting pissed off if it isn't, not to mention lording it over those who don't nearly care as much. Oh, and sig figs... show me a normal, non-science enthusiast who can even figure out how to do them right.

Besides, we are talking in an everyday context, not the highly specialized scientific realm, of which I have already stated SI is better for.

Besides, we are talking in an everyday context, not the highly specialized scientific realm, of which I have already stated SI is better for.
Believe it or not, outside of the USA people actually live in this so-called "scientific realm" doing decimal calculations and other related things. And you know what? They consider it an everyday life :lol:

Besides, what do you usually do if a fraction's denominator is not a power of 2? Something like 5/11 + 7/9.

^^ haha so true, its about time metric was adopted everywhere regardless of the problems it would cause in the US.

Why stifle progress for the sake of the old dinosaurs?

Believe it or not, outside of the USA people actually live in this so-called "scientific realm" doing decimal calculations and other related things. And you know what? They consider it an everyday life :lol:

Besides, what do you usually do if a fraction's denominator is not a power of 2? Something like 5/11 + 7/9.

Honestly, does it matter if it is represented as 2500 m or 2.5 km? You know what is being talked about either way, so the conversion is pretty much unnecessary. Give me an everyday occurrence where you would HAVE to convert between different scales. It's pretty rare, isn't it?

5 times 9 is 45. 7 times 11 is 77. 45+77 is 122. So it's 122/99. Which may seem unwieldy, but in a mathematical context is a hell of a lot more precise than 1.23232323232323232323..., especially when you have to do more work with the numbers. Besides, if we are talking about everyday measurements, 7/11 in. would be as absurd as measuring something as 113567 μm. Sure, there are areas where you would need that precision, but generally that is very specialized. Something that needs to be about that long would be standardized to 5/8 in. Just as the 113567 μm would be standardized to 114 or 115 mm.

Why stifle progress for the sake of the old dinosaurs?

Why "progress" when it is unnecessary? To make everyone else happy? What's wrong with sticking with something that works for you?

Give me an everyday occurrence where you would HAVE to convert between different scales. It's pretty rare, isn't it?

Foe example when you are on a freeway and you see a sign stating the next exit is in 300m. You automatically know that's 0.3 Km's, so you know how much is it.

If you have a sign stating the distance for the next exit in feet, you have no idea what part of a mile does that represent... and as you're used to distances in miles for roads, that sign in feet will confuse you... unlike the metric signs in roads where distances are measured in km's.


That's just an everyday exemple... there are tons of others.

Why "progress" when it is unnecessary? To make everyone else happy? What's wrong with sticking with something that works for you?

Why invent automobiles when horse carriages work?

How do you measure for example distances in a house or so in the US?
In metric, for a roam, it could be something like 4.5 x 5.6 m^2.

How do you do in there? I guess you measure it in feets... But feets and fractions of feets, or do you also use inches, like you do when measuring a person's height? :nuts:


Another great thing about metric scale is that we just need 1 scale in our rulers.
If someone who works with furniture is measuring a new piece, he willl just measure it with a ruler marked with mm's and cm's... and he can measure any distance with it.... be it 1.2m, 27 cm or 17mm.

How do you do in there? The rulers must have diferent scale I guess. 1 with inches... and another with feet, if you need to use feet. And what unit do you use for measures below inches?

Why invent automobiles when horse carriages work?

Exactly. ;)
The right answer for the reply ADCS made to your post. :okay:

Then again, that's pretty pointless, isn't it? 2.5 km is the same as 2500 m, so why the need for conversion?

Would you like to say it's 384,400,000 meters to the moon, or the diameter of a hydrogen atom is 0.000000000005 meters everytime?

It's just anal-retentive people having to get everything exactly right, and getting pissed off if it isn't, not to mention lording it over those who don't nearly care as much. Oh, and sig figs... show me a normal, non-science enthusiast who can even figure out how to do them right.

Besides, we are talking in an everyday context, not the highly specialized scientific realm, of which I have already stated SI is better for.

Isn't it more educationally beneficial for a school age child to be more in tune with the scientific community than with grandma and grandpa?

And what unit do you use for measures below inches?

