I will grant you that the metric system is easier to use, especially in a classroom, where you are converting from one thing to another. Also, in many real-world uses, it doesn't make much difference whether you one or the other. For example, using hectares or acres in describing the size of a piece of land, either will tell someone what they need to know, assuming they were familiar with the unit in question.
However, there are some situations where the imperial units are just easier to work with. Which is easier, measuring out 1 teaspoon or measuring 4.928 ml?
Which means that it is not quite the same as an imperial teaspoon, which means you have to adjust the rest of the recipe. You are talking about either changing every single recipe out in every single recipe book, OR having people get two different sets of measuring cups/spoons/etc. At the end of the day, it just isn't worth the trouble.
Biggest problem with imperial is use of fractions instead of decimal. Quick- which is smaller.. 19/32, 5/8, or 37/64 (0.593 vs. 0.625 vs 0.578)
Inches and feet are commonplace because they are pretty close to average width of thumb and shoe. Know why a meter is 1 meter long? Because someone decided that I cubic meter of water weighed 1,000 kilos, but then they had to decide what 1 kilo weighed and to do that they had to set a rate of gravitationalacceleration... and they based it upon 9.8 meters per second sqrd. So why not change length of a second to get 10 meters per second sqrd. Because a second is EXACTLY
9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom... why not 10 billion even? Cause that messes with everything else.
It IS all arbitrary, we literally can make up a new system any day and use it.
You just adjust the recipe to the measurement system used locally, a difference of 0.182 ml isn't even measurable in baking.
Now, the real problem with the imperial system that the metric system solves is volumes and weights. Say you've bought a water tank and want to know the weight of the water to see if your stand can take the weight. For simplicity I'll use 1x1x1.
A 1x1x1 meter volume of water (1m³) is one thousand liter which weighs 1000 kilos.
A 1x1x1 feet volume of water (1ft³) is 61 023.7441 cubic inches. One cubic inch water weighs 0.036127 pounds. 61023.7441x0.036127 is not how you calculate that and I have already given up trying. According to Google one cubic foot weighs 5.202288 pounds which makes absolutely no sense.
Or, just for fun, you could take the amount of water the tank holds, which is usually a known amount, and knowing that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds, you can just multiply it out.
(I might point out here that my original comment was that there are times when the Imperial system is easier to work with, not that it is better than the metric system.)
Don't get me wrong, the metric system is better suited for many, many, modern applications. It's just that, for a lot of day to day activities, switching over would simply not be worth the trouble.
However, there are some situations where the imperial units are just easier to work with. Which is easier, measuring out 1 teaspoon or measuring 4.928 ml?
Inches and feet are commonplace because they are pretty close to average width of thumb and shoe. Know why a meter is 1 meter long? Because someone decided that I cubic meter of water weighed 1,000 kilos, but then they had to decide what 1 kilo weighed and to do that they had to set a rate of gravitationalacceleration... and they based it upon 9.8 meters per second sqrd. So why not change length of a second to get 10 meters per second sqrd. Because a second is EXACTLY
9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom... why not 10 billion even? Cause that messes with everything else.
It IS all arbitrary, we literally can make up a new system any day and use it.
Now, the real problem with the imperial system that the metric system solves is volumes and weights. Say you've bought a water tank and want to know the weight of the water to see if your stand can take the weight. For simplicity I'll use 1x1x1.
A 1x1x1 meter volume of water (1m³) is one thousand liter which weighs 1000 kilos.
A 1x1x1 feet volume of water (1ft³) is 61 023.7441 cubic inches. One cubic inch water weighs 0.036127 pounds. 61023.7441x0.036127 is not how you calculate that and I have already given up trying. According to Google one cubic foot weighs 5.202288 pounds which makes absolutely no sense.
(I might point out here that my original comment was that there are times when the Imperial system is easier to work with, not that it is better than the metric system.)
Don't get me wrong, the metric system is better suited for many, many, modern applications. It's just that, for a lot of day to day activities, switching over would simply not be worth the trouble.