Pushing for total metric in the US: is a foolish consistency the hobgoblin of a small mind?

[Aeschines]

From time to time on Facebook, people will pass along this image making fun of the imperial system of measurements and glorifying the metric system. Haha, we Americans so DUMB for using them old things!

But here’s my thesis:

America already uses the metric system to a considerable extent, and we’re metric enough.

(Caveat: There are probably some companies, government agencies, etc., that should be using metric measurements instead of imperial so as to smooth international trade, etc. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about general use by society. I agree that for general scientific use, the metric system is superior.)

We used a mixed system in the US. Everyone knows how big a two-liter bottle of soda is and how big a gallon of milk is. All booze is sold in ml, but beer is sold in fl. oz. We typically use pounds for bigger weights and grams for smaller weights. Sometimes ounces. All food packages show both ounces and grams. We do our high school scientific course work in the metric system (this was true for me way back in the 80s), as well we should. We use both inches and centimeters, but we tend to stick to feet, yards, and miles for more macro distances.

Guess what? None of this hurts anyone, and none of it is shameful from an international perspective either. Japan uses several old measures, such as go for rice, jo (tatami mat size) for traditional Japanese room sizes, sho for sake bottles, and even tsubo for area is still quite common.

Further, there are aspects of the imperial system that are just better for everyday applications, and that’s the main reason why they’ve stuck around:

• Miles are better for highway distances because, by happy coincidence, 60 mph is a common highway speed. You can easily estimate your time to your destination. Yes, it’s a small thing. But changing everything to km wouldn’t really make anyone’s life easier, except perhaps for foreign visitors and residents.

• The Celsius temperature scale is a joke for daily use. Further, since both it and Fahrenheit are base 10 and the selection of their 0 point is completely arbitrary, neither is more “metric” or “scientific” than the other (for actual science, please use Kelvin). The 0-100 scale of Celsius seems more rational at first glance, but it actually sucks for expressing daily temperatures: you have to go negative for anything even sort of cold, and almost nothing over 40 is used. OTOH, Fahrenheit 0-100 covers the temperature range that people actually experience, and it is suitably granular: no need for decimals at all.

• Feet have stuck around because the meter is too big and the centimeter is too small for a lot of things. Also, millimeters are too fine a gradation for everyday crafts like home building, framing, etc., whereas 1/4 1/8 1/16 in. are more visually intuitive for everyday purposes. (Again, for science and industry, metric is great.)

• Cooking measurements in cups and tablespoons isn’t going away simply because it works well–very well. I cook a lot and bake too. Trying to convert all that to ml and grams would just be anal-retentive nonsense. Working with overseas recipes I get online in grams forces me to get out my gram scale–no biggie, but it’s an extra step.

There are plenty of areas where the metric system has similar advantages, and people freely and autonomously embraced the system insofar as it was better. Grams being a big example. Ounces are actually too big to measure small weights, and fractions of an ounce are just confusing. That’s why your dealer would sell you grams and not scruples of blow even back in the 70s!

Other stuff is arbitrary. Both pounds and kilograms are sufficiently granular for things like body weight. I do medical interpreting, and I have even seen offices that mix inches for height and kg for weight (most use inches and pounds; some use metric).

At the end of the day, people in the US use imperial measurements because they remain useful for specific tasks. We mix and match (as do people in many countries, actually, pace the metric nazis). So, ultimately, those FB posts about imperial dumbth reveal a blind spot of the poster.

[PastTense]

And it’s trivially easy for you convert yards to miles off the top of your head, right?

[Aeschines]

@PastTense

And it’s trivially easy for you convert yards to miles off the top of your head, right?

Never need to, is the thing.

[Civil_Guy]

…and I’ll say it again. Miles and kilometers are both good for estimating ETA, they just work differently. In metric units, 100 kph is about the same as 60 mph. With mph, you get the number of minutes before you arrive. With kph, you get the number of hours.

Say, you’ve got 450 miles (725 km) to drive today. That’s 450 minutes or 7.25 hours. No, not exactly the same answer, but we are figuring an estimate in any case.

Not that this comes up all that often, but converting the volume of materials to weight (okay, mass) is a lot easier in metric units.

