Should the USA go metric?

[Camacha]

I also don't see why fractions are harder than decimals. Decimals _are_ certain fractions. And entering them into a calculator is the very same number of button presses in your example (I even added one for the fraction in case you want to convert first).

Fractions are a little harder to work with intuitively, but they are more pure. One third is always going to be more precise than 0,3333333333333. However, using them excessively might be a sign that you are overlooking something.

Well, I find that I like metric for working with numbers and imperial for working with people. It's easier to say you're a foot from something than 30.48 centimeters. And it's easier to put 30.48 centimeters into the calculator than it is to put 3/16ths of an inch.

Well, if 30,48 centimetres does not work for you, you can always take 3,1 decimetre, or 0,31 metre. One of those will be intuitive enough. At least you do not have to convert to 417 quaznopples, or 243/358^th slubarnobs.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Camacha

[LABHOUSE]

The question is not should, but will/can.

[Souper]

Absolutely. Metric measurement is far more versatile than imperial, i switched to it a long time ago.

[RAINCRAFTER]

Absolutely. Metric measurement is far more versatile than imperial, i switched to it a long time ago.

This is the reason I prefer metric.

[xtoro]

There's only 5 or 6 countries that use imperial. Feet, inches, yards, miles,none of them can be converted easily without a calculator when dealing with large numbers. How many feet in 7/8ths of a mile? How many feet does 387 inches make? So much easier to just shift the decimal point around. Imperial is outdated IMO.

[mrfox]

Any thoughts on other non-base 10 systems in common use? Should our time system be base 10 instead of base 60/24/7/(28/30/31)? Other than the number of days in a year, the rest are pretty arbitrary - 24 hours/day, 7 days a week, and a very arbitrary number of days per month (lunar calendars non-withstanding). Various systems have been proposed, used, or tried, but none in common use today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

How about long/lat? Many systems today already use decimal degrees rather than minutes and seconds, should the whole thing be overhauled to be base 10?

Any other examples?

[Kruleworld]

i've read all 18 pages of this fluff, and not found one GOOD argument why usa should stay imperial, other than they can't be fkd to learn a new system.

1 kilometer = 1,000 meters

1 mile = 1,609 meters

Which one is easier?

tsk, fail. you should have used

1 mile = 1760 YARDS

[magnemoe]

i've read all 18 pages of this fluff, and not found one GOOD argument why usa should stay imperial, other than they can't be fkd to learn a new system.

tsk, fail. you should have used

1 mile = 1760 YARDS

This the problem with imperial is that its an group of legacy standards so you end up having different units for liquid and solid both who are unrelated to cubic foot.

[YNM]

Time... Well, time is mostly multiples of 6 or somesuch. There're ~360 days in a year (heard somewhere that the rest 5 days were festive days). Not sure who started 24 hour in a day. Then 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute. Month is there for seasons, 12 for the moon appearences . Week is actually not always 7 days long - some dating systems use 4, 5, or 6 days in their week. Degrees - there's 360 in them which is better than an irrational number (2À rad), and they plays well with time. Changing them to decimal time would be quite a huge change - litterally everything needs to be changed (like, speed of light, definition of a second, right ascension, although JD would profit from this). Not to mention your senses of a second !

I know the hard part is the senses, same for imperial - metric. Maaybee there can be things like kiloinch or so ? Kiloyards ? Then kilopound, just to get the "sense" of metric changes ? Then one day, knock the yard into meter, so everything's good ?

Edited June 14, 2015 by YNM

[micr0wave]

Originally Posted by JoCRaM

Yes, but the lunar module program was held in two cubic feet of rope memory (and used a cubic foot of ram) - note cubic feet, not cups or sticks

You mean 57 litres?

What's that in gallons ?

How much would it weight when you filled it with water ?

[SemiaCloud]

Metric is better.

http://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/imperial_vs__metric_by_nekit1234007-d5p0ou5.png

Plus, why would you need a bunch of weird measurements for amounts of liquor, pork, etc.

Edited June 14, 2015 by SemiaCloud

[PakledHostage]

The issue of decimal time, lat/lon degrees - minutes - seconds and the number of degrees in a circle are all straw men. The point of encouraging the US to switch over to metric is that it would standardize measurements across the world. The rest of the world could just as well switch to imperial, but nobody is (quite rightly) pushing for that. Metric was developed to be based on only a handful of reference units rather than a hodge podge of units that developed organically over centuries. This makes standardizing measurements around the world (and indeed anywhere else we may travel) simpler because most of those base units are defined in terms of physical properties that are invariant and can be established anywhere independently.

[Nibb31]

The reason for using 24-hours goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They divided the day into two equal parts, night and day, and then divided each part into 12 hours. The duodecimal system was popular in ancient times, because 12 can be neatly divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. It also fitted the Babylonian system of dividing the circle (and thus Earth's rotation) into 360 degrees. The beauty of 360 is that it can be divided by pretty much every number from 1 to 10 except 7, which is a huge advantage.

