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.
CarbonIceDragon 61 points 3 years ago
SatansMaggotyCumFart 17 points 3 years ago
Like PonyOS!
SatansMaggotyCumFart 10 points 3 years ago
blushes profusely
Aw, shucks.
Bye 45 points 3 years ago
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.
randomwords 16 points 3 years ago
I don't generally defend imperial, but feet and inches are actually really useful in construction. Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 4, and 3. You often need to divide architectural elements in thirds.
Buffaloaf 39 points 3 years ago
I was a welder for years and I have to disagree. Using millimeters is way easier than inches, mostly because decimals are faster and easier to use than fractions. And it's not that hard to divide 10 by 2, 3, or 4.
CapraObscura 6 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027652 2028485 2029418 2029668 2038529, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0
GrumbleGrim 27 points 3 years ago
As a former structural engineer who lived on a Jobber 5 all day, that's still pretty niche overall. Easier because it's what your used to maybe, but outweighed by situations where it's not. Try doing trig with fractions and then tell me imperial is better.
bleistift2 1 point 2 years ago
Does it matter whether you punch 3/8 or .375 into a calculator? Don’t tell me you calculate stuff by hand…
nilloc -4 points 3 years ago
4 1/2 inches divided into 2 is 2 1/4. Finding center with imperial on a tape measure is actuality faster than metric. (I use a tape with both while fabricating).
Also (good) metric fasteners cost 50% more than imperial in the US. Unless it’s for a car, I don’t use metric to save money.
yA3xAKQMbq 13 points 3 years ago
That might be somewhat useful if it was consistently applied, which it is not.
And it’s maybe useful for fractions, but how many feet are in a mile again? 5280? A square yard is what now… 1296 square inches?! Who the fuck is supposed to memorize all that?
What’s a 1/4 square yard in square inches?
That’s not easy, that’s putting the mental into mental arithmetic.
randomwords 0 points 3 years ago
Again people making me defend imperial, I think metric is better.
I see this argument all the time, converting between these units is hard cause the numbers are weird. You have to stop thinking about imperial as a system, it's not. No one should convert miles to feet, they are not intended to measure on the same scale.
None of the conversions are easy because imperial is just a random collection of units that were being used to measure different things.
CapraObscura -1 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027652 2028485 2029418 2030724 2038705, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 10
CapraObscura 7 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027652 2028485 2029418 2038507, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1
PRUSSIA_x86 7 points 3 years ago
Modern 2x4s are 1½x3½ and rounded edges and nobody knows why.
jrbaconcheese 2 points 3 years ago
No they aren’t- they are allowed by their respective grading agencies to be scant of truly 2” x 4” because they are most often dried after sawing, which causes them to shrink.
Fuckfuckmyfuckingass 2 points 3 years ago
What do mean no one knows why? It's to use less lumber. Back when there was unlimited old growth timber they used true dimensions at the mill, even extra dimensional, I've seen 2x4's that are closer to 3x5.
captainlezbian 6 points 3 years ago
As an engineer it’s because the people building it complain if I draw in metric
CurlyMoustache 1 point 3 years ago
"Give me eight cups of cocaine, good sir!"
Areopagus -6 points 3 years ago
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.
WtfEvenIsExistence 14 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027652 2028498 2029415, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 2
amanaftermidnight 4 points 3 years ago
*decimalized
there1snospoon 1 point 3 years ago
That’s no republic
Diprount_Tomato 3 points 3 years ago
Vive l'empereur, then
joel_feila 1 point 3 years ago
Amd yet metric time failed
Bishma 9 points 3 years ago
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.
CapraObscura 8 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027652 2038479, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 2
Staple_Diet 4 points 3 years ago
Wait, what unit do you guys measure a swimming pool in? Furlongs? Leagues?
Diprount_Tomato 1 point 3 years ago
Then that means it's the people who are stupid enough to follow a worse system?
surely_not_a_bot 112 points 3 years ago
In this thread: people bending over backwards to defend their insane, non-logical unit of measurement
assassin_aragorn 15 points 3 years ago
Alternatively, people insisting that Americans must be math gods for using such a demanding and archaic system.
curiousPJ -4 points 3 years ago
And plenty of people who don't really care to understand how deep the roots of inch stuff is. Most people have no clue how much aerospace is commanding the need for Inch. (ALL and every aerospace fasteners are inch.)
ephemerality 10 points 3 years ago
interestingly enough, there is an incident where a unit conversion cause a spacecraft to crash.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
NASA specifies that companies who work with NASA should use metric units as a part of the contract. Lockheed produced software that output in imperial units and it caused the orbiter to flame out.
themeatbridge -62 points 3 years ago
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.
internetofsomethings 66 points 3 years ago
This is either a way too elaborate troll or one of the dumbest things I have ever read and I can't figure out which it is.
themeatbridge -8 points 3 years ago
Point to the thing I said that was not true.
internetofsomethings 20 points 3 years ago
Wow you are actually serious. Okay here we go.
