JohnMacca
Bronze Member
I am old enough to have gone through the metric conversion in Australia in the 70's.
Adjusting your thinking was hard at first and some units were harder to get used to than others. (The key, as others have said, is NOT to get wrapped up in converting - especially to 3 decimal places when it doesn't matter).
Some examples:
A pint of milk became a 454 millilitres bottle/carton - but changed to a 500ml later on. A quart became a litre. I don't remember caring much, it was still just a bottle of milk like before.
A hot day was nothing to talk about unless it was above 100 F. Didn't sound very hot when it became 38 C, but temperature was an easy one to get used to, as you use it in conversation almost everyday. Now it has to be above 40 C to make it a hot day - as we have been getting lately.
One I still have to think about a little is the car fuel performance. The old miles per gallon still comes more naturally. Low numbers bad, high numbers good. The metric version is litres per 100 kilometres. Low numbers good, high numbers bad. I can't do whatever the conversion is in my head!
By the way, I have always thought it was funny calling mpg "fuel consumption" - distance for a given volume is "performance". Litres per 100 km - volume per given distance is "consumption".
Of course I have toolboxes with spanners and sockets in metric and SAE and Whitworth and whatever else. Usually reach for the metric ones first.
The kids had no problems because they didn't have to convert anything - except when they were talking to me. I would ask them to get me 18 inches of 4 X 2 from under the work bench. All I would get was a blank look! I would need to say "about half a metre of 100 X 50".
And I have to say that the metric system buggers up some of my favourite jokes. Such as - "Why does an elephant have four feet? Because six inches wouldn't be much use!"
Adjusting your thinking was hard at first and some units were harder to get used to than others. (The key, as others have said, is NOT to get wrapped up in converting - especially to 3 decimal places when it doesn't matter).
Some examples:
A pint of milk became a 454 millilitres bottle/carton - but changed to a 500ml later on. A quart became a litre. I don't remember caring much, it was still just a bottle of milk like before.
A hot day was nothing to talk about unless it was above 100 F. Didn't sound very hot when it became 38 C, but temperature was an easy one to get used to, as you use it in conversation almost everyday. Now it has to be above 40 C to make it a hot day - as we have been getting lately.
One I still have to think about a little is the car fuel performance. The old miles per gallon still comes more naturally. Low numbers bad, high numbers good. The metric version is litres per 100 kilometres. Low numbers good, high numbers bad. I can't do whatever the conversion is in my head!
By the way, I have always thought it was funny calling mpg "fuel consumption" - distance for a given volume is "performance". Litres per 100 km - volume per given distance is "consumption".
Of course I have toolboxes with spanners and sockets in metric and SAE and Whitworth and whatever else. Usually reach for the metric ones first.
The kids had no problems because they didn't have to convert anything - except when they were talking to me. I would ask them to get me 18 inches of 4 X 2 from under the work bench. All I would get was a blank look! I would need to say "about half a metre of 100 X 50".
And I have to say that the metric system buggers up some of my favourite jokes. Such as - "Why does an elephant have four feet? Because six inches wouldn't be much use!"
