I always wondered why the United States seemed so hesitant to adapt the metric system. To me, it always seemed yet just one more thing with which Americans seemed to feel that they had to be different or, as many Americans like to suggest, "exceptional."
Well, maybe it turns out the metric system is not perfect.
Perhaps, but I still think it would be easier on several levels for the country to join the rest of the world and use the metric system. As it stands now, the United States is one of only three nations that do not use the metric system (Liberia and Burma being the other two).
In any case, here is a link to an article on the metric system that has been sitting around in my unpublished bin for a long, long time, and it seemed high time to publish it already.
So, without further ado, here is the link:
The Not-So-Perfect Kilogram and Why the Metric System Might Be Screwed
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31122/not-so-perfect-kilogram-and-why-metric-system-might-be-screwed
Interesting, though at the risk of appearing naively uninformed I would counter with the following:
ReplyDelete-Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater: it sounds to me like the official weight used to measure whether or not something weighs precisely one kilogram only needs a bit of fine-tuning, as opposed to the scrapping of the metric system altogether.
-Isn't it entirely plausible that the imperial system used here in the states is subject to the same tiny variations? Couldn't the official weight to confirm that something weighs precisely one pound also be off by something on a par with the weight of a grain of sand?
Aside from that, I just wanted to point out that Britain still uses the imperial system to a degree, notably for maps and road signs. http://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2011/06/21/2495b8b7-cbf2-11e2-9a4a-0291187b029a/resize/770x578/78e4e637db10ac6ee886bbede54669f9/speedlimit1.jpg