- Units of measurement are made to be accurate, while most of your rant talks about "estimating". Being easily estimated adds zero value and it's something you invented to try and make your point.
- Disregarding point 1, every single thing you said can be reversed by someone used to metric. I have no clue how to estimate things in imperial, but I can easily estimate 1 cm, 1 meter, 1 litre, 1kg, etc with a similar margin of error as you can estimate imperial, because I'm used to it.
- Your point about temperatures is the most boneheaded of the entire paragraph. Go to Chicago, ask someone what is "kind of hot" and what is "kind of cold", and compare it to a New Orleans resident. Wanna bet they give wildly different answers? Also, again: what is the merit of this? If it's 30 degrees C outside I consider it hot, 5 or below is cold. What does it matter which numbers you find important?
- About your rope, or your piles of grain and hunks of beef. I have no clue what your point is there. Do you know what we do when we want more precision? We just move the decimal point. You want 1/5 of a kg of beef? Might want to ask for 200 grams instead. I don't even know what kind of point you're trying to make there.
- Metric is standardised. A metre in Belgium is the same as a metre in France, and a metre in Norway, etc. You're talking about a ounce. You mean an imperial ounce or a US ounce? Do you like pints? Do you want a US pint or prefer an Imperial one? Space ships have crashed because of nonsense like this.
As a final example, let's go beyond units of measurement. If I place a book on the table and ask you to estimate the value of it: you might say something like 20$? I might say something like €20? We just use the currency we're familiar with. What if I ask you to estimate the value of that same book in Vietnamese Dong without looking up anything? 50? 100? 200 000? I wouldn't know. I don't know if you buy a pencil sharpener or a car with 200k Vietnamese Dong. But a Vietnamese person would know, right?
You're talking purely from a perspective of someone that is very familiar with one system and has very little knowledge of the other. It's not that you -by your own omission- can only estimate something like a centimeter and not much else that the rest of the world breaks down when they see a 3 centimeter rope. Both systems might have merit, but metric is a clearly superior system in almost any perceivable and objective way that I can think of.
Atomic 28 points 3 years ago
A foot is a foot. Fantastic. Glad to know everyone has the same sized feet.
And the same length on their legs so we all pace the same distance.
I would say good troll, but it just seems too long to be ironic.
assassin_aragorn -2 points 3 years ago
Is every location at the exact same elevation? Varying elevations have varying atmospheric pressures. You've got the Netherlands at 0 m elevation, and places in Bolivia like La Paz and El Alto which are ~4000 m elevation. That's an atmospheric pressure of 101 kPa for the Netherlands and 57.2-69.7 kPa for the Bolivian cities (I don't have the time to interpolate the data table unfortunately). This corresponds to a drop in the boiling point of water from 100 C to approx 86.5 C.
Both systems have just as arbitrary reference points. They also both have absurd conversions -- why isn't it 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to a day, 10 days to a week, etc? It would make my work so much easier if time was powers of 10, but that's where metric stops?
Atomic 2 points 3 years ago
Good thing that Celcius is scaleable with Kelvin, which is scaleable with Pascal and meters. So you can easily calculate very precisely what temperature the water will boil at depending on your elevation.
Time is measured at a base of 12. Because it's far easier to create mechanical watches on a base of 12.
What is important is that it's a standardized measurement. We all have the same second.
I'm not sure if you're trying to make arguments for Fahrenheit or if you're just reciting your 7:th grade physics homework
that_leaflet -8 points 3 years ago path: 0 2041592 2043073 2051971 2058480, hotness: undefined, score: -8, children: 0
themeatbridge -9 points 3 years ago
There aren't many instances in normal life where accuracy and precision are that important. Modern humans can measure distances with lasers and satellite coordinates. You probably own a tape measure and at least one type of scale. But unless you're building something, baking something, or selling something by weight, estimates are almost as good as knowing something precisely.
