The European Parliament voted to allow the United Kingdom to keep their imperial units of measurement so that the countries will not have to switch to metric units. Thus, the UK will not have to replace the pint with the liter, the mile with the kilometer, nor the inch with the centimeter. The ruling by the parliament is indefinite. The only question now is, will the United States ever change to the metric system?
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Oddly, way back the US was one of the first to adopt the so-called metric system. But lacking a metric tsar Americans continued to use the most convenient units.
I prefer what we used to call engineering units, feet, pounds, degrees F, which means heat in BTU’s, pressure in psi, horsepower, etc.
Many “metric units” are the wrong size for humans. The degree C is too course, the calorie is too fine – what people call a calorie is really 1000 calories, a kilocalorie. Ergs and dynes are far too small to conceptionalize. A kilogram is too large for a butter or bread purchase and a liter is too small for gasoline purchases. Do we ever see a liter of anything? Seems it’s always something like 750 milliliters. 25mm pipe is actually 1″ pipe. Metric countries don’t follow their own rules, they (wisely) use kilometers per hour on their speedometers instead of proper meters per second.
I suppose as old engineers die off, so will the old units. A miss is as good as 1609.35 meters.
Hi Matt,
Ireland (Republic of) uses the metric system for everything. Our road system switched completely to metric in 2005, and our school education system is totally metric. The only non-metric measurement in Ireland is a Pint on draught in a pub.
Northern Ireland, as it’s part of the UK is not metric.
Thanks Luke! I repaired the post! -Matt
Cool thanks Matt, enjoy the holidays.
Don is way out! Australia changed to the metric system in the late 1970′s – it’s not hard to get used to!
Butter comes in 250 gram/500 gram packs, milk 1 litre (or 2or 3 litres) and yes “gas” is priced per litre – what is wrong with that?
As to Km per hour rather than metres per second, we don’t say “yards per second”, but “miles per hour” – I can’t see your logic!
I strongly believe that the metric system which is a decimal system is much more ease to be used. I can’t see the difficulty to the conversion from the old system. In Cyprus which was an English colony in the past, the conversion was completed many years ago without any problems.
I lived in Italy for a couple of years (I am American) and it was very easy to get used to the metric system. As a previous person said, things were in 100′s of grams, etc. If something sold for $X per kilogram, it was easy to figure out what a tenth of it was. Converting from pounds to ounces was always a pain…
Britain and the USA should make the change to metric. It’s more than time! I’m an ex-Briton and whenever I’m in the UK everything just seems so archaic. As for the USA, likely the world’s most prominent nation, it’s beyond belief that they cling to colonialisms, when you consider that they wanted rid of everything British, years ago! Here in Canada we’ve had a wishy-washy attititude for years metric officially but imperial in tandem, especially in supermarkets.
As a global-conscious American, I would gladly welcome adopting the Metric System. (and while we’re at it, also give up penny coins and paper dollar bills which are both a great waste to manufacture; and the electoral college system).
Although we would have to change popular sayings such as: “Give them 2.54 centimeters, and they’ll take 1.6 kilometers.”
Let’s apply the cgs system to corn yields. A very understandable measure is in bushels per acre per year. In the cgs (centimeter-gram-second, the rigorous metric scientists are supposed to use)the bushels (vol)would become cubic centimetrs, the acres (area) would become square centimenters and the time would be in seconds. cm^3/cm^2/sec, or cm/sec – which looks all the world like a velocity, not a corn yield.
I think of conductive heat tranfer in BTU/square foot/per inch/delta degrees F/hour. Makes sense and is easy to understand. Use the cgs system and it becomes unintelligible. Sure you can use the metric system if you are willing to cheat and not follow the rules:you get cal/cm^2/cm/delta degrees C/sec, which is OK but it’s cheating.
If memory serves me,the US government officially accepted the metric system before Italy or Germany were even countries. Isn’t this fun?
You don’t know what you are talking about, Don, what is wrong with tonnes per hectare?
Jeff, strictly speaking I think neither tonne nor hectare is in the Cgs System. Actually you give another example of what I am joshing about, adapting the system to fit the case – what I called “cheating.”
Tonnes/hectare has dimensions of mass/area, not the equivalent of bushels/acre,which is volume/area. How about steres/hectare?
OK Don, why not pecks per square yard (or whatever?). Anyway, let’s agree to differ and hope you have/had a good Christmas – here in Australia it is nearly 1am 26 Dec.
Cheers … Jeff
Fair enough, Jeff.
Pecks? I remember buying potatoes by the peck. But, now don’t get me started. And Happy New Year and all that sort of rot.