I am so old that I remember when the US did have a metric conversion program and all the road signs were in both Imperial and Metric. It was a colossal failure as people just kept using the measurements they were comfortable with. An a n engineer, I speak both fluently and convert easily but there is no question which is more logical :).
I also remember the reason why the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed in 1999. Good old measurements confusion. Talk about a costly mistake.
PS. Loved the SNL skit, especially the part about people of color. Sad but true
Many, many things have gone wrong and continue to go wrong because of American intransigence when it comes to burning a few brain cells and using the metric system. The latest debacle is the infant formula shortage. Our babies might starve but by God we have King George III's glorious foot for a base unit of measure!
And no matter how you measure it, even the new high 440 ppm of CO2 on the atmosphere is 0.044% of Earth's air so it has no measurable effect on global temperature, and the 5% human contribution to that 0.044% is even less.
Another winner Krista! You ht the nail on the head with this one.!
Loved this article and I think Dave would have loved it too :)
I am so old that I remember when the US did have a metric conversion program and all the road signs were in both Imperial and Metric. It was a colossal failure as people just kept using the measurements they were comfortable with. An a n engineer, I speak both fluently and convert easily but there is no question which is more logical :).
I also remember the reason why the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed in 1999. Good old measurements confusion. Talk about a costly mistake.
PS. Loved the SNL skit, especially the part about people of color. Sad but true
Glad you mentioned the Orbiter! Big things can go wrong
Many, many things have gone wrong and continue to go wrong because of American intransigence when it comes to burning a few brain cells and using the metric system. The latest debacle is the infant formula shortage. Our babies might starve but by God we have King George III's glorious foot for a base unit of measure!
SI is such a brilliant innovation, but it falls underneath a lot of radars. Standardization across centuries has been a very clear story, though: https://goatfury.substack.com/p/centuries-of-standardization
I love it when we touch on the same concepts, but through slightly different lenses!
#royalewithcheese
I knew I could count on you to provide the goat’s view on the history of standardization!
And no matter how you measure it, even the new high 440 ppm of CO2 on the atmosphere is 0.044% of Earth's air so it has no measurable effect on global temperature, and the 5% human contribution to that 0.044% is even less.
I'm sorry. I'm American. Can I have that in bananas and football fields please?
LOL. (I'm sure you're joking. Nothing metric at all about ppm and percentages, of course, and we're both from the same side of the pond.)