Americans, what's so great about the Imperial System?

shootthebandit

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
Absolutely none whatsoever.

The is no reason to use Imperial over Metric.

However, at this point it's completely and utterly impossible to ever make the switch. When 300+ million people are all committed to one system and their entire society is built around it, they can't change just because the other system makes a little more sense.
The UK made the switch rather seemlessly. Old people still use imperial measurements but obviously as generations go on everyone will be metric. We still use imperial for some things like heoght and weight of people and we use miles for distance


bearlotz said:
Heronblade said:
Speaking for the engineers that have to convert all this mess into a usable format, the vast majority of us loathe the imperial system from the bottom of our nerdy hearts. The reluctance of the American populace at large to switch to the more efficient and easier to learn ISU standard is incredibly annoying, and there is a very strong sentiment that we should simply swap over to doing everything in metric, to hell with anyone not prepared to finish switching with us.
Hi-five. Also American, and also an engineer, and I agree with all of the above. Any time I'm doing anything for work that isn't staying domestic, I need to work with both systems on the same project. And it sucks. It sucks horribly. I would change over tomorrow if I could, but then it would be just me saying things that non-technical people wouldn't understand, and last time I did that a group of nice young men in clean white coats wanted to have a word with me. Everything gets kind of fuzzy after that...
Im an engineer from the UK and everything is metric ive only really come across imperial when i was doing my training and we had to be aware of how to convert from one to the other. I remember it being a nightmare to use imperial. I work on british aircraft so everything is metric until i come across an american part (which is very rare) and all our tools are metric so i spend ages looking for a fucking socket that will fit
 

moseythepirate

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Something you imperial-bashers need to understand is that the imperial system is not arbitrary.

Where the metric system was designed to be easy to make calculations with in a base 10 numeral system, imperial measures were designed to reflect common use and be easy to estimate without precision measurements...mostly because many of them were designed thousands of years ago, before we had precision instruments. The foot, for instance, has probably been used for as long as people have had feet.

As for temperature, whereas Centigrade was calibrated to the freezing and boiling points of water, Fahrenheit was calibrated to the freezing point of water and average human body heat. In other words, the temperature is calibrated to 2 useful temperatures, making is a handy estimate of comfortable temperature range.

It isn't like you can't do science in Imperial units. It's just that the you need conversion coefficients, which are annoying, but not difficult. Besides, American scientists and engineers work in metric anyway. It's just the common folk that use imperial, so why worry?
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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It's all they know. Literally the only reason. The metric system is on a basic, pedestrian level just as good but not better in that both define specific quantities. The difference is that metric is neater and more logically derived, and the rest of the world uses it.

To those saying it's impossible or too expensive to switch, it isn't, but the longer you leave it, the harder it'll be. Do it now. For your own sakes.
 

briankoontz

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American Exceptionalism - we're super special, whatever we do is right, and the rest of the world should become us, not the other way around. USA! USA! USA! We're number 1!
 

AliasBot

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
Absolutely none whatsoever.

The is no reason to use Imperial over Metric.

However, at this point it's completely and utterly impossible to ever make the switch. When 300+ million people are all committed to one system and their entire society is built around it, they can't change just because the other system makes a little more sense.
Basically this. It's just far too much effort to switch everything over to metric, especially when so many people here have no understanding of metric at all. Any change would have to come first through education, teaching children metric along with imperial when they're young so they understand both, and then, once those children have grown up to the point where most of the country does fully understand metric, the overhaul of signs, 'mile' markers, and...damn near everything else would have to happen, which would both take a lot of time and a lot of work. It's a long game type of thing, and there's no incentive in the short-term for politicians (the ones that would be implementing and overseeing the change) to start the process in the first place.
 

fix-the-spade

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Full Metal Bolshevik said:
I think the main reason US doesn't change to Metric system is because it would cost millions to do so.
Millions? Pff, the Imperial system has already cost the US billions, not least of which was the Mars Climate Orbiter, all one hundred and ninety three million dollars of it.

On a more serious note, I know of no industrial applications now that use Imperial, even US brands that I've dealt with manufacture to Metric then convert the measurements on account of every other country and company on the planet talking Metric. The saving of no longer doing that would outweigh the cost of finally admitting that inches are rubbish.
 

Snotnarok

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Nothing is better about it, it's just what everyone was taught and uses.
I've been learning metric as I go (not actively just trying to pick up on it as I have to look things up) but to be honest the use here will be limited, if I say I need 3 meters of blank, everyone will go :| wat? How many feet is that?
 

fix-the-spade

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Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
When 300+ million people are all committed to one system and their entire society is built around it, they can't change just because the other system makes a little more sense.
Why not? The rest of the world managed it, something like 48 states use Metric as the officially accepted units of measurement, so does NASA and the US military, it's taught in American schools and even your criminal justice system defines contraband amounts by Metric units.