- - - Updated - - -

What's that in gallons ?

How much would it weight when you filled it with water ?

57 kilograms. That was easy.

No idea how much it would weigh in pounds without pulling out the calculator.

[mrfox]

The reason for using 24-hours goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They divided the day into two equal parts, night and day, and then divided each part into 12 hours. The duodecimal system was popular in ancient times, because 12 can be neatly divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. It also fitted the Babylonian system of dividing the circle (and thus Earth's rotation) into 360 degrees. The beauty of 360 is that it can be divided by pretty much every number from 1 to 10 except 7, which is a huge advantage.

A lot of the imperial measurements were base 12 for the same reason.

And today, the one place that actually uses decimal time is... appropriately enough... astronomy.

And hence... KSP.

Just look at your save game.

[ZetaX]

There is simply not much reason to change the time system:

a) All of the (industrialized) world already uses the same system.

The weird conversion factors are irrelevant in many industrial uses (second is often all you need) except when there are human interfaces. Thus also things like unix time.

c) Whatever you do, you would not get rid of a year having a very ugly number of days of 365pointsomething. In other words: two of the recurring time measurements (day, year) are incommensurable, but both have a meaning in everyday life for good reasons.

[StrandedonEarth]

c) Whatever you do, you would not get rid of a year having a very ugly number of days of 365pointsomething. In other words: two of the recurring time measurements (day, year) are incommensurable, but both have a meaning in everyday life for good reasons.

No we can't change the number of days, but the calendar could be reformed: 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 (or 6 for leap years) days of non-denominational Turnover celebrations.

[Kryten]

No we can't change the number of days, but the calendar could be reformed: 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 (or 6 for leap years) days of non-denominational Turnover celebrations.

Or we could go with the existing Iranian system of six months of 31, then five of 30, then one of 29 (30 in a leap year). It also starts on the spring equinox rather than an arbitrary day in mid-winter.

[ZetaX]

No we can't change the number of days, but the calendar could be reformed: 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 (or 6 for leap years) days of non-denominational Turnover celebrations.

Then at least go for 13 months of 28 days. Thus a month consists of entire weeks and we are only left with a single day (two in leap years) to get rid of.

[-Velocity-]

For what it's worth, most of the number crunching involving units is probably done by scientists and engineers, and even in the USA they/we almost exclusively use the metric system. Like, where I work, if someone says the temperature of something was 55 degrees, nobody even asks if that's Fahrenheit or Celsius. It's immediately known to be Celsius. The only customary unit I ever encounter with regularity is the "mil". I do hate them. Mils are thousandths of an inch, so there are 25.4 microns per mil. Their use is declining, and the only reason they are still used is because machine shops still use them. Anyone know any other customary units are still used frequently in science and engineering?

Though in all honesty, I do like the Fahrenheit scale more than Celsius when talking about outdoor temperature, it has more "ticks" on it. It's almost always going to be above zero, too. Celsius positions 100 ticks between freezing and boiling, but it never boils outside, and it is frequently much colder than freezing. Fahrenheit positions roughly the same number of ticks between very cold and very hot outside. Fahrenheit just seems better matched to stating outdoor air temperature, especially as 1 degree Fahrenheit is supposedly about the smallest air temperature change that can be readily felt.

However, I'm not so in love with Fahrenheit that I wouldn't give it up in less than a heartbeat if we could do away with cups, ounces (fluid or weight?), pounds (force or mass?), feet, inches, teaspoons, tablespoons (QUICK, someone, off the top of their head in 2 seconds, tell me how many teaspoons to gallon!), etc. I REALLY hate the customary system. I mean, REALLY REALLY REALLY hate it.

The only people who like the US customary system are people who never have to actually use math involving units. They depend on the scientists and engineers to convert all the units into units that they can understand. I say turn the tables on them- start giving people units only metric. If they love the US customary system so much, then make THEM be the ones who have to corrupt clean metric unit measurements into their asinine backwards medieval measuring system.

[Finox]

The U.S. IS metric, we went metric, starting with length, in 1893. The basis of all standard U.S. units of weight and measure is the metric system; a foot, a pound, and a pint are all based on some fraction of the meter, kilogram, and liter. However the U.S. does not require anyone to express their units in SI, and since most people see little reason to change they stick with what already works.

It's not like metric spread because it is inherently superior at everything. The mere fact that science abandoned Celsius for Kelvin argues against that. Metric spread because of the role of strong central governments and their desire to modernize and make a statement while doing it. India for instance, went metric as a way of distancing itself from Britain after independence, most countries went metric for reasons that had nothing to do with the usefulness of the system. There's a great book called "Measuring America" by Andros Linkslater that deals with the history of measurement in general and the U.S. history in particular. It also contains a concise history of all the systems that went into the U.S. system, including the metric system. It's a revealing book, and an excellent read if you're interested in the subject, doubly so if you're also interested in land, which is what measurement standardization was largely about in the first place.

