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Petition to make USA Metric

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randomrogue said:
I can offer you a similar anecdote. When I moved to Europe you buy candy in hectograms. I didn't realize this at first. So it was very confusing. You have to be damn careful or you'll spend a king's ransom since the prices regularly shift between half price and full price. I haven't figured out the pattern yet but one day....one day!
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In Japan meat is sold in hectograms...I had to look up hectogram to know it is 100g. I have seen prices marked in 100g, never hectogram.
 
KillerCharlie said:
Converting from one set of numbers is easy.

Either you're too stupid to be able to do that and want someone to make all the numbers the same for you, or you actually use these units at your job and find it simple to convert.

Who really cares what units are used? Even if the US government does things in SI the massive engineering base will still use imperial.

I use imperial at work (aerospace company that probably has around 50,000 engineers). When someone wants something in SI you just multiple by a fraction. Wow, that's hard.

We just measure everything in inches, not feet or fractions of inches. If something is 5' 3 1/4" we just call it 63.25"... really, it's not that hard.
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One day, the US dollar note will go away. One day! :biggrin:
 
sdifox said:
I have nothing useful to add to this thread so I will offer this personal anecdote.

When I arrived in Toronto, I figured beef would be more expensive than in Argentina. So when I was in a supermarket, I looked at the meat counter and thought the numbers looked similar to the once in Buenos Aires. Then my aunt explained to me they are per pound, while back in Buenos Aires, it was per kilogram.
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Yeah, we use a hybrid system here. Officially everything is done in metric but unofficially a lot of imperial measurements are still used. Indoor air temperature, height and weight of people, interior dimensions, produce at the grocery store, measurements for cooking, a lot of hardware (lumber is still a 2x4), etc. I think it just worked out that way because Canada hasn't been metric for that long and because we deal a lot with the US.

Stuff that tends to be exclusively metric here is outdoor air temperature, speed, distance, weights for most objects besides fresh food and people, measurements for packaged foods, land dimensions, any sort of mechanical specifications.

I don't think it would be that big a deal for the US to switch over under a hybrid system like ours. I think most people already know about it. The big expense would be replacing all the road signs. Hey, at least it would create jobs.
 
mmntech said:
...
I don't think it would be that big a deal for the US to switch over under a hybrid system like ours. I think most people already know about it. The big expense would be replacing all the road signs. Hey, at least it would create jobs.
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The funny thing is, governments here don't often seem to give a damn about doing things efficiently, or avoiding wasting money.
"Spend more on tougher roads so that we don't have to resurface them annually, which would save money in the long run? But what about the loss of jobs that would result? We can't have that!"
There are a few states that use the state's outline on road signs, instead of a more standard route symbol for things like interstates or numbered routes. I wonder how much that cost each state to make the change to their signage once that was done?
And I wonder how much benefit that's brought the taxpayers who fronted that expense? 😀

So I think that any reason for a big sign changing operation would seem to be no issue as far as state and local governments are concerned. If anything, they could use it as an excuse to shoehorn in some kind of pointless "branding" for their state or municipality. Or hell, sponsorships. "Welcome to McDonalds' Route 37!"


And we've already got metric creeping in a few places.

- Lightbulbs are sold by the watt, not horsepower.
- Electricity is billed in watt-hours, not horsepower-hours. (Kilowatt-hours, if you want to include the multiplier.)
- Light output is expressed in lumens, which incorporates the SI candela unit, not the English candlepower unit, though the candela's definition is approximately equal to 1 candlepower.
- Drugs and medications are often sold in milligrams.
- Soda can be bought in 1L and 2L sizes.
- Engine displacement is commonly expressed in liters or cubic centimeters.
- LCD monitors express their brightness in candelas per square meter.
 
SagaLore said:
Would it?

How about base 21, so both 7 and 3 have clean results.
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Sorry, I guess my point was too deep to really be noticed. The point I was making was that any argument about fractions is silly, because regardless of which system you use, there are going to be fractions which cannot be expressed in a finite number of decimal places. I.e., base 7 would take care of sevenths, but then most of the other fractions would become repeating decimals.
 
Zimbabwe uses the US dollar today. I have a $100 trillion dollar note though. Just in case money gets tight it's my emergency cash fund.
 
The reason we use both metric and standard is so that people who use tools to work on things will have to buy two sets of tools instead of one to accommodate whatever type of fasteners they may encounter.

