The metric system makes sense. It’s probably the wave of the future for those of us who live in the United States of America, something we’ve been hearing for years. It’s logical and it eventually becomes understandable the more it’s used.
In the short term, however, I found that it can drive me nuts.
Geography lesson: I recently traveled by car from Detroit, Mich., to Buffalo, N.Y. The most direct route between those two cities involves international travel — across a portion of southern Canada, in fact.
“Make sure you bring your passport, Dad,” my daughter told me.
So we made the midweek trek a few weeks ago, and it was “Fun With Math” time for most of the trip.
Most of you know that Canada uses the metric system. It’s a system of weights and measurements, one of two in common usage around the world. The other one, much less popular on the world stage, is the imperial system. It used to be known as the English system, but the United Kingdom, for the last 28 years, has flip-flopped to primarily using the metric system.
The metric system uses terms such as kilometers for distances, meters and centimeters and even millimeters for smaller measurements, and liters for volume. Temperatures are measured in degrees Celsius.
There’s also the matter of weights. There are kilograms, and grams, and milligrams.
The beauty of all of this is that it can be instantly translated to easily understood decimal points. Ten centimeters equals a meter. One thousand meters equals a kilometer. Therefore, a centimeter is 0.1 of a meter. A meter is .001 of of a kilometer.
This is counterbalanced in American culture as we use inches, miles, and gallons. Temperatures are in Fahrenheit. That system uses much more unwieldy numbers for conversion such as 3, 12, 5,280, and 212 degrees.
We Americans are somewhat familiar with the metric system, but only in limited uses. Track and field competitions no longer run the 100-yard dash but the 100-meter dash. There’s the 400-meter relay. Instead of the two-mile run, there’s the 3,200-meter run. Recreational runs, such as those sponsored by non-profit organizations and the Parks Department, are measured as 5-kilometer or 10-kilometer distances.
Drugs, legal and not, are often measured by the metric system. I take several medications (legal) for my various ailments, and they’re usually measured in milligrams, or MG, as they say on the pill bottles.
For illicit substances, the measurements are usually in grams as well. The laws on cocaine and methamphetamines, for instance, draw a bright line at 3 grams. If you possess less than that, it’s a Class D felony. If it’s more than that, it’s a Class C felony. Three grams, by the way, is just over an ounce (imperial). It’s not much.
Anyway, back to the metric system, which has limited use in this nation but is widely accepted elsewhere, such as Canada.
As we were driving through The True North Strong and Free, we’re reading speed limit signs of 90 kph. I’m turning mental gymnastics. Five kilometers, I know, equals 3.1 miles. Therefore — and while I was figuring this out, I ran out of fingers to count on — we were doing about 56 miles per hour.
We stayed overnight in London, Ontario. As we’re having breakfast in the hotel’s lobby, the weather guy on TV had a smile on his face as he told us that the current temperature was 11 degrees Celsius to an expected high of 20 degrees. Linda Kay and I got out our smartphones this time and converted everything to Fahrenheit. That more-understandable range was 51 to 68 degrees. We could live with that. I mean, we were in Canada and we knew that we were in the northern climes, but still — 11 degrees?
I’m definitely of two minds about this.
First, certainly, the United States of America should move to the metric system. We should be citizens of the world. I understand that the currently en vogue phrase is “America First,” but let us not think that we can’t do our best to fit in. Adopting the metric system would be a step in the right direction. I understand that, and I agree with it.
On the other hand, I plead for an exception. Taking baby steps into my eighth decade of life, I am having and will continue to have a hard time adjusting to this degree of change. Much as in all things computer related, I am an analog native trying to make a go of it in a digital world. I have turned much of that transition over to the younger generation. If the conversion to metric follows the same path, my youngest son will be the captain of the ship as I navigate the transition. His son, my grandson, is almost three years old. He’ll probably be the first mate on that ship.
The Associated Press, among others, has been setting the course. When the AP has written about a location, they put the standard for the location in the story and then make a parenthetical note about the “other” system — for instance, a U.S. story might say that Bluffton is approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Fort Wayne. I’d take out the kilometers reference. Why? Because few of us around here use it.
I now apologize for that removal.
Nevertheless, for all of its superiority, the metric system mystifies me. A day and a night in Canada underscored that.
daves@news-banner.com
