Petition to make USA Metric

[SagaLore]

I'd rather we switch our standard measurements to a base 16 system.

 

[randomrogue]

Have you fellows ever seen a metric tape measure? Every carpenter in the US will be blind a month after the change. Nothing would ever get built again.

Why? How is using mm, cm, and m a problem? Why do we need to have an inch divided by 16ths followed by 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, and 5280 feet to a mile?

mm
cm
dm
m

Pretty damn simple.

 

[RedRooster]

Have you fellows ever seen a metric tape measure? Every carpenter in the US will be blind a month after the change. Nothing would ever get built again.

Perhaps so. But it beats measuring things by the width of your fingers and hand, which is pretty much what the imperial system looks like to us.
"Cut me a five fist two by four."

 

[randomrogue]

You can't do math, so everyone else should change?

"A pint is a pound the world around" - try that with your precious base 10 system.

I can do math. This is precisely why the arbitrary retardedness of the imperial system needs to go away. There is a better system where everything is base 10 and it has been around since the 1500's. The USA should catch up.

 

[silverpig]

Let's take volume for example. Yo own a quart measuring device... that's it. With this quart you can roughly figure out a pint by filling half. From this you can roughly figure out a cup by again filling half. Alternately if you fill the quart and dump it in a larger vessel 4 times then you have a gallon.

Try doing the same thing with a Liter container when it is asking for 230 mL.

Sadly the scientific world thinks that everyday man needs to measure stuff precisely. This is not the case, has never been the case, and I seriously doubt it will ever be the case. Metric makes sense when I need precise figures and I am doing math with these figures. It makes it easier for it that time. But when I want rough and dirty measurements, I will take Imperial/American any day.

You do the same thing...

You fill the litre container up ~ 1/4 of the way.

 

[skimple]

20 ounces to a pint, 40 to a quart, and 160 to a gallon. Not logical.

8 bits to a byte
1024 bytes to a kilobyte [or] 8192 bits to a kilobyte
1024 kilobytes to a megabyte [or] 1,048,576 bytes to a megabyte [or] 8,388,608 bits to a megabyte


I think the Imperial system is doing just fine, relatively speaking

 

[lxskllr]

Let's take volume for example. Yo own a quart measuring device... that's it. With this quart you can roughly figure out a pint by filling half. From this you can roughly figure out a cup by again filling half. Alternately if you fill the quart and dump it in a larger vessel 4 times then you have a gallon.

Try doing the same thing with a Liter container when it is asking for 230 mL.

Seriously?! You're stacking the deck in your favor. Get me 14oz from your quart container.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I can do math. This is precisely why the arbitrary retardedness of the imperial system needs to go away. There is a better system where everything is base 10 and it has been around since the 1500's. The USA should catch up.

Unit conversions in scientific fields within the metric system alone is tough enough, if anybody wants me to deal with that in imperial I would go postal on their ass.

 

[Saint Nick]

You can't do math, so everyone else should change?

"A pint is a pound the world around" - try that with your precious base 10 system.

It's not so much that. It's mostly that everyone else uses a measurement system, and we use something else. Stupid really. Just another place for engineers to screw something up in conversion.

 

[Saint Nick]

You do the same thing...

You fill the litre container up ~ 1/4 of the way.

This...hahaha

 

[randomrogue]

8 bits to a byte
1024 bytes to a kilobyte [or] 8192 bits to a kilobyte
1024 kilobytes to a megabyte [or] 1,048,576 bytes to a megabyte [or] 8,388,608 bits to a megabyte


I think the Imperial system is doing just fine, relatively speaking

It's base 2. Binary. It's a computer.

 

[lxskllr]

Have you fellows ever seen a metric tape measure? Every carpenter in the US will be blind a month after the change. Nothing would ever get built again.

I used to use a decimal foot measure, and it wasn't precise enough. I'd have loved to use metric.

 

[randomrogue]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Here's an example of where the Imperial system cost NASA $650 million dollars.

 

[Broheim]

This. There is essentially no argument to be made for Celsius over Fahrenheit. Unless you only measure the temperature of water and care when it freezes and boils.

