White House response to the U.S. adopting the metric system

[greenforest32]

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/supporting-american-choices-measurement

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[dead0man]

I'm not understanding the rolleyes.  The White House is right.  The Metric System is generally better, but it's certainly not better for everything.

[greenforest32]

I'm not understanding the rolleyes.  The White House is right.  The Metric System is generally better, but it's certainly not better for everything.

Just the particular examples they used and references of "speaking metric" coupled with the relatively extreme delay we have with the world on this one standard.

I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime at this pace. Even the road signs still don't have metric in 2013.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

This seems to be as close as you can get to having a metric speed limit sign in the US.

https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=49.002351,-122.48345&spn=0.004666,0.008272&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=49.002355,-122.483606&panoid=4iWhBwmniiCbykC7JT9NNw&cbp=12,131.92,,1,0.41

[7,052,770]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

[pbrower2a]

The English System will never die in canned expressions (give him an inch and he will take a mile; a pound of flesh) and in units of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years will survive). It will be used indefinitely in such mundane activities as cooking with the "teaspoons", "pinches", "dashes", etc. Sports with solid rules will officially use "yards" in football and define the length of basepaths as 90 feet and the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate as "sixty feet and six inches". Real estate interests will use acres and square feet indefinitely because the legal measurements were originally English measurements. Nobody wants to make a mess of title insurance.

As it is, apothecaries' measures died about as druggists quit calling themselves apothecaries. Science and medicine have effectively gone metric. Engineering would do so wisely except for doltish customers who insist upon using English measurements.     

[DINGO Joe]

Back in elementary school, we were taught the metric system every year because the US was going to convert.  What wacko liberal bastion did I go to for grade school?  Oklahoma.

[Bacon King]

Back in elementary school, we were taught the metric system every year because the US was going to convert.  What wacko liberal bastion did I go to for grade school?  Oklahoma.

It's still taught today because it's required knowledge for even basic science.

[King]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

Yeah, 32 as hot just doesn't sound the alarms like 90.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

Yeah, 32 as hot just doesn't sound the alarms like 90.

Actually the degree size is what is superior for Fahrenheit.  In my own personal experience, a degree Fahrenheit is right at level where I can notice a difference between one degree and another.  That makes the degrees in Celsius too large for optimal use.

[Supersonic]

Why doesn't the US just adopt the moderate hero choice and use both like we do in the UK?

Although, I have no idea how Fahrenheit works, so please adopt Celsius.

[King]

We do use both.  There are no barriers for the scientific community using the metric.

There's no reason to force it on casual weather reports and Jr high math problems.

[Donerail]

Why not just use Kelvin?

[Ichabod]

I guess because Kelvin scale is just a linear function of Celsius scale.

[muon2]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

Yeah, 32 as hot just doesn't sound the alarms like 90.

Actually the degree size is what is superior for Fahrenheit.  In my own personal experience, a degree Fahrenheit is right at level where I can notice a difference between one degree and another.  That makes the degrees in Celsius too large for optimal use.

That's interesting and to your credit. It's not generally true that a person can distinguish between a 61 F day and 62 F day. It's unlikely most people would dress differently either. That's why you don't see Europeans giving fractional Celsius temperatures on the weather forecast.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why not just use Kelvin?

Both Kelvin and Rankine, the Fahrenheit equivalent scale with 0°R = absolute zero, give fairly large numbers for weather observations, so for those purposes Celsius and Fahrenheit are more comfortable scales than their absolute zero based equivalents.

If we were defining a temperature scale from scratch, we'd ignore the boiling point altogether as a reference point and use absolute zero and one of the triple points, but not necessarily that of water.  Water is tricky because you have to define the isotopic composition.  It would be much more reliable to use the triple point of one of the elements with only one isotope.  On the other hand a scale with the triple point of water as one reference point has the advantage of making it easy to define a practical scale that like the Celsius scale would use 0° as the triple point which is close enough to the freezing point for ordinary use.  If we wanted degrees similar to Fahrenheit in size we could specify 500 (or 512 for binary geeks). degrees between absolute zero and the triple point.

(A bit of trivia, one reason the Fahrenheit scale is the way it is is because Fahrenheit wanted a power of 2 for the number of degrees between his reference points to make it easier to mark the degrees.  His original reference points were thus 0°F for a frigorific mixture of ammonium chloride and ice (frigorific mixtures naturally reach a stable temperature) and 32°F for ice water.  A third reference point for him was body temperature, which he defined as 96°F (64 degrees above freezing).  Later recalibration of the scale by others set the boiling point at 212°F (180 degrees above freezing) which also affected body temperature.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

Yeah, 32 as hot just doesn't sound the alarms like 90.

Actually the degree size is what is superior for Fahrenheit.  In my own personal experience, a degree Fahrenheit is right at level where I can notice a difference between one degree and another.  That makes the degrees in Celsius too large for optimal use.

That's interesting and to your credit. It's not generally true that a person can distinguish between a 61 F day and 62 F day. It's unlikely most people would dress differently either. That's why you don't see Europeans giving fractional Celsius temperatures on the weather forecast.

To be fair, I'm only that sensitive right at the transitions between just right and too warm, and between just right and too cool.  As the temperature gets farther away from just right, I'm less sensitive to temperature differences.

Outside temperatures vary enough during the day that the imprecision of the Celsius scale doesn't matter, but for inside temperatures, I want to control my thermostat to the nearest degree Fahrenheit.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

The only thing I use imperial for is weight and penis size.

[morgieb]

I generally support metric,  but Fahrenheit is far superior to Celsius.

Yeah, 32 as hot just doesn't sound the alarms like 90.

What sounds colder though? 30 or -2 (or something like that?)

[Mr. Morden]

I'm for switching to metric as long as we go all the way and use metric time.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I'm for switching to metric as long as we go all the way and use metric time.

It's a little late for that since most of the derived SI units use the second.  There's not much point in refactoring the larger units.  54 hours of 40 minutes of 40 seconds? 6 hours of 120 minutes of 120 seconds? Or how about dropping minutes and have 96 hours of 900 seconds or 100 hours of 864 seconds depending upon where you want to put the tens?

Or maybe you'd like something more radical and not bother with a day the same length as the solar day.  A day of 27⁷/₉ old hours divided into 10 new hours of 100 minutes of 100 seconds?

[pbrower2a]

In case anyone is curious -- all metric units except for time and temperature have their basis in the speed of light. One meter is measured as something close to the distance that light travels in something close to 1/300,000,000 of a second.  The speed of light in a vacuum is as absolute as anything can be.

To make things really difficult, try using Planck units which almost all have large positive or negative exponents.

[Ban my account ffs!]

None of this matters when you're Minnesotan and all distance is measured in how long it would take you to drive there.

"How far is it to New York?"

"Oh, 30 hours by bus."

[Beezer]

You try walking 1.61 kilometers in his shoes!

[Donerail]

http://zapatopi.net/metrictime/