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Why isn't the U.S. Metric?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Chimaera: [QB] A question: Is NASA metric? When I watch, say, a shuttle mission on CNN, all measurements are quoted in the old english system. Is this just for the public's benefit? Especially now with the international space station, I would think they would have to change over... My gripe with the english system (or imperial, as we call it up here) isn't that the American farmers still use it (I couldn't care less what they use), but that we're still forced to use it up here even though Canada is officially metric. The reason is a lot of equipment is imported from the US, and most Canadian companies don't bother insisting on buying stuff specified in metric units (probably because its more expensive). Hence conversions all over the place. No doubt I'm biased because I grew up with metric, but imperial just irks me after I've worked with metric. A related rant, something that bothers me that no few people care about. Often we get stuff from the US that has metric units on it, but the wrong units, or utter nonsense. An example: Kilograms per square centimeter is NOT A UNIT OF PRESSURE. No doubt the confusion comes from the fact that in the english system there are actually two kinds of pounds: pound force and pound mass. But in metric, kilogram is mass and Newton is force. The metric unit for pressure is the Pascal (which is 1 Newton per square meter). Some people seem to think that to convert Pounds per square inch to metric, just convert pounds to kilograms and square inches to square centimeters. But mass per unit area doesn't make any sense for those of us living in three dimensions. Argh. [IMG]http://solareclipse.net/Forums/frown.gif[/IMG] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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