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Will America Ever Go Metric? 80

Posted by Cliff from the miles-vs-kilometers dept.
poixweryth asks: "Just reading an article pointed to by a recent story in which they refer to "an object bigger than 0.6 mile (1 kilometer) in diameter". This is obviously American journalism. What I want to know is this: is the American public ever going to convert to the metric system?"
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Will America Ever Go Metric? More

Will America Ever Go Metric?

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  • "Imperial" units (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of course, the "English" units aren't standardized, either - one Imperial pint is 20 fl. oz., whereas here in 'Merka, it's 16 fl. oz.

    Two possible rationales:
    A. This brings the pint in line with the pound (16 fl. oz. of water == one pound).
    B. It allows beverage makers to short us on our pints. :o)

  • Cars (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can see the mechanical influence in just about anything, from American cars to computer enclosures.

    Odd, my 1992 GMC pickup had all metric fasteners - an SAE-only socket set would be useless for working on it. The one exception I came across was two small screws holding the distributor rotor in place, which were some small x/64" fractional size.

    IIRC, GM started converting to metric back in the late '70s or early '80s.

  • Re:Sure (Score:1)

    by brion ( 1316 )
    Esperanto kaj Dvorak? Oni povas fari tion chiam, sen Libertarianoj! Estas facila, jhus faru "loadkeys dvorak"... Ho, ankau lernu Esperanton! Iru al esperanto.net [esperanto.net]...
  • Sure, here in Australia we use metric units almost all the time. But much of it is done in a half-arsed fashion. Things are mostly measured in imperial units and then converted into what often becomes a pretty awkward metric equivalent.

    But don't kid yourself that just because we express things in metric units, we have converted to a metric system. A few examples of the top of my head.

    Radio reporter: "Witnesses report that the offender was approximately 183 centimetres tall..." (approximately?)

    Milk comes in 600 and 300 ml cartons, not 500 and 250 ml.

    A standard student's ruler is 30 cm.

    Speed limits in parking lots are often marked as 8 or even 17 km/h.

    And of course, beer, oysters and eggs are sold by the dozen and half-dozen. When these items are sold in 10's and 5's, maybe then our conversion will be complete.

    This is the stage we are at 25-30 years after adopting metric units? It seems like the whole process is gonna take maybe 4 or 5 generations.

  • If you are a manufacturer who exports from the States or uses parts obtained from abroad you have problems.

    Things like nuts and bolts are not interchangeable, stuff won't fit into rack mounts etc. All this leads to increased costs.

    It would be interesting to find out how much of American industry actually uses the metric system internally.

    On another, but related front, I know that a lot of American companies are starting to use the Euro rather than multiple single country currencies because of simplification and cost reduction.

  • I know this too: I'm 40U tall.


    Wil
    --

  • Not as fun as when you're an American riding with a German on the autobahn, watching the speedometer go up to "230"!


    Wil
    --

  • Not me, I drink by the liter!


    Wil
    --
  • >Everyone seems to think metric is automaticly better for everything. In fact metric is often worse except for one point: everyone else does it. Americans don't always follow what everyone else does (despite how it seems sometimes).

    Metric *is* better for everything. Lets go through a simple example.

    1mL = 1 1000th of a Litre.
    1mL = 1 gram
    1mL = 1 cubic centimetre

    Now, how much water is in 1 cubic metre?

    Well, 1 cubic metre is 100x100x100 centimetres. That's 1000000 cubic centimetres. That's 1000000 grams. That's 1 tonne of water, and 1000 Litres. *Everything* in metric is logically consistent. You're not just capable of dealing with powers of 10 within a type of measurement (height, weight, volume) but you can convert between them, as well.

    The reason why 1/1000th of an inch is a good tolerance is because people have been using it so long. Having a wrench that's 3/8ths of an inch is irritating. Having a 13mm wrench (not the correct conversion, I know...I'm not gonna work it out.) is much more convenient. People deal with whole numbers better. Fractions are considered 'harder' math.

    In metric, you don't need a third of anything. There's an actual number value associated with a third of a metre: 333mm. If you want to get more precise, you don't have to resort to fractions and decimals if you don't want to.

    Everyone else does it because it's a better system, not the other way around. Try and think of cause and effect.
  • ...I mean it doesn't cause any real problems, or cost organisations billions of dollars when things go wrong.

    (Huh? What about Mars?)

  • the U.S. originally stuck with the metric system

    I think you meant to say "imperial" system.
    England has switched to the metric system

    Not quite. They still use miles for long distances and measure weight in stone (14 lbs) and pounds.
  • "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the ways I likes it!"

  • No (Score:1)

    by G-funk ( 22712 )
    No, they won't. It's too entrenched now, what with all the computer systems and all, and frankly, I think America as a whole is just too damned arrogant to change. Americans seem to love doing things almost the same... Weird TV formats, The emperial system (even the empire has given up on it), and the like...

    Meanwhile, I'm still hanging for my chance to get out of the country I love and go to the states where the government is working _quite_ so hard to fuck up the lives of all tech workers :)

    Gfunk


    --Gfunk
  • Eventually we will. Some states (I can't name one) have signs like "SPEED LIMIT 55mph/88kph". I've shot at gun ranges with Yards and Meters marked. Most auto mechanics have both SAE and Metric tools. I think it's just a matter of people getting used to it. It would be a nightmare if we switched all at once. "I swear officer, I was only going 55 terrabytes, it must have been the car in front of me".

