Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a rod of given length as a unit of length ?

Answer 1

Benefits of the Metric System

• Easier for anything involving conversions.
• Celsius is based on the the freezing and boiling points of water.
• Is the most popular system of measurement worldwide. This gives interchangeability internationally.
• Other systems of measurement, like U.S. standard units, are tied directly to metric units so they can be converted back and forth.
• You can sell to the government since governments (including the U.S. government) require government contractors to use the metric system for most things.

Both systems have benefits and disadvantages.

Benefits of the Metric System

• Easier for anything involving conversions.
• Celsius is based on the the freezing and boiling points of water.
• Is the most popular system of measurement worldwide. This gives interchangeability internationally.
• Other systems of measurement, like U.S. standard units, are tied directly to metric units so they can be converted back and forth.
• You can sell to the government since governments (including the U.S. government) require government contractors to use the metric system for most things.

Situations Where the Benefits are Irrelevant

• The fact that metric is great for conversions is irrelevant in situations where no conversion is needed. For example, there is no need to convert square feet of a bedroom into square miles, and there is no need to convert miles per hour (MPH) into feet per second.
• The fact that Celsius is based on the freezing and boiling points of water is irrelevant when you are measuring other things, like body temperature, or the melting point of any substance other than water.
• Certain things, like the size of a milk jug, aren't really that important. Does it really matter if a customer buys a gallon of milk, or a liter of milk? Are any spacecraft going to stop working if there is a conversion error between the cup and the jug? In the U.S., liters of milk and gallons of milk are sold side by side in the grocery store. For some reason, Americans prefer gallons of milk over liters. Why change it? It's not that important.

Disadvantages of the Metric System

• Fahrenheit is 1.8 times more precise than Celsius, giving you finer control of temperatures. A 1 degree difference in Celsius is a much bigger temperature difference than a 1 degree difference in Fahrenheit.
• The U.S. Standard and Imperial systems originate from practical sizes, and then were standardized later.
  • For example, a cup is a useful measuring unit while cooking. In fact it is so useful that the metric system defined a cup as 250 milliliters. So instead of getting rid of the imperial cup, the metric system instead just redefined it as 250 ml instead of 240 ml for U.S. standard, and 284 ml for Imperial. The fact that the metric system needs to continue using "cups" shows how the metric system is not suitable for all situations.
• Standard units are usually better for rough estimations.
  • Since the typical speed limit in the U.S. is around 60 mph for highways and 30 mph for residential areas, miles per hour can easily be converted to miles per minute, giving an easy estimation of time. (60 mph = 1 mile per minute, therefore if the destination is 45 miles away, it is approx. 45 minutes away at highway speed.)
  • Since a foot is based on the size of a man's foot, it is easy to measure the square footage of a room simply by walking across it. If you have a shoe size of 10.5 or 11, your boot is probably 12 inches long. If you have smaller feet, just add a little space between steps.