I know that the classic American view of measurement is that our system works. But the yesterday I was sitting at my fathers computer, watching him convert from inches to a metric measurement (which now escapes me) and I thought, “What the hell is this all about?” I just don’t seem to understand why the hell we have to be so different. I like base ten. I like easily converted units. I love the metric system.
I guess I’m saying, IMHO, I think that, as a nation, we should switch or atleast introduce it more into the culture.
It’s really nothing a few months of acclimatization wouldn’t solve. Most people are discomfited by the fact that they won’t have an intuitive feel for how far away a rest stop really is if it’s in “5 km”, or how much meat to buy in kg.
Then again when soda bottles switched from gallons to liters back in the early 80s (for reasons I still don’t fully understand – in the US, milk and OJ are still sold in gallons and half-gallons), people expressed fear and loathing, but really it didn’t take very long for people to grok the volume of liquid in a one-liter or two-liter bottle.
I grew up with Imperial in the UK and Australia; I converted to metric in Australia in the 1970s; and now I live in the US and have had to convert to US customary (which is unfortunately different in many ways from Imperial). So I’m completely unbiassed, and I prefer metric all the time.
I like it for most things. But for some reason, I can’t wrap my head around metric for fabric buying and other sewing things. I know a meter is awfully close to a yard, and there’s no other time in my life when I refer to “two-thirds of a yard” (Yes, it’s two feet. No, you don’t call it two feet in the fabric store.), but ordering six decimeters of ribbon seems bizarre. I might be able to get used to ordering “two-thirds of a meter”, but that sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
But I do wish more of my kitchen tools came with both units. Translating foreign recipes into English measure is tiresome.
I’m all for switching. I think in a couple generations I may be anyway. I know how many kg I weight, I can grok temperature, but though I know 5km is approximately 3 miles, and 10K miles is approximately 6 miles, when somebody talks about driving 120km an hour it throws me off.
A better approximation than 1 yard = 1 metre is 1 foot = 0.3 metres. So, if you want 2/3 of a yard, they you should get 0.6 metres. That’s both closer to what you want, and easier to measure on the ruler in the haberdashery. (Since the ruler will be marked with centimetres and decimetres, but not with thirds of a metre).
I’m Canadian, and I wish we’d finish converting to metric.
I’m learning about building, and right now all I know is that it’s in a horrible mess. The Building Code is in metric. The lumber is in Imperial. The bricks are allegedly in metric. Furnaces and insulation are rated in Imperial, but the heating calculations in the Code are in metric. The buildings are dimensioned in millimetres (millimetres!), but are built according to multiples of a foot, because that’s how the plywood and wallboard are dimensioned.
That’s ignoring the difference between nominal and actual dimensions of lumber: in other words, a “two-by-four”, the canonical size of lumber, is actually around 1.5 inches by 3 inches. In metric, this is referred to by its actual dimenstions, and is a “38 mm x 89 mm” unit. But this isn’t, strictly speaking, a failure of the metric conversion process.
When I was in architecture school, back in 1981, we were in the midst of the conversion, and we were told that we would be finished by the end of the eighties. Then in 1984 the new Conservative government pulled the plug on the process and disbanded the Metric Commission. There’s “conservative” and then there’s “reactionary”. But if the US changed, we would complete our transition so fast that it would make your head spin.
To me the ‘American system’ is a human based system. Having the normal temperature range of 0-100F makes sense, while having a system of 0-100C only makes sense if you are a water molecule at standard pressure. A foot to me is a more useful measurement then a meter, if we need meters, we have yards, and a inch more practical then a centimeter, Km and miles can go either way, but I’m sure I could find a reason that a mile is more of a human measurement. For liquid measure the only practical measure is the liter, but we already have such a unit, the quart, but adds other practical to us humans measures such as gallons, pints.
In short the metric system robs us of our humanity, and causes our spacecraft to malfunction and be lost.
I wish we could have ONE system…if it is to be Metric, fine with me! The big problem i have is switching from one to another…drives me crazy!
The US senate has had a metric conversion committee seated since 1909…what do they say? Is metrification just around the corner?
I assumed we would be there by now. I learned the coversions in the 50’s, and I presume every other kid has had a lesson on them since.
But the key to acceptance is the phrase: “Don’t convert, remeasure”
Everyone can complete a metric cake mix recipe with a metric measuring cup. No conversion there.
I have a plan how to make the move, next time I’m president.
Have all those weights and measures we don’t care much about, like the net weight on a can of beans, put into metric with old style in parentheses, instead of the other way around. And make sure the metric value is a round number and the old style is the odd number with three digits after the decimal.
This worked for 2 liter soda. Nobody was confused.
Our problem is we started in the 60’s with things people really cared about because they did calculations all the time. Freeway distance signs, and attempts to explain why miles/gal should be inverted for metric.
Gradual will get the job done. One industry at a time. But start with things you see every day but don’t calculate, like those soda bottles.
But we are made, in great part, of water molecules at standard pressure.
I find 0F to be rather meaningless. 0C, on the other hand, has direct and obvious applications. It’s the temperature at which water freezes. When temperatures get near 0C, we know to look out for ice on the roads, we know to change to heavier clothing, we know that the landscape will change and become more dangerous. 0F is, what, -18C? It’s a temperature that marks a boundary between ‘cold’ and ‘a but colder’. The only significance -18C has is that my nose hairs will freeze in only two breaths when I’m outside in it.
And 100F? Not particularly meaningful, other than “it’s hot out”. I can say the same about 35C. 100C, on the other hand, is when things start to boil…
You do know that this definition of “normal” is so arbitrary as to be completely nonsensical. Your lower point in particular makes no sense. How often is it 0F where you are? To me, OC is freezing. A perfect cutoff point in my opinion. But no more than my opinion. Sure, the upper regions of human tolerance in Celsius don’t go to a nice-round 100, but I know the difference between 30 and 35 and 38. It’s arbitrary too.
There may be some valid reasons against introducing Celsius, but this isn’t one of them.
I happen to be a big fan of the English system for woodworking. The fact that the inch (and the foot, and the yard) can be divided neatly into two, and divided again, and divided again, and divided again, and that those divisions correspond to actual marks on the ruler, seems very elegant to me. I don’t like the fact that on a metric ruler, you have clear demarkations at the centimeter and half-centimeter, and everything ese is a tiny undifferentiated line. God help you when you want to split 37 mm in two, let’s say. One of the brilliant things about the inch is the way each further halving of the inch is marked with a line of a different length. God save the inch!
And I don’t know about the rest of you, but to me, the metric system stinks of the guillotine. (Though I would like to wish everyone a happy primidi of the first *decade *of Nivôse, in which we celebrate peat!)
My feeling is that the switch to metric in the US will never happen. It’s just too inconvenient. Besides, while the metric system is unquestionably the way to go for most scientific or engineering calculations, there’s something to be said for the US system for everyday stuff. Really, a foot is a more useful standard than the meter. A meter is just too big; OTOH, a centimeter is a little small. Same with the kilogram. It’s too big, the gram is too small. And as far as cooking is concerned, the US systems’ “power of 2” setup makes halving recipes a little easier. As far as temperature is concerned, the Fahrenheit scale does give greater resolution. That can be handy.
The liter sorta works, but we already have the quart. I’ll be the first one to admit the kilometer works, though.
