Obviously there's some geography involved, but for a fair chunk of the globe 0F constitutes "really effing cold" and 100F "really effing hot", nevermind the more extreme -40F(/C) and 140F.
Metric vs Imperial System
- Thread starter tuckerkao
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Obviously there's some geography involved, but for a fair chunk of the globe 0F constitutes "really effing cold" and 100F "really effing hot", nevermind the more extreme -40F(/C) and 140F.
I don't drive, so it's all numbers to me anyway, but I found out this week that British drivers will often talk about the size of their tank in litres, but their fuel consumption in miles per gallon, like that makes any sense at all.
Zkribbler
Deity
Pfft, when I moved to the Phils, I had to switch from fehrenheit to Celsius. It;s not a big deal.
Car speeds are the only thing that leave me befuddled, but you just go with the flow of traffic.
The US started switching over, but people freaked out.
So? That's basically -20° to 40°. Scaling that to 0-100 instead doesn't gain anything, and moves the freezing point to 32 rather than 0.
Why?
I was so happy when Celsius came along, because temperatures finally made sense.
Somehow Canada survived all that, though the older generations still blame Pierre Trudeau (he's been dead for close to 20 years).Fahrenheit is undeniably better for measuring air temperature. The US won't switch because there really isn't a need to, and it'd be incredibly expensive. Nothing would be gained by switching, and imagine having to update mile markers and everything everywhere. Most people can figure out the two systems easily enough, it's certainly easier than learning a foreign language
Actually, we do think of metric as a second language. I speak metric in certain kinds of measurements, but not in others, and there are times when I just go with the one that's more convenient. It's kind of like getting along in Frenglish, with some native words thrown in.
Canada is bigger than the U.S.Please find a EU country the size of the US
I bought a clock a few months ago, and discovered something really aggravating. It's programmed to take DST into account, but not leap year. In my attempt to fix it everything got worse. The clock now thinks today is May 3.
How do you express distances? We tend to express it in terms of time, as in "Location A is 90 minutes north of Location B" or "How far is it to Location C?" "About 2 hours."
All this said, though... without imperial measurements (among others), at least one Irish drinking song would be a lot shorter:
(Irish Rovers in Vancouver, British Columbia - it's been decades since the last time I listened to this song, but I still remember most of the words - and I don't even drink)
It'd be awesome. Best of both worldsWhy?
For routes I take, generally in time, since I'm not the one driving. Theoretical distances I measure in miles because that's just the done thing in the UK.
I'm wondering why the United States still using Fahrenheit, foot and inch, pound and ounce, gallon and quart while almost all other nations are using Celsius, Meter, Kilogram and Liter.
Conversions between the 2 measurement systems aren't very hard for me, such as 1 mile = 1.60934 kilometer or 1 kilometer = 0.621371, so I say 5 miles ≈ 8 kilometers -
For Australia it's really only vital statistics you'll still hear in the old terms, most people fluently use both feet and centimetres for height and kilograms is nearly universal for weight, stone is very old fashioned.
People colloquially use miles without a clear understanding of them in a literal sense, and travel distance is generally discussed in time (Melbourne to Sydney is 8 hours, etc).
Cooking and recipes are all metric, though I recently discovered we have an entirely different tablespoon measure (20mL/4 teaspoons) to both the UK and US (15mL/3 teaspoons) and then realised my two tablespoon measures at home were different sizes, one of each.
Americans love saying this nearly as much as they love to "cut checks"
The idea that 0F, 20F and 32F are meaningfully different and need to be distinguished would be completely alien to most people here, and even in Canberra where we do get below freezing for four months of the year, all anyone really needs to care about is that it's "below zero". Closer to the equator, the idea would make even less sense.
Here's a customary casual understanding of celsius temperatures, customised for Australian experience:
- The 40s is dangerous (the high 40s in Melbourne or Sydney shuts everything down and can break infrastructure)
- The high 30s is too hot
- The low 30s is hot for me but my wife likes it and is normal in the tropics, with humidity it's gross
- The 20s is nice unless it's humid in the upper 20s
- The high teens is cool but nice for some (me)
- The low teens is too cold for many (my wife) and still probably okay for me with a single thin jumper, but people in Brisbane will rug up for it
- The single digit celsius range is very cold especially as a daytime temperature, and is too cold for most Australians who don't know how to layer their clothes or who don't own proper warm clothes at all
- Anything in the negatives is very very cold
- Anything beyond about -5 celsius means either that it's 3am on a bad July night in Canberra or you're up at the snowfields
Ancient Egyptians only cared about hours. Minutes would be completely alien to them.
If you watch the old Top Gear, they're positively schizophrenic in their alternating between metric and imperial.
Please find a EU country the size of the US
China is larger than the US in land area and had a significantly larger population than the USA does today when they adopted the metric system. (The USSR had much more land area and about half of today's USA population when they did.) American exceptionalism is a myth.
The Arrogant Worms explain this thusly:
Or if you prefer the formal version:
Either way, they make it quite clear where the U.S. stands on size, and it's not even on the podium.
Or if you prefer the formal version:
Either way, they make it quite clear where the U.S. stands on size, and it's not even on the podium.
If anything, having fewer people over the same area would have made it more work, proportionally, to change all the road signs.
There's more roads per capita. The USA has about 7x as much road as Australia but 13x as many people (Canada also has like twice as much road per person and will have changed from miles to km at some point too).
That extra road burden per person likely means a lot of extra travel distance for the work crews and higher salary and fuel costs per capita for them, and probably more road signs per capita to actually replace.
People who talk about the USA being larger in population forget that also means they have more taxpayers, proportionally. You see this with things like healthcare - oh it's so big, that makes it harder. The implicit assumption being that larger jurisdictions are worse at things than smaller ones. But why then does Germany, which is like 15x larger than Denmark, have basically the same quality of governance and similar practices? Shouldn't the Germans find everything a lot harder? Is there no threshold between say 6 million and 80 million but a very firm one between 25 million and 330 million?
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hobbsyoyo
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Which was undoubtedly the case in comparison between the US and China when China switched over -
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
Americans are raised to fluent in both systems so we get to enjoy the benefits of metric while also being exclusive unique hipsters when we want to be. It's win win.
tuckerkao
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Then, how many feet = 4 meters?
I can say I'm raised to count fluently in both the decimal and the dozenal based math.
Bugfatty300
Buddha Squirrel
12-13 feet is 4 meters. That's pretty easy though. 4391 meters in footage would have me stumped. The trick is not mixing them up in the first place. Liters = liquor and soda. Gallons = Milk and fried chicken. Miles = big numbers on top, kilometers = little numbers on bottom.
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