    Eric
  • No, he didn't fight "them Germans" so Europeans...

    Remember the UK, and all the other Allies...?

    We use the metric system, exclusively, in Australia. Doesn't mean the words inch, foot and mile are forbidden. "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile" doesn't need to be explained to children here like morons...

  • Is the American public ever going to convert to the metric system?

    I don't really care whether the American public converts or not. But I was really shocked to learn that many American scientists and engineers haven't converted to SI yet (cf. the Polar Lander incident). In retrospect, I am really glad to have been to school in Europe, so my physics teacher could explain physics to us, and didn't waste our time explaining how to get the units right.

  • Well, a number of people forget the basic concepts and use only 3 significant digits for conversion (e.g., 2.54cm = 1inch).

    How many digits do you want? If you want ten digits, then 1inch = 2.540000000cm. It's exact (fortunately!). The only place where you might get problems is in the fractions, and you don't really measure stuff in fractions in industry. You can have 12.345 miles, then for an accurate conversion (as accurate as it is now) you can take a few more digits as the original number has.

    Of course, Fahrenheit to Celcius is another matter, with its 5/9 fraction. But there, again, you most certainly are dealing with decimal numbers anyway, not exact Fahrenheits.

    Shortly put, conversion should be no problem as long as it's done even a bit the smart way.
  • Yeah, here it's the 'English' system (or 'Standard Units'/'Standard Measure'). The US doesn't like to think of the units as 'Imperial', because that would mean that someone besides the US had an empire, and we used to be a part of it... the country is a little sore still (we're young, we'll get over it).

    Meter, theater, center. Metre is unpronounceable ;-)

    --
  • of course, boxing in england measures the fighters' weight in stones, which one can only describe as, well, quaint. i know how much a stone weighs (14 pounds), but it's just not worth the thought to convert it into something that i can relate to like pounds or kilos. i'm just glad that they don't throw in the hundredweight, which is 8 stones (112 pounds - now that makes sense).
  • The metric system is UNIFIED with respect to distances, weight and temperature.

    The unit for distance is defined as 1/40000000 of the circonference of the earth (well, now, it's defined by light but...), then the weight unit is defined as the weight of 1 cubic meter of water at sea level (1000kg), finally the temperature is defined by the frozing and boiling points of water (under condition that I don't exactly remember).

    All these definitions come from physical things, while anglo-saxon measures come from nothing.
    Furthermore, the metric system is WAY easier to use, no matter what you thing.

    This is why the system should change, but I you said, unfortunately, this is not going to be any time soon :)
  • Just go ahead and explain why water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212, instead of 0 and 100.

    All depends on who you are. Ask a chemist and they very well might tell you that water freezes at 273 and boils at 373. On an overall view difining 100 degrees between water freezing and boiling makes about as much sense as basing your thermometer on 100 degrees between a normal human body temperature and the approximate temperature where it would freeze solid.

    All of our measurements are pretty arbitrary anyway. Yes it's a bit easier to convert between different units with the SI system, but in my everyday life I don't do all that much converting. However I do need to make eyeball judgements about how many units something is and it's a lot easier to do if I use the units I'm most familiar with. On a daily basis I use units like miles, feet, tablespoons, gallons, pounds and ounces (both kinds)I know about how big they are and that's all I care about.
    _____________

  • The Rules Have Changed...Get Paid to Surf the Web!

    Shouldn't that be "The Rules Have Changed, now we pay less and make you earn more before we'll cut you a check for putting up with a program that crashes your already unstable windows box at least once an hour."?

    Just my thoughts anyway. Damn I hate All Advantage.
    _____________

  • And we'll all be typing in Esperanto on our Dvorak-layout keyboards.

    To be sure that no one's confused: Dvorak layout keyboards are layed out to allow better typing of the english language only.

    I'm not sure, but I think it'd be safe to say that Dvorak also applied his methods to other langues, and hence it's a shame that the English Dvorak keyboard was simply named Dvorak.

    -Daniel

  • ...UK fluid ounces are 28.4ml not 29.6ml, and thus weigh almost exactly an ounce, unlike the American ones!

    Wow, so they are even able to change the laws of physics in the UK? So a UK fluid ounce of mercury weighs the same ("almost exactly an ounce") as a UK fluid ounce of water? Here in America, a fluid ounce of mercury is much heavier than a fluid ounce of water.

    I'm impressed.

  • The UK hasn't entirely gone over to using metric. We still measure large distances in miles, and people still usually quote their heights in feet and inches and their own weights in stones and pounds. Up to a couple of years ago, you could still buy groceries in pounds and ounces, but an EU regulation put paid to that, stating that all weights and measures in shops must be in metric, with the exception of milk and beer, which are still sold in pints (but with the metric equivilent on the packaging). The car is where is gets confusing. Engine sizes are in litres and petrol is sold in litres but distances are imperial, measured in miles, speed in miles per hour and so is fuel consumption which is in miles per gallon (a UK gallon, which is different to a US gallon). We quite often use imperial and metric interchangably at home, such as when cooking.
  • All we need to do is reinstate the draft - problem solved ;-)
  • After reading a few of the posts, one thing stood out - many people refer to 'Imperial' as 'English'.

    Is 'English' the normal tern used to describe the system in the USA, because here in Australia I've always known it as 'Imperial'.

    Just a little point that I was wondering...

