# why woun't USA go metric
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 30, 2002, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544 "2002-04-30T20:23:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@POWER\_station](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/POWER_station)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/41 "2002-05-01T16:25:39Z")
Inches is a measure that still are used in Europe.
Especially on sawmills. (I believe that they changed to cm some years back, but it’s still used by many to measure bits of woods)
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### Author:  [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/42 "2002-05-01T16:38:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Fox\_Moxin \*
> Laziness mostly. I’d have to memorise a whole new set of weights and lengths and such.
Actually, I suspect that most every American who has gone through high school in the past 30 years knows the metric measures. For me, it’s always been an issue of visualization.
Because of my early education, English measures are inculcated into my perception. I see a stick and I can make a pretty good guess as to how long it is, in inches or feet. I can’t do that in centimeters or meters. To guess its metric length, I have to estimate it in inches, then convert.
This happens all the time when I see billboards that give the current temperature in centigrade. If I don’t catch the Farenheit temperature as well, I quickly do the conversion in my head to figure out how cold or warm it is.
Sua
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### Author:  [@St.Urho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/St.Urho)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/43 "2002-05-01T16:47:43Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by The Ryan \*
> \*\*
> Actually, the units in the metric system are:
> the meter: based on the diameter of the Earth
> the second: based on the rotation of the Earth
> the gram: based on the meter and the specific gravity of water
> the Kelvin: based on the specific heat of water
> etc. \*\*
Actually, the meter is now defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in a certain period of time. The meter was originally defined relative to the size of the earth, though.
> [@](#):
>
> _According to the [National Institute of Standards and Technology](http://www.mel.nist.gov/div821/museum/timeline.htm)_
> 1983
>
> On October 20, the meter was redefined again. The definition states that the meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. The speed of light is
>
> c = 299,792,458 m/s
>
> The second is determined to an uncertainty, U = 1 part in10[sup]14[/sup] by the Cesium clock. The General Conference made the iodine stabilized Helium-Neon laser a recommended radiation for realizing the meter at this time. The wavelength of this laser is
>
> lHeNe = 632.99139822 nm
>
> with an estimated relative standard uncertainty (U) of + 2.5 x 10-11.
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### Author:  [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/44 "2002-05-01T17:14:33Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \*
> **Just about every industry sells its products at home and abroad, or uses components made abroad, so products are made on the metric scale, and the English units are pasted on labels for products made for American consumption.**
How ironic that a cutting-edge industry like computers seems to be among the feet-draggers on this. My diskettes are 3 1/2 inches – How big are yours?
In sharp contrast, we’ve had soft drinks in liters for a few decades already.
I think that a very real comparison can be made between switching from English to Metric measurements, and switching from paper $1 bills to coins. In both cases, Merkins just don’t like making changes, whether there’s a good reason or not.
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### Author:  [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/45 "2002-05-01T23:07:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Keeve \*
> \*\*In both cases, Merkins just don’t like making changes, whether there’s a good reason or not. \*\*
I don’t know that _anyone_ likes making changes! We dumped our royalty over 200 years ago, and we’re still waiting for the Your-a-peein’s to catch up! 😛
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### Author:  [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/46 "2002-05-01T23:26:35Z")
SUA sez:
> [@](#):
>
> This happens all the time when I see billboards that give the current temperature in centigrade. If I don’t catch the Farenheit temperature as well, I quickly do the conversion in my head to figure out how cold or warm it is.
This is the sign of a very smart Merican. Lots of us don’t know how to do the coversion, much less in our heads. If we don’t see the F display, we drive by thinking “Nine degrees? What the fuck is ‘nine’? Now I have to drive around the block again to see what the temperature _really_ is.”
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### Author:  [@BraheSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BraheSilver)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/47 "2002-05-01T23:43:48Z")
A not-so-distant relative (originally from Europe) came to visit us for the first time. He mentioned that one of his pleasures is to drive a nice car, and drive it fast. “How fast?” I ask. “Ninety? A hundred?”
“Nah,” he says. “About two hundred on an open road.” I choked briefly, then remembered to do a conversion.
