U.S. still the last major metric system holdout

With the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, the U.S. started down the road to measuring in liters, meters, celsius and grams, but in everyday life Americans are still miles away from embracing the measuring system used around the world.

To compete in the world market, for convenience and in some cases by law, many U.S. industries have switched to designing and producing products with specifications and sizes based on the metric system.

But many products continue to be produced in the sizes Americans are accustomed to, while metric sizes and measurements are also used in many things we buy or use.

We buy a gallon of milk and a 2 liter bottle of soda.

Our 6 ounce cup of yogurt has 6 grams of protein.

A football player's speed is based on their 40-yard dash, but in track and field runners are competing in metric distances such as 100-, 200- and 400 meters.

Americans are familiar with the English units of measurement, which are now collectively known as the United States customary system or the American system.

When you narrowly miss your mark - you missed it by an "inch."

If you are way off target - you missed it by a "mile."

A 6-footer describes a tall person.

A 50-yarder is a long field goal in football.

A nice day of 80 degrees fahrenheit doesn't seem so nice when it's 26.7 degrees celcius.

Highlands Today asked a few employees what 1 inch correlates to in the metric system and nobody had a clue that 1 inch is roughly 2 1/2 centimeters, or 25.4 millimeters.

So why change? Why should we use and become familiar with the metric system?

Dave Murto, lab director at Short Environmental Laboratories, Sebring, said he works almost exclusively using the metric system with units in milliliters, grams and milligrams.

A few English measurements are still used in his business such as well depths, which are measured in feet rather than meters, he noted.

As a nation, "we've been lax about picking up and using the metric system and we are losing a lot of benefits because of that," Murto said.

What needs to happen is not to get people familiar with converting - because then you still have to remember difficult conversions and numbers that aren't even - but get them to use the metric system, he said.

The metric system is much easier to convert measurements to different units within the system compared to the English system.

If you got a measurement in inches and you need it in feet then you've got to divide by 12, Murto said. If you are up at 35,000 feet in an airplane and you are wondering how many miles you are at then divide that by 5,260. You just can't do that.

But with the metric system it's just the powers of 10 and move the decimal place, he noted.

For example: 1,000 millimeters = 100 centimeters = 1 meter. 1,000 meters = 1 kilometer.

The relationship among the measuring units in the metric system are useful in making conversions, Murto noted. For example: 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram.

Neil Young, owner of Neil Young's Auto & Truck Repair, Sebring, said most of the nuts and bolts and car parts are now in metric, but a few are in the American sizes.

All the new cars, including the ones from American manufacturers, are built with parts based on the metric system, he said. It's been a gradual change to metric since the 1980s.

"Back then it was even worse because you had to use metric and American wrenches," Young said. "About the time you thought you had all the wrenches you needed, you had to go back and get American ones or you had to go back and get metric ones.

"It was kind of a screwed up change over."

Metric Association

The U.S. Metric Association (USMA), a national non-profit organization that was founded in 1916, advocates the U.S. conversion to the modern metric system.

The metric system is formally named the International System of Units and abbreviated as SI.

Many people do not realize the extent of metric usage in the United States, according to the USMA.

The USMA notes the following:

• Metric is now required along with inch-pound units on most consumer products.

• About 50 percent of measures in the U.S. are metric. (Many of those measures are used in the fields of science, engineering, manufacturing and international trade.)

• All inch-pound measures are defined and calibrated to the SI metric system. (Inch-pound units are currently based, by the U.S. government, on the metric system.)

• Metric is used predominantly in the rest of the world, with the U.S. being the only major holdout.

Students are taught in both the systems and Florida's new math standards for the 2010-11 school year also addresses the metric system, for example:

• Second grade - measure weight/mass and capacity/volume of objects. Include the use of the appropriate unit of measure and their abbreviations including cups, pints, quarts, gallons, ounces, pounds, grams, kilograms, milliliters and liters.

• Eighth-grade - compare, contrast and convert units of measure between different measurement systems (U.S. customary or metric (SI)) and dimensions including temperature, area, volume and derived units to solve problems.

"We just got to get over the resistance to it and learn it and learn it early and then start using it," Murto said.

For now, though, Americans, especially those in the business world, will need to be familiar with both systems.

You'll buy a quart of motor oil for your car and then purchase a 750 milliliter or 1.5 liter bottle of wine or liquor.

We used to listen to our 7-inch 45-rpm records and 12-inch long-playing albums.

Now you likely own a bunch of 120-millimeter diameter discs with a 15 millimeter hole - that's the size of music/computer CDs and DVDs.

For tons (or gigagrams) of info about the metric system check the USMA Website at http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/.

Metric quiz/primer

1. One inch equals what in the metric system? Roughly 2 1/2 centimeters. 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters.

2. One yard equals what in the metric system? About one meter. 1 yard = .9144 meters

3. What is the equivalent of 1 pound in the metric system? About half a kilogram. 1 pound = .4536 kilograms (approximately).

4. If you are driving 55 miles per hour, how fast in kilometers per hour are you moving? 88 kilometers per hour. 1 mph = 1.6 Km/hr.5. One quart is the equivalent to what in the metric system? About one liter. 1 quart = .9 liters.