How Scientifically Literate Are You?

That was my point: it's too easy. It's easier to make mistakes when you don't have to think about what you're doing.I'm not arguing that the Imperial system is better. I'm just saying that the metric system isn't intrinsically better. It may be better for some things but it isn't necessarily better across the board. That's why we still use Imperial measures for a lot of things when they're more convenient. Again you make my point. A giraffe is better for opening cans than a pillow. A stand-alone can-opener may be ideal for opening cans but it doesn't make a good pet. No single thing (or system) is all things to all men.

I recall paying 50.9 cents per half-gallon at a lonely gas station in the Fraser Canyon. I think it was 1977.

Your argument here seems to be that finding imperial system conversion factors is difficult enough that a person who who wants to convert from feet to miles is more likely to find the correct conversion factor than when converting from, say meters to kilometers.I find that prospect a bit dubious, but let me instead suggest that if left alone, many people are unlikely to produce the conversion factor for feet to miles if given any infinite amount of time to recall it, and that the difficulty for recalling the correct conversion for meters to kilometers is much smaller, and that the same conversion factor works for grams to kilograms, or from Hertz to kiloHertz. There is a metric unit that is conveniently sized for any task. The only advantages Imperial measures have over metric units comes from the tradition of use. My main 'beef' with non metric units is the division of units into non-decimal parts. Converting calculated values into 16ths and 32nds before you can use them is an error prone step that provides no extra value.

My argument is really from the opposite direction: that people using easy conversion factors are more likely to be careless with them. And yet we don't use them. Hmm....Convenience is as convenience does.

Remember the old saying:"A pint's a pound the world around."But wait...I just read that a UK pint is 20oz, while a US pint is 16....time to move to England for my pints.

And the ounces aren't the same size, either.....

In calculus class, I found this to be true: We used calculus to set up the problem, did most of the work in algebra, and made most of the mistakes in the arithmetic. And when you're having to do lots of long division and multiplication with inconvenient numbers, that's just all the more opportunity to make arithmetic errors.For those who are not convinced, here's the type of problem I would have to work with in US conventional units: You want to hang a rectangular object centered horizontally on a wall. Yes, you could solve this with constructions rather than with measurements, but to make ths a valid example we must use measurements. You take the two measurements and they both in several feet plus some inches, plus some fraction of an inch. It works best if we can put them all in the same units, so for both we have to convert feet and inches down to 32nds of an inch. Then we subtract the smaller from the larger and divide the remainder by two to get the width of the left border in 32nds of an inch. Which means that now you must convert that answer out to feet, inches, and a fraction of an inch. Lots of converting to have to do while staying within the system of measurements.You could avoid all that converting by working the problem like we work time problems, by keeping them in their units and then do whatever borrowing and carrying may be necessary. Very cumbersome and even more prone to error.In contrast, in metric you would take the measurements in meters and you could keep them in meters throughout the calculation, because fractions of meters are treated as floating-point fractions not as rational fractions.Though interestingly, I've seen it pointed out that 12 inches to a foot is easy to divide up because 12 is one of those special numbers like 60, of which 12 is a factor: 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 -- throw in 5 as a factor and you have 60.

How often do you need to subdivide exactly one foot? This seems even less convincing than ringos examples.

You can buy a metric tape measure but you can't buy a metric two-by-four to measure with it.

Don't go measuring a two-by-four expecting it to be two by four, though. You'll be disappointed.

How about in Modern physics where time can be measured in inverse Joules.

There is a strong tradition for wood to be marketed as larger than it really is.

Though there was a time when a 24 did indeed measure 2 inches by 4 inches. You will still find them in the walls of older houses built in the first half of the 20th century and you will encounter them when doing remodel work in older houses. And instead of the rounded edges we see now, these had nice sharp right-angle edges.

I guess my deadpan deliver needs work. Yes I know them well as my house was built around 1900.