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why is the US not Metric

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Simon:
some people just want to keep imperial, like Jacob

KL27x:
Maybe times gone by, yeah. Most Americans under retirement age, let's say, are very comfortable with metric. I think our young people are more inclined to metric and really most folks in college can't use an imperial tape measure for squat. It's the people who build stuff that get accustomed to 1/16".

How many times you get a blank stare and a moment of confusion when your total is 11.37, and you hand over a twenty and two ones? You don't have any preference for either system when all you know to do is punch numbers into a computer.

tooki:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on November 02, 2019, 05:34:01 pm ---The comments on recipes are intriguing.  In the US virtually all units are volume (cups, fluid ounces, teaspoons and tablespoons). The exceptions are usually for things marketed in a standard size, the 1lb can for example. My experience with European cookbooks, confirmed by the examples given above show a mixture of volume and mass units.  Do cooks resort to scales or balances for these?

--- End quote ---
As someone who first learned to cook in USA and then moved to Europe, it also seemed odd to me at first to go by weight. But having become a very good cook, I’ve come to appreciate accurate measuring for the things where it’s critical (read: baking, candy, etc). It makes absolutely no sense to measure compressible powders (like flour) and ingredients with significant density variation between manufacturers (like salt) by volume, since the measurement can be off by a HUGE amount. (For example, when a recipe says to add salt, it absolutely matters what kind of salt it is: Diamond Crystal kosher salt, for instance, is HALF as dense as Morton’s kosher salt or regular granulated salt. For Europeans: it’s like comparing the same volume of fleur de sel vs. table salt vs. coarse pretzel salt.) And some ingredients, like honey and shortening, are just a pain in the butt to measure by volume, even if they can be measured accurately that way.

Cooking is one area where I have more or less abandoned US customary measurements, because weighing is just  so damned convenient, and grams are great for doing it because a digital kitchen scale’s dynamic range is enough to measure both large and small amounts accurately. The fact that water weighs 1g per ml also means that you can just weigh the water too, without even having to change units. (Less measuring cups to clean!) When I make bulgur, for example, I put a glass bowl on the scale and tare it, put in 200g of bulgur, add water to 600g, and then add bouillon powder to 615g. (Black pepper and olive oil added by eye, then it goes in the microwave for 11 mins at 1000W and then another 5 mins at 400W.) Tablespoons and teaspoons are the only non-metric measures I use, since even European recipes use those regularly. However, since most of my favorite cookbooks and cooking channels are in US units, I remain fully comfortable using them.

bsfeechannel:

--- Quote from: KL27x on November 02, 2019, 06:44:33 pm ---I often use mm where 1 or 2 is the size I'm trying to express.  But to me, 40mm x 120mm is still not automatic to visualize.

--- End quote ---

I developed rules of thumb to convert imperial to metric.

If the temperature in °F is below 300, I subtract 30 and divide the result by two. For instance, 100 °F: (100 - 30)/2 ~ 35°C. Quite warm for an ambient temperature. 40 °F: (40 - 30)/2 = 5°C. Hmm, pretty cold. For temperatures above 300 °F I simply divide by two. For instance, solder melts at about 200 °C. That's around 400 °F for you.

2.2 pounds is 1 kg. I divide the value in pounds by two and subtract 10%. So a 200-pound gorilla weighs about 90 kg. A little fat for 1.75-m tall guy.

1 foot is 0.3 m. 485 ft? It is about 500ft. So multiplying by 0.3 gives me about 150 m. That's about 1.5 the length of a standard city block. 

A mile is about 1.6 km. But I round it to 1.5 km.

A gallon is 3.8 l. So I round it to 4.

There are a little more that 4 inches in each 10 cm. So, 40" is about 1 m. 7 inches? That's something around 17,5 cm.

1/2" is about 13 mm, a little less.

1/4" is little more than 6 mm.

1/8" is little more than 3 mm.

1/16" is little more than 1,5 mm.

40 mm? That about 39 mm, which is about 3 x 13 mm, which is about 1" 1/2. 120 mm? A little less than 5".

That way I can have a rough idea what the "imperial to the core" guys are talking about.

Ounces (fluid or "solid"), pints, and all the rest, however, I don't even touch with a barge pole.

Simon:
I used that sort of thing a lot with an imperial family. Forget what it should be, best tell dad in the measurements he understands when it's how far frow the wall is he that he is about to back into.

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