[running_coach]

metric people can’t be trusted. Give 'em an inch and they’ll take a mil.

flees

[Mr.Goob]

As a machinist I’ve spent my whole life thinking in decimals of an inch. I can’t wrap my head around millimeters. When I get that occasional odd blueprint I dig around for my “other” calipers or look at a chart to understand what sizes I’m looking at.

Insert get off my lawn joke here.

[jz78817]

It doesn’t really matter. the only people who care that we haven’t converted over only care inasmuch as it gives them something to complain about.

where it does matter (science and engineering,) we’ve already converted.

[ctnguy]

I think a lot of this is just that the units you grew up with will always feel more natural.

@Aeschines

• Miles are better for highway distances because, by happy coincidence, 60 mph is a common highway speed. You can easily estimate your time to your destination. Yes, it’s a small thing. But changing everything to km wouldn’t really make anyone’s life easier, except perhaps for foreign visitors and residents.

Besides what Civil Guy said regarding 100 km/h speeds, in quite a lot of metric countries the highway speed is 120 km/h, which works exactly as easily as 60 mph.

• The Celsius temperature scale is a joke for daily use. Further, since both it and Fahrenheit are base 10 and the selection of their 0 point is completely arbitrary, neither is more “metric” or “scientific” than the other (for actual science, please use Kelvin). The 0-100 scale of Celsius seems more rational at first glance, but it actually sucks for expressing daily temperatures: you have to go negative for anything even sort of cold, and almost nothing over 40 is used. OTOH, Fahrenheit 0-100 covers the temperature range that people actually experience, and it is suitably granular: no need for decimals at all.

I agree that the temperature scales are arbitrary, and because there is no conversion between different orders of magnitude there’s no particular metric advantage. That being said, I think this is just a case of preferring what you’re used to. There’s nothing wrong with using negative figures - having grown up with celsius it feels perfectly natural to me that negative temperatures mean freezing. The granularity of celsius is fine for talking about the weather or setting your thermostat, and when higher granularity is needed you just go decimal.

• Feet have stuck around because the meter is too big and the centimeter is too small for a lot of things. Also, millimeters are too fine a gradation for everyday crafts like home building, framing, etc., whereas 1/4 1/8 1/16 in. are more visually intuitive for everyday purposes. (Again, for science and industry, metric is great.)

The thing is, with metric you essentially have implicit units at the orders of magnitude between the “named” units. They’re just expressed as decimals. Like 0.1m (aka 10cm) (I think that’s actually called a “decimetre” but nobody uses that name). And of course you can use fractions just as you would with inches, it’s again just easier to use decimals. In those situations where you’d use fractions of an inch, it’s very common to use fractions of a centimetre. So where you might use 1/4in units, in metric world we might use 1/2cm units, but just call them 5mm.

• Cooking measurements in cups and tablespoons isn’t going away simply because it works well–very well. I cook a lot and bake too. Trying to convert all that to ml and grams would just be anal-retentive nonsense. Working with overseas recipes I get online in grams forces me to get out my gram scale–no biggie, but it’s an extra step.

Here you’re also changing what you’re measuring, though. Cups and tablespoons are volume units, whereas grams are weight units. If you have measuring spoons and jugs marked in millilitres, they work just as well as tablespoons and cups.

[Aeschines]

@jz78817

It doesn’t really matter. the only people who care that we haven’t converted over only care inasmuch as it gives them something to complain about.

where it does matter (science and engineering,) we’ve already converted.

TL;DR version of the OP, thanks!

[Aeschines]

@ctnguy

I think a lot of this is just that the units you grew up with will always feel more natural.

Not sure that’s quite it. I grew up with imperial but am not comfortable with ounces. Ounces suck. I am fine with either pounds or kg. I lived in Japan and am comfortable with metric. I hate Celsius, though. Always will.

Besides what Civil Guy said regarding 100 km/h speeds, in quite a lot of metric countries the highway speed is 120 km/h, which works exactly as easily as 60 mph.

Point taken on this!

I agree that the temperature scales are arbitrary, and because there is no conversion between different orders of magnitude there’s no particular metric advantage. That being said, I think this is just a case of preferring what you’re used to. There’s nothing wrong with using negative figures - having grown up with celsius it feels perfectly natural to me that negative temperatures mean freezing. The granularity of celsius is fine for talking about the weather or setting your thermostat, and when higher granularity is needed you just go decimal.