    (Oh, and if you ever do switch, it's spelt 'metre' ;)

  • The Imperial system is not English it is British. #ifdef AMERICAN $text~=s/England/Britain/g $text~=s/English/British/g
  • I seem to remember reading in an engineering text book that the standard unit of force in the imperial measurement system (feet, inches etc) is called a slug. That's funny.
  • i'm sure they'll grow up to be ACs as well...
  • actually, my kids are not taught the metric system in school in southern california.

    americans are too fucking stupid to switch to the metric system.

  • the southern part of arizona (as one nears the mexican border) has speed limit and distance signs in metric and american standard.
  • or the chopper, or the asshole with the road spikes
  • Should have expected the contact info from a place like this to be registtered in TX....

  • I live in Denmark and we've been metric for almost a century. That doesn't mean that inches, dozens, pounds etc. have gone out of use, but the ones less easily converted to metric have been 'metricized'. That is, an inch is exactly 2.50 cm, a pound is 500 grams exactly. Not sure if a foot is now officially 30 cm, but I think so. While everything is officially measured in metrics, some things are traditionally not. Newborn babies have their weight measured in pounds more often than not. So my infant daughter was 4100 grams, but the preferred measure was 8 pounds - not just by oldtimers. Most folding rulers (not sure if that's the correct english term) have centimeters on one side and inches on the other. Quite fittingly, they're called "inchsticks" (direct translation). Lumber for construction is not 100x100 mm or 63x125 mm, it's a 4x4 or 2,5x5.

    So go ahead and make metric the official measure, and rest assured that most of the non-metric measurements will live happily everafter.

  • I'm assuming German's use KPH here, unless you're going for a ride in a McLaren.

    Yes, 230 is _fun_. I ran out of road, the last time i was speed testing my Firebird. Too many cops even out in the county, and if one takes a dislike to your 3x the speed limit exploits, it's a bitch to outrun them. Sure, a Crown Vic tops out at about 220, but you can't outrun a radio. =)
  • I've seen pop cases of 20, was wondering why it was a bit cheaper than usual, looked at the 20 on the side finally. Course, the cost per can was actually higher, even though the total cost was less =)
  • I'm a 24 year old Canadian. I grew up with the school system teaching me Metric. My parents work in English units. To this day, I usually have to convert temperature, weight and height to English, for it to make sense to me. When i'm driving in the US, i mentally convert the posted mph speed limit to kph, since it's harder to see the smaller MPH markings on my speedometer.

    Trust me, it's fun when you have an American in the car, who has never seen a Canadian dashboard(big letters are kph, and small is mph), and he looks at the dash, and thinks you're really going the 120 "mph" that the dash says.

  • I still know height and weight by the old system, but we dont use pounds, we use stone.
    ( 14 pounds = 1 stone )

    when it comes to metric i think of a bag of sugar (the stadard size in the supermarket here is exactly 1 kilo)
  • As a Canadian who grew up taking metric in school, they did try to teach us EVERYTHING in metric, but I still think of height, weight, and waist size in English units.

    I'm slowly getting used to engine size in Litres, but don't know the conversion. I know the 318 that was in my old '74 plymouth was bigger than my 2.4L in my Olds, but not by how much. As for driving, I think of everything in Km, it just seems easier. Sure roughly 1 mile takes 1 minute to drive (at highways speeds), but when you say your going 350 miles it takes a second to convert, but 350Km is 3.5 hours. (Of course this is assuming 60mph or 100kmh... I only drive that slow when road conditions aren't great).

    I'd prefer to think of my height and weight in metric, but its a hard habit to break. Heck, I just checked my drivers license (Saskatchewan) and its got me at 6'1", not 190 odd centimetres (I think). Not to mention, when was the last time you went to buy a pair of pants and asked for a waist size of 84cm... finding size 33 waist is tough enough without confusing the sales people... I know, I'm the same waist size.

  • If God had wanted us to be metric, he would have had 10 disciples!
  • Celsius degrees were designated so that water froze at 0 and boiled at 100. For fahrenheit (sp?), a saturated brine solution freezes at 0, and the human body temperature is 100, but the guy measuring made a mistake. Kelvin has degrees the same size as Celsius, but having 0 at absolute zero. There is a similar scale called Rankins (I think) with degrees the same size as Fahrenheit, but 0 is absolute zero.

    As a Canadian, I grew up with the metric system, and am comfortable with it for most things (especially any calculations for physics etc.) However, I still think a lot of the time in feet/inches, pounds, and cups. This is because of what I was exposed to as a child. My height was always given in feet/inches (I don't even know how many centimetres tall I am), my weight in pounds (sometimes stone, my mom came from England, and she brought her bathroom scale). Of course, any cooking I do is strictly cups, tsps, & tbsp. This is because that is what all of the recipies are in, and what all of the measuring implements are.

    Now, I know we are supposed to be a metric country, but I believe, like the US, we are still in the transition phase. Each new generation will rely less on imperial measurements, because they will be brought up more with metric. My dad is Canadian, but still needs the temperature in Fahrenheit. I can see my children, in fifteen or twenty years, laughing at me because when they tell me how tall they are, I ask for them to convert it to feet and inches.

