As I noted last time, much of the US is surveyed in mile square “sections”, with roads along the section lines and blocks and acres in neat increments. Using metric here would be extremely messy.
Some of those are practically from before he was born. 
I’ll go one better and suggest that we should go to a truly funamental system of units.
Seriously, aside from the general inertia to change and complaints about the costs (which, if implemented incrementally, are modest) is that much of our domestic heavy manufacturing and construction is still done in US Customary units for the simple reason that most common fabrication and building materials are mor readily available in those units (albeit often modified, e.g. a “2x4” piece of stud lumber is actually 1.5x3.5", sheet metal and wire in gauges or mils, et cetera). However, as an increasing volume of materials are now being sources from foreign suppliers that produce exclusively in SI measures, even that is changing. And the need for homologation (to sell products manufactured in the US in Europe and Asia) is significantly simplified by not having to perform a large amount of unit conversions, particularly when it comes to energy and power measurements.
Proponents of maintaining the status quo often say things like, “The US went to the Moon on the Customary system.” The irony of that statement is that while outputs of calculations were provided in miles and feet, this was purely for the convenience of astronauts and technicians. The actual calculations done by computers on the ground and the Apollo Guidance Computer were done in SI specifically to minimize and deal with floating point errors in the memory-limited systems of the day. In other words, using miles and feet would have contributed significantly more errors to a system at was already pushing the limit of the then-state of the art in calculation, guidance, and navigation.
Stranger
Aw, quit ruining all my fun! 
Read the post I was responding to, too: fumster was making the mistake, intentional or not, of thinking that the ounce must be a measure of weight because, technically, that’s what scales measure. fumster’s mistake was thinking that this could be used to boost metric over customary because weight varies with location due to local gravitational conditions, which explains all of the people moving to high mountaintops to lose weight, and why Jenny Craig has built a lamasery in the most clichéd region of Tibet. Deadpan comedy is the only response to such ideas.
Child of the 70s here too. I remember that. Good times, some of the happiest days of our lives, but some of the worst. I also remember one horrible curmudgeon. Bastard was one of ‘those’ teachers, one of the ones who rejected the metric system and all change–and took it out on us kids. Constantly looking to heap derision on us or exposing any weakness to the other kids. He was constantly trying to find ways to hurt us any way that he could. Sorry to sidetrack, but Septimus’ post really brought the memory back: :
I can still hear that horrible schoolmaster, with his “An acre is the area of a rectangle whose length is one furlong and whose width is one chain”
it’s to confuse ferners and hopefully keep them at bay.
in science, technical and trade both systems will be used; maybe metric exclusively.
in dual system countries or recently (within a half century) transitioned people will use the system that gives a convenient range. people dislike fractions and decimals (in spite of the monetary system using it easily) and huge or small numbers. the english system gives fractional units so you can have whole numbers of a couple units. metric requires the use of a decimal quantity. people don’t like having quantities get huge.
Americans Against Metric, how many pennies in a dollar? How many nickels? How many dimes? How many quarters? How many 10-dollar bills make 100? How many 100s make 1,000?
Many of you may remember the U.K.'s pre-decimal, base-12 currency. Who in the U.S. didn’t think that was crazy?
If metric is so awful, why doesn’t the U.S. use base-12 money? Because it would be as crazy as having to remember 5,280 feet make a mile and two pints make a quart and four quarts make a gallon.
Come to that, U.S. liquid measures, from ounces to barrels, have always shortchanged Americans anyway.
Yes, but the question was a pound: one pound troy is twelve troy ounces.
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a gallon is 231 cubic inches
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16
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about 9
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an acre is 4840 yards squared
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um, the exact same amount?
I know these offhand. Granted, knowledge of acres and cubic inches in gallons is probably not typical, but I’m pretty sure most people know there are 16 tbsp in a cup, which is the one that most likely for most people to encounter.
Imperial gallons or U.S. gallons?
Imperial tablespoons and cups or U.S. tablespoons and cups?
Imperial gallon or U.S. gallon?
Yah, ask some Canadians about the conversion to metric sometime.
It helps that basically, a majority government is a 5-year dictatorship in a parliamentary country. Trudeau could pass the laws and all had to obey, or feel the full wrath of big brother.
For cheese, or meat, or other groceries: the same laws used to ensure that scales in retail stores were accurate (for consumer protection) now were used to force grocers etc. to replace their scales with metric ones. When the law was being passed, the argument was “that won’t cost much, just paste a new number scale over top the pounds.” Oddly enough, nobody who made scales were interested in changing the numbers on an existing scale when they could sell you a brand new one.
Gas pumps also had to be metric to comply with consumer laws.
The famous “Gimli Glider”, a 757 (?) made a dead stick landing half way across Canada when it ran out of gas because someone made a mistake converting litres to gallons when deciding how much gas to put in.
