Either system can provide as accurate as any other. Any system I know of can equal the “accuracy” of any other.
The difference is not the possible accuracy of any system, but rather the ease of using the system. For most people the most convenient is whatever they commonly use. So for most people in North America fractions are easiest. In Europe (and as I recall most of the world) digital (1 or 0.1 or 23 …) is the most common.
However if we were to switch everyone to digital, then in one generation, we could have the best system (for nearly all) uses.
Base 60 works? I didn’t know the Babylonians Had a survivable culture. Learn to use a metric tape measure in carpentry and your ability to use and transfer more accurate measurements is enhanced dramatically. Use one to install your siding, roofing, windows and doors and the fitment has the potential to be better and in less time then otherwise using conventional measure standards. Let’s see 25 feet 6 and 5/16 inches or 8.125 meters… duh.
Do you. . See the irony there? (especially since many elements of the English system are Roman in origin?)
TSM: Since when do we need to bend over to the specifications of NATO?
Since we wanted interchangeability of armaments. It’s ridiculous to have to ship two types of ammunition out to the battlefield. Much easier to send a big crate of 7.62mm cartridges, and everyone can load up no matter what country he’s from.
While I’m not foaming at the mouth to switch over, I find arguments along the lines of “We’re the leader, we call the shots” to be both silly and arrogant. A good leader recognizes a good system and adopts/adapts it to his organization, and is not such a blowhard as to tell his coworkers that he’s the only one with any good ideas and everyone else can shut the hell up.
The metric system makes a lot of sense for a lot of applications.
Meter / kilometer makes much more sense than foot / mile:
“Hey, how many meters in a kilometer?”
"Uh, well, the name tells you. Kilo. 1,000.“
is a lot more sensible than
"Hey, how many feet in a mile?”
“Erm. 5,280.”
“What? Why!?”
"Because. . Uh. -blush- Well, the English decided to make 8 furlongs a mile, and a furlong is how far a horse can pull a plow before it needs to rest, which was about 660 feet, and so. . Uh. . Why are you laughing? "
If we didn’t have a system already in place…then obviously the Metric system would the most logical choice. But the problem is we do have a system in place. And changing it is not going to be easy.
I’ve NEVER worked in SAE in any college Physics class…or even higher math class. All calculations are done in metric.
Some sports have already changed over to Metric…Track and field is all metric now…But I don’t see how Football (American football) or baseball is going to change over. “That was a great punt return of 90.44 meters.”
"Some sports have already changed over to Metric…Track and field is all metric now…But I don’t see how Football (American football) or baseball is going to change over. “That was a great punt return of 90.44 meters.” "
If we did metrify football and baseball fields, i.e. 10 meter first downs and 100 meter football fields, all the past records would have to be frozen and the records started anew.
I think yards in football and miles in driving are going to be with us for a long time. The fact that the mile is not a nice round number of feet or inches is irrelevent for the distances that are measured in miles. Most instruments that measure distance in miles use the mile as a basic unit and divide it into tenths and hundreths of a mile instead of miles and feet anyway.
The mile is a natural unit for measuring driving distances because it’s about the distance a car typically travels in one minute on the highway. If a sign says your destination is 50 miles away, you are about 50 minutes away. That’s a good reason to keep it.
BLE “I think yards in football and miles in driving are going to be with us for a long time.”
I fully agree and feel they will until at least they stop making reruns of “The Longest Yard”. I feel our preferences for non metric measures may have as much to do with our fixation on Americanized sports as anything else. I bet that if we all woke up tomorrow and speed signs were in KPH instead of MPH, we would have few problems.
But, to your point, if the football field were “lengthen” to 100 meters. there would be a national uprising. Track and field has been “metrified” because less face it, fewer people care…sorry for the sports insult, just an opinion.
For starters, the SAE wishes people would not refer to them as SAE fasteners
(or wrenches). Both ASTM and SAE have specs for both inch and metric
fasteners. SAE generally uses either the word inch or metric in the title to
distinguish. (Most of the inch specs are in the aerospace arm of SAE and the
reference number begins with AS, but it is not 100% clean.)
The proper name for US measurements is USC (US Customary Units). Note, it is not called a system as it is not. It is a hodge-podge collection of poorly related units.
Those who prefer to support USC by the claim that the US is the world’s largest economy or has the strongest military are completely wrong. It is the European Union that is the world’s largest economy and has been so for most of this century. See:
As for the US military, it hasn’t won a war since 1945 and only then because of Allied support. As a super power, the US is quickly being replaced by a growing China in Asia and the EU in the west. Unfortunately the US media fails to report to the American people how quickly China is replacing the US in the Pacific region. America’s mistakes in Iraq (killing off Saddam Hussein) allowed Iran to exert itself in the Muslim world resulting in the series of revolutions in pro-western Arab countries with pro-Iranian and anti-American political parties assuming the leadership.
It isn’t surprising that with all of these American mistakes, that the US made a even bigger blunder by not metricating. But fine, you live by your mistakes.
Yes, it may cost a king’s ransom to convert American companies to metric, but who ever said they need to be converted? There is a better way and that is exactly what is being done now and since the Reagen administration. You don’t metricate the factories, you simply close them and move them offshore to countries where the metric system is established. This way everyone is happy. The company because it can metricate at a low cost and the former American worker who doesn’t have to dread waking up every morning and having to go to work in a metric company. The fact that he may be unemployed has to be preferred to having to speak metric words all day.
The new Chinese producers of former American products don’t do soft conversions. They switch immediately to rounded numbers. Your 4 x 8 plywood sheets now coming from China are not made to 1219.2 mm x 2438.4 mm but to a round 1220 mm x 2440 mm and Americans don’t even know the difference.
