Technically the metric system is "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce" as per the Metric Conversion Act of 1975.
You're just also allowed to use lbs and feet and stuff and most people do.
The versions of imperial measurements the US uses are even defined in terms of metric units, so they're less a completely separate measurement system these days and more just a weird facade on top of metric, even.
Like PonyOS!
And in the sciences and drug dealing and the military, we use metric exclusively.
But for some idiotic reason, construction engineers often use imperial units and I have no idea why. Like buildings are built in pounds and feet and stuff, with half inch bolts and 2x4 (ish) lumber and half inch plywood. It’s idiotic.
As an engineer it’s because the people building it complain if I draw in metric
"Give me eight cups of cocaine, good sir!"
There is tradition with buildings having measurements connected to the human body. It makes looking back at ancient ruins and cathedrals intriguing and people who learn that stuff want to hold onto it so it isn't lost knowledge.
Regan also never bothered to reinstate Imperial standards at the bureau of weights and measures (because it would have cost a small fortune). So our units are officially defined by the their metric counterpart. Legally speaking an inch is 2.54 centimeters.
Then that means it's the people who are stupid enough to follow a worse system?
In this thread: people bending over backwards to defend their insane, non-logical unit of measurement
Alternatively, people insisting that Americans must be math gods for using such a demanding and archaic system.
Logical, mathematically convenient, but not practically convenient. Without a measuring tool, there's no good way to estimate anything besides a centimeter.
Every imperial unit of measure can be estimated whilst naked (but preferably clothed).
An inch is your distal thumb phalanx. A foot is your foot. A mile is, or was at one point, roughly 1,000 paces.
The weather can be estimated by going outside. Is it too hot? It's in the upper third of the 100 degree scale. Too cold? Lower third, might snow. Cool enough to fully dress, but not too cold, right in the middle.
A healthy, big person is about 200 lbs. A very small person is about 100 lbs.
Converting between these units is useful in science, which is why science uses metric. But you could live your entire life on earth and never need to know how many distal phanages are in 1,000 paces. It literally never comes up. Who cares?
It's why units are divided into fractions, rather than into a decimal system.
By the way, the only reason we use a base 10 numbering system in the first place is because we have ten fingers and it was easier for early mathematicians to count. But I digress.
If you're dividing a length of rope, and all you have is the rope, it's simple to divide it in half, and then half again, and then again in half. You could even divide into thirds, if you were feeling frisky. You just fold it over itself until the lengths are even. There are two friendly numbers that are difficult to do that with, though. Can you guess what they are? If you guessed 5 and 10, you nailed it, good job.
Same with piles of grain or hunks of beef or chunks of precious metals.
But what about units of volume, you ask? I don't have a part of my body that holds roughly 8 oz of fluid to pour out. No, for that you'll need a cup. Just a cup. Not a graduated cup with a bunch of little lines down the side. 1 cup. Or half a cup, or a third, or maybe a quarter cup. Again, easily divisible for easy measuring without any special tools.
But a gallon, you protest. A gallon is 16 cups! What the fuck is 16 cups good for? Why not 10 or 100, or create a decigallon for simple math? Because 16 can be divided in half 4 times. Measuring out portions of the whole is as simple as pouring out equal portions into similarly sized containers. Divisible numbers are easier to use without graduated equipment.
And that's why time is measured in 24 hours, each hour is 60 minutes, each minute is 60 seconds. There's a ton of history there, and we'll ignore for this discussion the inaccuracy of measuring a day or a year. If the metric system is entirely superior, why don't you demand we all switch to metric time? A year will still be roughly 365 days (again, setting aside the inaccuracy) but we could divide the day into 10 equal metric hours, or mours, and those mours into 100 metric minutes, or metrinutes, and then those metrinutes into 100 metric seconds, or meconds. 1 mecond would be 0.864 seconds, and a metrinute would be 1.44 minutes, which to most people would be an imperceptible difference in time. Hey, how many seconds is 1.44 minutes? You don't know without a calculator because we don't use metric for time, and it probably never bothered you once before now. What an insane, non-logical unit of measure time is.
Yes, metric let's us convert millimeters to kilometers, or helps us determine how many calories it take increase 1 cubic centimeter of water by 10 degrees kelvin. It helps with those things because the units are arbitrarily defined to make the math easier, not to make the measurement easier. But that's it, there's no additional sanity, no additional logic. It's easier to convert between units via math, because it was designed to be easier to convert between units via math. There are no additional benefits to the metric system.
I feel like a lot of this is based on what you grew up with and you eventually related it to something to make it easier for you.
Like a cm is the width of a fingernail. A dm(10cm) is the size of a middle finger. 100m is 1 minute of walking. I know 1 metre is my normal stride.
Is it too hot? 30s. Is it cold? Less than 10. Is there snow? Less than 0. Is it cool enough to fully dress but not too cold? Around 20.
Big person? 100kg. Small person? 50kg.
The point is that you can make any system relatable.
