it's funny... i've been watching the original star trek episodes off and on, and noticed that they mix imperial and metric units quite often. stuff like...
"distance to the object is 800 million kilometers and closing"
(15 seconds later)
"distance is now 100 million miles, still closing"
i hate the imperial system - always have. for me, it was taught right alongside metric starting from kindergarten in the early 80s. but try to buy a measuring tape or any carpentry tools in the US that's metric. even simple things like chisels are made with imperial widths. saw blades are 9" diameter to fit properly, and of course lumber... i don't see that changing real soon. a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood/sheetrock/etc or a 2x4 piece of lumber is much easier to say than 1.2m x 2.4m... though 2"x4" is pretty close to 5x10cm (especially considering the fact that
a 2x4 is not actually 2x4). not to mention the hassle of trying to deal with different thread pitches - some imperial and metric ones are close enough to let you screw the nut onto the stud, but then it will either bind up and ruin the threads, or will easily strip when torqued down due to the slight difference in diameter.
and car tires... so many
mm wide / some
percent of the width to get sidewall height / wheel diameter in
inches (but demarked with an R, which usually means radius). it's like they made it confusing just to mess with people. why not say 235/140/406) instead of 235/60r16? they already list wheel bolt patterns in both metric and imperial (5x114.3mm = 5x4.5" for example) and some bolt patterns they don't even list in inches - 4x100 for example.
US market cars also have speedos marked in both MPH and KM/H, so that we don't have to do the conversion in our head if we happen to drive to canada or mexico. but i've only ever seen metric speed limit signs right near the big airport here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@29.977...4!1suYeN706SKxzOw29cAhaaZg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 - but even that's inconsistent. some other speed limit signs in the airport are MPH only.
in the kitchen, all our measuring cups/spoons have both imperial and metric markings, but all our pots are marked in quarts (not that it's super critical for things like soup pots, esp since a quart is pretty close to a liter, but still)... at the grocery store you buy milk in gallons, quarts or pints, but you buy soda and (most) water in 1L, 2L, 3L or 500mL bottles (though it's still a 12 fl.oz can)... and water can also be bought in gallon+ containers. fresh produce and meat are sold by the pound/ounce. yet a lot of the frozen stuff i see is more often marked with a nice round number of grams instead of ounces.
i HAVE noticed that some things traditionally (in the US at least) measured in inches have been completely replaced with metric - specifically headphone jack sizes. most people used to say 1/8" and 1/4" but now almost everyone says 3.5mm and 7mm. and even US automakers are finally using almost 100% metric fasteners, so that's nice.
then again, at the rate we're (not) going, by the time we've fully colonized pluto, the US MIGHT have finally completely eliminated the imperial system.