The nice thing about standards, there are so many to choose from…
Having both systems has made working on cars interesting. Some of the "nuts and bolts’ are in metric, some in standard.
Oh, groovy.
You get to go out and buy a whole new socket set. Wrenches, too.
Now, an excuse for buying tools is almost always a good thing…unless you already have a buttload of tools that have always worked fine up 'til now!
Hah! My Stanley Steamer got 10 furlongs to the butt!
I agree with the fact we just have to much inertia to change. Current lumber is standardized, a 2X4, a 2x10, 4X4 etc. Plywood and sheetrock come in 4x8 foot sheets. Tile is 12’‘X12’’ and so on and so on. If we change then either we are going to maintain two systems then either, we keep the old sizes and rename them with cumbersome, non-intuitive metric calulations, or we change actual sizes to nearby intuitive metric ones, which means maintaining twice the stock for new and old constructions and increasing the price, or just doing crappy work with gaps and trimmed edges if we cram the metric sized ones into the holes where the old ones used to be. It’s bad enough needing two different sets of wrenches and sockets, I sure as hell don’t want to deal with buying SAE or Metric lumber.
I wish the US Gov. would set a date-like June 1st, 2010, after which EVERYTHING would be metric-then people would have to adapt. Trying to phase it in graduall is a mistake-we need an irrevocable transistion date, and be done with it.
But then, what will the US Senate Metrification Committee do? 
I first heard about the metric system by reading the ‘7 Litre’ badge on my dad’s '66 Ford Galaxie 500. In school in the early-'70s I took to it and decided it made more sense. (Besides, I hated doing fractions!) In aviation, temperatures are given in ºC. I’d like to see more metric.
American by birth, 1/2 metric by profession (nursing) and recreation (motorcycles and bicycles mostly metric), 1/2 anachronistic american system 'cuz we’re too lazy to convert. Longing to be fully metric
I wouldn’t mind a switch over to metric, just so I could try a Royale with cheese
Do you know what a Slug is? 'cuz that’s the english measurement of *mass * (1 slug weighs 32.17 lbs. at Earth’s surface).
Yes, I remember hitting that in Statics in first year and going, “WTF?” Later, I learned about the 'poundal", which is an alternative unit of weight in a system where the pound is a unit of mass.
[quote=wolfman*I agree with the fact we just have to much inertia to change. Current lumber is standardized, a 2X4, a 2x10, 4X4 etc. Plywood and sheetrock come in 4x8 foot sheets. Tile is 12’‘X12’’ and so on and so on. If we change then either we are going to maintain two systems then either, we keep the old sizes and rename them with cumbersome, non-intuitive metric calulations, or we change actual sizes to nearby intuitive metric ones, which means maintaining twice the stock for new and old constructions and increasing the price, or just doing crappy work with gaps and trimmed edges if we cram the metric sized ones into the holes where the old ones used to be. It’s bad enough needing two different sets of wrenches and sockets, I sure as hell don’t want to deal with buying SAE or Metric lumber.[/quote]
See, Canada was trying to make a complete change and then we quit halfway in. For this reason, the building code assumes a dimensional “module” of 100 mm: studs are on 400mm or 600mm centres, plywood is 1200mm x 2400mm, etc. Except what we actually get at the lumber supply house is on a inch-based module: studs are actually built on 16" or 24" centres, plywood is 4’ x 8’, etc.
Gaah.
Huh? I think maybe the confusion is between ‘familiar’ and ‘human’. I’ll agree on ‘familiar’ but not the other.
I fail to see how you can be using a non-gendered language to claim a system of measurement is ‘inhuman’ anyway. I think you need to agitate for masculine and feminine pronouns with which to fight your battle because English itself is ‘cold’ and ‘inhuman’ if you get right down to it.
I do my part by using dual units in most of the community plans and regulations that I write. It seems to drive some old farts nuts, but I’m not going to stop doing it to appease them.
I used to have trouble with Celsius for everyday sorts of temperatures – just didn’t have an intuitive sense of what anything felt like. Then, I worked in a lab for a few months, where pretty much any temperature between -80 and 100 was used on a regular basis. Now, I know that 22 is slightly on the cool side of room temperature, 37 is balmy, 30 is comfortably warm, at -80 things stick to your fingers if you’re not careful, and 65 is the hottest that something can be handled, etc. It really only took a few different reference points for me to get the hang of things.
And yes, I’m an American. Count me among the metric supporters.
Really. Nobody should ever try to wrap their heads around “slug-furlongs per fortnight squared” (I exaggerate, of course, but my high school physics teacher would throw crap like that at us every so often.)
Ugh, that would be even more annoying than some fractionated (not a real word, I don’t think…) metric measurement.
Do you know how many recipe books would have to have their measurements recalculated and then be re-written? How about my old (VERY cool) 1940something cookbook? It’s long out of print. Of course I guess it’s not as if our stores would stop selling measuring cups and all, or outlawing the use of the “old” system.
From some of the things I’ve read, the problem isn’t the soft conversions, it’s the hard conversions. Soft conversion is just changing the labels to use SI units, like putting 355 ml on a soda can. Hard conversion is changing the dimensions of the product to standard metric sizes, like switching to a 330 ml soda can.
Do we use different cups? Mine are 1 cup = 250 ml. 1 tsp = 5ml, 1 Tbsp = 15 ml. I can do the conversions in my head, too (although I have 3 sets of metric measuring cups and a kitchen scale as well). I’ve never had a problem with American recipes using my cup sets.
Granted, a lot of the recipes I cook are even more archaic than the American system. Quick, can anyone tell me off the top of their head how much a ratl of vinegar is?
One positive to converting to metric is that your drug dealers will already have an edge.
And the only thing I like about metric is the use of bolts on cars. I can spot the common 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18mm bolts a lot easier then I can the 3/8, 1/2, 9/16, 5/8" bolts. Not sure why, but metric is easier when working on vehicles. The ones I hate is when the manufacturer mixes the bolts. And I know they’re doing it just to fuck with me personally.
Wow, that’s rough. Can you think of anything you might have done to piss them off like that?
So, from what I’m hearing (and having experienced) is that once you get a little familiarity with metric, it’s all good. I wish Canada would complete the conversion, too. Once you live with a measuring system, you adjust.
(22 is on the cool side for room temperature? We usually have our house around 18 - 22 is a sauna for us.)
Why are spark plugs metric, even going back quite a few years? I know there isn’t a single metric bolt or nut otherwise in my ancien’ regime pickup truck, but the spark plugs are.
Do they sell A4 paper in Canada? I’ve never seen it in the office supply stores in the US.