Metric system in US et alia

[Nimthill]

The metric system has been implented quite globally in science, due to the fact that it is a more logical and systematic system of measurement. I am curious, however, as to how much of this system actually infiltrates the daily comings and goings in countries like the US and UK, which historically used the imperial system and have not officially adopted the metric system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units)

Do you buy litres of gas yet or are you still stuck with gallons? Do you buy coca cola in litres or ounces? Do you use celcius instead of farhenheit?

Do you think this will change any time soon? Or are you more in favour of keeping the miles instead of the kilometres, because they sound better? (And yeah, I agree. They do sound better.)

[Manco]

If I'm not mistaken the UK basically use both at the moment, slowly changing to the metric system.

The US however barely uses it

[Koil]

In the UK, we pretty much use the Metric system for everything nowadays. There are a few things like Pints (Beer, Milk etc) that are still Imperial, but it's slowly dieing out and is more for the older generations. We also use Imperial for Roads, but again Metric is overtaking it.

The US on the other hand is still stuck with the older complicated Imperial.

[Dr. Croccer]

Officially, the UK uses the metric system but others such as feet and miles are still used.

[ivan_the_terrible]

I can sort of imagine miles and feet, roughly. Though it takes me a few moments to convert. I can't estimate in imperial at all.

But Farenheit, I honestly have no idea.

[Boer]

If God wanted us to use the metric system there would only have been 10 apostles.

On a serious note, basically everything in our Science classes are metric, and every thing in daily life is not.

[PointOfViewGun]

There are only 3 very important countries in the world that still only use Imperial system:

United States
Myanmar
Liberia

[Musthavename]

In the UK, official measurements in most places are in Metric, primarily because of an EU directive.

Though, even though I was brought up and taught primarily metric, on a day to day basis i'll use Imperial. I'd say the majority of people state their weight in stone & pounds, their height in feet and inches, distances in miles, volumes in pints & gallons. If I actually need to calculate something i'll use Metric though, as that just saves time. On another note, everyone uses Acres instead of Hectares (I believe a Hectare is some kind of Metric Measurement, i'm not quite sure).

The other interesting point is if you say went and bought some building materials, say wood. On the packaging, it would state it's length in centimetres. However, if you converted it into Imperial, you'd get an exact number of inches. So things are still designed to be a certain Imperial length, but they're sold in Metric.

In the UK, we pretty much use the Metric system for everything nowadays. There are a few things like Pints (Beer, Milk etc) that are still Imperial, but it's slowly dieing out and is more for the older generations. We also use Imperial for Roads, but again Metric is overtaking it.

Eh? Since when is Metric overtaking Imperial measurements on roads? I haven't ever seen one sign in Imperial on the roads in my life. Likewise, apart from younger kids who have only been taught Metric, I don't really know anyone who uses Metric for day to day stuff. And eventually, most of those kids pick up Imperial from things such as stating your height or weight.

Thing is, certain things will never die out. I can't even imagine going to my local and asking for anything other than a Pint.

[Manco]

Thing is, certain things will never die out. I can't even imagine going to my local and asking for anything other than a Pint.

We still call them pints, but they just aren't anymore. They're 1/4 litres, but I bet hardly any one in mainland Europe still realizes a pint is a unit of content.

[smithy17]

Surely its still the same glasses - how can these glasses be slightly bigger than before? Anyway it would be 1/2 a litre not 1/4.

[Manco]

Nope, what we call pints are 1/4 litres.
1/2 litres we call half litres (sounds better in Dutch)

And I hope you realize there are a lot more 1/4 l glasses made than real pint-glasses?

[smithy17]

Oh, not in the UK. I got a bit confused there. But 1/4 litre is nowhere near a pint in size.

[Musthavename]

A pint is 568ml. If I ordered a pint and got a quarter of a litre i'd be getting less than half of what i've paid for. (Just as a sidenote, you can order Half-Pints). We order pints, and they come in pint glasses. The bottle of milk in my fridge reads "568ml, 1 pint".

[Manco]

A pint is 568ml. If I ordered a pint and got a quarter of a litre i'd be getting less than half of what i've paid for.

That's only in Britain, on the mainland every one knows a pint isn't actually a pint any more and consequently pays for what he expects to pay for.. Though I doubt the word is even used all that much anywhere in Europe, except for Belgium and the Netherlands. (Do Germans still use the word pint?

edit: just read that pint had different values all over Europe: so in that case our pint might always have been approximately 1/4l (and I just read that where I live it's just a word for beaker)

[Yorkshireman]

In the UK, official measurements in most places are in Metric, primarily because of an EU directive.