Millimetres. One inch is 25,4 millimeters, makes sense, right? :nuts:

Why invent automobiles when horse carriages work?

Not even the same sort of thing. Horse carriages don't work nearly as well as cars do for most things we need to do on a daily basis. For most things, the two measurement systems work just as well. Otherwise, the US would be an undeveloped cesspool (which it's not, obviously).


Would you like to say it's 384,400,000 meters to the moon, or the diameter of a hydrogen atom is 0.000000000005 meters everytime?

That's silly and pedantic. Just as silly as saying it's 1,191,286,089 feet to the moon. No one works in those sort of scales (except in a scientific context, as I keep stating). Most people would immediately work with kilometers when talking about something as far away as the moon, a meter being exactly 1/1000 of a kilometer is not relevant information, unless you do have to convert, which in a scientific SI environment, is useful (which is why it is good for science and American scientists use it exclusively).

Isn't it more educationally beneficial for a school age child to be more in tune with the scientific community than with grandma and grandpa?

They certainly deal with grandma and grandpa more often than the scientific community. Most of them are not going to be scientists; those that do will learn SI.

You have to understand, for most Americans (and a good bit of the British, as well), this is akin to us telling the rest of the world that they are stupid for not speaking English exclusively. Not nearly on the scale of that, but the same sort of offense.

Foe example when you are on a freeway and you see a sign stating the next exit is in 300m. You automatically know that's 0.3 Km's, so you know how much is it.

If you have a sign stating the distance for the next exit in feet, you have no idea what part of a mile does that represent... and as you're used to distances in miles for roads, that sign in feet will confuse you... unlike the metric signs in roads where distances are measured in km's.


That's just an everyday exemple... there are tons of others.

Do you really think that "300m is 1/3 of a km, and thats how far I need to go" or do you think "300m is about this much farther away, better get to the right lane". I usually think the latter on the freeway, so when a sign says "Exit 1 mile" or "Exit 1/4 mile" or "Exit 1500 ft" I don't think of it as an exact measurement that needs to be converted, I just know about how far that is. 1/4 mi is very close, 1500 ft is a little farther, but pretty close, 1/2 mi is reasonably close, 3/4 mi is far enough away where there is some time to make a decision on whether or not I am exiting. 1 mile indicates that I need to pay attention to the upcoming exit.

That a quarter of a mile is 1320 ft or a half is 2640 is irrelevant, I know about how far away they are. No signmaker with any sort of common sense is going to put up those unfamiliar amounts. And that 2500m is 2.5km is irrelevant in much the same way, you pretty much know how far away they are. That Europe uses one style and Canada/Australia uses the other and both are interchangeable is a nice benefit, but hardly one that is used often enough to warrant a full-scale change. How about this, we change to metric and everyone drives on the right. Is that a fair exchange?

How do you measure for example distances in a house or so in the US?
In metric, for a roam, it could be something like 4.5 x 5.6 m^2.

How do you do in there? I guess you measure it in feets... But feets and fractions of feets, or do you also use inches, like you do when measuring a person's height? :nuts:


Another great thing about metric scale is that we just need 1 scale in our rulers.
If someone who works with furniture is measuring a new piece, he willl just measure it with a ruler marked with mm's and cm's... and he can measure any distance with it.... be it 1.2m, 27 cm or 17mm.

How do you do in there? The rulers must have diferent scale I guess. 1 with inches... and another with feet, if you need to use feet. And what unit do you use for measures below inches?

Square feet, which are made just the same way square meters are. A 2,500 square foot house is a nice sized house for a family.

Our rulers look like this:

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3016/ruler20steel2012in20paimp0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Usually, they're just a foot long, like the one there. For longer distances, we use yardsticks (which are 3 feet, that is, a yard, long) or tape measures, which usually go up to 6 feet. Yes, those are centimeters and millimeters on the other side, useful when working on European automobiles (and new American ones, which all use metric specifications now).

Below inches, we use half-inches, quarter-inches, eighths of inches, sixteenths of inches all the way to 32nds of inches. It works just fine, since often you don't need to be that precise, and most objects made in the US are standardized to at the very least 8ths of inches. A 16 mm wrench is about the same as a 5/8 in wrench, for example.

