One mile per minute (at 60 mph) seems easier than 1.6 km per minute when estimating time of arrival. I’d think about changing over completely to metric if there was a reason to.
Well it’s not a gimmick to those of us working in scientific fields. I switch SI prefixes dozens of times a day (I’m aware of the irony of using “dozens” 
)
The more obvious comparison would be between centimetres and inches. And, by your own logic (earlier in the post, not quoted), centimetres wins. Because, in that crucial fingernail to whole hand size range, inches frequently need to be subdivided. Whereas usually a whole number of centimetres is precise enough.
I’m curious, there can’t be any international push for Americans to switch measurement systems? It holds no relevance to any of our lives.
Hell, Americans really did switch and use the metric system in any and all international or scientifically meaningful forums. I have a feeling its all much-ado-about-nothing; no one outside of the US pushes for this.
Just go 2 km/min! 74 mph (in real units).
At least in the English speaking world, the usage is the same: “four by eight”, which is a nominal size for about 3.5" x 7.5" I’m not sure about lengths, I think Canada is in feet at least.
Most/many countries also often use inches for monitor and TV diagonal sizes, e.g. pouce in French, Zoll in German, インチ in Japanese.
That would be a post, not a sheet of plywood. It’s a mess too.
There’s a certain aspect of being a native English speaker that’s something of a gift (based on its relative ubiquity in much of the world).
I’d think the same thing about the Metric system. I wish it was my ‘first language’ of weights and measures.
I make doughs a lot, and when I do so, I convert to metric. It just makes the math a lot easier.
I want to make a 70% hydration dough with 1 lb of flour. How much water do I need (it’s going to be 70% of 1 lb … well … how much is that?)
With metric, it’s 450g * .70 = 315. If I don’t want to even do that math, I add 50g to get to 500g, and then it’s a simple 350 anyone can do in their head. It’s so easy.
I haven’t made sausages in years, but it was the same way. Convert to metric, as all my measurements are based on what %age by weight of another ingredient is compared to the meat.
I lived in Hungary for 5 1/2 years, and just everything seemed much easier to deal with in metric – even temperatures were fine. The coarser grading of integer temperatures was fine. I don’t need the extra 1/2 steps Fahrenheit has. Perhaps heights were a little more difficult to get used to. Everything else was pretty easy after a couple of months.
I’d be fine with using metric units in my life if I lived in a country that used them.
It’s like a language, and ought to be treated as such.
The only real place for contention is that science and industry ought to be conforming to one system–I agree with this and am always encouraged when I find more parts of our nation’s industry are metricized.
Customary units really ought have no business in scientific applications. I shudder at the memories of doing all of my studies in Navy Nuclear Power School using British Thermal Units, degrees Rankine, and a mystifying proportionality constant that had to be salt-and-peppered everywhere to handle the difference between lbs as force vs. mass. I have heard that they have since converted to metric.
One benefit of using customary units is that it gives something for the rest of the world to sneer at smugly, hopefully distracting them from some of our more embarrassing and shameful issues within our country.
Double it and add 30. Close enough.
I just cannot believe we’re having an argument in this thread about the pros and cons of a standard of weights and measures that much of the world has been using for over 150 years, and pretty much the entire world today. The only exceptions are Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States.
If we were arguing about whether we can get there from here that I could understand. The idea that metric is just stupid and unworkable is what’s unbelievable.
In the UK we are officially metric, but there is definitely still a generous sprinkling of imperial that gets used all the time. For example, the typical standard for a tall man would be and still is (ok, maybe just tall-ish nowadays) 6 foot. When most people talk about their weight, they tend to use stone (or pounds if talking about losing a bit of it). We still use yards frequently if talking about relatively small distances, and miles if talking about longer ones. Our road signs still use miles and hence car speedometers miles per hour.
But at the same time, I believe most people these days use Celsius/Centigrade for temperatures, and our food is packaged in grams and kilos, our drink and other liquids in millilitres and litres. One exception being pints of beer though. Rulers are marked in both inches and centimetres. It is a real mishmash.
Sort of. Don’t you have a lot of 454 gram packs?
We have those, too!
I think it’s funny that you hung onto pints, and it’s a different pint than what we use over here, 20 oz vs 16 oz.
Milk still comes in pints, and draught beer and cider etc., but that’s about all.
I try to remain thinking in imperial measure, and all my machine shop work at home is done in thousandths of an inch.
In countries other than the UK, does milk come in anything larger than 1 or 2 liter? We have lots of gallon-sized milks over here.
I do so all the time for volume. How many square feet of space will a cubic yard of crushed stone cover at 3" depth and things like that (or conversely how many CY do I need to cover X sf at Y depth). But that’s second nature to me at this point anyway.
I do largely agree though that the hand-wringing over imperial conversions is largely hyperbolic and most people never need to care how many feet are in an acre, much less obscure and outdated things like rods. And, on the rare occasions where it happens, you just spend twenty seconds looking it up versus thinking “Shit, we should change to metric”.
That’s a good point, we do indeed have 454g things, presumably manufacturers didn’t want to change the size of the containers?
And as others have said, milk still comes in pints, although I think the traditional ‘milkman’ that delivers to your doorstep has almost died out, so most people buy larger bottles that are plastic in supermarkets rather than the old glass pints.
In my experience I think pilots still announce a flight’s altitude in feet, is that just because I have been using British carriers, or is that still an international convention?
Plus, today, with the internet and smartphones, compared to the 1970s, when the U.S. last seriously pushed the metric system, it’s far, far easier for most people to look up a conversion or calculation if needed than it used to be.
The reasoning behind that is pretty funny, actually, and somewhat related to Metric adoption.
The US version was based on one (of several) measures of gallon used in the UK.
Some time in the 19th century (after the US declared independence), the UK wanted to attempt a sort of metricisation of the gallon to a single standard using 10 pounds of water, since the French had developed this interesting system of standards around base 10 and the Brits couldn’t well be overshadowed. So they came up with an “Imperial gallon”, thus adding yet another ‘gallon’ to the list of gallons. And of course, Americans, among others, didn’t bother updating the perfectly good gallons they already had.
And since there are always 8 pints to a gallon, this meant the size of a pint itself (16 vs 20 oz) depends on the ‘gallon’ you use, and the US version predates the UK one by a fair amount.