Nobody, I repeat nobody in the world wants to force the US to metricate. It is to their economic advantage if America never does. They have the booming economies and all America has is a pile of debts and virtual bankruptcy. It is to their advantage that the US NEVER change. America’s loss is their gain.
If there ever was a need to metricate is was to maintain America’s former economy. Now it is too late for America. Keep your inches and continue to decline and let the world have metric so they can continue to grow.
“The mile is a natural unit for measuring driving distances because it’s about the distance a car typically travels in one minute on the highway. If a sign says your destination is 50 miles away, you are about 50 minutes away. That’s a good reason to keep it.”
Natural to whom? It is what you are use to. As for the speed and time that would depend on you traveling at a speed that works out to 50 min driving time. When I travel on the Expressway I do 120 km/h. Thus I can estimate that every kilometre takes 30 s. On city streets the speeds are usually 60 km/h, so the travel time is 1 min per kilometre. By your logic, the metric system works better.
Mike in NH said:
"Some sports have already changed over to Metric…Track and field is all metric now…But I don’t see how Football (American football) or baseball is going to change over. “That was a great punt return of 90.44 meters.”
What is this nonsense of measuring to 90.44 m? Do you do that with prehistoric units? Would you measure a punt return to 90.44 yards? If not, why not? You use round numbers to make it easier to say. The same thing would be true when measuring in metres. You would say 90 m, just like every other normal person does. Maybe this is where America is failing, it seems to hung up on exact numbers that a calculator spews out and can’t bring itself to round the numbers sensibly.
It is comments like these that put meaning behind America’s decline. There is no way the US will ever be a great nation again if this is a sampling of the way its citizens think.
So, we only closed factories and moved them to China because the alternative was metircating them? And somehow it was all Reagan’s fault? Really? Are you sure that if America had adopted the metric system a long time ago and someone other than Reagan had been president, this would not have happened anyway?
Get with the times man. Reagan as a scapegoat is soooo yesterday. Today’s official scapegoat is RAYYYYYY-CISM. That’s right, we didn’t go completely metric because we are RAYYYY-CISTS.
I agree with some of the comments by Ametrika but only in an over generalized way. I firmly believe that it’s a corporate decision based upon profit which may involve the expenses in production here which may include metric conversion, but never as a direct strategy. Heck, Japan outsources as well to China. In general, massive campaigns to spread false information for profit is the norm in our advertising. The average American is perfectly capable of converting to metrics immediately.
When teaching, I made the annoucement that all labs and math exercises would be in metrics during certain topics. Students complained then promptly proceeded to use metrics to great advantage. When left to their own, they reverted to the influence we adults provide for them in the outside world by the 16 Oz. soda can in the lunch room disillusioning them about metrics and trapping them on a path to poor health as well; all for profit.
BTW, Americans choose “not to win wars” some times as the alternatives are " break it, you own it " and getting out at the appropriate time is often the best strategy. Our biggest fault is shared by all large nations. We minimize the value or individual lives and freedoms for corporate profit, China included. We actually fall for the “best leaders are corporate heads” who oversee profit making ventures and elect them to political office.
This further enhances the Idea that a country should be run as a compassionless corporation for profit and not a trust. Hidden in that decision is the reluctance to do what’s right and make metrics part of our nation language and provide all our people’s with the rights they deserve.
“Ametrica” is one of several usernames/sameperson who uses a certain list to get to discussions like this. I’m actually quite ‘on topic’ as it goes as I have 5 cars three of which are classic (maybe 4). I am from the UK. So you can imagine how loudly I LOLd at his comparison of America to ‘the country called europe’.!!! So I would not worry about that one. We are out of their argument on who saves Greece and what the Germans should do about Spain etc etc. Total mess. But I digress.
He’s here to do 3 things:
Hate America
Hate people who like america - like me. So he hates me.
Talk bllcks about the metric system. So he… you get the picture…
He’s a super troll but in reality it’s quite humorous to see his fits in black and white.
Beware though… He’s been banned from many sites and has closed down others (intimidation etc).
How do I know? Because I have an interest in measures. Not as much as cars though.
Don’t let him ruin this site!
Is Britain really metric? Well - a govt figure may say yes or almost. Someone in the street will say no.
Basically we have caved in into labelling certain things up in metric. This is due to the gutless govts of Major and Blair. Walk into a superstore and see the loose stuff - well you’ll see imperial AND metric. Go to the pre packed stuff and it’s metric only (although 2 supermarket giants are thinking about changing all that - good luck to them).
In reality we’re a mix. but if you come over here and looked and listened you’ll hear good old British measures (and enjoy a larger drink in the pub!). Deliberately walk into a shop and grab your magnifying glass and look at the numbers on a pack of cheese then you might see metric. Or both. While others look at you thinking ‘Why?’
Oh yes, we had our petrol stations changed over by Mrs T to litres from gallons. The only thing she got wrong. But then how would you hide a huge price hike?
Drive our roads and you’ll see miles, yards, feet, inches, Tons, etc
Tons is a good one. Correctly it should say tonnes (on of our few metric usages) but they label it up in either - and guess what? They almost weight the same! Ta daaaaa.
Has he told you about yards actually being metres?
Or ‘pounds’ being 500 grams?
Or the Euro doing really really well?
“Time for example is almost universally measured in hours, minutes, and seconds.”
“Well, during my time as a letter carrier, USPS time clocks measured time in hours and ‘hundreths.’ Dunno how common this is, but it seems unlikely time clocks were built exclusively for postal desires!”
On the other hand, back in college I worked at K-Mart, and the time clock there was in hours and eighths. Clock in seven minutes early and leave seven minutes late and you get nothing; eight minutes early and eight minutes late and you get paid for an extra half hour (plus you get a stern warning about not taking overtime).
Of course, they also paid us all in cash in those days…