They certainly deal with grandma and grandpa more often than the scientific community. Most of them are not going to be scientists; those that do will learn SI.
Scientists, engineers, physicians, etc. There are benefits to mainstream society following the same standards as those in those professions, wouldn't you say? Those are highly regarded professions that children should be encouraged to strive for.

What's more, grandma and grandpa aren't going to be around forever.

Scientists, engineers, physicians, etc. There are benefits to the mainstream following those in those professions, wouldn't you say? Those are highly regarded professions that children should be encouraged to strive for.

What's more, grandma and grandpa aren't going to be around forever.

And they certainly are. Most good scientists, however, are not made that way, usually there is an interest in science that comes from even before schooling. Most scientists publish in English, but that doesn't mean that they speak it at home.

Grandma and grandpa certainly are going to die sooner or later, but when there are 100 million grandmas and grandpas, getting them all to follow a new system becomes increasingly difficult.

This may have been covered already, but I don't have the time to read every post here...didn't the U.S. plan to go all metric sometime back in the 70's? What caused this not to happen?

(I remember some radio and tv stations started giving the temps in celsius to get ready!...that quickly ended)

The metric system is really an easier system to understand, but Americans are rather hard-headed about such matters and what is familiar is what remains!

Metric measurements is ok, I guess

But the Celsius so-called "temperature scale" is dangerous and evil :(

Hehe, id say its very logical and easy to grasp, 0 degrees for when water freezes to ice and 100 degrees for when water boils in normal atmospheric pressureconditions. And everything else relative to that.

But id say kelvin is better than both celsius and fahrenheit, isn't it? :banana:

I guess celsius is better for regular temperaturemeasurements for weatherpurposes though becouse the contrast of using negative and positive values. you know its cold when its minus, and there is a significant difference between -20 and +20. Whereas 253.15 and 293.15 doesn't offer the same contrast.

^^I guess we'il now someone stating the Fahrenheit is much better, and that the 0ºF(-18ºC) is a much more usefull point than 0ºC. :nuts: :colgate:

The 0ºC is the most important point in temperature (weather wise) there is... undoubtedly... it's when things start to freeze, snow, etc... But i'm sure someone will come up with some excuse to say than in fact, the 0ºF is actually the point that's really important! :D

^^I guess we'il now someone stating the Fahrenheit is much better, and that the 0ºF(-18ºC) is a much more usefull point than 0ºC. :nuts: :colgate:

The 0ºC is the most important point in temperature (weather wise) there is... undoubtedly... it's when things start to freeze, snow, etc... But i'm sure someone will come up with some excuse to say than in fact, the 0ºF is actually the point that's really important! :D

Well, temperatures in Western Europe do tend to range from -18 to 38 C... maybe Gabriel Fahrenheit was on to something when he picked that exact temperature to be his zero.

And why is it when someone disagrees with you it's because of "some excuse"? Why can't two people (or societies) have completely legitimate reasons to do things differently?

^^Exactly from -18 to 38?!
Well... in here it's more like between 3 and 35.
In London It would be between -5 and 30... In Stocholm between -25 and 25... and so on.

So... no, there's really nothing special about -18ºC.

It is funny how some old-fashioned Americans are trying to justify Imperial measuremt system from "scientific" points of view. Yeah, Farhenheits are better because the scale is almost twice smaller than that of the Celcius. It gives you a better precision. He-he... The fact that no one can feel the difference in 2°F anyway is largely ignored. Even in degrees Celcius I can hardly tell a difference between, say, 17°C and 19°C, not to mention between higher temperatures like 33°C and 35°C.

Sometimes I wonder how come Americans did not go metric some 200 years ago? They simplified British language and decided to drive on the right just to be different from Britons. Why didn't they switched to metric? 200 years ago average population was not as literate as today, so converison would be much smoother than now. Illiteracy was the main reason why India switched to metric relatively easy in the 1950s.

How about this, we change to metric and everyone drives on the right. Is that a fair exchange?
Deal! :colgate:

^^Exactly from -18 to 38?!
Well... in here it's more like between 3 and 35.
In London It would be between -5 and 30... In Stocholm between -25 and 25... and so on.

