Change over to Metric

[myosh_tino]

While I can see how Celsius might be better for colder climates (0c vs 32F), I believe Fahrenheit is much better in warmer climates (35c vs 95F).  The use of triple digits make really hot days standout more in my mind.

Also, how would the pro-metric folks handle the following (and by "handle" I mean would you keep the customary units or force those in the sport to "go metric")...

Baseball -- 90 feet between bases
Football -- 100 yard fields
Basketball -- 10 foot high baskets

Bowling* -- 60ft lanes, each board is 1-inch wide, pins are 3 lbs 6-9 ozs, all bowling balls are weighed in pounds.
*I'm throwing this one in because I am an active league bowler... would I have to look for 6.80388 kg (15 lb) bowling balls if we went metric?

Personally, I say just leave things as is.

[Michael in Philly]

Not to mention 90-degree turns, 24-hour days....

Decimalize everything, dammit!  :-)

[agentsteel53]

JN, you have a very different internal thermometer from me.  I tend to be wearing short sleeves even if it is as cold as 55 fahrenheit... sometimes as low as 20 fahrenheit if I am in the sun and strenuously working.  (that involves a snow shovel a lot of the time!)

[NE2]

Not to mention 90-degree turns, 24-hour days....

Decimalize everything, dammit!  :-)

365-day years... we must change the solar system to match our hands!

[J N Winkler]

JN, you have a very different internal thermometer from me.  I tend to be wearing short sleeves even if it is as cold as 55 fahrenheit... sometimes as low as 20 fahrenheit if I am in the sun and strenuously working.  (that involves a snow shovel a lot of the time!)

That is definitely a big difference--even to shovel snow in the sun, I would be wearing at least a jacket, scarf, sweatshirt, and short-sleeved shirt, plus long johns if I expected my trousers to get wet--but I know other people who have even more trouble with the cold than I do, and insist on a tropical environment indoors.

[formulanone]

Also, how would the pro-metric folks handle the following (and by "handle" I mean would you keep the customary units or force those in the sport to "go metric")...

Baseball -- 90 feet between bases
Football -- 100 yard fields
Basketball -- 10 foot high baskets

Bowling* -- 60ft lanes, each board is 1-inch wide, pins are 3 lbs 6-9 ozs, all bowling balls are weighed in pounds.
*I'm throwing this one in because I am an active league bowler... would I have to look for 6.80388 kg (15 lb) bowling balls if we went metric?

Personally, I say just leave things as is.

I would imagine in most matters of sport, traditional weights and measures would still apply, especially since most of our favorite sports treat the basic playing fields' dimensions as sporting law as framework for the rules.

Let's face it, other than football, I can't think of anything else that uses "yards" except for describing lengths of cloth, and sometimes flooring or carpeting (although square foot is also common).

There's slightly different dimensions for international basketball courts. Not sure about baseball. A tennis court is a tennis court.

Interestingly, NASCAR seems to embrace the metric system: Many of its "500"'s are defined as kilometers, but actually about 312 miles. Although this is really a matter of convenience, because an event with "500" in it sounds a lot more interesting, apparently.

[realjd]

JN, you have a very different internal thermometer from me.  I tend to be wearing short sleeves even if it is as cold as 55 fahrenheit... sometimes as low as 20 fahrenheit if I am in the sun and strenuously working.  (that involves a snow shovel a lot of the time!)

You can always tell a Floridian getting off the plane in San Diego because we're the ones putting on jackets!

Temperatures below 70 are when I grab a light fleece jacket.

[bulldog1979]

Interestingly, NASCAR seems to embrace the metric system: Many of its "500"'s are defined as kilometers, but actually about 312 miles. Although this is really a matter of convenience, because an event with "500" in it sounds a lot more interesting, apparently.

I think, kind sir, that you are confused. Most tracks are not a mile in length, so maybe you're thinking of events that run an odd number of laps to make the 500-mile length of the race?

[Takumi]

The only NASCAR events measured in kilometers are the two Phoenix races (one 500, one 600), and the Sonoma race (350). Other shorter tracks (Richmond, Martinsville, Bristol, Iowa) go by the laps in the race.

And then there's Watkins Glen, which is just the "(Sponsor) At The Glen".

[formulanone]

Interestingly, NASCAR seems to embrace the metric system: Many of its "500"'s are defined as kilometers, but actually about 312 miles. Although this is really a matter of convenience, because an event with "500" in it sounds a lot more interesting, apparently.

