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I know this may have been asked before in previous years, but will the US ever fully convert to the metric system or that will never happen? (Including road signs & temperature)
It's happened already where precision is needed. Engineering, science, medical - anything complex that takes exact figures or - gasp! - requires international cooperation.
Incidentally, US units are already metric by definition - quite literally, in fact. There's no standard yard in a vault anywhere, nor is the yard defined by some natural constant. The Office of Weights and Measurement the rational route and defined customary US units as fractions of metric units way back in 1892.
I said " easier to learn ". Any system in practical use can be as simple or as complicated as the equation.
You ignored the statement because it's nonsense, yet post the same point???
Easier to learn. You mean like time periods?
60 seconds per minute
60 minutes per hour
24 hours per day
31 days for 7 months, 30 days for 4 months and 28 or 29 days for one month
365 days a year for 3 years, and 366 days for 1 year, of a 4 year cycle.
The world seems to manage just fine learning that.
I did not post the same point. I posted a specific practical application of metrics, I didn't even tell you the operators needed. You claim that the process of division varies dependent on the divided or divisor, which is utterly absurd.
In addition to adopting the metric system, they should change time so that ...
There are 10 hours in a day (noon would be at 5, no silly AM or PM)
There are 100 minutes in an hour
There are 100 seconds in a minute
With the current system there are 86,400 seconds in a day. My system would create 100,000 seconds in a day, which actually isn't all that different. What they would have to do is shorten the length of a second by 13.6%.
This sounds intuitive to you, but it requires a lot of changes. This would actually drastically change sports besides baseball, cricket and golf. Basketball is currently 40 minutes (college and women's pro) or 48 (men's pro), while hockey and football are 60 minutes, and soccer/association football is 90 minutes. I think lacrosse is also 60 minutes but I'm not as sure. This new system would be around 24 minutes for college and women's pro basketball, about 28.8 for men's pro basketball, about 36 minutes for 60 minute sports and 54 minutes for soccer. This sounds clunky like the ml round off on most liquid oz containers. Then you also have the issue of work shifts. The typical work shift is 7 to 8 hours or anywhere from 25,200 seconds to 28,800 seconds. Basically it would create a LOT of chaos and not just for the new watches but for the system we know.
The biggest thing I'd say is distances are too intuitive in the US system. Temperature, I could do Celsius if needed because 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling is easier than 32F and 212F in Fahrenheit. Poundage (gravity based) could easily be converted to metric, might take a little work, but I think it would be far easier than distance. Distance I think should stay as is since we have tv dimensions, we can truly gage a mile and it wouldn't throw drivers off and football fields are set by about 100y from the outer boundaries of the two endzones.
I know this may have been asked before in previous years, but will the US ever fully convert to the metric system or that will never happen? (Including road signs & temperature)
I love the metric system, what's not to love about a system based on 10 but this would be an enormously expensive task, take the building industry for example. Nearly every house and building is built using standard. If you were to switch to metric you have three choices.
Label standard sized material in metric which is just stupid other than a secondary label. A 4*8 sheet of plywood is still a 4*8 sheet of plywood.
Hybrid where you supply standard sized for old construction and metric for new construction, also stupid and would be very expensive.
Fully switch to metric sized material in metric sizes that make sense.
This last one would incur huge expense and waste. The standard sizes in use are built around certain dimensions to eliminate work and waste. Most framing in a structure is built on 16 inch centers. When you put a piece of 4'*8' material on this the edges line up on the center of a stud. any old structures would require every piece of material to be cut to fit or adding studs. The studs themselves become an issue because they would also have to be ripped to size or furred out.
This is just one issue of very many, shipping is another one. It's just undoable, you can't change history.
Last edited by thecoalman; 06-17-2018 at 06:00 PM..
Dane metric is certainly much easier to use but you can make precision measurements with either system.
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