Absolutely incredible copypasta
I honestly love this take. The fact that people are responding so negatively to a damned decent argument for units that can typically be halved a couple of times without messing around with decimals only shows how irrational the motivation to insist that one is more precise is. Might as well be a sports team the way even glancing in the direction of nuance provokes upset.
Every imperial unit of measure can be estimated whilst naked (but preferably clothed).
so I can ask a 9 yr old child to walk out naked to the streets to measure a thing in their foot and:
- I'll get the exact same answer as if I send an adult priest naked to the street to measure the same thing in their foot
- I'll not get the priest to rape the kid
?
How dare you have reasons and explaining them so thoroughly. I'm here to hate people because they are dumb.
Ah nice, this should be a constructive dialogue between open minded and empathetic individuals.
grabs popcorn
When my American friends insist that feet and inches is just easier for them, I just nod in agreement and give them measurements using rods, chains and furlongs as well. If you're going to go Imperial, you have to know 'em all. An acre is a chain by a furlong, totally logical as that would be 4x40 rods which is of course 43560 square feet. I guess it makes complete sense when your world is only a few furlongs across.
Most people who insist that imperial is better still have absolutely no idea how many spoons there are to a cup, how many cups to a gallon, how many inches to a mile, how many square yards to an acre.
As an American, anyone who claims the Imperial system is better about anything is lying or stubborn. An argument could be barely made for Fahrenheit and even then it’s not worth it.
I've worked in both, and if precision isn't as important as accuracy feet and inches, and only feet and inches, can be easier. A third of a foot is 4 inches, yay whole numbers. A third of a meter is 33.33 cm. Way harder to measure and calculate on the fly. If anything I'm working on has measurements or tolerances under a quarter of an inch, I prefer metric.
A third of a foot is 4 inches, yay whole numbers. A third of a meter is 33.33 cm.
Yeah, but a foot is about 30 centimeters. Easy to calculate half, a third, a fifth, a sixth of that. Yay. Whole numbers.
Not particularly hard to measure and calculate on the fly.
For what it's worth, a chain is a literal standardized metal chain that surveyors used when physically staking out parcels. It's not a unit normal people have ever used.
An acre is a chain by a furlong because a furlong is the distance you'd plow with an ox, and an acre is about the area you'd plow in a day. They derived the standard chain from that, much as metric chains are 20 meters or 30 meters. France used to use 10 meter chains, with 20cm links.
Normal people don't measure things in chains, whether metric chains or imperial.
I mean I can respect that if they've just really known imperial forever. I just take issue with them confusing it being easier for them for that specific reason with it being intersubjectively better, which is dumb.
A truly logic system would be entirely designed around a base-12 number system. But we were born with an imperfect set of 10 fingers and that doomed us.
Those aliens have 6 fingers. It's an absolutely ironic twist that their discussion on measuring systems is super illogical for them, and yet logical is the verbiage they use.
Care to elaborate on how base 12 would be better than base 10 in this case?
Basically it's because 12 is more divisible than 10. Factors of 10 are 1,2,5 and 10. 12 has 1,2,3,4,6 and 12. This gives more flexibility when discussing numbers. Our time is technically using base 12, which is why we can say quarter past 4 and it means a traditional whole number. That's the argument I've heard anyway
Base 6 however is perfect for 2 hands with 5 fingers each. You can easily represent the six possible digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 on each hand, and can therefore comfortably count to 55 (decimal 35) with two hands, using our familiar place-value numeral system.
I like the idea of base 12 counting the segments of your fingers with your thumb. Though its less intuitive.
Base 10 is the most easy to scale, you just move the coma and add 0s. Base 12 doesn't allow that easily
A base 12 number system would have two extra symbols. Twelve would be written 10 and be called ten, and the number 144 would be written 100 and be called one hundred.
Everything you may think is inherent to base 10 is largely not. The quirky rules of 9's multiplication table would apply to 11's. Pi and e would still be irrational, and continue being no no matter which base of N you choose. Long division would work the same. Etc.
You can count your 12 finger-parts with your thumb, once you go over 12 on one hand, go back to 1 and count one more on the other hand
Have fun counting on one hand, writing with the other, or counting to 100 dozenal on just two hands!
I'll also defend fractional measurements over decimal to my dying breath. Decimal measurements can't express precision very well at all. You can only increase or decrease precision by a power of 10.
If your measurement is precise to a quarter of a unit, how do you express that in decimal? ".25" is implying that your measurement is precise to 1/100th - misrepresenting precision by a factor of 25.
Meanwhile with fractions it's easy. 1/4. Oh, your measurement of 1/4 meter is actually super duper precise? Great! Just don't reduce the fraction.
928/3712 is the same number as 1/4 or .25, but now you know exactly how precise the measurement is. Whereas with a decimal measurement you either have to say it's precise to 1/1000th (0.250), which is massively understating the precision, or 1/10000th (0.2500), which is massively overstating it.
