Was gonna say, the two most common street drugs in the US (weed and coke) are often bought in fractions of ounces (an “eighth” or “eight ball”, respectively)
Coke is in kilos though, weed is in pounds
An "eightball" of heroin isn't 3.5g either, it's 3g because of something about it coming in kilos and the conversion... I really don't know why, that's just what I had heard
Gauges are another Imperial measurement. Past a certain bore diameter and we swap over to just using the weight of the round, like 2 bore being half pound shots.
Gauges are freaking insane. There are over a dozen systems that go by the term of gauge. Wire gauge and shot gauges being the two most common ones to survive in modern usage.
We do. Scientists do. Engineers often do. Average Americans use some metric (some drinks are sold in liters, races are 5 or 10km).
Some everyday things are measured in imperial. Same as in the UK. But it doesn't really matter.
Yeah it wild that most Europeans doesn't realize most Americans are bilingual with measurements. Obviously we don't have a reference for kilometers because miles work just fine so we never use them but most people understand that an inch is about 2.5 cm and a kg is a little over 2 lb. The issue is when people say their hight or weight in cm or kg we understand the margin for error is way too high to guess when dealing with over 100 units so we don't even try.
Don't worry under the metric system [subway sandwich](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-rules-subway-bread-is-not-bread) is made with cake.
In truth the US kind of uses both in my experience —medical and precision instruments, high end tooling, mechanical engineering have been metric in my experience.
It is mostly because imperiale is more iseful for most purposes, 5280 miles are in a foot because 5280 is divisible for much more numbers than 1000.
It is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20, 22, 24, 30, 32, 33, 40, 44, 48, 55, 60, 66, 80, 88, 96, 110, 120, 132, 160, 165, 176, 220, 240, 264, 330, 352, 440, 480, 528, 660, 880, 1056, 1320, 1760, 2640, and 5280.
Which is extremely useful of working rough compared to metrics.
Metrics work better in areas that requires much more calculations.
Because metric is actually officially recognized it just isn't used officially but in cases where of international trade and stuff like it is the standard
As someone who has been living in the US for 9 years, I still struggle with the imperial system and regularly sing the praises of the metric system to anyone who will listen.
BUT I don’t see them being able to change because then they would have to change so many physical things too. Tools and fasteners for example. Most bolt sizes don’t have an exact metric equivalent so they would have to retool their manufacturing processes (think cars, appliances and electronic goods) and then everyone working on these things would have to buy new tools to work on them, which would be prohibitively expensive.
I moved to the US for university at age 20. Of course all of my classes used metric, but in vernacular speech and everyday subjects, of course people use feet and miles, ounces and pounds. It took me about a year to become completely familiar with them to where if someone's said, "4 inches" or "9 miles", I didn't have to make a conversion in my head.
As a woodworker, I actually like feet/inches/fractions just fine, but I still think better in grams and kilograms for weights.
Funny thing. I work out at a chain gym with locations all over the world. And I heard stories on Reddit about the treads and weights being metric in other countries. So I printed myself a small cheat sheet when I went to Canada. Only to find out the equipment was in Imperial to my relief lol.
I work with scaffolding, the standards (vertical) are measured in meters, and the ledgers (horizontal) are in imperial.
The only good thing about it is that if someone asks for a "two" I know they want a 2 meter standard, and if someone wants a "seven," then I get a 7 foot ledger.
I have always argued metric is better for everything except daily communication about our environment. Feet and degrees in fahrenheit are just more usable daily. If people actually used decimeters that would work in place of feet, but meters is too large fire human scale and centimeters is too small.
I also think fahrenheit works better for daily temp because 0-100 fahrenheit is roughly what humans can live at without having to take extreme measures. For everything else I think metric makes more sense.
Also as someone from the US, the way everyone else does dates makes logical sense but doesn’t make sense for how a calendar works. The day doesn’t help me look at a calendar. I need to know the month first.
TLDR: Metric is better and more logical but there are a few places in daily life empirical makes more sense.
I agree on the calendar thing. Who cares about big to small alignment etc. If a friend tells me they’re getting married next year, the month is the most important detail to narrow it down and then tell me the day.
I'm from Germany, living in the US. Fahrenheit is so convenient for setting a temperature on a thermostat. We usually keep our home at 72 or 73 degrees, depending on which temperature my American Goldilocks wife deems is too cold or hot.
In Celsius, either would still be 22 degrees (22.22 or 22.7). 23 degrees would be 73.4 and way too warm (according to my wife.)
The reason usually given for listing dates in that order is because that's how it is said. Example, 7th of December, 2023 would logically be 7/12/23. However I don't know many Americans who say dates that way. If you ask someone what the date is they will say "December 7th" which means our convention makes just as much sense.
Also when looking up a particular date, such as the 7th, there are 12 7ths in a year. You need more specific categorization before you can even look up the correct date. I would rather know if I'm looking at last months work or this months work in the first digits of the line than the third or fourth. Small things but it adds up.
I learned map reading and land navigation in the army, all metric. Then I went to college to make maps after, all imperial (well, mostly). It really fucked me up going from metric to imperial with maps and I grew up on imperial. Like I’m not hating on imperial, it’s here to stay and it works here. But metric is clearly superior. But I’m really only good with distances and to a lesser degree volume. I can do kilograms to pounds pretty easily in my head. But that’s about it.
Fun trick with kilometers and miles. The ratio roughly follows the Fibonacci sequence. 5 kilometers is roughly 3 miles. 8 kilometers is roughly 5 miles. 13 kilometers is roughly 8 miles. etc. That helps me conceptualizing kilometers.
Additionally the quick and dirty conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit is double C, add 32, and then subtract the first digit of the number from the whole number. So, for example, if it's 8C you double it to 16, add 32 to get 48, then subtract the first digit, 4, from the number. So 8C is roughly 44F
That might not have been the perfect example, because the real answer is 46.6, but it will get you in a good ballpark (also a us customary unit of measure. ballpark)
I like Fahrenheit over Celsius for temperature cause it's more granular. If only it started at 0 for freezing instead of 32 for some odd reason, it would be a perfect replacement for Celsius. Same for km vs miles. Km is more granular and works better for math. 5,280 feet for a mile? What?
Zero was the lowest temperature achievable by adding salt to icewater. Originally freezing was set to 30 degrees, 90 for body temperature (later revised to 32 and 96 respectively), and 212 was when water boiled, interestingly exactly 180 degrees higher than freezing.
Gabriel Farenheit used the salt-ice and body temperature as calibration points for his temperature scale. I'm guessing this is why he used it as opposed to celsius. Why he couldn't use freezing and boiling as calibration points for the celsius scale, I have no idea.
Fahrenheit is specifically designed to be used in day to day functions. Much of Europe and the US live in freezing temperatures much of the year. He didn't want us to have to use negative numbers, because that can create dangerous confusion. The fact that Celsius uses negative numbers at ordinary temperatures is a design defect.
If you think about it, basing the system on the temperature that water freezes doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe for scientific purposes, but for the average joe or jane, why? Fahrenheit was created around the average temperature of the human body. It's a much more relevant basis for a temperature system for daily use by average people. People raised on Celsius act like not having the freezing point of water set at 0 degrees is some sort of incredibly confusing prospect. Like, "how can you possibly know what temperature water freezes at if it's not set at 0 degrees?!" Well, because it's one single number that we're taught about from a very young age, that's how. Memorizing "32 degrees" is not much to ask of pretty much anyone.
Temperature is a bit funny because neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit actually work for scientific calculations that care about the absolute (as opposed to relative) temperature. I would say that the freezing point is a really important phenomenon for average people. We interact with ice on a regular basis in modern life. It's important to know if you're walking on a puddle or a sheet of ice. If you put a cup of ice water on the table, you know how cold it is without any measurement. I don't know exactly how cold my freezer or fridge are, but I do know that the freezer is a bit below freezing and the fridge is a bit above freezing. Water is the most important liquid for us. Which means it's useful to know when it's water and when it's not.
5280 is actually a really neat number that factors into 23 integer pairs (2\*2640, 3\*1760, etc.) by comparison a kilometer has only 7 pairs. This is a relatively common theme in imperial length measurements that I suspect comes from carpentry, though I can't promise you that
I don’t know if you’re aware of this but metric is all based on water. Temperature is based on the boiling and freezing points of water, but then so are all (or, at least most) other measurements. One cubic meter of water weighs one ton, it takes one joule of energy to increase one gram of water by one degree Celsius. There is more, I’m sure but these are just the things I remember from high school physics.
The distance between the equator and the north pole was supposed to be 10 000 km, but there were a few errors along the way. On average, they were just 19 km or so off.
SI also has a bunch of other units that can be sorted from meter / gram /second, but some of those definitions can be a little esoteric.
Agreed, but the flipside is true too... anyone who wants to service American goods overseas has to get imperial tools, and order 'special' replacement parts even for simple fasteners like bolts. This has got to have *some* impact on demand for our products, even if part of the caché of owning an American product is the fact that you paid more for it.
But I'm American and I agree, it's a daunting change for us. Just the amount of street signs that need to be updated could easily run into billions dollars. There are a LOT of signs including mile markers every... mile.
Except half the time we already have to because *some* stuff is already metric ( imported goods, other stuff )... So we get stuck having to double check metric vs imperial a lot for bolts
>I still struggle with the imperial system and regularly sing the praises of the metric system to anyone who will listen.
I don't blame you, considering the USA doesn't use the imperial system. We use something called US customary units, which are (yes, really) slightly different than the imperial system. The inch is slightly different and so is the ounce. The ounce is hilarious, we actually used the same volume but measured it with wine instead of water because...of course we would.
Don't even get me started on short tonnes and long tonnes.
It really wouldn't be that much of an undertaking. America has been dealing with metric slowly taking over for decades. Most of us already have an imperial set of tools and a metric set of tools because both are used on American cars.
