When will the US officially adopt the metric system?

[Integral]

Not really... There's nothing to understand, it's just about having to deal with fractions vs moving the decimal point. Metric is superior in every way.

Just not true. Consider entering measurements into a computer. The metic base of .1 when converted to binary is infintly repeteing and MUST be rounded off. While all of our inch subdivisions are powers of 2 and can be expressed exactly in binary. Further our base 12 foot has more prime divisors then then the base 10 system. I personally want to see everyone move to hexadecimal for our offical number system.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Just not true. Consider entering measurements into a computer. The metic base of .1 when converted to binary is infintly repeteing and MUST be rounded off. While all of our inch subdivisions are powers of 2 and can be expressed exactly in binary. Further our base 12 foot has more prime divisors then then the base 10 system. I personally want to see everyone move to hexadecimal for our offical number system.

I once read a book about someone's idea of a base 12 system. The eccentric author liked to quote "A pint's a pound the world around". Hexadecimal is interesting but converting to either base 12 or 16 measures effectively requires converting our number system as well. The hexadecimal mile consists of 4096 hexadecimal feet (16 inches) which is written as 1000 in hex.

The real reason for converting to metric is not so much the fact that it's decimal. It's because it has worldwide use and any nation that exports or imports must use it to a certain extent. It's very inefficient to do business in two systems.'