The fact that the metric system is decimal and all conversations essentially consist of moving a point around are much more trivial. 1000 millimeters is a meter. 100 centimeters is a meter. 10 millimeters is a centimeters. it's in the name. Same for liters, same for kilogram. You don't need to do math, you just move a separator. It's not arbitrary, that's the big advantage.
Especially when you jump several magnitudes. 3.5 liters is 3500 milliliters. What's 3.5 gallons in ounces? eight ounces are one cup, two cups are a pint and two pint are a quart IIRC but then four quarts are a gallon? And there's more units. I always forget them and I actually tried to learn them.
448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448.
You could work through that from the smaller units if you didn't know off hand. Still, it's pretty unusual to want fluid ounces at that scale. Keep it at 3.5 gallons.
> 448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448.
I think you just unironically showed why SI is the superior system.
Also, how do you feel about degrees, minutes, and seconds?
Shhh! Don't let them know that SI's base ten counting isn't some kind of scientific absolute and is just as arbitrary as inches and feet, and if humans had 11 fingers, SI would be different.
Sometimes, they do.
Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used to show how far your car can travel for every gallon (or 4.55 litres) of fuel it uses".
A handy trick is to memorize conversions in terms of a particular reference object or entity, instead of memorizing "the" conversion factor as a decimal. For example, while I know an inch is 25.4mm, I convert volume by remembering that 5.7 liters is 350 cubic inches - for obvious reasons.
I disagree it is a false premise. If you look at major economies – other than the US and UK – >80%, >90% of units encountered in everyday life are metric. In the US, it is more like the other way around. The UK and the US are both outliers from the global average on this, but the UK to a lesser degree than the US is. No other major economy (for any reasonable definition of "major") is an outlier in that sense.
> We learn the metric system in school,
In the majority of countries worldwide, people only learn the metric system at school. The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
> Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used to show how far your car can travel for every gallon (or 4.55 litres) of fuel it uses".
That's not a very good argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies to use miles for road distances (and hence also speed, fuel efficiency, etc). All other major economies use kilometres, not miles.
If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list.
I mean, the criterion exists, and therefore the list is technically correct, but nobody researches it before repeating the meme, and it's not at all obvious without research.
If the reasoning doesn't come to you naturally and intuitively, endorsing it I think is insincere. Like the redefinition that demoted Pluto from planethood.
>The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
This is too vague to even determine if true. Also the implied premise is getting silly. Teaching non-metric measurements needs to be stamped out? Do people learn about miles and gallons in hedge schools in proper countries? If so, is that to be emulated? Is it bad to teach languages other than your preferred one? Do French people know what CV stands for?
Let's forget about Liberia and Myanmar and just focus on major economies. People can argue about the definition of "major", but for the purposes of this discussion, let's define it as G20 members.
In how many G20 members does the average person make significant, regular use of non-metric measurements in their daily life? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is "only two" (US and UK), and for the US that usage is significantly more than the UK. So, there is a very real sense in which the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) are outliers on adoption of the metric system in everyday life. That's not "bullshit".
> >The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
> This is too vague to even determine if true.
I have lived my whole life in Australia. Here, non-metric measurements are not part of the government-mandated curriculum. That was true when I was a child and is true for my own children who are at school today. Schools and teachers are free to teach whatever they want (within reason), but if it isn't part of the official curriculum, there is no incentive for them to spend any significant time on it, so the vast majority won't. Most school children have heard of inches/miles/etc, but for most of them their understanding of it is limited to "outdated stuff we don't use any more but Americans still do"
Most countries worldwide are closer to Australia on this than to the US. I mean, how much time do schools in France or Germany or Japan spend on teaching how many ounces in a pound or how many yards in a mile? How many countries – other than the US – have learning details of how to use non-metric measurements in their standard school curriculum?
Canada as well. Usually I'd assume no one cares but you did say G20.
So I’d break it down like this: of the 19 countries directly in the G20 (so not counting those only indirectly in it via the EU’s membership) - 1 has high degree of everyday use of non-metric measurements (US), 16 have low, and the other two are in-between, we might say medium (UK and Canada). That leaves 80% of the G20 in the “low everyday use of non-metric measurements category”.
Unlike the UK, Canada uses kilometres rather than miles for roads, so in that regard is more metric than the UK. Although I’ve also heard that some Canadians do crazy things like use Celsius to measure room temperatures but Fahrenheit to measure oven temperatures.
This is an interesting question. The amount of usage would need to be quantified. The definition of "average person" would need to be explicit. You have data?
Whatever the data might show, I am confident it won't show a stark division between the US, Liberia, Myanmar, and every other country. But if I'm wrong, that would be interesting.
>Here, non-metric measurements are not part of the government-mandated curriculum
That's exactly what I mean about a hyper-technical argument.
Does the US have a government-mandated curriculum; is it an apples to apples comparison; does its treatment of metric measurements translate to actual classrooms, &c, &c, &c...
>how much time do schools in France or Germany or Japan spend on teaching how many ounces in a pound or how many yards in a mile
That might be interesting to compare with the US. If you have such a statistical analysis, would you share it?
the customary units were plenty good in europe too, as far as i can tell. though i guess maybe they were not the same in all countries, which may have been a motivation for the switch.
We would lose consistency between new and old MW for example or milligram and millilitre. But shouldn't it otherwise be fully consistent?