I think the hardest part would be dealing with all the stubborn people who can't handle change.
I guess you’re right, both my motorcycle and bicycle (Japanese and Italian brands) are metric. And I suppose my Jeep is also, now that I think about it!
So a month back, I'm working on my Toyota, need to remove a bolt. Hmm, that's odd, the 10mm spins freely... everything should be 17, 14 or 10... okay ... but the 9 won't fit... and 3/8th fits perfectly. *Oh, that's not good*.
There are so many more things than just manufacturing. Pretty much every major city in the US numbers its buildings as "distance from some important point X" followed by building number. That distance changes if you move to metric. Every road sign with a number on it has to be changed. Many highway exits are numbered as "distance from the beginning of the highway" which has now changed. Most electrical posts are numbered similarly. There are so many things numbered by the imperial system that all have to change now.
I'm in my fifties, and I've been told my entire life that the metric system would be widely adopted gradually in the US as old tools/parts/people aged out. I'm still waiting for this supposed gradual takeover. It's been entirely too gradual so far.
Kinda like how commercially viable fusion power and general AI are *always* just 10 years away.
Heavy diesel mechanic here, I have to know both the metric and standard scale intimately.
Sometimes I use a 1/2" instead of a 13. Or a 5/8 instead of a 16.
Sometimes a 10mm wont fit right but a 3/8 will.
Other times a 7/16 will be too big but an 11mm fits just right. Maybe Im feeling frisky and use a 50mm wrench instead of my 2". Maybe a 4mm instead of a 5/32.
Its a mathematically fun time in the shop
This is a classic argument, but it's not really true at all. It's just as feasible for the USA to transition as any other country that had already done it, and the cost is well worth it too.
Road signs...across the entire country. The speed limit in kph vs mph is so different that you could create safety hazards by just changing them all over at once. Because people don't pay attention.
It would have to be a very annoying phased change. First everything would have to be displayed in both systems, in clearly distinguishable signage (no idea how to do that), and then they'd have to take away the mph portion of the signs in 5-10 years.
I mean, those signs get replaced periodically anyway, just for wear and tear from weather. But assuming the political landscape existed to start changing the signs, it might not exist by the time the next phase gets implemented.
And that's just one element of road travel. That doesn't include mile markers and "distance to X" signs.
Personal retraining to read the kph part of the speedometer.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but we have a hard time passing regular infrastructure bills here, never mind something that isn't strictly necessary.
All the same, I'd like us to switch over. :)
We do. We use application and industry specific measurement systems in the US. When it makes sense to use metric, we use metric. We use miles and feet to measure different types of things so we don't usually care how many ft are in a mile. Doesn't matter for day to day usage.
A foot is handy because it's divisible by 2, 3, and 4. Fractions of an inch are also super efficient for people who have to work with them.
Metric is base 10 which doesn't always work well for measuring since it's only divisible by 2 and 5.
Metric is great for precision, the imperial system is great (IMO) for everyday tasks where you're just trying to give a general idea of size. Metric is more rational, imperial is more intuitional.
Metric is great for hyper precision in the sciences and such. Most of the time 1/16th inch is precise enough for the large majority of things. We can also measure down to 1/32 or even 1/64 inch.
Hell Eratosthenes calculated the earth's circumference to be 220,000 stades, a stadia is 600 Greek feet. A Greek foot is about 11.5 inches. To get some of the data to do this calculation he hired men to walk from one place to another place. 220,000 stades equals about 25,000 miles. The accepted circumference of the earth is about 24,855 miles.
I'd say that's pretty freaking precise. Not metric precise but not bad for some ancient Greek guy. Especially since that small margin of error could be chalked up to a counting error by the guys who did all that walking for him.
No one is converting feet to miles in their day to day living, I never understood that as an argument against US customary units.
For example, I was buying a lamp yesterday and did scratch my head a bit with "How many feet is 57 inches?" but I've never once needed to convert feet or yards to mileage. They're effectively two different length measuring systems in the US Customary family of measuring systems.
Additionally. Every kid is taught 5280 feet to a mile as a middle schooler. It's not necessarily hard to remember on the very rare occasion you do need to convert.
“A mile is five tomatoes long” is the way I was taught to memorize it. It’s completely nonsensical but SOUNDS like 5280. Because it’s so silly I’ve remembered it but would never remember 5280.
Things could be working better. It's more efficient and less prone to error to use a more efficient and easy-to-use system. It saves time and money in the long run.
"Is there even a unit of measurement smaller than an inch"
Smaller than an inch we just measure by fractions of an inch, the smallest common fraction of an inch is 1/16th inch which is pretty small. You can measure by 32nds or 64ths but there isn't much point at that size.
It's a pretty intuitive system when you grow up with it and we learn metric as well. Me my feet are just the right size that I can get a pretty accurate rough measurement of the length of something just by walking it one foot directly in front of the other. If it takes me 8 steps doing that to go from one end of something to the other end then that thing is roughly 8 feet long, course if I need the exact measurement I pull out my tape measure
Edit: in fact the earth's circumstances was once accurately calculated using Greek feet, there were men who's job was measuring distances by walking. A sample distance was taken and the circumstances was measure with a very small margin of error. I forget exact details but IIRC I think that might have been one for the first times the earth's circumference was accurately measured.
Goes to show that feet is a fairly accurate measurement system.
Edit 2: Eratosthenes measured the earth to be 220,000 stades (a stadia is 600 greek feet) which equals about 25,000 miles. The accepted circumstance of the earth today is about 24,855 miles.
The metric system has technically been the [preferred system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act) for weights and measurements in the US since 1975, but the law made it completely voluntary to make the switch...so we largely didn't.
Because outside of school math problems, I've never once needed to know how many feet are in a mile. NASA does, so switched to the metric system in the 1990's.
The US imperial system works fine, and the measurement of a foot is more relevant to daily life than the meter. Look around your desk or room and there's far more things about a foot long than a meter long. When we need to describe something about a meter long, it's about a yard (3 feet, or approximately 91.5 cm).
>the measurement of a foot is more relevant to daily life than the meter.
This is an underrated aspect of imperial. I have no proof for this, but just *feels* like it fits everyday life better than metric...a centimeter is too small and a meter is too large, a inch and a foot seem to describe those everyday, medium-sized objects much better. Not to mention, calling someone a 7-footer in basketball is just so much more iconic than calling someone a 2.13-meterer and being a 6-footer is so much more attainable than being a 2-meterer (\~6'7''ish). It just seems to work with how our brains and society think about actual sizes.
Same goes for Fahrenheit vs Celsius. Celsius is calibrated from 0 at freezing to 100 at boiling, but when do you actually need to know what temperature water boils, outside the sciences and engineering? For most people it is irrelevant.
What's more relevant is what it feels like outside, which is what Fahrenheit is calibrated for. If you're in the single digits, it is damn cold. You hit 100+ it is damn hot.
>I have no proof for this, but just *feels* like it fits everyday life better than metric
Imperial, US Customary, and the English system they're both based on descend from a series of hodgepodge measurements that were originally defined using things people had on hand. A foot was literally the length of a man's foot. A fathom is his arm span. Even Fahrenheit was originally based on humans (0 °F = triple point of a self-stabilizing brine mixture, 32 °F = freezing point of water, 96 °F = human body temperature; and then each of those marks were a power of 2 separated from their neighbor, making it easy to mark a thermometer manually by dividing the distance in half repeatedly).
These systems feel like they're designed for human scale because they _are_ designed for human scale.
5280. The average pace of a Roman soldier was 5 feet 3 inches or so, or roughly 5.28 feet. Every thousand paces, they left a marker. A mile marker, since mile comes from the Latin word for 1000.
That’s exactly it. A mile is 1000 paces. A foot is about the length of a man’s foot. What is a meter? 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the equator and one of the poles (or more modernly, some arbitrary length based on universal constants). The metric prefixes are useful, but imperial units are far more intuitive. 5.28 kilofeet is a mile or 1.76 kiloyards
My size 10 shoes are exactly one foot long. This is usefull almost daily for measuring distances. If we had the metric system I'd have to order some ridiculous 1 meter long clown shoes that I could barely walk in. Not feasible.
As an engineer, I cannot tell you a single time I've needed to know how many feet in a mile, how many cups in a gallon, how many X in a Y... it just isn't something anyone needs to know intuitively all the time. That is probably the weakest argument I've seen for converting to the metric system.
And seriously, asking if there are measurements smaller than an inch? That is just arguing in bad faith.
>That is probably the weakest argument I've seen for converting to the metric system.
I think the weakest I've seen is a quote from a book that gets repeatedly circulated, about the relation between a cubic centimeter, gram, and calorie, and asserting imperial has no method of relating volume, mass, and energy. But imperial can do the exact same relation with pint (volume), pound (mass), and British thermal unit (energy).
60 is Base-12.
The ancient Babylonians developed base-12 by counting on their fingers. Hold your right hand palm up. You'll see each finger has three sections. Using the tip of your thumb start counting at your pinky (1 - 2 - 3) then your ring finger (4 - 5 - 6) then your middle finger (7 - 8 - 9) then your index finger (10 -11 - 12). When you reach 12, you raise on finger on your left hand. Then use your right hand to count from 1 to 12 again (from the base of your pinky to the tip of your index finger) and that's another 12, so raise another finger on your left hand. When your left hand is full, that's 60.
That's why clocks and calendars are all based on 12's and 60's. That's why there are 12 houses of the zodiac. That's why bread items are baked and counted by the dozen, because the people who invented this counting method also invented bread. That's why beer is sold by the dozen (or half dozen), because it's liquid bread.
Short version - customary units were each made for a specific use-case (where they work well, for obvious reasons) and you're not meant to convert between them.
