But neither of the systems is really a 100-point scale, since common everyday temperatures extend well below zero and above 100 for both. Actually the closest would be Celsius because it divides the temperatures between two common natural phenomena into 100 units, and 0°C as I pointed out is a very important point in everyday life and transportation safety, whereas 0°F doesn’t really mean anything useful, nor does anything important happen when the Fahrenheit numbers go negative.
Exactly, it doesn’t. Typically the old “1 mile to exit” signs have been replaced with “2 km” signs, and the “500 m” signs appear just before the exit. This is actually a good example of the utility of metric. “500 m” is a hell of a lot more meaningful than “1320 ft”, since the former is instantly recognizable as half a kilometer, while the latter isn’t immediately recognizable as anything. Of course a real sign would say something like “exit in 1/4 mile”, but the point is how intuitively one can translate between the different units in the metric system. What if the only place to put a sign was, say, about 600 m away from the exit? The metric sign would say “600 m”. I don’t know what the current system could reasonably say – “1969 feet, 0.373 miles”? I think in the spirit of the old system, it should say “Exit coming up real soon, about 3 furlongs”.
It might not make you very happy, but in many, perhaps most, metricified countries, they do not say Km/L. The more common usage is L/100Km. And when you think about it, that usage might be more descriptive, because an economy car will have a lower number than a Maserati, as in “uses less fuel”.
The ambient outdoor temperature is almost always between 0 and 100 F. It gives a nice broad range that is useful for daily human applications. The boiling point of water means nothing to someone except a scientist.
This is nonsensical. What is confusing about 1/4 mile? That would be like me saying that a conversion to metric would require 1/4 mile signs to be replaced with “402.336 meters to next exit” to show how absurd the metric system is. Any system can be easily divided and shown by a road sign. The only problem is that almost every American can estimate 1/4 mile, but a forced conversion to metric would make us have to figure out how far 500 or 600m are, and force us to do it for no real purpose.
If this makes a financial difference in international trade, major corporations would be making that switch immediately.
It took humans that timeframe to create everything. Language included. Nothing’s special about numbers.
Call me culturally biased, but yes, in fact, I do think it’s way more natural to count on fingers than count on segments of fingers. But feel free to produce that civilization that developed a different system of numeration because they counted on segments of fingers.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been culturally accustomed to using the Celsius scale for… everything. So it “just feels right”. I’m hopelessly lost when talking to older Canadians (who grew up using Fahrenheit) or Americans. (40-100 degrees??? wtf does this nonsense even mean??? Arrrrgh!! ).
However, they probably feel the same (in reverse). You are used to, what you use. The Indian numbering system always confused me as it is centered on the lakh (100,000). And, while I grew up speaking English, I hear that some others grew up speaking NOT ENGLISH :eek: ; and they seem to think that THEY’RE the normal ones :dubious: .
Anyhoo. I like that the designers of my system did it elegantly, removing any need for conversion formulas within distance (metre to kilometre); or weight (gram to kilogram); or volume (milliliter to litre). Setting Celsius to the physical properties of water is pretty cool too (“x below” weather = expect snow/ice conditions. A boiling pot = 100C). If only Fahrenheit had set 0-100 to something stable/common in nature, it would’ve received those bonus points too.
Since 0 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit are calibrated to…nothing, I have trouble framing it within my life’s context/experience.
Guys, this may come as a shock, I know, but it’s all what you’re used to. Celcius provides a perfectly decent range for weather conditions on Earth. It gets way colder than zero Fahrenheit at times in certain locations, mine being one of them.
Anyway, I was in my early teens when Canada changed, so I don’t even really need to think about the conversion of temperatures or distances. My brain knows intuitively what either scale means. However, if a quick-and-dirty conversation is required, the following works quite well:
Oh sure, but the part we live in, in the Fahrenheit scale, is effectively a 100-point scale.
Yeah, but we don’t live in most of that range. Sure, I boil water at 100° C., but I don’t use the number. I just turn up the burner, and a few minutes later, the water’s boiling. But nobody’s going to inhabit that 50°-100° C. range.
Agreed. This is the one part I think is actually relevant to non-scientists.
While there’s no bright-line event at 0°F. (or 100°F. for that matter), I still come back to 0°-100°F. roughly demarcating a human livability zone.
(Yes, as Leaffan reminds us, people live in places where the outdoor temperatures frequently drop below zero F., and the same is true at the other end: I have a cousin who’s spent most of her adult life in Dubai, where it frequently gets over 100° outside. But at neither end do you want to spend time outside at those temperatures; they’re temperatures you protect yourself against. I’ve gone skiing when it’s been 10°F. and enjoyed it; I doubt I could have said the same about -10°F. I’m sure some people do, but I bet the slopes are a LOT less crowded at Alta or Park City at the latter temp.)
Yeah, this. For some reason, every time this topic crops up, the USAsians on this board go to battle over temperature above all else.
As someone who was brought up under one system, and has seen the nation migrate to the other (UK), it’s really honestly not a Big Deal.
Our weather was reported for years in both F and C, presumably to help us learn, and one day, they just dropped Farenheit. I don’t think anyone noticed.
Your concept of “temperate” would be considered a national emergency in Spain. Or not. We might all be dead if we had -20ºC for more than a few seconds. 40ºC OTOH most of us know how to deal with; 50ºC is “gee, it is hot out there today!” in some parts of the country.