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### Author:  [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/48 "2002-05-02T10:40:22Z")
I’ll convert when they get metric time right. As long as I have to remember 60 seconds in a minute, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 30 days in these months, 31 days in those months, 28 or sometimes 29 days in that month… I may as well remember 12 inches in a foot and 16 ounces in a pound too.
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### Author:  [@Sparc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparc)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/49 "2002-05-02T12:40:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Mr2001 \*
> I’ll convert when they get metric time right. As long as I have to remember 60 seconds in a minute, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, 30 days in these months, 31 days in those months, 28 or sometimes 29 days in that month… I may as well remember 12 inches in a foot and 16 ounces in a pound too.
Sorry, although I hate to destroy a good jest; I have to point out that this is not metric, but Gregorian. In a long and still standing French tradition of legislating nature, metric time was tested in France during the revolution by the introduction of the decimal week and the decimal day, i.e. a ten-hour day instead of twelve and a ten-day week instead of seven. They scraped it when they saw how confused everyone got trying to divide 365 and some fractions solar days into some kind of sensible decimal yearly calendar - not to mention all the expensive clocks they had just confiscated from all those royal castles being suddenly rather useless. 😃
Sparc
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/50 "2002-05-02T15:45:56Z")
Jodi wrote, re temperature displays in Celsius:
> [@](#):
>
> This is the sign of a very smart Merican. Lots of us don’t know how to do the coversion, much less in our heads. If we don’t see the F display, we drive by thinking “Nine degrees? What the fuck is ‘nine’? Now I have to drive around the block again to see what the temperature _really_ is.”
Note that a European, who’d grown up with degrees Celsius, would have the same conundrum if he were presented with a Fahrenheit display.
The real problem is **not** that a lot of Americans don’t know how to do the conversion. The real problem is that Americans are brought up on Fahrenheit, and then have to learn how to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit later. If Americans were taught Celsius from the get-go, they wouldn’t **need** to know how to convert.
My first introduction to the metric system came in (American) elementary school. Every single one of the homework problems we had to work out, without exception, was a **conversion** problem. We had to convert meters into feet and inches, or kilograms into pounds and ounces, or Fahrenheit into Celsius (which was called “centigrade” at the time), or kilometers into miles, or liters into quarts. Why? Because we had **already learned** what a foot, inch, pound, ounce, degree Fahrenheit, mile, and quart were!
What needs to happen is that schoolkids need to be exposed, from a VERY young age, to how long a meter stick is, how heavy a kilogram weighs, what a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius feels like, how big a liter is, etc… Then the “metric” problems in our homework won’t need to involve conversions at all. They’ll be things like “Johnny is 130 cm tall, and Jane is 95 cm tall. How much taller is Johnny?”. Then, later, out of necessity, we can teach the kids how to convert **from** old Imperial units **to** the metric system they’ve already learned. If we were to teach the metric system **this** way, the Imperial system would vanish within a generation.
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### Author:  [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/51 "2002-05-02T16:33:09Z")
**tracer,** I think your analysis misses a key point - kids are taught the basics of the English system of measurement before they step into a classroom.
Mommy and Daddy measure the kid and tell her she is 3 feet tall and weighs 50 pounds. They ask her to pick up the gallon of milk from the shelf in the supermarket. They tell the kid that the beach where they are going on vacation is 60 miles away. Etc.
Sua
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### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/52 "2002-05-02T16:57:26Z")
I still don’t understand what we really gain from the metric system. Why is it a big deal again? I missed that day of class.
FTR, I measure small distances (less than one or two meters) in metric and anything approaching a quarter of a mile I use, well, miles. This is my intuitive grasp of measurement.
I perform terribly when guessing distances in inches or fractions thereof.