Fractional measurements are awesome.
i’ve never heard of anyone using non-reduced fractions to measure precision. if you go into a machine shop and ask for a part to be milled to 16/64”, they will ask you what precision you need, they would never assume that means 16/64”+-1/128”.
if you need custom precision in any case, you can always specify that by hand, fractional or decimal.
I'm scratching my head, wondering why all the downvotes.
This feels like such a niche reason to prefer fractional measurements.
I've always sucked at math tbh, but fractional measurements are my jam. It goes faster in my head and I can visualize things better.
I'll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY
TLDW: metric is better because all the different kinds of units were designed to work together.
Where as imperial units developed organically, within specific trades/use cases. They're not all supposed to work together.
I use imperial because that's what I was raised with, but I recognize metric is better in many ways. My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Well buddy, you're in luck because today you get to stop griping about something that's been part of SI units for the entirety of SI units.
Interesting. Looks like a decimeter comes out to just under 4", so still a fair bit less than a foot. I guess that's where a half-meter would come in. Honestly I think I just like imperial linguisticly, the terms and slang for all the units tickles me. Metric has a more sterile vibe. Which is fine, I reckon that was the whole idea of it!
Fun fact British imperial units are slightly different than American, because of course they are! This is an issue for folks that own, and work on, vintage British cars. American wrenches don't fit!
A foot is convenient size for most things.
Aka '30 cm', it's not hard to say. As someone from a metric country you just say the absolute cm value, or maybe 'half a metre', etc.
Also every single kid who grew up in a metric country intuitively knows how long 30cm is. That's the length of a standard school ruler.. in the pencil case of every child.
Jefferson actually intended to make metric standard in the US back in 1793. Unfortunately, the ship carrying the standard measurements from France was captured by pirates.
My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Doesn’t seem to be an issue though, the decimetre is rarely used. Sometimes you find dL, decilitre, for 100 ml. It seems that 1, 100, and 1000 are convenient enough for most things.
Yeah, if you've got a measurement like 54 cm and you'd like that in decimeters for estimating how big it is, you literally just have to move the decimal point: 5.4 dm
You don't have to actively convert it to dm for that. You just see a number of cm and will immediately know how much it would be in steps of 10 cm...
It’s a decimal system, so t’s “all in 10th” deci=1/10. Meter > decimetre (dm) > centimetre (cm). So I think what you’re looking for is decimetre (dm) = tenth of a meter 😊
And centi denoting a factor of one hundredth and so on 🙃
That's why we have decimeters...
Problem with a foot is, that it creates a reference, to well a human foot. But my feet are 11" whereas my gfs feet are 9.4" and my fathers feet are 12".
So four foot for my gf would be three foot for my dad. That is a terribly inaccurate references.
We used to have the same thing for cloth, where the length was measured with your underarm. Guess the shorter traders got rich off it.
And just as you noticed people are different sizes so would have people of the past. They weren't stupid or blind. Probably some room for haggling or less business, if you're trying to screw folks.
Interestingly no one actually uses centimetres, in my line of work everything is measure in millimetres, even something over a metre. Average sheet steel size is 2400 x 1200 mm
I think a lot pf professionals that don't mind big numbers do it this way
Back in my middle school planks and beams of wood always had their length marked in mm. I've seen floor plans of houses and apartments in mm, tens of thousands of them without thousand separators!
In was just thinking of this video! There really are some legitimately good things about the imperial system, but metric is still better, but imo not quite enough better to take the work of converting everything in the country over to it
When I find a wood working video on YouTube from the states it blows my mind how anyone can not just adopt metric “This is 5” 4/57 and we need to cut it to 5” 5/45 and a half” bzzzzzzz.
I may be biased, but I think it kinda makes sense. All the fractions are really just powers of two:
One half
One quarter
One eighth
One sixteenth
One thirtysecond
etc.Oh yeah, totally makes more sense to say "it's 3/64ths of an inch" than "it's 2 millimeters." Completely reasonable.
So reasonable, in fact, that in most manufacturing that still uses imperial measurements they long ago abandoned fractions and moved to decimal inches.
Which leads to unholy abominations such as the wood shop sending over "cut off 3/64ths" and the metal shop cutting off 0.046875".
And all of the fractions in metric are just powers of 10: one tenth, one hundredth, one thousand. Powers of two are great when you're working in base 2. It's a big hassle when you're working in base 10.
Everyone also gravitates to length and how fractional powers of two are sensible. I'll grant that they're at least sensible although awkward in base 10. But what about every single other thing? For lengths greater than one inch, there's no consistent pattern. For volumes there's no pattern - mass, weight, etc. The thing is a monstrosity. People pick out one part that's halfway acceptable and act like that's a defense of the rest of the pile of garbage.
"Why do they use the much more complicated system?" "Nobody actually knows."
I'm not defending it, but it's because 12 has more factors than 10
10 has 2 and 5
But 12 has 2,3,4,6
So 1/2 ft, 1/3 ft, 1/4ft and 1/6 ft all have a whole number of inches
But it doesn't use base 12. Take distance. Values smaller than 1/64" are measured using "thou", "tenths", and "millionths", which are decimal multiples of 1/1000', 1/10000", and 1/1000000" respectively.
