Petition to make USA Metric

[SSSnail]

Hey sunnyd and skimple, go google base ten, and educate yourselves. I don't really have the time to pay taxes, AND do what the public education system failed to do.

SunnyD, just in case you think you're right, no. what's the smallest unit of measurement in you stupid 2 dollar bill that you keep bringing up? Holy shit you're beyond retarded. You went way past full retard.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Now US has bastardized me into this arbitrary garbage system. Now I don't know the general feel of cm & kg when it comes to height and weight.

So? Why would you? I don't, and it hasn't affected me in the slightest because I live in America where people don't generally give a shit about that outside of for professional reasons. I've never been laughed at for being unable to accurately gauge someone's weight in kilograms or height in meters anymore than I've been mocked for not being able to measure something in stone or rods or hogsheads or furlongs or leagues or any other unit that isn't commonly used by people in the society I live in. Why does it matter?

 

[nehalem256]

If I have a 1000mL container and need 333mL, I know I can fill the container up 1/3 of the way, approximately.

If I need a 1/3 cup of water I use my special 1/3 cup measuring cup. If I need a 1/3 of a foot, well that is 4 inches.

Imperial system win!

 

[WelshBloke]

... wuss

It's been hovering around 0c for months now so TBH 15c would feel fucking hot.

 

[fatpat268]

Also, when talking stuff like gallons, the UK gallon is different from the US gallon

The UK gallon is 1.2x larger than a US gallon. So keep that in mind whenever you hear a brit talking about fuel efficiency of their car.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

The imperial system isn't a true Base 12. You still count inches in the standard base 10 number system as do you count everything else in standard base 10. It's just the conversion is 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 5280 feet = mile, etc.

That's not the same as a base 12 or base whatever system.

I agree it's arbitrary, just like whoever created the meter, but having everything work in 10s is FAR easier.

People who say it's "hard" do so because we're used to the inch. We're used to describing height in feet, and distances in miles, and temperatures in F. But if you get used to the other system, the use of 10s is far easier. I hate converting stupid things like cups to ounces and quarts and mL. Here lemme give you a cup of milk. Can you carry that on a plane? Does that meet the 3.5 oz requirement or 100 mL? Or if I was in Europe I'd give you 250 mL container. Is that ok on the plane? Oh cutoff is 100 mL. Nope. Done. Simple.

 

[zinfamous]

Why? Fahrenheit is more useful for everyday application than Celsius. Celsius has a real "usable" normal area of between -15 and 42 or so. You're not going to be talking about 65 degrees Celsius outside of applications in science. Fahrenheit has a useful scale between 0 and 110 or so. That makes it nicer for daily application. If I'm talking about the weather, 100 degrees just immediately sounds hot; 38 doesn't. 45 sounds brisk; 7 sounds fucking freezing. It obviously depends on where you were raised and what you're comfortable with, but normalizing your scale to average daily temperatures is a lot easier to immediately understand than normalizing your scale to the boiling point of water, as we experience daily weather more often than we boil water. It's all arbitrary.

well, that's the thing, really. 38 doesn't sound hot to you simply because you aren't used to it. I find myself having to convert these in my head when mentioning temperature to my colleagues--F is a mystery to most of them. But you say 38, they respond something like, "Ah bloody hell!"

application is application. F (which I will never be able to spell on first attempt, so that's another reason to dump it ) is really only useful for laymen, if you ask me. It's really no more applicable than is celcius, and when the world standard for applied science measures everything one way, and when that same measurement makes perfect sense to 90% of the rest of the world's population, how would that measurement be any less applicable and convenient?

 

[zinfamous]

I'm sure no one reads this far down, but base12 or base16 makes a lot more sense than base10. From there its choosing between easy factoring and easy binary conversion.

Typed in Dovorak.

awesome post.

 

[Olikan]

The imperial system isn't a true Base 12. You still count inches in the standard base 10 number system as do you count everything else in standard base 10. It's just the conversion is 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 5280 feet = mile, etc.

