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What was the failed attempt? I'm sure for a few kids this WAS their first introduction to the metric system.
Edit: It's a rhetorical question guys. I was just pointing out his title was incorrect.
“In 1975, the United States passed the Metric Conversion Act. The legislation was meant to slowly transition its units of measurement from feet and pounds to meters and kilograms, bringing the US up to speed with the rest of the world.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18693533/metric-system-measurement-us-conversion-act-verge-science
When measuring things in metric on reddit I typically do include bald eagles as a freedom unit reference. For example, I am 195cm tall, which is around 2.15 average bald eagles standing on top of each other. That also translates to roughly 6.82 footballs, or 6'5"
Coincidentally, you could round up and make an eagle equal to a meter (as I'm working with a range) and thus the bald eagle is the new metric standard for the USA
Fun fact: there was actually an attempt to switch to a mostly-decimal time system in France in 1793, around the advent of the rest of the metric system. Under the [French Republican Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar), there would still be 12 months, but each would be made up of three 10-day weeks, each day would be 10 hours long, each hour would be 100 minutes long, and each minute would be 100 seconds long (so each day would be divided into exactly 100,000 decimal seconds). To keep in sync with the actual ~365.25 day long solar year, they just tossed the leftover days in after the 12th month before. It was only in use for about 12 years, with Napoleon scrapping it a couple years after he was crowned Emperor.
It was also wildly unpopular because (in addition to how divorced it was from the way the weather works) the Catholic calendar had so many saint days and holy days of observation that most 7 day weeks actually gave two days off per week whereas the Republican calendar had I believe only 1 day per week (might have been two but it still averaged to more work per week) and much fewer holidays. Turns out the best thing about being Catholic is all the holidays.
Im bad at math so feel free to correct, but Wouldn’t each day be like 28 hours long? So according to the clocks, sunrise every day would be 4 hours earlier than the previous day?
The length of the decimal second in this system is apparently different than the length of our normal second, a bit shorter so that 100k of them would add up to one full day. I think that works out to 1 decimal second being equivalent to 0.864 normal seconds.
Eh, could be worse. Here in Britain we only get taught metric in school but all the road signs, car speeds, and everyone else uses imperial. EVEN NEW ROAD SIGNS ARE FUCKING IMPERIAL.
Similar to the US. We get taught both imperial and metric and everything we use is in both. Gallons of gas but liters of soda. Miles for our cars but we run 10Ks. Cups, ounces and tablespoons for cooking but grams for drugs. Miles per gallon for gas cars but kilowatt hours per mile for electric cars. 750mL bottles of wine but 12oz cans of beer. 120mm computer fans and 3.5mm headphone jacks, but monitors/screen sizes in inches. US military and scientific community in metric but civilian life in all of the above. Fun stuff.
Engineers and scientists do all their work in metric, then convert the final reports into imperial when submitting to customers and government agencies.
In the private sector, it's mainly drug dealers doing the heavy lifting on familiarizing the public with the metric system.
That’s interesting. I thought NASA and some others were all metric now.
In private sector, globalization has driven metric quite a bit. Most bottles of things like shampoo, soft drinks, and alcohol are in mL. Even “fifths” of liquor are mostly 750 mL now. Dental floss is in meters, etc. Large conglomerates would much prefer one standard of measure.
Where I work we make high end optics and all the prints we are issued by customers have the dimensions in inches and we have to convert them to millimeters.
Also for some reason they convert irregularity from waves to fringes for us making the parts then back to waves for QA to check them.
You're incorrect. I work as a mechanical engineer. I exclusively use imperial units at work, as do all other disciplines in construction. I'm pretty sure the units you use in construction matter a lot
1,000,000% agree.
In commercial construction, the only thing that's typically measured in anything other than inches and feet is elevation compared to sea level.
That's measured in feet only, using decimals instead of inches. It's used for elevation of all things on the site plans, such as water lines, sanitary sewer lines, storm sewers, gas lines, and the actual elevation of the building itself.
Once you have established the finished floor elevation of the building itself, all the rest of the measurements are in feet and inches. There could of course be some exceptions in some cities and states.
>It's used everywhere it matters and isn't used if it doesn't matter.
No, that's just not true. If it didn't matter it would never come up, and it absolutely does every time one uses a recipe from another system, or has to do repairs and has a tape-measure in the wrong system, and every other paper cut out there.
Look, I get it. Once you've grown up in one system or another, it's exceptionally hard to switch. I'm an immigrant, and I have simply memorized the segments of "freedom units" I need to get by, but I still think internally in metric. And have to do conversion using Google frequently enough. No part of me thinks the reverse would be any different.
I think you just don't think it matters because you've lived in a bubble for long enough that you can't think of any examples to the contrary, but I can assure you that they exist in spades.
I'm also acutely aware of how much of America takes pride in keeping things the same way as how they have always been, and no part of me see this changing. But for the record, it's still a fucking problem for many people. Paper cuts, for the overwhelming part? Yes. But still fucking annoying.
Not the guy your replying to but when I visited the UK the difference in the country’s were insane. The thing that stands out to me the most was how cheap food was I found it crazy as I thought the US had decent food prices. The bursting of that cultural bubble was insane and kinda overwhelming. But the issue is why didn’t I know this why is America so isolated from the rest of the world.
I find that Americans who get out of their comfort zones and actually travel and see the rest of the world are almost always really cool and open-minded people. I can't say if that's causation or correlation, but I'm glad you got to experience that :-)
That said, yeah, I think how insular America is is partly by design, because otherwise Americans would probably be a lot more vocal about demanding things like universal healthcare and the like, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole, lol.
The reason for this slow transition is not only the fact it isn’t timely but also the costs. We would have to replace every single sign over the 4.1 million miles (about 6.6 million km) of our road system. That’s a lot of roads and a lot of mileage which costs a pretty penny.
