# Why we need the metric system **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 17, 2010, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140 "2010-09-17T22:28:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2010, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/1 "2010-09-17T22:28:19Z")
I’ve just put together a video describing one (often overlooked) reason why we Americans need the metric system – and, no, this reason ISN’T the Mars Climate Orbiter: [![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtNnVvdvfZw) (Note that in doing this little project, I’ve discovered some of the audio problems you get when you try to upload WMV-format videos to YouTube. Unfortunately, the WMV-to-MP4 converter I used to get around the problem lowered the resolution substantially, for some reason.) ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/2 "2010-09-18T02:07:38Z")
The reason for switching to the metric system in the video is that there are ounces troy, avoirdupois, and liquid ounces, and so on. Also pounds, but troy pounds as far as I am aware are never used, and also differences between inches. All of this adds up to massive confusion. Anyway, I don’t think that this ambiguity thing is all that much of a big deal. It gets dealt with all the time with only very few issues. You may not know that the gold your selling to that mail-in company will be weighed in troy ounces, but they do. Only surveyors deal with survey feet, and in any event, the difference between survey feet and international feet is insignificant for anything but really long distances or really short ones. Moreover, there is some ambiguity with the metric prefixes, especially when dealing with computers, which some people find annoying or inelegant, but that which persist all the same. The point of this observation is that just “having to know” which meaning is meant in a given situation is common and usually easily dealt with. The main reason for switching over to the metric system remains trade, and the wastes of time and money that go into that kind of nonstandardization. The powers of ten thing, the links between the units, and all that, is nice and handy, but in themselves not worth the effort of retraining the population. Wasting billions is. (Also, if it were up to me, we’d get rid of the Celsius scale and just use kelvins, but that could be that as an American, the advantages of the zero degree freezing point are not impressive to me.) ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/3 "2010-09-18T02:17:38Z")
From _the Simpsons_ > [@](#): > > Grandpa Simpson) The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/4 "2010-09-18T04:45:18Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > The powers of ten thing, the links between the units, and all that, is nice and handy It would probably be even handier if we had a base-12 counting system and a powers of 12 set of units. ---
**Author:** ![dzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@dzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzero)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/5 "2010-09-18T04:46:44Z")
There’s also the problem of inflating measurements that would persist in whatever system you use. “Dick inches” are always a lot more than std inches. If you go metric, you would just have “dick centimeters” instead. Haven’t areas that could really benefit from the switch, like science and medicine, already made it? Although I do wonder about medicine sometimes. Any prescriptions I get are always in mg. unless it’s a liquid - then sometimes I see ml., sometimes oz. and sometimes both. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/6 "2010-09-18T10:21:21Z")
You don’t really pronounce it “ah vah doo poise”, do you? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/7 "2010-09-18T10:24:34Z")
> [@dzero](#): > > “Dick inches” are always a lot more than std inches. Actually they would be less. A shorter inch counts to more. ---
**Author:** ![jasonh300](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/46a35a/32.png) [@jasonh300](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasonh300)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/8 "2010-09-18T10:45:57Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > You don’t really pronounce it “ah vah doo poise”, do you? That’s how I’d guess it’s pronounced. I’ve seen that word in print all my life, but I’ve never heard anyone speak it. ---
**Author:** ![Mogle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mogle/32/12021_2.png) [@Mogle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mogle)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/9 "2010-09-18T11:06:36Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > Moreover, there is some ambiguity with the metric prefixes, especially when dealing with computers, which some people find annoying or inelegant, but that which persist all the same. The point of this observation is that just “having to know” which meaning is meant in a given situation is common and usually easily dealt with. What do you mean by “especially when dealing with computers”? It’s _only_ a problem when dealing with computers, and that is the fault of the programmers of yore who redefined what the prefixes mean in a computer context. If they had just bothered to come up with a new name for 2[sup]10[/sup] back then instead of deciding that ‘1024 is pretty close to 1000 so let’s call it a kilo’ this wouldn’t be an issue. As far as SI is concerned the prefixes are unambiguous. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/10 "2010-09-18T12:40:12Z")
> [@jasonh300](#): > > That’s how I’d guess it’s pronounced. I’ve seen that word in print all my life, but I’ve never heard anyone speak it. Dunno how it’s supposed to be pronounced in the Queen’s, but the correct French pronounciation would be something like “Ahvwahr dhu pwah” (the “dhu” being the hardest sound for y’all English speakers to get right, since English doesn’t use the /Y/ phoneme AFAIK) [some checking later] Wikipedia lists the correct English pronounciation as /ævərdəpɔɪz/ which would be something like “ah vur duh poise” I think (both "u"s pronounced as in supply) ---
