To steal a criticism, are the highlighted countries places where SI is not official, where any version of the metric system is not official, or where use is not normative?
[...] The United States finds itself in good company with Liberia and Myanmar as one of only three countries that have yet to adopt the metric system. (HT to Coming Anarchy) [...]
Yeah, this doesn't tell the whole storyu. Plenty of other countries such as the UK use non-metric measurements when they feel like it. Just ask a Japanese person how many _tsubo_ their home is.
Read more on "metrication in the US":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States.
In Canada height, weight, and cooking measurements tend to be in Imperial, whereas distance, temperature and volume are in metric. Tools come in both varieties, as do guns. My parents still use miles and yards for distance though, there is somewhat of a generational gap.
While it's true that other countries still use localized/regional measurement systems, I think my general concern is that if you asked the average American how many meters are in kilometer or how many millimeters are in a centimeter, they'd be stumped. This doesn't bode well and America hasn't learned some important lessons from using universal measurement systems, especially considering the Challenger disaster was caused by a misconversion of the metric system to the English system.
The Challenger accident was a failure of the booster's O-rings due to very cold temperatures before launch. You're thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter, that crash-landed on the surface after a unit mix up.
It seems odd that the United States doesn't use metric as a whole, seeing as how scientists and the military all use is, and also as it is taught in school at the primary level. Personally, I have more trouble with customary units then I do with Metric units.
The problem for the US is retooling all its factories to support metric measurments. Not cheap... In the end that what matters and thats where you get the benefit also.
We use both metric and customary units in the military, depending on the use and location. For obvious reasons, overseas bases use metric more often.
As a surveyor, engineering technician, construction inspector, and soon engineer, I'm fully comfortable working in both systems (or any arbitrary make-believe units for that matter). That being said, however, I much prefer working with customary units. Partly because I grew up with them, so they're far more intuitive, and partly because they're honestly easier to use in many applications.
The costs of a full-scale conversion to SI units in the US far outweigh any potential benefits.
The big advantage of SI was that one could rapidly calculate measurements in one's head -- with the advent of the calculator that's not a big deal. The UK and the commonwealth countries probably wasted the money they spent on conversion.
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Comments to this entry
Grendel
July 2, 2007
9:38 am
Dan tdaxp
July 2, 2007
11:15 am
The Marmot’s Hole » In Good (Non-Metric) Company
July 2, 2007
11:48 am
Richardson
July 2, 2007
12:03 pm
Nathan M
July 2, 2007
1:31 pm
Jenny Craig
July 2, 2007
1:37 pm
a517dogg
July 2, 2007
2:21 pm
Curzon
July 2, 2007
2:30 pm
Younghusband
July 2, 2007
2:33 pm
In Canada height, weight, and cooking measurements tend to be in Imperial, whereas distance, temperature and volume are in metric. Tools come in both varieties, as do guns. My parents still use miles and yards for distance though, there is somewhat of a generational gap.
alec
July 2, 2007
3:54 pm
Where art thou, young progressive bloggers? | Prose Before Hos
July 2, 2007
5:15 pm
Shadowgallery
July 2, 2007
6:01 pm
It seems odd that the United States doesn't use metric as a whole, seeing as how scientists and the military all use is, and also as it is taught in school at the primary level. Personally, I have more trouble with customary units then I do with Metric units.
captbbq
July 3, 2007
1:22 am
Nathan M
July 3, 2007
2:02 am
As a surveyor, engineering technician, construction inspector, and soon engineer, I'm fully comfortable working in both systems (or any arbitrary make-believe units for that matter). That being said, however, I much prefer working with customary units. Partly because I grew up with them, so they're far more intuitive, and partly because they're honestly easier to use in many applications.
The costs of a full-scale conversion to SI units in the US far outweigh any potential benefits.
James Bennett
July 4, 2007
4:07 am
sun bin
July 4, 2007
8:34 am
you can come up with many reason to defend being in the same league with myanmar. :) but you need to do the numbers first.
as for the other pal liberia, it was sort of an abandoned state of the US, right? so there is no coincidence there.