So... no, there's really nothing special about -18ºC.

-18 is about as cold as it ever gets in most places (Gdansk, for example, where Fahrenheit was from) and 38 is about as hot as it ever gets. Usually, it's around the middle, from about 25 degrees Fahrenheit to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

I'm not saying it inherently "proves" that Fahrenheit is better, just that it's something to think about.

It is funny how some old-fashioned Americans are trying to justify Imperial measuremt system from "scientific" points of view. Yeah, Farhenheits are better because the scale is almost twice smaller than that of the Celcius. It gives you a better precision. He-he... The fact that no one can feel the difference in 2°F anyway is largely ignored. Even in degrees Celcius I can hardly tell a difference between, say, 17°C and 19°C, not to mention between higher temperatures like 33°C and 35°C.

Come on, really. Celsius is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. Just as there are 100 degrees between freezing and boiling in Celsius, there are 180 degrees in Fahrenheit. We just put the starting point 32 degrees earlier. In fact, after Fahrenheit died, the scale was recalibrated to have exactly that happen. Thus, why it is so relatively easy to convert between the two systems.

Sometimes I wonder how come Americans did not go metric some 200 years ago? They simplified British language and decided to drive on the right just to be different from Britons. Why didn't they switched to metric? 200 years ago average population was not as literate as today, so converison would be much smoother than now. Illiteracy was the main reason why India switched to metric relatively easy in the 1950s.



Possibly there was no way to at that time. The metric system was invented in 1791, 10 years after the US got up and going. At that time, the country was split up into two factions, Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans. The former, with their base in the rich, powerful Northeast, feared the effects of the French Revolution, and would have made sure that there would be no adoption of the new system. The federal government went officially metric in 1866, but there would be no way to get the whole country to shift, especially after the Civil War.

Finally, though the country was mainly illiterate, it did know its measurements, something absolutely necessary to the farmers who often got their land based on sections (square miles) and acres given out by the government. Not to mention, the US at the time was much less densely populated than India in the 1950s. Metrication was also not seen as a sign of wresting off colonial shackles like it was on the Subcontinent.

It is funny how some old-fashioned Americans are trying to justify Imperial measuremt system from "scientific" points of view. Yeah, Farhenheits are better because the scale is almost twice smaller than that of the Celcius. It gives you a better precision. He-he... The fact that no one can feel the difference in 2°F anyway is largely ignored. Even in degrees Celcius I can hardly tell a difference between, say, 17°C and 19°C, not to mention between higher temperatures like 33°C and 35°C.

Yet the same people probably wouldn't accept that as an "advantage" of cm over inches :D

Come on, really. Celsius is just as arbitrary as Fahrenheit. Just as there are 100 degrees between freezing and boiling in Celsius, there are 180 degrees in Fahrenheit. We just put the starting point 32 degrees earlier. In fact, after Fahrenheit died, the scale was recalibrated to have exactly that happen. Thus, why it is so relatively easy to convert between the two systems.

There is one problem here already. Regardless of which system is actually "better", it is a fact that people work much easier with "round" numbers that are powers of 10. Therefore, while both systems are arbitrary, 100 is much easier to grasp than 180. Of course, that is the case when we are dealing with water, which is a reasonable choice for weather and other everyday affairs. And what the other pro-Celsius people say about weather is also important. It is much clearer to distinguish freezing temperatures by a minus sign (and again, it's an important distinction when it comes to weather), while in Fahrenheit, we get numbers such as 32 (already not so convenient, because it is a much more "random" number than 0), and therefore we have numbers that are both negative and positive, corresponding to freezing.

With regards to Kelvin, it is best left to the scientific community. Besides, one can think of the Celsius scale as simply the Kelvin scale shifted up to be more convenient for everyday life (even though, of course, Celsius predates Kelvin in reality).