That doesn't work out so conveniently when you are measuring natural things. You get something that is say 73 inches long and dividing it in 3rds won't come out even. It's convenient for many manufactured things because for things where people will have to subdivide them manufacturers pick lengths that will be easily divisible into those subdivisions.
But manufacturers can do that in SI units too. E.g., if you were making say rods and you expected customers to need to cut them into equal pieces you could make them 84 cm (just over 33 inches). That's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84.
> How about temperature?
What I don't get about metric temperature is why it even exists. All C really changed from F (once they flipped the direction of Celsius' original scale when had higher numbers mean colder!) is the size of the degree and the zero point.
With the other metric units (length, volume, area, mass) the new units cleaned up messes of a whole bunch of named units in all kinds of relationships. But there was no mess with F. F would have been fine as the temperature for metric and (as you noted) it actually fits in a lot better with the range of temperatures that most people have to deal with.
The thing that doesn't make sense about this argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies which haven't adopted metric for 90%+ of use cases. (Everywhere retains non-metric units in certain exceptional cases – e.g. most countries use feet for altitude in aviation, although that is largely due to the economic influence of the US, and to a lesser extent the UK.) And even the UK uses metric significantly more than the US does, despite the retention of miles for road distances being an obvious holdout.
If your argument really explains why the US hasn't switched, how does it explain the fact that the vast majority of the rest of the world has?
That said, I think economic resiliency and early mover (did)advantage are the other parts of that story. Not many nations can handle the trade impediment of their own units of measure, but the UK and US were/are both large enough. And I think because we industrialized early, switching with the rest of the world was more expensive, so we stuck with it.
English units weren’t a “more convenient” system than that used by the rest of Europe. Before the metric system, France used - feet and inches - and the French foot was composed of 12 French inches. The difference was that the French inch was a little bit longer than the English one - about 7%, although the ratio between the two varied over time, because before all this modern technology made it easier, maintaining consistent units was very hard. Feet and inches go back to the Roman Empire, but everyone ended up using a slightly different foot/inch. Even the US and UK used to use different inches (pre-1959), although the difference between the two is microscopic (but was considered important in US land surveying, since over hundreds of miles the difference can add up to several feet.) And today the US and UK still define non-metric volume measurements completely differently - the UK gallon is 20% larger than the US one
> And I think because we industrialized early, switching with the rest of the world was more expensive, so we stuck with it.
The problem with that argument is that US industry is actually more metricated than US everyday life. It is in domestic and consumer settings where the US lags the most in the adoption of the metric system; in industrial settings, it depends on the industry, but some US industries use metric heavily (for example, design and manufacturing of automobiles.)
Close to all trade, construction, design, healthcare etc in Britain is done in metric units.
The idea that 0-100F is somehow the range of “human living conditions” is completely bizarre to me, but I can see why someone from a place like the American Midwest might think this is true.
To me 0C is so much more meaningful than 0F, especially when talking about weather. The difference between -1C and 1C is something you can literally see around you. The difference between -1F and 1F is not.
Anything “below zero” is literally frozen and completely inhospitable to normal human life!
Ironic since I don't live in the midwest. I've visited there during summer once. :)
> The difference between -1C and 1C is something you can literally see around you. The difference between -1F and 1F is not. Anything “below zero” is literally frozen and completely inhospitable to normal human life!
I dunno, down to 20°F/-7°C, it's pretty easy to have liquid water still when hit by direct sunlight. It's also not really that extremely cold (I'm still fine with short sleeve shirts in the 20s F). 0°F/-17°C is where I'd say things get extremely cold and even direct sunlight ceases to melt water.
I believe you when you say you feel that way at those temperatures, but I personally wouldn’t wear just a t-shirt when at any temperature under 10C/50F.
So Fahrenheit matches the subjective temperature range where you might feel comfortable, but not me. And so you can’t make a general statement that it matches “human living conditions” when others think that Celsius better matches their comfortable range.
Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4). Feet are made up of 12 inches, a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Very convenient. One yard is three feet, gaining all the divisibility benefits that feet already have, and then some.
How about volume? Especially when dealing with recipes, the customary units are extremely convenient, with perhaps one exception. One gallon is four quarts (alternatively, two pottles, but that unit is not encountered much, shame), one quart is two pints, one pint is two cups, one cup is eight fluid ounces, one fluid ounce is two tablespoons, one tablespoon is three teaspoons. Excepting the last one (three instead of two), these measures make it very easy to double and halve quantities at will. Just a little bit of math, and third and quarter measurements are not difficult either. Effectively the customary volume measurements are counting in binary.
How about temperature? What's a more convenient scale for human living conditions? 0–100 °F or -20–40 °C? I know what one I'd pick. I am aware people live in even colder and hotter environments, but the majority of people in the world don't need to worry about values outside of this range. I also think "0 is very cold" and "100 is very hot" just makes more sense than "-20 is very cold" and "40 is very hot".
Metric/SI systems have been pushed in the United States since the 1860s. The continued use of the customary units is not for lack of trying. The customary units are plenty good already, have a few advantages of their own, and SI has failed to present itself as an overall better system. We'd probably adapt just fine, but we don't want to. We already have a convenient system for everyday use. (SI is probably better in scientific fields, and it's already used in such industry, so there you go.)
[1] Yes, even the SI base units. Look up their definitions and they're all defined with very difficult to remember numbers that you can measure against physical constants. This is because old meters, grams, liters, et al were arbitrary things and physical constant definitions have been retrofitted onto them. United States customary units are likewise defined as multiplications against the SI base units. Customary units already benefit from the physical constant definitions.