| General > General Technical Chat |
| why is the US not Metric |
| << < (119/291) > >> |
| SilverSolder:
Is it actually a problem that metric and imperial co-exist? It doesn't seem any different than dealing with ancient measurements elsewhere (e.g. when cooking: tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, ...) which can be more convenient in real world usage than an exact number of milliliters... in fact, mixed units are common when cooking. (e.g. 600g flour + 435ml water + 1.5tsp yeast + 1tsp salt + 2tbsp honey to make bread dough). |
| Bud:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on November 23, 2019, 10:28:51 pm --- Is it actually a problem that metric and imperial co-exist? --- End quote --- It is in Canada. You go buy a 1/4 plywood for a repair, bring it home at it turns out it is not good because it is 5mm, not 6mm ! :rant: |
| KL27x:
^According to bsfeechanel, that's only because evil America is subverting your system, Canada. Even if imperial were "completely vanished" as bsfeechannel seems to think is obviously desirable, we would still have use imperial in textbooks. Even in America, we get imperial examples in our textbooks and curriculum. And just like in your countries, these examples are used to show us how stupid imperial is, and to teach how to do conversions. And even after bsfeechannel is happy, we will still need to teach these examples to our kids so that they can understand that metric is not reality. It's just the arbitrary system that we have agreed upon. |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: KL27x on November 23, 2019, 09:44:48 pm ---Other than geography and history, pretty much 100% of our education is in metric. Honestly, every single "look in metric this is easier because..." example that has been mentioned in this thread is explicitly demonstrated in a classroom, thoroughly explained (I want to say somewhere around 5th to 8th grade?), and then the students USE all this stuff for all their coursework for the rest of their academic life. But after they graduate, Americans go into the real world. And our construction industry is imperial. This drives the tool market. E.g., even though our tape measures have both, TBH, inches is always marked more prominently. To this day, I have never seen metric drill bit set in a store or online, even. Other than my tiny PCB drills. So Americans adapt and are for the most part completely comfortable with either system. It's not like I feel metric "taints" imperial or vice versa. I see both as a man-made arbitrary constructs, and I use the one that works best. While driving on our roads, mph seems about right for some strange reason. Maybe some of you can explain that one. :) While fabricating stuff, I use imperial cuz my tools for this are slightly better/easier in imperial, IMO. I mean, I know how to make a 1M solution of salt by using the atomic weight, Avagadro's number, and weighing out the grams into a 1L flash before filling with water to the line. But I don't need to to that very often, so I don't lose any sleep if my measuring cup is literally a cup. And I have no problem to convert that same recipe to any size in any unit. I would say I primarily "capture" or estimate distance in imperial, due to my environment. You don't learn that in a classroom by reading and doing abtract problems on paper. You get become calibrated when you start to do things in the real world and actually have to measure and cut and deal with resulting accuracy. Weight? I dunno. Pounds mostly, but for light things w/e. Grams, usually. Grains for lighter stuff (yeah, I have reloaded ammo). To me metric ton vs imperial ton? Honestly, I will look it up if/when I need to know. I'm not sure if a ton is 1000 lb or 2000lb? Volume? Equally comfortable with gallons or liters or cups. You metric guys listing furlongs and tower oz and whatnots, ad infinitum? You guys seem to know more antiquated and stupid imperial units than we do. We Jacks and Jennys use the basics. If you wanted Americans to LOOK like we're metric just like Canada, then we would have to change road signs and legal stuff and to make some international announcement. Documents. Media/news. That's gigantic mess for the next 80 years. If you wanted Americans to think in metric and are upset about tools/fasteners, then I would focus on the construction industry and media/news. That is a much more manageable problem, I think. But still expensive. --- End quote --- I suppose that's the main difference between the US which is not fully metric and the UK which is nearly completely metric: drills and tools are all metric, rather than imperial. It's exactly the area where the US should focus on moving further over to metric, simply because it would make trading with the rest of the world much easier. Granted, it would be annoying having to stock extra tools for legacy jobs, but no doubt it worth it in the long run. Of course you'll use whatever units you're accustomed to. In the UK people normally think of miles for large distances, simply because that's what's used for road signs, but metres, centimetres and millimetres for short distances. I've always thought it was silly how there's an uneven number of grains in an ounce which is 437.5 grains. It should be an even number like 400 or 500. The one US unit which caught me out as a child was the cup, because no one uses it in the UK or ever has done to my knoledge. I often used to encounter it in US recipe books but had no idea what it meant, so guessed. Nowadays, I'd simply Google it, but in the the Internet wasn't so convenient to access back in the 90s. Normally the recipe worked out in the end, after some experimentation, but it would have been nice if they'd used an internationally recognised measurement. |
| Bud:
I am a metric guy all around but for house repairs i find inches and feets more convenient to work with the typical small construction jobs, i guess they better fit the volumetrics of distances and sizes of such jobs , i.e. just 1 foot floor tile vs 30cm or 0.3m, you save on the number of digits and decimal separator ! :) |
| Navigation |
| Message Index |
| Next page |
| Previous page |