That said, temperature isn't the biggest problem. The Imperial measurement system, on the other hand, is simply harder to grasp, and it really is a fact, because it relies on measures that are not powers of 10. It is probably true that a person who used Imperial his/her whole life has absolutely no problem using it, a system that is based on powers of 10 is more natural for humans. It is often easier to write (Imperial often requires fractions, and lacks prefixes that can be used to indicate larger numbers), and converting from one unit to another is a huge pain in the neck, both for people who are not used to the system, and to those who are. The argument that "we don't care about exact quantities, but only get a feel of how large they are" is not a good one, because there are many instances where an exact quantity may be required, and I don't think that converting between all of these inches, feet, miles, etc. is something that can quickly be done by the average person without the use of calculators and conversion tables. In the metric system, this conversion is really a non-issue for anyone with basic mathematical skills.

^^I guess we'il now someone stating the Fahrenheit is much better, and that the 0ºF(-18ºC) is a much more usefull point than 0ºC. :nuts: :colgate:

The 0ºC is the most important point in temperature (weather wise) there is... undoubtedly... it's when things start to freeze, snow, etc... But i'm sure someone will come up with some excuse to say than in fact, the 0ºF is actually the point that's really important! :D

What was Fahrenheit thinking when he decided to use salt water as a basis for setting 0º and 100º?! :bash: Depending on the concentration of salt in the water the numbers could be wildly off. Using pure water in the Celsius scale makes more sense (snow/ice/rain). I mean who really needs to know the freezing or boiling point of lab-specified salt water in their everyday lives?!

I'm sure there are people out there who will say the Fahrenheit scale better reflects the comfortable living range for humans (0**ºF-100ºF), but doesn't the freezing point (0ºC/32ºF) pose a greater concern to human health? I don't know how long an unprepared person can survive in those conditions. Wouldn't it make more sense from that perspective to calibrate 0 to a relative danger point for humans?

There is one problem here already. Regardless of which system is actually "better", it is a fact that people work much easier with "round" numbers that are powers of 10. Therefore, while both systems are arbitrary, 100 is much easier to grasp than 180. Of course, that is the case when we are dealing with water, which is a reasonable choice for weather and other everyday affairs. And what the other pro-Celsius people say about weather is also important. It is much clearer to distinguish freezing temperatures by a minus sign (and again, it's an important distinction when it comes to weather), while in Fahrenheit, we get numbers such as 32 (already not so convenient, because it is a much more "random" number than 0), and therefore we have numbers that are both negative and positive, corresponding to freezing.

With regards to Kelvin, it is best left to the scientific community. Besides, one can think of the Celsius scale as simply the Kelvin scale shifted up to be more convenient for everyday life (even though, of course, Celsius predates Kelvin in reality).

That said, temperature isn't the biggest problem. The Imperial measurement system, on the other hand, is simply harder to grasp, and it really is a fact, because it relies on measures that are not powers of 10. It is probably true that a person who used Imperial his/her whole life has absolutely no problem using it, a system that is based on powers of 10 is more natural for humans. It is often easier to write (Imperial often requires fractions, and lacks prefixes that can be used to indicate larger numbers), and converting from one unit to another is a huge pain in the neck, both for people who are not used to the system, and to those who are. The argument that "we don't care about exact quantities, but only get a feel of how large they are" is not a good one, because there are many instances where an exact quantity may be required, and I don't think that converting between all of these inches, feet, miles, etc. is something that can quickly be done by the average person without the use of calculators and conversion tables. In the metric system, this conversion is really a non-issue for anyone with basic mathematical skills.

I'm glad you recognized that one who has grown up with the system doesn't have these problems. In most areas where metric has a clear advantage over customary, as you pointed out, the supposed "problems" simply don't arise. Generally, you don't need to convert between different units, because you start on a certain scale to begin with. You wouldn't start measuring meter-scale things in millimeters, would you? Likewise, foot-scale things aren't measured in inches. They are measured in feet first, then the inches left over are measured. Therefore, overpass heights in the US have signs that say " 15' 6" ", for example.

Maybe we look at measurement differently than metric countries. Certainly doesn't hinder us that much.

Back to the original topic of metric signs. Here in Washington State, the English speed limit sign is accompanied by the metric one (25 mph, 40 km/h).

http://www.westcoastroads.com/washington/images500/wa-504_eb_app_j_ridge_01.jpg

Alex, where was this taken? Looks like E. Washington.

