If you aren't familiar with metre/meters and so on...
- Thread starter JesterFace
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I think about this all the time (well, often, anyway!). For example (looks around room for example...), okay, a chair. Now how in the world was it ever decided that that's what it'd be called? Why not call it an oven? Or a sprinkler? And how was this idea sold to others in the first place?
No metric for cooking? But what if you wanted to try making some home-made gram crackers?
I would say a bigger hurdle to accepting metric is that if you are raised on the imperial system your brain is wired for it.
I tell you I'm 190 pounds, you immediately know exactly how heavy that is. I tell you I'm 80kg, you are probably mentally converting it to pounds before you understand it. It's like learning to speak a second language. When you first start using it you're translating it in your head before you understand it. When you've been immersed in it for a while, then you start being able to think in the other language.
So if you suddenly switched all the highway signs from miles to km it would cause a lot of short term frustration and confusion. If you started putting both miles and km on a highway sign, people who grew up on miles would just look at the miles. The only real way to get people to switch over is to use it exclusively in schools and then wait a while.
I tell you I'm 190 pounds, you immediately know exactly how heavy that is. I tell you I'm 80kg, you are probably mentally converting it to pounds before you understand it. It's like learning to speak a second language. When you first start using it you're translating it in your head before you understand it. When you've been immersed in it for a while, then you start being able to think in the other language.
So if you suddenly switched all the highway signs from miles to km it would cause a lot of short term frustration and confusion. If you started putting both miles and km on a highway sign, people who grew up on miles would just look at the miles. The only real way to get people to switch over is to use it exclusively in schools and then wait a while.
Moreover, students at the top of the bell curve learn independently outside of school. If you're an inquiring, logical mind, it doesn't matter how bad your school is, you will learn math and science.
It's the average student who's not learning math and science.
Well yes and no, as in the UK we use(d) the stone (14lbs) , so 190lbs would be 13st 8lbs. But the rough conversion from Lls to Kg is half it, and to go from kg to lbs to double it.
But you are right you mentally convert it to the one you are more familair with, but were the US to adopt the metric system it would probably go down the UK route and use a hybrid of the two. i.e. Road distance would still be measured in miles, but things like tempature would be measured in celsius.
If it's not feet, pounds, miles, light years, I tend to either chuckle at it, or try to convert it roughly so I can know that they mean to say 948 feet, not 289 meters. Meters and all that sound so...cute. As in "bless your heart..."
I was raised on metric, and to this day I still have trouble grasping Fahrenheit temperature measurements. I know conceptually that 0° = 32°F and 100° = 212°F, but it's all the numbers in between that I have problems with. When I happen to hear a temperature given on a US weather report, I'm generally stymied as to what it actually means. "High of 84 today"... OK, is that warm? Cold? I have no idea without converting it.
Oddly, though, all our ovens seem to be calibrated in Fahrenheit, so I have a better understanding of Fahrenheit temperatures that humans couldn't actually survive in.
(And I guess it's handy, too, because all recipes and cooking instructions that I see seem to give the temperatures in Fahrenheit as well, so I don't have to convert them.)And I know I'm biased because I was raised on it... but metric just seems so much more logical than Imperial, and I vastly prefer it!
^Like you I have to convert tempature to celsius to understand how hot/cold etc.. that is, but when I see a temapture written down that doesn't mention scale I read it as celsisus first.
And as has been pointed out several countries have converted from Imperial to metric, US teaches metric in school. So is it really a big hurdle to change systems in the US?
And as has been pointed out several countries have converted from Imperial to metric, US teaches metric in school. So is it really a big hurdle to change systems in the US?
You can almost call it a matter of language or just a different country's custom, IMO. I think commonly most everyday people in the U.S. are just used to thinking and communicating in inches, feet, and miles because that's the reference system (along with the Fahrenheit scale) that's been used--and continues to be used--by most of their family and friends. Metric is probably considered just "that thing" that is taught in classrooms, but is left there when they go home. This doesn't mean that metric isn't used for scientific and industrial purposes in the U.S. though.