Values between 1/64" and 1" are measured using dyadic rationals, i.e. base-2 fractions.
Above 1" it's mostly base 12,except for the yard.
So 1/2 ft, 1/3 ft, 1/4ft and 1/6 ft all have a whole number of inches
The same is true if you start with 300 mm instead of 1 foot.
Though dozenal numbers with a corresponding dozenal metric system would be very convenient, if you ignore the enormous cost of switching.
So all imperial measurements are factors of 12 apart?
Okay, so why inches divided into 8ths?
And why are there 16 cups in a gallon, 15-and-some tablespoons in a cup and 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon?
Better make it 12 tablespoons in a cup and 12 cups in a gallon, then!And why are there 14 pounds in a stone and 16 ounce in a pound?
The imperial system does not use dozenal.
It uses a clusterfuck of bases because it's actually a clusterfuck of measuring systems in a really big trenchcoat
Those aliens have 3 fingers. A decimal system to them is like a system based on 14, 196, 2744, 38416, ... would be like to us - probably worse than US Customary
14, 196, 2744, 38416, … would be like to us - probably worse than US Customary
I mean if they had a base 14 numerical system then a base 14 measurement system would make perfect sense.
Contrary to that, the US does use a decimal system for numbers while the various units in the US customary system do not have any common base.humans have used base 8 count the gaps between your fingers, base 12 count the joints on 4 fingers with your thumb, and base 26 by using lots of body parts.
Number of fingers doesn't have to dictate their number system. If they're using a decimal based number system, then a decimal based measurement system is still the logical choice.
It partially does, the percentage of languages that use base 10 is nearly 100 and most that don't use base 5 or 20... Sure there's others (60 being the main one that still has an effect on most people's lives) but they're vanishingly uncommon
They have 3 fingers on each hand and 2 toes on each foot. 10 total.
There's no good way to predict what base they'd actually use for their numbers, but there's definitely nothing about 10 that makes it an obvious choice for an inter-species standard line the comic implies.
3, 6 or 12 would be overwhelmingly likely though, inferring from all documented human language families
No, the problem with the imperial system is not what number it's based on. The problem is that it's not based on any number. A coherent base 14 system would be easier to use than the madness that is imperial.
Silly Americans, you could be measuring your winnies in GIGAMETERS and yet decide to keep using the kings thumb as a reference for it*
Me with a 1.0x10^-11 GIGAMETER weenie: 😎
Base 12 is way more logical than base 10, I bet aliens would think we're stupid for counting in base 10 just because we have 10 fingers, my opinion on this is infallible fight me
Base 12 is as arbitrary as base 10 and we don't know what aliens would think nor should we care. Base 16 makes more sense because it is 2x2x2x2 instead of 2x2x3
A base based on 2^x makes the most sense since it's easy to do conversions between bases that match that template. So base 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, etc. The limit would just be how many symbols can be easily remembered and instantly recognizable (need 32 symbols for base 32).
The Egyptians and Babylonians counted in base 12. They did so by counting each section of the fingers on one hand with their thumb (4 fingers, 3 sections each = 12).
From what I understand they used base 60. They counted each finger section on one hand with each of the fingers on the other (5x12)
I have noticed old people in India who are used to counting like that as well.
Or heximal/senary. Arguably imperial is already duodecimal/hexadecimal/sexagesimal for the fractional parts.
Why use decimals when reducing fractions is SO EASY
I'm just gonna drop this here: https://iquilezles.org/articles/floatingbar/
Looking forward to your new animated series!
Yes indeed! Just checked and it's out in 6 days.
Ah yes, the weirdos who insist on using dozenal
I mean, base 12 or 16 is definitely better than 10. Not saying imperial is better but a system like metric that uses base 12 or 16 would be best, as it’s divisible by more numbers.
I feel like this is my wheel house.
There are so many baseless radixals in the comments.
I can't wait to see their new TV show that's airing in
September^(a few days), I hope it's gonna be good 😄🍿August 9th, it's merely a few planetary rotations away. 👽
Oh right, my mistake. I got the episode number/order wrong, the last episode of the season, e10 will air 27. September.
Now I won't be able to fall in a hallucinating unconscious state when the planet turns away from the nearest star until the first episode airs, because my body is producing too much of those chemicals that prevent it... 😵💫😅
WHAT. HOLY SHIT. YES.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14914464/
August 9 on Apple TV+
Every time anyone talks about this, I feel obligated to inform them: there's also a counting system that's not based on ten, and it's way superior. Do people know about it? Most don't. The Wikipedia page stupidly calls it the "ten-plus-two" system, and there have been heated arguments there with the dumbasses who refuse to change it to the logical name. That's how stupidly-biased people are towards the ten-based system.
You make a "metric" measurement system based on 12-based counting and then everyone wins. Everyone. It'll never happen of course.
