As someone from european continent. Those US measurements units look and feel so hard to work with.

Instead metric system is predictable and easy to work with.

Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?

analog31 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In industry, we have. At home, most households have little or no use for US dimension tools such as wrenches. You can service a bike with all metric tools.

"Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. The latter would cause a brief but massive inventory management problem, that nobody's ever willing to put up with, even if there's a long term benefit.

I believe we made a mistake in how we tried to teach the metric system. I learned in first grade: Metric is easy because it's just math. Most people heard "math" and freaked out. Metric was taught as a bunch of conversions and units. Inches were taught as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.

I remember talking to a machinist, and he said: "I hate the metric system because there's so much math." That was 30+ years ago. Today, machinists just read mm or inches from the same digital readout or CAD program.

My Canadian friends learned metric as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.

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perilunar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes.

You adopt ISO sizes FFS. They are international standards. You really want to invent a whole new set of incompatible 'standards'?

You think the US is the first to go through this? Australia, Canada, and the UK went metric in the 1970s (we also decimalised our currencies). Yes it was challenging for some adults but mostly pretty easy for kids. People adapted. Industries adapted. Now we hardly think about it except when dealing with Americans or in some historical contexts.

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent [-]

For the piping example, you have all the installed infrastructure that's in the old "IPS" (straight) and "NPT" (tapered) sizes. So now a plumber needs to carry additional fittings or carry conversion fittings. Easier to just stay with what we have.

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perilunar an hour ago | parent [-]

Of course it's easier to stick with what you have in the short term. Change is difficult. You do it for the long term gain. If you had done it 50 years ago like the rest of the English-speaking world you wouldn't be in this mess.

	▲	SoftTalker an hour ago \| parent [-]
		What's the long term gain? It's just a unit of measure, ultimately arbitrary. Standards bring efficiency, and we already have a standard.

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SoftTalker an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Imperial measurements do have the benefit of more even divisors than metric.

Pretty common to talk about measurements of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 of an inch and find those graduated on a ruler. Or 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/8 of a cup for liquid measures, etc.

But then machinists generally work in thousandth or ten-thousandths of an inch.

	▲	analog31 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm a fairly experienced machinist, though it's not my occupation. At the present time, machinists have the least problem with metric. The unit conversions are built into all of the machines and measuring tools. You press the inch / mm button. The ruler has inches on one side and mm on the other. Everything is standardized on IEEE floating point. ;-) It's a headache to maintain collections of parts and tools such as taps and dies for both standards. The biggest shift is simply the obsolescence of old stuff, and emergence of new stuff. And industries have adopted the practice of reducing the overall variety of parts needed. I work in the development of industrial measurement equipment, and where a design might once have had 30 different sizes of fasteners, now it's 5, all metric. Designs rarely need nuts and spacers any more. Washers are integrated into the screws. No more "philips" or flat head screws. And so forth.

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cityofdelusion 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.

	▲	Jblx2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Can't wait for us to adopt the metric Avogadro constant. I wonder what units they use for the Hubble constant in Europe (love me some megaparsecs).

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iacelmiv 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Points are not American, they are used for typography in Europe and everywhere else equally as much as in the US.

The metric system is poorly suited for font sizes. Most designs require a series of sizes within a small range: a typical book or poster might use 9pt for footnotes, 12pt for main text, 16pt for subtitles, and 24pt for titles.

Aesthetically speaking the most attractive ratios of sizes are small ratios like 3:2 and 4:3. Using points it is very easy to construct an attractive range of font sizes like my example above. It is difficult to imagine how this would look in a metric system that's not a mess.

	▲	perilunar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Font sizes would be perfectly fine in millimetres. 9 pt ≅ 3 mm, 12 pt ≅ 4 mm, 18 pt ≅ 6 mm, 24 pt ≅ 8 mm. The difference is about 6%.

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projektfu 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My countrymen are shockingly dumb. Presented with something rational like 24-hour time, they prefer to not learn and be confused all the time instead of adopting the better way. Unless it's mandatory, such as in military or aviation, then they are happy with it and feel like part of a special in-group.

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Jblx2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>something rational like 24-hour time

Shouldn't the real smarties be using 10-hour days using metric time? 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute.

https://timeity.com/metric-time/

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projektfu an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Clearly we should just use seconds, hectoseconds, kiloseconds and megaseconds, and stop worrying about whether our time lines up with the celestial movements.

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Jblx2 an hour ago | parent [-]

And here I thought maybe time zero would be the big bang, but alas, that is too celestial, so I guess January 1st, 1970 it is. Or whatever that is in the metric calendar (10 months per year, 10 days/week, 100 days/month)

	▲	perilunar 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's a bit difficult to use the Big Bang as time zero when the current uncertainty of when it actually happened ±0.02 billion years, which is what, a thousand times longer than all of recorded human history. We could use the birth date of that jewish prophet, except we'd still be off by a few years. Oh well, in a few centuries no one will care, and we'll just use Unix Epoch.

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stackghost an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

My grandfather gave me a mechanical pocketwatch stopwatch that counts tenths of a minute. Every gradation on the dial is 6 seconds. It's bizarre.

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drstewart 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Reddit level post.

If Europeans are so smart, why didn't they commit to metric time which is soon much easier to understand?

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projektfu an hour ago | parent [-]

At least 24 hour time is monotonic through the day. Baby steps.

	▲	parineum an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Unless you're talking to someone in a different time zone. Europe should just have one time zone on a one day clocks divided into decidays and centidays.

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reddalo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> why US just don't move to metric system?

They've been trying for a long time, but apparently it's not an easy task.

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LtWorf an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?

The maga people are ready to die on this hill.

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georgemcbay 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?

Because we live in a land of liberty!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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