America converting to the Metric system

[Surefire]

8 seconds. But I was disqualified as half of if was down my front.

Thats not true. In fact only recently the EU gave up trying to force this legislation on the UK and traders are perfectly welcome to sell goods in lbs and ozs.

[Mr Eagle]

Thats not true. In fact only recently the EU gave up trying to force this legislation on the UK and traders are perfectly welcome to sell goods in lbs and ozs.

The UK government has said it will no longer prosecute "minor" offences,not quite the same as "welcome to sell goods"

www.metricmartyrs.co.uk

[ctmurrray]

The famous saying:

" The US is moving toward the metric system slowly - one inch at a time"

As a scientist my work is in metric and my daily life in US units. I seem to have a good grasp for both. I was surprised that one of the Mars missions which failed was due to two separate teams on the project using different units (launch team and landing team at a later date). To save money there was not much if any overlap between the teams so the landing team assumed one set of units were used when in fact the other was actually used. It seemed strange - both should have been using the same units.

[DaveLeeNC]

Golf is the ultimate compromise between metric and US/Imperial units with the underlying units of Swing Weight being "gram-inches".

Never in my life would i have ever believed that any kind of torque would be defined in gram-inches (which, strictly speaking, isn't even torque in mixed units).

dave

ps. I remember hearing in school in teh 1960's that the US would be totally metric by the 1980's. It clearly isn't gonna happen.

[zeg]

The metric system is fundamentally better designed, but as others have said already, old habits die hard.

That's probably not even the biggest obstacle, though. For manufacturing work, it's important to specify sizes and tolerances precisely. Going from one set of units to another introduces endless opportunities for rounding errors. The rounding can't necessarily be done automatically -- thought has to be put in to ensure that two pieces that interlock are rounded to preserve the proper spacing. Given the enormous infrastructure in Imperial machine tools, etc, it takes a long time to convert.

I am pretty sure we'll convert "eventually," though. The metric system is more sensible and the rest of the world's already using it. It doesn't mean we'll drop all the old terms. Football will probably always use yards and we'll all still drink pints of beer. Heck, have you ever checked the volume of that fifth of bourbon? It's 750 mL, not 1/5 of a gallon any more!

[jonjones]

In the Military we measure distance in kilometers. In Architecture we use Imperial Units in the States and Metric overseas. Structural and Civil Engineers use decimal inches (8.625" vs 8-5/8"). A mix is fine and has worked for me.

If God had intended us to use the Metric System we would have only had 10 disciples.