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Being a translator, I sometimes get technical documents from American clients to translate, and in specification tables it often says for instance 1/4" and in brackets the corresponding rounded mm value.
Why switch over if the current system works just fine? The scientific and medical field uses metric, ok. Everyday life people use imperial, big deal. Us switching purely to metric has about as much chance of happening as the British Isles switching over to left-hand drive like the rest of the world
India, Australia and Japan all have left-hand traffic.
But only when you pick the wrong order before the unit. Actually that is one of the benefits of the metric system, you just add a c, or an m, or a μ (which was not a lucky choice though as it is not a standard letter) or an n before meter. Is there something like a milliinch or nanoinch?
India, Australia and Japan all have left-hand traffic.
So does the ex british colonies of Africa from Kenya on down to South Africa, all of the English speaking Caribbean including the USVI, several Polynesian islands, Kong Hong, Macau, Thailand, and a few other nations in southeast Asia and New Zealand.
The point of my post was Britain and Ireland, especially the UK, are not going to switch to left-hand drive (LHD, as in steering wheel placement) despite ALL of continental Europe driving on the right. So, I don't see the U.S. switching over to metric in everyday life anytime soon. Americans will still use pounds, ounces, pints, quarts, gallons, miles, feet, inches, Fahrenheit, etc. for the foreseeable future. Scientists that complain that the U.S. doesn't use metric are talking crap, because ALL scientific research and work, including medicine, is done in metric anyway. The only advantage that I like about metric, are the small measurements like milligrams, centimeters, millimeters, micrometers, and nanometers. Those are very handy, but we don't need Celsius, kilometers, or meters for most things.
The difference might be that driving on one side or the other does not offer any advantage or disadvantages, one is just exactly the opposite of the other, like looking in a mirror.
In science Americans also use the metric system, it is natural as science is very international...
yeah, i only mentioned the auto industry as that is what i am most familiar with. funny though back in the mid 70s when i was in high school, my chemistry teacher hated the metric system, but my physics teacher loved it. and my auto shop teacher didnt care either way.
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