# How do you feel about converting to the Metric system? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 23, 2023, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666 "2023-01-23T15:52:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/401 "2023-04-19T12:59:00Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I actually know Celsius from 0-40. I know what it feels like, and what those temperatures mean. I have no clue what temps in the 80s and 90s mean, though. All temps above 60C mean the same thing… scalding, fire, and “aaaaaaaaaahggggggggh!!!” 100C also means “boiling” (in addition to the above) ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/402 "2023-04-19T13:34:29Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > When the water is boiling, it’s got tons of steam coming out the spout, yes? And it makes boiling noises? It’s literally the only point at which you don’t need to see a temperature display. I suppose? What I do know is this: I also started out setting it in F. And after a few days, realized those numbers meant nothing to me and setting it in C made a lot more intuitive sense while sitting there waiting for hot water. So, sure, if it provides some sense of personal comfort to set it in F, I get that. But more than something that actually makes some kind of rational sense, it feels more like an appeal to familiarity. And again, if the argument is that familiarity is more important, go ahead, but there are a lot of people who seem to be taking the stance that there’s more to it than just familiarity - that it is somehow also objectively or intuitively more correct, which does not match my experience at all. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/403 "2023-04-19T14:04:33Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > there are a lot of people who seem to be taking the stance that there’s more to it than just familiarity Right, let’s look at your kickoff post and the responses: > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > one very specific case where metric is obviously and clearly superior yet not used Responses: > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > 94 C, which isn’t any easier to remember than 201 F. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > If I’m a tea drinker and I’ve found that 180 F is the best for my favorite tea, and I’ve been using that number for years, why would I want to have to remember 82 C instead? It’s not like it’s more of a round number in C > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > All I care about is that the number on the display is the same as the one I remember to be the best. > [@puzzlegal](#): > > I’m struggling to understand why it should be easier for me to set my electric kettle to 93C than to 200F, > [@puzzlegal](#): > > My US - marketed teas all come labeled with a recommended temperature in Fahrenheit. You want me to do the math just to brew tea? The only person taking the stance that one system is objectively more correct is you. Celsius is 100% as arbitrary as Fahrenheit, and confers 0% of the Metric System’s conversion and relational benefits. It could have been replaced with F from the start and absolutely no utility would have been lost. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/404 "2023-04-19T15:06:43Z")
Imperial measure? I’ve been using US customary units for almost 70 years now – I have even less use for imperial measure than I do for the metric system. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/405 "2023-04-19T15:23:14Z")
I don’t really care how someone sets their kettle but I find it weird that some people legitimately believe that it’s any burden to remember that water freezes at 32F or boils at 212F (in theory). You learn this in grade school and carry it with you just like knowing about gravity or Columbus sailing in 1492 or whatever. Whatever benefits might sell metric, “You won’t have to toil to remember this thing you learned when you were seven years old” isn’t it. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/406 "2023-04-19T15:31:03Z")
> [@Honolulu\_Lulu](#): > > For those of you (like older Canadians) who started their lives on pounds, miles, Fahrenheit, and gallons, how painful was the switch to Metric? UK here - we sort of graduallly switched to metric, with a lot of the real-world changes happening during my lifetime - at school we were taught and were expected to use both Metric and Imperial systems (although only metric for science topics). The biggest changeover events happened in the last 5 years of the 1990s. How painful? As painful or painless as you choose to make it, on a personal level. Measuring ingredients for recipes using grammes and ml is just easier than ounces and fluid ounces and pounds and pints, especially if you want to scale up or down. The UK still retains a few imperial measures as exceptions either because people are enormously comfortable with them (pints for beer and milk, for example), or because changeover would be expensive and chaotic (miles and miles per hour for road signage). These exceptions don’t matter all that much, IMO, and colloquially, it’s not unusual for people to talk about certain things such as their height or weight in imperial measures - given that this causes some young people confusion, that’s probably an indicator that it will dwindle as the existing older population shuffles off. Unless the UK government decides that the weird pseudopatriotism that is linked to ‘the good old days’ is an issue that might win them election votes, in which case we might all go back to using gallons and hogsheads and barleycorns or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/407 "2023-04-19T15:37:24Z")
I readily accommodated to using grams, millimeters etc. in medical applications at work. It’s part of near-universal medical/scientific language. However, I continue to think in terms of pounds, feet and so on at home. The dichotomy isn’t confusing to me and I see no reason for forced metric conversion. Most negative would be having to use Celsius, which just seems nasty. 45F is a lot more comfortable than 7C. 😃 A gram is better than a damn, but not by much. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/408 "2023-04-19T15:50:35Z")
