I kinda like the idea that Americans could be gradually migrated from Imperial to metric by osmosis over the course of a few thousand measurement based scientific articles.
Science, even at the level of secondary school classes, has used metric in the US for a very long time. I don't know where people get this weird idea that Americans don't use SI. Imagine Americans making fun of Europeans for not speaking English, because they thought multilingual = not speaking English. That's how silly this meme is. Every car I've ever owned had km on the speedometer.
> Every car I've ever owned had km on the speedometer.
Same here. (Although, I've driven a couple cars that only had a single scale of digits on the gauge. Pressing a button would toggle the meaning of the numbers from mph to km/h and swing the needle around to point at whatever was correct.)
Problem is that the issue is not just about the numbers and units people expect to use.
The other issue relates to the fact that we build things according to imperial dimensions. (Paper is 8.5x11, bolts have sizes in imperial units, screw threads are pitched according to inches, etc.)
Some or all of this can be changed, but neither the change nor the transition are free. (ie: I two sets of tools - one for metric and another for imperial.)
perl4ever|7 years ago
mschaef|7 years ago
Same here. (Although, I've driven a couple cars that only had a single scale of digits on the gauge. Pressing a button would toggle the meaning of the numbers from mph to km/h and swing the needle around to point at whatever was correct.)
testplzignore|7 years ago
mschaef|7 years ago
The other issue relates to the fact that we build things according to imperial dimensions. (Paper is 8.5x11, bolts have sizes in imperial units, screw threads are pitched according to inches, etc.)
Some or all of this can be changed, but neither the change nor the transition are free. (ie: I two sets of tools - one for metric and another for imperial.)
mattnewton|7 years ago