I think, kind sir, that you are confused. Most tracks are not a mile in length, so maybe you're thinking of events that run an odd number of laps to make the 500-mile length of the race?

Yes, that's true: There may never be 400/500 miles of Bristol (not a bad idea in theory, but a race might take twice as long) or Martinsville (a sleep-inducingly awful idea). I just recall there's lots more km-based "lap mileage", but maybe not as much I thought.

[Zmapper]

Pfft, I have shoveled snow in a t-shirt before. After you warm up a bit, a jacket becomes too hot to comfortably wear.

[NE2]

When I was your age we shoveled snow in fig leaves. Handmade fig leaves.

[Michael in Philly]

Interestingly, NASCAR seems to embrace the metric system: Many of its "500"'s are defined as kilometers, but actually about 312 miles. Although this is really a matter of convenience, because an event with "500" in it sounds a lot more interesting, apparently.

I think, kind sir, that you are confused. Most tracks are not a mile in length, so maybe you're thinking of events that run an odd number of laps to make the 500-mile length of the race?

Yes, that's true: There may never be 400/500 miles of Bristol (not a bad idea in theory, but a race might take twice as long) or Martinsville (a sleep-inducingly awful idea). I just recall there's lots more km-based "lap mileage", but maybe not as much I thought.

I know next to nothing about auto racing, but could they be calling 312 miles "500" (km) to associate it with Indy?

[jwolfer]

Here is an interesting customary/metric difference... Illegal drugs.  Cocaine is kilos, no one one ever talks about cocaine in pounds.  However marijuana is usually talked about in Ounces/pounds. ( I saw this on COPS)

[bulkyorled]

Besides its not as if you cant change to metric, make it official and not still use US units for things such as whats been mentioned. You hear Canada, UK, Aus, etc all still say Miles or whatever even if they're not talking to an American or anything.

[Michael in Philly]

Which is actually a strike against the the-rest-of-the-world-uses-metric argument....

[kphoger]

/quote]Do you ever need that though? I can't see why you would need to.

Oh, yes, I certainly do need to know that kind of thing in my daily life.  We find a recipe that calls for–I don't know, let's say 3.5 cups of beef stock.  Then we go to the store, and find 32-ounce cartons of beef stock.  Is that carton enough?  Should we buy a carton plus a can?  Who the heck knows!

Compare this to metric:  the recipe says 800 mL, the store carries one-liter cartons, we're good to go.

[jwolfer]

Besides its not as if you cant change to metric, make it official and not still use US units for things such as whats been mentioned. You hear Canada, UK, Aus, etc all still say Miles or whatever even if they're not talking to an American or anything.

Expressions such as "a million miles away" are still used ... no one says "a million kilometers away".  Although i found a website advocating that we should change expressions.  I am pro metric conversion but the whole erase from the language is a bit much

[kphoger]

Besides its not as if you cant change to metric, make it official and not still use US units for things such as whats been mentioned. You hear Canada, UK, Aus, etc all still say Miles or whatever even if they're not talking to an American or anything.

Expressions such as "a million miles away" are still used ... no one says "a million kilometers away".  Although i found a website advocating that we should change expressions.  I am pro metric conversion but the whole erase from the language is a bit much

Of course.  Conventional units wouldn't, and shouldn't, disappear from the world completely.  Football still has yard lines, even if the official length of football field might be expressed in meters.  Milk can still be sold in pints if you wish, but volume on the carton and in cookbooks would be expressed in mL.  People in American geography class would still be taught that Kansas' township boundaries are expressed in terms of square miles, but properties within those boundaries would still be valued by the hectare; owning a 259-hectare farm instead of a one-section farm doesn't affect your farming practice in the slightest, and you would still talk about the northwest forty with your family and friends.

After all, we still call giving our opinion "putting in our two bits", even though decimal currency was adopted in 1794.

[Michael in Philly]

Talking of the purported need to conform with the rest of the world, just saw this, in a British paper:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/walterellis/100167582/americas-sports-are-as-weird-and-isolated-as-australias-animals-thank-goodness/

This particular columnist is fine with our having our own sports (which assumes he'd have the right not to be...), but I've been seeing this sort of thing - for our against - since the World Cup was here in 1994 and have never understood why it's an issue.  It's this sort of harmless quirk - the sort of thing that makes it possible to tell where you are - that makes the world more interesting.  I'm not arguing that preservation of customary measures is essential to our national identity (and I have nothing against metric as such), just that it's not doing any harm.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  And I don't see any virtue in conformity for its own sake.