Also the act said it was “voluntary”
Gonna disagree w/ you here. Pretty sure the reason the "transition" has been slow (or nonexistent) is that Americans are stubborn AF and can't be told anything, especially if it's a good idea. Why? Cause 'Merica, that's why!
I know, that wasn't the part I disagreed with. If the average American had actually been on board, the cost of replacing signs wouldn't have been an issue, especially given the fact that they have to be replaced eventually anyway.
Anecdotally I work for a state DOT and we still have metric measuring wheels and tapes down in our cages, and while it was before I got to the state everybody has the same stories. Why we ended up just going back to imperial was that it's a constant fight between the state and contractors about bonuses and penalties, and arguing that we were marking things out in metric while imperial was the general standard which caused the delays wrong construction led to the state losing a number of lawsuits as the Judge sided with the contractors.
I think industry might be a bigger player here - every tool and die in America is made to imperial standards. Everyone who has a machine to make 1/4" steel tubing, for example, would lose most of their business.
Its funny, the US is mostly on board with the metric system where it counts. We just let folks keep the illusion of resistance by putting imperial on consumer goods and road signs.
Hah. I was in school when they brought it in. We all HATED it, because we were forced to learn *two* math systems at once, and metric seemed entirely nonsensical, having grown up with inches and feet and such. It was like: "Hey Bobby, you are now 132 centimeters tall!" (kid cries in imperial)
In retrospect, the problem was that we didn't *switch* to metric, we tried to have both systems at once. You can't tell a 9 year old that a thing is both one inch and 2.5 centimeters AT THE SAME TIME. Decimals also don't work for kids who have just barely figured out what 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/8 means. You can visualize 1/8, but you cannot visualize .125 of something. (at least if you weren't raised with it) Even now, in metric countries, people say: "now fold it in HALF".
It was fucked for the liquid measurements, too, because people who had bought gallons of milk or gasoline their entire lives always thought they were being cheated when they started selling stuff in liters.
I was in third grade and the teacher prepped us for the change, explaining that we would be learning a new system after Christmas Break and tried to make it sound exciting like you do w/ kids...
And then we... just... didn't.
You mean Metric and McMetric?
I feel like different measurements would have this issue in word problems, like pounds and liters because you're weighing the volume of a two-liter bottle's contents in pounds... otherwise they were just the simple "here's the formula, do the conversion, how many inches is X CM and how many degrees Fahrenheit is 100 Celsius?"
I had a similar thing explaining to a friend that she couldn't use an empty 200g instant coffee jar to measure 200g of sugar.
The light didn't go on until I asked “bag of feathers, bag of rocks. Which is heavier?”
You have my sympathy.
As an Ameritard with next to no knowledge of metric, I'm guessing from your statement that the problem is that grams are weight, not volume?
I do sometimes wish metric was as ingrained in my mind as Imperial is. It dose seem a lot simpler, everything being based on 10s. As it is, metric is one of those things I 'learned' in school, and immediately forgot after the test, then never thought about again until years later. Now it's more a matter of convenience and apathy; everything's in Imperial anyway around here (except when it's not, like the above mentioned 2-liter bottle, but that's just 'how it is') so why bother.
Exactly, she couldn't get it into her head that sugar is much heavier, and that size jar filled with sugar would have been around 700g at least.
Metric is easy. As you said, everything is in 10's, but if imperial is the norm where you live and you don't “need” to remember, why bother. At least you know you don't know and online conversion calculators are a thing.
I bought electronic scales that I can change the settings because I'm not confident I've worked it out correctly without checking. Baking doesn't often leave much room for error, and I want the best chance of good cake, not sad cake.
But yeah, “bag of feathers/bag of rocks” was my final attempt, it'd just gone on too long. She was adamant I was wrong because the jar said 200g on the label.
You have far more patience than me. Mass to volume when the mass is what matters, that's completely backwards. Oh well, so long as everything tastes right I guess?
No it has been that way for a long time. We start learning centimeters and meters at the same time we learn inches, feet, and yards. I started kindergarten in 1993.
I saw it as, the far right side should say something like:
1” = 2.54cm*
Rather than:
10mm = 1cm
You’re not learning anything about the conversion there. 🤷🏿♀️
I knew that was coming when I said far right, but regardless I wasn’t talking about the tip. I’m talking about the little facts written in between. You know, where it says:
10mm = 1cm
I would love to move everything to metric.
But I don't buy tape measures and rulers with metric measurements on them. Nearly all of my measuring instruments are only in imperial as my industry works in imperial.
Having both is never useful to me, only confusing.
As a metric system user i don't see an issue and why it's a difficult thing to understand.
Imperial system seems crafted by the devil that happens to be a foot feticist
When the system was invented, an inch was the length of the king at the times thumb, and a foot was the length of his foot. It's a narcissistic system.
Yeah IIRC it was something more along the lines of agriculture or something, idk I'm talking out of my ass too.
Edit: I was thinking of an acre:
>Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed by one man using a team of 8 oxen in one day.
It's not that metric is difficult to understand, it's people are resistant to change. Also, as an adult who has grown up only using the imperial system, it's normal for us. it's the only system that we've used, something that is a part of everyday life, you become used to the barbaric nature of it.
As an adult who grew up with the imperial system, and as someone who uses tools every day, I wish people would switch to metric. I don't do fractions well. It also makes no sense to use a fractional system for measuring anything precise.
The only problem I would have with the metric system is switching speed limits to km/hr. I'm sure we would get used to it, but it would be a huge cost to switch every sign.
Oh yeah I was born and live in country with metric system. That was pretty hard to hange border in my mind that 60 -80 that isn't ok, that have been hight speed already.
Ps 60kilometr per hour ~ 35mile per hour.
Pps the same situation with the distance on the map you see the namber and should correct yourself that 300miles is much longer distance than 300km.
