Should the U.S adopt the Metric system completely and why?

[dirtyparrot]

So? Our year numbers are in fact a way of counting years. So "the first year" is year one, not zero. Nobody who is presented with three apples would label them "apple zero, one and two".

Do you go from -1 to 1 or is there a 0 in between?

 

[Algeroth]

A year zero makes absolutely no sense.

With Teeth was a way worse.

 

[Traitorfish]

Britain was supposed to have gone metric back in the 70s and even now it still hasn't caught on. If it takes that long for a tiny country I would imagine it would take much longer with a large country like the US.

It's caught on in most things, and it is ubiquitous in any sort of technical work, which is where it really matters. We've just clung onto a few strange ones- miles for distance, stones for human weight, feet/inches for human height, and pints for beer and sometimes milk- and even a lot of them probably won't last through the next generation.

 

[warpus]

Do you go from -1 to 1 or is there a 0 in between?

Year 0 *doesn't* make sense though. The first year should be "Year 1"

Just because we have years before "the first year" doesn't mean the first year should be Year 0 for some reason. If anything it makes more sense to make Year 0 the year BEFORE the first year... but then that would mess up the whole B.C. scale

 

[dirtyparrot]

Then we agree that there's a zero somewhere

 

[Bill3000]

So? Our year numbers are in fact a way of counting years. So "the first year" is year one, not zero. Nobody who is presented with three apples would label them "apple zero, one and two".

You can start counting with zero. It's pretty easy. Years arn't apples, by the way. You can count negative years - you can't count negative apples. If you have a set of both positive and negative whole numbers, it is best to include zero as well. Years are in the set of integers, not natural numbers. Years are measured in integers, not natural numbers. If time was quantized in years and there was no such thing as time before the first quantum, and we measured years since that first time unit, you might have a point on the counting apples gig, but it's not.

 

[Leoreth]

We start counting everything with one, why should we use a different principle with years?

And as far as I know, there are no negative years as well. We have the CE scale (or AD, if you prefer) and one designated year is its first year. Then we have all the years that came before the beginning of that year (BCE or BC). For convenience, we started counting backwards because we don't know from where else to start. So the first year on this scale (1 BCE) is the year before the first year on the other scale (1 CE).

 

[Cheetah]

If ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization shouldn't it be IOS?

Not in French.

A year zero makes absolutely no sense.

Yes it does. What doesn't make any sense is not having a year zero. And everyone who has to calculate with dates before and after the Common Era.

How many years are there between Jan 1, 1980 and Jan 1, 2000? 20 of course.
How many years are there between Jan 1, 100 BCE and Jan 1, 70 BCE? 30 of course.

Now how many years are there between Jan 1, 10 BCE and Jan 1, 10 CE?

Not having a year zero messes up calculations in astronomy and history.

Year 0 *doesn't* make sense though. The first year should be "Year 1"

Just because we have years before "the first year" doesn't mean the first year should be Year 0 for some reason. If anything it makes more sense to make Year 0 the year BEFORE the first year... but then that would mess up the whole B.C. scale

The BCE scale is already messed up, precisely because we don't have a year zero. That's why I propose we simply move all BCE dates one year back and include a year 0 before 1 CE.

Might as well just renumber the whole chronology from some point before the beginning of recorded history.

Yeah, sure. Or current years are just by tradition when Jesus was born, and are mislabeled as "Before Christ" and "Anno Domino", even though most scholars agree Jesus was probably born about 5 years before tradition.

As such labels are thus wrong, I prefer using "Before Common Era" and "Common Era" to address the years. And we need to include a year zero. E.g. Jesus was probably born in 4 BCE, and died in 30 CE, which means he was 35 years old at the time of his death.

As there is no point in holding with a tradition just because it is tradition - especially when tradition is most likely wrong - I am all for deciding on a new event to set as year zero.

Ideally, such an event should be old enough that most dates humans like to use are included in the positive range, but not so old as to make it useless (If we knew the exact year of the Big Bang, it should still not be used as writing todays year as 17,000,002,010 is quite ridiculous).