Sumerians picked base 60, which is the minimum common multiple of "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6", which is far superior to either 10 (MCM of only "1, 2, 5"), or 12 (MCM of "1, 2, 3, 4").
But the average people had trouble counting to 60, so they used their fingers... which happen to be 10, which happens to be 1/6 of 60... and they called it "good enough".
We still use base 60 for minutes and seconds, base 6*60 (360) for angular degrees, and base 2*12 (24) for hours... which is at least something.
Going back all the way to your original comment. Counting to 60 is not the same as counting base-60, unlike this comment and a ton of your replies. 60 minutes in an hour isn't base-60 counting. Unless you write one sixty as "10" and two sixties as "20", you are not counting base-60. Because the tens digit means one group— no matter the size— and the zero after it means none extra. For the love of god please read a book.
I find imperial vs metric to be a question of practicality vs ideality, and as an engineer I tend towards the former. Either way it doesn't really matter, because unit conversions are easy math, and a good engineer can work in any unit system.
In defense of imperial, to balance things out here:
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I almost never need to go from inches to feet to yards to miles. Conversions like that play almost no role in my daily life. Easily going from mm to cm to m to km is a solution in need of a problem.
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Because imperial isn't bound by a constant conversion factor, you can use several points of reference. An inch is about the size of one knuckle. A foot is roughly the size of... A foot. Most of the time, I don't need anything more than this. Although to be fair, I rarely need this even. Smaller than an inch is all metric though, easily.
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Imperial is sometimes more convenient. Twelve seems like an usual number for inches to feet, but twelve is also easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. I can instantly convert from fractional feet to inches for the most common fractions.
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I'm going to say it, both temperature scales make sense. Celsius being based on water makes a lot of sense, it's the most ubiquitous substance. Fahrenheit makes sense too in terms of climate and the weather that people experience -- it's harder to go more simple than 0 = very cold and 100 = very hot.
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Conversions actually aren't universally good for metric. Joules are great for abstract concepts, but not so much more realistic matters. The energy required to raise 1 g of water by 1 deg C is 4.184 Joules -- or more simply, 1 calorie. Calorie is actually neither imperial nor metric. Metric here loses the intuitiveness of water, while SI takes a big W. Another example, mass and weight. In metric, 1 kg is 9.8 Newtons. Most places don't bother with Newtons and stick to kg. In imperial, 1 pound mass is 1 pound weight. They have been set equal to each other by definition. Mass to weight calculations will always be much easier in imperial, and that's rather nice for looking at chemistry and flowrates and equipment requirements.
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Imperial is better for K-12 education, another unpopular opinion. It requires children to learn going from inches to feet to yards, which uses math far more regularly than metric does. For lengths, it's great for teaching fractions. Unit conversions between systems are taught often, which gives students a basis when you're converting other units, like moles and kilograms in chemistry.
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It teaches you to always label your fucking units. It's incredibly bad engineering practice to do this, even if you work solely in one unit system, because you almost certainly aren't using just one unit. Hell when it comes to pressure, with kPa, psi, atmospheres, and bar, it really doesn't matter what unit system you're using.
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Metric defines some units in a way that's good for science but bad for everyday life. A pascal is 1 newton of force per square meter. Our atmosphere is 101,125 Pascals. You see kPa used constantly because the defined unit is absurdly small. The same goes for a Joule, it's the work done to move a 1 newton object 1 meter. Chemical reaction energy is measured on the basis of kJ per mole (or kg). The defined unit is really small.
TLDR: Convenience + Practicality vs Ideality + Logic
The amount of downvotes for a thoroughly explained opinion tells me this is Reddit now.
Yeah it's disappointing. Several weeks ago, it would've been upvoted not because people agreed with it, but because it contributed to a thoughtful discussion. I'm an engineer. I've probably had to explicitly consider and think about units more in a year than most people here have in their lifetimes.
I just can't wrap my head around this thread. You'd think Americans were math geniuses by age 12 with how hard they're making this out to be.
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There are some places that do use a base 12 number system.
Again, I wasn't defending it, just explaining it.
It's not entirely without logic. Base 12 is actually better that base 10 for a start, as it allows for a lot more fractions that have clean representations, so 12 inches in a foot is fine. The next thing is that people seem to think we have all of these strange units with strange conversions, when in reality we have 3 units for short distances, and then a seperate unit for long distances. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and then nobody cares how long a mile is in terms of feet or yards. Once you realize that the mile is not even really part of the same measuring system as inches, feet and yards, the weird conversion makes sense. We exclusively use miles to talk about long distances above 0.1 miles, and then yards are used below 500 yards (which has an overlap of 324 yards). And then for the logic, it is entirely based on actual human scale shit. A foot is called a foot because it is roughly the size of your foot. A yard is approximately how long one stride is. Saying something is 100 yards away means it is approximate 100 steps away. Obviously there will be a bit of variance for how accurate that will be for any given person (and children will have to base it off of an adult obviously), but because it is based more on human things it is more useful for measuring human scale things. It was designed to not use decimals or large numbers because humans don't comprehend those very well.
