In order for SI to be compulsory, Congress must first fix the standard and make SI the ONLY legal system. All pre-SI units must be made non-legal so their use or abuse becomes unsupported by the government. All legal conversion factors between SI and pre-SI would be removed and pre-SI units would becomes just words with no measurement value. A CTO can work with Congress to make this happen.

During the 70's and 80's when we were supposed to be converting. The school system went headlong in teaching the students metric. We didn't learn much of the old way until I was in high school. I ask Mr. Obama to make it compulsory for the change to be completed. Follow Australia's example. From what I understand their conversion was pretty painless.

It doesn't matter, I was just trying to help out a little. I don't think we need to worry about the semantics of the Celsius poem.

AMERICA MUST COMMIT ITSELF TO A NATIONAL, FORCED, COORDINATED CONVERSION PROGRAM TO THE SI SYSTEM OF MEASURES, AS THE ONLY LEGALLY RECOGNISED SYSTEM OF MEASUREMENT FOR ITSELF, IN UNISON WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD. DURING THIS GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS, THINK OF AMERICA'S NEED TO CONNECT WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD WITH THE METRIC SYSTEM, BECAUSE OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE. GO METRIC USA.

The only two words in the rhyme that do rhyme are nice and ice. Warm can be thought of as nice. Therefore why not reword your rhyme to: 30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cool, 0 is ice. This way it is more true to form.

I understand, I was just trying to extend the rhyme to everyone to make it a little easier to remember Celsius temperatures.

I think that most people would agree that 30 is hot and not warm. We can even extend the range to 40 being sweltering and 50 being the limit of human endurance. The point is that every 10°C is a different category of heat.

It's even easier to remember Celsius temperatures with a little rhyme. It goes, "30's warm, 20's nice, 10's cold, and 0's ice." I've switched all my thermometers to Celsius and it's become second nature.

Tymes comment that people would understand a 1°C change in temperature by what it means is Fahrenheit is nonsense. Milliards of people worldwide use Celsius everyday and don't even know what a Fahrenheit is. For those who pretend not to know Celsius there are easy ways to learn it and relate the numbers to real events, like 0 is freezing, 10 is cool, 20 is warm, 30 is hot, 37 is body temp, etc.

The comment by nc50 shows how really stupid some people can be. If football ever changed to metric it can either go to a 100 m field with 10 m per down or to a 90 m field with 9 m per down. A 90 m field would be shorter by 1.44 m and each down by 144 mm. The change would be unnoticeable. A 100 m field would be larger by 10 m but maybe too large to fit in existing field space.

The military and the international manufacturing industry are already metric for instance boing and the dying auto companies.... so are schools and higher education but the american people are behind. Metric is science measures... why are they so so behind the times... 47th or 63rd? Education is where in the world scale?

Metric things would do 3 things... #1 stupid people would try to undertstand it or grasp it while more important things were addressed beyond their limited scope, #2 when people talked about 1 degree global warming they would understand how really bad it was because it was 2-3 degrees fahrenheit. #3 it would help education and US students and US populace. Finally also do ISO dates 2008-11-22.

The focus of metrication would be on commerce. I believe that sports rules are generally outside of commerce. I'm confident that U.S. football and other U.S. sports could continue to use yards or feet without affecting the progress of national metrication.

Football can still be in yards, just like in Canada. ;)

Though I am not personally against this, I think it will never happen for one simple reason: American Football. "First down and 9.144" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

"I doubt it COULD have any impact on gdp"

Well, you're wrong. Sorry! :)

We should do it regardless of how it affects the GDP. I think the transition to digital television, which, apart from freeing up parts of the radio band, will do nothing to help the GDP at all. At least as a metric country we would do better on the foreign market.

But, ynot56, how things are measured is, in part, how the world works.
How things are measured determines the form in which things are manufactured and sold. If metrication is a non-issue, it is only so because it has suffered in silence for years. Surely, it is time to discuss the U.S. gaining the metric-system advantage. The national silence on metric has been deafening since about 1982.

Silliest non-issue ive seen on this site.

This is only about how things are measured, not how the world works.

I doubt it COULD have any impact on gdp

Bottom line is that going metric is a good thing for the economy. It equals jobs. The process of converting to metric alone will create plenty of related positions. But more importantly, as has been pointed out before, much more business will come our way since we'll be able to communicate with the rest of the world, not just in English, but in metric as well.