I seem to remember reading that the human body is able to feel 1 degree celcius variations, but not fahrenheit.

 

[Maximilian]

You should follow us in the UK - decide to change to metric in a flurry of technocratic European-community idealism, then get halfway (or 0.5 of the way) and lose momentum, get stuck, revert to imperial, then decide to try and go for for metric again, then lose interest in the whole business and decide 'what the hell' and let everyone use a mixture of both systems according to personal preference.

So short distances can be in inches or cm, long distances are more often in miles, heights of people are in feet and inches but other things more often in cm, weights of people are in stone but weights of foodstuffs are in kg, temperatures are C or F depending on your age and generation (F means absolutely nothing to me and it infuriates me that so many people still use it). Alcohol and milk are officially in ltrs but everyone still thinks in pints (definitely for booze). And its not unknown to buy things with one dimension given in inches and the other in cm.

(These days, because I can never remember how many yards there are in a mile - its some stupid number that makes no sense - I tend to have to convert from one to the other by remembering 3 feet in a yard, 12" in a foot, 2.54cm in an inch, 100,000cm in a km, and a km is 5/8 of a mile.

This... UK ftmfl :thumbsdown:

Fed up telling people i weigh 63kg only to get the look from them followed by "wuts dat in stonez?"

 

[SunnyD]

I can do math. This is precisely why the arbitrary retardedness of the imperial system needs to go away. There is a better system where everything is base 10 and it has been around since the 1500's. The USA should catch up.

The metric system is just as arbitrary. Someone just so happened to have arbitrarily decided to line shit up on the power-of-10 boundaries.

Stop bitching about your own inadequacies and trying to force them on the rest of the world.

 

[randomrogue]

Temperature:

0C Freezing
100C Boiling
37C Fever
39C High Fever

32F Freezing
212F Boiling (I had to look this up and I've lived in the USA for over 30 years of my life)
99F Fever
103F High Fever

Which one is logical and which one is batshit crazy?

 

[nehalem256]

C over F makes sense because the normal range of temperatures people experience are a little above and below zero C. I know that 30C is a damn hot day, and that if its below zero its cold and there will be frost. Of course, its really just what you are used to, but temperatures given in F mean nothing at all to me.

Imperial is a perfectly usable system in general though, I wouldn't knock it. People ought to know both I reckon.

And the normal range of temperatures in F is between 0-100. And anything below 0 or above 100 is really freaking hot or cold and you should just stay inside .

I thought metric people liked their powers of 10? Since when is 30 a power of 10

 

[randomrogue]

The metric system is just as arbitrary. Someone just so happened to have arbitrarily decided to line shit up on the power-of-10 boundaries.

Stop bitching about your own inadequacies and trying to force them on the rest of the world.

We count with base 10 you weirdo. We have 10 fingers. 10 toes. Base 10 allows us to just move the decimal point. What's arbitrary about it?

 

[Train]

There is a better system where everything is base 10 and it has been around since the 1500's. The USA should catch up.

You're off by about 300 years. But who needs accuracy?

 

[nehalem256]

Temperature:

0C Freezing
100C Boiling
37C Fever
39C High Fever

32F Freezing
212F Boiling (I had to look this up and I've lived in the USA for over 30 years of my life)
99F Fever
103F High Fever

Which one is logical and which one is batshit crazy?

so 39 is more logical than 103 how?

And given that you had to look up the boiling point of water tells me its utterly irrelevant to your life and that it is pretty silly to use it as a "logical" basis for your temperature system.

 

[nehalem256]

You're off by about 300 years. But who needs accuracy?

Certainly not people who prefer Celsius

 

[Train]

Base 10 allows us to just move the decimal point.

EVERY base allows you to move the decimal point.

 

[Broheim]

The metric system is just as arbitrary. Someone just so happened to have arbitrarily decided to line shit up on the power-of-10 boundaries.

Stop bitching about your own inadequacies and trying to force them on the rest of the world.

not entirely, 1 kg of water equals 1 liter / 1000cc. that's hardly as arbitrary as "my foot is a better than yours and shall henceforth be used as our measuring system".

 

[Train]

dp