US switching to metric system?

[BrianAbington]

we probably will when we give up our soverinty to a single world government...however opressive regimes usualy don't want their people to be educated so they won't teach you how to use it.

I honestly think that we should just teach it so that people can know how to do the conversions.

[truckncycle]

As a woodworker, I actually find English/American units more accurate - millimeter is the smallest size you can easily measure with Metric but with English units you can get down to 32ths and 64ths. The math is easier with Metric. I think that shipping will most likely continue to use nautical miles which doesn't really match Metric or English units. A nautical mile is approximately 2000 yards (2025), 1852 meters, or one minute of latitude.

[NachtRitter]

Originally Posted by Binger

we probably will when we give up our soverinty to a single world government...however opressive regimes usualy don't want their people to be educated so they won't teach you how to use it.

I honestly think that we should just teach it so that people can know how to do the conversions.

Not sure what they do in your neck of the woods, but even in the Cali boonies where I'm at, they teach metric in middle school... and the teacher at my kid's school rails on how ridicurous the "stupid system" is compared to metric... Of course, other kids from "redneck families" are so "anti-the-rest-of-the-world" that I'm not sure how much difference it's going to make if this is taught or not...

[Frank Lee]

Back when I was in skool (right about when they went to them fancy multi-room skoolhouses) we were taught metric cuz the US conversion to it was "right around the corner". Yeah. Hardly ever used it since, except when I need to fiddle around with conversions between units.

[NachtRitter]

... Or when you had to find the right size metric wrench for your all 'murican car ...

[spoil9]

I read somewhere that over 60% of the Ford Mustang is made outside the US. And 80% of one of the "imports" is made here in the US.

But back on subject, the Army uses metric more than English units. And Wikipedia says...

According to the US CIA World Factbook in 2006, the International System of Units is the primary or sole system of measurement for all nations except for Myanmar, Liberia and the United States.[1]

[CapriRacer]

I don't know this for a fact, but every time I work on my car, I only use metric wrenches, so I suspect the automotive industry is already there! I know that all the technical papers are done in metric units.

Anyone know for sure if the "nuts and bolts" have not been converted?

[MechEngVT]

I'm an engineer (but not a city-boy) and at my last job I was on a clean-sheet vehicle design that was decreed to be fully metric and was except the tires, wheels, and lug nuts. There's a prevailing tendency among older engineers to use metric-converted-english even in fresh design which I find irritating. At my present job everyone has resisted metric so strongly I had to go back to english design (which I hadn't used since my drafting class in high school). Major pain in the rear end.

IMHO an official conversion to metric can't come soon enough, but it will never happen. People will never stop using MPH or miles or gallons or (infuriatingly) cups, teaspoons, ounces, pounds. If America is to be alone among the developed world in holding out against the International Standard system we should be forced to measure height in rods, weight in stones, and speed in furlongs per fortnight. See how fast people clamor to use metric.

I just did a brake job on the wife's Odyssey which uses a 3/4" socket for the lug nuts, 17mm for the caliper bolts, and 1/2" (no, 12 and 13 mm would not fit) for the brake line bracket.

My Dodge Ram uses a 22mm socket for its lug nuts (IIRC). In fact, I don't recall ever using an english socket on that truck.

[jamesqf]

Personally, I think the metric system's just as confusing as the one we have. Everything's in 10s, so you have to depend on prefixes to tell what's what, and they all sound alike: kilo-, milli-, micro- whatever. Then when you do get something down, like centigrade degrees (which is at least a halfway sensible name, being that it has 100 degrees between freezing & boiling) they go change the name on you. "Celsius"? What the heck does that mean? Confusion reigns.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Personally, I think the metric system's just as confusing as the one we have. Everything's in 10s, so you have to depend on prefixes to tell what's what, and they all sound alike: kilo-, milli-, micro- whatever.

It takes getting used to, but still easier than random names and numbers.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Then when you do get something down, like centigrade degrees (which is at least a halfway sensible name, being that it has 100 degrees between freezing & boiling) they go change the name on you. "Celsius"? What the heck does that mean? Confusion reigns.

Celsius was the guy who inverted the centigrade scale
Celsius - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fahrenheit was the name of the guy who did the first temperature scale, 20 years before Celsius.