"Besides, metric is easier and makes more sense, especially when it comes to temperature: 100C is the boiling point of water, 0C is the freezing point. 212F and 32F are such arbitrary numbers."

The 0C and 100C degree points may make more sense, but Fahrenheit degrees are nearly twice as precise and for industrial measurements actually are more useful. Also what is so special about water or ice? As for metric in general, none of it really makes any more sense than the english system, especially when you consider that no one is using time measurements that are in any metric format and they are never likely to be!! Ditto for angular measurement, it is degrees, 360 of them. Not metric either......

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1961 190Db retired
1968 220D/8 325,000
1983 300D 164,150

I agree with Craig that metric is much easier to handle. Everything is a power of 10. For example, 1 meter = 100 centimeters so converting between the two is a breeze. Yards, feet and inches are not as easy, especially when you deal with area let alone volume! Regarding water, what's not special about it? It's 70 something % of our bodies, and we were talking about measuring coolant temperature. For those running low antifreeze solutions it's especially important to know where the boiling point is. Precision is a non-issue. If you want higher precision than 1 celsius, just add a decimal point.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

Totally.

When I was in Rome in 1873, living in the campground in a motor home he built himself, come to think of it it may have been a benz, was an Architect from South Africa. He was working in an office there which was run by an American exile. They were pushing a job out and offered me employment. I worked there for a couple of weeks and earned enough to buy some really nice Italian clothes which I wore til I gained too much weight to get them on anymore. But the use of metrics....well, It took no time at all. They just handed me a metric scale and in a day or so I was thinking in meters.

As Craig said, it is a lot easier to draw and calculate in meters, where everything is decimals. Inches? ridiculous, when making stair tread calculations you have to convert everything to inches, make your calculations and take it back to feet and inches. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

Why we don't convert is a total mystery.....until I think of our fearless president and then......

Tom W

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

That makes you at least 134years old?

I think it's just resistance of the public in general. The people out of school don't want to learn a new system and alot of things would still have to be converted from American to Metric and back. It would probably take a generation or two to work all the non-metric measurements out of the system. We can't teach just metric in the school system and teaching them both will just result in them forgetting the metrics and using the American system thats everywhere around them.

But, this thread is starting to get way off topic now.....