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Why doesn't the US use the metric system??

Why isnt the US on the metric system?

  • Liberals. Its why we cant have good things

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The downside of change is greater than the upside, and I'm a short term thinker.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    32
I guess when your water bill starts to charge you in drams, you might want to have standardization.

Not really, as long as the meter reading is accurate it doesn't matter what units are used. Drams, gallons, barrels, fraction of library of congess volume, it makes no differnce.
 
I was thinking about this as I was working with my daughter this AM baking, and to adust the recipe we had to figure out how many tablespoons in a cup, how many cups in a quart, etc. I, as usual, converted everything in my head to metric and I just showed her the rough metric approximations (tsp=5ml tbsp=15ml, cup 240ml, pint ~ 500ml ) and figured it out from there. She looked at me and said "why dont we just use that measurement in the first place?".

The metric system is much, much more simple than the Imperial system... it makes doing simple things like doubling a recipe, calculating distance, and scaling up fluid and weight measurements much easier. The US is virtually the only nation in the world that sticks with the old, goofy imperial system, which probably costs a whole lot of money (everyone else sells stuff or buys stuff in metric units - the US has to be the exception), and we know has destroyed at least one space mission.

Its a simple system to use. We half-use it already anyway - you buy pop in 2L bottles, all food items are at least marked in metric volume or weight, and people run 5k races. Why dont we complete the job and ditch these worthless british holdovers that even the brits ditched years ago.

I dont know whatever happened to the metric initiative in the 70s (but I'm guessing Reagan killed it because it was too French and would confuse his constituents) and I know getting the old voting crowd to actually want to change would be tough, but why has there been no major initiative in the US for the last thirty years to finally join the rest of the world in measuring sanity?
I don't know, but I wish we did.
 
I worked in the photo-lab business for over thirty years where everything is done on the metric system and it does make everything much easier to figure out.
I believe that the biggest resistance to the adoption of metric system, was to weather temperature ...and rightly so.
The Fahrenheit scale is perfect for describing weather and the Celsius scale ... well, sucks.
On the Fahrenheit scale the hottest day of the year in temperate climates is about 100 degrees and the coldest average is about zero, with ten convenient little packets of tens in between.
The Fahrenheit scale is more like a decimal scale for weather than any other.
If I say that the temperature tomorrow will be in the 50s you know exactly what that means and how to dress. If I am talking within the Celsius scale and I say tomorrow will be in the 20s that could mean anything from 68F to 86F. Not nearly as descriptive or convenient.
The Celsius scale is not based on the meter anyway ... it is based on the freezing and boiling temperature of water. That makes perfect sense for the chemistry lab, but not for weather. Water almost never boils in nature.
Why did it have to be adopted as part of the metric system?
If the US had decided to leave the weather temperature and the Fahrenheit scale alone then Americans would have been more willing to adopt true metric measurement elsewhere.

Weather is something everyone talks about everyday and the Celsius scale is just not refined or well suited enough for describing it.
 
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Yet there is an easy equation to go from Fahrenheit to Celsius.
And an easy mnemonic was 0[SUP]o[/SUP]C equals 32[SUP]o[/SUP]F and then go up 5[SUP]o[/SUP]C for every 9[SUP]o[/SUP]F.
A 1.8/1 ratio.

And then there's needing to add 273[SUP]o[/SUP] to the Celsius reading to get Kelvin used in the Gas Laws .
 
Let's not get started on time. That's where the whole ****house goes up in flames. lulz
If we were really interested in making sense we would be on a twenty hour day and a thirteen month calender.
 
Temperature is one of the seven base/fundamental quantities in Nature that all other derived quantities are based on.
The Kelvin is the actual SI unit based on absolute zero.
Having water exist at its triple point, 273.16 K at 4.6 mm pressure in a closed system is another useful measurement.
With 0.01[SUP]o[/SUP]C as the triple point on the Celsius scale, showing their exact defined difference as 273.15 .
I worked in the photo-lab business for over thirty years where everything is done on the metric system and it does make everything much easier to figure out.
I believe that the biggest resistance to the adoption of metric system, was to weather temperature ...and rightly so.
The Fahrenheit scale is perfect for describing weather and the Celsius scale ... well, sucks.
On the Fahrenheit scale the hottest day of the year in temperate climates is about 100 degrees and the coldest average is about zero, with ten convenient little packets of tens in between.
The Fahrenheit scale is more like a decimal scale for weather than any other.
If I say that the temperature tomorrow will be in the 50s you know exactly what that means and how to dress. If I am talking within the Celsius scale and I say tomorrow will be in the 20s that could mean anything from 68F to 86F. Not nearly as descriptive or convenient.
The Celsius scale is not based on the meter anyway ... it is based on the freezing and boiling temperature of water. That makes perfect sense for the chemistry lab, but not for weather. Water almost never boils in nature.
Why did it have to be adopted as part of the metric system?
If the US had decided to leave the weather temperature and the Fahrenheit scale alone then Americans would have been more willing to adopt true metric measurement elsewhere.

