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Metric versus Imperial Discussion
- Thread starter Electroman
- Start date
Not “arcane”, which means known or understood only by a few, since many billions of humans use the metric system on a daily basis. But somewhat “archaic”.
If NASA‘s public broadcasts used metric terminology it would make no difference to Americans in general. They get along just fine in their daily life using the imperial system.
Thou doth over-estimate the regard with which people hold NASA and the persuasive nature NASA has over people.
Save for maybe the DOT, there's no American institution (or set of institutions) that could possibly be the catalyst to move away from Freedom Units. As with many other sociopolitical topics, there's simply too great a critical mass of 'Mericans that will die on their hill of FUD before they let the SI system really take root. (Mind, most of those folks haven't had to "wait, wot?" lbf vs lbm or visualize a slug, but I digress...)
For everyday usage (non scientific, non engineering), imperial is a better system.
Have you ever used a Celsius thermostat? You set the temperature using 0.5 degree increments. How is that better?
How about buying meats? A pound of ground beef is a useful standard measure for cooks. A kilogram is too big a unit for most things. Likewise for weighing yourself. For pounds, decimals really aren’t needed, kilos, they are. And ounces are again a useful measure, grams are way too small.
How about volumes? I buy pint, quart and gallon baggies at the store. In Canada, they are marketed as small, medium and large with no size consistency between different manufacturers.
Length measures are about the only thing better in metric than imperial.
How many pints is a quart? how many quarts is a gallon..? how many feet is a mile? enough said..
Entire world gets by perfectly fine with metric.
Entire world gets by perfectly fine with metric.
As a Brit I have in my lifetime gone through the decimalization of our currency, the move to metric units for foodstuffs etc and of course the use of C instead of F. I have no problems setting my thermostat. I also lived in 2 European countries where distances and speeds were also metric.
Now for the important things in life. Trying to remember from the last conference I was at in the US - what size are your wine bottles?
Of course you can get used to either system. I grew up in Canada, started off as imperial, went to metric, and now I’m in the US in imperial again. I notice though that one one wants to actually address my three examples of where imperial is better than metric. I’ll take that as a win.
This metric v. Imperial discussion should be moved to the Off Topic forum. I can use either system and have a definite preference which I will keep to myself, as I would like this debate to stop in this thread. Thank you.
Some reasonable comments about ease of use, although metric is just as easy one you get used to it.
The one thing that is UTTERLY INARGUABLE is that you need to make up your mind one way or the other!!
Well @Cosmacelf , I usually find myself agreeing with you... gotta go the other direction this time.
There are plenty of imperial "fractional units" that are commonly used, as they are applicable to everyday life:
- a quarter or half an inch to the left
- 1/4 mile walk to the store. Or a drag race
- half a gallon of milk
- 1/2 a cup of water
- 1/4 pound burger
- 1/2 a yard farther
- etc...
It's easier to use whole numbers that are at most 2-3 digits long. It's much easier to say "20 gallons" than "2560 ounces". Likewise, it's easier to say "32 centimeters" than "0.32 meters". It's also not terribly easy to detect/accurately measure below say
The beauty of the metric system is that if the unit size is the wrong granularity (large or small), you can shift a decimal point and have the order of magnitude that fits your use case... if you want. The reality is that humans are typically lazy, and default to using a few common units. So most folks probably say "300 meters" rather than "3 dekameters" in same way that "16 oz." is what you see on beer cans rather than "2 cups".
One example you gave where the laziness is manifest is temps... 1 degree C is course enough that a full unit either way may be too much for comfort. And saying 38.5 is clumsy. But nobody uses centidegrees... because... well "humans".
But I would say there's absolutely no reason "3/8" of an inch or "2.5 gallons" is inherently better than "1-1/2 centimeters" or "6.5 liters" ... it's all really about what you are used to... and that's often units that you can often use whole numbers with. And metric's gotcha there.
