How Can We Convert the US to the Metric System?

thesolo asks: "Despite past efforts of the 1970s and 1980s, the United States remains one of only three countries (others are Liberia and Myanmar) that does not use the metric system. Staying with imperial measurements has only served to handicap American industry and economy. Attempts to get Americans using the Celsius scale, or putting up speed limits in kilometers per hour have been squashed dead. Not only that, but some Americans actually see metrication efforts as an assault on 'our way' of measuring. I personally deal with European scientists on a daily basis, and find our lack of common measurement to be extremely frustrating. Are we so entrenched with imperial units that we cannot get our fellow citizens to simply learn something new? What are those of us who wish to finally see America catch up to the rest of the world supposed to do? Are there any organizations that we may back, or any pro-metric legislators who we can support?"

Gulags

[Tatarize]

About 4 kilogulags worth of forced punishment for not using the metric system would do it!

oh, man

[Tumbleweed]

Looks like *somebody* is about to get a visit from Homeland Security...

Easy

[ceeam]

Penis size is bigger in centimeters than in inches.

Metric Bibels? No way!

[Kerstyun]

Read the good book. Did GOD tell Mosers to buld his arc 140 metears long? No HE did not, it was 300 cubics.

Re:oh, man

[stefanlasiewski]

DHS lost a $50 thousand surveillance van because a Ford engineering team used metric units of measurement while the agency's team used the more conventional Imperial system for a key driving operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

As a result of this mishap, the Van operator misjudged the driving angle, and crashed into a neighbors pool.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to prevent this sort of confusion by converting the agency from the old "Imperial" measuring system of English miles to a new "American" measuring system utilizing "freedom miles".

Appeal to pride.

[Tatarize]

Your penis may only be five and a half inches long but thats 13.9 centmeters!

It is like the square root of one million...

[Per Abrahamsen]

No one will ever know.

Re:What's stopping you?

[Curtman]

Why do you need the government to change the speed limit signs if your problem is interoperating with scientists?

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"

Re:One word

[Grey Ninja]

Is Metric a Communist Plot?

CLASSIC American scare-mongering to any sort of change. I have bookmarked that site, and I will have to look at all those later. =) Thanks for the link.

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[Lars T.]

Ok, a few questions:
how big is your dick ?

bigger than yours

how much beer do you need to get really drunk ?

more than you

what's the speed limit ?

too low

All the really important stuff is in imperial.

Nope, relative.

Re:Appeal to pride.

[Tatarize]

That's the second post I had troll modded in this thread. First one too. I mean, unfunny would be one things... but troll?

Re:Utter Piffle!

[Andrew Aguecheek]

Depends... if you're in Milton Keynes it's entirely possible to drive more than 800 miles.

It'll happen soon

[farker haiku]

I mean, we're inching towards it all the time!

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[bitkari]

Shall we argue this over a quick pint?

School districts votes to require 'Cubits'.

[kale77in]

A school district in Massachusetts today voted to remove all references to "imperial" and "metric" from their science and mathematics curricula, after complaints from a parent that 'cubits' were not receiving equal time in the classroom. A spokeswoman for the district board said today that if scientists themselves cannot agree on the matter...

Re:What's stopping you?

[HoldenMyOwn]

"If children aren't taught the metric system, they'll have to learn it."

A priceless statement from an admitted scientist.

Re:What's stopping you?

[smchris]

My car gets forty rods to the hogshead

Typical American. Sir, ye need a Nipponese Prius! Ye should be able to journey a great many furlongs on but a small part of a hogshead.

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[Fear the Clam]

In America even our meters are bigger.

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[fatphil]

Close enough for military work.

Re:What's stopping you?

[Inflatable Hippo]

But the more useful measure is for typical urban usage of hogsheads when cruising at 1500 furlongs per fortnight while carrying a balanced load of 12000 troy ounces.

I think you'll find that a tank capacity of 2 kilderkins won't last you too long in those circumstances.

Re:Funny, but lame

[Eudial]

Well, as a maths student, I would prefer to ban degrees and keep radians. Radians are actually useful to work with.

Exactly. If I'm at the grocery store, and I need to integrate a trigonometric function in order to determine how much milk I should buy (seeing as how you can roughly approximate the demand during the day with a sine curve), and I'm stuck with degrees, it'll be hell to integrate, when compared to radians.

Re:School districts votes to require 'Cubits'.

[mbrett]

Hey, I like the concept! They'll pay attention when teacher talks about a homer (Ezek 45.11-14) of beer!

Obligatory...

[deimios666]

The metric system is just a theory! It has no place in schools... It's a conspiracy I tell you. First they take away our origins with that Darwin's theory now they want to take away our measurements... May God bless you with a tinfoil hat.

The collapse of civilization?

[nbahi15]

If Sweden can switch from driving on the left side of the road to the right side of the road overnight I think Americans could deal with a little metric. - Norwegian girlfriend

I must agree, George Bush has a golden opportunity for a solid policy win, and a chance to get something other than Iraq and September 11 in the history books.

Switch to metric. There will be resistance from the populace that is satisfied with the status quo, but metric is more sensible from a design standpoint, it makes greater sense from an industry and economic standpoint, and really it won't be that hard. The best part is he might find some of his former detractors backing him on this one.

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[Fred_A]

In France, home of the metric system you *have* to buy one gram, one kilo or one ton of anything because there aren't any units in between. There are gendarmes everywhere making sure nobody bends the rules. And the fines are very stiff (up to a ton of euros).

