Now let's just cross fingers and hope the US will adopt the metric system
Can someone shed some lights why is that?
In the celsius system (and at standard pressure and bhawawa please point out technicalities) - water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C. That's pretty simple to remember and makes actual sense.
In fahrenheit, body temperature was supposed to be 100°F but its not because when the guy measured his temperature, he had a fever. Congrats dude. First strike.
It freezes at around 30°F but not quite. The scale just doesn't make sense for any intuitive application.
If you think that body temperature should determine the scale of temperature measurements, think about how often you need to know your body temperature vs. how often you need to know how hot it is outside. "is it tornado season? nah, its only about 0.7 body temperatures outside". Besides, to anchor a scale, you need 2 reference points. Not just one. Fahrenheit is just a turd.
On top of that, Celsius scales just like Kelvin. 0 Kelvin is the point of absolute zero. The point of "No temperature" - to keep things simple.
0°C is 273.15K and 100°C is 373.15K - which means that Celsius is essentially Kelvin (the unit that makes scientific sense) adjusted to a level that makes sense for common man applications.
That explains why everyone is using Celsius. Nobody can tell you why the US does not. Its clearly because they are some very special snowflake. Same reason they use retarded units like inches, feet, yards, miles, ounces and pounds.
Metric systems be damned.
After his death in 1776, it was redefined based on the freezing and boiling points of water at STP, at 32 and 212 (a difference of 180). So in fact it uses the same fixed points as Celsius, and has for hundreds of years.
Also, you have Celsius and Kelvin backwards: Kelvin was originally formulated to use the same sized degrees as Celsius, not the other way round. Celsius was first. (Although Celsius is now defined in terms of Kelvin.) See also Rankine, which is the Kelvin equivalent to Fahrenheit: absolute zero is 0, the freezing point of water at STP is about 492, and boiling point is about 671.
Did you know that the original Celsius scale ran from 0 at boiling point to 100 at freezing point, i.e. backwards? It was reversed after his death. Fahrenheit didn't make that mistake!
I am sympathetic to the argument that 12 (but not 16) would make a better base. But that argument only works if it's uniformly applied bottom up - base-12 everywhere, and then we define base-12 metric prefixes, use 144 degrees between defining points for temperature etc.
As it is, the incoherent mix of base-16 and base-12 that is common for American customary measures, and base-10 used to actually write them down, is a mess.
Thought so. Most people have enough difficulty understanding multiples of 10. No need to make it more difficult for the mentally challenged. For us scientists, factors of 10 prove really helpful.
Common usage shows that Americans have no issues adopting the metric system, just very selectively. Americans currently enjoy:
1 Liter and 2 Liter bottles of Coke
Muscle cars with engines that are specified in liters
5K and 10K races
drug prescriptions in which doses are specified in milligrams
750 ML bottles of booze
Monthly power bills that are specified in Killowatt hours
Kilowatt-hours are not SI, the metrics unit is the Joule (or MJ in the case of your power bill). However the US joined the Metric convention in 1878 and has used the internationally standardized metric inch of precisely 2.54 mm since 1959 (except, I believe, for surveying)
Plenty of so-called "metric" countries continue to use customary units such as miles (UK) though those are based on the metric inch. I still hear people talk about their weight in stone. Germany uses a metricised pound (Pfund) of 500 g. Japan still commonly uses the tsubo (坪) for land. India also uses a variety of official land measurements, and also doesn't break its numbers symmetrically into blocks of 10^3 (preferring lakhs and crores). etc etc
I am not a fan of the metric system in daily use (though I use Celsius). For work I have used the official systems MKS and (US) Imperial, but have also used cgs and imperial imperial. For building a staircase, making the riser a convenient 2/3 of a foot is physiologically ideal.
If there is a god it was cruel for giving us five digits on each hand. Far better would have been one fewer or, even better, a thumb on the other side.
This is true around the globe, the only exception to this being Russia and China.
2/3 foot is 203mm. You wouldn't notice any difference with stairs of 200mm.
Did someone interpret this as anti-American?
This was meant meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Please look at the items in the list - it's drugs, booze, sports cars and junk food!
Why is there so little for a sense of humor on HN? Must everything be so serious?
The main discussion is about a country changing its calendar Gregorian in the year 2017 after all, jeez.
The UK in daily use has as many imperial measurements left as the US does. Americans are just more honest with ourselves about it.
Never heard that one used in America.
Though our pints are different sizes too.
I've lived in both, that's inaccurate.
The UK is mostly metric with exceptions (MpH, pints, pounds & stone for "people weight") but in all other ways it is metric, cooking is in metric (grams, liters/milliliters), parts are in metric, temperature is in metric (centigrade), and most measurements are metric (metres, cm, mm, etc). It is a metric country with a few leftovers.
The US conversely is imperial with exceptions. Meaning most "day to day" activities are in imperial units with certain industries (like science) and activities (?) being metric. But if you go buy a cookbook in a US bookstore then good luck finding a metric one unless it is an international cookbook (it will be in "spoons" "cups" "ounces" and so on). You buy a new cookbook in the UK and it is almost certainly metric unless it is from a used book store.
So, no, the UK has adopted metric much more thoroughly than the US. To use made up percentages, the UK is 65% metric, the US is 20% metric. Again, I've lived in both for a decent chunk of my life.
Old people might still commonly use Imperial gallons, Imperial pints, pounds, Fahrenheit, inches, and so on, but the cutoff age for this is rising. I'm 39 and I don't routinely use these.
I use some context-specific Imperial units: feet (people), stone (people), Imperial pints (beer), miles per Imperial gallon (car fuel economy).
Miles are pervasive, and will probably never disappear. (Miles per Imperial gallon is obviously stupid - but it will probably become outmoded before it's changed.)
I bet there are young people that don't use feet or stone. If you don't drink beer, you won't encounter pints very often. (Family-sized milk containers come measures in litres.)
Yes, some people talk about their weight in stone or their height in feet and inches, but almost anything official will be in metric.
And yes beer is sold in pints, but in that context it's not really a comparative measure, it's just "a normal sized glass of beer". And bottled beer is usually 500ml these days.
Bottled beer volumes can vary between 568mL (UK produced), whatever an American pint is for American exports, and 330mL (small bottles), 500mL (large bottles), and 750mL (huge bottles). The metric sizes are common for British produces, as well as the rest of the world -- presumably, standard sized glass bottles are cheaper.