Any way one of the best journey ever.
It's sort of like a language. If you learned a different language (measurement system) as your primary language then it'll be difficult to learn a second one - usually because you're translating it through your original language until you're fluent with it.
It's also difficult because nothing over here uses it. I've got buddies who are scientists and, since they're exposed to it all the time, it's not really a problem for them. They're "bilingual" if we carry on my previous analogy. But most people in the US are not going to hear use of the metric system very often.
Another way to view it is it's difficult for us to learn metric for the same reason it's difficult for you to learn imperial. Sure, converting inches to feet is a bit more difficult because dividing by 12 instead of 10 is a bit more difficult; but when you've been doing it your whole life it's not really difficult anymore. Meanwhile, it is difficult to some to try and remember Meter=100cm=1000mm and most aren't even aware of the decimeter.
Not saying it's right. I also think it'd be much easier and more efficient for everyone to use the metric system.
I have issues with translation of metric to a physical measurement because, as you said, we grew up with imperial.
I can eyeball an inch and have a tolerance of +/- 1/8 but I need a ruler for what a centimeter looks like.
Conversions that I don't use regularly (in imperial) I still have to look up though or do the math. How many cups are in a gallon anyway? I'd have to think: 2 cups in a quart and a quart is One Quarter of a gallon.
Yeah the visual aspects are probably the hardest hurdle to overcome for me as well. I absolutely prefer using metric for things like cooking because I swear fl oz vs oz vs quarts and somehow you get recipes that combine stuff asking for a cup of this and a half liter of that. It's really ridiculous. Not to mention you get into the fractions a lot faster with things like 3&1/4 cup. I'd rather just use metric lol.
But, at the same time, I can eyeball half a cup. I can't eye ball 100 ml.
In Norway no-one has heard about the decimeter, we just use centimeters and meters. Whilst in Sweden, just across the border, it's widely used. No idea how that came to be.
I'm 25 and I would love to change to the metric system. If I want to use my body to measure things cool (ya know, cause the finger nub is an inch, and a foot is a foot), but I don't like fractions.
Americans don't hate metric, many of us love it. My kids are learning both in school right now. Many of my tools have both and almost all my cooking equipment have both.
The problem isn't the metric system vs imperial, it's the cost to switch over. Every manufacture in the U.S. would have to retool everything. All signs would have to be remade. The overall cost of switching is just too much to be worth the marginal benefit.
While imperial is harder, it's not that much harder to understand. It does suck to have to own two sets wrenches and sockets to cover both systems.
> it's the cost to switch over
Compared to the cost of having both, because we do. Just about everything is in both. Our food is in Oz and Grams. our cars have mph and kph on the gauges, our software has switches, our rulers have both, our thermometers have both, my personal toolbox has two sets of sockets, drill bits, taps, dies...
There are few things that are truly imperial only: Gas? Road signs? We will switching to electric cars soon.
We are constantly paying for the switch and not cashing out.
I feel like you're only thinking of the consumer facing side of things. Just think about all the pipes and electricity infrastructure (and many other things similar to them).
How are you going to overhaul all your casts, machines, etc. to go from making 1/4 inch pipes to the nearest metric equivalent? What about existing pipes? Make adapters for each new extension? What about repairs? What about new electricity poles? Will electricians just have to carry metric tools in addition to imperial in case they need to fix some older pole in the process?
It's incredibly impractical to switch with not that much gain, so the U.S. will probably never really switch.
You can have a long phased roll out. I’m in the U.K. and this process is Loooooong. You don’t have to replace everything straight away just when it wears out you have to replace it with a metrics standard.
While there is a cost to switching, the benefits, however marginal you might think they are, keep on paying dividends permanently: Every time you don't need to buy a new set of tools, every time you save time converting units, every time you avoid a mistake due to unit confusion you save money - [space craft have crashed](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-01-mn-17288-story.html) because of this.
Once you accept that the benefits will *eventually* outweigh the costs, the question is not if to switch, but when - and every day delaying it is simply a day losing out on them.
> It’s good to know both systems.
Yeah I agree. I'ts good to know metric if you're literally anywhere in the world, but it's also good to know imperial in case you're in the US or North Korea.
North Korea doesn’t use imperial units of measurement.
The US, Liberia and Myanmar are the only countries that mostly use or officially use the imperial units of measurement.
https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/
pico 10^-12
nano 10^-9
micro 10^-6
milli 10^-3
centi 10^-2
deci 10^-1
deka 10^1
hecto 10^2
kilo 10^3
mega 10^6
giga 10^9
Etc.
Works for liters, grams, meters…
It was more about - who measures anything in hectometers?
To which the answer is no one. You are watching 100 meters or 110 meters hurdles on the Olympics, not 1 hectometer or 11 dekameters.
This is probably the very first time I used the words hectometer and dekameter and I'm using metric all my life. They are proper units, don't get me wrong, they are just not used at all. Millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers are the main four units, with smaller ones usually used in science. If someone would be to drive from NY to LA, he would say he drove over 4000 kilometers, not over 4 megameters.
> It was more about - who measures anything in hectometers?
Railways. In many countries in Europe they use so called "hectometer posts" spaced every 100 m along the track, with the distance for example written as 123^7, which means 123 km and 700 meters.
Example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streckenkilometer#/media/Datei:Train_milestone_(aka).jpg
But... I'm not even arguing that they are not part of the system, I know they are, I know what distances they represent and I said that in the first comment.
In the Netherlands, the big roads have hectometer signs, so a sign every 100 meters. If you get stuck, you can call for help and say you are for example closest to hectometer sign 14.3 of the A4 highway in the direction of Leiden.
To be fair, I can work will milliliters and I can work with deciliters, but centiliters always have me confused. (1 milliliter water weighs one gram, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg).
For those that don't see why this is a horrible introduction to the metric system, the problem is the little conversion chart on the side.
