Metric conversion in the UK isn't complete: on road signs, distances are in miles and speeds are in miles per hour. Pints are used to serve draught or keg beer.
In aviation, height/altitude is measured in feet or flight levels (hundreds of feet), horizontal distance is measured in nautical miles, and speed is measured in knots.
Milk was the same for a while and you still see it occasional though we've gone to liters mostly.
Most things are metric now though.
Feet for altitudes are not ideal, but it's become a convention (in China they use meters) (Now if they were to mix feet and miles in the altitude that would have been bad)
Even in France, we use pints to serve beer...
In the UK and US they still have ye olde measures - 568.3mL and 473.2mL respectively.
I've done experiments switching to metric. It's not a good idea to rely on my GPS for speed limit information. My home thermostat apparently doesn't have a Celsius setting (and would confuse my wife if it did). It's difficult, but mostly possible to switch here...but what's the point? It's a lot of work for comparatively little benefit.
it simply is not a priority, it could be slowly slipped into prominence by emphasizing the measurements on everyday items instead of making those in small print
Every science class I had in high school used metric. We also spent a fair amount of time going through it in elementary and middle school math classes.
My younger sister (by 20 years) spent a good deal of time on the metric system in her math classes.
Britain has all of this in metric; the beer, road signs and casual (non-medical) body measurements are the only exceptions.
If you didn't know this was 16" on center, and 2x2 framing, you'd think some mad drunk person had come up with these numbers. I also like to imagine building inspectors walking into a building and saying "Oh, these studs are 407mm apart. Tear the building down."
Imperial is only really used in consumer facing situations. If we forced everything over to metric, would it make that much of a difference? Would the US economy suddenly surge due to a more efficient system? Unlikely.
And hey, if it's good enough for NASA, it's good enough for the rest of the states. ;)
Worst hit, would probable be the automobile industry. But I'd say there'd be advantages to metrification there too.
They use metric.
Why? The French system has exactly two benefits: it's popular, and it's easier to perform abstract conversions (i.e., conversions between units on paper). OTOH, it is worse at performing concrete manipulations (i.e., dividing one physical quantity into another): accurately cutting or dividing quantities into tenths without the aid of a guide of some sort (e.g. a ruler or measuring cup) is so difficult as to be basically impossible, while cutting or dividing into halves is so easy that a child can do it, and thirds are not much harder at all.
Yes, it happens that it's easier to 'do science' currently using French units, but that is because all of the standard constants happen to be based in those terms: there's no fundamental reason one couldn't use Rankine instead of Kelvin and so forth.
I won't claim that the standard system of units is perfect (the partial decimalisation the Brits attempted in the 19th century was misguided): indeed, it could get a lot better: nautical miles are probably better than statue miles; a reset in the length of the yard so that there are 1,728 yards in a mile would probably be a decent idea; a cup ought to be 16 cubic inches; and so forth.
But throwing away 12 (with its divisors of 6, 4, 2 & 3) for 10 (with half as many: 5 & 2) was a foolish, foolish decision by the French.
If they'd really wanted to be revolutionary, they'd have adopted base-12 numbering instead of trying to fit the world to base 10.
(I will grant the the French system of paper sizes is elegant, and I wouldn't mind us adopting a similar system based, of course, on the yard)
By your count, the "standard" system (how is it standard if it's used almost nowhere?) has 1 point: A foot being 12 inches means it has more divisors than 100 cm to a metre.
So, therefore the final score based on your appraisal is Metric 3, Freedom Units 1.
A clear win for the metric system.
Historically, it seems baffling. Their real name, "imperial units", are a clue that they're all but rooted in freedom. They're inherited from the country that the US broke free from…
Plus, the Metric system stems from the French Revolution, making it a better contender for the term "freedom units".
Finally, wasn't there a whole PC phase in 2003 where expressions with "French" in it, like "French Fries", were renamed "Freedom Fries"? It all makes things rather confusing.
Top marks!
The paper sizes are German, and adopted by the ISO.
A0 is 1 m^2, by area, with sides in a ratio of 1:sqrt(2).
When you fold it in half, you get the same ratio, but now A1:
A1 is 1/2 m^2.
A2 is 1/4 m^2.
A3 is 1/8 m^2.
A4 is 1/16 m^2.
etc.
So, if you buy paper, it will be, say, 80 g/m^2. Now, one page of A4 thus is 5 g.
