Comment by Aloha
3 years ago
Dislike of change is a worldwide constant, like gravity.
Also, all measurement systems are functionally arbitrary - be it the kings foot, a rod in a library, or some mathematical constant - all are arbitrary, ours is just a little less rational and certainly less relational than others.
Fahrenheit is just fine however thank you. (My ideal system would be a zero to 200 system, water would freeze at zero and boil at 200, gives you the best of both worlds, and less need for half degrees in measuring the weather - or other human centric temperatures.)
The US government is an original signer of the Metric Treaty, and if you deal with the federal government you're often supplying measurements in meters and weight in kilograms. The military is metric too. Just not so much anything else.
Even bolts on our cars are metric, at least mostly. Every car I've had from MY1986 on has been more metric than SAE.
In fairness however, we're not the only English speaking country using miles still. For that matter, aviation (in most of the world) still uses feet too - inventors privilege I suppose. ;-)
Most Americans are aware of the metric system and have a vague idea of how long a meter is for example, we also know the 0 is freezing in Celsius. I don't think the costs of changing the places we use customary units would pay for the benefits, our soda cans even are usually clearly labeled at 355ml.
I agree we should get rid of the penny, and probably dollar bills, but for a bunch of historical reasons americans don't like dollar coins. (Mostly the size we picked is too close to the quarter)
> Also, all measurement systems are functionally arbitrary
It's not a question whether they are arbitrary, it's a question if they are technically consistent within themselves.
The metric system is: Everything is orders of magnitude, powers of ten, throughout all the measurements. Consequently, everything measured by base units of distance and mass follows the same rules: A Watt is 1 Joule per second, which is 1 Newtonmeter per second, which is 1 kilogramm per meter squared per second per second per second. 1 Grey (Gy) is 1 Joule of radiation absorbed in 1 kg of mass. If I have to do a calculation, I simply put the different weights and whatever in, and everything just falls into place on its own.
Additionally, measurements of distance and mass are not independent, but based on one another, also by powers of ten. 1000 cubic centimeters (a litre) of Water at maximum density is 1kg of mass. 1 Millilitre of it is 1 gram of mass. 1 m³ of it is 1 metric ton, which is 1000 kg.
Not only is that consistent, it also fits into our radix 10 numerical system like a hand into a fine glove.
I have yet to find any internal consistency in the various imperial systems of measurement. Everything is based on yet another arbitrary comparison with real life objects or references, and so nothing is consistent with anything else. A mile is 8 furlongs, a furlong is 10 chains, a chain is 4 rods, a rod is 5.5 yards, a yard is 3 feet, a foot is 12 inches. Land is measured in acres, which is a furlong by a chain.
Measurements of mass don't follow measurements of distance. A ton is 160 stone, or 160 * 8 "hundredweights", or 160 * 8 * 14 pounds, or 160 * 8 * 14 * 16 ounces. Not only is it not dependent on the distance measurements, the conversion rates are also dissimilar.
> Measurements of mass don't follow measurements of distance. A ton is 160 stone, or 160 * 8 "hundredweights", or 160 * 8 * 14 pounds, or 160 * 8 * 14 * 16 ounces. Not only is it not dependent on the distance measurements, the conversion rates are also dissimilar.
Woah woah woah, don't put that evil on us in the USA, that stone madness is all British.
A US hundredweight is 100 lbs.
The metric system didn't invent water volume and weight correspondence -- a pint's a pound the whole world round. 1 pint of water weighs one pound, and one fluid ounce of water weighs one ounce.
> Woah woah woah, don't put that evil on us in the USA, that stone madness is all British.
> A US hundredweight is 100 lbs.
The fact that there are more than one sort of imperial measurements, and that they are different, makes matters worse, rather than better. The metric system works the same, everywhere, in all countries, and in all languages. The only thing that changed since its inception, was switching from defining base units through comparison to physical templates, to defining them by natural universal constants, aka. making it even better than it already was.
> The metric system didn't invent water volume and weight correspondence
I didn't say it did, I said they depend on one another. And in metric, that works for ALL weights and measurements, and does so consistently. Cool, so 1 pint of water == 1 pound. How much is a pint in cubic inches? How many cubic furlongs of water do I need for 10 imperial Tons?
Oh, and btw.: What exactly do you mean when you say "pint"? Because there are many different ones. Just a short list of examples:
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint#Other_pints
If I have to rely on context, locality and customs to have a chance to understand what a unit of volume actually means, then there may be some issues with the underlying system. One reason why the metric system was invented, and why today almost every country in the world officially uses it, was to solve exactly these problems of ambiguity.
When I say "liter", there is no ambiguity, it's always 1 cubic decimeter.
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> It's not a question whether they are arbitrary, it's a question if they are technically consistent within themselves.
It's important to note that the US does not and has never used the "Imperial System" which didn't even exist before 1826 which is post-revolutionary war. US Customary units evolved around the same time as the Metric system and used names from the Dutch and English systems for historical reasons. The motivation being global compatibility, not internal consistency. The US was an original signatory of the treaty of the Meter. The British Empire (and thus, Canada) was not.