We see the same in countries that us metric. Most people estimate how many meters, kgs, or liters things are because taking the time to accurately measure isn't necessary. Maybe your phone tracks your daily jog, but that's only going to be accurate to within a few meters, and most people would round off to the nearest significant digit anyway.
Atomic 6 points 3 years ago
Yes. People estimate things. Because we don't carry around a scale in our pockets. What does that have to do with anything?
The point of metric system is that things should be scaleable. And relatable. Between different types of measurements, such as weight and volume.
yA3xAKQMbq 4 points 3 years ago
There aren’t many instances in normal life where accuracy and precision are that important [...] unless you’re building something, baking something, or selling something by weight
Yeah, because building, baking, or selling something by weight are totally not important and absolutely common "instances in normal life" 🤡
Good fucking grief...
Boxtifer 23 points 3 years ago
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.
assassin_aragorn 4 points 3 years ago
Oh it's absolutely just based on where you grew up. And there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone uses a rather stupid time system compared to metric measurements, but we stick with it because that's what everyone is used to.
themeatbridge 2 points 3 years ago
Of course you're right. The point isn't that one is better than another, the point is that Imperial was historically easy to share and use. There's a sense among metric users that the imperial system is stupid, illogical, unwieldy, and useless (see the comic and almost every comment in the thread). None of those things are true, and the advantages of the metric system hardly ever come up for most people.
It's easy to hur dur Americans stupid, but the reality is always more complex.
DigitalAudio 5 points 3 years ago
To be fair, if it truly were more convenient, countries like Japan, China, India or the Middle East that had no cultural reason to prefer one over the other, wouldn’t have chosen metric.
I don’t think Americans are either stupid or more inefficient for having the clearly more impractical system, but I can’t help feel that the only reason they’ve kept their very odd measuring system is that they will never recognize anything ever being better in other countries than it is in theirs.
In a way, the imperial stubbornness among Americans feels like yet another display of American exceptionalism and their odd superiority complex, than anything logical or even pragmatic.
CurlyMoustache 7 points 3 years ago
What's a "fat load" in metric?
themeatbridge -1 points 3 years ago
OK, but this is why certain Imperial measurements caught hold, and why Americans still use it. We also use metric for the things metric was created to measure.
Fogle 1 point 3 years ago
They're just the arbitrary numbers you know. I know below 10 is cold and below 20 is chilly. Above 20 is warm and above 30 is hot.
I know what a liter looks like and I know roughly how far 100m is. You learn the normal numbers for each system by using them. But metric is logical and imperial is random.
FlipTheEgg 22 points 3 years ago
Absolutely incredible copypasta
QuazarOmega 12 points 3 years ago
You know, this convinced me....
that I wouldn't mind metric time actually
themeatbridge -1 points 3 years ago
I actually wrote a paper in high school extolling the virtues of metric time. It was not persuasive.
themeatbridge 1 point 3 years ago
Base 12 is better than base 10, but base 16, aka Hexadecimal is better still.
MiddleWeigh 2 points 3 years ago
OK I'm looking up the history of the metric system now.
MiddleWeigh 1 point 3 years ago
Thanks! Bookmarked (I got a ton of lemmy bookmarks, lots of reading to do lol)
Millie 1 point 3 years ago
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.
veniasilente 0 points 3 years ago
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
?
themeatbridge 4 points 3 years ago
Yes, officer, this comment right here.
veniasilente 4 points 3 years ago
the officer also sees the naked child
ennakes themself
"well, time to fill the imperial metric quota"
Lizardking27 1 point 3 years ago
Wow good job making both of the most beaten-into-the-ground jokes simultaneously. You win the award for most unoriginal.
kameecoding 13 points 3 years ago
how many ounces of popcorn?
kameecoding 4 points 3 years ago
the one you would use for gold.
liquefied gold
Killing_Spark 4 points 3 years ago
What's that in cups?
CurlyMoustache 3 points 3 years ago
No. Popcorn is measured in denim jeans pockets. Anything else wouldn't be logical
CoolBeance 2 points 3 years ago
Could I get that in buckets?
DigitalAudio 1 point 3 years ago
No, you mean how many grams. Definitely not liters for popcorn, that’s just deranged.
PutangInaMo 3 points 3 years ago
I'm struggling to understand the joke, can you kindly explain? Is this an imperial vs metric thing?