Somewhere at the beginning of human civilisation would be ideal I think, as that would bring all human history within the positive range. However, I don't know of any good event upon to declare the "start of human civilization".

I have been fiddling with ideas such as the first agriculture, or the construction of Stonehenge, or the founding of Jericho, etc. But none of those are a very distinct temporal event, and we don't have the exact dates for any of them.

We could of course say that we set year zero 15,000 years back, something that will allow us to include all of human history, but that is a very ugly hack, as it basically defines year zero as 15,000 years from some arbitrary year of today.

 

[Leoreth]

I think what causes confusion here is that people consider our year numbers as a system of measurement, which it isn't. It's a system of counting.

 

[dirtyparrot]

We start counting everything with one, why should we use a different principle with years?

And as far as I know, there are no negative years as well. We have the CE scale (or AD, if you prefer) and one designated year is its first year. Then we have all the years that came before the beginning of that year (BCE or BC). For convenience, we started counting backwards because we don't know from where else to start. So the first year on this scale (1 BCE) is the year before the first year on the other scale (1 CE).

Sure there are negative years, we have just chosen not to call them as such. It just depends on where we put the reference point. Same thing with temperature. The only way you don't get negative temperatures is if you use the Kelvin scale (because 0K is the lowest possible temperature). So, if you don't want negative years, then you would have to start time at the moment of the Big Bang.

 

[Leoreth]

Apples and oranges.

Temperature is a system of measurement. If we say "it's 21.7 degrees Celsius here", it makes perfect sense. Nobody would ever have the idea to say we're now in the year 2010.84 CE.

 

[Bill3000]

We start counting everything with one, why should we use a different principle with years?

Because we don't start from the beginning of time. Next?

 

[Leoreth]

And that's important why ...?

 

[bhsup]

Someone without a calculator - how many ounces in a stone? How many feet in a mile? How many pounds in a ton?

We don't use stone weight over here, but for what it's worth there are 16 ounces in a pound. 5,280 feet in a mile, and 2,000 pounds in a ton. Pretty basic stuff, really.

Now, how many grammes in a kilogram? How many kilograms in a tonne? How many microgrammes in a gramme?

1,000, um...er...2000/2.21something, 1000?

 

[Arakhor]

There's 224 ounces in a pound and 2240 pounds in a ton. The short ton has 240 pounds less

As anyone who has studied the Metric system to any degree whatsoever, it's 1000, 1000, 1,000,000.

 

[dirtyparrot]

I think what causes confusion here is that people consider our year numbers as a system of measurement, which it isn't. It's a system of counting.

When you're counting in your example, you're assuming you're at zero when you begin. That doesn't mean that zero doesn't exist. Suppose you originally owed an apple to someone, how would you go about counting each apple you were subsequently given?

Apples and oranges.

Temperature is a system of measurement. If we say "it's 21.7 degrees Celsius here", it makes perfect sense. Nobody would ever have the idea to say we're now in the year 2010.84 CE.

Nobody would say were in the year 2010.84 because: 1) it's of very little use to go to this kind of precision in our lives (you certainly don't go the time right now is 6:30 36 seconds and 96 milliseconds); and 2) because we have agreed to use integers only (although we can be more precise by mentioning the months and days).

 

[Xanikk999]

We dont even use ounces that much either except for like relatively small amounts of liquids or objects.

For most really small measurements of weight we use the metric system. All medicine that is prescribed is in milligrams for example.

For anything smaller then an ounce we use the metric system. Our society isnt completely american imperial or metric its a mix of both. Much less a mix than great britain or canada though who are more exclusively metric.

 

[Traitorfish]

5,280 feet in a mile

As if anyone ever needed evidence that Imperial is absurd.

 

[BuckyRea]

I believe the first president to try and install the metric system in the US was President Johnson. That's Andrew Johnson, back in 1866. Eventually we will recognize the wisdom of this inspirational figure.

 

[GoodGame]

I think the only thing holding us back is that the Chinese make are screws in English measurements still. If they refused to make anything in any dimension other than metric, then there would be mass conversion.