Should the US get off the pot and go metric?

We remember when Canada went metric, I'm OK with it except for temperatures, 32 f is freezing ! The kids of course learned metric, but our son switches back and forth with ease.
 

I still work in feet and inches, otherwise, I'd end up making things 10 times too big or 10 times too small. 😊

Then what about the words in all those super songs....

"I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles."......

Lovely, but it would have to now read like this......

"I'd walk a million 'kilometers' for one of your 'smileometers' "..... nah, that would sound rubbish. 😊
 

It does help if everything is standardised. I have trouble with American recipes. Just how much is a 'cup'? American gallons are different too, which is confusing when you have to measure out quantities exactly.
Something else which is different is the way we describe people. Americans are somehow able to calculate a person's weight just by looking at them. Where we would describe someone as 'well-built' or 'slim', Americans give their actual weight.
 
I recall the drive to do this in the '70s, and it just didn't take. The metric system is, IMO, more practical, with 10 being a multiplier/divisor of various measurements.

But our world here in the USA is pretty well set up for ounces and pounds and pints and quarts and gallons and so on. It's one thing to change our mindsets, but its another to change all the measuring devices. In short, while it may seem desirable by some to change, it ain't gonna happen in my life time. Heck, the powers that be can't even agree on eliminating daylight savings time.
 
I don't know if it's been stated but the only way everybody would get on board is to go full metric all at once.

But I suspect that there are expenses involved in making the transition so things have to be updated to metric when other changes are being implemented and the cost is figured in.
 
The U.S. has often…all too proudly…marched to the beat of a different drummer than the rest of the world. Other nations have gun control, whereas our regulations by comparison are extremely lax. Other nations utilize the metric system, whereas we cling to the Imperial system. We also cling to the arcane and archaic Electoral College, whereby someone can be elected president while losing the popular vote. That’s remarkably happened twice in twenty years!

At several points in the past, the U.S. has seemed to declare the intent to go metric, but sadly never actually gone ahead with it. I suspect that we’d survive if we did, once the dust settled…
 
It's not that hard of a transition. Calculating changes to metric is harder than just going metric. It's a pointless step, when all it takes is just getting used to seeing what centimeters and meters look like.

For some odd reason in the US, ski lengths, which are important for a proper fitting, have never been done in inches. It's always been in centimeters, and I have never heard one American skier complain that this is a problem. We just know what 200 centimeters, plus or minus, looks like. But trying to figure out how many inches that is would drive me nuts. It's not a problem to live with metrics. It's a problem trying to live with two systems when only one is necessary. There is a reason why the rest of the world uses metrics. It just makes more sense. Of course, to old farts in the US, it makes no sense, but that's our fault.
 
I am pretty much used to both. My old Toyotas are all metric as well as many other things I am repairing. For distance, just remember “about” 2.5 cm per inch, 1cm is about 3/8”, 10km is about 6 miles and 1m is just over a yard (by 3”).

20 degrees Celsius is room temperature (68F), but I can never spell Fare-en-height! 0C = 32F and 100C = 212F, boiling pt of water.

2L is just a bit more than 2 qts (by 3 oz).

Not too good on mass/weight since we rarely have to convert that.

But as far as a complete transition, that will take time as we still will have a need for many non-metric replacement parts.
 
There have been stupid blunders like space craft built using the wrong measurement system. Using "simultaneously two measurement systems causes unit errors". That costs money.
And metric is the language of science.
As far as American learning a new system, well 30 years ago, did you know what "logging on" was?
We aren't that dumb.
 
Here's a helpful hint to understand the complexity of metrics; 60 centimeters is less than 65 centimeters. If we can understand that, we are ready to make the the change. I dunno. Maybe I'm missing something. Yeah, I probably am. We already know that water boils at 100 and freezes at 0, it's just that we don't understand the degrees between 100 and zero. That will take some getting used to. But it shouldn't be harder than learning the next version of Windows, or even the current one for that matter.
 
My brain frames in the Imperial System, not metric.

Sure, I know a meter is roughly a yard and a liter is roughly a quart. But that's the point, isn't it? When I hear meter, my brain thinks "about a yard." When I see temperatures in Celsius I either have to convert them to Fahrenheit or have zero idea what they mean. 32°C? Is cold or hot? Are we talking 45°, 60°F, 100°F, or what? (Ok, slow down... double it and add 30. So like 90°. (Just checked it and it's 89.6°F.) 89.6°? Now that's a temperature I understand.

It's said that the definition of being truly bilingual is not just speaking another language, but also thinking in that language rather than using an inner translator.

Measurements are simply a language that communicates capacity and dimensions. Metric may be a foreign language to most Americans but we're fluent in Imperial.

Moving to metric would involve years (if not decades) of side-by-side measurements, as well as converting children's textbooks to metric meaurements. Eventually we'd become fluent.
 
Tom52 said:
For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone outside the U.S. would care whether or not we convert to metric. You do you and we do us.
Click to expand...
if you take a minute to get off your high horse, you will see that the OP of this thread IS an American.. and the rest of the thread is called ''Discussion''..on a Discussion forum......just so you know where you are ! :cautious:
 
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