Why doesn't the USA adopt officially the metric unit?

[The Chairman]

FWIW, I find having to buy TWO sets of sockets, wrenches, taps, etc for everything amazingly inconvenient AND expensive!

 

[Charlie99]

yep, length, area, volume and mass

Actually, area and volume are not a base SI/metric quantities, since they are simply length-squared and length-cubed.

The truly, truly basic units are length, mass, and time. The SI/metric system has 4 other base units --- the mole, candela, Ampere, and degree Kelvin.

There are many derived SI units, such as the watt.
1 watt = 1 joule per second.
1 joule = work done when 1 newton of force acts over a distance of 1 meter.
1 newton is the force needed to accelerate 1 kg at 1 meter per second-square.
So you can always eventually convert the derived SI units back to a base unit.

 

[The Anchor]

Very good reference, although there is one minor error I noticed. Mass is not weight. Weight is a function of mass and gravity. A 1 kilo item will still have 1 kilo of mass when it's on the moon, but it's weight will be reduced to approximately 1/6 its weight on the Earth's surface. The actual metric unit for weight is not grams, but newtons. I know in practical usage, everyone uses grams. The Imperial system uses pounds to measure weight, not mass. While we typically convert kilos to pounds and back, technically it's not correct. The Imperial unit for mass is the slug.

Thank you Walter.

That is my biggest complaint with the metric system. By biggest complaint with the Imperial system is that they use the same units for different measurement. There is no need th have an ounce refer to both volume and weight. And don't get me started on Troy ounces.

As for ordering beer, has anyone actually measured their pint to confirm that it is actually a pint? I am fairly sure that it isn't.

 

[Walter]

1 newton is the force needed to accelerate 1 kg at 1 meter per second-square.
So you can always eventually convert the derived SI units back to a base unit.

Yes, but that doesn't mean much to most of us. On the surface of the earth, a mass of 1 kilo will weigh 9.8 newtons. On the moon, it'll weigh 1.7 newtons.

 

[Walter]

Whoops.

 

[Wayward Son]

FWIW, I find having to buy TWO sets of sockets, wrenches, taps, etc for everything amazingly inconvenient AND expensive!

Me, too. The biggest hassle I lived with along those lines was a Dodge Omni O-24. The car was "made in America", LOL. Well, sorta. The engine was a VW Rabbit engine from Germany. The car was designed in Japan, built in Canada & then shipped to the states where a "Made In USA" sticker was carefully applied.

The engine & power train was all metric. The chassis was SAE. Well, mostly, it seemed that there was always an exception waiting to be found. I put up with that crap for over 250,000 miles.

 

[Teamcasa]

FWIW, I find having to buy TWO sets of sockets, wrenches, taps, etc for everything amazingly inconvenient AND expensive!

Snap-On?

 

[The Chairman]

Snap On (Fall off), Mac, Matco as well as some specialty tools. When I had them appraised (about 17 years ago, when I moved into this house), the insurance company set their value at $65,000+! That's 25 years of tool collecting!

 

[The Chairman]

The engine & power train was all metric. The chassis was SAE. Well, mostly, it seemed that there was always an exception waiting to be found. I put up with that crap for over 250,000 miles.

That's OK, I first started working on older English cars and soon found out about "Whitworth" threads. Yes, the bolt is 5/16" course, but it just won't thread into the block. As a Service Manager, I was often challenged by the new kid in the shop over my knowledge. I would plop the tool for adjusting a Stromberg (or SU, or Mikuni, or whatever) carburetor and ask him what it was. Then I would ask him which is set first: dwell or timing and watch the puzzled face as he tried to figure out what dwell was.

 

[Kim]

You either have a huge solar array or a very small A/C.

It produces around 6 Kw/hr. The A/C in the living room will cool the entire living area and kitchen (about 60 square meters) - it uses about 2.5 kw/hr while cooling from warm, and drops to about 1.2 kw/hr once it reaches the set temp.