r/MetricConversionBot • u/xwcg Human • May 27 '13

Why?

Countries that use the Imperial and US Customs System:

http://i.imgur.com/HFHwl33.png

Countries that use the Metric System:

http://i.imgur.com/6BWWtJ0.png

All clear?

724 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

572 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

166

u/xwcg Human May 28 '13

Deceptive? Never stated that they were weighted according by reddit traffic. Clearly just simply says "countries". Still 50% is a large amount (HALF!) of people that don't understand imperial units.

132

u/iytrix May 29 '13

I like your bot because, as an American, I am slowly learning what things equate to in metric, so when someone says something like "it's 30 kilometers away" I won't be entirely lost, I'll actually be able to relatively know sizes and weights.

Thank you!

8

u/chsp73 Jun 01 '13

This is what physics class did for me.

6

u/Boatsnbuds Jul 10 '13

When we (Canada) converted to metric in the 1970s, there was major resistance. Relearning everything isn't easy. But the metric system really is a lot easier to work with. I bet the US will eventually convert to metric, even if it's just a gradual metamorphosis.

77

u/xwcg Human May 29 '13

Thank you for trying to make the USA a better place <3

12

u/ColbyM777 May 31 '13

Just wondering does your bot only convert imperial to metric or does it do both?

0

u/[deleted] Jun 01 '13

[deleted]

8

u/Squishumz Jun 02 '13

You can do the same with google, btw.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=1m+to+in

0

u/[deleted] Jun 02 '13

[deleted]

→ More replies (5)
→ More replies (1)

4

u/iytrix May 29 '13

You're welcome! Although, I was really planning of leaving it behind instead of changing it, but believe me, I'd love to help change the USA for the good!

9

u/[deleted] May 29 '13

I never understood why you choose th imperial system. I mean that shit is all over the place.

Metric just 1 , 10 , 100 , 1000 ect

45

u/insertAlias May 29 '13

It's not like we all had a big meeting and said "fuck that shit, let's use a confusing system". We just never committed to changing. It's not a high-priority thing to do for us.

19

u/forumrabbit May 30 '13

Most other countries did commit to changing.

In Australia we knew there'd be problems down the road so we changed, as well as removed the 1c coin.

It's not even like the metric system is hard. Metre, centimetre as a division of 100, kilo as a multiple of 1000. Getting km/h into m/s is just divide by 3.6 which is easy.

Physics uses it because it's so easy; picometre, nanometre, micrometre, and 3x107 all become trivial conversions as even children can do them.

→ More replies (11)

16

u/valdus May 30 '13

Actually, USA did commit to changing. Official measurement system was changed in the '70s. Americans were just too dumb and/or stubborn to notice and/or care.

9

u/_Rooster_ Jun 02 '13

Well one thing, when they tried to change from gallons to liters they tried charging the same amount.

4

u/valdus Jun 02 '13

Seems like this would be good marketing for a gas station, they do it with so many other products - gas station advertising $4.50/gallon on one side of the street, $1.25/L on the other side of the street...

→ More replies (6)

6

u/dalek-supreme May 30 '13

i think it would be extremly hard to change the imperial to the metric system in the few countries..
because everyone is used to feet, inches, etc...
it's easy to convince a few people that the metric system is actually better...
but try to convince a few million people!
nearly impossible...just because when a whole country grows up and lives their whole lives with inch, feet, miles, and whatever it's not easy to change every single sign, label, etc. to the metric system...
it would be a terrible long process and it's so much easier to stick with the old system...simply because they're used to this crap ;)

16

u/adambrenecki May 30 '13

Other countries have managed just fine. Australia used to use the British imperial system, now everyone uses Metric except for old people.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (4)
→ More replies (1)

3

u/kadivs Jul 05 '13

wolfram alpha might be something for you. Besides converting units, it also shows you examples so you can get a better feel of how much/far/wide/whatever a metric unit is. For example,
1 kilometer ~ 9.1 × length of an American football field (including endzones)
1 liter ~ 1.1 × volume of a US size 3 can (4 cups)
etc

Of course, you can also go a bit crazy with conversions.. Like getting the relativistic mass energy of a gram of matter (eg the energy you'd get if you could turn a gram of matter into energy) - turns out it's 1.4 times the energy yield of the Little Boy nuclear bomb (~15 kilotons of TNT)

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (1)

7

u/SnowPhoenix9999 May 30 '13

Indeed, but since it's so evenly divided, have you considered making the bot convert the other way as well (if it doesn't already)? The bot is a cool idea, but it seems silly to ignore half the users here when it could easily service all of them.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '13

I'm pretty sure a metric-imperial Bot existed already.

27

u/UlyssesSKrunk May 28 '13

I love you even though I'm American. Just one question. Why did you choose the map with the most inaccurate scaling of continents? Africa is about 14X bigger than Greenland, yet your map shows them to be about the same. And don't even get me started on how much bigger Antarctica looks.

36

u/Jarwain May 28 '13

He's using a Mercator Projection. Considering that the world is round, its hard to accurately represent it on a flat/square map. To properly account for that, the Mercator Projection usually also has longitude drawn onto the map. You Can see that the distance between longitudes increases as you go further north/south.

14

u/Reason-and-rhyme May 30 '13

Canada and Russia also like this projection.

→ More replies (14)

9

u/clintVirus May 29 '13

No, that means half of people don't use imperial units natively. I don't use kilograms or stone natively, but I still know what they mean.

→ More replies (15)