Metric system in the usa

[FX120]

There are other fields of endeavour somewhere between 'rocket science' your 'everyday life' as an American teen. There are designers, architects, engineers, builders, cabinet makers, manufacturers, chefs, surveyors, and many others who, believe it or not, do need to be fairly precise with their measurements. And sometimes, one needs to do calculations with those measurements.

To answer your question, when somebody asks me how big something is, it really depends on what they're referring to. Depending on the context, my answer may be any of the following:

a. About 40 centimetres
b. Let me grab a tape measure
c. None of your business!

It's never been much of an issue to me. Somehow us dumb Americans have survived over two centuries of designing and building very complicated structures and assemblies using our inferior measurement system.

Oh, by the way: Engineers often work in decimal inches. Makes working in inches pretty easy.

IMO it's a non issue. Maybe we'll convert to metric when the rest of the world starts speaking English.

 

[Tomorrow]

IMO it's a non issue. Maybe we'll convert to metric when the rest of the world starts speaking English.

Are you kidding? We can't even get all of America speaking English.

 

[InsanelyApple]

But when I want to hear the weather forecast, I want degrees C. 0 degrees C means it's cold (water freezes). Anything below 0 means it's really cold. Above 0 is good. The higher the better (but not above about 35 degrees, which is heat wave weather. Anything over 40? YIKES!)

Haha, silly person. Visit my state in the US. It feels about 125F (51C) in summertime. We'd love that kind of weather!

 

[ratzzo]

Personally I grew up using the metric system and having moved to USA in which everything is 3.7, 1.6, 2.7 instead of plain 1.00 makes it a bit harder. KM to miles are easy, multiply by 6 and so on. But doing the same for gallons, quarts, litres, ... everything can be annoying at times.

It would only make sense that in the future the whole world uses just one standard way of measure, and this would be the metric system given how simple it is to understand and convert. Unfortunately, these changes at a global level are always very difficult to endure and in the end, neither governments nor people like change. While I believe it should happen and might happen, it'll take many years for something like that to show up out of the blue.

 

[Apple OC]

Haha, silly person. Visit my state in the US. It feels about 125F (51C) in summertime. We'd love that kind of weather!

where do you live that it is 51C? ... the edge of a volcano in Hawaii?

 

[balamw]

KM to miles are easy, multiply by 6 and so on.

Something is missing from that. 1 mile ~= 1.6 km, 1 km ~= 0.6 mi, 6 mi ~= 10 km, ...

Engineers often work in decimal inches.

IMHO (as an engineer) microinches and mil (milliinches) should be the first units retired. Once you are at those scales you are likely to have other things in your design that are already in mm and um.

B

 

[Don't panic]

That is not the only argument but is a big hurdle nonetheless. I suggest reading CalBoy's responses on some of the benefits with the imperial system

i read all his 'points' and the the only advantage that i can see we have with the imperial system is that we are used to it.
but there is not a single objective advantage of the imperial system over the metric.
maybe if it was internally consistent with the base 16 and fraction system and the relationships between different units. but it's not.
it's an irrational potpourri of inconsistently random systems that some of us want to keep because
a) we think we are intrinsically better then everyone else
b) we are lazy
or
c) we think other people are to stupid to understand the new (and much easier) system without selfcombusting or something.