Personally I think internal consistency is overrated. It's nice to have but really reads like marketing wank. What matters to people doing work is if they can do their jobs. In those contexts change is far more costly than conversion to a new system. Tooling will already be built to deal with appropriate units.
One example of this is in metalworking machines. Those tend to last for decades and entire companies have built portfolios of designs and programs in thousandths (base 10 for those playing along at home) of an inch. It is unlikely that converting all those designs to microns would justify the cost, so we don't.
Almost all food packaging in the US has both systems printed on it but I am unclear how my dinner will taste better if I measure the ingredients in SI units. It just doesn't matter in that context.
> The motivation being global compatibility, not internal consistency.
All the more reason to officially switch to metric. Because as of right now, only 3 countries in the world (US, Liberia and Myanmar) officially use imperial units, while the rest of the world uses the metric system.
> The US was an original signatory of the treaty of the Meter.
So? If I have a gymcard and don't go to the gym, it's not doing me any good.
> It's nice to have but really reads like marketing wank. What matters to people doing work is if they can do their jobs.
Indeed it does. That's why science and engineering are using the metric system. Including NASA btw. Being able to convert measurements easily, and have them correlate with our most common, radix 10, numerical system, is not "marketing wank", it's a built-in advantage.
If I want to figure out what mass of water falls on an area in the metric system, I can do the calculation in my head. If I have to figure out hundredweights per acre, given that X inches of rain fell, I'm gonna need a calculator, a conversion table, and social context to know which kind of "hundredweight" I'm supposed to use.
Oh btw. people "do work" in all these other countries. And guess how they measure things when doing that? Exactly: In meters and kilograms.
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Machinists have no problem working with designs in SI units on an inch-based machine. Lots of American companies use metric in designs and machine shops have to deal with it, although shops are moving to metric more and more. When they do this they keep and use their old machines with no problem although it’s an annoyance. Conversely metric machine shops can make inch-sized parts with no problems. Lots of material stock is inch-sized in the US, so even when you design in metric you have to consider this. But over time there is more metric stock available in the US, and for things like precision shafts there’s no cost difference anymore.
Regardless of everyday usage, in mechanical engineering/metalworking, the switch to metric has already been happening slowly since the 70s. Old machines and designs can stay in inches but most industries are already moving to metric unless there’s a compelling reason not to. You can see in Canada what things have stayed in inches because of regulations and material availability. House framing and steel weldments come to mind.
In terms of arbitrariness, note that your "traditional" units are only actually defined in terms of the SI system ("metric" units). Metrication is expensive and although the US is rich it declines to spend the eye-watering sums it would cost to do adequate metrication separately for its own unit system, so the pound is defined as some number of kilograms, the inch is defined as some number of metres and so on.
As a result to the extent all the systems are arbitrary, all the traditional units are automatically one step more arbitrary.
The number of layers of arbitrary dont bother me very much. We've metrified our industry (gradually over 50 or so years), dealing the the government is metric, etc. I think we've adopted the metric system in the most important places - I dont think our competitiveness is harmed or helped if I have to buy meat by the KG at the grocery, or the weather forecast comes in celsius or not.
Then why not just officially ditch what is, at this point, a quirky anachronism at best, and a potentially really expensive source of mistakes [1] at worst?
[1]: https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metr...
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> for a bunch of historical reasons americans don't like dollar coins. (Mostly the size we picked is too close to the quarter)
I'm also surprised you like the dollar bills all the same size and colour. I don't know how I'd pay in a bar while drunk lol.
Though I guess like most people these days I just slap my phone on the reader.
They are now subtlety different colors, anything 10 dollars and above has their own shade. I dont personally I think it matters very much, I actually mostly carry 2 dollar bills around, for novelty (and rememberability) factors (they make great tips).
And.. basically yeah, we pay with cards now, lol
Anyone involved with chemistry uses the metric system. As does anyone who plays soccer. It's everywhere. Go look at any item in your pantry, metric units will be printed on it.
The metric system is great but measurements in football (aka soccer) pitches are more naturally expressed in yards than metres given its historical standardisation in Britain.
I only played during PE lessons but don’t recall anyone ever referring to measurements during play. Just “the box” or the “halfway line”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch
Yeah, that was largely my point, everyone who complains about america not being metric has not been to the store, I think we're around as metrified at the UK, the one difference is we still use Fahrenheit, and anything sold bulk measure is sold in pounds - packaged goods have Metric on them either because of a legal requirement, or because of bleedover from Canada and Mexico, most store scales can do KG or Pounds - but are set to Pounds.
I'm not convinced re: cross-border sales. When Canada was on the imperial system they were on the actual Imperial system. The one the British adopted in 1826. That's post-revolution so the US was on the US customary system which evolved alongside the Metric system and for similar reasons. This means that gallons were different sizes. Today Canada sells milk in bags, I'm not sure that's even available in the US. Cars in Canada have different gauge clusters to support primary-kph. There are probably additional differences in packaging. Does Canada use the same nutrition facts label?
I would believe that there's some standardization from NAFTA and similar agreements with our northern (and southern) neighbors. But I think Canada's usage of the Metric (and Imperial) systems has more to do with being part of the commonwealth and less to do with the US being nearby.
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