Hah, in high school, we were taught that a kilo was about the weight of our high school math textbook. 
Yes, I realize that. However it is pointless so long as they use a blended system. Work on a car for a couple hours and you’ll be baffled by the number of fasteners that are right next to each other and attached to the same part that are both metric and standard. Even Toyotas and Hondas have a blended system. It drives up the price of cars and repairs for everyone.
No it isnt. Many people are math resistant, probably because of the hacktastic way small kids can be taught math. I am math phobic because of the way I was treated in 4th grade, so I will NOT do math in my head, and if it requires memorizing arcane formulas of take this, add that subtract that double that and then add this the world would go up in flames before I try doing it. I will continue to think in imperial and if I need metric, Ill hit google and use the auto convert.
*FWIW, I was an army brat and changed schools a fair amount very young. In one school in 3d grade, we learned addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. In the school I moved into they had apparently also learned fractions and decimals. I was punished by the teacher for the entire first week of school [when she was reviewing everything learned the previous year] for refusing to do any class work. I wold have been happy to do the class work, IF I HAD LEARNED IT IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE. It took my mother having to come down on friday, after being stood up in the corner and used as a negative example for 3 fucking days for the teacher to actually realize that I wasnt refusing to do the work, I never learned it in the first place and COULDNT do the work. She never apologized, and the classmates tormented me for weeks after that. As far as I was concerned, math sucked ass, and it didnt matter that it was a misunderstanding, kids are cruel and crap like that stays with you for years.
We can’t switch to metric until all the coffee cans of miscellaneous nuts and bolts have been exhausted.
Interesting story. So you decided to prove your teacher right and now refuse to do math?
As some have said, this is the wrong approach to learn or introduce a new system. You need to gain a feel for the new system, to learn to use it without converting. If you can learn what 85°F feels like, you can also learn what 28°C feels like. If you can learn what a 5’9" tall person looks like, you can learn what a 175 cm person looks like. There’s no calculation required.
Yes, I lived through the conversion from imperial to metric in Australia in the 1970s, and while you needed approximations during the conversion period, the policy was to stop using imperial units as soon as possible. So my youngest son, who moved from high school in Australia to the US in the mid 1990s, only knew about non-metric stuff from films and TV. But he coped with converting to the illogical system, because he’s reasonably bright.
Absolutely. A common situation when you can make yourself think in unfamiliar measurements is if you’re driving in a country which uses kilometres on signs rather than the more familiar miles (or vice versa). Don’t think “130km…sooo that’s think around 80 miles or so…and I’m doing 120…so that’s going to take ummm…”. Just stop yourself at the first stage, and think directly what that is in journey time, i.e. “130km…and I’m currently doing 120, so just over an hour”. Before the end of the first day you will be doing it automatically. Once, after three weeks in Canada, I even had to do the reverse for a short while, to return to thinking in miles.
Temperature in general is the wrong place to start. 0F is as cold as it ever gets. 100F is as hot as it ever gets. With a few exceptions, of course. That makes a lot more sense than -15C being as cold as it ever gets, and 35C being as hot as it ever gets. For everyday, who-cares-when-water-freezes-do-I-want-shorts-or-a-coat use, Fahrenheit is simply a better system than Celsius.
For pretty much everything else, metric is better. But you’re not going to win a metric argument by starting with weather-based temperatures.
I’ve said this before, and my compatriots who live in Saskatchewan, the climatic Siberia of Canada, will agree:
Celsius is a much more logical scale for temperature in Canada. The big change, from positive to negative, happens at the freezing point of water, which is of vital weather importance in Canada. What’s 0F? Minus 18C, an otherwise unremarkable temperature. Even in the south it gets colder than that in winter. And 100F? 37.5C. Gets hotter than that too, though rarely. That’s what a mid-continental climate will do for you. No, the zero and hundred of the Fahrenheit don’t make sense.
You are entirely correct about your comrades from Saskatchewan. This old saw about 0F being as cold as it gets is off by about 50 degrees F.
I suspect you only feel that way because you grew up using Fahrenheit. It makes just as much sense (arguably a lot more) to have the freezing point be the reference point (zero), and measure temperature based on how much higher it is than freezing, or how much lower it is than freezing. -10[sup]o[/sup]C is twice as cold (relative to freezing) as -5[sup]o[/sup]C, etc.
And freezing point is a very important temperature. The world is completely different when it’s below freezing - you get dry snow/ice on the ground instead of wet mud, or black ice on the road instead of just wet concrete. Plants start to die from frost, most food items and other “wet” things can no longer be stored outside, etc. I also find that’s about the limit where I need to wear proper cold-weather clothing (hat, ear protection, etc).
No, you see, the zero and hundred of Fahrenheit make perfect sense (although I always thought the spelling of Fahrenheit could have been made a bit easier). What you have so nicely highlighted for us is the REAL problem with temperatures in Canada… the location of Canada is what does not make sense! Why didn’t you guys consider putting it farther south? 