I don't think this is that common in Washington, maybe up near the Canadian border, but I don't see a lot of signs like that.

pwalker, it was taken on WA-504 near Coldwater Lake in Cowlitz county. So, it's not really that close to Canadian border. But I also think that metric signs would be rare. Besides, this pic, I believe, was taken in the St Helen's park where a lot of visitors drive.

Down here in Sacramento, they had a distance sign that displayed kilometres along miles, but after they renovated the road (US-50), the sign was gone :(

i wonder what is next to that bridge to make a 40km/h/25mph speedlimit.

i wonder what is next to that bridge to make a 40km/h/25mph speedlimit.

If you look in the background, it appears the road's about to make a serious curve to the left...

It is an interesting question. I didn't take this photo, so I don't know why the speed limit was 40 km/h.

There is a difference between the USA and Europe in a way the speed limit is set. In Europe, the speed limit may be lowered outside of populated areas to reflect the change in landscape such as the presence of dangerous curves, the width of the roadway, etc. In the USA, on the other hand, the speed limit outside of villages remains the same (e.g., 90 km/h), and should there be a curve or bent, a warning sign will be posted advising to drive with a certain speed. The official limit, however, will remain 90 km/h.

Also, within the National parks in the USA, the speed limits may be very low even though the road condition allows to drive at a much higher speed. This might just be the case.

There are advisory speed limits in Europe too.

In the Netherlands, this is signed this way:
http://www.gratistheorie.nl/auto/snelheid/fotos/advies002.jpg

note; this is not a minimum speed! (as seen in Portugal)

Alex, where was this taken? Looks like E. Washington.

I don't think this is that common in Washington, maybe up near the Canadian border, but I don't see a lot of signs like that.

Probably (hopefully) the start of a phase-in, coming soon to a sign post near you.

Probably (hopefully) the start of a phase-in, coming soon to a sign post near you.

Here's (http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mutcd.html) a page you would like, then.

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mutcd-r2-1-2-3.gif vs. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mutcd-nl-speed.gif

How large should a US sign be, so that the numerical part will be equal to that of the European sign? It seems like a lot of wasted space to me. Why not to do like Canadians, at least?

http://www.alaskaroads.com/canada-speed-limit-sign.jpg

All imperial here in MN. :( (I think)

In the US we use the SAE system ( smaller gallons 3.78 L ) not the Imperial system (bigger gallons 4.54 L & different measurements of force ) . In 1962 we set up metric equivilents , so technically we are tied to the meteric system .

How large should a US sign be, so that the numerical part will be equal to that of the European sign? It seems like a lot of wasted space to me. Why not to do like Canadians, at least?

http://www.alaskaroads.com/canada-speed-limit-sign.jpg

If you saw that sign on the Trans-Canada Highway in the Fraser Valley, I think it means the number of East Indian farm workers you can fit into a van. :lol:

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mutcd-r2-1-2-3.gif vs. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/mutcd-nl-speed.gif

How large should a US sign be, so that the numerical part will be equal to that of the European sign? It seems like a lot of wasted space to me. Why not to do like Canadians, at least?

http://www.alaskaroads.com/canada-speed-limit-sign.jpg
These signs with a circle around 'km/h' speed numbers were just adopted for the first time in the latest USA Federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices ('MUTCD') update that was approved within the past two years. I'm glad that they adopted that circle and I consider it to be a very good first step. Previously, 'km/h' limits were to be displayed in the same manner as 'MPH' speeds, but only with a little 'km/h' under the numbers.

Now, perhaps that circle can be made red and some of the 'wordiness' removed in the next update. However, I think that the reason why the people maintaining that book are a bit skittish on that is that might conflict with the MUTCD's standard state highway route marker sign, which is a circle (but less than half of the USA's states use a circle to denote state highway numbers) and especially New Mexico's state highway route sign, which is a red Zia 'Sun' symbol circle around the numbers and they do look a lot like Worldwide standard speed limit signs. I'd like to see the Federal MUTCD go to a square for their 'standard' state route signs, like those used in Maine, Massachusetts, Texas, Illinois, Indiana and a few others.

We can only hope and lobby the right people.

:)

Mike