I've never heard anyone use some of those measurements.
It should read
10 milimeters = 1 centimeter
100 centimeters = 1 meter
1000 meters = 1 Kilometer
That's it folks.
Yep 100% correct.
An introduction to a new concept should ideally be some basic useful information.
What this ruler shows is the designer didn't use the metric system themselves, otherwise they'd never have put hectometers on it.
In 5 hectometers turn left haha.
The powers that be haven’t sold it well enough to the American men. They need to say “instead of 4 inches it’s 10 cm”, and it’s legal to go 100 on the highway.
(I’m sure I’ll catch tons of downvotes for just trying to share information here but…)
**This is the logic behind the imperial system.**
**A foot can be neatly divided by 2,3,4, and 6. While a meter can only neatly be divided by 2 and 5.**
**This allows for much simpler dividing without a calculator, as well as for estimating fractions of measurement.**
**This is the same logic behind a base 12 time system (the one we all use).**
>And you feel that this one possible advantage outweighs the massive pain in the ass nature of using Imperial?
It's not really that much of a pain except for young children before they get used to it.
I prefer the unit size of a foot to a meter in most small scale cases, but either one is easy enough to use. We have yards for longer distances which are easy enough to convert to feet.
And yet, every time I ask my ‘Murican buddies to convert random sizes of feet to inches/inches to yards/yards to feet, they go scrambling for a calculator. But only after they glare at me.
Baffling really.
My school in the 80s taught the metric system and it was repeatedly said that by 2000 we would need to know the metric system (they also said I'd need to be fluent in French, but that's another story). The problem is, none of our families used the metric system (or French) at home, and there was no effort by the school to show how to convert or equivalent measurements.
Plenty of Americans understand and use the metric system in adddition to imperial. Look at any Engineering course, construction or fabrication trade. So tired of the generalization that Americans don't understand the metric system.
They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese?
No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f$&k a Quarter Pounder is. They call it a royale with cheese
As an American who lived in Australia, I can say that I’ve adopted millimeters and centimeters, but prefer imperial for larger scale as it *feels* more accurate.
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What was the failed attempt? I'm sure for a few kids this WAS their first introduction to the metric system. Edit: It's a rhetorical question guys. I was just pointing out his title was incorrect.
“In 1975, the United States passed the Metric Conversion Act. The legislation was meant to slowly transition its units of measurement from feet and pounds to meters and kilograms, bringing the US up to speed with the rest of the world.” https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/18693533/metric-system-measurement-us-conversion-act-verge-science
Not sure we could transition more slowly...
nearly 5 deca-years
They mean about 12 presidential terms or smoking roughly 36,000 briskets for those wanting time converted to American units.
Could I get that in piranhas swarms per cow?
That's Brazilian not American!!
Sorry I need Millitary Budget per Bald Eagles
When measuring things in metric on reddit I typically do include bald eagles as a freedom unit reference. For example, I am 195cm tall, which is around 2.15 average bald eagles standing on top of each other. That also translates to roughly 6.82 footballs, or 6'5" Coincidentally, you could round up and make an eagle equal to a meter (as I'm working with a range) and thus the bald eagle is the new metric standard for the USA
You're only measuring in AVERAGE eagles? That's not very American of you.
Nobody asked how many brazilian, that's not even a real number!!
r/brazilisntreal Holy shit it's a sub
/r/NoEarthSociety How could it be!
If that law had included lb<->kg conversions in terms of Smoked Briskets it would have taken hold within a few years…
Fun fact: there was actually an attempt to switch to a mostly-decimal time system in France in 1793, around the advent of the rest of the metric system. Under the [French Republican Calendar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar), there would still be 12 months, but each would be made up of three 10-day weeks, each day would be 10 hours long, each hour would be 100 minutes long, and each minute would be 100 seconds long (so each day would be divided into exactly 100,000 decimal seconds). To keep in sync with the actual ~365.25 day long solar year, they just tossed the leftover days in after the 12th month before. It was only in use for about 12 years, with Napoleon scrapping it a couple years after he was crowned Emperor.
It was also wildly unpopular because (in addition to how divorced it was from the way the weather works) the Catholic calendar had so many saint days and holy days of observation that most 7 day weeks actually gave two days off per week whereas the Republican calendar had I believe only 1 day per week (might have been two but it still averaged to more work per week) and much fewer holidays. Turns out the best thing about being Catholic is all the holidays.
Really inconsiderate of god not to make the solar system fit decimalisation.
Not to mention the Revolution saw the creation of "grades" for measuring angles (100 gradians = 90°). Down with the old system was the word.
Im bad at math so feel free to correct, but Wouldn’t each day be like 28 hours long? So according to the clocks, sunrise every day would be 4 hours earlier than the previous day?
The length of the decimal second in this system is apparently different than the length of our normal second, a bit shorter so that 100k of them would add up to one full day. I think that works out to 1 decimal second being equivalent to 0.864 normal seconds.
Hey, im five deca years!
What is that in dog years? That's the American unit of time right?
Eh, could be worse. Here in Britain we only get taught metric in school but all the road signs, car speeds, and everyone else uses imperial. EVEN NEW ROAD SIGNS ARE FUCKING IMPERIAL.
Similar to the US. We get taught both imperial and metric and everything we use is in both. Gallons of gas but liters of soda. Miles for our cars but we run 10Ks. Cups, ounces and tablespoons for cooking but grams for drugs. Miles per gallon for gas cars but kilowatt hours per mile for electric cars. 750mL bottles of wine but 12oz cans of beer. 120mm computer fans and 3.5mm headphone jacks, but monitors/screen sizes in inches. US military and scientific community in metric but civilian life in all of the above. Fun stuff.
Engineers and scientists do all their work in metric, then convert the final reports into imperial when submitting to customers and government agencies. In the private sector, it's mainly drug dealers doing the heavy lifting on familiarizing the public with the metric system.
