Should Britain, and/or the US, Adopt The Metric System?

I wouldn't mind if the U.S. curriculum started teaching preschool/kindergarden children metric. I think it makes fine sense to get rid of Feet and Yards and Pounds.

But as for me, I'm stuck with customary. When I'm on a road, I know what it means to be driving at 65 mph but am lost when you say 6 meters/second. When you tell me the temperature, I know what it means to say '85 degrees fahrenheit outside,' but tell me it's 85 celsius, and I can't tell whether if that means it's slightly hot or that the sun is falling. Considering that most Americans are basically in the same boat, changing now would be an enormous amount of trouble for what is arguably next to zero gain.

I mean, practically, you'd have to get rid of US customary influence almost completely in order for it to be effective. Otherwise, so what if Meters/Hour is listed as an asterisk under the Miles/Hour sign? Any American over ten is going to ignore the Meters and always look at the Miles. Customary is what we're used to and it's not going to be easy for us to change.

They never travel alone.

Well, then you slowly go into metric. Celsius is a lot betetr then farenhiet. Plus, km/h isn't too different then mph. Just remember 60mph = 100km.

edited 2nd Sep '11 2:48:30 PM by Erock

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

0°C is the freezing point of water, 100°C the boiling point.

Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.

That's pretty logical. Based on two of the most common things in nature.

As is metric. Based on the metre.

One litre? One cubic decimetre of water.

One kg? One litre of water @ 0°C.

edited 2nd Sep '11 2:58:10 PM by Inhopelessguy

Km and Celsius just doesn't click with me. I can tell automatically how cold it will be when it's announced that it'll be 45 Fahrenheit. And I know immediately how reasonably* fast someone is going when they reach 80 mph. Most Americans have to think about metric.

I'm not sure how we would enact a change... If we tried doing it slowly, (put signs that have both metric and customary) nothing would happen, because we'd just look at the customary (Like an English sign with Spanish under it). But if we just flat out replaced those 65 mph signs on the freeway with 100kph... Well, you can picture the increase we'd see in crashes...

I mean, yeah, metric is logical. But most of us here didn't grow up with it.

They never travel alone.

Then raise your kids to learn metric, eventually all the old farts will die.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

See if you can get that through to all 311 million of us.

They never travel alone.

Pretty much. Education is the way to go.

We did it back in the 80's and the shift wasn't so bad.

A lot of us still measure ourselves in feet though, for some reason.

I think this is being turned into a big deal when it really isn't. If part of your national pride is based around what bloody system of measurement you use you might want to reevaluate yourself.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Exactly. People can shift easily to using a new system.

For example, decimal coinage in Britain.

Everyone coped well with the new signs, new coins, new everything without a hubbub.

Coinage and notes are a lot bigger (esp. in the 70s) than a bunch of road signs.

The only sense in which the UK has not adopted metric is that road signs still have miles on them. And that people order pints of beer. Everything else is metric. Everything. The OP makes it sound like the areas the UK has adopted metric are tiny exceptions.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Why are there still 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, and 365.25 days in a year?

As nice as standardization is, I don't see a pressing reason why we need to do it right this minute or even in the very near future.

Besides that, I detest metric units of measure for distance. The centimeter is one of my archenemies...

edited 2nd Sep '11 5:58:00 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

Only the second is actually part of SI. The other units are just used because they are convienient and allready universalley accepted. We also could only change hours and weeks, anyway, day, months and years are derived from the motion of the earth and the moon, even though months are cut loose from the actual moon orbit to fit into the year.

Probably yes: Decimal conversions are simpler. You simply slide the comma forward or backwards.

The problem is retailers will use decimalization to decrease the quantity of stuff they sell us for the same cash, so it might turn into stealth inflation.

edited 2nd Sep '11 5:55:00 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

I do not see why sexagecimal gets to stay but duodecimal and hexidecimal are stupid.

Decimal time is not nearly as useful.

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

But pretty much everybody uses the sixty-seconds-in-a-minute thing. Are there any cultures where they use a decimal system for time?

Be not afraid...

Nope.

The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.

Metric use in the U.S. gets mixed in with Imperial/Common w/e you want to call it. When you work with mechanics or building you will end up using metrics sooner or later. Honestly I find metrics easier to use and easier to use the sub-units for fine measurements. The military relies heavily on metrics.

Who watches the watchmen?

Cultures do count in octal, though, which is not much of a stretch from hexidecimal.

And what do you think about degrees versus radians? One is in base sixty, one is in pi...

@loni kay: not that people haven't tried.

@hopeless: I don't see why your getting your knickers in a knot over it. Does the metric system make more sense? Yes. Do people use it? No. People simply don't want to change. Imperial units are based off easy to remember concepts that exist in the natural world rather then the anal use of the number ten. People just simply want to stick to the system they are happy with and quite frankly it is arrogant to tried to change them.

I'm sorry but any one who finds metric easier to use across the board is most likely to be autistic

edited 2nd Sep '11 7:45:42 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

It's easier to make calculations in metric. When it comes to actually measuring stuff to do hands-on work, good ol' standard is more intuitive.

edited 2nd Sep '11 7:53:07 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

So the mathematicians and the scientists can use their precious metric system and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.

I am now known as Flyboy.

People simply do not always think in base ten. Music is a perfect example. The most cmmon scales are heptatonic and pentatonic. The most common meters are divisors of twelve. Tempo is also often given in numbers divisible by twelve (eg. 60, 144, 156, etc). The ledger holds nine notes. Computers think in hexidecimal and binary, we measure space in astronomical units and lightyears...

If we're going to reform measurements, why not do it with things that might actually make life easier rather than harder, like clothing and shoe sizes? Those are different in practically every country. It is really fucking annoying.