I’m American and therefore against forced metrication, but have spent a very significant amount of time working overseas. It’s actually a bit difficult for me to think of ambient temperatures in terms of F. The only real handicap is when I try to talk to people about the weather. What does 60 degrees feel like again?
And like I mentioned upthread, why the hell is the doctor telling me 20 lbs, 6.3 oz? Why not just 20.4 lbs, or even better, or why not just 9.25 kg? Doctor, you’re from India, for crying out loud. Just tell me the scientific units. Medicine is a science, right?
These are irritating, but nothing worth forcing my mother to change units for.
Temperature is the one area where there is literally no objective benefit to going Metric. It is simply a different scale for temperature than Fahrenheit. It makes nothing better, nothing more understandable, nothing more translatable than keeping what we already have.
Distance, volume, mass, are all objectively made somewhat more simple by switching to Metric. Primarily because you don’t have unusually sized translations between different scales of measure. No such benefit is gained from going to Celsius.
One of the reasons we can soldier on with our old system is that translations between sizes is not as big a deal as one might think. When travelling, the whole 1 mile vs 1/4 mile vs 1,000ft vs 500ft signs aren’t a problem because we simply get used to what the signs mean in driving terms. 1 mile means you need to work your way over to the right lane, 1/4 mile means it’s getting close, 1,000ft is just a bit closer still and 500ft mean you should be seeing the exit right now.
Even though 200m is easier to translate into a kilometer, it doesn’t actually give you more driving information than 500ft. You’re not actively translating the sign distance into a fraction of a larger distance, comparing that fraction to your speed in that larger distance, and calculating an ETA for the exit. Instead, the sign gives you an intuitive sense of how long it will take to get to the exit.
Well at least you finally responded with half a post that wasn’t comprised of argumentum ad hominem. I’m assuming you aren’t super comfortable with division, thus the very emotional defensive reaction to non decimal systems so…here.
60 / 5 = 12
If you count with 12 with the segments of you of one hand, and use the other fingers of the other hand to track your place you end up with 60. This is where you can get the sumerian and babylonian mathematics base 60 that is in still used for seconds and degrees even today.
It’s a worldwide standard, as well as the standard in science. If we switch to Celsius, we won’t have to design everything with dual scales (or different scales for different markets): thermometers, thermostats, ovens and other kitchen appliances, cars (they have temperature displays/controls), every data sheet & product manual (they have temperature ranges written somewhere), etc. We won’t have to “translate” cookbooks for the European vs. American market. Weather forecasts will be understandable when you travel overseas, or when foreigners visit the US.
Technically, Kelvin is the standard, and it all has to be translated to degrees C = T/K − 273.15
Note that despite the MKS system of units succeeding the centimetre–gram–second system of units (CGS) in commerce and engineering in 1889, which was replaced by SI in 1960, many of the sciences still use the CGS with the dyn and the urg.
One world standard would be nice, but the “rest of the world” using a single system is still a goal that is a very long way away even if the US outlaws customary units tomorrow.
Half the reason I comment in these threads is out of hope that the world will practice what it preaches. The rest of the world is regressing while pointing to the US as the only problem and it is causing issues.
To clarify “pounds” are a unit of mass in the official US units, but engineers use a gravitational system with pound-forces as the base unit…this is where that whole belief that the pound is not a unit of mass comes from. Engineers use a special gravitational FPS system that consumers don’t use.
That system needs to die and it should have died a long time ago and if it did all US customary units would be exact relations to the SI system.
Unfortunately physics astronomy and other fields that people like to think as being Metric or SI are not, they use the CGS system which has compatibility problems with SI units like A.
While this is just some random .edu this note will describe this.
To be clear, the US states should get up the courage to move forward, even if the SI system isn’t perfect neither is any other system. All international agreements will be full of compromises and that is fine.
What annoys me is some claim that science uses SI or that the rest of the world uses SI, which they don’t.
Universal adoption will provide many benefits, the common myth and propaganda that only the US hasn’t moved forward is counterproductive. Yes it will take some brave politicians before the US moves forward but it would be a lot easier thing to sell if it wasn’t just a move to another patchwork of exceptions and problems.
Those in science and technical industries need to set up to the plate and move forward, it may be nicer to use other systems but it is a compromise for everyone and the benefit is there if we all move. Pretending that science and technical industries have adopted the SI blocks forward progress for it actually happening.
That’s an objective benefit to having a single standard. That single standard needn’t be Metric to get all of the benefits you listed.
Point is, the other metric units have benefits besides being standard. Temperature doesn’t have any of the complexity inherent in other measurement units, so it doesn’t really matter at all if you use C or F.
Yes, they are all arbitrary. And everyone else (other countries AND the US scientific community) has chosen one of those arbitrary units as the world standard. (Or a variant of it, i.e. the Kelvin). So there is objective benefit to the US converting to that same world standard.
There’s no point in debating which one we SHOULD have chosen as a world standard. One has been chosen, and the only decision for the US is whether to comply with it or not.
There’s “no there there” for this in America, we don’t really have a society where it’s expected government in Washington regulates the usage of units of measure in the entire country’s commerce, science, road signage etc. There’s actually some individual U.S. states that have road signs that list KPH and km in distance. There’s tons and tons of individual Americans and American companies that predominantly or exclusively use the metric system.
