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I use both interchangeably, as well as my own standard of measure, for my designing projects. Each system has its points of advantage and I have memorized the common conversions, the same way I did my multiplication tables, in the 1st grade.
The US is fine the way it is. Nobody in the world is bothered because the everyday US citizen uses non-metric measurements. It works for Americans in everyday use (miles on distance signs, for example, and pounds in supermarkets), and as has been pointed out, American industry that needs to use metric, does, effortlessly.
I'm in Canada, where we were forced to make the change to metric. It was a botch-up. Today, we are officially metric--but in practice we're not. There was no good reason to make the change. We still use pounds and ounces in baby weights, feet and inches in our height, pounds in our weight, and a proper pint of beer in a pub is 20 ounces (Imperial pint, not that 16-oz US pint ). Horse races are still measured in furlongs and miles, football fields and golf courses are still measured in yards, and railroads still measure miles from divisional points.
We woke up one morning, and were forced to learn another language, with no more reason for it than, "Well, wouldn't you like to know the temperature in Europe when you vacation there?" Given that most of us never vacation in Europe, it was a weak excuse. Our industry can make metric parts, and compete with Europeans and Asians, but I'm damned if I know why our domestic roads, gasoline measures, and so on, are measured in metric. Who in Europe or Asia cares how Canadians measure things in their everyday affairs?
Again, there was no good reason for Canada to make the change.
Really? It's so much simpler though. The metric system is based in 10s. The imperial system is based on some ancient king's shoe size.
Binary is based in 10s. There are 10 kinds of people in the world those who get binary, and those that don't.
Metric system was based on the assumption that the earth's 1/4 circumference equator to pole was 10,000,000 meters in length, it's not. Now it's based on an approximate solar second (of which there are 31536000 a year) the science is an arbitrary number of hyperfine transitions of a Cesium133 atom, that's pretty damn close to 1 solar second. Interesting they chose a universally rare element (why not H1, the most common element in the universe?) and why 9,192,631,770? Well because it's approximately 1 ephemeris second, which is itself approximately 1 solar second. And get this... 1 solar second is approximately one heartbeat, so did the ancients choose seconds to define the year? Wouldn't that make it a system derived from the period of someone's heartbeat?
Our system is our culture. It doesn't cause any problems, and we don't impose it on anybody else.
Agreed, any measurement system is solely an abstract means to represent physical quantities. Those that grok* this don't care about the means, those that don't seem to think the means are the most important thing in existence.
We sell internationally so we have used metrics at work for a long time. I learned Celsius conversion from Bob and Doug McKenzie back in the early 80's.
"Do American engineers use metric?
American physicists and electrical engineers use the metric system very heavily. American mechanical engineers, civil engineers, and aerospace engineers tend to emphasize the US customary units"
This.
What is the cost to have the civil engineers convert all the land records from acres and feet to metric?
US lumber is in feet. Are we going to build different sized buildings or buy lumber 2438.4 millimeters long.
The US is not alone. In the UK, while they have gone further, use a mish mosh of imperial and metric.
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). Horse races are still measured in furlongs and miles, football fields and golf courses are still measured in yards, and railroads still measure miles from divisional points.