The other "everyday use" factor you didn't mention is conversion. People do that every day... ai bet you can find a "tablespoon/ounces/cups" conversion chart it every kitchen. With metric that's so much easier...
The biggest hurdle is what you are used to... those aforementioned lazy humans don't like change...
I did say that length measures are better in metric … mostly, as you point out, because we use the 1/10 measure, centimeter.
But we don’t use centiliter, thus making volume measurements silly (242 ml baggies), and centigrams, making Kilos too big a measure requiring decimals in ordinary usage. And what do you do with Celsius degrees where a single degree is also too big a measure for ordinary usage again requiring decimals?
I find it interesting that everyone is so invested in the “obviously better” metric system (and it is obviously better for science and engineering) without pausing to ask whether it is actually better for everyday use. My three examples (weight, volume and temperature) show it is not better and no one here has said otherwise.
I guess my point is "better" is rather subjective. For what? Using whole numbers? Ease of conversion? Granularity? Number of digits to write?
For each of your 3 examples, there's a metric unit that trumps it... it's just if people are not too lazy to use em?
Weight: Kilograms too course? Grams (or decigrams for the enlightened) are better than either pounds or ounces in terms of whole units.
Volume: Liters are already more flexible. Is it harder to say 9 liters than 2 gallons? Want smaller units? Deciliter.
Temp: Celsius too course? Sure, most people prob don't want to use "decidegree", but that's not the system's fault. And I really suspect most folks who have been referring to "eleven thirty-seconds of an inch" can say "thirty eight and a half degrees" pretty easily.
You ignored my point on conversion.. that;s a pretty common need.. Unit "logicalness" (i.e. a Kg is the weight of a liter of water, etc...). Math. consistency (cups are 8 oz, pounds are 16 oz, gallons are 128 oz, or 4 quarts, which are 16, feet are 12", yards are 3 ft, etc... vs "it's all 10''' shift your decimal point and call it a day).
I maintain that "better" in this case is highly subjective, and highly biased towards a person's familiarity/comfort.
I tried to stay out of this discussion but you guys pulled me back in…
Metric volume measurements in daily life are easy for me and I prefer them. Regarding the example above, a 242ml plastic bag could be expressed as 0.242 liters which I can readily visualize as part of a liter bottle. And of course plastic bags could be manufactured in sizes of 100ml or 200ml increments or something like that. In North America I suspect they are not because the US exerts so much economic influence.
I wish all recipes were metric, much easier to measure out quantities whether dry or liquid. I hate imperial units when cooking. When I want to double or halve a recipe they are really annoying.
Fundamentally, metric makes sense, it’s all about base 10.
That said, the average person doesn’t even know what “base 10” means. Sure they were probably taught it in grammar school (I can’t recall exactly, too long ago!) but they likely quickly forgot it.
As to temperature scales, I am happy using Celsius since moving from California to Vancouver in 2021. It’s logical since it is oriented around the freezing point of water, a concept that the vast majority of humans understand. I don’t care that 1C is a larger increment than 1F. It makes no difference to me. Yes, my home thermostat adjusts in 0.5C increments. So what? It’s not a problem.
Probably 90% of humanity thinks in metric and are fine with it. The US is obviously an outlier. It was supposed to officially transition many decades ago but it didn’t happen because, in my opinion, many Americans tend to think they are exceptional people who live in the greatest country on earth and don’t want to exert themselves to conform to “strange foreign” ways of thinking.
That opinion will annoy some people. I’m not apologizing for it. I’m an American. My early schooling in the 60’s was of course all in imperial. Learned about metric in high school science classes and that was reinforced in university. It immediately made sense to me and I prefer to think that way but of course had to continue to use imperial since I lived in America. When I lived in Toronto in the early 90’s and then in Singapore in the mid 90’s I was happy to use metric.
An aside: love that my Teslas can easily switch between the two systems so that when I cross the border I can change the car display to conform with the road signs.