Imperial system was done using random number generator

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Centimeters are clearly better than inches. They make penises sound longer. Kilometers aren't bad either; speed limits look more exciting. Volume I'm not sold on. It's a lot easier to do math with ounces than milliliters; 8 + 14 + 9 + 5 is easier to add up in your head than 237 + 414 + 266 + 148.

 

[diesbudt]

They are both easy, and just require some memory.

 

[diesbudt]

Centimeters are clearly better than inches. They make penises sound longer. Kilometers aren't bad either; speed limits look more exciting. Volume I'm not sold on. It's a lot easier to do math with ounces than milliliters; 8 + 14 + 9 + 5 is easier to add up in your head than 237 + 414 + 266 + 148.

Yes, I concur volume sucks in metric system.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

We learned the metric system in the 5th grade (along with Roman numerals). 39 years ago. So far, we've got a 2 liter soda bottle. This might take a while.

Yep. They fucked our generation all up by teaching us the metric system and NOT the imperial system, which we just had to learn on our own. The big switch was happening... To this day I still have no clue how many ounces are in a gallon, how many ounces are in a pound, or how many quarts are in a pint. All I know is that I have stripped a lot of 7/16 bolts labeled 11.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Centimeters are clearly better than inches. They make penises sound longer. Kilometers aren't bad either; speed limits look more exciting. Volume I'm not sold on. It's a lot easier to do math with ounces than milliliters; 8 + 14 + 9 + 5 is easier to add up in your head than 237 + 414 + 266 + 148.

That's just a matter of big or small numbers though.

You're not going to get weird shit containers like that though. It's usually 0.5L 0.25L, 0.4L, etc. I have a 0.6L and 0.7L water bottle at my desk. It's pretty simple.

The thing is I can give you three items: 1 cup or a quart or 24 ounces. You have to have a perception of EACH. Or you have to do some conversion such as 1 cup = 0.25 quarts. 24 ounces = 3 cups = 0.75 quarts. Compare 0.25, 0.75, 1 quarts. Ahh now you get the size. The trick is knowing the conversions. If you don't you're screwed.

I can now give you 250 mL, 1L, and 5L. You simply convert 0.25L, 1L, 5L. Or you convert all into mL and you visualize there. There's no remembering ANY conversion factors.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Yep. They fucked our generation all up by teaching us the metric system and NOT the imperial system, which we just had to learn on our own. The big switch was happening... To this day I still have no clue how many ounces are in a gallon, how many ounces are in a pound, or how many quarts are in a pint. All I know is that I have stripped a lot of 7/16 bolts labeled 11.

128 ounces in a gallon
16 ounces in a pound
2 pints make a quart?

how much memory am I wasting remembering stupid crap like this?

5280 feet in a mile?
1760 yards in a mile?

 

[Murloc]

Let's take volume for example. Yo own a liter measuring device... that's it. With this liter you can roughly figure out half liter by filling half. From this you can roughly figure out a quarter of liter by again filling half. Alternately if you fill the liter and dump it in a larger vessel 10 times then you have 10 liters.

I think the big issues are:
1. one system is arbitrary, the other follows base 10.
2. americans use base 10, but their units of measure don't reflect base 10. So they have to write stuff like 2' 33'' instead of just using a comma like they do with all their daily numbers: radio frequencies, temperature, percentages, prices etc.

changing to metric system for everything would cost a lot and not bring any serious benefit since science is metric already.

 

[Train]

128 ounces in a gallon
16 ounces in a pound
2 pints make a quart?

how much memory am I wasting remembering stupid crap like this?

5280 feet in a mile?
1760 yards in a mile?

With the exception of ounces to pounds, no one makes those conversions. And even that one is fairly rare. You could just use 1.25 pounds instead of 1 pound 4 ounces. You know, like very scale does.

You don't go to McDonalds and order a four ouncer, you order a quarter pounder.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

That's just a matter of big or small numbers though.

