Should the US go metric?

Should the US go metric?

  • Yes

  • No


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Ugg

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So, for all of you living outside the borders of the US, is it confusing to deal with the US system of measurements?

I remember when the highway signs started to show measurements in miles and Kms and the bank signs showed temps in cent. and celsius. Unfortunately, mr Reagan came riding in and trashed the idea as being un-american.

We pay such a high price for not going metric. How much did the Hubble fiasco cost???????
 
Well, not just the metres.. also liquids/ space/ temperatures etc .. I got tired of fighting against temperature - could not make Meteorologist work in °C so I know now it's 32 °F out here.. :p I think the system with BOTH makes sense for at least 5 or 10 years. In UK they seem to use kind of both .. for about all of those. Why to make unnecessary stress for e.g. elderly forcing them to learn the other systems too fast? The more time you allow people to get used to it the less they complain. :)
 
I want to go metric so badly... Its so much easier, but the first hurdle is updating my mental images of size and wieght to metric portions.. Whats the one between centimeter and meter?
 
I know now it's 32 °F out here.

I didn't know that Jaguars could live in such cold climates?? :)

I agree, a gradual transition is best, maybe over 10 years, that is what President Carter's plan envisioned was a slow but sure transition.

Mechanics must have two sets of tools, metric and US. International freight is shipped via Kgs domestic freight via pounds. What is 1/32nd of an inch??? or 1/10th of a yard? Ok, I'm not very good at celsius but it is a lot easier to envision 1000 metres than it is to envision 1781 yards or however many there are in a mile.
 
Gradual or swift, we really need to convert. Inertia is the ONLY reason for maintaining the old system, and that's no reason at all. Never do something only because you always have!
 
YES! i live in the UK, but quite often get US Measurements, albeit in many different fields, and it can be very confusing! ... MOVE with the times! :D

Besides, doesn't 0 Degree's Celcius = Freezing, make MORE sense than something silly like 27 Degrees Farenheit?! :confused:

Neyo
 
I think we should simply because it makes so much more sense. I have live outside of the US and it is not hard at all to get used to.
 
Meter is far more regular than any other usual length measurement system. Therefore it is an advantage to use it.

The discussion between °C and F is less obvious. Both are absolutely arbitrary. Luckily the relation between both is first order, it may have been logarithmic ! Let's promote K !
 
They have the metersystem in Star Trek :)
I think they should remake the clock also. It would be cool to have a decimal-system there too! But i guess THAT would really be a hard transition.
Meter-system rules.
10 Millimeters= 1 Centimeter
10 centimeters= 1 Decimeter.
10 decimeters = 1 Meter.
1000 meters= 1 Kilometer.
10 kilometers = 1 swedish Mile.

And the Liter-system is also logical.
 
Originally posted by hazmat
Well the thing that makes sense about Celsius is that 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling.

Fahrenheit has probably been created for a good reason by Mr Fahrenheit when he played with thermometers. And selecting water as the reference is quite arbitrary too. One could define the stable temperature of a metric black volume heated by 1 amp loop and radiating in free space to be 1 degree, zero being of course equivalent to 0 K.
 
Originally posted by hazmat
Well the thing that makes sense about Celsius is that 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling.
100 is only boiling point at sea level if I remember anything from science lessons.
 
i live in canada, and it's fun here. Not inches, but centimetres. not feet, but metres. not hands, but ... i don't know
 
going metric is not just saying a balmy spring day is 23 degrees, it means changing the whole industrial plant. it must be done, but it needs time.

one of the old arguments against it is that mechanics (and therefore consumers) would suffer because of a lack of tools. today every mechanic in the US, commercial or industrial, has a full set of both.

the SAE standards hurt american products overseas and change is overdue.
 
Originally posted by mrfluffy
100 is only boiling point at sea level if I remember anything from science lessons.
he he he (shhhh let the rest of the world live it's happy life thinking that water boils at 100º C and that tile is colder then the room is even though it really is room temprature) sorry i am in Pysical Science and we arn't allowed to use "standard" only metric (thank god)

and also we should thank Bill Nye the science guy for trying get kids to learn it at an early age :D
 
Jet, my young friend. When you get older you'll realize that you forget little details you learned in school and such. I was a math major at NYU and now can't remember crap about calculus. :-/
 
I don't know exactly all the relations between measures in the US (how many inches make a yard etc.), but the metric system is really straightforward and intuitive. It's always 10 of one kind that make 1 of the next higher order.
Likewise with volumes (liter) and weights (gram).
With temperature the best approach is to put the zero where the zero really is: no temperature, thus 0 Kelvin. Then, like negative weight or volume, negative temperature has no meaning.
 
...for temperature, at least... It annoys the hell out of everyone around me when they ask, "So, how is it outside?" And I say, "It's nice, sunny, 20 degrees".. :D
 
The USA should go 100% metric ASAP. A person working in the physical sciences or engineering is very familiar with the metric system already. When I started college 17 years ago, chemistry was ALWAYS taught using the metric system. Everything is measured in grams, liters, and centimeters/meters. The only exception to this is one of the contractors NASA hired to help send a satelite to Mars for study. OOPS!....We used the English system of measurement and sent the craft hurtling through the Martian atmosphere in a little ball of flame.

All Americans: step on your bath room scale and see what your mass is. If you quote a number in pounds (lbs) you are absolutely dead wrong. The English system of "weighing" is indeed in pounds, but pounds is a force unit. You have to divide the pounds by 32 ft/sec^2 to determine your mass in "Slugs".
 
Originally posted by chemistry_geek

All Americans: step on your bath room scale and see what your mass is. If you quote a number in pounds (lbs) you are absolutely dead wrong. The English system of "weighing" is indeed in pounds, but pounds is a force unit. You have to divide the pounds by 32 ft/sec^2 to determine your mass in "Slugs".

For this one, we Europeans do the same... with the great difference that we created a weight unit that is (nearly) equivalent to the regular mass unit.... but often we use the one for the other.
 
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