Originally Posted by lhbernhardt

Yeah, I hope I am not offending all you Yanks (well, I'm a dual citizen myself - raised in Berkeley and Oakland during the 60's, living in Canada since the 70's) but I always wonder when the USA is going to join the rest of the world, which happens to be on the metric system. Holy cow, even the US military uses metric, why don't civilians?

Metric just makes way more sense on a bike. Most fit cyclists can cruise at 30 kmh. That's two minutes per kilometer. All velodromes are measured in metric (with the exception of a few in the USA, like Alpenrose in Oregon, which is 267 meters or so, which translates to exactly 6 laps to the mile, go figure... But all its track measurements are metric, anyway).

One liter of water weighs exactly one kilogram, and a regular size bottle holds 600 milliliters, so it weighs 600 grams. Far easier than trying to figure out that 16 fluid ounces of water equals one pound, sort of, and a standard bottle holds about 20 fluid ounces, so how much does a quart of water weigh? And a gallon of water weighs what, 8 pounds?

Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius, and it boils at 100 degrees Celsius. So you want to be careful when the temperature is around 0, and it will be really hot when it gets above 30 degrees. Where the hell does 100 degrees Fahrenheit come from?

Buying meat by the kilogram might seem really tricky, but most places sell it per 100 grams, so it's really easy to look at the per kilogram price and move the decimal point so you can compare the per 100 gram price.

My previous Subaru, built for the outside-USA market, didn't even have mph indicators on the metric speedometer, so any time I was in the USA, I'd have to do the speed conversion in my head so I didn't get a speeding ticket. It becomes second nature after a while. And it's cool driving down a freeway where the speed limit is 100. Distances in the US are too great for kilometers? Figure that you'll be averaging about 100 kmh. So if you have 575 kilometers to travel, it should take 5.75 hours. Way simpler than trying to figure out how long it will take to go 345 miles.

The US system is a holdover from when the USA was a British colony. It's called "The Imperial System," and the Imperial does not refer to the US Empire, folks. Time to join the rest of the world!

(Actually, I suspect it's the French influence that keeps Americans from embracing Metric. It wasn't invented in the USA, it was invented by Napoleon, and the official reference meter is kept in Paris, I think. And those useless wrenches denominated in Imperial, like 7/16ths or 5/32nds, they have rebranded as "SAE" (Society of Automotive Engineers). Metric wrenches (M4, M5, etc.) are just so much simpler...)

- L.