Yes very logical, much intuitive
Gonna take a shit on this idea like a good American and say dealing with fractions is easier than irrational decimals. I do like the metric system tho and I wish we would switch at least some things like temp and road speed over.
The only reason we do things in fractions of an inch are because we use inches.
Irrational decimal? You mean multiplying and dividing by factors of ten?
I never understood how it's much easier to work with "three eights of an inch" than with one centimeter. Or how 6ft3 is easier to work with than 1.90m. The first one combines two measurement units and has very bad accuracy, the second one is straight forward dealing with fractions of itself and can be made even more precise if needed.
The problem isn't exactly fractions or decimals, you can present the SI system in fractions as well. The issue is unit conversion. If you want to go from centimeter to meter to kilometer it's very simple because all base unit conversion are a multiple of 10. But if you want to go from inch (the rough equivalent to centimeter) to feet (rough equivalent to meter) then that's a division by 12 and if you want to go from feet to mile (rough equivalent to kilometer) then that's a division by 5280 which is a fuck-all number that nobody is going to remember. So instead you have to remember feet to chain and then chain to furlong and then furlong to mile. And this is just one unit in one dimension. For derived unit conversions the imperial system can fuck right off because it's going to get needlessly complex.
I doubt that very much. Just yesterday I checked out the product page of the new DJI Air 3 and compared it with the Air 2. One of the new features is a bigger sensor compared to the old one. So I wanted to see how much bigger it got. For some reason though DJI only lists their sensor sizes in fractions. The Air 3 has a sensor size of 1/1.3 Inch and the Air 2 1/2 Inch. To be honest. I thought shortly about that and then concluded I would have to do math to compare those two and did something else with my life. I know how to convert between different bases but honestly - why should I? This is weird! Why use random switching fractions for anything? Fractions are only useful to display numbers that would be hard to express in decimal. And that is mainly 1/3 and 2/3! Which to be honest I dont encounter that much in my life.
I'm steel-manning the argument for sticking with US Standard. I think there is a lot more precision inherent in how the system functions that you don't really get in every day uses. Even so, I would rather deal with meters and liters because I hate having to convert between the two systems and metric seems to have won anyway.
Everyone focuses on why learning metric would be better in the first place, and they're right. No one has come up with a good argument for me to throw away all of my measuring tools, convert all my recipes and relearn an entirely new system when the system and stuff I have works for me now.
Because otherwise it will be difficult to live in a country that has converted to metric, presumably. While I'm not pushing for us to change to metric (even though I know it would be good), I suspect the change would be fairly easy to adjust to.
it would be difficult to live somewhere that uses metric
In the absence of any plans to do that, what's the advantage of converting?
Because it will make life easier for people coming after you, your kids off you have some or the generation after you.
If you don't do it then they will have to do it or suffer the difficulty of the imperial system.
This attitude is exactly WHY the US failed to actually convert back in the 70s
The only thing I still like Fahrenheit for is temperature. There's a wider range for the human livable temperature, so you get more persision. For everything else metric all the way.
And yes, it's 100% my American brain can't figure it out in Celcius no matter how hard I try lmao. 10's are chill, 20's are nice, 30's sind heiß. But in the end, I end up thinking Fahrenheit and going from there every time.
I understand this logic, but since growing up with Celcius I just can't intuitively convert the numbers. If I find a recipe where the oven needs to be at 350 (or whatever, I don't know Fahrenheit), I automatically Google or ask ChatGPT to convert 😂
Use wolfram alpha for math, it actually gives you the correct result.
What makes you think Farenheit is more precise for "human liveable" temperatures?
The temperature is the same. Regardless of which unit you use to document it in.
Which is why I think any argument between Celsius and Fahrenheit is completely arbitrary.
Like, the temperature that water melts and boils is completely dependant on pressure. If I follow a recipe I'll use the temp they recommend. My computer's heart gauge uses Celsius. I don't need to know what it is in Fahrenheit to know if it's overheating.
I am not familiar with fahrenheit, but celsius and kelvin allow for decimals. You can have as much precision as you like
I don't think aliens would see metric as pure logic tbh. Oh its 10! Big 10! Look at it go! Oh your still doing verbal and written?
Whatever you guys decide, Idc.
Remind me again how imperial is defined
12 inches and 16 ounces baby
Could Always Use both it's not confusing at all
Not confusing at all, but it confused NASA somehow.
NASA also agreed with the logic of "sure, we don't know how it'll perform at low temperature, but we don't know that it won't work!" that led to the Challenger explosion. They aren't infallible and they can make extremely stupid mistakes too.
I'm an engineer, and the unit mixup you've linked isn't a failure of different unit systems, it's just shitty engineering. You should always label your units. There's several domains where even a single unit system has ambiguity without labeling -- pressure with bars, atmospheres, and kilopascals.