The same reason alot of auto manufacturers require the use of a very specific tool that only has one purpose and is often highly overpriced to access or remove a specific component on a vehicle.
 
One U.S. gallon of water is 8.33 pounds so a pint is a bit more than a pound. A British imperial gallon was 10 pounds so an imperial pint was a pound and a quarter.
 
The number for the month only goes up to 12 so it's the smallest and comes first. Then the number for the day which could go as high as 31 is in the middle.The year number is in the thousands so it is last.
 
who? said:
The number for the month only goes up to 12 so it's the smallest and comes first. Then the number for the day which could go as high as 31 is in the middle.The year number is in the thousands so it is last.
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Yes but the rest of the world does it by what is longer. As in a measurement. So Days, Months, Years.

I still screw up writing the date and it confuses people to no end. My CV blew people's minds since I didn't realize I needed to change the dates on it.
 
yards to a mile is easier if you remember the sub units that no one uses.

22 yards in a chain
10 chains in a furlong (220yd)
8 furlongs in a mile (1760yd)

They're also helpful to remember retarded area units, like the acre:
one chain by one furlong
or ten square chains
or 220 x 22 yd
4840 square yards

Then you can figure things like.. how many acres in a square 1/8mi by 1/8mi? that's a furlong by a furlong, which is a (furlong by a chain AKA an acre) x 10, which is 10 acres.

in 1/4 x 1/4mi there is 4x that, etc, so you get 40, 160, 640 acres, for 1/4, 1/2, 1mi square plots.
 
hooollllyyyyyy crap, this place is full of morons.

united states customary units are archaic and asinine. for you flag-waving jackwagons, we have already used metric for ages in things that matter, like money, science, medicine and military.

"but we would have to change all the tools!" the old argument goes. guess what? what little is still manufactured in this country is easily changed or already metric. when will anand review intel's new 8.66141732 × 10^-7 inches manufacturing process? existing hammers still hammer, leaf blowers still blow, and "would you like fries with that?" happens to be exactly the same, just like -40 degrees.
 
WelshBloke said:
Ooooooookay then.

I thought it was going to be something mad like making 100 cents equal a dollar or the like.
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no no,

Dime must be renamed decidollar, penny renamed to centidollar.

Quarter and Nickels must be done away with for obvious reasons.

"Droppin' Benjamins" becomes "Droppin' hectodollars"

For "ease", your salary will no longer be paid in thousands of dollars, it will be kilodollars. But don't worry! If you need to know how much that is in dollars, just move the decimal!
 
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Train said:
no no,

Dime must be renamed decidollar, penny renamed to centidollar.

Quarter and Nickels must be done away with for obvious reasons.

"Droppin' Benjamins" becomes "Droppin' hectodollars"

For "ease", your salary will no longer be paid in thousands of dollars, it will be kilodollars. But don't worry! If you need to know how much that is in dollars, just move the decimal!
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And instead of being paid weekly you will be paid megasecondly 😛
 
who? said:
The number for the month only goes up to 12 so it's the smallest and comes first. Then the number for the day which could go as high as 31 is in the middle.The year number is in the thousands so it is last.
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When written with words it doesn't really matter as "March" is hard to mistake for the day (Assuming I speak English). "March 15th" just looks awkward to other nations, not confusing.

But when using numerical short forms it should be descending (not day-month-year) order of significance. 2013-03-18 (even more important if you shorthand the year to 13-03-18). When sorting large lists or comparing dates the larger number is always farther in the future (or closer in the past). It is just far easier to use for industry planning when anything more than a couple dates are being used or you need to use a dumb database of plain numbers. The US is the only country I am aware of whose industry does not use ISO date format for the numerical forms.
 
Daedalus685 said:
When written with words it doesn't really matter as "March" is hard to mistake for the day (Assuming I speak English). "March 15th" just looks awkward to other nations, not confusing.

But when using numerical short forms it should be descending (not day-month-year) order of significance. 2013-03-18 (even more important if you shorthand the year to 13-03-18). When sorting large lists or comparing dates the larger number is always farther in the future (or closer in the past). It is just far easier to use for industry planning when anything more than a couple dates are being used or you need to use a dumb database of plain numbers. The US is the only country I am aware of whose industry does not use ISO date format for the numerical forms.
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Unfortunately, there are plenty of Canadian companies as well as government agencies which do not use the ISO standard for date format.
 
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