I think the negative of F is better: really fucking cold! as opposed to “water will now freeze.” That’s a matter of preference. But I do think the granularity of C is shyte, and the need to use decimals is a palpable disadvantage.

The thing is, with metric you essentially have implicit units at the orders of magnitude between the “named” units. They’re just expressed as decimals. Like 0.1m (aka 10cm) (I think that’s actually called a “decimetre” but nobody uses that name). And of course you can use fractions just as you would with inches, it’s again just easier to use decimals. In those situations where you’d use fractions of an inch, it’s very common to use fractions of a centimetre. So where you might use 1/4in units, in metric world we might use 1/2cm units, but just call them 5mm.

But you’re talking about units no one actually uses because they’re crap! No one uses decimeters or half-meters or 1/3 meters or 1/4 meters. No one. No one uses 5 mm units. Because those are all clunky and unintuitive. The meter itself is fine (it’s like a big yard, after all), but its subunits are not designed for daily human use. People end up making do with the cm.

Here you’re also changing what you’re measuring, though. Cups and tablespoons are volume units, whereas grams are weight units. If you have measuring spoons and jugs marked in millilitres, they work just as well as tablespoons and cups.

The cups and teaspoons system was basically designed for baking because it’s just as much precision as is required. I’ve seen British recipes, and it’s like “300 g of onions” and BS like that.

[Daylate]

And it’s trivially easy for you convert yards to miles off the top of your head, right?

I’d say it was trivially easy. It’s not hard to divide 5280 by 3 = 1760 yards.

[Trinopus]

@Mr.Goob

As a machinist I’ve spent my whole life thinking in decimals of an inch. I can’t wrap my head around millimeters. When I get that occasional odd blueprint I dig around for my “other” calipers or look at a chart to understand what sizes I’m looking at.

Insert get off my lawn joke here.

It ain’t that hard! 2.5 cm to the inch. Anybody who can’t do a “five to two” conversion isn’t trying.

Converting those decimals of inches to feet and yards is quite a bit harder.

Ever do any work with pounds, shillings, and pence? The British were reluctant to go to metric currency…and now they’d rise up in violent riots if anyone tried to make them go back!

[TriPolar]

I completely agree with the OP. Lincoln Chafee disagrees with the OP, therefore the OP must be correct.

[Daylate]

Converting those decimals of inches to feet and yards is quite a bit harder.

Not so. Basically, a hundredth of a foot is plenty close to 1/8 inch.

ie., .08 foot is very close to 1 inch.

.58 foot is almost exactly 7 inches.

Etc.

[Balthisar]

@Aeschines

America already uses the metric system to a considerable extent, and we’re metric enough.

Pretty much this, and there’s no practical way to legislate full conversion. Sure, we could change all of the highway signs, but what about everything else? We have a first amendment right to use American units of measurement.

If I am a soda bottler, sure, maybe the FDA or FTC can mandate ml on the bottle, but they have no right to take away ounce measurements if that’s what I choose to use.

If I’m a cookbook author, I have the choice to publish in American units.

If I own a bank or TV station, who can forbid me from indicating the current temperature in degrees-F?

Maybe there’s a legal theory that could force gas stations to dispense in liters, but no one will really care about that.

If we ever replace ObamaCare, maybe someone can introduce a rider that all medical information use metric units, but I’m thinking that that probably oversteps some Constitutional limits.

There’s not really a practical means to force anyone to use systems they don’t want to use. We could waste taxpayer money by introducing a public shaming campaign via propaganda, but it would still take decades to have a meaningful effect. People my age in Ontario (Canada) still use Canadian units for lots of things, and a lot of government requirements (such as certain CSA requirements) still indicate the primary requirement in Canadian units!

(Yes, there are differences between some American and Canadian units.)

[Max_the_Immortal]

Not sure why you need so much granularity in your temperature scale.

[Aeschines]

@Max_the_Immortal

Not sure why you need so much granularity in your temperature scale.

22-35° C, just 13°, goes from a comfortable 72 °F to a blistering 95 °F. To me, it’s too small.

The decades of F also reflect human comfort levels pretty well:

50s: Cool

60s: Cooly comfortable

70s: Ideal comfort, room temp

80s: Hottish

90s: Uncomfortably hot

100+: Fuggedaboutit

Sure, it’s kinda arbitrary, but that’s how humans think. The decades of Celsius are too cramped for this kind of thinking.