We use a mix of imperial and metric and some that you need a doctorate In maths to understand why we still use it
We sell petrol in litres but measure fuel economy in miles per gallon and if that some how makes sense
It was the contractor (I believe it was Lockheed?) who used pounds though NASA's documentation used metric units, cause they make actual scientific contributions.
Using both is the worst solution there is.
You will constantly be switching back and forth and many of times using both at the same time. As an engineer who designs things built around the world, the most frustrating thing isn't when it is built in the US and it is (almost) all Imperial. It also isn't when it is built in Europe and everything is all Metric.
No, by far the most frustrating thing is when it is built in Mexico and our local teams have better access to Imperial raw material, but the local workers measure everything in metric. Such a damn mess - you have steel that is 1/2" thick, for example, but since it is Mexico we dimension it out to 12.7 mm, so nothing is ever a nice round number. And most threads are metric, but you can't get all components in metric, so on the same piece of equipment you could have an M10x1.25 bolt and a 3/8-16 bolt.
That's literally what we do in the U.S.
It's easy to talk about converting over but I imagine the great majority of those calling for absolute conversion towards metric is completely ignorant about the immense scale of imperial hardware (fasteners nuts and bolts) used globally because of aerospace. It's easy to change the numbers on a piece of paper. It's not so easy to respec a commercial/military aircraft from inch to metric. Not only is the final component changed but almost every legacy tooling that has existed to manufacturer and assemble such goods. And trust me the world isn't all CNC machining as you might think it is.
I'd like to phase out of inches eventually but somethings are prohibitively expensive to convert without starting fresh from the ground up. Hard to justify such a "backwards" step to shareholders.
Tl;Dr inches is here to stay whether you like it or not.
Other. Countries. Did. It..
Besides all the Imperial standards are calibratrated from metric since the US imposed the standard during WW2.
Except well... when it comes to aerospace hardware. It's all inch threads. There are no metric hardware (bolts and nuts) in planes. They (countries other than the US) literally have to have inch hardware and tools to service aircraft.
While the base inch unit is derived from metric. Actual industry standards like https://www.sae.org/standards/content/as8879/ are not 'metric' by any means.
Hard to justify such a "backwards" step to shareholders.
Aaaaand there it is, the usual boat anchor encased in concrete with two society-sized boot holes molded in.
why fix what aint broke? Aerospace bolts and nuts are orders of magnitudes more regulation stringent than automobiles. And it really isn't just as simple as changing bolts and nuts... Basically the entire plane has to be created again. Every single blueprint with a new hole/countersink needs to be updated. Every subcontractor and emergency repair facility needs to have their legacy mylar drawings updated.
All for what? Getting off inch system because it's "illogical" for a select group?
And unfortunately, doing work costs money.
If there's a story I want to hear, is one of how automobile companies transitioned into Metric. I'd imagine it's not too difficult since they come up with a new vehicle platform every couple years.
When I'm doing things that require precision: grams and °C
When I'm telling how the room or the temp outside is, °F
Why? Because 0°F to 100°F is way more reasonable for telling comfort than -17.78°C to 37.78°C
It's not that hard to use both and anyone incapable of doing so is an idiot.
Because 0°F to 100°F is way more reasonable for telling comfort than -17.78°C to 37.78°C
There is nothing more reasonable about F in that scenario. You like it because you are familiar with it, that's it. I can assure you that celsius is perfectly reasonable for telling you the room temperature. Billions of people use it without any problems, decimals and all (which is apparently something that Americans find extremely scary).
American here. A ⅓lb burger is smaller than a ¼lb because 3 is less than 4 something something metric system.
I am not sure about this comfort thing you talk about. Where does this come from? Just wondering where does those numbers come from. In any case I wouldn't consider minus 0C on my comfort zone but that's another topic...
Honestly?
100°F (37.8°C) is universally uncomfortably hot 0°F (-17.8°C) is universally uncomfortably cold. 50°F is exactly what you'd expect it to be, 10°C, and room temp is ~70°F (21.1°C). Honestly it makes a lot of sense compared to humans (and most mammals).
People exist in both extremes but there's virtually nobody that could survive constantly in either temperature without taking measures and I'm willing to assert that as fact. Both are extreme but common. Thus I'm willing to call them a good general measure.
I could turn this around and say there is no sple way to tell -20°C oder +40°C in F. Who decides that the F Values are the exact points where humans feel uncomfortable when it can be some nearby C ones?
For someone that grew up using Fahrenheit, maybe. I have no desire nor need to learn it.
Oh my god get a new joke. The U.S. uses both systems just like everyone else.
This is essentially incorrect; the vast majority of people here use the inferior system in everyday usage.
But there are everyday examples where both are used.
E.g. If you see someone drinking a soda and ask them how much sugar is in it they'd probably tell you a number in grams.
Or if you have to take cough syrup the dosage is usually in milliliters.
Or if you ask someone what size engine their car has they'll most likely tell you in liters.
Plus, many of us are in STEM fields and appreciate/prefer the metric/SI system. However, we think in imperial units because that’s what we used in daily life in our formative years.
