  Imperial/English vs. Metric While reading through urlLink Slashdot today, I came across the article urlLink Another English/Metric "Spacecraft" Problem , which talks about a recent incident at urlLink Tokyo Disneyland's urlLink Space Mountain . While the article is somewhat interesting, the comments following the story were more interesting, as it started turning into a debate of English/Imperial Measurement versus Metric Measurement. One comment followed like this: Anonymous Coward @ urlLink 16:32 2004-01-26 : ...No system of measure is inherently better or worse than another.... urlLink Carnivore (103106) @ urlLink 17:36 2004-01-26 I disagree.
You can truthfully say that no system is any more accurate than another, but since people have to work with the system and convert from unit to unit, some systems are inherently better. Let's take an example from last night's Mythbusters episode: The rowing 8 that Stanford used for the demonstration has a mass of ~ 1000 kg when loaded with crew. If you were to design one, what volume water would you have to displace to float the boat? Since water is ~ 1 kg/l, we have 1000l, which is the same as 1 m^3. The process is much more complicated in the imperial system. We have ~2200 lbs.Water weighs ~8 lbs/gal, so that's 265 gallons of water. According to units, that's 35.42 cubic feet, which is, of course, pretty much the same as 1 cubic meter. The difference here is that it took me 5 minutes and 2 different programs (calculator and units) to do it in the imperial system.
In all honesty, I can say that I don't remember learning extremely in-depth conversions in the metric system, such as the aforementioned ~1kg/L, but if Metric truly is that simple, then why hasn't the United States come to terms and simply just accept the single measurement system? Would it not be easier to remember that: 1 Liter = 10 deciliters = 100 centiliters = 1,000 milliliters rather than: 1 Gallon = 4 quarts = 8 pints = 16 cups and then have to worry when you're not dealing with whole units?
What, if anything, is wrong with base10, since the rest of the world seems to have adopted it? After living in the metric world for a bit, where I couldn't fathom ever adjusting to the measurement system, I'm slowly getting there without even trying. I'd say the hardest measurements to adjust to are distance and weight. Think of it this way. In your head try to figure the answers out: 1. How many mi is 15,000yd? 2. How many km is 15,000m? Answers: 1. 8.52272727... Mi (used Palm Calc) 2. 15km (used my head) For me, this raises the question: Why does the US hold on to it's full use of English/(modified) Imperial measurement? Sure, the UK hasn't completely gone Metric (yet), as it's holding dearly to its fluid measurements, but it's switched almost entirely otherwise? 
