I noticed a mention of it a while back. What surprises me is that no one has brought up the famous Abraham Simpson quote…
Anything to be calculated using metric is rendered much simpler by a factor of a factor.
Seeing stock quotes as stuff like “54 7/16” is a joke.
However, in daily life, it can be a bit of a problem, given that people have dyed-in-the-wool units that they’re comfortable using. But people adapt, over time.
But what’s with all this libellous “English system” stuff? We use metric (mostly), you know. I think you should change the nomenclature. 
That would be 11 stone, 1 stone = 14 pounds
This is one of the imperial measurments that still persist in common use in England, even among the young who are taught metric at school.
The metric system is the tool of the devil!
Wouldn’t the meter stick be the actual tool? And does that mean the yardstick is the tool of the lord? Maybe that’s why nuns are so fond of rulers in catholic schools.
Same deal in Puerto Rico. Distances in Km, speeds (and the speedometer in cars) in Mph.
We also have gasoline priced by the liter, cooking gas by the pound; land surfaces in square metres, building interior space in square feet. At the doctor’s, height and weight in inches and pounds, body temperature in Celsius. At the market, soda, wines and spirits in litres, beer and milk in ounces/quarts (OK, we do share that with the US).
…and they wonder why we can’t get anything done on time.
Blimey, how tall are you, gonzalo? I’m six foot, I mean 183cm, and I can just about walk a kilometre in 1000 paces. You’re claiming that your pace is over 5 feet long?
Those of us who live in Canada, Ireland, PR, are in the worst of both worlds: stuck halfway between one systen and the other.
We should finish the conversion. Or never have converted at all.
But I like the idea of the base-12 metric system. It has the divisibility advantage of the Imperial/US Customary units and the consistency and extendability advantage of the current SI.
Has anyone worked out the details for it (physical constants, etc)?
Let’s think about this for a moment. Logarithmic does not mean “base ten” or “factor of ten growth” or whatever. You are simply doing it in base ten. Because that’s what you’ve always done.
Ass I understand things, you could have 4.5 x 10[sup]-7[/sup] pints if you wanted. Really, this is silly. The ability to manipulate through powers of ten is not patented by the metric system. It just so happens that you can call 1000 meters a kilometer if you wish, whereas there is no simple thing for feet to miles. But that’s much more nitpicky than I think anyone need get.
As I hope I have illustrated, no.
Monty, why do you ask me that question?
tjblack, it wasn’t a matter of calculating what a weight was in newtons, it was intuitively understanding it. I would have to calculate it, you see, to understand it. I have an intuitive grasp of weight measured in pounds, though. Because tht’s what I’ve used all my life.
Everyone. Length, mass, time, electric charge. As I understand it, everything we deal with can be handled with these four units (there may be more as we get into physics and stuff but whatever). They can be whatever you want, and you can treat them as fractions or powers of ten or smilie faces for all I care. You can have half of an ampere of current or you can have 500 milliamperes or you can have five-point-zero times ten to the negative first amperes. You can have ten millimeters. You can have one eighth of an inch or you can have 125 times ten to the negative third inches. Try not to confuse the complete arbitrary nature of standard units with how we represent them as their quantities change. The metric system holds no special power by using multiples of ten. I use decimal inches all the time.
You use decimal inches all the time. That’s cool - that means the decimal system holds advantage over systems with other bases. Hence, the metric system. I rest my case.
No, that means I use it all the time. Number systems are arbitrary, too.
Wow eris you must think we’re really stupid. We have stated repeatedly that it is the simplicity of base ten calculations and the scalability of the units that make it much easier to use the metric system over the English system.
I’m pretty sure everyone here know that the name of units are arbitrary. However, that does not mean that mean functionality doesn’t differ by system.
The reason I mention logarithmic growth (and yes indeed I know what that means) is because in my lab we work with very small and very large numbers. Scalability is important to us. Base ten is the easiest way scale. If it weren’t what we’d be doing is transforming everything to a base ten anyway. Our calculations would look like 15[sup]-150[/sup] ounces/gallon. In other words we would start doing decimal ounces. Why not just cut out the middle man, and just go for the base ten unit as well.