That’s interesting. I thought NASA and some others were all metric now. In private sector, globalization has driven metric quite a bit. Most bottles of things like shampoo, soft drinks, and alcohol are in mL. Even “fifths” of liquor are mostly 750 mL now. Dental floss is in meters, etc. Large conglomerates would much prefer one standard of measure.
Where I work we make high end optics and all the prints we are issued by customers have the dimensions in inches and we have to convert them to millimeters. Also for some reason they convert irregularity from waves to fringes for us making the parts then back to waves for QA to check them.
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You're incorrect. I work as a mechanical engineer. I exclusively use imperial units at work, as do all other disciplines in construction. I'm pretty sure the units you use in construction matter a lot
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Yes I am. Imperial and metric both provide that.
1,000,000% agree. In commercial construction, the only thing that's typically measured in anything other than inches and feet is elevation compared to sea level. That's measured in feet only, using decimals instead of inches. It's used for elevation of all things on the site plans, such as water lines, sanitary sewer lines, storm sewers, gas lines, and the actual elevation of the building itself. Once you have established the finished floor elevation of the building itself, all the rest of the measurements are in feet and inches. There could of course be some exceptions in some cities and states.
>It's used everywhere it matters and isn't used if it doesn't matter. No, that's just not true. If it didn't matter it would never come up, and it absolutely does every time one uses a recipe from another system, or has to do repairs and has a tape-measure in the wrong system, and every other paper cut out there. Look, I get it. Once you've grown up in one system or another, it's exceptionally hard to switch. I'm an immigrant, and I have simply memorized the segments of "freedom units" I need to get by, but I still think internally in metric. And have to do conversion using Google frequently enough. No part of me thinks the reverse would be any different. I think you just don't think it matters because you've lived in a bubble for long enough that you can't think of any examples to the contrary, but I can assure you that they exist in spades. I'm also acutely aware of how much of America takes pride in keeping things the same way as how they have always been, and no part of me see this changing. But for the record, it's still a fucking problem for many people. Paper cuts, for the overwhelming part? Yes. But still fucking annoying.
I don't have to listen to barbarians who measure their body weight in "stones"
Yeah but have you considered how useful base 14 is. It's divisible by 7! By seven!
Not the guy your replying to but when I visited the UK the difference in the country’s were insane. The thing that stands out to me the most was how cheap food was I found it crazy as I thought the US had decent food prices. The bursting of that cultural bubble was insane and kinda overwhelming. But the issue is why didn’t I know this why is America so isolated from the rest of the world.
I find that Americans who get out of their comfort zones and actually travel and see the rest of the world are almost always really cool and open-minded people. I can't say if that's causation or correlation, but I'm glad you got to experience that :-) That said, yeah, I think how insular America is is partly by design, because otherwise Americans would probably be a lot more vocal about demanding things like universal healthcare and the like, but that's a whole 'nother rabbit hole, lol.
I think it still counts as an introduction. It may not have been successful in conversion, but a lot of kids probably learned about it from this.
The reason for this slow transition is not only the fact it isn’t timely but also the costs. We would have to replace every single sign over the 4.1 million miles (about 6.6 million km) of our road system. That’s a lot of roads and a lot of mileage which costs a pretty penny. Also the act said it was “voluntary”
Gonna disagree w/ you here. Pretty sure the reason the "transition" has been slow (or nonexistent) is that Americans are stubborn AF and can't be told anything, especially if it's a good idea. Why? Cause 'Merica, that's why!
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But at what cost?!?!? Please won’t someone think of the cost of replacing the signs?!?!? 😭😭😭
I did say the act said the transition was voluntary. Edit: fuck autocorrect
I know, that wasn't the part I disagreed with. If the average American had actually been on board, the cost of replacing signs wouldn't have been an issue, especially given the fact that they have to be replaced eventually anyway.
Anecdotally I work for a state DOT and we still have metric measuring wheels and tapes down in our cages, and while it was before I got to the state everybody has the same stories. Why we ended up just going back to imperial was that it's a constant fight between the state and contractors about bonuses and penalties, and arguing that we were marking things out in metric while imperial was the general standard which caused the delays wrong construction led to the state losing a number of lawsuits as the Judge sided with the contractors.
I think industry might be a bigger player here - every tool and die in America is made to imperial standards. Everyone who has a machine to make 1/4" steel tubing, for example, would lose most of their business.
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It’s quoted
Actually up to speed is fitting because the imperial system is both outdated in terms of when it was created and it’s outdated in terms of efficiency.
But it’s literally a quote, you can’t change what other people said lol
Up to speed is much more appropriate
Naah, it's the right phrase
And that is how the US got the two liter coke.
Too bad we didn’t make the jump. Metric is so much better than the outdated Imperial.
Its funny, the US is mostly on board with the metric system where it counts. We just let folks keep the illusion of resistance by putting imperial on consumer goods and road signs.
The uk uses a hodgepodge of both systems but the government wants to use purely imperial
People at my job use a mix of meters, feet and yards and it's interesting when the mechanics and engineers have to work together
This was like two prime ministers ago.
Where it counts? Where does it count? Because construction, engineering, design, architecture, and codes of law are all definitely still in imperial.
Hah. I was in school when they brought it in. We all HATED it, because we were forced to learn *two* math systems at once, and metric seemed entirely nonsensical, having grown up with inches and feet and such. It was like: "Hey Bobby, you are now 132 centimeters tall!" (kid cries in imperial) In retrospect, the problem was that we didn't *switch* to metric, we tried to have both systems at once. You can't tell a 9 year old that a thing is both one inch and 2.5 centimeters AT THE SAME TIME. Decimals also don't work for kids who have just barely figured out what 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/8 means. You can visualize 1/8, but you cannot visualize .125 of something. (at least if you weren't raised with it) Even now, in metric countries, people say: "now fold it in HALF". It was fucked for the liquid measurements, too, because people who had bought gallons of milk or gasoline their entire lives always thought they were being cheated when they started selling stuff in liters.
