[Jaw007]

And should we all speak Pig Latin?
I don't think so!

 

[kingkevo25]

No big deal, in my opinion. For normal day to day life, US units are fine, sometimes more sensible. It makes more sense, for example, to say "I am 5'9", instead of "I am 1.75 meters tall".... I think that centimers are too small, and meters are two large for daily use, but feet, inches and yards are just fine. For example, if I were describing two people, it would be easier for you to visualize the height difference in imperial units than it would be in metric, for example 5'9" and his 5'1" brother rather than 1.75m and his 1.55m meter brother....

 

[immtbiker]

In '73-74, we were told in Jr. High School (7th grade for non-Americans) that the US was going to make the transition to metric. All of our Baseball Parks had feet and meters on the outfield walls, and highway signs had kph and mph.
This was exactly when we had the oil embargo and gas went from 50 cents to close to a dollar.
All of the gas pumps were converted to liters so we would have know idea about how much we were being ripped off at the pumps.

Then as fast as it came, it ended. Too costly. We are talking about billions of dollars in machinery and instrumentation that still needed SAE tools (I can understand 1/8's of an inch, but whose idiotic idea was it to go down to 1/32nds and 1/64ths). Everything that I've worked on in my lifetime can be fixed with a tool measured from 1 to 24 mm (allens included).

Anyway, it's one of those things, that we are so far imbedded in a system, that it's too major to make the change.

Money is different. The Euro is a good idea.

I also believe, that in a day and age that pancakes and coffee no longer cost 35¢ (too many '60's Twilight Zone episodes), that we should do away with pennies and nickels. Dimes, quarters and paper money would do just fine.

 

[jonathanjong]

Aren't they inconsistent in the UK too?

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kydsid /img/forum/go_quote.gif The sheer cost of the conversion would keep the US from undertaking the change. And I beg to differ that it is only three countries. Seems to me every sign I remember in jolly ol Englad was imperial. Course I suppose the EU has changed that too.

The UK has officially been metric since the '70's. The reason you still see some things in imperial is due to resistance of change and the older members of the population teaching the wrong system to the kids. Interestingly, the stone weight measurement they still use dates back to the anglo-saxon period. That's a lot of resistance to change.



Metrication is the process of introduction of metric units for measurement. The adoption of metric units has been discussed regularly by Parliament since 1818. The United Kingdom is currently phasing out the legal status of most non-metric units. Completion was originally projected for 1978 and has since been delayed a number of times. The use of non-metric units as supplementary units looks likely to continue beyond the projected end date of 2009.[1] Informal usage of Imperial units remains widespread among people of all ages and the media, particularly for describing body measurements.
When the UK joined the European Community (now the European Union) in 1973 it was under an obligation to adopt amongst others, directive 71/354/EEC[2]. This directive catalogued units of measure that might be used and also catalogued those units whose use was permitted only until the end of 1977. For many EU countries, these directives meant dropping the pfund, livre, pond, etc., in favour of "500 g", but in the case of the United Kingdom it meant the completion of its metrication program (which had been under way since 1965).

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emooze /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think the imperial system at least needs to change if you don't completely get rid of it.

Americans don't even use Imperial system. They have their own system called American Standards or something like that. It is based on the imperial system but some things are different. An American pint is only 16 oz. and an Imperial pint is 20 oz.

Order a pint of beer in the U.S. and you will only get 16 oz. Another thing, a lot of bars in Canada started to import pint glasses from the U.S. so they could still call it a pint but be shorting you by 4 oz. They charged exactly the same for the lesser 16 oz. pint as they did for the old 20 oz. pint. I've reamed out a few bar managers for that shady practice. Another thing about bars in North America that irk me compared to UK and Europe. Over there they are required by law to fill your glass to a certain line or the rim of the glass if there is no line. Here they don't give a damn if it is to the line or not. And that is beer to the line and not half beer and half foam. But I digress.

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by immtbiker /img/forum/go_quote.gif I also believe, that in a day and age that pancakes and coffee no longer cost 35¢ (too many '60's Twilight Zone episodes), that we should do away with pennies and nickels. Dimes, quarters and paper money would do just fine.