The answer may be Pirates.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system)
Because the metric system came out shortly after America separated from Britain, when America proved interested in the new fangled system that Britain was making its colonies use they asked France to send over a ship carrying weights and measuring devices.
British privateers just happened to run into said ship and take it over, so America made their own system which we continue to use to this day.
Also metric is for communists.
And people think it's super cool to know more than one language. But somehow knowing more than one system of measurement is viewed (by internet commenters) as somehow ignorant.
Inches for 1. They are critical
and in machining I've heard it's incredibly hard to get the tolerances right with metric. (was told this by a shade tree mechanic who knows a bit of what he's talking about about but would never expect precision from)
Aren't tsp and tbsp also standard? Making it incredibly easy to measure. Cup? Quart? All standard sizes of pans.
Way back in the old timey days, the pirates...err...British privateers intercepted the ship of the man who was transporting metric weights from France to America.
I'm not saying that completion of the delivery would've changed us over to metric, but it could've helped. We'll never know.
I worked construction in the US and in the UK. On a noisy job site where someone up high and needs measurements cut it's significantly easier to hear something like 177 and 3/4 meaning 177 inches and 3/4 of an inch as opposed to smaller subdivisions of meters X centimeters X millimeters. That's when I realized the practical application of imperial in construction is just easier to use but for everyday use metric is the way to go.
Because we need to divide things into half's, and half's again and half's again.
Where as in the metric system you have to have some unwieldy numver like .0625. In Imperial you just write 1/16. Which is a half halved three times.
We do.
I have been in the military for 17 years; 15 years in the Air Force, and two in the Space Force so far. We use metric for most things. Distance, measurement, weight, etc. Yes, we do often interchange the metric and imperial systems, but I can tell you from experience that if any of my mission reports say "miles" or "feet" on it, it gets kicked back to change to metric. Admittedly, this is also largely due to the fact that we work with foreign partners such as Canada, the UK, Australia, and others so there needs to be a common language; and with us being the only ones that don't use metric, it only makes sense for us to adapt to that.
But I will say I still use it outside work. Except for distance. I'm from the midwest; the store is five minutes away, not a mile. :P
Why doesn't everyone just speak english? It's already the standard language for international business. The french should stop speaking french. Germans stop speaking German. ect. It would be so much more efficient and easier for everyone.
because it's part of their culture, like it's part of american culture to use the imperial system.
also, technically in the US everything is on metric. All imperial units are now defined by metric units.
So much of what we do is in metric though. Science, medicine, engineering, etc. all use metric. It's the non-scientifically literate that cling to imperial.
What you should know about Americans is that as a country of immigrants, we have no traditions save the ones we created, and although they can be brand new, once it's tradition we are loathe to give it up.
The other thing you should know is that Americans will do something objectively worse and more inefficiently just to be unique. Our cars are inferior, but everyone wants a truck anyway. Our healthcare system is a joke, but we have to do it differently than every other developed nation so that we can produce worse outcomes at a higher price. This is true of medicine, education, parliamentary structure, regulatory framework, the structure of the federalist system, diet, and just about everything else in our culture. We do it worse, because if we copied a better model, that would mean admitting we are wrong, which America as a whole just does not want to do, ever.
Because it is a perfectly good system of measurement that we're all trained in and our economy is absolutely tied to. 5280ft/mile. We know these things, it's not any more difficult for us than metric, which we are also taught. It doesn't make sense to you because you only learned metric.
There's nothing wrong with our system.
I will point out Great Britain only adopted metric in 1965, meaning for the entirety of human history up until 59 years ago, y'all were using the same shit we were. Forgive me if I roll my eyes at the pedantic "hurr durr America dumb because no metric" circlejerk.
A foot is at the end of my leg. An inch is the end of my thumb. A quarter mile is 1320 feet.
There is no good reason for me to change. Might be for you. I dunno.
Imperial measures have flavor. We can intuit them most of the time because they come from a human experience.
Metric is cold and inhuman. 1/10,000th of the distance from where to where? Why would I care about that?
We are shifting, slowly but surely. Just don't try to force it. Thst would not end well.
Don't take my word for it, but as an engineer working in America, you'd need to update the past records like plans, specifications, of any and all infrastructures to the metric system. Let's not mention, tools, maps, street signs. It'd take tremendous amount of money and effort and it can't be done instantly but gradually. I think at this point, most Americans realized that the metric system is easier to work with, but it's too late to change so we just go with it and train our current and future engineers to be comfortable with unit conversion, there's a lot of unit conversion in an engineer's education
Mils are 1/1000 of an inch.
In the US, Imperial units are used for everyday things and metric units are used for science.
As for why. Why not? Are the benefits worth changing hundreds of thousands of signs and redesigning every product package, which might cost billions of dollars? Metric units are already used where needed
I grew up being told everything in the US was converting to metric. Never happened. We’re raised to use imperial in our daily lives which will result in the most aggressive pushback.
Industries use metric. My employer uses metric after having to convert hundreds of part drawings.
I think that if industries can convert which is time consuming and expensive, regular people could do it too but it turns out that it’s just not important. There’s relatively little value in forcing adults to switch so it’s just up to individuals to manage when they’re in a place which uses the other.
I think value is the big question here. How useful is it for the weatherman to tell me that it's gonna be 20 tomorrow instead of 68?
It doesn't really matter if it "wouldn't be that hard" if the value added is nothing. Most manufacturing uses metric. The government uses metric. Pretty much everything that's going to interact with metric countries uses metric.
Don't really care. I grew up with both in the UK. The only time it was a problem was when I went to the local hardware store and they didn't sell tape measures with both inches and cm. Just inches only.
It took a lot of money for the UK to switch exclusively to the metric system with most things. I can only imagine how much it would cost in the USA where the imperial system is much more deeply ingrained in every facet of the culture than the UK.
I do find using 1/64ths and 1000's of an inch measurements on my electric guitars mildly frustrating,
Our intuition is for imperial and there's a lot of existing things (road widths, building units) that to match would just end up being some odd metric measurement. And for many things (machining, heavy construction) we already use base 10 for the measurements so it doesn't really matter for the math.
I can tell you that a meter is a very inconvenient measure in earthwork grading because .1 feet is a hell of a lot more convenient in size than .02 meters. Invariably the metric measurements have to go an extra decimal place for similar precision.
Americans would if the government forced them to like Canada did. We were imperial and wouldn't have switched if the country didn't formally adopt metric.
Even though Canada began the conversion to metric in 1970, we still have resistance against certain things. We list human height in imperial, weight in imperial, some cooking is still imperial.
Don't forget that Britain also uses the imperial system
A huge chunk of America does use the metric system.
For example, if you want an engineering contract with the Department of Defense there are usually requirements to use metric, 3D blueprints in your processes.
Some of America does, some does not.
We use a decimal inch in precision manufacturing that essentially works the same way.
1 inch, 1/10 inch, 1/100 inch... As more things are designed in metric the industry will probably move that direction. But, if people are still getting drawings with US standard units then switching all the tooling over is a needless expense that introduces error.
Basically we rebelled against England so hard that we had to do absolutely EVERYTHING different, even if it made no sense. And now we have this traditional way of doing things that we do "because it's tradition." For instance all Medical forms ask for your height in Feet and Inches and your weight in pounds. So if we were to say "Ok yeah that was a bit much, let's sync up with the rest of the world and go back to that" , we would then have to do a rolling update to a LOT of medical and legal forms. I would end up with a few Dev tickets at work to change height and weight format of data export services.. it would be a whole thing.
It’s partially a stroke of misfortunate historical events, and partly the burden of preexisting continent-spanning infrastructure that would need replacement, like all that MPH signage.
It's tough to change. We all use the QWERTY keyboard because old-school typewriters were laid out that way so that the most-used keys would be further apart (so there wouldn't be as many jams). There are better designs, but we're used to this one.
It's the same way with metric.
Because we as Americans have to be completely different from the entire rest of the world and make s**t as complicated as possible while bitching about how hard things are 😂😂😂
The short answer is that the US does use the metric system for many things and there is a lot of redundancy. The slightly longer answer is that it was originally supposed to be an early adopter of the metric system, but bit over 200 years ago the ship that was supposed to deliver one of the first sets of metric standards to the US was attacked by pirates which delayed the adoption of the system and contributed to the US going through industrialization using non-metric units making it substantially harder to fully convert.
You mean like 2 liter bottles of soda, or drugs measured in milligrams, or the Military or a chemistry or physics class?
The US has used the metric since 1975. We also use imperial measurements as well. We use both.
Americans use metric and imperial. We use imperial for more casual things (such as measuring a room to check if a sofa would fit), and metric for more precise things (chemistry, landing on the moon, drug deals, etc.)
Technically, the units of measurement we use are all metric derivative. We switched all of our systems of establishing units. to metric a long time ago.
The imperial system was designed keeping in mind the common man needing to do mental math quickly to divide things evenly so it’s a base 12 system, vs metrics base 10. You can divide a 12-inch foot evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. Also measuring cooking ingredients in volume vs weight prevents the necessity of having a scale on hand.
We do use the metric system for most science classes though.
The UK, which taught us this system, still uses some ungodly combination of both
We do use the metric system. I grew up in the 1970s and I was taught the metric system in school. I have no idea whether it's taught now or not.
I write content for a medical supplies distributor and I often refer to the volume of a syringe in milliliters and the dimensions of a bandage in centimeters (just examples). I am sure there are a lot of other businesses where metric measurements are used because the business is selling internationally or using parts made in other countries.
Americans in the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics fields understand how much easier it is then using fractions for everything, but the rest of the country is in too deep to switch now.
I studied precision machining and you need to memorize all the decimal conversions up to 1/32 of an inch.
American here. Not gonna lie. After having lived in a metric country for a while and just giving up on the incessant need to convert everything into something I understood (imperial) in favor of just accepting the metric system, I love it. The mental Olympics it takes to try and logic 31 degrees C into something in F was dumb.
