There has long been an argument as to whether or not the US should switch to the metric system — and there are lots of obvious reasons to push you either way. I thought we could go over this debate today.
The biggest debate is this: the metric system calls for almost no calculation when transferring units because they are all based on a factor of ten. 100 cm is one meter, 1000 meters is 1 kilometer, etc., etc. Whereas the Imperial system is much more bound in history and debate than ease of calculation. I mean, 5,280 feet in a mile? What's that about?
Moving on, we have the debate Imperial system users have — (besides the high cost of transferring) the metric system isn't practical. If someone is 6 feet tall it's quite easy to visualize, much easier than 182 centimeters or 1.82 meters. Everyone knows how big the average adult foot is and can therefore easily estimate how tall someone is in feet, but that's not really the case when it comes to centi/meters.
Now, most of the gosh darn world is using the metric system, making the US the odd one out. Most people in the US already understand and use the metric system on occasion, but the main system is still the Imperial system. If we wanted to change from Imperial to Metric, we’d have to change a lot of things — like grocery store packaging. Many companies don't want to waste money changing their labels to conform to the rest of the world's liking.
So from the looks of it — for now, we’re stuck with the Imperial system.
Stay Nerdy! 😊🧐 🤓🧐 🤓