I would have to learn all new ranges for PSI in kPa or Bar. ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/409 "2023-04-19T15:59:42Z")
Me, I don’t see that as a problem. ‘Bar’ is pretty much ‘standard atmosphere’ as well as being 100 kPa. Still, as much as I’d like to see the US go metric, its one of the nation’s microproblems. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/410 "2023-04-19T16:27:08Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > setting it in C made a lot more intuitive sense while sitting there waiting for hot water. Well, if you are standing there looking at the numbers while waiting for your water to boil, there’s your problem right there. It turns out that a watched pot _does_ boil, but the great thing about an electric kettle is you can set a temp and walk away, and it gently beeps when the temp is reached and then holds it there for…i dunno, half an hour? So i fill my kettle, set the temp if someone has changed it, turn it on, and then go do other stuff. Sometime after it beeps, i pour the water over my tea or ramen or whatever. I spend zero time standing there looking at numbers and thinking “70 is more than halfway between 22 and 93”, or whatever calculation you find easier in Celsius. I’m just not doing that calculation. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/411 "2023-04-19T17:08:35Z")
No… I’m claiming that Denver isn’t the exception you think it is. That’s it. All the discussion about the merits of Celsius are part of the rest of the thread, but _I_ didn’t make that claim. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/412 "2023-04-19T22:55:36Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > As for percentage being relevant, well, yes 100% of the way to boiling is exactly what I want to know in this specific case. That’s rather the point - people fight metric even in the cases where it actually is clearly easier/more intuitive to use. But it’s not a percentage of the way to boiling, unless you want to argue that room temperature is 20% of the way to boiling. And yeah, of all of the comparisons between metric and American units, the advantages of metric are weakest for temperature. Temperature is very seldom used in combination with other units, and Celsius and Fahrenheit both have arbitrary zero points, which causes problems with both. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/413 "2023-04-20T14:07:39Z")
For temperatures other than boiling, the kettle depends on a temperature probe. This isn’t case for the “boil” setting, though, so C vs F doesn’t matter, and altitude doesn’t matter. It’s a really simple mechanism, and pretty universal going back to the dawn of electric kettles. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/414 "2023-04-20T15:13:50Z")
Electric kettles vary. Mine only has a temperature target. There is no “boil” setting. I agree that there’s little difference between using Fahrenheit and Celsius. They are both based on arbitrary numbers assigned to common temperatures. Both work fine. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2023, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/415 "2023-04-20T16:40:04Z")
To bring actual numbers (to a best estimate) this paper states the following. [Brief Report: Global and country-level estimates of human population at high altitude - PMC](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8106311/) “Herein, we use a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach to quantify human population at 500-m elevation intervals for each country. Based on georeferenced data for population (LandScan Global 2019) and elevation (Global Multiresolution Terrain Elevation Data), 500.3 million humans live at ≥1,500 m, 81.6 million at ≥2,500 m, and 14.4 million at ≥3,500 m.” So call it 600 million at altitude of a mile or more, more if you’re willing to consider a starting point of like 4000 feet. Though of course a lot of them probably don’t own an electric kettle. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2023, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/416 "2023-04-21T19:29:49Z")
What happens if you set it to a temperature that’s impossible to achieve? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2023, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/417 "2023-04-21T19:55:27Z")
I wondered that, but don’t know the answer. The highest temp it will register is 212F, and i live close enough to sea level as to not matter. Probably, it just stays on for half an hour, instead of cycling to keep warm. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2023, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/418 "2023-04-21T20:10:43Z")
> [@abcdefghij](#): > > How many Rhode Islands is that? I live in a state that’s exactly one Rhode Island in area. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2023, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/419 "2023-04-21T20:12:20Z")
Aquidneck finally nuked it’s neighbors, eh? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2023, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666/420 "2023-04-21T20:32:56Z")
I mentioned above that mechanics already have two set of tools based on inches and millimeters. There’s no conversion needed between the systems for most parts. However, there is a growing issue in machine parts where some components are made for metric sizes but also listed for imperial components that are close in size. Recently I was clued into a particular ball bearing part number that was actually made with a 5/8" bore instead of a slightly larger 16mm bearing that they have listed under their 5/8" bearings. Machinist have long used number and letter size drill bits, just another system and no conversions needed, although occasionally similar sizes are used from other systems when they are close enough to fit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666.md?page=20) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-feel-about-converting-to-the-metric-system/978666.md?page=22)