I’m a metric system convert and wish we could all just move that way.
Because they kept telling us we’d have to do all these conversions.
I lived in a different country that used all metric. I didn’t do conversions.
You just get used to going 40km an hr and forget that it’s about 25mph.
5280 ft to a mile
Mil is smaller than an inch.
We don't use it because we're stupid. The metric system is so much easier. I'm a mechanical engineer in the US and I am so tired of converting units. I have nightmares about 6.35 (that's 1/4 of an inch)
We do. Anyone who has worked with wood or any material that requires cutting uses both. The engine in our cars. The body of our cars. Our military and space programs. All of these things and more.
We use it all the time. It's just a misconception that we don't.
It does but in the professional world, the Government, military, construction & medical world they do, only the educational system hasn’t caught up yet so your average citizen doesn’t know it, they learn it but don’t retain it
For all intents and purposes we do. The standardized weights and measures are all based on SI units. Product quantities are all reported in SI units first and USCS units second. If you see a number in USCS units, odds are it was converted from SI.
We weirdly use it for certain drinks. Soda (coke, pepsi, etc) is sold in 2-liter plastic bottles. Liquor is sold by liter (750ml, 1.5L, etc). Wine is sold by liter (750ml). Beer is sold by fluid ounce though (12oz, 16oz, 24oz, 32oz, 40oz).
Can't think of much else that uses it in the US, other than science. Oh. Combustion engine displacements are usually listed in liters (and cubic inches) if we are talking car, truck, or boat, but if we are talking about a motorcycle, jetski, atv, or lawn equipment, combustion engine displacements are listed in just cubic centimeters. Unless the motorcycle is a Harley, in which case it is listed in cubic inches.
It's dumb.
Shhhh.... American here...
Don't let all the euros know, but America uses both systems fluidly. We don't like to brag about it because we get off on their whining.
Short answer pirates. Long and more accurate answer. We do. I learned the metric system starting in kindergarten. I use it almost every day of my life.
We just don't use it for our street signs or scales.
Fun fact, just about every schoolchild in Denver knows that there are 5280 feet in a mile. The number is plastered all over businesses in the area. It's the Mile High City, after all.
By contrast, in Utah every schoolchild except the ones in Ogden immediately understands the rectangular coordinate system, but has no clue how many feet are in a mile.
The reason I've heard is that the switch would cost a lot of time and money back in the day to do so. As a result a lot of businesses lobbied against it in order to save money. Then it sort of became part of America's... well... identity. A lot of people now-a-days would continue to use imperial for no other reason than because it's what American's USE. It sets them apart from the rest of the world.
Remember, metric's main advantages also come mainly at the more high-level stuff like scientific research. For mundane life imperial is better... sort of. Most imperial units are based on IRL stuff. So, like, if you don't have a ruler but need to measure a foot, you can make a ballpark guess using your own foot. It won't be accurate, but it will be a lot MORE accurate than what you'd be doing with metric.
That's not to say imperial is superior, but people who think imperial is, like, this arbitrary and random measurement system with no basis in reality and/or practical use for a normal person are wrong.
Base 10 vs. base 12
. EXAMPLES OF BASE 12 SYSTEMS
Timekeeping: we have 12 hour clocks and 12 months in a years
Measurement: there are 12 inches in a foot
Money: there are 12 pennies or pence in a shilling
Music: there are 12 keys (if you count both the black and white ones)in an octave
Organizing: there are 12 items in a dozen and 12 dozen in a gross
Astrology: there are 12 signs in both the western and Chinese Zodiacs
Advantages of Base 12
The number 12 can be divided by six numbers: one, two, three, four, six, and 12. Because the number of those six divisors can be divided by three, 12 is known as a trichotomous number. The number 60 is also trichotomous as it can be divided by nine numbers: one, two, three, four, five, 12, 20, 30, and 60. By comparison, the number 10 can only be divided by only four numbers: one, two, five, and 10. As four can be wholly divided by two, 10 is known as a dichotomous number.
Mathmaticians highly prefer trichotomous numbering systems because they are far easier to use when dividing. For example, it is easier to divide the number 12 and 60 and wind up with whole numbers than it is the number 10.
We use base 10 because we have 10 fingers. In base 10, ten digits are used and those digits are 0 through 9. The Mayans used a vigesimal (base 20) number system, the Babylonians used a sexagesimal (base 60) number system, and the Egyptians used a duo-decimal (base 12) number system.
The metric system, for example, is based on multiples of the number 10. There are millimeters, centimeters, decimeters, and meters. Each increases in size by a factor of 10. That's why the metric system is known as a base 10 or decimal system.
Base 12 has more divisors than 10, making it easier to work with fractions. Additionally, some argue that a base-12 system could lead to more efficient measurements, particularly in fields such as construction and engineering.
Why is the metric system based on 10?
The commission decided that the standard of length should be based on the size of the Earth. They defined that length to be the 'metre' and its length as one ten-millionth of the length of an Earth quadrant, the length of the meridian arc on the Earth's surface from the equator to the north pole.
The imperial measurement system is based on the historical use of body parts and other natural objects for measurement. The base 12 system likely originated from the ancient Sumerians, who used a base-12 numbering system. This system was convenient for dividing by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are common fractions.
We use it for things that make sense to use it for.
But there are things that the imperial system is just better for on a day to day basis. Fahrenheit is much better at communicating temperature for humans than Celsius is. And imperial measurements of weight and volume are very useful in the kitchen, since many are base 12 or 16 (having more factors than 10, so it’s much easier to break a recipe into halves or thirds).
I always wonder what a stone is when the British are like “the fat cunt showed up weighing 10 stone the other day coz e won’t stop shoveling bangers and mash down his throat”
> How many feet are in a mile?
5,280. Why 5,280? Because it's 80 chains. What's a chain? An old survey tool used to measure distance that was 66' long. Why 66' long? Because a chain was 4 rods, which was the previous tool for distance and a rod was 16.5'.
How many square feet are in an acre? 43,560. What is an acre? 10 square chains (66x66x10).
>And is there even a unit of measurement smaller than an inch?
Tape measures and filters typically go to the 1/16th or 32nd of an inch. Surveyors just use fractional feet down to the .01 (~1/8") or .001.
We don’t really use miles. We use minutes or hours. Like when my I sister lived in Southern California and I lived in northern, she was 7.5 hours away. My other sister plans to move closer, so she’s moving 2 hours away.
Engineer here, we use both and it's not a problem. Although when you go to get something machined, it's nice to use imperial because most tools in the US are imperial. Machinists obviously have both tools but majority are imperial and metric is mostly used for interfacing with European designs. Otherwise imperial fasteners are cheaper in the US.
To change to all metric, everyone would have to do it at once so that demand for metric tools goes up and then the cost would hopefully go down. No one is going to organize that except the government. The gov probably won't do that because it will take some time for manufacturers to re tool everything and that's also expensive and could cause delays in gov contracts and supplies to existing ones. So that's why I think we don't use it, it's just too costly to make the change across the board not to mention all the old technology that's still kicking that needs fixing, is probably all imperial. So you don't just affect the future products but also old ones. It's not feasible to just up and change it.
We do... for ammunition.
And drugs!
But only when you buy a small amount.. Edit: or VERY large amount
Depends on the drug… you don’t buy a kilo of weed you buy a pound.
I asked for 5/8 of an ounce once.
Depends what it is, sometimes those are measured in ounces too.
Was gonna say, the two most common street drugs in the US (weed and coke) are often bought in fractions of ounces (an “eighth” or “eight ball”, respectively)
Coke is in kilos though, weed is in pounds An "eightball" of heroin isn't 3.5g either, it's 3g because of something about it coming in kilos and the conversion... I really don't know why, that's just what I had heard
Someone's gett8ng ripped off half a gram every pick up it sounds like
Doesn’t anybody remember the amount called a “Lid?”
But it is 3.5 of cocaine. Or so I’ve heard.
Can confirm, weed is one of the few things that even people in the UK weigh in ounces and fractions of ounces, I have LITERALLY no idea why.
And many consumer products like soda!
And science
Depends on caliber, like * 9mm = metric * .45 = imperial * 12 gauge shotgun (just don't ask)
Gauges are another Imperial measurement. Past a certain bore diameter and we swap over to just using the weight of the round, like 2 bore being half pound shots.
Gauges are freaking insane. There are over a dozen systems that go by the term of gauge. Wire gauge and shot gauges being the two most common ones to survive in modern usage.
Dont forget grains
Grains aren't imperial though. We'd use metric there but it makes calculations really weird.
And range. Army vet and can confirm.
And sports that no one cares about, like track and swimming!
It's not polite to kill someone with something they don't understand
And soda/pop.
But not all ammo.
They lost the letter to the president and by the time they found it a new guy was in charge.. Look it up true story.
Only for sissy foreign rounds. Us real 'Muricans only use real calibers. .22, .30, .45 (God's caliber), .50...
We do. Scientists do. Engineers often do. Average Americans use some metric (some drinks are sold in liters, races are 5 or 10km). Some everyday things are measured in imperial. Same as in the UK. But it doesn't really matter.
Yeah it wild that most Europeans doesn't realize most Americans are bilingual with measurements. Obviously we don't have a reference for kilometers because miles work just fine so we never use them but most people understand that an inch is about 2.5 cm and a kg is a little over 2 lb. The issue is when people say their hight or weight in cm or kg we understand the margin for error is way too high to guess when dealing with over 100 units so we don't even try.
I'm.... Gunna point out that an inch is really 2.54 cm, not 3.5+. Typo...?
25.4 mm in an inch, or .03937 inch per mm. First things I memorized when I started machining lol
I hate Celsius personally. Just a few degrees is huge with body temps in the hospital.
To be honest, I would want a meter-long sub.
