Why the United States refuses to go metric

I’d setting for more people being able to subtract 12 when I say “18:00.” Even better, if they actually understood that whole difficult 24 hours in a day thing. Oh and don’t get me started on the screwed up date formatting around here. Month-date-year is not a logical progression!

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http://time.interordi.com/itime.php

More than that, the 0 to 100 range of the Fahrenheit scale, quite well encompasses the normal temperature range of where the vast majority of humans live. Zero is pretty darn cold, and 100 is pretty darn hot, and most of live somewhere in the middle, most of the time. There is simply nothing remotely like that in the metric world. Celsius is fine for scientific purposes, but for reporting the weather Fahrenheit is better (and it has superior granularity for that purpose).

That’s what Pagume is for!

EDIT: Went to correct this, then realized I was right the first time.

It’ll still be the back 40… just the back 40 hectares, not acres.

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Also: F and C match up at -40, also known as the freezing point of mercury.

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We should recalibate both scales to reflect this essential truth.

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Yeah, no. There is something like that in the metric world, but the range is different – in Canada, I’d say 0 to 30. (0F is beyond “pretty darn cold” IMHO).

As for granularity – I don’t know anyone who can feel the difference between 20C and 21C, so I really don’t believe the granularity between 71F and 72F matters that much. Granularity is for cooking and laboratories, both of which use Celsius just fine.

Like I said before, if you really want to use Imperial measures, then cool. But don’t try to claim it’s superior, because if it was the countries of the British Commonwealth would never have switched.

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Liberia and Myanmar have been to the moon?

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So you’re basically saying that both systems are arbitrary? Cause if you’re aiming for objectivity try Kelvin.

Gotta tell you though, its pretty handy to easy to estimate the weight of a liquid by volume if you know that 1 litter of water weighs about 1 kilo, and its useful enough for doing some light plumbing work if you also need to calculate pressure.

Now, I normally wouldn’t care to defend metric except the only reason the rest of the world needs to bother with conversions is because of a couple of stragglers who refuse to change their arbitrary set of measurements for a more consistent arbitrary set of measurements.

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d) and we’re economically dominant enough we can get away with not switching.

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That’s because you don’t know me. I can definitely tell the difference between when my thermostat is set to 75F and 76F. I can set the thermostat with greater precision than I could using Celsius. And for a range of 0-30C vs 0-100F, well, the granularity is more than 3X. To say that’s not significant is simply absurd. Fahrenheit is simply a better scale for reporting environmental temperatures.

Fahrenheit is based on a human scale, while Celsius is based on a the freezing and boiling point of water - if it ever rains boiling water, then I’d concede your point. Until then, no.

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I think you’re just arguing that something that makes sense to you must also make as much sense to everybody else.

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It’s not the laborers, it’s industry with all of their machine tools calibrated to traditional American units that originally opposed conversion. It’s since become a cultural issue - do you want to use measurements created y cheese-eating surrender monkeys?!?

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The US never stopped using the fathom. Soundings for all NOAA charts for US waters are still in fathoms. Here’s one I used last weekend: http://www.charts.noaa.gov/PDFs/18720.pdf - note the “Soundings in fathoms” in big type at the lower right.

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Then please explain why Celsius is better for reporting the environmental temperature.

If you want greater granularity in environmental temperatures in degC, just go to 3 SF.

What resolution / accuracy do thermostats have, anyway?


As a Brit, I’m hopelessly conflicted on metric / imperial anyway. People’s weight has to be in stones and lbs, height in feet and inches, speed in mph, economy in mpg, even when buying fuel by the litre, beer by pints, but when hiking, I used OS metric maps, not the old 1" -1 mile ones, the weather has to be in degC.

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@tachin1 didn’t claim Celsius was better. You’re the one who claimed Fahrenheit is better, so the explanation is up to you.

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Vive le calendrier républicain !

Seriously those revolutionary loved base 10 system !

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