You're much further along that change than you think.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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Its not better, its not worse its just different. Some people find it easier to grasp, others are more comfortable with the metric system. I prefer Imperial though I also can use metric without much (if any) issue since I was in the Military and they use the metric system out of tradition and easier communication with allies during joint exercises.
Still I like the Imperial more because it seems to make a bit more sense to my way of thinking. I feel its subjective more than anything but thats me.
 

Exterminas

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It is already established in America and people are used to it to a certain degree.
That is probably the only advantage over the metric system.
 

Rinshan Kaihou

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I can agree that the metric system is better in almost all things, except temperature. Maybe it's because we are used to it, but if I go outside and it's oven roasting hot, it seems to make more sense to me to say "man, must be at least 100 degrees outside!" than to say "man must be at least 40 degrees outside!" etc
 

Heronblade

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Comocat said:
senordesol said:
I don't think there's anything inherently 'great' about the Imperial system; it's just what we were raised on and, thus, how we're used to measuring things. It's a pretty easy system to translate physically, too.

I know I can easily lift a pound, not a thousand pounds though.

But I can easily lift a gram and a kilogram; so what's the point?
I agree, it's just a system of measurements. Any organization where measurements matter probably already uses SI conventions and then who really cares if we measure a road trip in miles or km?
Everyone who has to translate between the two systems cares, which includes pretty much everyone who makes the products the rest of you use and depend on. It is a pain in the freaking ass for us, and ends up presenting a potential safety hazard if we proceed with less than our usual care.

Case in point, a recent 125 million dollar orbiter failed simply and solely because Lockheed Martin standardized components in imperial rather than SI units. NASA should have caught the issue prior to launch, but mishaps like this are a hazard every time a company is forced to work with both systems.

Also, senordesol, kilogram is the standard starting unit for most day to day use. Its about 2.2 pounds. Try using that for your standard of comparison rather than a gram.

Of course, it technically is a unit for mass, not weight, comparing it to the English equivalent of slugs would be more accurate, but almost nobody, even Americans, seem to know what the hell a slug is anyways, and going the other way, people don't seem to like using newtons for weight.

rudolphna said:
I can agree that the metric system is better in almost all things, except temperature. Maybe it's because we are used to it, but if I go outside and it's oven roasting hot, it seems to make more sense to me to say "man, must be at least 100 degrees outside!" than to say "man must be at least 40 degrees outside!" etc
You could always use the other metric temperature scale when you want to be dramatic. How does "Man it must be at least 313 degrees outside!" sound to you?
 

Robert Marrs

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I don't think anyone really likes the imperial system its just what we are used to. If you tell me something weighs 20kg my mind does not process what the object would feel like if I held it. I could do the math of course but its not natural. Metric system is simpler and makes more sense but its not used very often in normal everyday american life.
 

MCerberus

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There's actually a fairly strong thread of Xenophobia going through this. There's this assumption that some foreign power is trying to force us to change and TAKE OUR FREEDOM. This combined with the fact it's easier to do nothing means it doesn't get changed.

Metric is still taught for science though. Chemistry and physics are hard enough without trying to force imperial though. Dear lord even something as simple as STP would become a nightmare on imperial.

Off-topic. One of the things I find odd is that people consider ounces and grams to measure the same thing. They do not, but it seems that way because we assume a gravitational multiplier of 1.00
 

SuperSuperSuperGuy

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I find it weird that mass is a derived unit in imperial, rather than a base unit. Rather, the base unit is force, in pounds, which is used to calculate mass, rather than the other way around. Mass in imperial is measured in slugs, just FYI.

The only reason that I can see why people still use imperial over metric is because it'd be costly to change it. I, personally, think metric is just better because it's easier to use and it makes so much more sense.
 

mitchell271

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Here in Canada, we use a mixture of both. At least, in Southern Ontario we do. Because we're basically the same country at this point, especially with Harper (fuck that guy), a lot of what the US does rubs off on us. When measuring anything but distance driving, we use Imperial, but we're taught in Metric, almost exclusively. It really annoys me that when I was renting my apartment, the floor plan said "x square feet". I don't know how big that is, tell me in m[sup]2[/sup]!

I hate this place sometimes.
 

MCerberus

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SecretNegative said:
MCerberus said:
There's actually a fairly strong thread of Xenophobia going through this. There's this assumption that some foreign power is trying to force us to change and TAKE OUR FREEDOM. This combined with the fact it's easier to do nothing means it doesn't get changed.
Really? From what I've seen pretty much everyone has been saying "Metric is obviously better, but everyone uses Imperial since that's what they're used to". Doesn't strike me as xenophobic, it strikes me honestly as pretty rational.
This is both historic context, and add on to that the US cannot sign a treaty with another nation this day and age without people going to the media claiming its some sort of Illuminati plot to take our freedom. America is not a rational place.