Metric volume measurements in daily life are easy for me and I prefer them. Regarding the example above, a 242ml plastic bag could be expressed as 0.242 liters which I can readily visualize as part of a liter bottle. And of course plastic bags could be manufactured in sizes of 100ml or 200ml increments or something like that. In North America I suspect they are not because the US exerts so much economic influence.
I wish all recipes were metric, much easier to measure out quantities whether dry or liquid. I hate imperial units when cooking. When I want to double or halve a recipe they are really annoying.
Fundamentally, metric makes sense, it’s all about base 10.
That said, the average person doesn’t even know what “base 10” means. Sure they were probably taught it in grammar school (I can’t recall exactly, too long ago!) but they likely quickly forgot it.
As to temperature scales, I am happy using Celsius since moving from California to Vancouver in 2021. It’s logical since it is oriented around the freezing point of water, a concept that the vast majority of humans understand. I don’t care that 1C is a larger increment than 1F. It makes no difference to me. Yes, my home thermostat adjusts in 0.5C increments. So what? It’s not a problem.
Probably 90% of humanity thinks in metric and are fine with it. The US is obviously an outlier. It was supposed to officially transition many decades ago but it didn’t happen because, in my opinion, many Americans tend to think they are exceptional people who live in the greatest country on earth and don’t want to exert themselves to conform to “strange foreign” ways of thinking.
That opinion will annoy some people. I’m not apologizing for it. I’m an American.
My early schooling in the 60’s was of course all in imperial. Learned about metric in high school science classes and that was reinforced in university. It immediately made sense to me and I prefer to think that way but of course had to continue to use imperial since I lived in America. When I lived in Toronto in the early 90’s and then in Singapore in the mid 90’s I was happy to use metric.An aside: love that my Teslas can easily switch between the two systems so that when I cross the border I can change the car display to conform with the road signs.
US is just being arrogant. The world isn't going to ditch metrics and adopt imperial, and so it is only a matter of time US will have to adapt.
Translation: I'm used to imperial so it's better. Don't mistake familiarity with quality.
Example: How many tablespoons in a cup? How many ounces in a stone? What is the weight of one teaspoon of yeast in ounces? How big an area is an acre? How many fluid ounces in a pint (hint, it might not be what you think everywhere)?
Imperial units are a mess, the sooner we get rid of them the better.
Today I asked my spouse — who does not cook — how many teaspoons in a tablespoon. She didn’t know. Neither did I. Answer: 3. My response: huh? There are 4 pints in a quart. Why aren’t there 4 tsp in 1 tbsp? I have no idea. It’s nuts. And then there are “fluid ounces” and (not) fluid ounces. Again: hun? The imperial system is based on a grab bag of random unrelated stuff from centuries ago. I really dislike it.
My high school physics teacher vs. a student who tried to argue that nothing was wrong with imperial:
Teacher: How many millimeters in 1 meter?
Student: (grumblng) One thousand
Teacher: How many centimeters in 1 meter?
Student: (grumbling) One hundred
Teacher: How many meters in 1 kilometer
Student: (grumbling) One thousand
Teacher: How many meters in 7 kilometers?
Student: (grumbling) Seven thousand
Teacher: How many feet in a mile?
Student: (proudly) FIVE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED EIGHTY!
Teacher: How many feet in 7 miles?
Student: Uhhh...uhhh...uhhh...
thesmokingman
Active Member
Ben W
Chess Grandmaster (Supervised)
Hogsheads, what else?
The one that really gets me is the US Government's official standard unit for vehicle emissions, which is grams per mile. For stationary engines it's even worse: grams per horsepower-hour.
An interesting side note is that the unit of fuel consumption is technically area: volume (of fuel) divided by distance (traveled).For instance, 20mpg (equivalent to 0.05 gallons per mile) works out to about 0.1 square millimeters. Doing the math, and fighting valiantly to keep this thread on-topic, an E2E Starship flight of 10,000km (on 1200t propellant) would work out to about 0.12 square millimeters, or about 16mpg.
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