Switching to Metric System

I finally pulled the plug and abandoned the archaic system of weights and measures of the good ol' United States of America. Actually, this was a product of visiting New Zealand over a month ago, and I'm finally just writing about it now.

Time

Actually, I've had my clocks set in a 24-hour format long before I went to New Zealand. I still find myself converting in my headwhat 17:00 is, for example, but slowly it's becoming more and more second nature.

As for dates, I personally like the YYYY-MM-DD format the best. It makes the most sense when paired with HH:MM:SS, because you go from "largest" timescale to "smallest." Also, if you name files this way, it will naturally sort by date. This is one frustration about non-US dates. They got everything else right, but why, why, why DD-MM-YYYY? At least it's not the MM/DD/YYYY monstrosity adopted by the US.

Temperature

This was the next to go. New Zealand, like the rest of the world, uses degrees Celsius for temperature and weather reporting. It is a much more scientifically-defined system. 0C is the freezing point of water and 100C is the boiling point. I was curious about the Fahrenheit scale, so this is what I got from a Wikipedia article, paraphrased:

The zero point was determined by placing a thermometer in a mixture of brine: ammonium, ice, and water in a 1:1:1 ratio. Human body temperature was defined as 96 degrees.

Makes total sense. Also, as we know, human body temperature is not 96F anyway.

Going back to the story, on the trip, I finally converted my weather app over to Celsius. It was shocking to see temperatures originally in the 50s-60s (F) immediately drop to 10s-20s (C).

Distance

This was my latest addition. In Strava, I always counted my distance in miles and speed in minutes per mile. I finally abandoned that for kilometers and minutes per kilometer. This one felt good as all my distances dramatically increased from the 10s-20s (mi) to 20s-30s (km). However, this will be tricky because I won't want to slowly drift back down as I want to keep my weekly distances up.

To adjust for this mental trickery, I need to make sure that my new monthly goal (originally 60mi per month) is about 100km per month.

I left Google Maps alone in terms of miles. I also cannot change my car's speedometer to km/hr, but even if I could, that would be a very bad idea as all road signs in the United States are in miles per hour (mph), and I can't convert in my head that fast! (Not to mention, that would probably be illegal.)

Other

There are other dimensions in the metric system besides, time, distance, and temperature, but I either haven't found a practical way to make the switchover, or it's just out of my control. For example, I would like to switch to the following:

• Volume from gal to liters
• Mass from lb and grams to kg (Yes - I know that the imperial weight system technically describes a force, not mass. Just another reason why it's so poorly defined.)
• Energy from Cal to kcal or Joule
• Pressure from psi to Bar or Pa

Conclusion

I've survived over a month so far on the metric system for time, temperature, and distance. I'd love to commit even more of my dimensions to the metric system, but it's either impractical or out of my control. The most challenging switchover by far was temperature. I still "think" in degrees Fahrenheit, so in my head I have to convert back to Fahrenheit, which is a bad habit.

To help with this, I've come up with "temperature bands" in my head to determine the actual heat or coldness. For example, anything below 10C is my idea of "winter" weather (as a Californian.) 10-20C means to grab a jacket, 20-30C is warm and pleasant, and anything above 30C is "summer". These bands have helped me get accustomed to Celsius much quicker as someone who's used Fahrenheit their whole life.

Here's my final call to action! Write to your local congressman asking to change from the old, clunky, outdated imperial system of weights and measures and instead adopt the far superior metric system! It's no pure unit system but it's a start!