    The country is changing at a rate it feels comfortable with. We just happen to have a bit of a headstart over the US, but my guess is that, a few generations down the road, we'll all be talking in kilograms, metres, and newtons instead of slugs (imperial measurement of mass), feet, and pounds. How many US lightbulbs are rated in horsepower instead of watts?
  • This irks me. A meter is a measuring device. Ohmmeter, ammeter, thermometer. A metre is a measure of distance. To each his own, but I know that I've added lots of new words to my spell checker.
  • The slug is a unit of mass, not force. It is analogous to the kilogram. The pound mass (lb) is also a mass unit.

    The pound force (lbf) is the measurement of force. Keep in mind that lb != lbf.

    -z

  • While I love the simpicity of the metric system, and unlike most of my peer group (I'm 21) can roughly convert and eyeball in both systems. But I do a lot of carpentry and construction work. These are people who will need ages to convert to metric. every house built in the US, all of our stock scenery, even the measurements of our stages..all feet and inches. All of those 2x4s, sheets of plywood, 30" wide doorframes, ...i love to tell one of my professors that something is about two meters long...they look at me like i was some sort of socialist radical (oh, wait..) The sooner the better I say...but don't expect it overnight.
  • trying to figure out just how much 37/64 is.

    Pure silliness, if you ask me. I can pretty much understand going down to 1/8th increments, but for the love of sanity, why would you EVER specify things in 16ths, 32nds, or 64ths?!? It would be a LOT simpler if you just converted to the decimal equivalent. Chances are that when you take the tolerance into account, it'll erase quite a few of your precious significant digits anyways ( 3/16 is .1875, but will most likely show up at .19).

    As an engineer, this never fails to irk me.

    "There's a party," she said,
    "We'll sing and we'll dance,
    It's come as you are."

  • To those who claim the US will never "go metric" -- it's already happening.

    'Way back in the 1970s, many people said the same thing -- "metric" is too weird (or too foreign), we're all comfortable with the "American" system, and so forth. Then imported wine started arriving on US store shelves in SI sizes, such as 750 ml. People bought it. No one's head exploded because they poured their wine from a "metric" bottle. Then US domestic wine started arriving on store shelves in "metric" sizes. Still no fatalities among the "US units" faithful. Then soft drinks started arriving in 2-liter bottles. Now there are 1-liter and 3-liter bottles, too. As far as I can tell, there has been no irreparable cultural damage as a result.

    So as you turn on your 100-watt light, sit down at your 500-MHz computer, and open a 2-liter bottle of Jolt, don't ask when the US will start to go "metric" -- we started decades ago. Ask when we'll finish.

  • We americans love being different just to be so. Changes like that would require that it upset a lot of people enough to get them out of their technology induced stupor (thanks TV). Many of us are content the way we are and see no reason to uproot ourselves from our SUV's, TV's, and Lay-z-boys. This mentality shall be our downfall, we must plan for a new future today! A fu-.... oooh, Fraiser's on! Bye!
  • And also, why are hot dogs sold in packs of 10, when hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8 or 12!!! it just never adds up 8^)

    Because the pet dog get gets 2 wieners and he doesn't like buns :)

  • While the US has yet to embrace the metric system, we in the UK have it thrust upon us by European Law. A fruit-seller where I live has been taken to court for selling his produce in lb's and ounces! I do believe metric is a far better system, but what utter nonsense!
  • Travelling on a ferry from the continent to the UK, I noticed a sign hanging in the bar "We now serve spirits in the larger metric units". This is the perfect way to make people accept the metric system. Even Brits. Otherwise, I highly regret that Napolean never conquered the british isles. Apart from a decent constition, it may have bestowed the metric system once and for good onto the english speaking nations. I consider the metric system the best invention since sliced bread and ... the guillotine.

  • WHY? (Score:2)

    by bluGill ( 862 )

    Everyone seems to think metric is automaticly better for everything. In fact metric is often worse except for one point: everyone else does it. Americans don't always follow what everyone else does (despite how it seems sometimes).

    Imperial is better for fractions. Most imperial systems were designed to support common fractions. 1/3rd a foot is marked on every imperial measuring device. A foot also happens to be a useful measure on a desktop. Of course something about that size would work too, but a foot is what we have. A decimeter is a bit small, but would work, and a meter is too big. (I wonder how many metric people know what a decimeter is without thinking...) Within a desktop area a third of your measure is a common thing to need. A quarter of a foot is useful, and the foot/inch system supports both rather well. Thirds are difficult in metric.

    Converting between units is often described as an advantage, but in reality mistakes are made with both systems. If you order a large airplane (ie 200+ passangers) with metric units they build it, but every meaursement is milimeters, from the tollorances (which is .00xx mm) to the overall length (which varies depending on the tempature, but is something like 33000mm). Finially you rarely need to convert units. If I'm dealing with miles (or km) I don't normally need to know more then 1/4th a mile (1/2 km), anything more detailed isn't going to have an effect. (There are exceptions, but for most people and uses you don't need many significant digets.)

    Speaking of tolorances most machinsts I know report that the thousandth of an inch happens to be a good tolorance, any metric measurement is either a not enough or more then needed for practical applications. I'm sure this is luck, but it is still a point.

  • > Right after the Federal Government repeals the
    > income tax and a Libertarian gets elected
    > president

    And we'll all be typing in Esperanto on our Dvorak-layout keyboards. :^)
  • Surveyors use Feet, not Inches. There are two definitions for feet - the International Foot and the US Survey Foot.