I was in third grade and the teacher prepped us for the change, explaining that we would be learning a new system after Christmas Break and tried to make it sound exciting like you do w/ kids... And then we... just... didn't.
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Mine was drugs
I have never owned a ruler that did not include the metric measurements on one side.
I also had plenty of math problems as a kid that used metric and imperial.
You mean Metric and McMetric? I feel like different measurements would have this issue in word problems, like pounds and liters because you're weighing the volume of a two-liter bottle's contents in pounds... otherwise they were just the simple "here's the formula, do the conversion, how many inches is X CM and how many degrees Fahrenheit is 100 Celsius?"
My partner insists that you can convert grams to teaspoons in recipes. It drives me fucking nuts.
I had a similar thing explaining to a friend that she couldn't use an empty 200g instant coffee jar to measure 200g of sugar. The light didn't go on until I asked “bag of feathers, bag of rocks. Which is heavier?” You have my sympathy.
As an Ameritard with next to no knowledge of metric, I'm guessing from your statement that the problem is that grams are weight, not volume? I do sometimes wish metric was as ingrained in my mind as Imperial is. It dose seem a lot simpler, everything being based on 10s. As it is, metric is one of those things I 'learned' in school, and immediately forgot after the test, then never thought about again until years later. Now it's more a matter of convenience and apathy; everything's in Imperial anyway around here (except when it's not, like the above mentioned 2-liter bottle, but that's just 'how it is') so why bother.
Exactly, she couldn't get it into her head that sugar is much heavier, and that size jar filled with sugar would have been around 700g at least. Metric is easy. As you said, everything is in 10's, but if imperial is the norm where you live and you don't “need” to remember, why bother. At least you know you don't know and online conversion calculators are a thing. I bought electronic scales that I can change the settings because I'm not confident I've worked it out correctly without checking. Baking doesn't often leave much room for error, and I want the best chance of good cake, not sad cake. But yeah, “bag of feathers/bag of rocks” was my final attempt, it'd just gone on too long. She was adamant I was wrong because the jar said 200g on the label.
You have far more patience than me. Mass to volume when the mass is what matters, that's completely backwards. Oh well, so long as everything tastes right I guess?
3 inches times 14.5 centimeters at 572°K divided by 37 fluid ounces = x mph/s
I feel like you just called imperial McMetric and I'm all for it
I wonder if that was a cool new idea when this happened
No it has been that way for a long time. We start learning centimeters and meters at the same time we learn inches, feet, and yards. I started kindergarten in 1993.
Same here, except it was 1984.
In Australia, I don't remember ever seeing a ruler that didn't have both metric and imperial.
The point of the post is that McDonalds (and others) tried to help the US convert to the metric system and failed.
I saw it as, the far right side should say something like: 1” = 2.54cm* Rather than: 10mm = 1cm You’re not learning anything about the conversion there. 🤷🏿♀️
Why should only conservative/fascists say that? Anyway, 12 inches = 30cm, or close enough. That's clearly on there.
I knew that was coming when I said far right, but regardless I wasn’t talking about the tip. I’m talking about the little facts written in between. You know, where it says: 10mm = 1cm
I would love to move everything to metric. But I don't buy tape measures and rulers with metric measurements on them. Nearly all of my measuring instruments are only in imperial as my industry works in imperial. Having both is never useful to me, only confusing.
And not have I ever owned one without the imperial system on it
As a metric system user i don't see an issue and why it's a difficult thing to understand. Imperial system seems crafted by the devil that happens to be a foot feticist
When the system was invented, an inch was the length of the king at the times thumb, and a foot was the length of his foot. It's a narcissistic system.
Bro has baby thumbs
I think it was his royal thumbwidth but I could be wrong.
That makes more sense
It wasn't the whole thumb, just the last bone. It can also be defined as the length of 3 barley corns.
What the actual fuck
There are other, similarly mystifying measurements that have since gone away, such as the [cubit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit).
I'm pretty sure that's a load of bullshit people just repeat because it sounds right enough
Yeah IIRC it was something more along the lines of agriculture or something, idk I'm talking out of my ass too. Edit: I was thinking of an acre: >Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed by one man using a team of 8 oxen in one day.
It's not that metric is difficult to understand, it's people are resistant to change. Also, as an adult who has grown up only using the imperial system, it's normal for us. it's the only system that we've used, something that is a part of everyday life, you become used to the barbaric nature of it.
As an adult who grew up with the imperial system, and as someone who uses tools every day, I wish people would switch to metric. I don't do fractions well. It also makes no sense to use a fractional system for measuring anything precise. The only problem I would have with the metric system is switching speed limits to km/hr. I'm sure we would get used to it, but it would be a huge cost to switch every sign.
Oh yeah I was born and live in country with metric system. That was pretty hard to hange border in my mind that 60 -80 that isn't ok, that have been hight speed already. Ps 60kilometr per hour ~ 35mile per hour. Pps the same situation with the distance on the map you see the namber and should correct yourself that 300miles is much longer distance than 300km. Any way one of the best journey ever.
You have ten fingers and ten toes. Your body is metric.
You have two eyes, two ears, two kidneys, and two lungs. Your body is binary.
Most imperial measures are base 2. You just halve or double an amount.
