
US Metric Association - uiri
http://www.us-metric.org/
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amai
I never understood why the Americans fought a war of independence, but then
insist on using imperial units.

~~~
pc2g4d
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/whos-a...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/whos-
afraid-of-the-metric-system/395057/)

According to the article, it's about screw thread measurements. And the
cultural aspect. The fact that the abbreviation for the system is SI which is
short for a French phrase makes it seem foreign. And FRENCH. Which many
Americans seem to hate.

~~~
stephenr
Given how much manufacturing has been outsourced I doubt this would still hold
weight, and honestly at this point I imagine most international toolmakers are
building in mm and simply providing the ridiculous fractions of an inch
measurement for American markets.

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knz
The most concise summary of why the US should adopt the Metric System is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system#/media/File:Metr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system#/media/File:Metric_system_adoption_map.svg)

If the metric system had no value then the map would be reversed. It's already
here being used by many industries, almost every other country has adopted it
(to varying degrees), and there is a cost to not adopting it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_dollar#Introductio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_dollar#Introduction)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_New_Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_New_Zealand)

~~~
asher_
While it's a no-brainer that the US should adopt metric, that map isn't the
reason. The same argument could have been made against adopting metric when it
was first invented.

The reason that it should be adopted is simply because it's a far simpler
system to use and understand. Units of measurement have simple relationships
with other units, and there are standard prefixes.

I actually find it quite sad. Not being able to think about these things in a
simple way makes learning much much harder for children, and even for adults
there is no way someone using imperial measurements can perform operations
anywhere near as quickly or easily as someone using metric. This is especially
true of unit conversions. Not using metric makes you ostensibly dumber.

For many of us outside the US, the continued use of imperial measurements is
thought of as akin to eschewing cars in favour of horse drawn carriages. For
those in the US, how it is viewed from the inside?

I wonder how much this reason alone is responsible for comparatively poor
results of the US in science education. It's obviously far from the whole
reason, but I can't help but think that young kids would be turned off
learning all of these esoteric and arbitrary rules.

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x1798DE
I'm mostly happy enough with the metric system (though I feel like things
might be nicer if we had started out using base 12 instead of base 10) in most
areas, but I'm not sure I'm convinced about switching to Celsius. I very
rarely have to talk about temperatures exceeding 100F, and when I do, they
typically range from around 200-600F anyway.

My ideal temperature scale would be one where 0 is 0C and 100 is roughly 100F.
Using celsius, you're basically leaving 60% of the 2-digit portion of the
scale unused.

~~~
stephenr
Temperature is used for more than reporting the weather/human bodily
temperatures.

100°c is boiling water (at ~sea level).

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x1798DE
I'm struggling to think of a common use case that makes heavy use of the
"40-75C" range of the Celsius scale, and even for cooking you're mostly
looking in the 150C-300C range, which is no more convenient than using
300-500F.

There's no particular reason to be hung up on where water boils when it's not
creating a particularly useful scale. You could just as easily set 100 to be
the point at which proteins denature (~75C).

~~~
stephenr
"Safe" internal temperatures for cooking meat are in the 63-85°C range.