It's not always easy I tell you. Sitting at the terrace of a café, sipping at a one litre cup of expresso... metric has its drawbacks.

Re:What's stopping you?

[that this is not und]

Adjustments can be made. There's a diamond rattail file kept in the same cabinet as the platinum 'standard kilogram' for that purpose.

The people have spoken! Viva La SI!

Re:Euro-homos

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you're a norwegian. Am I correct?

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought that the only reason why the US didn't switched to metric
was this one: If God Wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would
had only taken 10 apostles.

Re:Funny, but lame

[Anonymous Coward]

An alternative definition is 1/2,325th of the time it takes Windows Vista to finish booting up on a 2002-era PIII PC.

Re:Funny, but lame

[Grave]

If you need to think about trigonometric functions to determine how much milk you're going to drink, maybe the problem is somewhere other than metric vs. imperial.

metric conversions are not so easy

[r00t]

A cube-shaped box 10 cm on a side is 1 L.
If the box is 100 cm on a side, 10 times as much, it should be 10 L. Oops...

BTW, do you know the time in kiloseconds? Why not?

Re:Funny, but lame

[budgenator]

Normally a measurement systems popularity is proportional to it's ease of use, for example look at the Egyptian system of measure in base 60; it's devisable by 12 numbers and thereby avoiding those pesky irrationals that make doing math in your head rather difficult. I will admit that radians have a certain elegance, that's why the military came up with a where they have rounded off the milli-radian to 6400, it introduces a bit of error but it's still close enough for government work; it's not like your selling milk to 5 decimal places.

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[$0.02]

And our kilometer is 1024 meters.

Re:Yeah, but in the real world

[hanche]

Surely, everyone knows that the proper measure for fuel economy is the square millimetre (or millimeter for the other side of the pond). After all, we're dividing volume by distance here, so naturally we get an area. And this measure has an obvious geometric interpretation: Distribute the fuel needed to drive a certain distance as a very thin tube along that entire distance, and measure its cross section.

gallon sizes

[r00t]

The US uses Queen Anne gallons. This is what Britian used to use. There was no real reason for Britian to change, but I guess the King wanted bigger jugs...

Re:Funny, but lame

[Phisbut]

Personally I think the solution is to travel back in time, and re-engineer the human race so that we grow 12 fingers.

I'm sorry, but you didn't understand anything from all those units 'n numbers discussions. We need 16 fingers, not 12. Hex is the one true base.

Or cut your hands off, use your 2 arms and stick to binary.

Re:What's stopping you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody, somewhere respects you for actually knowing this.... happy hunting!

Re:A question I alwais ask when discussing this...

[Arker]

190,080 inches of course.

It's really fairly simple to calculate. One mile is 1760 yards. Each yard has three feet and each foot has 12 inches, so that means each yard is 36 inches, and 1760*36=63,360. No more difficult than dealing with numbers like 256, 512, 1024... in computing.

It's even simpler if you remember the furlong. A mile has exactly 8 of them. Each furlong has 220 yards.

Am I the only one that sometimes suspects the SI system was invented solely as an excuse to avoid learning basic fractional arithematic?

Re:I'll let you into a secret about Britain

[Cervantes]

It's actually 40 inches (1016 mm) long.

That's a Freedom Meter

Re:Funny, but lame

[kevin lyda]

You overclockers, always bragging.

Re:Funny, but lame

[Caffeinate]

I don't know if he's joking or not yet, I'm still drawing that sine wave . . .

Re:Beautiful post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Like Daylight Savings Time! It's traditional and should never be changed until it's pried from our cold dead hands.......

Re:School districts votes to require 'Cubits'.

[Chattah]

1 firkin = 40.9148269 liters Love thy google

Re:Funny, but lame

[Spikeles]

that's why the military came up with a where they have rounded off the milli-radian to 6400, it introduces a bit of error but it's still close enough for government work

Military Guy: Sir, Our cruise missile just hit a school in Iraq.
Software Tech: Oh, damn, i knew we shouldn't have rounded the nearest milli-radian to 6400

Re:What's stopping you?

[Random Data]

2.4 inches is hard? Maybe you need to pay attention to your spam.

Re:Metric Imperialism - Globalisation the goal?

[banditski]

I've heard the argument that the States won't change to the metric system because it gives their businesses an advantage in dealing with other American companies. A reasonable analogy is they speak a code language that others have to fight to understand but comes naturally to them. For companies outside the US, there is a cost associated to converting. It provides Americans with a way to impose a tariff to protect US business, but without actually doing something the WTO could complain over.

And since we're at it - to all the Brits, Irish, Aussies, Japanese, etc. out there... When are you gonna learn to drive on the right side of the road? I'd argue that's at least as disruptive to a nice happy global family as Americans using an outdated measuring system. Surely driving on the left has caused MUCH more physical harm than the Imperial system ever has.

Oh yeah - UK, Denmark, Sweden - get the Euro.

And just to stir the pot a little more - English really has become the global language. Two years living in Holland and meeting less than 10 people who weren't completely fluent in English just sealed it for me. So can't we do away with those other funny languages? Or at least make English a national language of each country, much like India?

Bottom line - why can't we all be like me? :)

(Yes I realize I'm getting more and more self centred, but I was on a roll.)

Re: School districts votes to require 'Cubits'.

[Zagra]

We use asprin for headaches - sold in milligrams!