The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'', naturally. ("[[wikipedia:Klick|Klick]]" is military slang for kilometer, in case you were wondering.)

** Also normal person slang in Canada.

* Like its [[Firefly|originating series]], ''[[Serenity]]'' quietly averts this trope with a single line:

{{quote|'''Wash:''' Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90-pound girl, 'cause I don't think that's ever gettin' old.}}

== Literature ==

* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] by Scottish author [[Ken MacLeod]]'s ''[[Fall Revolution]]'' books. When asked why spacecraft use imperial measures, Ellie May Ngwethru replies, "Fucking NASA." ([[Did Not Do the Research|Which is wrong]]; the reason the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed was that NASA and JPL were using metric but Lockheed-Martin was using imperial, and didn't check the measurements.)

* ''[[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.