That’s the beauty of metric.
You forgot the best part:
No, I think you are attributing the ease of a measuring system with the way it is most commonly used. That is not stupid, it is just a mistake.
Why is it any harder to say “ten inches” than “ten centimeters”???
Then you wouldn’t agree that it was arbitrary. Inches and centimeters both measure length. One is not any “better” than the other at doing so. I have not seen anyone indicate how it could be, other than the dubious “convenience” of being able to call one hundred centimeters a meter.
Then you can appreciate why I find n inches to be just as scalable as n centimeters. “N” is the only factor in scalability.
What are your criteria for “easy”? I see nothing easier about using base ten over base two or sixteen other than I’ve been raised using one particular one most of my life for specific applications.
I have a sneaky suspicion you really are missing my point. Or you find some universal preference for the decimal system. Which is different than the metric system.
There is no such thing as a “base ten unit”. There are units of measure, and the metric system has prefixes to indicate powers of ten. It is a conversational shorthand. Nothing in the whole wide world except convention prevents anyone from talking about milligallons. Dig?
Because in a lab, you publish what you find, and other labs around the world would have to break out the calculators to figure the inches/centimeters conbversions. It is just easier if everyone does the same thing.
1 litre = 1 cubic decimeter.
1 gallon =(? or ~?) 231 cubic inches, as far as I can tell.
I rest my case.
To add a cheap shot, that makes 1 (US) gallon about 0.1337 cubic feet. And the general intelligence of people using 1337speak is well-known, neh? 
The word mile comes from Latin, mille passum, 1000 paces.
One pace = two steps, or every right foot.
The problem isn’t with inches, per se. The problem is with feet and inches. (Not to mention yards, chains, rods, miles, etc.) Inches are no more arbitrary than anything else, and you’re right that there’s no such thing as a “base ten unit”, but there is such a thing as a base ten unit system. Can you convert quickly between feet and inches? When the measurement is more than 12 feet? Can you convert quickly between miles and yards? Can you tell me how many inches are in 3 miles, 142 yards, 2 feet, 7 inches? What is that distance in decimal miles? Decimal feet? Those kinds of calculations are impossible without a calculator or pencil and paper (and time), unless you’re an idiot savant.
The superiority of the metric system is that it makes conversion between different sized units trivial. And the advantage becomes even greater when you start measuring something like torque (Describe the calculations involved in converting foot pounds to inch ounces, or whatever unit is used to measure small amounts of torque) Unless you’re advocating that we start measuring long distances in kiloyards (0.57 miles) and short distances in centiyards (.36 inches) or milliyards (0.87 of 1/32 of an inch), you’re using a measuring system that doesn’t take advantage of the fact that we count in base 10. The fact that you can use decimal representations for any single unit is beside the fact.
And why do you use it all the time? 
so don’t use feet. I don’t know anyone that uses megameters.
When you find someone that actually uses one, you let me know.
No, but on the other hand, I can’t say I’ve ever found the need to, either. That might explain it.
When I last did any science work, apart from studying electronic circuits, we did everything in scientific notation inside the cgs system. That’s what we used, three units, centimeters, grams, and seconds. We didn’t use meters, we used 1.0 x 10[sup]3[/sup] cm. We didn’t use hours, we used seconds. We didn’t use kilograms, we used grams. :shrug: I have rarely been in any circumstance where anything needed to be expressed in picometers. Except, of course, when learning how to apply the prefix “pico”. Hardly a universal application, IMO.
And when that ever matters, a situation I really haven’t found yet, I’ll be sure to let you know.
In case my exposition went right past you, the metric system simply has conversational shorthands for the elimination of saying “times ten to the”. This conversational shorthand can be applied to any system. It simply hasn’t been. That is cconvention. If you want to argue, like Tars, that this convention is what makes the metric system worth using all the time, I will conceed that is probably the case.
It is the fact.