[cicatrix]

Guess that's due to the language used (I mean June 6 is easier than 6th of June) ? In mine, it's really more convenient to say it dd/mm/yy or dd/mm/yyyy.

Actually, as a person who had lots of folders named dd-mm-yyyy I should say that having them in yyyy-mm-dd format is much more convenient for navigation/sorting purposes. It took some scripting but finally I renamed them to somewhat 'awkward' format for my eyes.

And another argument - for a country who takes pride in its republican and democratic traditions having something imperial is not very appropriate.

Edited June 15, 2015 by cicatrix

[YNM]

A lot of the imperial measurements were base 12 for the same reason.

And today, the one place that actually uses decimal time is... appropriately enough... astronomy.

And hence... KSP.

Just look at your save game.

And Julian Dates (also, Heliocentric Julian Dates). Even so, if you're out there in reality, want to actually observe things, you'll better be using the standard degrees and hours. A decimal system could save time but imagine how many papers, clocks, and scales need to be changed. Then there's sidereal time, moving at it's own pace compared to the civil time whatever system is used. Days in a year can't be decimal too, not to mention lunar and solar (and lunisolar) calendars out there.

But hey, angles (and time) are not even a (spatial) dimension ! Get back to dimensional things, and all that dependent on them !

[Wesreidau]

People keep referring to Imperial units of measure I've never heard of or that don't exist. For example, we do not measure butter in "sticks". A half-cup of butter just happens to come in a stick-shaped form factor standardized across all the manufacturers, with a foil wrapper that has gradients marked for 1 tablespoon/eight cup/quarter cup marks. I really don't know how else you'd measure butter, unless you mean to tell me you crazy Uropeeuns mash it into a measuring spoon to get 50 milliliters of the stuff. That would just be silly and slow compared to knifing off a quarter-inch from a stick. And that's another thing. I don't like cooking with units filled with zeroes. Every Uropeeun recipe on Youtube has some posh-sounding British woman counting off one-thousand, five hundred and fifty milliliters of flour. You don't need a scale that granular and precise for making cookies. Just say two and a fourth cups of flour! Its so easy to double too. Four and a half. One and an eight. Ultimately I don't like metric because everything is shoehorned into the same units for the sake of standardization. Its fine if you like it. Use it all you want. Just celebrate diversity.

Oh, and everyone stop pretending the Mars Polar Lander was lost due to metric/Imperial. It was a software error in the landing engine shutdown logic. The "Lockheed Used Imperial" story is a bogus lie propagated by the big-government media hacks at CNN to further the adoption of Metric in the US as part of a Fabian attempt to covert the world to UN-standardized laws.

Disclaimer: At some point the preceding statement becomes self-parody.

[Shpaget]

Oh, and everyone stop pretending the Mars Polar Lander was lost due to metric/Imperial. It was a software error in the landing engine shutdown logic. The "Lockheed Used Imperial" story is a bogus lie propagated by the big-government media hacks at CNN to further the adoption of Metric in the US as part of a Fabian attempt to covert the world to UN-standardized laws.

Mars Climate Orbiter, not MPL.

Also, we use grams (or decagrams) to measure butter, and similarly the wrapper the "brick" comes in is graduated ever 25 g.

Flour is also usually measured in grams (or decagrams).

[peadar1987]

People keep referring to Imperial units of measure I've never heard of or that don't exist. For example, we do not measure butter in "sticks". A half-cup of butter just happens to come in a stick-shaped form factor standardized across all the manufacturers, with a foil wrapper that has gradients marked for 1 tablespoon/eight cup/quarter cup marks. I really don't know how else you'd measure butter, unless you mean to tell me you crazy Uropeeuns mash it into a measuring spoon to get 50 milliliters of the stuff. That would just be silly and slow compared to knifing off a quarter-inch from a stick. And that's another thing. I don't like cooking with units filled with zeroes. Every Uropeeun recipe on Youtube has some posh-sounding British woman counting off one-thousand, five hundred and fifty milliliters of flour. You don't need a scale that granular and precise for making cookies. Just say two and a fourth cups of flour! Its so easy to double too. Four and a half. One and an eight. Ultimately I don't like metric because everything is shoehorned into the same units for the sake of standardization. Its fine if you like it. Use it all you want. Just celebrate diversity.

Oh, and everyone stop pretending the Mars Polar Lander was lost due to metric/Imperial. It was a software error in the landing engine shutdown logic. The "Lockheed Used Imperial" story is a bogus lie propagated by the big-government media hacks at CNN to further the adoption of Metric in the US as part of a Fabian attempt to covert the world to UN-standardized laws.

Disclaimer: At some point the preceding statement becomes self-parody.

We use masses. 200g of butter. Means that all you need is a scales. And 1kg of butter is always 1kg of butter, even if you have weird offcuts it's almost impossible to measure the volume of.