[Monty]

@Balthisar

Pretty much this, and there’s no practical way to legislate full conversion. Sure, we could change all of the highway signs, but what about everything else? We have a first amendment right to use American units of measurement.

Can you explain how this is a First Amendment right?

[Cazzle]

@Aeschines

• The Celsius temperature scale is a joke for daily use. Further, since both it and Fahrenheit are base 10 and the selection of their 0 point is completely arbitrary, neither is more “metric” or “scientific” than the other (for actual science, please use Kelvin). The 0-100 scale of Celsius seems more rational at first glance, but it actually sucks for expressing daily temperatures: you have to go negative for anything even sort of cold, and almost nothing over 40 is used. OTOH, Fahrenheit 0-100 covers the temperature range that people actually experience, and it is suitably granular: no need for decimals at all.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you don’t live in Los Angeles.

This argument always makes me laugh. I live in a climate where the extremes of temperature I experience are -3.7C/25.3F(lowest ever recorded, 1992) to 47C(116.6F) (highest ever recorded, 2009). The Celsius range works perfectly for me. At 0, there may be ice on the roads and it’s freaking insanely cold - and it IS freaking insanely cold to me, because it never really gets much below that so that’s my entire frame of reference. Come live here and then tell me how it’s more important to use 0 to mark the point where it’s freaking insanely cold (Fahrenheit-style) instead of the point where ice starts forming on the roads.

• Cooking measurements in cups and tablespoons isn’t going away simply because it works well–very well. I cook a lot and bake too. Trying to convert all that to ml and grams would just be anal-retentive nonsense. Working with overseas recipes I get online in grams forces me to get out my gram scale–no biggie, but it’s an extra step.

It’s what you’re used to. I convert US recipes to grams and wish more were done by weight to begin with. For one thing, measurements by weight produce more consistent results than measurements by volume. For another, different countries use different size cups and teaspoons - you have to know where the recipe is from to know how much flour “1 cup” actually is. That doesn’t mean I can’t use cups and spoons - I own a set and if it’s more practical, I’ll use them. I just don’t see them as superior to measuring by weight.

[Aeschines]

@Eliahna

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you don’t live in Los Angeles.

Thank God, no!

This argument always makes me laugh. I live in a climate where the extremes of temperature I experience are -3.7C/25.3F(lowest ever recorded, 1992) to 47C(116.6F) (highest ever recorded, 2009). The Celsius range works perfectly for me. At 0, there may be ice on the roads and it’s freaking insanely cold - and it IS freaking insanely cold to me, because it never really gets much below that so that’s my entire frame of reference. Come live here and then tell me how it’s more important to use 0 to mark the point where it’s freaking insanely cold (Fahrenheit-style) instead of the point where ice starts forming on the roads.

You really haven’t said why C is preferable to F in such a case.

It’s not “important” that 0 is where it’s at in F, other than the fact that 0-100 covers the range of temperatures that people in most climates regularly encounter (the fact people in certain climates experience a narrower range doesn’t negatively affect this advantage). If that 0 marked what is currently 10° F and those whole 100° were scrunched down into the new 90° range, the system would work about as well.

It’s what you’re used to. I convert US recipes to grams and wish more were done by weight to begin with. For one thing, measurements by weight produce more consistent results than measurements by volume.

Yes, in certain recipes, it’s preferable. I use a shortbread recipe in which I weigh the flour.

That’s not a flaw of cups and tablespoons, however. It simply means that more recipes should be presented by weight–as needed. I don’t think it would affect most recipes, since such great precision isn’t required.

OTOH, I get the impression that most recipes done in grams are doing so to be metric and are calling for superfluous precision and therefore complicating things.

For another, different countries use different size cups and teaspoons - you have to know where the recipe is from to know how much flour “1 cup” actually is.

No, that’s not true, so long as you are using a consistent set of measuring tools. The overall recipe will just be slightly smaller or bigger.

That doesn’t mean I can’t use cups and spoons - I own a set and if it’s more practical, I’ll use them. I just don’t see them as superior to measuring by weight.

It’s not that measuring by volume is superior to weight. Rather, it’s that people started using weight when they started using metric to make everything metric. Why? My guess is that ml is an impractical measurement, but g is doable with a scale. The cart was put before the horse, IOW.