I’m an American and an engineer;
In college, of course, we mostly used metric. A few professors insisted on throwing in English units because “That’s how American industry measures things.”
Surprise! I entered American industry and found that, indeed, English units were hardwired into the laborers. And they just preferred them.
So today -
In the lab, I’ll work with metric. “Add 30 grams cobalt to the mixture”. When I scale up to production, I’ll scale and round everything to English - “Add 3 lbs. cobalt”.
The operators I work with are ok with grams. A lot of our mixes require additives on the PPM scale (PPM, mass base, 45k lbs). Grams are pretty useful there (as opposed to 1/16 oz or something ridiculous like that.) The same operators flat out refuse to deal with anything on a larger mass scale with anything other than than pounds (grams? No problem. Kilograms? What are you, some sort of alien?).
Plus, a lot of our raw material suppliers sell their materials in pound increments - a 50 lb bag, for example. Just the way American industry has been entrenched. There’s nothing inherently better about either the metric system or the english system. Sure, the metric system probably has more global support. But the people who do the technical work are probably pretty decent at converting in their heads on the fly.
I can understand the continuing use of inches, feet, and yards as they are pretty handy when you don’t need to be exact.
However, for precision, and longer distances (Kilometres), Metric is the way forward IMHO. It helps that “Yard” and “Metre” are near enough to interchangeable in everyday use, too.
Also, if you think converting from Ounces to Grams is complicated, wait until you start messing around with gunpowder and projectiles, which are measured in grains; based on the sizes of traditional cereal seeds and equivalent to about 65mg.
I dunno - I lived in Australia for 6 months and adapted to the metric system, but I think that its inherent problem is that a couple of the most commonly used measurements are just too small to be useful.
30C being hot just doesn’t really work. Think of it as if it were money - I have 30 bucks, I can do a little. Buy a pair of jeans (on sale!), see a movie, have a dinner. I have 100 bucks, I can do a lot more - buy the jeans and see the movie and have the dinner. So sure, I’m biased because of where I grew up, but 30C doesn’t seem hot, because 30 is too small. 80, 90, now that’s hot.
Same with distances. 500 km doesn’t really get you anywhere, even though the number seems huge. And a distance that I can drive in half an hour being 50 or 70 km away seems inflated. Again, I’m biased, but miles just seem to make more sense.
It doesn’t help that the guys who foisted these units of measure on the States have only imperfectly converted over to metric as well. We’re not the only one using miles and such.
I agree these are obstacles to getting people to learn and use the new system. But it seems you understand it’s a bias based on what you grew up with, and not literally an inherent problem of the metric system.
One could just as easily argue that many of the American units are inconvenient for certain purposes. The inch, for example, is just too big to measure common everyday items with whole numbers. Shoes, paper, furniture, etc. tend to get measured to the nearest half inch or quarter inch.
Are other countries are actively “foisting” the system on the US? I’d like to think that Americans understand the advantage of adopting a worldwide system, and don’t need to be forced to do so.
Not all Americans resisted metric. Some of us even quasi-revolted in favor of it.
1983…and the new science prof at our college came in. He was older and had spent many years ‘in the field’.
He used the English system. Foot-pounds and all that.
We hated hated hated HATED HATED HATED HATED HATED it.
We essentially forced him via protest to use metric. 
I can do limited math in my head, though I am very competent with a calculator and a slide rule [oddly enough]
And a small child doesnt decide to refuse to do math … let me put it to you another way ,
sit in that corner, lazy lazy slob, refusing to do your work. no you cant go on recess with everybody else since you refuse to work you can just sit there …
day after fucking day for a week, and all the kids going out to play, and teasing you by tapping the window from the outside WHERE THEY ARE PLAYING.
Oh, so you are just dumb and didnt learn anything? Here, sit there and do this remedial work while EVERYBODY ELSE IS OUT PLAYING since you are too dumb to learn anything when you are supposed to…for yet another week
And yes the fucking cunt called me stupid, lazy, slob and meant it.
What fucking teacher calls a 9 year old kid a slazy slob to their face in class…
I think it’s what you’ve grown up with, to be honest. I’ve grown up using Metric and then in terms of millimetres/centimetres/metres/kilometres for distance and milligrams/grams/kilogrammes/litres for weight/volume.
So, to me, 30 degrees is hot, and 0 degrees is a perfectly sensible freezing point. Similarly, 500kms is a significant distance, especially when you consider the speed limit on the highway is 100km/h; so it’s actually a handy way to work out roughly how long it will take you to get somewhere. “Miles” don’t really mean anything to me except that they’re just over 1.5kms for rough approximation purposes.
I use yards and feet for shooting (Old British military rifles are sighted in yards, not metres), but for any other Imperial units, they only mean something to me in the context of being converted from Metric.