Why doesn't america use the metric system?

,Despite what Sebastjin said, there is no 1 mm error in the metric system. There is a tiny discrepancy in measuring liters and cubic centimeters, which is generally ignored. To answer the question, it requires change to go metric. People don't like to change, and it is expensive also, to change all the measuring devices now used to measure volume and weight and distance. All the packaging equipment would need to be changed also.

Now, in case you don't know it, almost all science classes in the United States use metric units for calculation, and almost all scientific work is done in the metric system, so it is used.

Edit: Well, Sebastjin, I taught Physics for 30 years and never heard of a 1 mm error in length. By the way, Moritz Cantor died in 1920, and there have been changes in the definition and measurement of the meter since then. If there is an error, it is due to the fact that it is impossible to measure anything with 100 % accuracy. The definition of a meter has been changed over the years to make it as accurate as humanly possible, though. There is no system that I know of that is more accurate. Do you think that when we measure distance in miles, it is more accurate? I doubt it very much. The only discrepancy I ever heard or read of was in the liter vs 1000 cubic centimeters, and it was tiny. In any case the example you gave was incorrect. 1 mm in 1000 meters is equivalent to 1 dollar in a million dollars. I think the problem with the space probe was not the scientists using two systems, but with the fact that engineers and manufacturers of equipment sometimes use non metric units. I am in favor of the metric system, by the way. Are you? Feet and inches and miles, and furlongs, and rods, are certainly not more accurate, so what is your point?

OK, first of all your culture comes from the British, who hated the French which invented the metric system.

This might sound a bit childish, but great Britain and France where the two superpowers of the time when scientific standards where being set, and both wanted to impose their own standards.

Second, your entire culture is based on the imperial system (inches, feet, etc) that is a lot of cultural inertia and there hasn't been any event powerful enough to change it... And there probably never will be, at this point the best we can hope is that every child in the U.S.A learns the metric system and that every tool and machine has both metric and imperial system.

The way I see it, the imperial system is easter to relate to, as it is at a human scale, but is is less practical when you have to operate with it.

As a side note, Fahrenheit degrees are absolutely illogical, and show to the extent the British were willing to go to not adopt a French system, as while the metric system used celcius scale with 0 as the freezing point for water and 100 as boiling point for water the imperial system used alcohol!!! With the same "logic".

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RE:

Why doesn't america use the metric system?

Its so much better in every possible way!

The only way it is going to happen is if they put both systems together like when you buy a ruler, you have inches in one side and centimeters in the other side.

Then of course they should put this into schools, I don't know if they already use it but if they don't... then how do they learn math?

In a metric system you can have both real numbers of even fractions for infinite numbers. In non-metric US system you only have fractions for anything that is not a whole multiple of an inch for example!

I only know inches because they have it on rulers universally, otherwise there is no reason for me to even know its existence!

I'm from America and I don't know but I want to say to the haters that America uses a more complicated system then the metric and that I know it's easier to memorize the metric but isn't America smart because we made it harder?

American Metric System

It's not particularly well-scaled to everyday life (at least not everyday US life).

Granted, if you use it all the time, it becomes second nature, but so does the traditional system.

A "foot" is based on the general dimensions of a human foot.

A "meter" is based on the dimensions of the Earth. At least originally...the current definition is based on "1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum".

Guess which is the more "human" scale? Superman may have an intuitive feel for krypton, but I don't.

That said, the metric system is great for computation and gets marks for self-consistency, but that doesn't make it any less awkward for daily use.

Wouldn't life be a whole lot simpler if everyone just spoke English? I think it would, but the French, who came up with metric system would throw a hissy-fit. Adjectives come before nouns in English, behind them in Spanish. It's all just what you're used to, and at some degree arbitrary.

Like language, just use what is commonly locally and convert where necessary. It's not the big deal some would have you believe.

Remember, metric time didn't catch on. Not even the French use that, even though it would seem a mathematically natural extension of the metric system.

Because we're stubborn.

And it'd be too difficult to just switch it...too many people are set using the imperial system, people would either 1) refuse to use metric, or 2) get so confused and **** everything up.

What they need to do is start putting the metric measurements on things as well...so we get familiarized. Teach children both methods in school, so once they're adults the metric system will be popular and well known.

America uses imperial because it was colonised by people who used the imperial system, like the English. A mix of the two isn't bad, I've always known distance to be in yards and miles, and everything else in cm and metres, and I measure weight in stones, not kg.

In England we are in the middle of changing, it's not too much of a problem. My parents still use imperial, we are taught metric at school, and I can use both with reasonable efficiency. ome things have changed faster than others.

For example, weights are generally measured in kg, but when we weigh ourselves, many of us still use stone. For measurements other than our height, we use cm and m, however its still most common to give your height in feet and inches. We also still use miles for distance. Milk and beer still come in pints (but milk is also labeled with the equivalent no of litres).

Change takes time, it will be a few generations before we are fully metric.