Will America ever use the metric system?

[Laize]

It's funny that our government, military, science, medicine and industrial sectors are based on metric, yet we teach customary to our children and act like metric is a crime in school.

Science courses are taught in metric.

I can rattle off numerous natural measurements (such as the acceleration of Earth's gravity at Sea Level being approximately 9.8 m/s² or the speed of light).... but if you asked me how to do any sort of science in American Standard I couldn't do it.

The ONLY thing I know is that light moves 186,000 miles per second.

I couldn't name anything else... in large part because as far as I'm aware, there's no American Standard unit of mass... only force.

[chrisnumbers]

I love this video and seems appropriate here.

[Muzjhath]

My whole point was that it doesn't matter whether the household uses 220 or 120. The differences are quite negligible.

And we try to have cleaner power generation but every time someone suggests a nuclear reactor (Which is by far the most efficient clean fuel), fearmongers shit enough collective bricks to build a skyscraper.

The issue with nuclear that most environmentallist take up today that are valid are two.
One after storage (This everyone agrees with). As well as extraction of Uranium.
The second most forget. It's rare, needs extrem excavagation to get out, and is hassardous for the workers.
Then the refining process isn't all flowers either. Yes once you have uranium it's cleaner, but getting it is pretty much worse than burning coal. (Thorium is a different matter).

Sun, wind, smart water. Things like that are good and sun speciffically needs to get done more with.

[Masark]

Last leg is only in your home IIRC.

In overhead lines that are outside your house, power is transmitted at almost a million volts.

No, the lines outside your house aren't anywhere near megavolts.

I don't work in T&D, but there's several layers of transmission and distribution at different voltage levels. That's why we use AC, because jumping up and down between voltages is efficient and easy.

The lines outside your house are probably 14.4kV at most (I believe we've still got some ancient 3kV distribution equipment from the 20s in service). The hundreds of kilovolts lines go between cities and plants.

Our stuff is relatively low voltage, because we don't need more, but the highest voltage generally used anywhere is 765kV, not a megavolt.

[Volitar]

When we get invaded by China, sure.

[felcommander]

We really should, its not like it takes a long time to get used to, 6 months to a year and everyone would know the measures as well as they know feet, yards, gallons ect.

[Waniou]

I really don't get the whole "it'll cost too much!" argument. Yeah, it'll cost a bit now but it's not like putting it off for longer will make it cheaper.

[MerinPally]

Drug dealers deal in eighths of ounces all the time.

Do they not just call that a Henry in the USA? I know we do over here in the United States of England.

[Fortera]

Because I don't need to right now.

[Laize]

Sun, wind, smart water. Things like that are good and sun speciffically needs to get done more with.

Storage wouldn't have been a problem had Yucca Mountain been completed.

Even if we assume you're correct and that extracting Uranium is dirtier than coal (which I see no reason it would be) it's so much more energy dense that it still winds up being orders of magnitude cleaner I'd wager.

The problem with renewable sources such as solar (especially solar) is that they're criminally inefficient. Wind isn't so bad if you have a really large wind corridor (as we do in the US). Hydro has a tendency to output a crazy amount of greenhouse gases that makes them cleaner than coal... but not by as much as you'd think.

[Varabently]

I certainly hope so. It's so much easier to understand, especially for little kids.

[belfpala]

Yes, I do it all the time, as do all my coworkers. Have been doing it for 7 years now, as have all my coworkers. I've never heard of a problem coming from it in the history of the company, which is about 40 years old.

I've done it many times also. I got a converter pack from RadioShack, just takes my usual laptop plug and changes the prongs. I think the PSU itself detects the voltage (and frequency, btw, I think they do 50 Hz and we do 60)*.

* My alarm clock ran slow, connected the same way. Pretty sure it uses the frequency of the connection as its timing clock, so 1 minute on its display was actually 1.2 minutes. Had to do some math every night before setting my alarm.

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Gotta agree that our power distribution network is old and dated and inefficient as hell though. I'm an environmentalist, but the nuts give us a bad name for opposing updating it. It'd save us in the long run.

I've learned to translate my environmentalism to tangible benefits for certain audiences. Instead of "we get less pollution because we don't have to burn as much fuel!", try "Updating our energy infrastructure is good for security (more reliable) and more efficient (reducing the cost of electricity)."

[GreatOak]

The contrarian in me wants to say "fuck off" to the rest of the world, but the brain in me says that the contrarian in me doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.