The Metric System

[Adam Nelson]

The Royale with Cheese.

What about the Big Mac?

[John Watson]

The Imperial system is more human. An inch is about the width of the thumb of an average size man. A foot's about the length of one's foot (average size adult male).
Similar with many other Imperial measurments.
The numbers, though galling when adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing feet with fractional inches are derived from and ingrained in our actual lives.
The meter was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. [wikipedia]
WTF does that have to do with anything we measure in our practical lives? It's the size of nothing useful/practical in our lives.

I think the adoption and use of both systems, metric for scientific usage, and imperial for whatever else, is fine. Just don't mix them up.

Then there is the widespread use in common parlance. As they said back in the 70's the metric system lost by a mile.

[m_sporkboy]

Celsius is much more intuitive: At zero, water freezes, at 100 it boils (at 1 atm). Humans feel comfortable somewhere between the two (also at 1 atm).

I'm a somewhat squishy metric fan, but I hate Celsius. The degrees are too big, so you need decimal places to distinguish differences between temparatures that humans can easily perceive (70F and 71F are just different enough that you might want to adjust the thermostat by one tick). Plus 0=really damn cold, and 100=really damn hot, so it's a good match to the range of temperatures humans normally live in.

[ChrisRozon]

There's two problems here.... first, the metric system is too French for most Americans to put up with. I mean, it's basically one step away from your wife not shaving her legs, god damn socialism. Secondly, it would take government regulations to make it work, and the average American will stick their hands directly into a campfire rather than obey a government rule about fire safety.

[Matt Stacks]

Because then McDonald's will have to rename the Quarter Pounder.

This is the most satisfying answer so far.

[lurkmore]

What about Fahrenheit? The conversion goes like this:

[°C] = ([°F] − 32) ×  5⁄9
[°F] = [°C] ×  9⁄5 + 32

Celsius is much more intuitive: At zero, water freezes, at 100 it boils (at 1 atm). Humans feel comfortable somewhere between the two (also at 1 atm).

Celsius is too narrow of a scale. 0-100 in Fahrenheit is great for explaining how much the weather sucks today. Going past either of those numbers is universally understood as "the weather really, really sucks today".

[vanwirtp]

The Royale with Cheese.

The Newton Burger. 1 Newton = 0.225 lbs

[Nockian]

The Royale with Cheese.

Classic :-)

As for the metric system: The world chose gold and silver as money through the process of market trading. The operative word being 'chose' and not 'imposed'. The imperial system was also chosen by the market as representative of the best system. The metric system is an imposed system, a top down central Government committee lead decision forced on the population-often accompanied by fining/prison sentences for those refusing to comply.

Now my countrymen have advocated to leave the EU, here's hoping we abandon the hated French/USSR/Nazi system of regulation and discover what's best.

[stef]

It's good to be able to think in more than one measurement system, particularly for spatial visualization.

Metric may be "easier" for some, but then you get the misplaced decimal point errors, particularly in those who only are fluent (or less, esp if also dependent on machines to do manipulate numbers for them) in one system.

[Bill Been]

The Royale with Cheese.

Check out the big brain on Mark!