To metric or not to metric

The United States has taken a lot of flak for not adopting the metric system. After all, everybody uses the metric system. But is this really true? A little research reveals that, in fact, two other countries also lack the metric system! So let us be heartened by the fact that we, along with the equally advanced Myanmar and Liberia, refuse to bow to international peer pressure to use a system that makes totally more sense than the one we have.

Every year when I was in school we were warned that the metric system was coming and we had better be prepared for it, as if suddenly one day we would not be able to understand anything that had to do with numbers, which was pretty much true anyway. So every year we dutifully learned about meters and liters and kilograms and hectometers and Kelvin (not, as we supposed, a Muppet), dismayed to find that we weighed significantly less in kilograms than in pounds, because at that point we all wanted to weigh more. We dutifully learned these things, but we had no idea what any of it really meant.

To help us avoid ignorance and catastrophe when the Day of Metrics would finally arrive, teachers gave us exercises to help us learn to think in metrics. It never did any good, but teachers are hardy souls. And so year after year, while children in other, metric-compliant countries were learning things like quantum physics, we did assignments like these:

Estimate the following objects, then find the actual measurements in metric units.

Item------------------------------Estimate-----------------Actual

length of your shoe-----------about 5 thumbs------20 centimeters

weight of your math book---193 mightygrams----1.5 kilograms

width of your TV screen
(which you should not be
watching right now)---------8,643 pixels--------------54 centimeters

distance to school from
your house--------------------not far enough-----------2 kilometers

It should not be a surprise that the metric system has been debated in Congress as far back as 1790, when it missed becoming a part of the new country by only one vote. Congressional debates about whether to adopt the system are still going on, in some cases with the original debaters. Although this issue does not receive the same level of attention it once did, it stirred intense debate in the early days of Congress, some of which is reproduced here:

1st delegate: Methinketh this system of metrics be good for the country. We must taketh our place in the world!

2nd delegate: But it hath been invented by the French! Can any good be found therein? Perchance it requireth more thought.

3rd delegate: The French have helped us win yon war just past. Perchance it behooveth us to thank them in this manner.

Delegate 157: Perchance to sleep, perchance to dream...ssnssnxxxx...

1st delegate: Wake up, Potter!

Delegate 157 (startled): I beggeth thy pardon.

2nd delegate: At present it be 81 miles to travel twixt Philadelphia and New York, and an arduous trip it be. Having to travel in kilometers would putteth an unnecessary burden upon the people!

3rd delegate: And how longeth, exactly, would ye trip be in kilometers?

2nd delegate: How the hecketh should I know?

Delegate 157 (consulting metric conversion chart and muttering): Hecketh, hecketh...how much is a hecketh...ssnssnxxxx...

We have not made much more progress than this on adopting the metric system. And so I pose a question to you readers: What are the chances of it happening in our lifetime? (Please state your answer in hectares per quadrimeter.)