You're not going to get weird shit containers like that though. It's usually 0.5L 0.25L, 0.4L, etc. I have a 0.6L and 0.7L water bottle at my desk. It's pretty simple.

Sure you will. The common size for a can in the country is 12 ounces. 355 milliliters is a pretty arbitrary number. A shot is 1.5 ounces... or 44 milliliters. Even if you round them and had things in 350 ml cans, 50 milliliter shots, the math is screwed up. I've had 7 cans of soda (not actually, mind you, just as an example). 7 x 12 = 84 ounces is a lot easier to come up with than 7 x 350 (here's the math in my head: 350 x 2 = 700, 700 x 7 = 4900, 4900 / 2 = 2450 ml). And if I do it in liters, now I'm messing around with all sorts of decimals that just makes it even harder: 7 x 0.35L = fuck that in American math.

No, volume is silly in metric. Maybe if anyone actually used deciliters it could be useful, but they don't, so to hell with it.

 

[ElFenix]

With the exception of ounces to pounds, no one makes those conversions. And even that one is fairly rare. You could just use 1.25 pounds instead of 1 pound 4 ounces. You know, like very scale does.

You don't go to McDonalds and order a four ouncer, you order a quarter pounder.

or a le royale

 

[Atomic Playboy]

2. americans use base 10, but their units of measure don't reflect base 10. So they have to write stuff like 2' 33'' instead of just using a comma like they do with all their daily numbers: radio frequencies, temperature, percentages, prices etc.

Two things: first, we would never, ever, ever write "2' 33"." That means 2 feet, 33 inches. But 33 inches is 2 feet, 9 inches. So we'd either write 4' 9" or 57". We would never use some arbitrary measure that reduces some of the inches to feet but not all of them.

Second, we don't use commas in our daily numbers, we use decimal points. Commas differentiate between orders of thousands, ie 1,000 or 1,000,000. Decimals are used for percentages of a whole, ie 3.14159 or 97.4.

 

[drebo]

This... UK ftmfl :thumbsdown:

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

kg isn't a measure of weight, so their skeptical looks are valid...you look like a moron.

You need that in Newtons.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

I don't know about you noobs but I use Kelvin for temperature. Makes everything easier.

Kelvin = 6 letters

degrees Celsius = 14 letters

degrees Fahrenheit = 17 letters

Kelvin is superior.


Yo dog I heard it's going to be above 300 Kelvin today. Lets go out.

 

[Olikan]

Sure you will. The common size for a can in the country is 12 ounces. 355 milliliters is a pretty arbitrary number. A shot is 1.5 ounces... or 44 milliliters. Even if you round them and had things in 350 ml cans, 50 milliliter shots, the math is screwed up. I've had 7 cans of soda (not actually, mind you, just as an example). 7 x 12 = 84 ounces is a lot easier to come up with than 7 x 350 (here's the math in my head: 350 x 2 = 700, 700 x 7 = 4900, 4900 / 2 = 2450 ml). And if I do it in liters, now I'm messing around with all sorts of decimals that just makes it even harder: 7 x 0.35L = fuck that in American math.

...LOL, it's easy for you because the can uses imperial-friendly system

doing the a metric-friendly, puts imperial in a hard spot aswell...
1 litter is 33.81 ounces
7 litters is ....

 

[Atomic Playboy]

...LOL, it's easy for you because the can uses imperial-friendly system

doing the a metric-friendly, puts imperial in a hard spot aswell...
1 litter is 33.81 ounces
7 litters is ....

7 liters is too much soda for one day.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

...LOL, it's easy for you because the can uses imperial-friendly system

doing the a metric-friendly, puts imperial in a hard spot aswell...
1 litter is 33.81 ounces
7 litters is ....

Correct. And a CAN isn't a unit of measure. If its 350 mL so be it. Alcohol mixology stuff originated from the US, so yes the shot is based on the ounce. It could've been 50mL if we used metric.