Another thing that’s often measured in Metric units is footraces. While there are the occasional races measured in miles, 5 km and 10 km races are far more common.
It’s more because of international competition than any movement within the United States, however. American football is still measured in yards partially because nobody else plays it.
Wine is also measured in metric (750 ml bottles), though I’d be surprised if a casual wine drinker would know this.
Medication and vitamin dosages are measured in mg/ml/etc. However, for over-the-counter liquid medications, you will often see instructions that talk about teaspoons/tablespoons. (Many liquid medications instead provide a small dosing cup with dosages marked on the side.)
I cannot more strongly emphasize the science aspect that astorian noted. Science uses the metric system for measurements, in both school and the workplace. Occasional exceptions are height/weight and temperature (usually in the medical field, referring to a patient), though you will usually see the metric version used.
As stated by others above (Wendell Wagner certainly), most products in the US are sold with the metric equivalents marked on them, but the package sizes are geared towards the other system. So you won’t see a bag of rice marked as 1 kg (2.2 lbs), but you will see 2 lb (.9 kg). It is obviously not geared towards convenience for those using metric measurements. The 1/2/3 liter soda bottles are nearly unique in this respect.
It’s uncommon even in the sciences to see seconds used with the positive-log prefixes, like kilo or giga, but it’s extremely common to see them used with the negative-log prefixes, like milli, micro, and nano.
We’ve had numerous threads like this, and my answer has been to observe that it is usually easier and better to use measurement units appropriate for what is being measured. This is oftentimes metric, oftentimes not.
NRA members are stereotyped as conservative, but they’ve had no problems learning just how big a 9 mm bullet is. On the other hand, though, an esoteric system involving the number of lead balls that make up a pound is still the easiest method to denote the diameter of a shotgun’s barrel.
In the military, metric units are great for map reading and targeting. They are useless in the Navy, however, for navigation. Here nautical measurements based on the yard are much more practical.
This is nonsense. The nautical mile is defined as 1852 m, not as any number of yards, and is based on the average length of one minute of arc on the surface of the earth. The rest of the units like feet and fathoms could be metric just as well. or are you telling me that using metric units puts a navy at a disadvantage?
As has been said in this thread, American cars have been metric for quite some time now. You obviously don’t maintain your own American car.
You’re obviously not much of a sailor.
Any sailor knows that the nautical mile is two thousand yards, and that a knot is a speed of one nautical mile per hour.
He also knows that many radar sets and charts take this into account.
He also knows that in three minutes, he sails a distance equal to his speed in knots multiplied by one hundred yards. This allows him to quickly judge the relative motion of another ship using a maneuvering board and ensure that there will not be a collision at sea.
Seems I’ve pissed more salt water than you’ve ever seen.
Not precisely. A yard is 0.9144 meters, so 2000 yards are 1828.8 meters. A nautical mile has 1852 meters, as has already been mentioned here.
Quoth hlanelee:
But the ability to convert American units is an even bigger problem. Forget about knowing the myriad conversion factors; I’ve met Americans who think that an ounce is larger than a cup. When you’ve got things like that going on, no system of units is going to work.
And Mr. Moto, if “any sailor” knows that a nautical mile is two thousand yards, then “any sailor” is wrong. A nautical mile is 2023.37183 yards. It’s approximately 2000 yards, but then, it’s also approximately 2000 meters. And I would wager that any situation where the former approximation is good enough, the latter is, as well. You must have pissed an awful lot of salt water; isn’t that painful?
(aside) Chronos, did you maybe mistype a “5” as a “3” (2023 versus 2025)? MY HP-48 says “2025.37182852”, which essentially agrees with you 100% save for that 4th digit. (/aside)
My HP-48 says a nautical mile is defined as 1852m.
Una, Engineer, not a Sailor.
Mr. Moto, if you are going to insult me the least you can do is be right. If you had followed my past posts you would know one of my areas of expertise is celestial navigation.
The NM is defined as 1852 m.
I concede to you the exact measurements, sailor.
However, if you’re tracking several dozen surface contacts and cutting radar fixes while in the Strait of Messina, you’d be better off using yards.
A quick rough measurement is often much better than a slow precise one.
This I just don’t get. Why not use a system that uses a common factor, and pretty much relates one thing to another by definition, rather than random factorization and no interrelationships between different numbering schemes?
We use a weird hodgepodge of metric and English.
You can buy a quarter of coke (1/4 gram) or an eight-ball (1/8 oz.). If you move to marijuana you have a more consistent use of the English system, but it’s a world where a quarter ounce can weigh 10 grams or 7.
Hogwash. It may be more convenient for you because that is what you were trained in but for someone who was trained in metric it would be a nightmare. Take two people, one using metric and the other American units, both equally comfortable using their units, and the guy using metric will outperform and make fewer mistakes than the other guy. Or prove otherwise. Prove that a navy using metric is inherently at a disadvantage. Your cites of rules of thumb are just silly. Rules of thumb exist regardless of the system used.
Again, please explain why using American units is better. For example, some charts show depths in feet, others in fathoms. Please explain how this is more convenient than using metric units and why it is so convenient to have your depth sounder displaying fathoms when your chart shows feet or viceversa.
Traditional units are kept for only one reason: they are traditional and some people are used to them. They have been abandoned in many sectors and their use continues to diminish, not grow. America is going metric, the rest of the world is not converting to American units. America can only retin its system in areas where it is insulated from the rest of the world. The automobile industry had to convert and as America’s dependence on foreign trade grows, more industries will have to convert.