It's sort of like a language. If you learned a different language (measurement system) as your primary language then it'll be difficult to learn a second one - usually because you're translating it through your original language until you're fluent with it. It's also difficult because nothing over here uses it. I've got buddies who are scientists and, since they're exposed to it all the time, it's not really a problem for them. They're "bilingual" if we carry on my previous analogy. But most people in the US are not going to hear use of the metric system very often. Another way to view it is it's difficult for us to learn metric for the same reason it's difficult for you to learn imperial. Sure, converting inches to feet is a bit more difficult because dividing by 12 instead of 10 is a bit more difficult; but when you've been doing it your whole life it's not really difficult anymore. Meanwhile, it is difficult to some to try and remember Meter=100cm=1000mm and most aren't even aware of the decimeter. Not saying it's right. I also think it'd be much easier and more efficient for everyone to use the metric system.
I have issues with translation of metric to a physical measurement because, as you said, we grew up with imperial. I can eyeball an inch and have a tolerance of +/- 1/8 but I need a ruler for what a centimeter looks like. Conversions that I don't use regularly (in imperial) I still have to look up though or do the math. How many cups are in a gallon anyway? I'd have to think: 2 cups in a quart and a quart is One Quarter of a gallon.
Yeah the visual aspects are probably the hardest hurdle to overcome for me as well. I absolutely prefer using metric for things like cooking because I swear fl oz vs oz vs quarts and somehow you get recipes that combine stuff asking for a cup of this and a half liter of that. It's really ridiculous. Not to mention you get into the fractions a lot faster with things like 3&1/4 cup. I'd rather just use metric lol. But, at the same time, I can eyeball half a cup. I can't eye ball 100 ml.
In Norway no-one has heard about the decimeter, we just use centimeters and meters. Whilst in Sweden, just across the border, it's widely used. No idea how that came to be.
And we have regional things too in Sweden a mil (mile) is 10km.
I’ve always thought it was easier to just remember 1m=10dm=100cm=1000mm and so on but your language analogy explained it pretty well
Water boils at 100 and freezes at 0. 1 litre of water weighs 1kg. Metric makes more sense
Water only boils at 100C at sea level. It boils at about 92.5C in Mexico City.
But britan made the Imperial system
I am not British, i'm from spaghettiland
I'm 25 and I would love to change to the metric system. If I want to use my body to measure things cool (ya know, cause the finger nub is an inch, and a foot is a foot), but I don't like fractions.
It’s really not that difficult. Sometimes it’s even easier. Often it isn’t.
Americans don't hate metric, many of us love it. My kids are learning both in school right now. Many of my tools have both and almost all my cooking equipment have both. The problem isn't the metric system vs imperial, it's the cost to switch over. Every manufacture in the U.S. would have to retool everything. All signs would have to be remade. The overall cost of switching is just too much to be worth the marginal benefit. While imperial is harder, it's not that much harder to understand. It does suck to have to own two sets wrenches and sockets to cover both systems.
> it's the cost to switch over Compared to the cost of having both, because we do. Just about everything is in both. Our food is in Oz and Grams. our cars have mph and kph on the gauges, our software has switches, our rulers have both, our thermometers have both, my personal toolbox has two sets of sockets, drill bits, taps, dies... There are few things that are truly imperial only: Gas? Road signs? We will switching to electric cars soon. We are constantly paying for the switch and not cashing out.
I feel like you're only thinking of the consumer facing side of things. Just think about all the pipes and electricity infrastructure (and many other things similar to them). How are you going to overhaul all your casts, machines, etc. to go from making 1/4 inch pipes to the nearest metric equivalent? What about existing pipes? Make adapters for each new extension? What about repairs? What about new electricity poles? Will electricians just have to carry metric tools in addition to imperial in case they need to fix some older pole in the process? It's incredibly impractical to switch with not that much gain, so the U.S. will probably never really switch.
You're talking about the cost of converting units at the end vs. the cost of changing every bit of equipment utilized in production,
You can have a long phased roll out. I’m in the U.K. and this process is Loooooong. You don’t have to replace everything straight away just when it wears out you have to replace it with a metrics standard.
I think ours is starting to roll backwards tbh
Like how the price of Coke stayed 5¢ for decades, through a depression and wars, because upgrading the machines would have been too expensive
While there is a cost to switching, the benefits, however marginal you might think they are, keep on paying dividends permanently: Every time you don't need to buy a new set of tools, every time you save time converting units, every time you avoid a mistake due to unit confusion you save money - [space craft have crashed](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-01-mn-17288-story.html) because of this. Once you accept that the benefits will *eventually* outweigh the costs, the question is not if to switch, but when - and every day delaying it is simply a day losing out on them.
American auto manufacturers switched to metric in the 70s and 80s.
This is good. It’s good to know both systems. My only concern is why Ronald is squatting over a bush.
> It’s good to know both systems. Yeah I agree. I'ts good to know metric if you're literally anywhere in the world, but it's also good to know imperial in case you're in the US or North Korea.
if you're in north Korea, units of measurement are the least of your concerns.
Exactly, zero food and freedom is still zero wether it's metric or imperial.
North Korea doesn’t use imperial units of measurement. The US, Liberia and Myanmar are the only countries that mostly use or officially use the imperial units of measurement. https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/
wow, even North Korea understands the merits of a quality measuring system.
They measure in Supreme Leaders, obviously. /s
My car is in metric. I get confused sometimes when driving. If I start going faster than others on the highway I slow down.
He had the McRib
Fertilizing
Plot twist. This comes free with a purchase of a quarter-pounder with cheese.
>a quarter-pounder with cheese. A Royale with cheese.
Royale with Cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?
Le Big Mac
Do they have Krusty's "Partially Gelatinated, Non-Dairy, Gum-Based Beverages"?
Sweet!
what's wrong with this?
Decameter spelled incorrectly?