I agree on that one too. It actually costs more to make a penny than its face value. That's real smart. :/

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbriant /img/forum/go_quote.gif I forget exactly when Canada made the switch from Imperial to Metric, but it's been decades since, and even though metric makes much more sense, I still think in Imperial and have to roughly convert to metric in my head...especially temperatures for some reason. I voted yes because I think the U.S. should have to go through the same confusion as we did.

Don't convert, just think metric and it is easy. What annoys me in Canada are grocery stores that show vegetable prices in imperial and then show it in metric on your receipt. I can see no point to that at all unless they are deliberately trying to confuse the customer. A law should be brought in to force them to use metric and metric only.

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Voted no. For the uses where it's necessary, people have switched. In other areas, unnecessary as the SI system isn't human friendly and inferior for daily use. For length, the foot is far superior to the meter, and the inch is superior to the centimeter. No surprise since the foot is human scale based and the meter is an arbitrary distance cooked up by French crackpots with fancy titles. For temperature, Celsius ain't even the metric unit. Kelvin is. And unless we want to start reporting temperatures in the two to three hundred range, the metric system ain't the way to go. The metric system is bad enough in this aspect that the BIPM has to approve a deviation for the use of the Celsius scale. For mass/weight, metric wins out all the way. Pound/slug sucks. For time, the metric system only officially recognizes the second. The hour and minute are again deviations recognized by the BIPM. The Imperial system wins out again. There was a pre-existing decimal time system that could have been picked up by the metric people, but it was pretty much a miserable failure and died a well deserved death. So looking at the units, Imperial wins, 3-1.

I don't see how the foot is superior to the meter. IMHO, the imperial system just fails at small numbers. 1/32, 1/64, 1/128 and etc. Sorry, I don't have a calculator ready all the time to accurately get that down to decimal numbers. 1.2 nanometers. Oh I know what that is. 0.0000000012 meters. And look! I didn't even need to use a calculator to get it down to that many decimal places!

Fahrenheit as well. I don't see how it is "better" than the Celcius or even the Kelvin. And how can be cutting of 273.xxxK to create the Celcius be a bad thing? As if the Fahrenheit doesn't reach more than 100 Degrees Fahrenheit in some places in the States as well.

Time is time. It still passes us anyways.

Point is.
As long as that unit is able to get a proper error/deviation or get a calculation accurately to a certain number, just use it.

 

[wonderwall]

I guess we should enforce a global language standard as well then? And then after that maybe we could work on some kind of dress code?

Let people do as they wish. Or smoothly integrate by teaching young children both. But this force non-sense makes some of you sound rather militaristic and quite unlikable.

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wonderwall /img/forum/go_quote.gif I guess we should enforce a global language standard as well then? And then after that maybe we could work on some kind of dress code? Let people do as they wish. Or smoothly integrate by teaching young children both. But this force non-sense makes some of you sound rather militaristic and quite unlikable.

The world already has a dress code for businesses. A suit. Or at least a collared-buttoned shirt with a tie and trousers.

 

[immtbiker]

And a Dress or Business Suit for the ladies. Hillary Clinton loves the pants suits to cover her "cankles"

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Voted no. For the uses where it's necessary, people have switched. In other areas, unnecessary as the SI system isn't human friendly and inferior for daily use.

Unfortunately, not true. We lost one of our Mars probes because the contractor that built it used one American measurements and the NASA used metric.

I wish we would switch, or at least start putting signs back in both. I doubt we'll ever will though.

I'm fairly comfortable in weights and volume metric measurements because a lot of products I buy are in even metric sizes and odd American sizes, like liter bottles of water. I'm a little less comfortable with distances and I'm horrible with temperature. I always have to do a calculation in my head when I see a Celcius temperature. I've never had a good feel for that.

Edit: This poll would be more interesting if it was broken down by Americans/everyone else. I'm curious how many Americans are voting yes. I did, although I doubt it'll ever happen.

 

[slypher]

A question for you guys living outside north america how are your construction standards set up like lumber mesurements?

 

[Maxvla]

Somehow 'First Down, 9.14 meters to go' just doesn't have a good ring to it.