Weather is something everyone talks about everyday and the Celsius scale is just not refined or well suited enough for describing it.
 
universities - better if left private
roads - better if left private.
the military- better without a standing army.
air traffic control- better if left private
commercial airline safety - better if left private
Most of us are civilized and as such we believe in civilization.
We also understand what you are.
 
Temperature is one of the seven base/fundamental quantities in Nature that all other derived quantities are based on.
The Kelvin is the actual SI unit based on absolute zero.
Having water exist at its triple point, 273.16 K at 4.6 mm pressure in a closed system is another useful measurement.
With 0.01[SUP]o[/SUP]C as the triple point on the Celsius scale, showing their exact defined difference as 273.15 .
Yes we understand all that. But Fahrenheit is the best scale suited to describing weather.
 
We should have did it a century ago.
 
If we were really interested in making sense we would be on a twenty hour day and a thirteen month calender.
I've no idea how any of that came about. I blame Roseanne.
 
View attachment 67171107

Much like the individual's who make up the USA the USA tends to go it's own way. We do not need the example or methods of inferior nations who we have to bail out frequently from one war or another.
Yeah ...Go USA...
NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss


NASA's Climate Orbiter was lost September 23, 1999
September 30, 1999
Web posted at: 1:46 p.m. EDT (1746 GMT)

(CNN) -- NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday.

For that reason, information failed to transfer between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin in Colorado and the mission navigation team in California. Lockheed Martin built the spacecraft.

"People sometimes make errors," said Edward Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science in a written statement.

"The problem here was not the error, it was the failure of NASA's systems engineering, and the checks and balances in our processes to detect the error. That's why we lost the spacecraft."

Destination Mars


The findings of an internal peer review panel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed that the failed information transfer scrambled commands for maneuvering the spacecraft to place it in orbit around Mars. JPL oversaw the Climate Orbiter mission.

"Our inability to recognize and correct this simple error has had major implications," said JPL Director Edward Stone.

The spacecraft completed a nearly 10-month journey to Mars before it was lost on September 23.

The navigation mishap pushed the spacecraft dangerously close to the planet's atmosphere where it presumably burned and broke into pieces, killing the mission on a day when engineers had expected to celebrate the craft's entry into Mars' orbit.

Climate Orbiter was to relay data from an upcoming mission called Mars Polar Lander, set to set down on Mars in December. Now that mission will relay its data via its own radio and another orbiter.
In 2007 NASA finally adopted and embraced the metric system to the exclusion of all other systems.
 
Most of us are civilized and as such we believe in civilization.
We also understand what you are.

Government and civilization are not the same thing nor are they mutually dependent on each other.

The third reich was civilized even with some embarressing genocide
 
Government and civilization are not the same thing nor are they mutually dependent on each other.

The third reich was civilized even with some embarressing genocide
So says the Libertarian Nazi.:lamo
Henrin has equal animosity and contempt towards civilization and government.
He is an anarchist.
 
This would fit into the category 'Conservatives- it's why we can't have nice things'....

I'm certainly no conservative, but that's my answer as well: Because we don't want to use the metric system.

I find it telling that the simplest and most likely answer wasn't even in your poll. :)
 
So says the Libertarian Nazi.:lamo
Henrin has equal animosity and contempt towards civilization and government.
He is an anarchist.

Just libertarian. Not a nazi at all. And only a libertarian by agreement with most of their principles not a member of the party.

Contempt for government is justified and earned and does not equal contempt for civilization.
 
Wondering how many of those Metric countries are miles ahead of the USA in Math/Science.
And laughing their asses at a country full of deniers of "hard" science .
 
(Sarcasm on)
How the heck do the Europeans do it! They must just be confused about the weather all the time!

(Sarcasm off)
I'm not saying that it can't be done ...all I'm saying is that the Fahrenheit scale is much more accurate and convenient to use for weather description.
 
You people never fail to amaze me. Talk about the metric system and you have partisan bickering within the first 10 pages (no, the first page).
 
It's the false allure that somehow the metric sounds smarter just because it is generally used in the sciences. It's just an arbitrary convention, and different trades use their own systems/units to make their own concerns more manageable.
 
I would think the American guys would like it.
 
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