Why doesn't everyone go metric

[WereKitten]

Gnac said:

Kasz216 said:

Gnac said:

mysticwolf said:

We Americans came up with our own system so that we would have pointless conversion problems to keep our high-schoolers busy. Then we can give credit to the people who came up with the conversion formulas, so we can convert the pointless conversions, even though we know metric is better, but we just wanted to make our own people famous. That's how I see it.

I think metric is better, but it's not up to me, so it doesn't really matter.

Imperial measurement is an old British system (hence the "imperial" bit).

Actually the US doesn't use Imperial measurement.

It uses "United States Customary Measurements."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

Potato, potahto.

Actually, and sadly, it makes a lot of difference in some cases.

The american gallon is different from the imperial gallon by about 20%, thus every software system for the management of air transportation that has to deal with the refuelling of aircrafts on both sides of the ocean will need to make conversions between metric and at least two kinds of gallons.

Even worse, since fuel density changes enough with temperature and aircraft fuel is generally sold by weight, but loaded in the tanks by volume, the software and accountancy system has to deal with Kilograms, pounds, litres, imperial gallon, american gallon. Plus currencies, which exchange rates vary in time.

That's a good deal of useless menial conversion work. Must be good for the economy :)