The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Difference between revisions
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While futuristic science fiction embraces this trope, futuristic ''fantasy'' often averts it: imperial measurements seem more appropriate for a non-scientific milieu.
The metric system is at least for scientific applications superior to the imperial system - water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius and boils at 100 degrees Celsius,<ref>approximately, given typical atmospheric pressure and chemical composition</ref>
Just to note, the United States is one of only three countries, along with Burma (Myanmar) and Liberia, that have not adopted the SI (metric) as their official system. So it is generally considered only a matter of time.
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* ''[[Honor Harrington|Honorverse]]'' is thoroughly metric (even the [[Deep South]] of Grayson), to the point that Honor, while reading ''[[Oliver Twist]]'' in her spare time, wondered what those "inches" and "pounds" mean and how much would it be. [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] when the Grayson pasttime of baseball is introduced in the books. Despite using metric for everything else, the Graysons stubbornly insist on using American measurements for baseball, because if they attempted to use metric, they'd either end up with crufty measurements (keeping the field the right dimensions) or end up with a field that was slightly off in distances. They refuse to update the game to include modern measurements because baseball is [[Serious Business]].
** But averted in Weber's [[Safehold]] Series. The people of Safehold use imperial units, which were deliberately imposed (along with roman numerals and certain religious proscriptions) early in the colonization project in order to hinder technological progress.
* [[David Drake]]'s ''[[RCN]]'' has Cinnabar use the imperial system while their enemies the Alliance (''not'' [[The Alliance]]) use
* As seen in the page quote, in British speculative fiction using the metric system in the future is usually a hint of dystopia. Oddly this is a much more common use than in American fiction, perhaps because the metric system has never been (in parts) imposed by government in America.
* Thoroughly averted by [[Larry Niven]]. His [[Ringworld]] (for example) is "six hundred million miles" in circumference.
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== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Star Trek]]'' caused a scientific error due to this trope. During the production of the ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "The Royale", they "converted" a temperature to Celsius (presumably to make it more "futurey") by simply swapping the unit names. The original temperature was -291° Fahrenheit (-179,4 °C), but the lowest possible temperature (absolute zero) is -273.15 degrees Celsius... whoops.
* ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' and its movies were known for using both the metric and imperial systems, sometimes in the same sentence, in a faintly baffling manner... [[Reality Is Unrealistic|much like the modern scientific community and US military]].
** The novelisation for ''[[Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home|Star Trek IV the Voyage Home]]'' featured Scotty having to mentally translate from metric to US customary when talking to the factory owner.
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* ''[[Traveller]]''.
* ''[[Champions]]''. As of 6th Edition, all distances are in meters or kilometers. (Previous editions used "hexes" as a unit of distance or area, which were two meters across.)
* Inverted in Steve Jackson Games' ''[[GURPS]]'',
** Apparently so much of the player base is American that they can't afford to switch to metric because, like many small RPG makers, SJGames is a margin business. (The Basic Set book does have a metric conversion table near the front.)
** Also averted in ''[[Car Wars]]''. Miles, feet, and pounds abound in Autoduel America.
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** The usual cited reason for not changing is the sheer expense of changing pretty much ''every roadsign in the land that has a number on it''. Every distance sign and speed sign would need to be replaced, which would be a colossal undertaking. It's for the same reason that milk and beer can still be sold in pints; replacing all the pint bottles and glasses is not practical.
* During [[The Eighties]], a conclusive switch to the metric system was widely anticipated in the United States. [[It Was His Sled|Obviously, that didn't happen,]] but at the time the expectation was so prevalent that the newly-finished [[wikipedia:Interstate 19|Interstate 19]] put up signs with distances in kilometers. The program ran from 1975 to 1982, and it's worth noting that its failure was not necessarily because Americans disliked the metric system. Public opinion tended to be split or just ambivalent, so the Reagan administration couldn't justify the cost of overseeing and marketing the metrication effort, educating manufacturers, and changing highway signs. Several of the aforementioned metric road signs still stand today, particularly near the Canadian and Mexican borders.
** The metric system did take hold in manufacturing, as companies wanted to build things that could be easily repaired overseas, hence [[Vanilla Ice]] singing about his "Five Oh"<ref>
** The expected switch to metric provided a lot of fodder for the ''[[Peanuts]]'' strip during this time, as seen [http://foodiesabroad.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/peanuts-metric.jpg here]. The 1973 TV special ''There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown'' has a [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] moment when Peppermint Patty says that, "We're going to have to learn the metric system, Franklin. By the time we grow up, the metric system will probably be official."
* September 23, 1999: NASA lost the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter because [[Unit Confusion|one engineering team used metric units while another used imperial units for a key spacecraft operation]]. The software keeping track of the small forces reported by the spacecraft's accelerometer gave results in pound-seconds of impulse, while the software that used this data to compute the spacecraft's course expected impulses in newton-seconds. The craft descended too low into the Martian atmosphere and was destroyed by atmospheric stresses and friction.
* The US uses SI units for some things because no equivalent "traditional" units exist. For example, all electrical units are
* Conversely, the metric system continues to use non-decimalized units for times greater than a second; partially because it would be a phenomenal pain to change on many levels, and partially because (unlike most units of measurement) the day and year are based on static phenomena and can't really be changed. However, it's not uncommon to do calculations involving X thousands of seconds, and convert it to familiar units of time at the end.
* When the metric system was introduced in the United Kingdom, ''Punch'' did a satire which was purportedly a government information pamphlet that accompanied the switch from Biblical measures to Imperial (how many cubits in a yard?). Which was quite funny considering that there were people who wrote complex theories trying to justify the Imperial system, which differs quite significantly from the weights and measures used in the Bible, on religious grounds, demanding that it should be maintained against the "godless" Metric system.
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