Peanuts by Charles Schulz for November 14, 2021

thanks to Mr Dryer (my high school math teacher) i will forever know that there are 63360 inches in a mile. very useful in my daily life……

How come we never hear about the decimeter?

I’m thinking this strip dates from the latter 70s and early 80s. As I recall, the government was trying to get us to use the metric system. Though it’s simpler than the English system we currently use it never caught on for some reason.

As an American who grew up hardly using metrics, when is metric really used within the non-metric borders of the US?

That’s it, you’re inching towards metric awareness, Patty!

I so hated metrics growing up in Canada. That, alone, was enough to make me want to permanently head south.

I remember when that was going to be our system and people just said, “nope!”

After being forced to try to learn conversion tables (and fail at it), I moved to S. Europe in 1983. And it was easy. Because, just like the English system, you learn it in practice. A kilo of chops is about this many. A litre of milk holds four glassfuls. If you’re going to upholster that armchair, you need this many meters of fabric. 30 km is a long way on foot, but a pleasant car ride.

There was a push in the US school systems in the early ’70s to teach the metric system. I remember it being introduced here in Florida during elementary school but I believe it was abandoned in the late ’70s though it is quite useful and if you end up being a science major at university you end up using it, like it or not.

I blame the French . . . give them 2.54 centimeters and they’ll take 1.6093 kilometers . . .

;-)

When I was in the U.S. Navy. I was in gunnery fire-control, (aiming the 5" guns, gunnersmates made sure that the gun went boom, I helped make sure we hit what we were aiming for). My fire-control system was set up for English measuring, (yards, feet, feet/sec, and so on). What we mostly exercised doing was gun-fire support missions, (shore bombardment). The problem was that all the Army & Marine spotters, in the exercise, were giving my ship directions in meters, (right so many meters, left so many meters, up so many meters). And someone in CIC had to do conversions for every change the spotters made. For my fire-control computer would not, could not except anything but yards or feet.

I’m a physicist so I’m very fluent in the metric system. I’m also an amateur mechanic. One thing that I’ve noticed is that even in metric countries, all the mechanics use English ratchets. There is no metric ratchet. If we want to actually switch to metric, that is the place it needs to start.

Yep, too many people just can’t handle change, even when it’s severely, apparently for the good.

Prescient… Mr. Schulz could have written this last week.

I remember road signs that showed kilometers to different towns. That didn’t last long. We had an “enlightened” Republican government that hated anything new. I just read most want to go back to 1950.

Think metric – pass it on!

It looks to me like some school boards have gone waaaay beyond the metric system!

For a tomgirl with a short attention span, Peppermint Patty is very observant.

A flatulence bubble in a hurricane compared to what those people on the school board get carried away with now…

Math? No thanks.

It will be handy when she travels for skating competitions ;)

I’m comfortable in either American or Metric units, but please DON’T MIX THE TWO!

They tried to teach us metric in school the wrong way. “a kilometer is 0.621 miles” and the like. Not much help when you barely know what a mile is. Better to show us a meter stick. “This is a meter. See, it’s a little longer than this yard stick. Now these marks are centimeters. See how big it is? And these tiny marks are millimeters. Centi means hundredth and milli means thousandth. A thousand meters is a kilometer.”

In 1963, when I was in first grade, I remember the teacher telling us that “the Metric system was coming soon”. Here I sit, grandmother of four in 2021 and the only “metric” thing I understand is a 2 liter bottle of soda. I guess the metric system is still coming? Looks like not in my lifetime. As another famous Krueger once said, “I’m not too worried about it”.

Oh, Peppermint Patty, you should see the current school board meetings now. People all riled up about things they don’t understand. Proposing burning books. A world gone mad.

Give them a yottameter & they take a paesec!

Metric system is part of the dumbing down program. Look how smart they were in the UK when people had to sort out their pence shilling pound money.

… or the millihour?

For Patty’s sake, I hope she never came across the Saturday Night Live piece in which Dan Aykroyd introduced us to the Decabet.

How appropriate for today’s school board antics.

Good news Patty. It never caught on in the U.S. Too hard for everyone.

Even after a President signed a law calling for conversion to the Metric System. A guy named Lincoln.

Peppermint Patty is my favorite character. She cracks me up!

If we had just adopted the Metric system back in the day, no one under the age of 50 would known anything but the Metric system. Just saying…

The metric system never did catch on the the U.S.

The best way to learn metric weights is selling weed. 3.5 grams =1/8 oz I mean where else would I learn that. As I grew up 113grams was a 1/4 pound.

I was visiting my motherland of England years ago and a Brit was poking fun of us and said: Why is it that you Yanks use miles, yards, feet, inches, and pounds in your measurements? I replied: We learned it from you!

The best way to learn the metric system is just use it, don’t try to compare it to the American standard system, soon or later you’ll get it.

I forgot to post this when I first saw it. https://www.gocomics.com/rubes/2021/10/24

Ask anyone who uses sockets and wrenches – which ones are used more than ever these days?

My SAE set (yes, 1) are shiny and clean – and my metric sets (at least 3) are well used. Especially the 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, etc. I have found that metric measurements allow a precision when measuring and cutting that I tend to use them in that work.

But I still track temps in F, distance in miles, other measurements in feet, weight in pounds, etc. ;-)

You " just" got inches and feet? How old are you, PP?