Lizardking27 -11 points 3 years ago
The joke is that British people have so little going for them that they must resort to making inaccurate jokes about outdated stereotypes based on cultural generalizations.
ephemerality 5 points 3 years ago
Why are you bringing the British into this? What did they do to you?
98jf98 55 points 3 years ago
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.
DrQuint 54 points 3 years ago
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.
ShinyShelder 53 points 3 years ago
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
tate 12 points 3 years ago
I believe this is also why we have 360 "degrees" in a circle, and not 365. The ancients hated that a year was clise to, but not exactly, 365 days. They chalked it up to the imperfection of Earth relative to the heavens. But a perfect year should be 360 days because it is divisible by every single digit number but 7.
DrQuint 15 points 3 years ago
On the matter of days in a years, there's also the idea of spliting the year into 13 months of 28 days each for a total of 364 days, closer matching the lunar cycle (and women's body). Every day of the year would always be on the same day of the week.
Then the extra day? It's world day, a global holiday for celebrating the new year, and it doesn't belong in any weekday. Sometimes we'd need an extra leap year day (just like right now with 29th February) so they would just both be world day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
Check for pros and cons.
huge_clock 3 points 3 years ago
The ancients actually used a 360 day calendar and a bonus week of 5-6 days at the end before the new year started.
sf1tzp 10 points 3 years ago
I’ve heard before it’s because 1/3 can be represented as a whole number.
Just like feet, which can have 12 inches. But if we want to get more precise we start cutting inches into eighths for some reason 😅
biddy 5 points 3 years ago
A base 12 metric system is the best of all worlds. 1/3 of a cm is 0.4cm or 4.
Your way seems like the worst of all worlds. What is 0.1 feet in inches? shrugs. If you're going to use a different system to the people around you, why not use normal metric?
stevep 2 points 3 years ago
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.
DrQuint 10 points 3 years ago
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.
Killing_Spark 7 points 3 years ago
Yep. In computer science you sometimes need to calculate with hexadecimal numbers where 10-15 are the letters A-F. You just use another factor for scaling "easily".
In hexadecimal 10 is 16 in decimal. So if you do C * 10 it's C0 but that is 192 in decimal (12 * 16, remember the base is 16).
Whats cool though is that (all hexadecimal):
10 / 2 = 8
10 is 2 to the power of 4 which means 10 is divisible by 2 4 times.
Similarly (and arguably even cooler) with a base 12 system 10 is divisible by 2 AND 3!
10 / 3 = 4
10 / 2 = 6
lord_ryvan 0 points 3 years ago
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!
chiliedogg -29 points 3 years ago
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.
CapraObscura 14 points 3 years ago
This is one of the dumbest fucking trolls I've ever seen.
Congratulations? I guess?
new_acct_who_dis 7 points 3 years ago
Honestly, I don't give a shit either way. Wish us 'mericans were on the same wavelength as the rest of the world, but we're awful in so many ways it doesn't even register.
However, this troll is gold and I think you're all sleeping on his genius
WhyIsItReal 9 points 3 years ago
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.
chiliedogg -5 points 3 years ago
But you can't specify it with decimal. That's my point. How do you tell the machine operator it needs to be precise to the 64th in decimal? "0.015625" implies precision over 15,000x as precise as 1/64th. The difference between 1/10 and 1/100 is massive, and decimal has no way of expressing it with significant figures.
WhyIsItReal 3 points 3 years ago
sure you can, you say “i need a hole with diameter 0.25” +- 0.015625“”. it doesn’t matter that you have more sig figs when you state your precision
but regardless, that’s probably not the precision you care about. there’s a good chance that you actually want something totally different, like 0.25+-0.1”. with decimal, it’s exceptionally clear what that means, even for complicated/very small decimals. doing the same thing fractionally has to be written as 1/4+-1/10”, meaning you have to figure out what that range of values are (7/20” to 3/20”)
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 8 points 3 years ago
No measured value will be perfectly precise, so it doesn't make sense to use that as a criteria for a system of measurement. You're never going to be able to cut a board to exactly 1/3 of a foot, so it doesn't matter that the metric value will be rounded a bit.
chiliedogg 0 points 3 years ago
Not "a bit". You can have a 9x difference in precision and be unable to record it.
Phantom3805 3 points 3 years ago
This feels like such a niche reason to prefer fractional measurements.
