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Metric Musings

Disclaimer: I'm American.

The United States officially uses the metric system. BUT: Most americans simply prefer the "traditional" imperial system of miles,gallons and pounds. MOSTLY.

We routinely measure the displacement of engines in centimeters (CCs), the volume of soft drinks in liters (a 2 liter bottle is "standard"), medicine (especiallly injections) are in CCs and liters, and so on.

We continue to use Farenheit; I think, at least in part, because it is a much more "human" scale. 0ºF is really cold and 100ºF is really hot. 0ºC isn't really all that cold, and 100ºC is fatal. The range of "normal" temperatures most people have to deal with on a day to day basis is 0º to 100º F, not the rather cumbersome -17º to 37º C.

This might, also, be because of the range of temperatures in the United States. Very few countries have such a range; -20ºF is common in the northern tier of the US, while 105ºF is common in the desert southwest. In fact many major cities in the US (take Chicago - for example) experience -10ºF (-23ºC) to 100ºF (38ºC) pretty much every year.

Our monetary system is decimal ('metric'), and was one of the first to be so.

I've heard people argue that converting feet to miles is much harder than converting meters to kilometers - which is true - but why would you care? Who needs to, routinely, convert feet to miles? Engineers, Mathematicians, etc. need to do such conversions, and they routinely use the metric system in their work. We lay-people just don't need to do such things.

Machinists are an odd lot - they often use the imperial system; but measured metrically (i.e. .1 inch, .001 inch).

Mechanics and carpenters, however, mostly stick to imperial fractions (1/32", 1/8", etc.), although more and more are starting to embrace metrics too; most mechanics have both imperial and metric wrenches in their toolbox.

We really aren't the only country to do such dual-system speak, I've frequently heard British folks use inches and millimeters in the same sentence.

Just a few random thoughts - "your milage may vary"

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JMP - 2025-11-20 09:04:04 email