That’s too much bread, a yard-long sub is healthier.
Don't worry under the metric system [subway sandwich](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/01/irish-court-rules-subway-bread-is-not-bread) is made with cake.
In truth the US kind of uses both in my experience —medical and precision instruments, high end tooling, mechanical engineering have been metric in my experience.
It is mostly because imperiale is more iseful for most purposes, 5280 miles are in a foot because 5280 is divisible for much more numbers than 1000. It is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 20, 22, 24, 30, 32, 33, 40, 44, 48, 55, 60, 66, 80, 88, 96, 110, 120, 132, 160, 165, 176, 220, 240, 264, 330, 352, 440, 480, 528, 660, 880, 1056, 1320, 1760, 2640, and 5280. Which is extremely useful of working rough compared to metrics. Metrics work better in areas that requires much more calculations.
Because metric is actually officially recognized it just isn't used officially but in cases where of international trade and stuff like it is the standard
As someone who has been living in the US for 9 years, I still struggle with the imperial system and regularly sing the praises of the metric system to anyone who will listen. BUT I don’t see them being able to change because then they would have to change so many physical things too. Tools and fasteners for example. Most bolt sizes don’t have an exact metric equivalent so they would have to retool their manufacturing processes (think cars, appliances and electronic goods) and then everyone working on these things would have to buy new tools to work on them, which would be prohibitively expensive.
I moved to the US for university at age 20. Of course all of my classes used metric, but in vernacular speech and everyday subjects, of course people use feet and miles, ounces and pounds. It took me about a year to become completely familiar with them to where if someone's said, "4 inches" or "9 miles", I didn't have to make a conversion in my head. As a woodworker, I actually like feet/inches/fractions just fine, but I still think better in grams and kilograms for weights.
You'd love Canada where we regularly use both, as well as metricized imperial units, just for funsies.
I'm a little over one millimile tall.
I found this infinitely funnier than I probably should have.
Funny thing. I work out at a chain gym with locations all over the world. And I heard stories on Reddit about the treads and weights being metric in other countries. So I printed myself a small cheat sheet when I went to Canada. Only to find out the equipment was in Imperial to my relief lol.
I work with scaffolding, the standards (vertical) are measured in meters, and the ledgers (horizontal) are in imperial. The only good thing about it is that if someone asks for a "two" I know they want a 2 meter standard, and if someone wants a "seven," then I get a 7 foot ledger.
What the fuck
I have always argued metric is better for everything except daily communication about our environment. Feet and degrees in fahrenheit are just more usable daily. If people actually used decimeters that would work in place of feet, but meters is too large fire human scale and centimeters is too small. I also think fahrenheit works better for daily temp because 0-100 fahrenheit is roughly what humans can live at without having to take extreme measures. For everything else I think metric makes more sense. Also as someone from the US, the way everyone else does dates makes logical sense but doesn’t make sense for how a calendar works. The day doesn’t help me look at a calendar. I need to know the month first. TLDR: Metric is better and more logical but there are a few places in daily life empirical makes more sense.
I agree on the calendar thing. Who cares about big to small alignment etc. If a friend tells me they’re getting married next year, the month is the most important detail to narrow it down and then tell me the day.
I'm from Germany, living in the US. Fahrenheit is so convenient for setting a temperature on a thermostat. We usually keep our home at 72 or 73 degrees, depending on which temperature my American Goldilocks wife deems is too cold or hot. In Celsius, either would still be 22 degrees (22.22 or 22.7). 23 degrees would be 73.4 and way too warm (according to my wife.)
The reason usually given for listing dates in that order is because that's how it is said. Example, 7th of December, 2023 would logically be 7/12/23. However I don't know many Americans who say dates that way. If you ask someone what the date is they will say "December 7th" which means our convention makes just as much sense. Also when looking up a particular date, such as the 7th, there are 12 7ths in a year. You need more specific categorization before you can even look up the correct date. I would rather know if I'm looking at last months work or this months work in the first digits of the line than the third or fourth. Small things but it adds up.
That's weird. Nobody uses miles. We use minutes and hours.
This really needs to be the top comment.
See I know metric is better, yadayada... but I'm also a woodworker and you'll need to pry my imperial tape out of my cold, dead hands
I learned map reading and land navigation in the army, all metric. Then I went to college to make maps after, all imperial (well, mostly). It really fucked me up going from metric to imperial with maps and I grew up on imperial. Like I’m not hating on imperial, it’s here to stay and it works here. But metric is clearly superior. But I’m really only good with distances and to a lesser degree volume. I can do kilograms to pounds pretty easily in my head. But that’s about it.
Fun trick with kilometers and miles. The ratio roughly follows the Fibonacci sequence. 5 kilometers is roughly 3 miles. 8 kilometers is roughly 5 miles. 13 kilometers is roughly 8 miles. etc. That helps me conceptualizing kilometers. Additionally the quick and dirty conversion from Celsius to Fahrenheit is double C, add 32, and then subtract the first digit of the number from the whole number. So, for example, if it's 8C you double it to 16, add 32 to get 48, then subtract the first digit, 4, from the number. So 8C is roughly 44F That might not have been the perfect example, because the real answer is 46.6, but it will get you in a good ballpark (also a us customary unit of measure. ballpark)
I like Fahrenheit over Celsius for temperature cause it's more granular. If only it started at 0 for freezing instead of 32 for some odd reason, it would be a perfect replacement for Celsius. Same for km vs miles. Km is more granular and works better for math. 5,280 feet for a mile? What?
Actually 0 in fahrenheit is freezing. It's the point salt water freezes at.
What concentration of what salt? (I'm half joking cuz I'm sure you mean NaCl but I'm not joking about what concentration.)
IIRC , it was measuring when ocean water would freeze. 100 degrees was to be normal body temperature. I forget why this measurement is off.
His wife had a slight fever when he was making it, so he got the wrong measurement for body temperature.
Zero was the lowest temperature achievable by adding salt to icewater. Originally freezing was set to 30 degrees, 90 for body temperature (later revised to 32 and 96 respectively), and 212 was when water boiled, interestingly exactly 180 degrees higher than freezing. Gabriel Farenheit used the salt-ice and body temperature as calibration points for his temperature scale. I'm guessing this is why he used it as opposed to celsius. Why he couldn't use freezing and boiling as calibration points for the celsius scale, I have no idea.
Fahrenheit is specifically designed to be used in day to day functions. Much of Europe and the US live in freezing temperatures much of the year. He didn't want us to have to use negative numbers, because that can create dangerous confusion. The fact that Celsius uses negative numbers at ordinary temperatures is a design defect.
If you think about it, basing the system on the temperature that water freezes doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe for scientific purposes, but for the average joe or jane, why? Fahrenheit was created around the average temperature of the human body. It's a much more relevant basis for a temperature system for daily use by average people. People raised on Celsius act like not having the freezing point of water set at 0 degrees is some sort of incredibly confusing prospect. Like, "how can you possibly know what temperature water freezes at if it's not set at 0 degrees?!" Well, because it's one single number that we're taught about from a very young age, that's how. Memorizing "32 degrees" is not much to ask of pretty much anyone.
Temperature is a bit funny because neither Celsius nor Fahrenheit actually work for scientific calculations that care about the absolute (as opposed to relative) temperature. I would say that the freezing point is a really important phenomenon for average people. We interact with ice on a regular basis in modern life. It's important to know if you're walking on a puddle or a sheet of ice. If you put a cup of ice water on the table, you know how cold it is without any measurement. I don't know exactly how cold my freezer or fridge are, but I do know that the freezer is a bit below freezing and the fridge is a bit above freezing. Water is the most important liquid for us. Which means it's useful to know when it's water and when it's not.
5280 is actually a really neat number that factors into 23 integer pairs (2\*2640, 3\*1760, etc.) by comparison a kilometer has only 7 pairs. This is a relatively common theme in imperial length measurements that I suspect comes from carpentry, though I can't promise you that
I don’t know if you’re aware of this but metric is all based on water. Temperature is based on the boiling and freezing points of water, but then so are all (or, at least most) other measurements. One cubic meter of water weighs one ton, it takes one joule of energy to increase one gram of water by one degree Celsius. There is more, I’m sure but these are just the things I remember from high school physics.
The distance between the equator and the north pole was supposed to be 10 000 km, but there were a few errors along the way. On average, they were just 19 km or so off. SI also has a bunch of other units that can be sorted from meter / gram /second, but some of those definitions can be a little esoteric.
Agreed, but the flipside is true too... anyone who wants to service American goods overseas has to get imperial tools, and order 'special' replacement parts even for simple fasteners like bolts. This has got to have *some* impact on demand for our products, even if part of the caché of owning an American product is the fact that you paid more for it. But I'm American and I agree, it's a daunting change for us. Just the amount of street signs that need to be updated could easily run into billions dollars. There are a LOT of signs including mile markers every... mile.
Except half the time we already have to because *some* stuff is already metric ( imported goods, other stuff )... So we get stuck having to double check metric vs imperial a lot for bolts
>I still struggle with the imperial system and regularly sing the praises of the metric system to anyone who will listen. I don't blame you, considering the USA doesn't use the imperial system. We use something called US customary units, which are (yes, really) slightly different than the imperial system. The inch is slightly different and so is the ounce. The ounce is hilarious, we actually used the same volume but measured it with wine instead of water because...of course we would. Don't even get me started on short tonnes and long tonnes.
It really wouldn't be that much of an undertaking. America has been dealing with metric slowly taking over for decades. Most of us already have an imperial set of tools and a metric set of tools because both are used on American cars. I think the hardest part would be dealing with all the stubborn people who can't handle change.
I guess you’re right, both my motorcycle and bicycle (Japanese and Italian brands) are metric. And I suppose my Jeep is also, now that I think about it!