The situation today is that an average person in a metric country can do more an better than an average person in the USA using American Standard units.
Look at this simple problem: I have a window and I need to buy blinds which will leave a certain clearance on each side. The width of the window is 4’ 5" 15/16 and I want to leave 1" 3/8 on each side so the width of the blind is 4’ 5" 15/16 minus two times 1" 3/8.
The same problem in metric is that the width of the blind is 53 cm minus two times 3.5 cm. I can do this in my head in an instant and can be more sure that I did not make any mistakes than anyone can be with the problem done in feet, inches and fractions.
These are everyday problems where people in the USA mess up all the time. Whether they are measuring fabric or lumber or liquids or anything else, they mess up continually.
Give the guy at the marina the following problem: I want to winterize my boat. It has M feet of pipe of N inches interior diameter. How many gallons of antifreeze do I need? The problem in metric units is 100 times easier.
Go to an American grocery store and ask a simple involving calculating with fluid ounces, gallons, quarts, etc and most people have no clue how to do it. Go to a European grocery store and ask the same problem in metric units and you will see they are much better able to deal with it.
There is a good reason science in the USA has gone metric: it is better.
I’ve gone through all the containers in my apartment to make a note of what units they are measured in. Here are the measurements. I’ve only included one of each product:
3.3 ounces (93.5 grams)
10 fluid ounces (295.74 milliliters)
.95 liters (32 fluid ounces)
10 pounds (4.54 kilograms)
64 fluid ounces - 1 quart (1.89 liters)
8 ounces (226 grams)
34 fluid ounces (1 liter)
32 fluid ounces - 1 quart (946 milliliters)
18 ounces (510 grams)
18 ounces (510 grams)
12 fluid ounces (355 milliliters)
20 fluid ounces (590 milliliters)
22 fluid ounces - 1 pint, 6 ounces (651 milliliters)
21 fluid ounces (620 milliliters)
21 ounces - 1 pound, 5 ounces (595 grams)
32 fluid ounces - 1 quart (946 milliliters)
2 pounds (908 grams)
1 gallon (3.787 liters)
8 fluid ounces (236 milliliters)
4 ounces
6 fluid ounces (177.4 milliliters)
200 yards (182.8 meters)
6.3 ounces (178 grams)
100 milliliters
20 milligrams of one thing and 12.5 milligrams of another
58.6 square feet (5.4 square meters)
112 ounces - 7 pounds (3.17 kilograms)
1 gallon (3.87 liters)
So virtually everything always has both metric and common measurements. I don’t know why the one item is listed just in ounces. The one listed just in milliliters was something I bought during my vacation in England (and is the only thing bought outside the U.S.). The 20 milligrams/12.5 milligrams thing is medication, where common measurements are hardly ever used. I kept the order of the listing of measurements as found on the products, but I’ve spelled out the names of the measurements.
So most things appear to have been measured in common measurements and then had the metric conversion figured out. In a few cases, it went the opposite way around. In some cases, I can’t figure out whether the metric or the common measurement was original. Notice that there’s no requirement to say “approximately” on the measurement that’s a conversion, so I don’t know if companies are required to have one of the measurements be exact and whether that measurement has to be listed first or what.
Krokodil writes:
> We Americans view the Metric system with suspicion (If we own
> a foreign car, we have to buy a second set of wrenches, for
> one thing). We see it as being of a piece with soccer and
> socialism.
Why do people think that they can speak for all Americans like this? I’ve seen this sort of thing a lot in threads like this, and it annoys the heck out of me. If you want to express your own opinion, fine, but don’t pretend you speak for all Americans.
Wendell Wagner, statements like “we Americans” can be recognized as a gross generality that’s commonly accepted. I do quite well in the metric system and completely am outside Krokodil’s description, but I can recognize the generality of it. We as Americans are pretty stupid about Canada, too. Even though I’m not, and a whole lot of Americans aren’t, either.
For what it’s worth, I happen to have heard some Windows, ON (Canada) 7-11 advertisements for a 651ml Big Gulp. Yeah, 651. Yeah, that’s obviously their small, 22 oz. soda pop. But rather than adapting the American measure by 1ml that no one notices (they’re self-filled!) in order to say “650ml Big Gulp” someone took up the effort to get that measurement right on the nose.
Sailor’s obviously right when it comes to people already trained. But for the most part, we as Americans do okay in American units because we’re used to it. The blinds example is good, and I’d probably get out a calculator or paper to do it repeatedly (just to avoid a mistake), but I know how to work in fractions (nothing to brag about, but there are a lot of people that don’t know that basic stuff) so it’s no big deal. At work (in the auto industry) where I’m not forced to use one unit over the other, I prefer metric for working with the smallest whole units.
Seeing how well Canada’s adopted to the metric system, I’m not sure it’d be a good use of money to force it upon the United States. A lot of money for nothing. Those that need metric units already use them. In Ontario I always see things in pounds and feet. Only where the government can step in are things 100% metric. Heck, in a Japanese plant in metric Ontario all of the safety related specifications were in English units!
Even in some countries that have been metric for a long time, there’s still a strong awareness of English measurements. My wife not from a border town knows inches, feet, yards, miles, leagues, cups, teaspoons, tablespoons, pounds, ounces, gallons with no problems (quarts and pints no, originally, but easy enough now). Fahrenheit is a problem for her, though. She’s a medical person with no link to manufacturing for export to the US (who probably know English units better still).