    Since the Metet was re-defined in the 50s to be some multiple of a wavelength of a specific electromagnetic emission, the definition of an inch to be exactly 2.54 cm or a foot to be .3048 meter changed the length of the foot. To maintain consistency with all the previous surveys that had been performed this was named the International Foot and a US Survey foot was created with a length to be 0.304800609602 (12 sig digits from the sources below).

    Add to this difference the fact that some survey calculations are done in State Plane coordinates and even survey calculations done in plane coordinate systems can easily have 8 significant digits, the difference between the two definitions of Foot can be very significant.

    Wisconsin Coordinate Systems Handbook Summary of Terms [wisc.edu]

    Mentor Software FAQ [mentorsoftwareinc.com]

  • And we still drink in pints!

  • The funny part is that the U.S. originally stuck with the metric system because they did a lot of trade with England and didn't want to make things difficult. (After all, it is the "English" system.) But now, England has switched to the metric system, but we're still stubbornly and blindly sticking with trying to figure out just how much 37/64 is.

    --
    Can you even play MP3s on that thing?

  • The American public education system as well as scientists and engineers have been teaching almost entirely metric since the '70s. There is no debate what our schools should be and actually are teaching, and the effort at the educational level to use SI cannot go any deeper.

    However, there is still a lot British Unit Standard is use. And reversing that is tough. Why? As someone mentioned, it has to do with engineering. Looking at the core three engineering disciplines, I will break it down:

    • Civil

      Civil is probably the most entrenched area of British Units. A great majority of this country (at least the East and Midwest, where I've lived and worke) was surveyed and completed by the mid-1800s. Plats, surveys and all major reference points are still in British Units, although civil engineers have been using 1/10th of a foot (instead of an inch) to reduce confusion for the past century. All new submissions are required to have both in most federal and state mandates.

      But there is a major problem with the entire conversion process. Remember all those tests on significant digits? Well, a number of people forget the basic concepts and use only 3 significant digits for conversion (e.g., 2.54cm = 1inch). When spread over several square miles, that lack of attention can lead to someone being cheated an acre of land! It's an entire mess, hence many surveyors and engineers still use British units alongside the required metric ones to keep the numbers correct.

      This really makes you wonder if metric is a good choice for civil engineering yet, especially land surveying. The lack of attention to significant digits is really causing a backlash against those making these mandates (yet not caring about accuracy). I should know, my father is a land surveyor and I occassionally help him out.

    • Mechanical

      Some of the greatest booms in the US' industry might came at the turn of the century and during World War II. Not surprisingly, all these machines are British standard. Changing this is slow task as nobody wants to chuck working machines, let alone possibly have to change to metrica suppliers who are harder to find. Furthermore, running with a dual-setup only adds confusion which, again, hurts their bottom line.

      You can see the mechanical influence in just about anything, from American cars to computer enclosures (see Electrical below). You can always tell what parts are made in America (or North American) and which are foreign, the former are (usually) in British, the later in metric. With more and more American cars just assembled in the US, while parts are made abroad, the are becoming more and more metric. And as American machines wear out, you'll see entire companies switch to metric.

      Now under mechanical is aerospace. And I'm personally sick of the ignorant bashing of NASA and contractors here on /. NASA and contractors are filled with metric spewing engineers -- I know, I worked in the aerospace field for 3 years. But the machinists and technicians are usually older gentlemen with quite a number of British-based machines and techniques. "Balast" (arbitrary weight used to modify center of gravity, etc...) is a very important in aerospace and while the engineers might do all the math, we don't assemble the rocket. Again, another issue in conversion.

    • Electrical

      Electrical technologies are relatively new in the engineering discipline scheme. As such, by the time electricity came about (late 1800s), use of the metric was widespread among the American scientists who helped inventor or cultivate those technologies. Although British units were used at the time, most of the basics of electronics were set in stone at its infancy (volts, amps, watts, etc..>). From By the 1950s, most electrical engineering, technology and well as end-user usage programs focused on using only metric.

      Now getting back to my previous mention of computer enclosures, ever look at a spec sheet? Note how the dimensions of the enclosure are in British, yet the dimensions of the power supply are in metric! And it's not just because a good number of electronics come from outside the US, the US engineering industry has been metric for a long time. Sure, PCBs are still referenced in "mills" (thousands of an inch), but most of the time the mills spec is actually just an conversion approximation of the actual size in milli or micrometers (aka microns).

      As an engineer with a degree in electrical and computer engineering and one who currently works in the semiconductor industry, when accuracy matters, metric is always the standard (using mills for only quick representation in size of larger, lesser important dimensions).

    Again, the issues are deep. I've personally seen them working in all three major engineering disciplines over the past 13 years. Anything electrical is basically metric here in the US. But there are still deep investments in British machines and other mechanical field equipment that will take time to change (but will). And as far as I am concerned, moving any civil standard away from British standard is not a good idea at this time, and given the reinvestment in re-surveying the country, I'd say it's not going to change for awhile (unless satellites can fully replace land surveyors, which is not happening for various reasons).

    I appreciate everyone who took the time to read this. Most /.'ers postings on NASA and other engineering firms have been leaving bad tastes in my mouth.

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • As a 17 year old uni student in the US, I can tell you exactly why my general peer group doesn't accept the metric system: we have no real experience with it. I think that's why most people don't accept it, in fact. It's very easy to understand (powers of ten, consistent relation between units via multiplication and division), but it's very difficult to apply if you grow up with english units. For instance, I can judge people's height in feet/inches very easily. Doing the same with meters is nigh impossible. Or worse, hefting something and determining its weight in kilos.


