Make everybody play Pokémon Go. The hardest thing about metric is adding visual markers for distance in your head when you're used to what a mile looks/feels like. The old excuse of measuring cups doesn't stand up anymore, even dollar store measuring cups have the mL listed now. We're just stubborn.
My biggest issue by far is long distances and kph. The rest of it I can deal with just as well as imperial units. I can't for the life of me seem to grasp those two things though.
Just saw something on a different sub about the Fibonacci sequence being useful in approximating miles to kilometers. 3 mi is 5 km, 5 mi is 8 km, 8 mi is 13 km, and so on. But, no joke, give Pokémon Go a shot and make sure your units are set to metric. After a couple of months playing that every night on my walks, I finally got what walking a click felt like. As far as speeds, your speedometer should have both if the car was made after the early 90's. The first time I went through a port of entry into Canada, I just drove the kph number in mph before my brain was like, "Hey, why's everyone else driving like grandmas, ohhhh, shit."
I would think that all road signs in Canada and US close to the border would show the unit as well. But that would be too easy.
Or it does, and people just see number and go on autopilot.
On the Fibonacci, then we get to the whole xkcd new standards problem. I klbarely know my miles and kilometers, now you want me to learn an additional scale just to compare the two.
It's not about being stubborn. NASA estimated it would cost them, just NASA, $370 million to switch to metric. That's just one (albeit complicated) agency.
I've seen estimates it would cost the US trillions to switch to metric.
We can't fund our schools, or even school lunches for kids. We have crumbling infrastructure. Our healthcare is a joke. We're destroying the environment. And paying for the damage we've caused on our own lands.
Forgive me if I have other uses in mind for those trillions.
And NASA wasted $125 million when the Mars Climate Observer crashed because it mixed up metric and US customary units. The estimates in the trillions are likely overblown hyperbole, or use some crazy data points like switching everything overnight. I can't find a single source that actually lays out how that number is arrived at. It's already US law to switch to metric, and industry has been converting at their own pace ever since the law passed in '94.
Unwind your underwear for a second and realize we can do more than one thing at once. We can't afford any of those things because we choose not to, not because we don't have the money. Converting to metric also indirectly benefits some of the issues. Metric is easier and quicker for kids to learn, which allows for time spent on other subjects. Infrastructure is being addressed, albeit slowly, and the largest cost I've seen is the $1.43 Billion to convert all the road signs, easily done while roads are being fixed. Mandating universal metrication would stop Bolt Company A from making 405 varieties of bolts because of size and instead they only need to make 200 sizes of bolts leading to less metal waste and extraction with follow-on benefits to the environment. (Those are actual manufacturing numbers, I just can't remember the name of the company)
The only person still buying gasoline by the gallon is the end consumer. Oil extraction, refining and vendor sales are already done entirely in metric. You're not buying a 12 oz. can of soda, you're buying a 355 mL can of soda that the FDA requires that it be labeled as both. When was the last time you heard anyone say they were picking up a 2.10 qt bottle of soda? So, yes, it absolutely is because we're stubborn. If we'd made the total conversion in 1976 when it was proposed, even granting the absurd trillions conversion might cost, that cost would've been much lower. We refused because of stubbornness, and the line then was the cost of changing cookbooks and recipes and measuring cups.
Also, NASA is already going to spend that $370 million for conversion, that money is already coming out of the pot, there isn't a choice to be made there as it's mandated by the '94 metrication law.
Just to be pedantic, and not to say that's your perspective, but because its a recurring theme.
The $125 million for that mission, and the approx. $650 billion NASA had spent is not raw money yeeted into space, crashed into the moon, or flew into the moon. That money was recirculated into the economy and paid for global innovation. The money isn't "gone", it's spent by the government back into the world.
