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[quote=Anonymous]Metric is used in medicine and science in the US. It's just everyday measures that we use the imperial system.

It makes sense in terms of ease of use. A foot is 12 inches. You can divide that evenly by 6,4,3, and 2, so you can easily take a third of a foot, or half of it, or a quarter of it. Those are easy to understand measures.

Same with temperature. We basically go by 10s

30s = winter jacket and gloves/hat
40s = winter jacket
50s= light jacket 
60s = sweater
70s = awesome
80s = hot
90s = drink water

Compare that to celsius, where +8 vs +12 makes a big difference. All temperatures you will encounter _in daily life_ are roughly between 0 and 100 in F. No need for negatives, which people have trouble grasping.

Distance too -- most people drive 60 mph on the highway a mile a minute. So if something is 25 miles away, you'll get there in 25 minutes. This makes even more sense since our interstate highway exits are numbered based on miles, so exit 8 is 2 miles away from exit 10. Notice the benefit next time on 495 when you see the digital sign saying "I-95 15 miles, 15 minutes" and you'll know traffic is flowign smoothly since that's a mile a minute.

Oh, and it would cost over a trillion dollars to convert the US to metric, with little benefit.

Heck, ever looked at paper in Canada? They use metric yet their standard paper measures 8.5" x 11". Maybe we should be lecturing them to move to A4 sized paper in mm.[/quote]

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