4 ms·

Basically anything even vaguely scientific in the US still uses metric units.

by mrosett 7y ago

starpilot 7y ago
Anything vaguely engineering in the US uses imperial, pounds and decimal-inches everywhere.
- skissane 7y ago
  I think it varies from field to field. For example, the US auto industry has mostly moved to metric for designing new cars. From what I've heard, the vast majority of civil and structural engineering in the US is still on customary. (A few state highway departments tried to move to metric, but actually ended up moving back, since using metric when the rest of the industry was still on customary was costing them more money.) US aerospace is still mostly customary, but NASA has been encouraging greater use of metric in space applications (due to the Mars Climate Orbiter debacle). And you'll notice SpaceX's webcasts all have metric units for telemetry – I believe SpaceX prefers metric wherever possible.
  - Ottolay 7y ago
    At NASA the standard seem to be SI units for anything in space and Freedom (English) units for anything inside the atmosphere. It is bizarre. The funny thing is looking back at Apollo documents from the 60s is that many of those were in SI, but for Shuttle they appeared to have switched the launch and land portion fully to English.
    - drewwwwww 7y ago
      likely because aviation is still on ft and nautical miles worldwide, i would think
      - skissane 7y ago
        The choice of units to display to the pilot (feet vs metres, nautical miles vs kilometres, etc) doesn't have any necessary connection with the choice of units for engineering drawings, engineering calculations (e.g. calculating forces on various components during flight), etc. You could keep the former in non-metric and do the later in metric. Actually, many planes support displaying metres for altitude as well as feet. This is because, while most of the world uses feet for altitude, a handful of countries (China, North Korea, some ex-Soviet states) use metres instead. On an international flight, pilots can even change the units displayed on their instruments as they pass from non-metric airspace into metric airspace and vice-versa.
- refurb 7y ago
  As someone who worked in health R&D in the US, I can assure you it’s all metric and has been for decades.
- dekhn 7y ago
  Microscopes and optical tables in the US use mixed units. For example, you will often get a product marketed "25.4mm" which is 1 inch. Frequently a single optical table will mix components between imperial and metric. You can see some of the approaches here: https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials.cfm?tabID=4068826A-1CD4-4E59-BCB4-F7BEB86CEC3E https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials.cfm?tabID=4068826A-1CD4-4... (I work with CNC and I spend much of my day converting between inch and mm).

Basically anything even vaguely scientific in the US still uses metric units.

starpilot 7y ago

Anything vaguely engineering in the US uses imperial, pounds and decimal-inches everywhere.

skissane 7y ago
I think it varies from field to field. For example, the US auto industry has mostly moved to metric for designing new cars. From what I've heard, the vast majority of civil and structural engineering in the US is still on customary. (A few state highway departments tried to move to metric, but actually ended up moving back, since using metric when the rest of the industry was still on customary was costing them more money.) US aerospace is still mostly customary, but NASA has been encouraging greater use of metric in space applications (due to the Mars Climate Orbiter debacle). And you'll notice SpaceX's webcasts all have metric units for telemetry – I believe SpaceX prefers metric wherever possible.
- Ottolay 7y ago
  At NASA the standard seem to be SI units for anything in space and Freedom (English) units for anything inside the atmosphere. It is bizarre. The funny thing is looking back at Apollo documents from the 60s is that many of those were in SI, but for Shuttle they appeared to have switched the launch and land portion fully to English.
  - drewwwwww 7y ago
    likely because aviation is still on ft and nautical miles worldwide, i would think
    - skissane 7y ago
      The choice of units to display to the pilot (feet vs metres, nautical miles vs kilometres, etc) doesn't have any necessary connection with the choice of units for engineering drawings, engineering calculations (e.g. calculating forces on various components during flight), etc. You could keep the former in non-metric and do the later in metric. Actually, many planes support displaying metres for altitude as well as feet. This is because, while most of the world uses feet for altitude, a handful of countries (China, North Korea, some ex-Soviet states) use metres instead. On an international flight, pilots can even change the units displayed on their instruments as they pass from non-metric airspace into metric airspace and vice-versa.
refurb 7y ago
As someone who worked in health R&D in the US, I can assure you it’s all metric and has been for decades.
dekhn 7y ago
Microscopes and optical tables in the US use mixed units. For example, you will often get a product marketed "25.4mm" which is 1 inch. Frequently a single optical table will mix components between imperial and metric. You can see some of the approaches here: https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials.cfm?tabID=4068826A-1CD4-4E59-BCB4-F7BEB86CEC3E https://www.thorlabs.com/tutorials.cfm?tabID=4068826A-1CD4-4... (I work with CNC and I spend much of my day converting between inch and mm).