**Author:** ![dzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@dzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dzero)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/11 "2010-09-18T13:22:42Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@dzero](#): > > > > “Dick inches” are always a lot more than std inches. > > Actually they would be less. A shorter inch counts to more. Stop confusing me with logic. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/12 "2010-09-18T13:46:29Z")
> [@RadicalPi](#): > > (Also, if it were up to me, we’d get rid of the Celsius scale and just use kelvins, but that could be that as an American, the advantages of the zero degree freezing point are not impressive to me.) RadicalPi, thank you for this. I deal with this problem daily. Having an offset in a “unit” is as dumb as toast. As soon as you start adding and subtracting temperatures, the idea of a Celsius degree changes meaning. 301 ºC minus 300 ºC is 1 ºC? But that is almost frozen, and we were talking about something hot! Do you write that 301 ºC (574.15 K) minus 300 ºC (573.15 K) equals 1 ºC (1 K)? Because that seems impossible. There is a unit for temperature, the kelvin, and we don’t need a scale, which confuses most people anyway. Just imagine if lengths all had an offset of an inch, because most things are bigger than an inch. You could go to the hardware store to buy a -3/4 inch washer. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/13 "2010-09-18T13:48:18Z")
> [@Mogle](#): > > If they had just bothered to come up with a new name for 2[sup]10[/sup] back then instead of deciding that ‘1024 is pretty close to 1000 so let’s call it a kilo’ this wouldn’t be an issue. Well, they didn’t do it back then, but they did eventually – there’s just a lot of inertia using the wrong terms: > **[Definitions of the SI units: The binary prefixes](https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/14 "2010-09-18T15:15:30Z")
:: claps at video :: There is a way things could be worse though: you could be living in a country that stopped metric conversion halfway through, and as a result live your life in a half-assed stew of three different systems of measurement: the US, the Imperial, and the metric. We did a design recently that had three different values for the volume of a cistern: US (liquid) gallons, Imperial (liquid) gallons, and litres. Yeah, building in Canada is such a pain. ---
**Author:** ![K364](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k364/32/5_2.png) [@K364](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/K364)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/15 "2010-09-18T15:22:03Z")
Ounces Troy and avoirdupois are bad enough, but [The Barrel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit)) is really arcane ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/16 "2010-09-18T17:00:07Z")
I use grams, millimeters and centimeters daily in my work and virtually all good old American units of measurement elsewhere, and that’s the way it’s gonna stay. You’ll introduce that Celsius crap only after you wrench Fahrenheit out of my cold, clammy dead grip. ---
**Author:** ![\_mostly\_Harmless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/9d8465/32.png) [@\_mostly\_Harmless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_mostly_Harmless)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/17 "2010-09-18T17:24:43Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@RadicalPi](#): > > > > The powers of ten thing, the links between the units, and all that, is nice and handy > > It would probably be even handier if we had a base-12 counting system and a powers of 12 set of units. I’ve been saying this for years! The only problem is that all of my friends’ eyes just glaze over when I start talking Dozenal so I don’t bring it up much anymore. The tyranny of ten must end! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/18 "2010-09-18T17:38:49Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > I use grams, millimeters and centimeters daily in my work Are you a drug dealer? ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/19 "2010-09-18T18:00:59Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Grandpa Simpson) The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it. I prefer to measure the speed of light in fathoms per fortnight… (It’s 1.98\*10^14 . Originally stated, methinks, in “the Know-it-all”. A fun book,in which the author reads the entire Encylopedia Brittanica) ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2010, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140/20 "2010-09-18T20:50:46Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > [some checking later] > Wikipedia lists the correct English pronounciation as /ævərdəpɔɪz/ which would be something like “ah vur duh poise” I think (both "u"s pronounced as in supply) I checked the pronunciation by visiting the online Merriam-Webster dictionary ([www.m-w.com](http://www.m-w.com)), looking up the word, and clicking on the little speaker icon to have someone speak it to me. Sure enough, her voice said “Ah vur duh POYZ”. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-we-need-the-metric-system/554140.md?page=2)