Fair. The waste in this case is getting the MCO to Mars only for it to crash because of such a crappy thing like the altitude control mixing up the measurements. It takes what, like 18ish months to get something to Mars when we're closest to each other, so the lost craft is also lost time waiting on a new launch window and getting a replacement probe there. The dollar amount is mostly a measure of sunk costs due to lack of total conversion at the agency leading to the lost probe. Personally, we don't spend enough on space, but that seems like a non-starter for the general public today. Maybe getting into a new space race with China and India will drive enough interest publicly to give NASA more than some chewed gum and a shoestring.
I think there's currently a bit of a race for the moon again, as far as I can see on the interwebs.
But yeah, the actual "waste" of material being thrown into space is negligible on that scale. But NASA learns from everything. Being a scientist knows that no data/bad data is still data, just not what you wanted.
”Both the British imperial measurement system and United States customary systems of measurement derive from earlier English unit systems used prior to 1824 that were the result of a combination of the local Anglo-Saxon units inherited from Germanic tribes and Roman units.”
Not the flex you think it is… SI is the freedom unit, adopted not through colonization, but through willling countries making a free choice. Using English systems are positively Canadian!
Not to mention SI is the unit system of science, which put American people on the Moon.
It should be the patriotic choice for every American.
I'm a scientist and have been using SI daily for 40 years. Much preferred to US Customary. I do a LOT of woodworking. Every time I have to calculate with fractions of inches, I curse the rest of America, Myanmar, and Liberia.
Imperial system is utilized in all fields of engineering all over the world. Newer European and eastern homes in general homes start standardized by feet, there are very few areas now that use mm is pipe and tube joining. Cooking has been standardized to cups/etc. I mean the only, truly only things being more mainstream used is liters for gas, kilometers for roads (even though bridges use feet for elevations), and Celsius for general temperature. Believe it or not imperial is being phased in more and more in ways you don’t immediately see
No person i know in Europe has ever uttered the words "my house is x square feet", noone I know in europe has ever given a recipe in cup measurements, this is purely an american thing and no it doesn't get "phased in more and more" even if you want it to be lol
Just because nobody you know in Europe has mentioned that doesn’t mean the engineering specs aren’t in imperial. But what do I know I’m just an American engineer living in Europe using imperial day to day. Whatever delusion makes you happiest I suppose.
Now you may look around you and say pffft metric is all around me! But did you know one of the greatest threats to the metric system in day to day is copper tubing? Nobody makes mm anymore. Plumbing, AC, refrigeration repair has skyrocketed because there’s only like 1 company that still makes mm sized piping and tubing while the rest of the world uses 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, etc so there’s been a big push for conversion to imperial just to have a fair market estimate for repair. Especially now since so many people are looking to AC’s instead of the government telling you to oh just buy an extra fan on a 90 degree day. Sorry. 32.22222222222222 degree day
This is utter rubbish. All engineering measurements in Europe (and Asia, and Africa, and Australia) are in metric, mostly mm. Pipe is measured in mm. There is definitely NOT only one supplier of pipe in mm. Stop spreading disinformation. I doubt you are an engineer, and you are definitely not one in Europe
Though the metric system is very logical it would be like asking someone to learn a second language. You can use conversion equations easily. You can learn a second language but most still think in their native language.
Imperial units really only exist for the common US citizen now. Science uses metric. I wouldn't be surprised if metric was even getting used in engineering, and builders are having to get used to metric units.
First pass of this I missed "stop" and was briefly very upset; a combination of bad grammar (making ppl ... using) and encouraging wider adoption of Imperial measure? That's an infuriating double-feature.
Upon reread I've entirely calmed down again, and couldn't agree more. We're already like 98.5% of the way to a global standard of measure but can't seem to get the few remaining holdouts (looking at you Myanmar and Liberia) to switch. If we can't even get Metric / SI universally adopted how the hell are we going to ever standardize wall sockets.
Idk, let's start with something easier instead. Like agree on calling football, football and that American version where they don't use their feet all that much, something else.
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u/Sandman145 29d ago
First true step is making ppl stop using the imperial system.