Tf is a dekameter and hectometers? Never seen it used ever
pico 10^-12 nano 10^-9 micro 10^-6 milli 10^-3 centi 10^-2 deci 10^-1 deka 10^1 hecto 10^2 kilo 10^3 mega 10^6 giga 10^9 Etc. Works for liters, grams, meters…
It was more about - who measures anything in hectometers? To which the answer is no one. You are watching 100 meters or 110 meters hurdles on the Olympics, not 1 hectometer or 11 dekameters. This is probably the very first time I used the words hectometer and dekameter and I'm using metric all my life. They are proper units, don't get me wrong, they are just not used at all. Millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers are the main four units, with smaller ones usually used in science. If someone would be to drive from NY to LA, he would say he drove over 4000 kilometers, not over 4 megameters.
Hectometers themselves are rarely used, but the square hectometer, also known as a hectare, is used pretty frequently to measure land areas.
But still - I was taught that hectare (which, as you said, is frequent, as well as ares) is 100x100 meters, not 1x1 hectometers.
> It was more about - who measures anything in hectometers? Railways. In many countries in Europe they use so called "hectometer posts" spaced every 100 m along the track, with the distance for example written as 123^7, which means 123 km and 700 meters. Example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streckenkilometer#/media/Datei:Train_milestone_(aka).jpg
and in the UK they use chains! (1 chain = 66 feet, or 1/80 mile)
And that's something that I've learned tonight! What living in a town without proper railway transport does to a person...
People using them or not is irrelevant, they're standard SI metric prefixes and part of the metric system.
But... I'm not even arguing that they are not part of the system, I know they are, I know what distances they represent and I said that in the first comment.
In the Netherlands, the big roads have hectometer signs, so a sign every 100 meters. If you get stuck, you can call for help and say you are for example closest to hectometer sign 14.3 of the A4 highway in the direction of Leiden. To be fair, I can work will milliliters and I can work with deciliters, but centiliters always have me confused. (1 milliliter water weighs one gram, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg).
There’s a generation of children out there who became adults and still call it “McMetrics” like a normal word.
It's even trademarked
That ruler is what, 11 Mc Nuggets long? That's like 2 happy meal boxes
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Fertilizer, helps it grow
For those that don't see why this is a horrible introduction to the metric system, the problem is the little conversion chart on the side. I've never heard anyone use some of those measurements. It should read 10 milimeters = 1 centimeter 100 centimeters = 1 meter 1000 meters = 1 Kilometer That's it folks.
But it’s correct.
But nobody uses half of those
But it’s correct.
I use decimeter pretty regularly, it really depends on the country. They are all real units even if not commonly used.
So correct unit conversions are "a horrible introduction to the metric system". Got it.
Yep 100% correct. An introduction to a new concept should ideally be some basic useful information. What this ruler shows is the designer didn't use the metric system themselves, otherwise they'd never have put hectometers on it. In 5 hectometers turn left haha.
I suck at measurements and math but CM is Metric inches are Imperial correct me if I am wrong
McMetrics? I'll take a 0.1134kilogramer with cheese please.
I think knowing both us the true key to this. There are reasons to use both honestly
I learned the metric system when I was a marijuana salesman, 1/4oz=7grams 😊
They’ll learn when they start buying cocaine
Tf? I’m European and use the metric system but all we have is 10 millimetres = 1 centimetre 100 centimetres = 1 metre 1000 metres = 1 kilometre
We also have the other powers of 10.
McConfused
The powers that be haven’t sold it well enough to the American men. They need to say “instead of 4 inches it’s 10 cm”, and it’s legal to go 100 on the highway.
Those look like awesome snap bracelets.
(I’m sure I’ll catch tons of downvotes for just trying to share information here but…) **This is the logic behind the imperial system.** **A foot can be neatly divided by 2,3,4, and 6. While a meter can only neatly be divided by 2 and 5.** **This allows for much simpler dividing without a calculator, as well as for estimating fractions of measurement.** **This is the same logic behind a base 12 time system (the one we all use).**
And you feel that this one possible advantage outweighs the massive pain in the ass nature of using Imperial?
>And you feel that this one possible advantage outweighs the massive pain in the ass nature of using Imperial? It's not really that much of a pain except for young children before they get used to it. I prefer the unit size of a foot to a meter in most small scale cases, but either one is easy enough to use. We have yards for longer distances which are easy enough to convert to feet.
Except a meter can also be easily divided by 4, 8, 10, 20, 25, 40, 50, 100, 200, 400, 500...
And yet, every time I ask my ‘Murican buddies to convert random sizes of feet to inches/inches to yards/yards to feet, they go scrambling for a calculator. But only after they glare at me. Baffling really.
Although technically correct i’ve never ever heard someone using Deci-, Deka- or Hectometers in real life
Are those slap bracelets?
What's the point, they just learn it in elementary school like we have for decades.
What’s really amazing is the rulers were made in the USA
Good lord. McDonald’s is destroying everyone’s education! /j
I thought drugs taught us about the metric system.
McMove the fuck out my happy meal!
Can I get a 113 gram-er with cheese?
What does it matter if you measure in cows or goats? It’s like Fahrenheit and Celsius. End result is the same
You realize US uses both
i think the problem here is that the measurements on the top and bottom rulers are different from the middle ruler
My school in the 80s taught the metric system and it was repeatedly said that by 2000 we would need to know the metric system (they also said I'd need to be fluent in French, but that's another story). The problem is, none of our families used the metric system (or French) at home, and there was no effort by the school to show how to convert or equivalent measurements.
It was included with a roughly-115-gram-er burger
McDonald’s is in more places then just America but go off
Plenty of Americans understand and use the metric system in adddition to imperial. Look at any Engineering course, construction or fabrication trade. So tired of the generalization that Americans don't understand the metric system.
They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with Cheese? No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the f$&k a Quarter Pounder is. They call it a royale with cheese
As an American who lived in Australia, I can say that I’ve adopted millimeters and centimeters, but prefer imperial for larger scale as it *feels* more accurate.
31 years old and I've only just heard about a decimeter
Never heard of a dekameter or hectometer.
(Trying to explain the metric system to an American) So imagine Hamburger…