US Revamps NIST's Standard-Setting Efforts

coondoggie writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been given new marching orders: expand work with the private sector to develop standards for a range of key technologies such as cloud computing, emergency communications and tracking, green manufacturing and high performance green building construction. NIST could see its core science and technology budget double by 2017. NIST has also cut the number of labs it runs to 6 from 10. NIST labs now include engineering, physical measurement, information technology, material measurement, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the NIST Center for Neutron Research."

Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[gman003]

American user here, requesting the NIST start migrating America to pure metric. I've done about all I can to prepare myself for metric - I can't do any more unless more people start switching as well, and the only way to really do that seems to be government mandate.

Key role in standardisation?

[Gavin Rogers]

From TFA, "Since World War II, the United States has played a key role in international standardization"

Umm. Played a key role in international standardisation? This is a country - the only major industrialised nation in the entire world - that so far refuses to embrace the metric system. Key role, indeed.

Re:Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[FrootLoops]

It gets inconvenient having both. Mechanics have to use x mm or y/z'th inch wrenches; nurses convert from F to C, pounds to kg's, and feet/inches to meters all the time; NASA lost a mars orbiter a few years back because of a conversion mistake. English units are inconvenient and error prone in other ways, besides the fact that the rest of the world doesn't use them. Try calculating your BMI by hand--you'll need to convert feet+inches to inches, that to meters, and pounds to kg's. The extra feet+inches conversion requires multiplication by 12 instead of a decimal shift and needs to be done even if you use a formula combining the other two conversions into multiplication by a constant. Converting between pounds and tons, gallons and pints, and feet and miles have similar issues--it's just stupid to add random constant multiplications when decimal shifts could do the same job.

If the weather was reported in C and kph, speed limit signs used both mph and kph, and common body temperatures were taught in both C and F, we'd be well on our way to conversion. Even a slow conversion is fine with me--letting the older generations die out as newer ones use metric more and more will eventually cause a switch.