4 ms·
When I was in 4th grade (in 1979), growing up in the US, we learned about the metric system. My teacher said that we were learning it, because the US would soo
by reuven 13y ago
When I was in 4th grade (in 1979), growing up in the US, we learned about the metric system. My teacher said that we were learning it, because the US would soon be switching over to it.
I came home and told my mother what my teacher had said. And my mother responded, "Yes, that's what my teacher told me in 4th grade, also."
Fast forward more than 30 years, and the US is no closer, despite other countries (such as England and Canada) having pulled off smooth transitions. Aside from a few signs on a highway in Massachusetts (of course) that I saw 20 years ago, marked in km as well as miles, and 2-liter bottles of soda, the metric system has completely and utterly failed in the US.
I now live in Israel, where the metric system is standard. My children cannot believe that I once used a system that wasn't so simple and standardized. But because they're not learning the metric system, but just using it, they never learned the beauty of its design, with powers of 10, and uniform prefixes. They just know how many cm tall they are, how much is in a 1 kg container of ice cream, and how many km it is to their grandparents' house.
It seems obvious to me that the metric system can and should be uniform, including in the US. But there is so much inertia, and so much history of opposing it, and so much technology tied up with the existing English system, that I don't realistically see it happening anytime soon, even if it could and should happen.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoHello fellow oleh amerika'i. Funny thing is, there's one metric unit I truly don't like: temperature. Fahrenheit-scale temperature is just better for describing the immense ranges of cold and heat you'll see inside the average year in a very temperate place like the United States or large parts of Europe. Only over here in a warm climate like Israel does Celsius make sense, where zero degrees is actually one of the coldest temperatures of winter and forty degrees the hottest temperature of summer. For distances, I don't really consider Imperial or Metric that much more useful. They're just slightly different.
- ptaipale 13y agoThe one very good thing about Celsius scale is conversion of energy amount of heating up water to calories. Those as such are still not so useful but the conversion to J is still something you can do roughly in your head. (Of course, conversions between °C and °F are simple for anyone who started their learning of C from K&R).
- gsnedders 13y agoWhy is having to use negative temperatures a problem?
- fjdghsd 13y agoIt isn't since in the fahrenheit scale temperatures drop below zero as well. It's just that we rate a lot of stuff on a scale of 0 to 100, so with the fahrenheit system it just makes sense to know that 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot.
- flog 13y agoNever in my life, which ranged from living in tropical jungles to snowy European cities, have I ever felt the desire for differences in measuring temperature. Comparing F and C is one of the most obvious cases for metric, as I see it. 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling. It couldn't be clearer.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThe weather never actually hits "boiling".
- wglb 13y agoAh, but what it it when it is -40?
- wglb 13y agoP. S.: This is a trick question.
- cellularmitosis 13y agoActually, temperature is the only thing which regularly makes me long for the metric system. I used to think celcius was ridiculous until I realized how useful it was as a tool to intuitively understand large temperatures. Just divide by 100! When I see 2500 F, that number is essentially meaningless to me, but when I see 1400 C, I immediately think "oh, that's like 14 times (freezing to) boiling, that's hot!".
- csense 13y ago> I immediately think "oh, that's like 14 times (freezing to) boiling, that's hot!" You can only say that X is K times as hot as Y if you're using an absolute temperature scale. Here's the ratio of the two absolute temperatures in Python: >>> (1400 - -273.15) / (100 - -273.15) 4.483853678145518 So 1400 C is only about 4.5 times as hot as 100 C. IMHO, the metric temperature scale should have absolute zero at 0 degrees and the freezing point of water at 100 degrees. But due to historical accidents, it...doesn't. Quick question for thermodynamics nerds: Is the mean kinetic energy of molecules in a sample proportional to temperature? I bet it's actually proportional to temperature squared, or at least some power of temperature.
- tptacek 13y agoCelsius is more intuitive for cooking.
- notahacker 13y agoI wouldn't say the English have pulled off a smooth transition. We still universally use miles for distance, frequently use feet and inches (almost universally for giving the height of a person; people usually weight themselves in imperial units) and drink pints of beer since bars can't even legally sell draught beer in metric units. Despite EU pressure, we're almost as stubborn as the US.
- BruceIV 13y agoThe smoothness of the transition in Canada is somewhat debatable. We use this weird mix of Imperial and metric now - people and food are (generally) measured in Imperial (I couldn't tell you my weight in kilograms, I can only remember my height in centimetres because it's just a bit short of 2m, and signs in the supermarket meat department are all $/lb (though the meat labels are in $/kg)), while most other things are measured in metric. Whether someone is more comfortable with Celsius or Fahrenheit is a generational thing, but most Canadians can think in inches and feet at least as easily as centimetres and metres, ounces and pounds more easily than grams and kilos, but (at least among the younger generations) mililitres and litres more easily than pints and gallons. The worst one is where we fill our cars in litres, measure the distance we travel in kilometres, then calculate the fuel efficiency in miles per gallon.
- BruceIV 13y agoActually, my elementary school math textbooks were American, awkwardly pasted over to use metric for the measurement unit, so I can keep the Imperial liquid measurements straight by just remembering that there are "2 half litres (pints) to the litre (quart)" and "4 litres (quarts) to the 4 litre bag (gallon)" (because milk comes in bags here)