Ok, just started reading this thread, so I don’t know if anyone else has addressed this, but I can definitely tell the difference between 70 and 75 Farenheit. In fact, I can tell the difference between 70 and 72 because when I walk into the bedroom I can always tell if my BF has sneaked the temp down a couple of degrees when I wasn’t looking.
I’m female, so I don’t know if our sensitivity to cold has anything to do with it, but I can most definitely notice a couple of degrees difference in Farenheit, which is why I personally don’t see the attraction of Celsius (especially for science and precise measurements, I don’t get it).
Yes, truly we can only wonder at the plight of those poor women in the entire rest of the non-US world who must cruelly suffer at the hands of the metric system.
:dubious: I was responding to the OP’s question whether the average person can really tell the difference between 70 and 75 F.
Just sayin, if my AC’s on auto, and starts up once the room has warmed up a degree (Celcius), well, I’m gonna be a bit warm waiting for it to register that the room has in fact gotten warmer. Which is why I’m surprised that Celsius & metric comes as a sort of package, because unless you’re getting into .25 degrees, Celsius is a much less precise measurement.
What do you mean by groceries? Would it be much of an inconvenience if milk was sold in 4-liter (=1.057 gallon) bottles instead of 1.000 gallon? Or if price of beef was marked as $1.10/100g instead of $5.00/lb?
As a previous poster mentioned, Celsius thermometers are often graded in increments of .5 degrees for this reason, which actually results in more precision than Fahrenheit-graded thermostats. Your fickle feminine nature would be able to move in increments of 0.9 degrees F instead of the coarse, barbaric 1.0 increments you presently must endure. Of course you would lose the ability to choose exactly 72.0F… you would have to settle for 71.60 or 72.50. I would question whether most people could even notice an air temp difference of 0.5F.
The real reason why is that it’s just a case of mass-retardation when it comes to being forced to do something they aren’t happy with, just like “The monsters are due on Maple Street” People bitch about how hard it is to convert, and before you know it people find themselves unable to do it. Which is ridiculous.
They are all simply ways of putting numbers on objects and neither is more “intuitive” in any kind of absolute sense. Those upholding the F system for its finer degree of accuracy are kidding themselves. Why not use half degrees in Celsius then? It’s too easy.
It’s amazing how people are willing to believe that it’s a difficult thing to get used to! We’re human beings people! We’re pretty damn good at adapting to things.
As far as using metric over English? I don’t care one way or another. I have no idea how much an liquid oz is, so much as I do what a deciliter looks like. That’s because I’ve only worked in a bar in Europe. Other than that? I couldn’t care less. When it comes to meat? Eat a steak in a restaurant once and you get an idea of how big it should be. It’s always like that, you remember how big things should be the first time you encounter them.
Celsius can be difficult, but then again, temperatures in general are difficult for me. I can read them and know what it means, but not feel it, and tell you, with any degree of precision how warm/cold it is. Miles and km are easy too. 60 = 100 that’s all you gotta know.
People with very limited brainpower can figure this stuff out, so the for the average joe, it’s not too hard.
[QUOTE=scr4]
[li]The metric system is consistent. A liter is always 1000 cm[sup]3[/sup]. A “gallon” could be Imperial gallon or US gallon; “pound” can be Avoirdupois, Troy, etc. This is especially important on the Internet - e.g. you may find an online article about a car that gets 40mpg; if you don’t notice it’s a British web site, you may not realize it’s 40 miles per Imperial gallon, which is only 33 miles per US gallon.[/li][/quote]
I don’t think this is a valid example. In most cases, cars are subject to national and state laws. It’s very unlikely that you’re going to be buying a car from someone with a different understanding of the unit “miles per gallon.”
[quote]
[li]The decimal nature of the metric system makes unit conversion much easier. Converting between mm/cm/m/km is much easier than between inch/ft/mile, for example.[/li][/quote]
This is something that we’ve already accounted for and adjusted to in our daily lives. And it makes little difference.
“Technical” (i.e., scientific) documents are already all-metric. Recipes are not technical documents and on the rare occasion such conversion is needed, it is not very difficult.
Again, in the rare case such conversions are needed, they are easily accomplished. If I want to adjust my work for a European audience by changing the units, it can be done within a matter of minutes.
All these examples regarding hardware units are up to the individual producers. If they want to get into the overseas market, they can change their units. Why should the government force them to?
I can’t think of a single occasion in my daily life in which I’ve had to convert mass to volume. If such an occasion arises, it might give me some initial trouble, but for such a one-off circumstance, it’s simply not worth my time or trouble or my government’s time or money or police power to enforce a wholesale change of units.
Again, none of these examples demonstrate anything more than “people or companies who are in businesses in which using metric represents significant savings or convenience should go ahead and switch.” They simply do not justify a universal mandate of any kind.
Exactly. It’s amazing how some people are willing to believe that the world would be so much better if they could just force everyone else to do things the way they think it’s better, even though there seems to be no practical detriment to leaving things as they are and letting people make individual decisions regarding what is better for them.