A full conversion to metric in the U.S. might require an official ban on Imperial. But Americans got upset when the formula to Coca-Cola was changed back in '85 (dang near started another Civil War)...
Does anyone know how the farenheit scale was callibrated? It just seems like it's based on 0-100 is the usual range of temperatures in a temperate climate.
According to Wikipedia 0 is the temperature of brine and 100 is the human body temperature. That seems pretty arbitrary.
I don't see the US government ever changing the system by force. I don't know how it is in Europe, but that's something the US would consider overreaching the government's authority and intruding too much on people's personal lives. What they might do is start teaching children exclusively in metric then adding both imperial and metric to signs.
Maybe we should all just switch to Kelvin.
According to Wikipedia 0 is the temperature of brine and 100 is the human body temperature. That seems pretty arbitrary.
I don't see the US government ever changing the system by force. I don't know how it is in Europe, but that's something the US would consider overreaching the government's authority and intruding too much on people's personal lives. What they might do is start teaching children exclusively in metric then adding both imperial and metric to signs.
Maybe we should all just switch to Kelvin.
Don't think anyone has brought this up, but whether or not there's any historical basis for it, somehow the 1970s push towards the metric system in the U.S. became associated with Jimmy Carter. Thus there won't be another such push at least while Carter is in living memory, because associating with #39 is a bipartisan means of surefire political suicide.
Actually, the way the Fahrenheit temperature scale was calculated makes even less sense than that.
But that's exactly how the rest of us came to be using Metric. It isn't like somebody just said, "You're all going to wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly have to try and calculate how many litres you get to the gallon", they simply phased it in via the education system, allowed a generation or two to pass through so there were enough adults acclimatised to using Metric, and then simply made the change 'official'. No mess, no worries.
It never happened over-night. It was a gradual change, brought on by one group of politicians, and then finally sustainable enough twenty years later that it was easy for another group of politicians to simply say "Switch over now".
But as I've already pointed out they have the authority to do so under the US Constition Article 1 Section VIII, I believe it is.
Um... seriously? Do you actually believe what you just wrote? Using a particular set of measurement units is hardly an infringement on personal liberties. And, as pointed out above, the government has every right to do so. In fact while they're at it, they should cease printing of the $1 bill and go with the coins.
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Since when did what the Constitution says have anything to do with what the Americans think the Constitution says?
Perhaps you are correct that it would be technically legal to fine people for not using metrics, but that doesn't mean it ought to be or that people would ever tolerate it. According to American mythology which is spiritually inspired by Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government, anything that does not infringe on people's natural right to life, liberty and property is none of the government's business. American mythology holds that the government has no right to intervene in people's non-harmful personal decisions, and that would include how to measure distance and weight.
If the government ever attempted to fine people for using imperial units, it would be unenforceable and career suicide for any politician who supported it and rightfully so. In cases where nobody's rights are being violated governments should affect change by education, example and encouragement, not by force.
Perhaps you are correct that it would be technically legal to fine people for not using metrics, but that doesn't mean it ought to be or that people would ever tolerate it. According to American mythology which is spiritually inspired by Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government, anything that does not infringe on people's natural right to life, liberty and property is none of the government's business. American mythology holds that the government has no right to intervene in people's non-harmful personal decisions, and that would include how to measure distance and weight.
If the government ever attempted to fine people for using imperial units, it would be unenforceable and career suicide for any politician who supported it and rightfully so. In cases where nobody's rights are being violated governments should affect change by education, example and encouragement, not by force.
And the American citizens (the people who own the government) have the authority to throw any politician stupid enough to back a change to the metric system into the street at election time.
Plus there the possibility of a special election to throw them into the street.
Pity that tarring and feathering has drop from style.
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