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I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It m

I moved from Belgium to the US last year, and one of the things that surprised me was that metric measures actually see a fair amount of use in the States. It makes a convoluted system even more weird, but it's also just plain fascinating. 2L bottles of coke and 9mm bullets, miles except when people suddenly switch to kilometers, 50 meter pools and 5K jogging runs but a 120 yard football field, 2 oz shaving cream but eye drops come in a 20ml bottle and so on. Guess that's what globalization does for ya.

yardie 14y ago
I'm an American that grew up during the time they "tried" to go metric and none of this surprises me. Volumes are tricky for me, but I have no problem going from imperial to metric. Most other countries see the US and are like, "why aren't you using metric?" and we're like, "what's in it for us?" We learned metric in school and it's great, for exact measurements. Sometimes you just want to use what you have and not think about it. I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)
- evolve2k 14y ago
  TV's in inches? Maybe but at best you are half right. http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25 http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25
- eru 14y ago
  > I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Do your cups come only in one size? (And aren't the bigger coffee mugs standardized to 200ml?)
- onetwothreefour 14y ago
  "Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)" Nope...
  - yardie 14y ago
    Samsung UE75ES9000S - 75 inches Samsung UE65ES8000Z - 65 inches Samsung UE32D6200W - 32 inches LG 55LM960V - 55 inches LG 47LM960V - 46 inches Notice a pattern, yet?
    - onetwothreefour 14y ago
      No? You're assuming things that aren't true in a lot of countries.
eloisant 14y ago
To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how many inches you want. When you swim, you know what a 50 meters pool means. But do you care how many laptop diagonals you're swimming? Probably not. Now back to US switching to metrics: I think the real argument in favor of sticking to imperial is the cost and risk of the switch. Risk because confusion between metrics could lead to a catastrophe (example: filling the tank of a plane with liters when it should be the same number of gallons).
- rohern 14y ago
  You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system.
  - curiousdannii 14y ago
    Yes, TV screens are measured in cms, no reason why computer screens couldn't be too.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Nautical miles are used in aviation as well. In both cases, the use actually has a very good, albeit obsolete, reason: one nautical mile is equal to one arc minute of latitude on the Earth, to within reasonable accuracy. Very handy for navigation, at least when you didn't have a magic black box to do it for you. I previously had a flight computer with two displays, each of which showed the distance to the next waypoint. One showed the distance in nautical miles, the other in statute. I could never remember which was which, and always had to look at both and see which number was bigger. Silly measuring systems. We should measure everything in planck units. Personally, I think the cost argument goes in the other direction. It's true that there would be costs to switching, even potentially lives lost. But there are constant, ongoing costs to having mixed units, potentially including lives lost (and certainly very expensive space probes lost). To me, that says that we should switch as quickly as possible to stop that ongoing cost. It may cost more up-front, but the cost of switching eventually ends, while the cost of staying as we are never stops.
ubernostrum 14y ago
My experience has been that the US and Canada are still "mixed" enough that it's highly noticeable. And I hear it's similar in the UK. The main differences are absence of an official government position (UK and Canada both have that, but with exceptions and/or significant numbers of people just ignoring it), and we still use Fahrenheit for temperature (amusing since the degree Celsius is arguably less "metric" and more just SI). Otherwise, it seems a largely arbitrary toss-up as to what will be metric in any of the three countries and what won't.
HCIdivision17 14y ago
At my last job, we measured product thickness in mm; area in square feet; throughput in meters per minute; coating thickness in nm, angstroms, or fraction multiples of 550nm; weight in tons (imperial) but some input materials in grams and kilograms; and pressure in hPa, atmospheres, psi, and torr (occasionally in the same sentence and graphed logarithmically in some cases). Basically, we use units like any tool. Use whatever tick marks line up to the problem conveniently. You can always covert later if you need to.

