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why is the US not Metric

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KL27x:

--- Quote ---Don't forget, others have different requirements.
--- End quote ---
I know this. When I measure the thickness of paint, I will use micrometers. In America we have a choice, and industries are free to use what they want. Most of the industries that will have a real benefit from metric have already changed. The point about differing requirements is supporting the use of w/e system/units you find better in any given context. It does not help the case to change everything to metric.


--- Quote ---An interesting thing is, there's a movement to get rid of cm and just use prefixes which represent multiples of three to the power of 10, so 1μm, 1mm, 1km etc.
--- End quote ---
Cuz it causes confusion and more opportunity to make mistakes. In Australia's construction industry, only mm's are used and cm's shall be written down and stated NOWHERE, ever. But how are the tape measures marked? Like I said before, hundredths of mm would be pretty convenient for machining, other than the fact they are hundredths and not thousandths. But no one makes a caliper that goes by centimeters or where you can change units or decimal places. Sure, the foot and yard and inch are separated by weird ratios, but they are a fairly reasonable way to get reasonably useful unit sizes to relate. And you can use decimal or tenths or hundredths or thousands of any of these units to get different ranges; e.g. in civil engineering, they use feet in the US. They don't need stinking inches for anything this large scale; they used tenths of feet. But tenths of meters would be too big.


--- Quote ---And the density of freshwater is simply 1kg per 1000cm3... but cm is a convenient unit for many applications and chemists often use dm because 1dm3 = 1 litre.
--- End quote ---
Keep on playing that one string banjo. Talk about beating a dead horse.  :horse:


--- Quote ---Yes and I could go back and counter all the examples you've posted with ones showing how metric units are often more convenient, but there's no point, because it depends on the situation.
--- End quote ---
There IS a point. Bring it. I'm sure you have dozens of examples where the size of the metric units is useful or convenient for something in particular. Crochet? Sewing? Baking is one you hear about... Since I have never baked, I will give metric (or the scale?) a win for baking. Even if you used a scale, certainly oz could be too big and grains too small for home-scaled baking, without using a lot of extra digits. I can see that.

So your list would be a lot more useful than repeating the same crap over and over. Maybe you put metric roads on your list, like bsfeechannel; let's hear the reasoning, though. What else you have? We know physics and chemsitry. I have added baking and measuring the thickness of paint. You can carry on from there, surely dozens of things in daily life. Go.

Is ok if Americans use yards for football? Then why not miles for driving? Then why not pounds for the deli mac n cheese? Then why not inches for machining and fabrication? Why not let people use what they want? You think the smart guy doing chemistry should dictate how the majority should do all other things? Because "cubic decimeters = liters!" You guys are so proud of yourselves that you have chosen to think and use metric for all things. Americans are not impressed with these mental superpowers. It's much more impressive to be able to use both as dictated by the task. And even to make up ad hoc units were they are useful. Cuz... the world doesn't fit together like metric Lego blocks, no matter how much standardization we have. If you go big enough in scale, the spherical shape of the world comes into play, so surveying feet? Who cares? And that is only America's "problem."

Merry 10 days of metric Christmas!

coppercone2:
i like how a inch ruler looks like even with machinists graduations but a metric ruler looks unpleasant. its simply too busy.

perhaps if you took a centimeter, made it 2.5 times longer, and divided it by 10 it would work as a hack to get the tenths system going. not sure how critical 8ths are. but the centimeter is defiantly too short to be useful. I kind of wonder if we would get more done if the inch was run on a 1/6th system rather then 1/8 because 1/8 is still too much to renember

when people measure things in centimeters or millimeters I feel like there is hyperinflation going. you need a whole wheel barrow full of numbers to define something the size of your hand.


usually when you mess up a fraction things account for that, for instance in welding or woodworking you can usually bend something or add a shim etc, so you don't need to worry too much about the fraction. when you get into the decimal points things go haywire IMO. it will make people go crazy. maybe if we make everyone a cyborg so they can define a little error bar to add near a number then metric will work

coppercone2:
and for cooking you use spoons. not sure what ingredients are even standardized in flavor enough to warrant that kind of precision. the natural ingredients vary anyway, so there no reason to reinvent the wheel. maybe precise bread manufacture


is flour and yeast even stable enough? all the stable ingredients besides salt and soda are bad for you anyway..

not sure if you should be weighing spices because.. their volume is important as quality assurance. it means its not caked up or ancient or ground too fine etc. volumetric is better. maybe I dont want the airfloat spice dredge from the bottom of the container to even make it into a meal.. when you pour something into a teaspoon or scoop it, you get used to how it feels and looks and behaves and pours and its a sign of standard quality.. the scale will lie to you

Tepe:
Billions of people cope just fine with centimeters and millimeters without being cyborgs.

coppercone2:

--- Quote from: Tepe on January 01, 2020, 12:31:42 am ---Billions of people cope just fine with centimeters and millimeters without being cyborgs.

--- End quote ---

they cope yes

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