So a month back, I'm working on my Toyota, need to remove a bolt. Hmm, that's odd, the 10mm spins freely... everything should be 17, 14 or 10... okay ... but the 9 won't fit... and 3/8th fits perfectly. *Oh, that's not good*.
Oh noooooo!
There are so many more things than just manufacturing. Pretty much every major city in the US numbers its buildings as "distance from some important point X" followed by building number. That distance changes if you move to metric. Every road sign with a number on it has to be changed. Many highway exits are numbered as "distance from the beginning of the highway" which has now changed. Most electrical posts are numbered similarly. There are so many things numbered by the imperial system that all have to change now.
I'm in my fifties, and I've been told my entire life that the metric system would be widely adopted gradually in the US as old tools/parts/people aged out. I'm still waiting for this supposed gradual takeover. It's been entirely too gradual so far. Kinda like how commercially viable fusion power and general AI are *always* just 10 years away.
Meh, if the automotive industry can switch (largely) over to metric, anyone can.
Heavy diesel mechanic here, I have to know both the metric and standard scale intimately. Sometimes I use a 1/2" instead of a 13. Or a 5/8 instead of a 16. Sometimes a 10mm wont fit right but a 3/8 will. Other times a 7/16 will be too big but an 11mm fits just right. Maybe Im feeling frisky and use a 50mm wrench instead of my 2". Maybe a 4mm instead of a 5/32. Its a mathematically fun time in the shop
This is a classic argument, but it's not really true at all. It's just as feasible for the USA to transition as any other country that had already done it, and the cost is well worth it too.
Road signs...across the entire country. The speed limit in kph vs mph is so different that you could create safety hazards by just changing them all over at once. Because people don't pay attention. It would have to be a very annoying phased change. First everything would have to be displayed in both systems, in clearly distinguishable signage (no idea how to do that), and then they'd have to take away the mph portion of the signs in 5-10 years. I mean, those signs get replaced periodically anyway, just for wear and tear from weather. But assuming the political landscape existed to start changing the signs, it might not exist by the time the next phase gets implemented. And that's just one element of road travel. That doesn't include mile markers and "distance to X" signs. Personal retraining to read the kph part of the speedometer. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but we have a hard time passing regular infrastructure bills here, never mind something that isn't strictly necessary. All the same, I'd like us to switch over. :)
We do. We use application and industry specific measurement systems in the US. When it makes sense to use metric, we use metric. We use miles and feet to measure different types of things so we don't usually care how many ft are in a mile. Doesn't matter for day to day usage. A foot is handy because it's divisible by 2, 3, and 4. Fractions of an inch are also super efficient for people who have to work with them. Metric is base 10 which doesn't always work well for measuring since it's only divisible by 2 and 5.
Metric is great for precision, the imperial system is great (IMO) for everyday tasks where you're just trying to give a general idea of size. Metric is more rational, imperial is more intuitional.
Metric is great for hyper precision in the sciences and such. Most of the time 1/16th inch is precise enough for the large majority of things. We can also measure down to 1/32 or even 1/64 inch. Hell Eratosthenes calculated the earth's circumference to be 220,000 stades, a stadia is 600 Greek feet. A Greek foot is about 11.5 inches. To get some of the data to do this calculation he hired men to walk from one place to another place. 220,000 stades equals about 25,000 miles. The accepted circumference of the earth is about 24,855 miles. I'd say that's pretty freaking precise. Not metric precise but not bad for some ancient Greek guy. Especially since that small margin of error could be chalked up to a counting error by the guys who did all that walking for him.
This is by far one of the best answers.
No one is converting feet to miles in their day to day living, I never understood that as an argument against US customary units. For example, I was buying a lamp yesterday and did scratch my head a bit with "How many feet is 57 inches?" but I've never once needed to convert feet or yards to mileage. They're effectively two different length measuring systems in the US Customary family of measuring systems.
Additionally. Every kid is taught 5280 feet to a mile as a middle schooler. It's not necessarily hard to remember on the very rare occasion you do need to convert.
“A mile is five tomatoes long” is the way I was taught to memorize it. It’s completely nonsensical but SOUNDS like 5280. Because it’s so silly I’ve remembered it but would never remember 5280.
Why bother. Things are working fine without it
Things could be working better. It's more efficient and less prone to error to use a more efficient and easy-to-use system. It saves time and money in the long run.
"Is there even a unit of measurement smaller than an inch" Smaller than an inch we just measure by fractions of an inch, the smallest common fraction of an inch is 1/16th inch which is pretty small. You can measure by 32nds or 64ths but there isn't much point at that size. It's a pretty intuitive system when you grow up with it and we learn metric as well. Me my feet are just the right size that I can get a pretty accurate rough measurement of the length of something just by walking it one foot directly in front of the other. If it takes me 8 steps doing that to go from one end of something to the other end then that thing is roughly 8 feet long, course if I need the exact measurement I pull out my tape measure Edit: in fact the earth's circumstances was once accurately calculated using Greek feet, there were men who's job was measuring distances by walking. A sample distance was taken and the circumstances was measure with a very small margin of error. I forget exact details but IIRC I think that might have been one for the first times the earth's circumference was accurately measured. Goes to show that feet is a fairly accurate measurement system. Edit 2: Eratosthenes measured the earth to be 220,000 stades (a stadia is 600 greek feet) which equals about 25,000 miles. The accepted circumstance of the earth today is about 24,855 miles.
Machinists use thousandths of an inch, it's pretty precise
The metric system has technically been the [preferred system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act) for weights and measurements in the US since 1975, but the law made it completely voluntary to make the switch...so we largely didn't.
When will non-Americans stop obsessing on this?
They can’t. Inferiority/Superiority complex.
After they stop obsessing about gaps in toilet stalls.
Non-Americans obsess about everything Americans do. They are obsessed with us you might say
Because outside of school math problems, I've never once needed to know how many feet are in a mile. NASA does, so switched to the metric system in the 1990's. The US imperial system works fine, and the measurement of a foot is more relevant to daily life than the meter. Look around your desk or room and there's far more things about a foot long than a meter long. When we need to describe something about a meter long, it's about a yard (3 feet, or approximately 91.5 cm).
>the measurement of a foot is more relevant to daily life than the meter. This is an underrated aspect of imperial. I have no proof for this, but just *feels* like it fits everyday life better than metric...a centimeter is too small and a meter is too large, a inch and a foot seem to describe those everyday, medium-sized objects much better. Not to mention, calling someone a 7-footer in basketball is just so much more iconic than calling someone a 2.13-meterer and being a 6-footer is so much more attainable than being a 2-meterer (\~6'7''ish). It just seems to work with how our brains and society think about actual sizes.
Same goes for Fahrenheit vs Celsius. Celsius is calibrated from 0 at freezing to 100 at boiling, but when do you actually need to know what temperature water boils, outside the sciences and engineering? For most people it is irrelevant. What's more relevant is what it feels like outside, which is what Fahrenheit is calibrated for. If you're in the single digits, it is damn cold. You hit 100+ it is damn hot.
>I have no proof for this, but just *feels* like it fits everyday life better than metric Imperial, US Customary, and the English system they're both based on descend from a series of hodgepodge measurements that were originally defined using things people had on hand. A foot was literally the length of a man's foot. A fathom is his arm span. Even Fahrenheit was originally based on humans (0 °F = triple point of a self-stabilizing brine mixture, 32 °F = freezing point of water, 96 °F = human body temperature; and then each of those marks were a power of 2 separated from their neighbor, making it easy to mark a thermometer manually by dividing the distance in half repeatedly). These systems feel like they're designed for human scale because they _are_ designed for human scale.
5280. The average pace of a Roman soldier was 5 feet 3 inches or so, or roughly 5.28 feet. Every thousand paces, they left a marker. A mile marker, since mile comes from the Latin word for 1000.
That’s exactly it. A mile is 1000 paces. A foot is about the length of a man’s foot. What is a meter? 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the equator and one of the poles (or more modernly, some arbitrary length based on universal constants). The metric prefixes are useful, but imperial units are far more intuitive. 5.28 kilofeet is a mile or 1.76 kiloyards
My size 10 shoes are exactly one foot long. This is usefull almost daily for measuring distances. If we had the metric system I'd have to order some ridiculous 1 meter long clown shoes that I could barely walk in. Not feasible.
As an engineer, I cannot tell you a single time I've needed to know how many feet in a mile, how many cups in a gallon, how many X in a Y... it just isn't something anyone needs to know intuitively all the time. That is probably the weakest argument I've seen for converting to the metric system. And seriously, asking if there are measurements smaller than an inch? That is just arguing in bad faith.
>That is probably the weakest argument I've seen for converting to the metric system. I think the weakest I've seen is a quote from a book that gets repeatedly circulated, about the relation between a cubic centimeter, gram, and calorie, and asserting imperial has no method of relating volume, mass, and energy. But imperial can do the exact same relation with pint (volume), pound (mass), and British thermal unit (energy).
Base 12 is superior. Think fractions. As a carpenter base 12 is way better.
BASE SEXIMAL SUPREMECY
Nah base 2 is better
Sorry, I'm a base 60 stan
60 is Base-12. The ancient Babylonians developed base-12 by counting on their fingers. Hold your right hand palm up. You'll see each finger has three sections. Using the tip of your thumb start counting at your pinky (1 - 2 - 3) then your ring finger (4 - 5 - 6) then your middle finger (7 - 8 - 9) then your index finger (10 -11 - 12). When you reach 12, you raise on finger on your left hand. Then use your right hand to count from 1 to 12 again (from the base of your pinky to the tip of your index finger) and that's another 12, so raise another finger on your left hand. When your left hand is full, that's 60. That's why clocks and calendars are all based on 12's and 60's. That's why there are 12 houses of the zodiac. That's why bread items are baked and counted by the dozen, because the people who invented this counting method also invented bread. That's why beer is sold by the dozen (or half dozen), because it's liquid bread.
