Do Americans understand celsius?

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As I understand it, the US has no official system of weights and measurements.

United States Customary Units are regulated by the NIST. However, there was no national regulation of all units until 1905. Before then, only weight was regulated nationally. Everything else was just allowed to handle itself. After 1905, there was an official national standard for everything.

United States Customary Units are regulated by the NIST. However, there was no national regulation of all units until 1905. Before then, only weight was regulated nationally. Everything else was just allowed to handle itself. After 1905, there was an official national standard for everything.

That's not what I was saying.

What I was saying is that the United States does not mandate that we use one system of weights and measures over all other systems of weights and measures. That we use miles, feet, quarts, pounds, ..., is because that is what we have traditionally used and are used to using rather than because Congress or some government bureaucrat decided that we must use that system.

You are correctly on point. In other parts of the world the government -mandates- the system of weights and measures that must be used for products to be marketed legally. In the U.S. NIST standardizes the weights and measures but, as yet, no system of weights and measures has been mandated by law.

ruveyn

If fahrenheit has not been mandated by law then why is using celsius considered to be unAmerican? If certain communities want to use celsius rather than fahrenheit then does opposing them run counter to democracy and freedom of consumer choice?

You are perfectly free to use celsius any time you wish. It is entirely up to you. There is nothing unAmerican about it.



Quite the contrary -- you are free to choose which to use.

For example, when I used to ride bicycles about 3,000 to 5,000 miles per year, I had my bicycle speedometer display the speed in km/hr in hopes that I would get a better intuitive feeling for the speed instead of having to do a mental conversion. That never really helped.

However, it did lead to a funny incident one day. I stopped at the bicycle shop one afternoon. One of the local racers casually walked over to my bicycle and pressed the display to see my maximum speed for the day. She did a double take and then gave me a funny look when she saw a speed of around 45-50. She didn't realize it was displaying kilometers per hour instead of miles per hour and that my peak speed was a quick sprint trying to beat a traffic signal.

The only times I actually hit speeds of 45 to 50 miles per hour was when drafting a vehicle, going downhill, or both.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when a 3/4 inch diameter BMX spindle is incorrectly referred to as 19mm.

The reluctance to use metric in the US resulted in a decision to use an imperial size bearing with an outside diameter of 1 5/8 inch and an inside diameter of 3/4 inch as the industry standard for the bottom bracket of a BMX. The spindles that fit into these bearings are officially 3/4 inch in diameter but are more commonly referred to as being 19mm.

Would it make you feel better is it was referred to as 19.05 mm?

My grandma (who lives in Brazil) told me at the dinner table that when she left Sao Paulo, it was 40 degrees Celsius, and then I just thought in my head 40 degrees that's 104 degrees or something like that.

It is a precision fit. Does anybody know why it ended up being popularly referred to as 19mm when Americans are familiar with inches?

Simple, because it actually is 19 mm (0.748031 inches) and 0.748031 inches is kind of hard to say.

Now if your question is, why is it in metric? That would be because they are made in China, and that's the system of measurements in China. As a matter of fact it is the system of measurements in almost every single country in the world, except the US. Same reason Asian and European cars use metric parts.

The mid BB bearing for a 3/4 inch spindle is an R12 which is an industry standard mass produced part dimensioned in inches. Not all are made in China. There is also another mid BB bearing with an outside diameter of 1 5/8 inch and an inside diameter of 22mm but this is a specific BMX component rarely sold by industrial bearing suppliers. I don't think there are any metric industry standard bearings with a 19mm inside diameter. BMX wheels are manufactured in China but their diameters are almost always described in inches.

Not at all.

We Americans will never adopt the metric system outside of drugs and soda bottles. You could get Katy Perry, Steven Seagal, Hulk Hogan, or a CGI John Wayne to endorse it and we still wouldn't switch.

It makes more sense for a hot day to be 100 degrees. When you convert it to Celsius, it doesn't seem hot enough! What the f**k, Euro-nutters? You're not getting enough! Same with converting pounds to kilos. Feet to meters only makes sense when you factor in how close a meter is to a yard but who has time to add three inches to every yard?

We already tried converting to metric before (Northern Delaware still has metric road signs) and it failed. It'd be too expensive and it'd need a severe overhaul of American English. If you go to McDonald's, you order a quarter-pounder with cheese, not whatever the hell it is in grams! The former rolls off the tongue. It's smooth and natural. The latter is stilted and weird.

Oh please, thats the name of a sandwich. It has nothing to do with measurements. Japan is 100% metric. Most Japanese would have no clue how much a pound is, but guess what they call a Quarter with Cheese?