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Should the US adopt the Metric System?

Should the US adopt the metric system?

  • Total voters
    41
Everything in IT is metric. The same is true for all the sciences. Metric is superior to the Imperial System in every way.
 
voyager1 said:
The rest of the world uses it. Medical professions use it. The sciences use it. NASA couldn't figure it out however and lost a Mars lander a decade ago though...
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yes of course and its should have been down decades ago.

its a no brainier and of course this cant simply be done over night with so much still present in the old but yes it needs phased out just like it has already been done by some industries.
 
Ad_Captandum said:
Are you being facetious?
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Short of having been very recently certified - how can he not be? :mrgreen:

To return OT, can I point out to the forecasters of doom, that societies such as the UK and Australia made the transition to metrication with little or no problems? The metric system is incomparably more logical (multiples of tens) than any quasi-imperial (the USA never used the Imperial system and still does not) system, involving as it does, innumerable variations of measure (12 inches to a foot - 3 feet to a yard - 1,760 yards to a mile) all of which have to be memorised. It is only metaphorical dinosaurs, who haven't the intellect, or experience of anything outside their national borders, who are afraid of metrication. As for the Canadians, they have allowed themselves to become so culturally US dominated, that they appear incapable of independent thought. :)
 
With the United States being a nation of nearly 320 million people, it would just be something else for most people to not have any idea what the Hell anyone is talking about. The time has passed. Obviously this is the worst sort of blasphemy for the Liberal elites, but Americans simply don't feel a burning desire to change systems.

Most people have no idea how big a liter of wine is right now. Tell a driver that he is going 45 kph and he will say How fast is that? How tall are you? 188.82 centimeters. How tall is that? Nobody knows. Your new baby weighs 3.62 kilograms, sir. Damn, I wonder how big he is.

Forget it. It's not going to happen. In a nation besieged by problems right now, it's too big a pain in the wazoo.
 
AJiveMan said:
They already have in a way. Almost every nut and bolt on American made cars are smetirc. Some mechanics own two sets of sockets for those emergencies of working on cars and trucks with both SAE & metrick. My odometer has MPH and KPH, we can't escape it. Which would you rather pay $3.89 for, a litre, or a gallon?
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That's not a good comparison. We'd pay the same for gas as we do now, it would just be in liter's instead of gallons. In your scenario we'd pay like $1.2 per liter, which would equal out to the same.
 
Reaganite said:
Nope. A gallon of gas is more than a liter. You get less gas when you use metric.
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Yeah. . . . .
Your Star said:
That's not a good comparison. We'd pay the same for gas as we do now, it would just be in liter's instead of gallons. In your scenario we'd pay like $1.2 per liter, which would equal out to the same.
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voyager1 said:
The rest of the world uses it. Medical professions use it. The sciences use it. NASA couldn't figure it out however and lost a Mars lander a decade ago though...
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They tried teaching it to us in school back in the 70's but the US never adopted it fully, because of the cost of changing everything into metric. Scales, product packaging, measuring systems, software, pricing etc.
 
voyager1 said:
The rest of the world uses it. Medical professions use it. The sciences use it. NASA couldn't figure it out however and lost a Mars lander a decade ago though...
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The change should be voluntary. It is already transitioning slowly. Eventually we will get there. Making it mandatory just makes people resist the change that much harder.
 
Gardener said:
Going metric sounds easy until you consider all the machinery that would need to be retooled in such a way as to calibrate in metric. The costs would be absolutely staggering. The housing collapse of a few years ago would look like a drop in the bucket in comparison.
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Actually we could do it with fairly little cost. It'll take a while to transition, but we should just continue teaching kids SI and phasing out old equipment over time. For a long while we would have to use both.

It has to be done eventually. We're the only serious country in the world that uses the ridiculousness that is the Imperial system.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Everything in IT is metric. The same is true for all the sciences. Metric is superior to the Imperial System in every way.
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Everything in IT is binary, you either understand that, or you don't :p
 
I don't want to be crass, so I'll just say that men who like the metric system tend to dislike vagina.
 
Jerry said:
Yes, but not because the rest of the world uses it, but why the rest of the world uses it: Metric 4 US - Why Metric is the Better System

We should be using a 28-day month, 13-month calendar too; and October should be 8th month, not the 10th.

And get rid of daylight savings.
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... That actually would be a nightmare for the economic sector.
 
AliHajiSheik said:
Everything in IT is binary, you either understand that, or you don't :p
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Everything is metric as well. Bytes - Kilobytes - Megabytes - Gigabytes - Terabytes (yes they are not exactly 1 then 10 then 100 (its multiples of 1024) but its always by 10).

*Not to be confused with Metrics in regards to Network Routes.
 
voyager1 said:
The rest of the world uses it. Medical professions use it. The sciences use it. NASA couldn't figure it out however and lost a Mars lander a decade ago though...
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We lost one drone to technical error after several other rovers of ours have successfully landed and explored the surface of Mars. It's not because of the metric system, it was because **** happens.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Everything is metric as well.
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As a Chem/Physics teacher, the most important feature by far of the SI/Metric is the base/derived unit concept.
With only seven base units, and mass as the only actual material object defined as a kilogram,
the other six base units can be reproduced anywhere in our Universe.
meter, second, mole, Kelvin, Ampere, candela--

Then all of the derived units, such as the Newton of force, are Algebraic combinations of the basic units.
A Newton being a kg[SUP].[/SUP]m/s[SUP]2[/SUP] from F = ma.

English units are simply not used for most undergrad majors,
there are too many units per quantity,
and no prefixes to make the base unit larger or smaller by a factor of ten.

And yes there are BTUs along with their programmable calculators depending on their engineering.
My job was to make algebraic equations of the natural world come alive with the Metric System .
 
Gardener said:
I'd suggest a walk through your local Home Depot or Lowes to get an idea of all that would have to be changed.
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Nothing would have to be changed. Simply label the exact same item in meters instead of feet/inches. Instead of having a 2x4, you could have a 5x10 (cm). It wouldn't be entirely accurate, but then neither is 2x4.

Personally, I say yes, make the switch. The metric system is better in pretty much every way.
 
Surtr said:
We lost one drone to technical error after several other rovers of ours have successfully landed and explored the surface of Mars. It's not because of the metric system, it was because **** happens.
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Apart from the Mars Orbiter destruction, there have been any number of air crashes, and air emergencies, due to Americans not understanding metric units. The principle danger comes about by confusing pounds with kilograms, and by mistakes when converting fuel loads. Weight is a critical factor with aircraft, and this danger arises, not because **** happens, but because of ignorance and a lack of appropriate knowledge.
 
voyager1 said:
The rest of the world uses it. Medical professions use it. The sciences use it. NASA couldn't figure it out however and lost a Mars lander a decade ago though...
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Learning to calculate stuff non-metrically is great practice for the brain.
 
Am I the only person that voted no but has a practical reason? It's really what I always thought the standard system was for.

10 can only be divided by 5 and 2. 12 can be divided by 2,3,4 and 6 without a decimal or faction. Being that I imagine land surveyors used these types of measurements long before anybody else out would have come in handy to Debbie divide in half, third, forfth and sixth.

Density measurements the same 16 ounces =a pound. Easy to divide by 2,4,8

But hey, practical usage for the every day person, I don't think it matters.
 
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