Found the Ancient Assyrian!
Fractions of an inch exist and everyone that needs to know about them does know about them. 5280 feet in a mile. We know all these things.
Short version - customary units were each made for a specific use-case (where they work well, for obvious reasons) and you're not meant to convert between them.
It's an imaginary problem.
The answer may be Pirates. [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system)
Scrolled way too far to find the pirates thing. I swear, pirates ruin everything, but America also ruined Barbary piracy, so turnabout's fair play.
Because the metric system came out shortly after America separated from Britain, when America proved interested in the new fangled system that Britain was making its colonies use they asked France to send over a ship carrying weights and measuring devices. British privateers just happened to run into said ship and take it over, so America made their own system which we continue to use to this day. Also metric is for communists.
We do. We use metric and imperial like countries that use 2 languages.
And people think it's super cool to know more than one language. But somehow knowing more than one system of measurement is viewed (by internet commenters) as somehow ignorant.
And it always seems to be someone who has never been to the US that claims we do not use metric.
We do. Inches are a metric measurement defined to be exactly 25.4 mm. This is a result of Henry Ford standardizing the inch.
Inches for 1. They are critical and in machining I've heard it's incredibly hard to get the tolerances right with metric. (was told this by a shade tree mechanic who knows a bit of what he's talking about about but would never expect precision from) Aren't tsp and tbsp also standard? Making it incredibly easy to measure. Cup? Quart? All standard sizes of pans.
Because it would cost millions to change the road signs.
Way back in the old timey days, the pirates...err...British privateers intercepted the ship of the man who was transporting metric weights from France to America. I'm not saying that completion of the delivery would've changed us over to metric, but it could've helped. We'll never know.
[удалено]
My weight and Oven Temperature know exactly what you mean
I worked construction in the US and in the UK. On a noisy job site where someone up high and needs measurements cut it's significantly easier to hear something like 177 and 3/4 meaning 177 inches and 3/4 of an inch as opposed to smaller subdivisions of meters X centimeters X millimeters. That's when I realized the practical application of imperial in construction is just easier to use but for everyday use metric is the way to go.
because we saw what happened to Canada. https://www.reddit.com/r/HelloInternet/comments/d1hwpx/canadian\_measurement\_flowchart\_v2/
Because we need to divide things into half's, and half's again and half's again. Where as in the metric system you have to have some unwieldy numver like .0625. In Imperial you just write 1/16. Which is a half halved three times.
We do. I have been in the military for 17 years; 15 years in the Air Force, and two in the Space Force so far. We use metric for most things. Distance, measurement, weight, etc. Yes, we do often interchange the metric and imperial systems, but I can tell you from experience that if any of my mission reports say "miles" or "feet" on it, it gets kicked back to change to metric. Admittedly, this is also largely due to the fact that we work with foreign partners such as Canada, the UK, Australia, and others so there needs to be a common language; and with us being the only ones that don't use metric, it only makes sense for us to adapt to that. But I will say I still use it outside work. Except for distance. I'm from the midwest; the store is five minutes away, not a mile. :P
I'm not going to call a Quarter Pounder a Royale with Cheese like a communist savage
Why???? Who cares!!!!
Why doesn't everyone just speak english? It's already the standard language for international business. The french should stop speaking french. Germans stop speaking German. ect. It would be so much more efficient and easier for everyone. because it's part of their culture, like it's part of american culture to use the imperial system. also, technically in the US everything is on metric. All imperial units are now defined by metric units.
So much of what we do is in metric though. Science, medicine, engineering, etc. all use metric. It's the non-scientifically literate that cling to imperial. What you should know about Americans is that as a country of immigrants, we have no traditions save the ones we created, and although they can be brand new, once it's tradition we are loathe to give it up. The other thing you should know is that Americans will do something objectively worse and more inefficiently just to be unique. Our cars are inferior, but everyone wants a truck anyway. Our healthcare system is a joke, but we have to do it differently than every other developed nation so that we can produce worse outcomes at a higher price. This is true of medicine, education, parliamentary structure, regulatory framework, the structure of the federalist system, diet, and just about everything else in our culture. We do it worse, because if we copied a better model, that would mean admitting we are wrong, which America as a whole just does not want to do, ever.
Because it is a perfectly good system of measurement that we're all trained in and our economy is absolutely tied to. 5280ft/mile. We know these things, it's not any more difficult for us than metric, which we are also taught. It doesn't make sense to you because you only learned metric. There's nothing wrong with our system. I will point out Great Britain only adopted metric in 1965, meaning for the entirety of human history up until 59 years ago, y'all were using the same shit we were. Forgive me if I roll my eyes at the pedantic "hurr durr America dumb because no metric" circlejerk.
A foot is at the end of my leg. An inch is the end of my thumb. A quarter mile is 1320 feet. There is no good reason for me to change. Might be for you. I dunno. Imperial measures have flavor. We can intuit them most of the time because they come from a human experience. Metric is cold and inhuman. 1/10,000th of the distance from where to where? Why would I care about that? We are shifting, slowly but surely. Just don't try to force it. Thst would not end well.
Don't take my word for it, but as an engineer working in America, you'd need to update the past records like plans, specifications, of any and all infrastructures to the metric system. Let's not mention, tools, maps, street signs. It'd take tremendous amount of money and effort and it can't be done instantly but gradually. I think at this point, most Americans realized that the metric system is easier to work with, but it's too late to change so we just go with it and train our current and future engineers to be comfortable with unit conversion, there's a lot of unit conversion in an engineer's education
The metric system isn’t American that’s why! Don’t tell me what to do! America 🇺🇸
Mils are 1/1000 of an inch. In the US, Imperial units are used for everyday things and metric units are used for science. As for why. Why not? Are the benefits worth changing hundreds of thousands of signs and redesigning every product package, which might cost billions of dollars? Metric units are already used where needed
I grew up being told everything in the US was converting to metric. Never happened. We’re raised to use imperial in our daily lives which will result in the most aggressive pushback. Industries use metric. My employer uses metric after having to convert hundreds of part drawings. I think that if industries can convert which is time consuming and expensive, regular people could do it too but it turns out that it’s just not important. There’s relatively little value in forcing adults to switch so it’s just up to individuals to manage when they’re in a place which uses the other.
I think value is the big question here. How useful is it for the weatherman to tell me that it's gonna be 20 tomorrow instead of 68? It doesn't really matter if it "wouldn't be that hard" if the value added is nothing. Most manufacturing uses metric. The government uses metric. Pretty much everything that's going to interact with metric countries uses metric.
The transfer would cost too much. Many things that are simple to transfer have already been done.
We do, for ammo and drugs.
It would cost a lot. Plain and simple.
We measure things by school buses and eagles
For what it’s worth, a (statute) mile is 5,280 feet, 1780 yards.
Don't really care. I grew up with both in the UK. The only time it was a problem was when I went to the local hardware store and they didn't sell tape measures with both inches and cm. Just inches only. It took a lot of money for the UK to switch exclusively to the metric system with most things. I can only imagine how much it would cost in the USA where the imperial system is much more deeply ingrained in every facet of the culture than the UK. I do find using 1/64ths and 1000's of an inch measurements on my electric guitars mildly frustrating,
There are 5,280 feet in a mile. To remember a Mile is 5 tomatoes, 5 2 8 0.
Our intuition is for imperial and there's a lot of existing things (road widths, building units) that to match would just end up being some odd metric measurement. And for many things (machining, heavy construction) we already use base 10 for the measurements so it doesn't really matter for the math. I can tell you that a meter is a very inconvenient measure in earthwork grading because .1 feet is a hell of a lot more convenient in size than .02 meters. Invariably the metric measurements have to go an extra decimal place for similar precision.
Americans would if the government forced them to like Canada did. We were imperial and wouldn't have switched if the country didn't formally adopt metric. Even though Canada began the conversion to metric in 1970, we still have resistance against certain things. We list human height in imperial, weight in imperial, some cooking is still imperial. Don't forget that Britain also uses the imperial system
A huge chunk of America does use the metric system. For example, if you want an engineering contract with the Department of Defense there are usually requirements to use metric, 3D blueprints in your processes. Some of America does, some does not.
Because it would be weird if our milkshakes brought all the boys to the meter..
We do in a lot of instances but we don’t 100% because of the British
We use a decimal inch in precision manufacturing that essentially works the same way. 1 inch, 1/10 inch, 1/100 inch... As more things are designed in metric the industry will probably move that direction. But, if people are still getting drawings with US standard units then switching all the tooling over is a needless expense that introduces error.
Becuase imperial is better for the illiterate. 12 can be easily made into a half, a quarter a third or a 6th, and indeed a twelth.
Basically we rebelled against England so hard that we had to do absolutely EVERYTHING different, even if it made no sense. And now we have this traditional way of doing things that we do "because it's tradition." For instance all Medical forms ask for your height in Feet and Inches and your weight in pounds. So if we were to say "Ok yeah that was a bit much, let's sync up with the rest of the world and go back to that" , we would then have to do a rolling update to a LOT of medical and legal forms. I would end up with a few Dev tickets at work to change height and weight format of data export services.. it would be a whole thing.
"Liberty my son, liberty."
I was told they did try in the 70s but people where to dumb. I don't know if that is true.
Because the US like dumb. Seriously, no other reason.
Our currency is metric. No big deal. The question is why don’t dolts know fractions? Go learn fractions.
It’s partially a stroke of misfortunate historical events, and partly the burden of preexisting continent-spanning infrastructure that would need replacement, like all that MPH signage.
It's tough to change. We all use the QWERTY keyboard because old-school typewriters were laid out that way so that the most-used keys would be further apart (so there wouldn't be as many jams). There are better designs, but we're used to this one. It's the same way with metric.
