I have no particular axe to grind on this, but I am curious - has anybody ever seen any concrete benefit to having converted to metric? Naturally when it was proposed and legislated there were alleged to be many benefits - but I wonder if you have known any? I thought of it last week when I saw news that they were finally going to bury Mirabel airport after $1.2+++++ billion investment there - and that was all just poor management, poor public policy, and I suspect packed with tens of millions of kickbacks for every Quebec company that came near it.
What does Mirabel have to do with the metric system?
Trudeau was deeply involved with both.
It has to do with evaluating the necessity of programmes and policies. We see these controversial and very expensive laws/expenditures, but rarely ever see any real evaluation of them later. I thought I admired Trudeau’s ability to legislate, but now I wonder. Mirabel was a massive insult to the life and nature of the area, cost billions, and was an undeniable mistake. I saw recently that the Cdn railroads changed to Metric, but it was such a disaster that they had to reverse it all. I think metric may have benefitted some giants like Bombardier, but I don’t know whether the whole nation had to make such a massive change for a few large companies.
I do not see how the Metric system has negatively impacted the country at all. Furthermore, Trudeau’s dead. Why is this an issue now?
Why did the CFL never convert to metric?
Well, if nothing else Canadian scientists and engineers don’t have to convert every quantity into new units when communicating with scientists and engineers from every other single country in the world except the USA. Which has to be of some use.
Isn’t the fact that the rest of the entire world deals in metric measurements good enough for you?
I know that in the UK we’re still fairly well wedded to our imperial measurements: we still buy our beer in pints (for which we have a special dispensation, along with the Irish, from the European Union), weigh ourselves in stones & pounds (new-born babies in pounds & ounces) and state our height in feet and inches. But anyone under the age of 30 is confused by this and once my generation is gone there will be no stopping metrication.
And it seems that North Americans cannot even count in metric: you sell your pertol (gas!) at the cumbersome XX and so many tenths of cents rather than the more straightforward XX point X cents.
My only gripe with the metric system is that atmospheric pressure is measured in hectopascals, surely the most bizarre-sounding unit ever.
Since this one seems destined to gather opinions, I think we’ll have to move it to IMHO.
samclem GQ Moderator
Not in Canada, or at least not in the part of Canada that I’m from (Winnipeg.) The billboards in front of gas stations almost always read, say, “78.7” (cents per litre.)
Funny, Environment Canada usually reports things in kilopascals (kPa). The reason that the hectopascal is used is because it’s equal to the “millibar”, which (I think) is a somewhat antiquated unit of pressure. It’s useful, though, because 1 bar is pretty close to atmospheric pressure most of the time.
[QUOTE=MikeS]
Not in Canada, or at least not in the part of Canada that I’m from (Winnipeg.) The billboards in front of gas stations almost always read, say, “78.7” (cents per litre.)
OK, MikeS, and apologies to Canadians everywhere.
There’s also the benefit that it’s a hell of a lot easier to learn. I am certainly glad I got to learn metric, where everything is ten of something else, rather than standard/imperial, where there’s no logic whatsoever to the multiples involved.
70-80% of our exports goes to the US. Even at the time of the change over, I think it was at least 50%. The value of re-scaling to export to the rest of the world was hardly a big seller.
Not true for any US state that I know. Typically the gas is sold in $1.XX per gallon.
And hey, the U.S. is making some progress. Heck, we even finally got around to converting our financial markets to the metric system (not without some continued resistance), no longer quoting stock market prices in fractions of a point.
This is one yankee who wishes we would go ahead and decide one way or another. Here’s a hint, fellow Amurikans, the rest of the world is not going to go away, and the metric system REALLY IS easier. And it’s really no big deal - we run 5k races, we drink liters of coke, we worry about grams of fat (some of us) - as for the rest, we’ll get used to it.
Um, yes, I’m a civil engineer, and I’d much rather figure the weight of a cubic meter of soil than a cubic yard of soil. (The specific gravity of soil is maybe 2 or so, so a cubic meter weighs, uh, 2 metric tonnes. As for the weight of a cubic yard of soil, well, at 27 cubic feet per cubic yard, maybe 120 pounds per cubic foot, and 2000 pounds per ton, uh… right.)
$1.XX9, actually. It’s the nine tenths of a cent that seosamh is talking about.
Isn’t the length of a CFL grid 100 meters instead of 100 yards ?
Incorrect notions and refutations:
The rest of the world is metric; only the US (Canada, Britain, etc.) isn’t.
This is wrong in two parts. First there is the incorrect notion that the US, etc., are insufficiently metric. Any cite for that? I don’t think there is a manufacturer, high-tech or otherwise, who is losing business because it refuses to use metric where it should. Some US companies use only metric, some use metric and imperial, and some just make products in even imperial units but just label in uneven grams–because it doesn’t matter. For example, Mars makes Snickers in the US with an even number of ounces and then sells it in Japan with an uneven number of grams. No one cares.
The second incorrect notion is that the “rest of the world” uses only metric. In Japan, jyou (the size of a tatami mat, a convenient measure of room size), tsubo (another measure of area, about 3.3 m[sup]2[/sup]), gou and shou (measures of volume used for Japanese sake and shouchuu) are used. Traditional measures are also used for kimono silks. On the other hand, kilometer and kilogram are both quite standard, as are most metric measurements.
AFAIK, China is not very metric at all and uses a vast array of traditional measurements–along with the metric system.
But only metric units are standard in high-tech, etc.
Incorrect. For example, every altimeter on every commercial (and military?) aircraft in the world uses good old-fashioned feet. The reason, according to what I’ve read, is that this use just stuck, probably because the numbers were mentally appealing in this application (if you use meters, you divide the feet number roughly by three, reducing the normal range to about 10,000 m or less).
I worked for a high-tech company until recently. Of course, most everything was metric, but the standard size for blades in that industry (at least in name) is 3 inches.
Sure, the exceptions aren’t numerous, but they are there.
My opinion is that the metric system is great for small measurements but has been a relative failure on the macro side. For micro, people don’t have a conception of how the things look and feel anyway, so the neat powers of ten are a big advantage. But for macro, there really isn’t an advantage at all, and often there is a disadvantage, since those units were originally created for specific purposes.
For example, I find it much easier to conceive of people’s heights in feet and inches. Most people are 4’+, 5’+, or 6’+ --three convenient layers, and the inches fill in the details. Going by 10s in centimeters is not as easy or intuitive.
Kilometers have bombed in the US for a similar reason, I think. A mile is a good, chunky unit for long distances. “Mile” itself is a good, solid word. “Kilometer” is just plain crap as a brand; no wonder it failed!
At any rate, there is no reason why we can’t go on mixing systems. Both imperial and metric have their advantages.
A CFL field is 110 yards - which is as near 100m as no matter, but it’s measured in yards. Centre is the 55 yard line. Oh, and it’s wider too.
What ges most people’s goat up(certainly mine)is the EU and friends deciding we MUST use metric and making it illegal for us to go off and buy a pound of bananas.If they just left it as using metric,with people free to use imperial if they choose,everyone would be a lot happier.
This is simply because it’s what you’re used to. Having grown up with kilometres and metres, I have a very good sense of how long a km is, but couldn’t tell you how long a mile is even if I walked it in your shoes.