I have no problem with metric units, but I do a rough mental conversion to imperial to relate to the measurement, and get a “feel” for it. This goes for temperature, distance, speed, volume, weight/mass, pressure, and essentially anything else that’s an everyday unit.
It’s analogous to how much of the world thinks of nuclear explosions in terms of kilotons or megatons of TNT. I mean, all you have to do is multiply megatons by 4.184e+15 and you’re back to the sensible unit of Joules. :)
You are funny. Most places do not use "both". They use metric and... Sometimes they switch to metric for good measure (hah!). To believe that the whole world does the old convert around is confirming another US stereotype (everyone else is like we are and that's a given) while you try to get us to stop mocking us stereotypes. Oh the irony!
It's true that the vast majority of the world uses only metric but Western English speaking countries tend to use a mix.
The UK is mixed, Ireland (where I am) is mostly metric but a person's height is still mostly imperial and butter is sold in 454g packs (a pound) and older folks still measure their weight in stones and pounds, Canada uses a mix (my sister lives there and we discussed this recently) and the US uses metric where appropriate (science, military, medicine).
The only irony here is your ignorant self mocking me for my alleged ignorance. Most countries don't use metric and imperial, but they use metric and something.
And just as general advice, mocking and generalizing other people due to their nationality is a primitive and smoothbrained behavior. Grow up.
I mean, not really.
Your maps, road signs, and speed are still in miles, height is still in feet and inches, weight is still in pounds, etc.
In Canada, we may use imperial for a few colloquial things, but everything for official use is in metric.
Ok, for one, that's...still using both.
Two, I only wish we measured codeine in pints.
Three, and this is genuine interest/curiosity more than an internet gotcha — either you're downplaying it because Canadians are really weird about making their whole identity The Country That Isn't The US, or the Wikipedia entry on this is incorrect and should be fixed.
I'd always heard the roadsigns in Canada were primarily metric but could be in both, whatever, could be regional, willing to disbelieve hearsay. But I don't think that cooking in tbsp, cups, and fahrenheit, or selling food by the pound and draft by the pint are really small colloquial concessions. Not to mention with the tool measurements, which we admittedly kinda force.
It's to varying degrees, but all the same, we both use both. US milk is in gallons, but all soda shall be in liters. If we wanna get technical about which measurements are the ones professionally used, both countries go metric.
What I found the most amusing: the healthcare section notes that Canadian measurements in the medical field may be different from American ones despite both of those being in metric, presumably just to be contrary
Very few countries use both systems.
True but the ones that do are Western English speaking countries like the UK, Ireland (where I am and which is in the final throws of ditching Imperial), Canada and to a lesser extent the US, which uses metric where appropriate.
Those countries are going to be disproportionately represented on here.
I read an article many years ago on why the the US hadn't gone metric and cost is a huge factor. Just replacing all the speed signs across such a huge land mass would be serious money for example with limited benefit.
Folks deal with the change itself just fine. I've lived though the change to metric and my parents lived through the change to decimal currency from shillings etc just fine also so ultimately the US still uses Imperial because it works just fine and the hassle of changing isn't worth it.
You don't use both, or at least, surely you mean "both" for cases where you are forced, like me by American online stores. And this joke won't stop until you get rid of that shitty system.
Except we do use both. Sorry but you're just wrong.
And sure, you're entirely welcome to keep making the same joke over and over and pretending it's still funny. Show that dead horse who's boss.
US has imperial for everything but guns and drugs, there are countries that use a lot of both (like UK) but there are many countries that use no imperial
I live in a country that's gradually moved to metric over the last 30 years. The only thing we use imperial for now is height and pints in the pub. Older folks still use it for body weight.
Speed limits were less of an issue than you might think as they convert pretty closely - 30mph is very close to 50kph etc.
I love that a litre of water weighs a kilo and takes up 100 cubic centimetres.
We use both for guns, caliber is imperial (.22, .45, etc).
We exclusively use metric for science
US has imperial for everything but guns and drugs
If we're talking legal drugs, my prescriptions all come in milligrams.
If we're talking illegal drugs, though fractions of ounces or pounds were more common, it wasn't unusual to come across someone selling stuff by the gram back in the day, and I can't imagine that's changed. The weed dude would sell any amount at $10/gram - and yes, I did see someone come with $3 once. 😂 I don't remember the coke dude's prices because that was much longer ago, but he was also totally fine with selling single grams.
Maybe my experience was different because I live in a college town, so the black market was supportive of the small purchases necessitated by student budgets.
everything but guns and drugs
Really shows their priorities
Drugs, guns, baking, construction, manufacturing... actually, the better way to put it would be "literally fucking everywhere but the road signs and speedometers."
The vast majority of the world does not use imperial units.
Oh really? So if I send blueprints to a steel fabricator in metric, they will not have a problem with that? Lol try again.
No. Also ur fat and eat hambugers
Now it's time for the school supplies joke