The EU gave up a couple of years ago.

European Union commissioners have ruled that Britain can carry on using imperial measurements such as pints, pounds and miles.

Europe's Industry Commissioner Gunter Verheugen said: "There is not now and never will be any requirement to drop imperial measurements." The decision will not affect current law on metric measurements, but means imperial equivalents can be used too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm

We use a strange hybrid in the UK. I learn't both systems at school, but when I was a nipper metric was hardly used. I use miles on the road, km's when I was navigating in the force's, pints to buy milk and beer, but coke etc in litres, at the market I buy fruit and veg in pounds but at the supermarket it shows both kg's and pounds. At work I use plans in mm's/cm's metres etc but still measure up jobs on our own in feet and inche's which is what most customers prefer. In fact most of the materials/stones we use are still in the old style (measured in inche's) I weigh myself in stones and am 6ft 2" tall, no idea what it is in metres.

(Even drug dealers buy in Kilo's but sell in in ounces!)

[★Bandiera Rossa☭]

The EU gave up a couple of years ago.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm

We use a strange hybrid in the UK. I learn't both systems at school, but when I was a nipper metric was hardly used. I use miles on the road, km's when I was navigating in the force's, pints to buy milk and beer, but coke etc in litres, at the market I buy fruit and veg in pounds but at the supermarket it shows both kg's and pounds. At work I use plans in mm's/cm's metres etc but still measure up jobs on our own in feet and inche's which is what most customers prefer. In fact most of the materials/stones we use are still in the old style (measured in inche's) I weigh myself in stones and am 6ft 2" tall, no idea what it is in metres.

(Even drug dealers buy in Kilo's but sell in in ounces!)

Well the only metric measurements we use around here (California) are Liters (for soda bottles) but Gallons of milk.. We use ounces for Soda cans.. Of course in middle school and stuff we had to learn Meters, Newtons and all that but we don't really use those..

[Stavroforos]

The only imperial measurement I ever understood while in the States was miles. I honestly don't know why people would use such a complicated system.

[fieldmarshal]

Here in the US we mainly use the Imperial system. As an engineer, i have to deal with both systems, since we have customers overseas. But its not a big deal since all Engineering programs do the conversions in one click.

[Yorkshireman]

As an engineer, i have to deal with both systems, since we have customers overseas. But its not a big deal since all Engineering programs do the conversions in one click.

I'nm the same. On large construction sites I work off plans in metric but when I go to someones house to do work, we'll always talk in feet and inche's.

[Arjun]

Here in the US we mainly use the Imperial system. As an engineer, i have to deal with both systems, since we have customers overseas. But its not a big deal since all Engineering programs do the conversions in one click.

Indeed. but while i was in uni taking physics classes the professor used the metric system. Which was a welcome change because the feet and miles were driving me nuts...especially when you do quick mental arithmetic. a decimal-based system is easy to manipulate whereas the other is certainly not. I rem writing a basic program to convert measurements into metric ones, including the Fahrenheit to Celsius/kelvin one.There were many on the web, but it was fun.

As someone who grew up using the metric system; the sudden change into the other one was such a pain in the neck.its like going back in time to drive a mule-cart after driving a car.lol

As an American structural engineer, we are taught physics & chemistry in the SI system, the basic materials and mechanics classes use both SI and Imperial, but once you get into design courses you completely switch over to Imperial. All of our building code is written in imperial units, though like the previous poster, I have had to work with SI on several projects for oversea's clients.

The US is unlikely to switch over in the foreseeable future. A lot of money and effort has gone into standardizing materials, products, codes etc into imperial units. For example, US Steel mills have tuned their production process to produce AISC 50ksi steel, (= 344.75 MPa). Like wise, steel rebar is produced in size increments of 1/8" (= 3.175mm). You wouldn't keep these odd numbers as standards, instead you would adjust the standard to something logical (400MPa, 3mm for example). Retooling all the steel mills, retesting all the components, re-writing all the design tables and codes, and massive retraining would be needed, and there is little enthusian for that.

Tell me about it...man .... i initially had a lot of trouble while taking one of those compulsory mechanical engineering classes we computer engineering majors had to take. Proengineer was a good software that allowed us to set measurements in both systems..which was a such a welcome relief.It even allows one you convert from or to the metric system


Even to this day i calculate distances in Kms and then convert them into miles using the approximation
1 km =0.6 miles which works out quite well.


There was this funny incident in NASA where some scientist messed up the conversion and it ended up with a mars Orbiter crashing.

Metric Mishap Caused loss of Mars Orbiter