How We can Integrate Metric and Imperial Systems

 

After getting thoroughly tired of dealing with traditional measuring systems, Europeans have agreed to replace it with universal international system that will be standardized and simple to use. They created such system and world lived happily thereafter. Right?

Turns out no. A few countries continue to use traditional 'imperial' units. One of them is very important one, the United States. Because of the US these imperial units crawling back into Europe, in form of computer screens, that are measured in inches and other things.

As much as some might want to lambast imperial system and Americans who are still using it as silly, they do stick to it and thus world has two rather incompatible systems, that make conversion between them or even within imperial system a nightmare.

That however does not have to be the case, as there actually exist one very simple solution and its name is a tonne, a metric tonne to be precise. Metric tonne is a former traditional imperial unit, that made its way into a metric system, by adjusting its value to be precisely 1000 kg, thus essentially becoming equivalent of a Megagram, but with a shorter more traditional name.

Metric tonne does not have the same amount as tradition tonne, either of them. The US short tonne is lighter than metric tonne while British long tonne is heavier than a metric tonne. Even before metric tonne was introduced to further confuse things, they were already confusing to begin with.

Here lies a solution, instead fighting over weather imperial or metric units are better, we can simply introduce the metric version of traditional units and end debate with that. While at first glance that looks like unnecessary duplication, it is more useful and valuable than initially apparent. 

To begin with traditional units are more natural, people used them for a long time, they have catchy names with character to them. They make sense in a rule of thumb sort of way, it's easier to estimate with them. One inch feels like smallest among that actually matter, meanwhile one centimeter is just too small to care. You can market an increase in couple of inches as people can see rule of thumb difference between them. You cannot do the same with centimeters as one cm difference looks more like an adjustment then an increase. 

On the other hand, as example with ton shows that exact values of traditional units do not matter. Even before metric system there were different values of the same units used by different countries, so nothing wrong comes with creating another one or adjusting a value of a traditional unit to match that of a nearest metric unit. 

Inches matter not in their precise to the decimal point value to centimeters but in approximate rule of thumb way. Nothing wrong will come from adjusting value of an inch to be exactly 2.5 centimeters. Such metric inch will be easy to scale and convert into metric system. 4 inches makes one decimeter and 40 inches one meter. Who says we cannot have both traditional units and easy conversions at the same time. We actually can.

We can do the same with other traditional units. Metric pound can be exactly 0.5 kilogram or 500 grams. Metric mile can be exactly 1.5 kilometers, Metric nautical mile exactly 2 kilometers. One metric foot exactly 30 cm or 3 decimeters. One metric ounce is exactly 30 grams. Metric yard can be equivalent of square meter. Metric furlong exactly 200 meters. And metric gallon can be exactly 5 liters. 

That will keep close approximations of traditional units around while at the same time allow for an easy conversion to a metric system and back. Best of both worlds.

Just like that metric tonne example allows us to solve a complex imperial vs metric system debate and intergrade both system into a single one.