[TXtoNJ]

/quote]Do you ever need that though? I can't see why you would need to.

Oh, yes, I certainly do need to know that kind of thing in my daily life.  We find a recipe that calls for–I don't know, let's say 3.5 cups of beef stock.  Then we go to the store, and find 32-ounce cartons of beef stock.  Is that carton enough?  Should we buy a carton plus a can?  Who the heck knows!

Compare this to metric:  the recipe says 800 mL, the store carries one-liter cartons, we're good to go.

But hardly anyone thinks that way. They see "3.5 cups" and think "OK, I need a good bit, but not too much." Then they see the quart carton and think "that will be plenty." What's important is while 3.5 cups might be 28 oz, and a quart is 32 oz, both are "a good bit, but not a whole lot." Cooking by nature is inexact, so there's not much use for greater precision.

In my experience, the customary measures lend themselves to visualization and estimation much more intuitively than most of the metric measurements. That has to do with the ambiguous analogies with tangible objects that the comic above derides so acerbically. It's easy to develop a feel for these measurements without instruments.

I also think this is why metricated equivalents to customary measurements become standard sizes for things like drink bottles. We drink 500 ml bottles of water because a pint's about how much water a person wants to drink at a time. We adopted 2 l bottles because half a gallon is a comfortable amount to keep in stock at a given time, and you get a little bonus over 2 qt.

Ultimately, I think the US should metricate across the board, but with the understanding that people will mostly use metricated equivalents of customary measures. Children would learn the customary measures when younger, then gradually shift over to SI units for scientific and technical purposes.

Examples:

1 cup = 250 ml
1 pint = 500 ml
1 liter (may be informally called a "quart" but unlikely) = 2 pt
1 gallon = 4 l

1 pound = 500 g
1 kilogram = 2 (new)lbs
1 ton = 1000 kg (no more distinction between short and metric tons)

1 foot = 333 mm
1 meter = ~3 ft, 1000 mm
1 mile = 1500 m

[J N Winkler]

People in American geography class would still be taught that Kansas' township boundaries are expressed in terms of square miles, but properties within those boundaries would still be valued by the hectare; owning a 259-hectare farm instead of a one-section farm doesn't affect your farming practice in the slightest, and you would still talk about the northwest forty with your family and friends.

But generating property descriptions (which is a necessary part of subdividing or selling part of the land) would involve a conversion step, which could be costly.  (This is one reason state DOTs which abandoned their metrication initiatives didn't immediately convert back to customary units for ROW plans--existing metric lot descriptions would have had to be changed, at additional cost.)

[formulanone]

Worrying about food/cooking is a bit moot since almost all packaging displays both measurements. Most measurement devices in the kitchen use both, and have graduated markings as well.

I worked in the dairy department of a grocery store roughly twenty years ago, and people from all walks of life were not sure how many ounces were in a cup nor pints to a gallon. I was taught it years ago, but liquid measurement is kind of forgettably odd, unless you use it frequently enough (I do forget how many teaspoons or tablespoons are in an ounce).

I think we'd all get to our destinations eventually, but there would be a year or so of growing pains, and an even longer span of fixing/replacing signage. I think we'd probably wind up with some sort of "crutch" mentality in which people wouldn't want the old units to ever leave. Or maybe folks would just have to...pay attention.

[realjd]

People in American geography class would still be taught that Kansas' township boundaries are expressed in terms of square miles, but properties within those boundaries would still be valued by the hectare; owning a 259-hectare farm instead of a one-section farm doesn't affect your farming practice in the slightest, and you would still talk about the northwest forty with your family and friends.

But generating property descriptions (which is a necessary part of subdividing or selling part of the land) would involve a conversion step, which could be costly.  (This is one reason state DOTs which abandoned their metrication initiatives didn't immediately convert back to customary units for ROW plans--existing metric lot descriptions would have had to be changed, at additional cost.)

NASA ran into similar issues with the now-defunct Constellation program. The Space Shuttle was designed entirely with customary units. NASA now, naturally, uses metric for most designs. Since Constellation was a shuttle-derived program however, they made the decision to stick with customary units and received some bad press because of it.

[Zmapper]

Here is an interesting customary/metric difference... Illegal drugs.  Cocaine is kilos, no one one ever talks about cocaine in pounds.  However marijuana is usually talked about in Ounces/pounds. ( I saw this on COPS)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/metric-system-thriving-in-nations-inner-cities,458/ 

Couldn't resist...