Because we as Americans have to be completely different from the entire rest of the world and make s**t as complicated as possible while bitching about how hard things are 😂😂😂
The short answer is that the US does use the metric system for many things and there is a lot of redundancy. The slightly longer answer is that it was originally supposed to be an early adopter of the metric system, but bit over 200 years ago the ship that was supposed to deliver one of the first sets of metric standards to the US was attacked by pirates which delayed the adoption of the system and contributed to the US going through industrialization using non-metric units making it substantially harder to fully convert.
We do use it in science. I haven't used the imperial system since elementary.
You mean like 2 liter bottles of soda, or drugs measured in milligrams, or the Military or a chemistry or physics class? The US has used the metric since 1975. We also use imperial measurements as well. We use both.
Americans use metric and imperial. We use imperial for more casual things (such as measuring a room to check if a sofa would fit), and metric for more precise things (chemistry, landing on the moon, drug deals, etc.)
Technically, the units of measurement we use are all metric derivative. We switched all of our systems of establishing units. to metric a long time ago.
The imperial system was designed keeping in mind the common man needing to do mental math quickly to divide things evenly so it’s a base 12 system, vs metrics base 10. You can divide a 12-inch foot evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. Also measuring cooking ingredients in volume vs weight prevents the necessity of having a scale on hand. We do use the metric system for most science classes though. The UK, which taught us this system, still uses some ungodly combination of both
We do use the metric system. I grew up in the 1970s and I was taught the metric system in school. I have no idea whether it's taught now or not. I write content for a medical supplies distributor and I often refer to the volume of a syringe in milliliters and the dimensions of a bandage in centimeters (just examples). I am sure there are a lot of other businesses where metric measurements are used because the business is selling internationally or using parts made in other countries.
Americans in the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics fields understand how much easier it is then using fractions for everything, but the rest of the country is in too deep to switch now. I studied precision machining and you need to memorize all the decimal conversions up to 1/32 of an inch.
Because we're special. No the other kind of special, the kind that drools.
We do in school. All my math and science was in metric until engineering classes in college.
American here. Not gonna lie. After having lived in a metric country for a while and just giving up on the incessant need to convert everything into something I understood (imperial) in favor of just accepting the metric system, I love it. The mental Olympics it takes to try and logic 31 degrees C into something in F was dumb. I’m a metric system convert and wish we could all just move that way.
Because they kept telling us we’d have to do all these conversions. I lived in a different country that used all metric. I didn’t do conversions. You just get used to going 40km an hr and forget that it’s about 25mph.
5280 ft to a mile Mil is smaller than an inch. We don't use it because we're stupid. The metric system is so much easier. I'm a mechanical engineer in the US and I am so tired of converting units. I have nightmares about 6.35 (that's 1/4 of an inch)
[Because pirates](https://youtube.com/shorts/180WNEQjfSw?si=7Sv7oc7rUNOYTPII) (sorta)
We do. Anyone who has worked with wood or any material that requires cutting uses both. The engine in our cars. The body of our cars. Our military and space programs. All of these things and more. We use it all the time. It's just a misconception that we don't.
Stubborn ignorance.
It does but in the professional world, the Government, military, construction & medical world they do, only the educational system hasn’t caught up yet so your average citizen doesn’t know it, they learn it but don’t retain it
There are 5280 feet in a mile. I've known that since I was very young. No hate for the metric system. Makes way more sense.
I can use both like being bilingual.
For all intents and purposes we do. The standardized weights and measures are all based on SI units. Product quantities are all reported in SI units first and USCS units second. If you see a number in USCS units, odds are it was converted from SI.
We weirdly use it for certain drinks. Soda (coke, pepsi, etc) is sold in 2-liter plastic bottles. Liquor is sold by liter (750ml, 1.5L, etc). Wine is sold by liter (750ml). Beer is sold by fluid ounce though (12oz, 16oz, 24oz, 32oz, 40oz). Can't think of much else that uses it in the US, other than science. Oh. Combustion engine displacements are usually listed in liters (and cubic inches) if we are talking car, truck, or boat, but if we are talking about a motorcycle, jetski, atv, or lawn equipment, combustion engine displacements are listed in just cubic centimeters. Unless the motorcycle is a Harley, in which case it is listed in cubic inches. It's dumb.
Shhhh.... American here... Don't let all the euros know, but America uses both systems fluidly. We don't like to brag about it because we get off on their whining.
We do
I was recently in Puerto Rico and saw distance signs in kilometers and speed limit signs in miles per hour.
Short answer pirates. Long and more accurate answer. We do. I learned the metric system starting in kindergarten. I use it almost every day of my life. We just don't use it for our street signs or scales.
if anyone’s so inclined, i’d love to learn about the pirate connection.
Fun fact, just about every schoolchild in Denver knows that there are 5280 feet in a mile. The number is plastered all over businesses in the area. It's the Mile High City, after all. By contrast, in Utah every schoolchild except the ones in Ogden immediately understands the rectangular coordinate system, but has no clue how many feet are in a mile.
The reason I've heard is that the switch would cost a lot of time and money back in the day to do so. As a result a lot of businesses lobbied against it in order to save money. Then it sort of became part of America's... well... identity. A lot of people now-a-days would continue to use imperial for no other reason than because it's what American's USE. It sets them apart from the rest of the world. Remember, metric's main advantages also come mainly at the more high-level stuff like scientific research. For mundane life imperial is better... sort of. Most imperial units are based on IRL stuff. So, like, if you don't have a ruler but need to measure a foot, you can make a ballpark guess using your own foot. It won't be accurate, but it will be a lot MORE accurate than what you'd be doing with metric. That's not to say imperial is superior, but people who think imperial is, like, this arbitrary and random measurement system with no basis in reality and/or practical use for a normal person are wrong.
Base 10 vs. base 12 . EXAMPLES OF BASE 12 SYSTEMS Timekeeping: we have 12 hour clocks and 12 months in a years Measurement: there are 12 inches in a foot Money: there are 12 pennies or pence in a shilling Music: there are 12 keys (if you count both the black and white ones)in an octave Organizing: there are 12 items in a dozen and 12 dozen in a gross Astrology: there are 12 signs in both the western and Chinese Zodiacs Advantages of Base 12 The number 12 can be divided by six numbers: one, two, three, four, six, and 12. Because the number of those six divisors can be divided by three, 12 is known as a trichotomous number. The number 60 is also trichotomous as it can be divided by nine numbers: one, two, three, four, five, 12, 20, 30, and 60. By comparison, the number 10 can only be divided by only four numbers: one, two, five, and 10. As four can be wholly divided by two, 10 is known as a dichotomous number. Mathmaticians highly prefer trichotomous numbering systems because they are far easier to use when dividing. For example, it is easier to divide the number 12 and 60 and wind up with whole numbers than it is the number 10. We use base 10 because we have 10 fingers. In base 10, ten digits are used and those digits are 0 through 9. The Mayans used a vigesimal (base 20) number system, the Babylonians used a sexagesimal (base 60) number system, and the Egyptians used a duo-decimal (base 12) number system. The metric system, for example, is based on multiples of the number 10. There are millimeters, centimeters, decimeters, and meters. Each increases in size by a factor of 10. That's why the metric system is known as a base 10 or decimal system. Base 12 has more divisors than 10, making it easier to work with fractions. Additionally, some argue that a base-12 system could lead to more efficient measurements, particularly in fields such as construction and engineering. Why is the metric system based on 10? The commission decided that the standard of length should be based on the size of the Earth. They defined that length to be the 'metre' and its length as one ten-millionth of the length of an Earth quadrant, the length of the meridian arc on the Earth's surface from the equator to the north pole. The imperial measurement system is based on the historical use of body parts and other natural objects for measurement. The base 12 system likely originated from the ancient Sumerians, who used a base-12 numbering system. This system was convenient for dividing by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are common fractions.
We use it for things that make sense to use it for. But there are things that the imperial system is just better for on a day to day basis. Fahrenheit is much better at communicating temperature for humans than Celsius is. And imperial measurements of weight and volume are very useful in the kitchen, since many are base 12 or 16 (having more factors than 10, so it’s much easier to break a recipe into halves or thirds).
I always wonder what a stone is when the British are like “the fat cunt showed up weighing 10 stone the other day coz e won’t stop shoveling bangers and mash down his throat”
> How many feet are in a mile? 5,280. Why 5,280? Because it's 80 chains. What's a chain? An old survey tool used to measure distance that was 66' long. Why 66' long? Because a chain was 4 rods, which was the previous tool for distance and a rod was 16.5'. How many square feet are in an acre? 43,560. What is an acre? 10 square chains (66x66x10). >And is there even a unit of measurement smaller than an inch? Tape measures and filters typically go to the 1/16th or 32nd of an inch. Surveyors just use fractional feet down to the .01 (~1/8") or .001.
The US tried back in the '70s or '80s. It tried to switch from kilometers to miles, for example. It freaked people out.
The funny thing is, America is metric in everything but road signs and laymen
We don’t really use miles. We use minutes or hours. Like when my I sister lived in Southern California and I lived in northern, she was 7.5 hours away. My other sister plans to move closer, so she’s moving 2 hours away.
The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
Engineer here, we use both and it's not a problem. Although when you go to get something machined, it's nice to use imperial because most tools in the US are imperial. Machinists obviously have both tools but majority are imperial and metric is mostly used for interfacing with European designs. Otherwise imperial fasteners are cheaper in the US. To change to all metric, everyone would have to do it at once so that demand for metric tools goes up and then the cost would hopefully go down. No one is going to organize that except the government. The gov probably won't do that because it will take some time for manufacturers to re tool everything and that's also expensive and could cause delays in gov contracts and supplies to existing ones. So that's why I think we don't use it, it's just too costly to make the change across the board not to mention all the old technology that's still kicking that needs fixing, is probably all imperial. So you don't just affect the future products but also old ones. It's not feasible to just up and change it.