    That's why I think it'll take a lot more than a just a few generations going by. I think it'll take putting the metric units in big print and the english in small. I think it'll take students being taught metric before english. And, most importantly, it'll take time. The US has shown great reluctance to even try to use metric units (the token effort with food and car spedometers is about it), so it'll probably be 3 or 4 generations before the english system is phased out.


    Of course, looking at Canada, I see a middle stage where a lot of things are still english, despite it being a 'metric country,' so we're not the only backwards place in the world. :)

  • The funny thing is that (even leaving aside the fact that the UK now uses mostly metric units) what Americans call 'English' units aren't anyway. For example, UK pints contain 20 fluid ounces. And UK fluid ounces are 28.4ml not 29.6ml, and thus weigh almost exactly an ounce, unlike the American ones!
  • Interestingly enough, even England has moved, at least somewhat, to a metric system. Decimal currency, rather than pounds, shillings, pence, etc.
  • Though that is true according to Oxford, there's still a lot of textbooks that haven't grasped that.

    Maybe I should start a campaign to rid the English language of all words that end in 're', but that would end up quite silly, with such sentences as "I heer you've been over theer" (though in some accents, this wouldn't be distinguishable).
    --
  • First: all systems are arbitrary. As long as you're clear on the conversion units, everything's kosher. 5280 feet in a mile is no more inherently bizarre than 1000 meters in a kilometer.

    The original mile was defined by the Roman Legions. A thousand Legionnaire paces became a mile. This makes perfect sense in an era where most people traveled by walking from place to place. The original foot was defined by the length of an English monarch's foot--okay, that one's silly.

    Insofar as why water freezes at 32 and boils at 212, you can thank Fahrenheit. His temperature scale was originally conceived of for medical purposes, not scientific ones. He defined the nominal body temperature as 96 degrees (both to allow high fevers to be an even 100, and because 96 was evenly divisible by a lot of numbers). For the zero point, he decided the freezing temperature of salt water would be the coldest anyone would need to measure, so that became the 0.

    Today, better thermometers than Fahrenheit had tell us the body temperature is 98.6 degrees. Salt water still freezes at zero, though.

    Imperial is only "clear and consistent" if you don't mind a bushell [sic] ... of random, meaningless, individual relationships between all of your measurements.

    As it turns out, the relationships are not random nor meaningless. As I said earlier, as long as you've got a decent memory for constants, conversion between the two is very straightforward.

    1 mi = 1.609344 km
    1 in = 2.54 cm
    c = 186,282.3979 miles per second
    1 pound = 454 grams
    1 kilo = 2.205 pounds
    1 quart approx eq. 1 liter, to 3% accuracy
    1 calorie = 4.1868 joules
    1 degree F = .555 degrees C
  • England is a subset of Britain, just as Wales and Northern Ireland are. Therefore, it's as fair to say the Imperial system is Scottish as it is to say it's English.

    Any attribute of a set belongs equally to all elements of the subset. :)
  • Why not? Because it's a complete nonissue. If you talk to a scientist, they're going to be comfortable with the metric system. Whether it's 20mi or 32km, I don't care; it's all the same to me.

    That leaves the conventional world as the last holdout, and even there it doesn't matter very much. What matters is that the people understand what the measurements are. If I were to tell someone asking for directions, "Sure, just go a klick down the road, take a right, and it's a half-klick on your left" it would make no sense at all to them--but if I were to say "sure, it's about six-tenths of a mile down the road, turn right, and about a third of a mile on your left", it'd make perfect sense.

    Why should they change? They've got measurements they're happy with. Now, admittedly, if they're going to travel in foreign countries they'd better learn the metric system--but since you can get by perfectly fine in America without knowing the metric system, the conventional wisdom seems to be "why bother?"

    As for me, I'm happy with either system. Doesn't matter to me which system of measurements you use, as long as you're clear and consistent.
  • I agree completely. Right now Americans judge things in english units, and possibly convert them to metric.

    Until people are so comfortable with metric units that they can use them directly, english units will prevail.

    Doug
  • we have no real experience with it. I think that's why most people don't accept it, in fact.
    Depends on the thing being measured. We're all pretty familiar with liters, thanks to soda bottles - in fact, it's pints and cups and that stuff that confuse me. (I'm thirty, and when I was in elementry school is the 70's it was assumed that we'd be metric any day now. Heh.) Distance, I'm about equally comfortable with feet and meters, thanks to metersticks and 5k runs and rulers with dual markings. But in weight and temperature I think in pounds and degrees Fahrenheit. (I wish they'd announce temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius in weather reports, so I could get a feel for it.)
  • It seems pretty certain that eventually the US will go metric. I think that the country is basically waiting for a couple of generations to kick off first.

    All school age students in the US learn the Metric system in addition to the English system. It is used exclusively in science classes and often in math as well.

    The problem is that older people are not comfortable with it. They don't understand it and don't want to learn. Eventually, everyone will know both and I think that you will start to see a phase out of the old system in favor of the metric system as has already been the case in the rest of the world.

    I believe it is simply a matter of time. Counter to conventional wisdom the US is a slow mover on a lot of things. The metric system is just one of many issues. But its inherent superiority will no doubt have it prevail.
  • I think it'll take putting the metric units in big print and the english in small. I think it'll take students being taught metric before english.