yardie 14y ago

I'm an American that grew up during the time they "tried" to go metric and none of this surprises me. Volumes are tricky for me, but I have no problem going from imperial to metric. Most other countries see the US and are like, "why aren't you using metric?" and we're like, "what's in it for us?" We learned metric in school and it's great, for exact measurements. Sometimes you just want to use what you have and not think about it. I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)

evolve2k 14y ago
TV's in inches? Maybe but at best you are half right. http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25 http://www.buytvsonline.com.au/products/?filter=25
eru 14y ago
> I don't know what 310mL is, I know how to measure 2 cups of water with...2 cups of water. Do your cups come only in one size? (And aren't the bigger coffee mugs standardized to 200ml?)
onetwothreefour 14y ago
"Speaking of globalization, TVs are still sold and classified in inches :-)" Nope...
- yardie 14y ago
  Samsung UE75ES9000S - 75 inches Samsung UE65ES8000Z - 65 inches Samsung UE32D6200W - 32 inches LG 55LM960V - 55 inches LG 47LM960V - 46 inches Notice a pattern, yet?
  - onetwothreefour 14y ago
    No? You're assuming things that aren't true in a lot of countries.

eloisant 14y ago

To be fair, non-metric units are also use worldwide in some specific fields. In aeronautics, height is in feet. In a boat, distance are nautic miles (not even the same miles as Americans on the road). Quick quiz: what's the diagonal size of your laptop screen in centimeters? Your mobile phone? So it doesn't matter if you use completely unrelated metrics for different things. When you want to buy a laptop you know how many inches you want. When you swim, you know what a 50 meters pool means. But do you care how many laptop diagonals you're swimming? Probably not. Now back to US switching to metrics: I think the real argument in favor of sticking to imperial is the cost and risk of the switch. Risk because confusion between metrics could lead to a catastrophe (example: filling the tank of a plane with liters when it should be the same number of gallons).

rohern 14y ago
You understand, though, that the reason laptop screens are measured this way is because of America's continued use of the imperial system.
- curiousdannii 14y ago
  Yes, TV screens are measured in cms, no reason why computer screens couldn't be too.
mikeash 14y ago
Nautical miles are used in aviation as well. In both cases, the use actually has a very good, albeit obsolete, reason: one nautical mile is equal to one arc minute of latitude on the Earth, to within reasonable accuracy. Very handy for navigation, at least when you didn't have a magic black box to do it for you. I previously had a flight computer with two displays, each of which showed the distance to the next waypoint. One showed the distance in nautical miles, the other in statute. I could never remember which was which, and always had to look at both and see which number was bigger. Silly measuring systems. We should measure everything in planck units. Personally, I think the cost argument goes in the other direction. It's true that there would be costs to switching, even potentially lives lost. But there are constant, ongoing costs to having mixed units, potentially including lives lost (and certainly very expensive space probes lost). To me, that says that we should switch as quickly as possible to stop that ongoing cost. It may cost more up-front, but the cost of switching eventually ends, while the cost of staying as we are never stops.

ubernostrum 14y ago

My experience has been that the US and Canada are still "mixed" enough that it's highly noticeable. And I hear it's similar in the UK. The main differences are absence of an official government position (UK and Canada both have that, but with exceptions and/or significant numbers of people just ignoring it), and we still use Fahrenheit for temperature (amusing since the degree Celsius is arguably less "metric" and more just SI). Otherwise, it seems a largely arbitrary toss-up as to what will be metric in any of the three countries and what won't.

HCIdivision17 14y ago

At my last job, we measured product thickness in mm; area in square feet; throughput in meters per minute; coating thickness in nm, angstroms, or fraction multiples of 550nm; weight in tons (imperial) but some input materials in grams and kilograms; and pressure in hPa, atmospheres, psi, and torr (occasionally in the same sentence and graphed logarithmically in some cases). Basically, we use units like any tool. Use whatever tick marks line up to the problem conveniently. You can always covert later if you need to.