Dealing with French units is a pain.
(as an aside, the reason I call them 'French units' is because the name 'metric' privileges them: our standard units are no less a system of measures than are they; this too is my problem with 'SI,' since our system is (or was) likewise international)
No farmer or brewer deals in units that are easier to half in American rather than metric units. They use tonnes, hundreds or thousands of litres, and large areas. Outside America, they don't need to convert between units of the same type: no acre-feet, bushels, pounds, tons, or all that crap.
Calling them "French units" sounds like xenophobia. The American system was never international, and the British system didn't extend that much further than the French, at the time of the empire.
In America, anyone who would deal solely in tonnes can deal solely in tons; anyone who would deal solely in hectolitres can deal solely in barrels (traditionally, 128 quarts); anyone who would deal solely in kilolitres can deal solely in tuns (traditionally, 1,024 quarts). No-one in America has to say '7 tuns, 2 hogsheads, 3 gallons, six quarts and a fluid oz' any more than he'd say '7.2850546 kilolitres.'
> Calling them "French units" sounds like xenophobia.
Oh, I'm not xenophobic! I just don't think they deserve a privileged position.
> The American system was never international, and the British system didn't extend that much further than the French, at the time of the empire.
The American system was used in Liberia; prior to the Russian Revolution the majority of the peoples of the world used systems of measurement substantially similar to the Anglo-American system, and could (should have, IMHO) rationalised and standardised that, rather than adopting the objectively inferior decimal principal.
Then your argument that these quantities are easily divided is irrelevant.
> 7.2850546 kilolitres
My house's water meter measures up to 99,999.999m³, or in litres up to 99,999,999 litres.
Europe other than Britain and Ireland didn't use the British system, and neither did their colonies, China, Japan, etc. All the British colonies except the USA chose the metric system after independence.
The SI system is the only one that's truly international, set up by international treaty between many countries.
I guess, but for what it's worth, I've never heard that before. It's a poor way to communicate, if communication is your goal.
Yes, easy halving and quartering was important back when the population was not used to decimals. But surely, most people these day can tell that half of 100 cm is 50 cm, a quarter is 25 cm, and a third 33.33 cm.
So, the Gimli glider had a glide ratio of 12:1. We're 10 km high, how far can we glide? Well, 120 km.
That's how we'd compute it in a metric world. In the real world, the Gimli glider was 32,000 feet high. How many nautical miles can it glide? Quick?
In the real world, the Gimli glider was 9,753.6 m high. How many km can it glide? Quick?
Of course, in real life one would cheat: a nautical mile is about 6,000 feet, so 32,000 feet works out to about 5 nautical miles, which means that it can glide about 60 nautical miles. One can always grab a calculator (or slide rule — they're actually quicker at this than calculators) to be certain (12:1 at 32,000 feet gives 63 nm/110 km).
117,043.2 m. In about 5 seconds in my head. By doing value × 10 + value × 2. Because multiplying by 10 is so easy, because arabic numerals are in base 10.
And by cheating, which obviously we would do as a first approximation, it is also much more trivial in SI units: 9,753.6m is about 10km, × 12 → 120km. At most 1 second to find. Faster again.
But my fundamental point: we already have the mnemonics ready for base 10, and we won't switch away from arabic numerals any time soon, so we might as well benefit from it.
It isn't a competition. After all, the metric system is screwed up: having 60 seconds in a minute is a pain (but wow, so many divisors! — really though, just an inheritance of an ancient culture that did not use base 10 numerals; using higher bases isn't an indication of modernity) and the fundamental definition of the second doesn't map to any physical reality in an intuitive way anymore.
It is simply less screwed up.
No, in duodecimal. It's generally better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal
And you can count by twelves on the knuckles of your fingers, so anyone who still needs to count on his fingers can still do it (I'm not certain why this is such a selling point for decimals: surely we're all intelligent enough to use higher bases?).
Construction on the other hand is still mainly in imperial/US units, which makes sense given that the use the same material providers as the US.
The risk of confusion was too high, and there was at least one case of a severe overdose when a weight was accidentally given in pounds rather than kilogrammes.
If an American child was hurt outside the USA, and the parent overheard the nurse saying their weight was 55kg, would they know whether that's accurate? That's why it's important that the same units are used at home and in science.
[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...