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### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/53 "2002-05-02T17:05:35Z")
_short_ distances in inches, or fractions thereof. (sheesh)
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### Author:  [@rivulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rivulus)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/54 "2002-05-02T18:05:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by tracer \*
>
> My first introduction to the metric system came in (American) elementary school. Every single one of the homework problems we had to work out, without exception, was a **conversion** problem. We had to convert meters into feet and inches, or kilograms into pounds and ounces, or Fahrenheit into Celsius (which was called “centigrade” at the time), or kilometers into miles, or liters into quarts. Why? Because we had **already learned** what a foot, inch, pound, ounce, degree Fahrenheit, mile, and quart were!
I had a similar experience in Canada. I’m old enough (or young enough, depending on your perspective) to have been an elementary school age kid when Canada switched to metric. (I remember the headline in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix that day: “Say Goodnight to Fahrenheit”) **Sua** , I too had learned English measurements at home and then was taught metric in school. As a child, learning this new language of measurements was nearly effortless. And thanks to my nifty MetricCanon calculator and other reinforcements like rulers with both centimeters and inches, thermometers with both Celcius and Fahrenheit, speedometers with both miles and kilometers it was easy to become and remain “bilingual”. It was harder for my parents, of course, but after a couple of decades they were thinking primarily in kilometers, liters, degrees Celcius, or converting between the two without any problem at all.
Whether or not the switch is even necessary for the US is another debate. But once the deed is done, switching really isn’t such a big deal. Even for the grumpy old-timers like my folks and others of their generation.
rivulus
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/55 "2002-05-02T18:13:33Z")
Erislover,
The gain from using the metric system is twofold:
[ul][li]No requirement to convert foreign measures to traditional measures.[/li][li]Ease of multiplying and dividing units since it’s based on the decimal system.[/ul][/li]
To me, at least, the second gain is more important.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/56 "2002-05-02T21:18:43Z")
It won’t help where funky definitions are involved, though.
F’rinstance, many of us Americans are familiar with how a house’s floor plan size is measured in “square feet.” Whan you may not know is how this square footage calculation is performed: the area of the entire **outside** perimeter is measured, and then the size of any attached garage is subtracted for that. (For two-story houses, the calculation is even more convoluted – I believe, but am not 100% certain, that the staircase gets counted twice.) Switching from square feet to square meters will not in any way alleviate the screwiness of this measurement.
And speaking of area measurements: You do know that there’s more than one metic unit for measuring the area of a plot of land, right? There’s the square meter, the square kilometer, and the **are**. One “are” is 100 square meters, and of course a hectare is 100 ares (10,000 sq. meters). Why not just call an “are” a square dekameter and a “hectare” a square hectometer? That’s what they are, after all. Hmph!
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/57 "2002-05-02T21:20:15Z")
Oh … and of course, a liter is just an unnecessary extra word for a cubic decimeter.
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### Author:  [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/58 "2002-05-02T21:25:34Z")
> [@](#):
>
> _SuaSponte wrote:_
> Actually, I suspect that most every American who has gone through high school in the past 30 years knows the metric measures.
I wouldn’t be so bold. Try taking a poll of your relatives in non-technical fields, and asking the question “how big is a meter?” You’ll be surprised at the answers you get.
As to the OP, a large part of the reason that the US hasn’t converted is that it would require a law forcing us to use metric in our _private_ transactions. We Merkins don’t take to the gummint telling us what to do with our private lives. As it is, business can use metric when it makes sense to do so (which is almost always nowadays), and Grandpa Simpson can state his car’s fuel efficiency (notice I didn’t say “mileage”) in rods to the hogshead. That’s the way I likes it.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2002, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/59 "2002-05-02T23:37:23Z")
CurtC wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> Try taking a poll of your relatives in non-technical fields, and asking the question “how big is a meter?”
“It’s about a foot tall and eight inches thick. The gas company uses it to see how much gas we use each month.”
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2002, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wount-usa-go-metric/106544/60 "2002-05-03T01:14:09Z")
Oh yeah, one other useful tidbit I forgot to interject here:
When you go to the supermarket and buy a “quart” of strawberries, you’re really buying a **dry quart** of strawberries. One dry quart is equal to 1.16365 liquid quarts.
So a quart of Diet Pepsi is smaller than a liter of Diet Pepsi, but a quart of strawberries is bigger than a liter of strawberries.
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