The US going metric

[Uradel]

Spiritual Machine

I can use either, so it doesn't really matter to me, but you are not going to convince a carpenter that has been building houses for 20 years that he needs to stop using feet and inches and use meters and centimeters, it's just not going to happen.

I know this post is two months old, but I feel it's one of the more important ones. I can vouch for this, as I currently work for a construction site and the older workers, and even those just into their thirties, are very staunch on the imperial system. I can use both, but to be honest, having grown up with the imperial system and the metric system, I prefer the imperial. It's just easier in construction talk to say "Cut me a sheet two by nine.". I'm not sure how it is with with European construction, but the one time we got an order from a Canadian company with metric measurements for several house units, it was chaos until we converted it.

If change were to occur, it'd have to be in schools and it'd likely be a snails pace. As Machine said, you're not going to get a carpenter to switch because it's "easier".

[oxcoxa]

I'd definitely support a switch. Metric is easier to break down. I read someone saying something about "more conversions" having to occur with use of the metric system. Conversions to what? If the USA used the metric system, we wouldn't have to convert to meet the almost completely internationally recognized system already in place. blaugh

[Tzenker]

Brothern

Vague Void

I think you're putting too much faith in the laziest generation in the history of the universe.

But hey, there's an app for that.

Hey - the metric system was invented by the French at the turn of the 19th Century. Every country in the world has since gone through metrication, except the US. We're talking countries with larger populations like India and China, and countries with large areas and diverse populations like Russia or Australia. If they can do it, the US can do it as well.

China & India were probably still using paper & pencil everything when they switched, and a large portion of their population (still do) live out in the boonies and pretty much farm dirt. Percentage-wise, the US is much more advanced now, and VERY reliant on current systems to provide power, supplies, transportation, & medical.

It would simpler internationally for everything to use one system, but the change would be too costly. The only way would be to start dual-teaching current generations in school how to use both systems, and gradually integrate over the next few decades.


And if anyone thinks a plane gliding to a controlled crash is bad, you should ask NASA about the billion dollar pile of junk of Mars.