    Bingo. The US is perfectly comfortable wallowing in british units forever. Left to inertia, it will take a thousand years. Metric won't take hold without a hard kick in the public's collective ass.

    A simple first step would be for the federal government to require all-metric measurements on government documents and contracts. Big industries would have to use metric. Their workers would have to learn metric. And so on.

    Except that Dubya certainly would never do such a thing, just like he'd never install solar panels on the White House roof. Guess metric will have to wait for another decade...

  • Things are mostly measured in imperial units and then converted into what often becomes a pretty awkward metric equivalent.

    Mostly? Hardly!

    Radio reporter: "Witnesses report that the offender was approximately 183 centimetres tall..." (approximately?)

    The media aren't exactly the smartest bunch of people, they say stupid things all the time...

    Milk comes in 600 and 300 ml cartons, not 500 and 250 ml.

    No, Milk comes in 1 and 2 lt cartons, with 600 and 300 ml available. 600 are 300 may be a throw-over from Imperial, but they are still round metric units.

    A standard student's ruler is 30 cm.

    1 in = 2.54 cm
    12 in = 30.48 cm

    That is almost half a centimetre off! We are hardly forcing the ruler to be an Imperial size. 30 is just a logical length, as 25 does not make the length of most school books (and you can't try to put logic into lopping 5cm off the size of a book so it fits 'the system')

    Speed limits in parking lots are often marked as 8 or even 17 km/h.

    These are private properties, and are VERY rare. All official streets are 'round' numbers (100 km/h standard of freeways, 60 km/h [and becoming 50 km/h in some areas for safety reasons] standard speed in residential areas.)

    And of course, beer, oysters and eggs are sold by the dozen and half-dozen. When these items are sold in 10's and 5's, maybe then our conversion will be complete.

    Tradition in sale. There is no point in selling less product just to conform to a system. Eggs hardly need to be sold in such a way they easily divide into 10.

    This is the stage we are at 25-30 years after adopting metric units? It seems like the whole process is gonna take maybe 4 or 5 generations.

    I am the next generation on from adopting metric, and I don't know Imperial AT ALL. I assure you, Imperial is dead to anyone under 25. Within 1 more generation, Imperial will be totally gone. And that is a very good thing.

  • Every time this comes up, labor unions squawk that they need vast sums of government money for their members to retool and retrain, and conservatives say "in your dreams pal. Buy your own tools and education." Also, our present system is so deeply entwined in our everyday life (walls are 8 feet high, paper is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, nuts and bolts are in fractional inches, etc.) that a conversion would be wrenching indeed (pun intended).

  • Of course, looking at Canada, I see a middle stage where a lot of things are still english, despite it being a 'metric country,' so we're not the only backwards place in the world. :)

    Speaking as a Canadian citizen who grew up *after* Canada went Metric in 1976-1977, yeah, it's screwed up.

    Metric is wonderful. It's easy to cope with, it's the measurement system embraced by science everywhere, it's clear and logical and not based on a dead king's body parts.

    I never learned the English system in school. Never. It was briefly discussed, primarily in history classes, but that was it.

    And yet, I'm 6'4" tall. I weigh 180 lbs. I have a 33" waist. I have *no idea* what those are in meters, kilograms and centimeters.

    Nor can I look at someone and estimate their height in meters. In fact, whenever I estimate the length of something, it's in inches and feet. My 1976 Dodge Ram is about 21 feet long. My penis... Well, let's just say that it's proportional to my height.

    Yards escape me, and meters I just can't eyeball.

    My old Dodge is a Canadian model of the Ram. The only difference between it and an American Dodge Ram is that my '76 was one of the very first vehicles in Canada to have a Metric speedometer and odometer.

    Now, even though my speedometer is in kilometers an hour (with little numbers for MPH, it's just the reverse of an American speedo), I think of speed in miles per hour. But to really mess things up, I think of distance in kilometers.

    When I'm working on a car or truck (one of my favorite hobbies), I can always look at an SAE bolt and grab the right wrench to fit it. 7/16", 1/2", 9/16"... no problem. And yet, while with Metric bolts you don't have to do that "which is bigger" fractional conversion in your head, I still can't look at a valve cover bolt on a Chevrolet Cavalier (all recent cars are built with Metric fasteners) and say "that's 12mm" or "that's 13mm".

    My truck has a 400 cubic inch engine. To convert that to liters so that I can really intimidate the jackass in the whiny little Honda with the tinted windows and the puny 1.5L engine, my 400 CID V8, converted to Metric, has a displacement of 6.6L.

    Fluids? I think in liters. I know what 8 ounces looks like, but I pour gasoline into my truck by the liter. It takes 70L to fill my tank. Divide that by four (approximately), that's almost 18 gallons.

    And finally, despite all that, I have no idea how many L/100km my truck takes. But I do know that my truck get about 8 miles per gallon.

    So, I'm a mess. Do I feel handicapped by the fact that I mix the two measuring systems? No.

    One of the few compelling Canadian politicians of all time, former Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent [ic.gc.ca], was perfectly bilingual. He spoke English and French with equal ease. And he was once asked by a reporter which language he thought in. Mr. St. Laurent's reponse was that he thought in whichever language he best knew the subject.

    And this is a fairly good approximation of how I switch back and for between measuring systems.

    How do I feel about the Metric system?

