[USMA:28962] Metric foot

[john mercer]

Hello I am going to put an opinion forward witch will probably upset some people but here goes.  I have given a lot of thought to this.  The word foot is a part of American and Canadian measurement language. What does anybody think of changing the foot from 12 inches to 30 Cms, but still calling it a foot.  Most people when they talk of  lenth talk in feet IE if a person has a boat they will say it's 40 feet.  They never say 3 yds and 1 foot. If this were to happen my suggestion is to make all rulers 30 cm with no inches. The argument against this could be that using a 30 cm foot if a person wanted to convert it to cm's as the number of feet got higher the cm numbers would be very high.  This is true but how  many people convert the number of feet to inches.  The metric foot would be divided in to ten 3 cm parts.  For example peoples heights instead of saying 5 ft 1 in they could say 5.1 feet.  This works out to  very close to 5 feet 1 inch. Most people know their height approx. I know this sounds very radical and you might think i am trying to go backwards but like i have said before i would like to have the metric system accepted by the average person.  I know this is not perfect but sometimes comprimise is not so bad. With a 30 cm foot if you asked a person what is a tenth of it they could easily tell you.  If you asked a person what is a tenth of a 12 inch foot you might have a little more trouble getting an answer.  Thank you very much, i hope i didn't upset anybody to much, but  sometimes i feel we who love the metric system can forget about the average person.  I'm saying this to myself more then anybody else.