The sign outside Sault Ste Marie said “120 miles to Wawa, or 200 Goose Steps” (with a picture of a Canada Goose).
Soda cans were (are) 288ml or 280ml rather than 10 oz. because that was simpler than changing all the can vending machines, but most items are measured in round metric now unless they are imported from the USA and relabelled.
After subsequent governments relaxed on the rules, a lot of groceries are advertised in pounds today (that’s allowed now) because they seem cheaper, but the checkout receipt and the fine print still say metric.
Of course, some things, like 4x8 plywood, 2x4 lumber, etc. don’t change because it’s impossible to change the construction market, and unnecessary to carry 2 different sizes. Land was surveyed in pioneer times in Acres and that didn’t really change. Houses are advertised in square feet, just like the USA.
Medical applications, science, etc. have been using metric for ages.
Meanwhile, of course, most North American mechanics already have metric tools, even in the USA, because so many vehicles come from Japan or Europe (or Korea now) and use metric. When Chrysler uses Mitsubishi parts, do you think they make a Japanese factory learn British units or does Chrysler adapt?
And also, there are Troy and Avoirdupois (weight) ounces, and British and American fluid ounces… 4 different ounces. Canada used to use mpg with British gallons, which soundd good because the gallon was bigger; now we see ads with L/100km.
Converting mileage was easy - multiply by 6, divide by 10. Technically 100km was 62.5mi not 60, but when you’re driving for 4 hours, who cares about 10 miles plus or minus?
12 troy ounces per troy pound. 16 avoirdupois ounces per avoirdupois pound. (Admittedly the troy pound measure may be obsolescent except for gold dealers deliberately confusing their customers. )
Yes, it is. And under the troy system, a pound is 12 ounces, not 16.
:rolleyes:
Of course, some things, like 4x8 plywood, 2x4 lumber, etc. don’t change because it’s impossible to change the construction market. . . .
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Not impossible. 2X4s hadn’t been 2X4s long before metrication.
I’m in the US so I use US gallons, or, as I like to call them, FREEDOM gallons.
What do you mean by “intuitive”? What makes one system of measurement more intuitive than another?
As others have said, it has a lot to do with what you’re used to. But it also has to do with what units are easy to imagine or visualize, and yield convenient numbers when you measure the kinds of things you want to measure with them, ideally relatively small whole multiples of the unit itself. That’s why we don’t give the outdoor temperature in Kelvin, or why, if you wanted to know how far someplace was to walk or drive to, you might give the distance in miles or kilometers, but not in inches or centimeters or light years.
By that standard, it may, arguably, be more intuitive to measure outdoor temperature in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius, or to measure how tall someone is in feet rather than meters. “Five feet tall” and “six feet tall” are easily visualizable benchmarks, more so than any nice, whole number of meters. It’s also why we had so many more old units of measurement that have fallen out of use, like furlongs and ells and roods and leagues and pecks: because, when they were in common use, they were convenient for measuring the kinds of things they were used to measure.
Why it was established: you can look up the history, but it sort of evolved naturally, and is older than the metric system, which is a more artificial, “invented” system (sort of like Esperanto).
Okay, I’ll bite: when would you need to know how many meters are in 3.5 kilometers?
And the whole “being able to convert between smaller and larger units” thing strikes me as less compelling nowadays, when just about everyone’s within easy reach of a calculator or computer or smartphone that can easily do the conversion no matter what unit you have to multiply by.
So much error, so hard to keep straight.
I once lived in a place where it got down to -40. the question is everyone would ask is … is that Celcius or Farenheit? Do you care?
I’ve been exposed to Celcius temperatures (in Canada) and I grew up in Farenheit, so I understand temperatures in both systems instinctively even though I have to think to convert - unless we get into higher temperatures we don’t usually get in Canada. It does not matter. 45 degrees in Luxor, Egypt or 43 in Death Valley (according to my car) is what is known as “really f***ing hot”.
Perhaps I am a physicist with a habit of measuring speed in meters/sec?
I stand corrected. I did search using Google, but incorrectly.
This:
Basically, what I mean by “intuitive” is easy to remember certain values (like freezing and boiling points) and conversion factors or easy to convert within a system of measurement.
I am sure quite a few people like DCnDC can indeed even answer these questions without a calculator, but wouldn’t it be much more efficient if all you were dealing with was factors of ten, rather than having to memorize so many different conversion factors?
While I think Kelvin would be best and “kick-ass” because it defines absolute zero most intuitively, for our purposes, I think Celcius is better than Fahrenheit because it defines freezing and boiling points most intuitively.
But do I really want to take out my Galaxy Nexus just to do a conversion which I could have done much more easily in my head if only we were using the more intuitive measurement system?