    I love it. I wish I used it for everything. It *is* legitimately easier.

    But if there's *anything* that has to be remembered about this is that while it seems like an easy switch on the surface, I'd still plan that it will take several generations to make the switch.


  • I'm slowly getting used to engine size in Litres, but don't know the conversion. I know the 318 that was in my old '74 plymouth was bigger than my 2.4L in my Olds, but not by how much.

    318 CID = 5.2L

    More than double the size of the Olds.

    :)

    The big pain in the ass is GM's 90 degree V6 engines. There's the Chevy 229 CID V6 (distributor in the back, a Chevy 305 with two cylinders lopped off), and the Buick 231 CID V6 (distributor up front). Both the 229 and the 231 are, in Metric, 3.8L engines. And they were used in a lot of the same cars quite interchangeably.

  • Speaking as a Canadian who was born after we went metric, my experience with metric is similar but evolving.

    I have rotten depth and spatial perception, so I can't judge distance at all. But when I see highway signs for 500 meters, I know I don't have any time to get over (unless I pull out the crazy driving skills). I judge distance by time; since I think speed in km/h, I can convert to kms fairly easily.

    I know my height in feet and inches. I used to only know my weight in pounds, but then I took up martial arts. Since all the tournement weight classes are in kgs, I can now convert between the two easily. Friends of mine from Eastern Europe know their height in both inches and meters.

    The thing that messes me up is cooking. I know what a cup and and tablespoon are, but mLs don't do much for me -- I have to pull out the calculator and convert. (Fortunately, it's an easy conversion -- 1 cup = 250 mLs, 1 teaspoon = 5 mLs, and 1 tablespoon = 15 mLs) Weirdly, I think of milk and water by the litre, and it drives me nuts when recipes ask for butter in lbs. It also bugs me when they ask for flour in grams.

    If you're wondering what kind of bizarre recipes I have that use cups, mLs, lbs and/or grams, this is what happens when you ask people of different ages for different recipes from different countries.

  • Metric countries often have metric sports --Aussie Rules Football uses meters (as far as I've ever seen it), ditto most Rugby & Soccer.

    American & Canadian Football. Yards. 'Nuff said.

    Baseball. Those numbers on the outfield wall? Feet. Except in Toronto & Montreal where they have smaller numbers underneath in meters.

    Boxing. I have a hard time picturing Michael Buffer calling out: "In this corner, standing 191 cm tall, weighing in at 103.2 kilos*...."

    Whenever I hear Pat Summerall & John Madden say something like "...and Brett Favre is sacked for an 8 meter loss", then the US will be officially be metric.

    * - In America, a "kilo" is a measurement of illegal drugs. :)
    Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.
  • As for me, I'm happy with either system. Doesn't matter to me which system of measurements you use, as long as you're clear and consistent.

    So "clear and consistent" means you have 5280 feet in a mile, 4 quarts per gallon, 12 inches per foot, and one stone is about 14 pounds? Clear as Guiness, if you ask me. I'm an engineer, and know the conversions - and they're not exactly straightforward.

    Compare your "clear and consistent" Imperial system with 1000 metres per kilometer, 1000 millilitres per litre, 100 centimetres (or 1000 millimetres) per meter, 1000 grams per kilogram... it's all just powers of 10, and dead, dead simple. Need a millionth? Micro-. Need a million? Mega-.

    Imperial is only "clear and consistent" if you don't mind a bushell (or is it only 16 pints?) of random, meaningless, individual relationships between all your measurements. Just go ahead and explain why water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212, instead of 0 and 100. I'd *love* to hear it.

    "There's a party," she said,
    "We'll sing and we'll dance,
    It's come as you are."

  • Re:Eventually (Score:3)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @10:53PM (#640835)
    Not exclusively. In my engineering courses they often stress how engineers must work in the constraints of the real world. So along with the predominate metric units, we still have problems dealing with feet, inches, psi, calories, etc. Of course, in practice that often means conversion into metric to do the calculations with reverse calculations at the end if needed.

  • Re:Exclusively? 'scuse me? (Score:3)

    by Tower ( 37395 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @06:04AM (#640836)
    As for the food packaging...

    A five pack of beer is shaped really funny, and takes more effort to pack multiple units together. Ten packs aren't so bad, but if a case turned into 20 instead of 24, we'd have a lot of upset people...

    And also, why are hot dogs sold in packs of 10, when hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8 or 12!!! it just never adds up 8^)
    --

  • Re:US Engineers learn metric, but industry varies (Score:3)

    by aidoneus ( 74503 ) on Wednesday November 08, 2000 @05:22AM (#640837) Journal

    Well, a number of people forget the basic concepts and use only 3 significant digits for conversion (e.g., 2.54cm = 1 inch).

    There isn't any problem with that. 2.54cm = 1 inch. It's an exact conversion, not an estimate like many people think. There are exactly 2.54cm/inch, 30.48cm/foot, 1609.344m/mile. so as a result...

    When spread over several square miles, that lack of attention can lead to someone being cheated an acre of land!

    ... is completely false, unless you have an incompetant surveyor who will round his/her measurements. Then there will still be problems, no matter what units are used.

  • I swear, these metric advocates-- (Score:5)

    by acceleriter ( 231439 ) on Tuesday November 07, 2000 @06:26PM (#640838)
    Give 'em 2.54 centimeters, they'll take 1.6 kilometers :>.

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