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| why is the US not Metric |
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| SiliconWizard:
You mean US gallon, US dry gallon or imperial gallon? ;D |
| boffin:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on November 15, 2019, 10:18:45 pm ---You mean US gallon, US dry gallon or imperial gallon? ;D --- End quote --- The correct answer for an American is likely "Freedom Gallons". |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: KL27x on November 15, 2019, 10:11:55 pm ---Zero999: --- Quote ---As I said before, it's not so much the different bases which make imperial/customary difficult, but the fact that mass, length, volume are totally different systems. Metric is all one standard international system, with everything being multiples of powers of 10. Example: we have a cuboid shaped fish tank, 4ft 6in long, 18in wide and 15in high. Calculate how many US gallons of water required to fill it to fill it to a depth of 1ft. I wouldn't have a clue how to figure it out using purely customary units. I'd just convert everything to metric: --- End quote --- So you know how to convert liters into gallons, but you can't figure out how to convert cubic feet into gallons? We have internet. We don't have to go to the library of congress to look up either. --- End quote --- I don't need the Internet. I performed that calculation, without looking anything up. I can remember the metric to the most commonly used imperial/customary conversions easily. I don't need to convert cubic inches to gallons. I just remember 1 US pint = 473ml and 1 imperial pint = 568ml. Nowadays it's necessary to be able to convert between metric and imperial/customary anyway, so there's little point in remembering things such as cubic inches to pints, the mass of a gallon of water, etc. just convert it all to metric, then it becomes easy. |
| KL27x:
Wow, freedom gallons. So many metric trolls. I think the metric trolls added up in this thread convert to 4.6 rstophers, imperial unit of troll. Conversion is 1 rstopher: 1.108 bsfeechannel. Zero, you could also do the calculation in imperial all the way to cubic feet, then convert to cubic decimeters. Then convert L to gallons. At least if you do in cubic feet, you have that original parameter of 1 foot high vs 308.4mm. You do just ONE conversion to get Liters. You don't have to do extra conversion of all dimensions of the tank to metric, doing 3 extra steps vs 1. The reason you convert all distances to metric is maybe you are more comfortable to think in metric? Americans think in imperial. That's your internal calibration, and it is probably not going to ever change. Same can be said about americans. We know what is 1.5m, but we don't intrinsically know if that is Tom Cruise or James Harden height. (Ok, I know it's way closer to Tom Cruise. But Tom Cruise or Kevin Hart? Getting tougher..) When performing a calculation like your example, anyway you do it should be equally comfortable. I don't get unit loyalty. |
| forrestc:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on November 15, 2019, 02:29:14 pm ---Either the cost is "enormous" or "marginal". Make up your mind. All road signs have to be replaced from time to time. If you were really willing to convert to metric, you would have already put a plan into action decades ago to gradually convert those signs and by now you wouldn't have to repeat those paradoxical explanations that no one buys. --- End quote --- You've still missed the point: What is the exact economic benefit of changing the units we measure our roads by from miles to km? I understand that you believe that you can just start replacing signs as they wear out with km versions. Considering signs can and do last up to 30 years, this would take 30 years, during which time a certain percentage of the signs would be in KM and a certain percentage would be in miles. Oh, so maybe we replace with signs with both systems, then at some point where most of the signs have been replaced switch to 'only km' versions. That could take 50 years or more. So the correct method is to replace big chunks all at once. Which is very costly. Let's just take speed limit signs. There are 4.2 million miles of roads in the US. I found a news article where a state changed their speed limit and replaced their speed limit signs at a cost of $134,000 for 810 miles of interstate. Let's just assume that's a good ratio. $134,000 for 810 miles. $165 per mile, multipled by 4.2 million miles, is just under 700 million dollars just for the speed limit signs. Then add in the much more expensive direction signs, distance signs, the mile markers along the road and on and on, and you are probably talking at least few billion dollars to just change the signage. Not to mention all of the side effects of this change. If you look at news articles about Interstate 17 in Arizona, you'll find lots and lots of people not happy about it being changed (eventually) back to miles because of the costs of the side effects (changing exit numbers, directions, etc, on printed material, and other costs). And again, for what economic benefit? Show us how we're going to save a few billion dollars by doing this and it will probably get done. But as it is now, most people don't see a good reason to change this particular thing. I get into my car, I look at the speedometer I make sure it doesn't exceed (by very much) the posted speed limit. The distance signs also need to be in the same units since I just take the distance to the destination and divide by the current speed. It doesn't matter what the number system is, as long as everything matches. The distance could be miles, or kilometers, or furlongs or kilosmoots, it wouldn't matter. I'm not doing engineering with those figures, and in this case there are a lot of costs to do the change, for no real benefit. It's really frustrating to hear people say "the US isn't metric". No, the US is metric, all of our units are defined in ratio to the metric unit, and every day more and more of the places where traditional measurements have been used are being replaced by metric measurements. All to point at our highway system which doesn't really matter what units it's measured in. |
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