MiddleWeigh 1 point 3 years ago
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.
joel_feila 46 points 3 years ago
how about we all agree that the best system is american units with metric prefixes. After all it is obvious that it takes an hours to drive 318 kilofeet
Fuckfuckmyfuckingass 45 points 3 years ago
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.
CapraObscura 48 points 3 years ago
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.
Fuckfuckmyfuckingass 7 points 3 years ago
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!
chase_what_matters 7 points 3 years ago
“If you’re under eighteen decimeters, swipe left.”
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tryptaminev 13 points 3 years ago
You think it is all convenient and easy to use intuitively, until i ask you, to convert how much water you use a day to how much water you use in a year and how much water your city uses.
Because your city measures in acre foot, which is 43,560 cubic feet or 325,850 US gallons. Actually there is a weird 3/7 of a gallon left
So you have no way of relating the ~20-40 gallons of water you use per day to the water use in your city ir the water you use in a year that is measured in centi-cubic-feet without pulling out a table and calculator.
Meanwhile i know that i use about 120 liters of water, which is 0.120 m3 a day. So my water bill in m3 is just a thousand liters per m3 and my city uses 230 million m3 a year or about 630.000 m3 a day. With that i can easily estimate that i use about 1/5.000.000 of my citys water.
So when we are talking about drought issues, or water demand etc. i can understand the values in the scientific and political debate, because i can actually relate them to my personal life.
The metric system empowers people because it makes SI units in any domain and of any size relateable and accessible. Meanwhile a kid in the US doesn't know what a mile is until it learns that by being driven enough miles to get a feel for how many yards that is.
Misconduct -6 points 3 years ago
Yeah, no. Knowing a different measuring system isn't gonna make me suddenly want to know the nitty-gritty details of things. The way water volume/use is measured in the US has nothing to do with how much people understand their water bill. If I really wanted to I'd just find something online to help me convert. Which I'd probably do on the other system because that's just reality. You know those things because you care about them or were interested not because you use what you consider to be a superior system of measurement lol. You guys really try hard to make it seem like a way bigger deal than it is.
Taleya 13 points 3 years ago
Well no, same as no one says '476.46 inches from the bin'. Cm work fine up to 100, then you talk m, then km. 'About two foot' and 'about sixty cm' are just as easy to say, you're just not used to the terminology
Misconduct -3 points 3 years ago
I fully understand roughly what 1/5 of a mile would be without any effort. That sounds perfectly reasonable and recognizable for me and I doubt I'm alone. It's because it's the system I use. Yours works for you because you're familiar with it. That's all there is to it.
droans 21 points 3 years ago
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.
QuazarOmega 5 points 3 years ago
Wake up babe! I know what we're gonna use our time machine for...
yA3xAKQMbq 13 points 3 years ago
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.
Knusper 4 points 3 years ago
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...
Eonandahalf 10 points 3 years ago
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 🙃
yA3xAKQMbq 7 points 3 years ago
Which is the „base“ for the litre: 1 cubic decimetre.
And originally it was defined as 1 kg water (under standard conditions), so 1000 L == 1 cubic meter == 1000 kg
Eonandahalf 0 points 3 years ago
Yup thnaks, was a typo 😊
tryptaminev 9 points 3 years ago
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.
Metatronz 1 point 3 years ago
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.
lord_ryvan 0 points 3 years ago
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!
astropenguin5 1 point 3 years ago
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
johnthedoe 44 points 3 years ago
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.
PRUSSIA_x86 4 points 3 years ago
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.
CapraObscura 23 points 3 years ago
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".
TheMightyCanuck 10 points 3 years ago
Lmao metal shop guy here. Can confirm the bastardized decimal inch measurement system.
"What do you mean it was bent 0.0125" off at 112°?!?"
QuinceDaPence 6 points 3 years ago
Man's over here asking for hundred-thousandth inch precision
CapraObscura 10 points 3 years ago
And I'll give it to her all. minute. long.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 7 points 3 years ago
Sure there is. Also equality and fraternity.
msage 5 points 3 years ago
Daily reminder that imperial comes from the word 'imperium', which had nothing to do with the US of A.
A partial quote from Wiki: "imperial units (also known as British Imperial)"
Kethal 0 points 3 years ago
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.
perviouslyiner 1 point 3 years ago path: 0 2032383 2057500, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
Zoomboingding 36 points 3 years ago
"Why do they use the much more complicated system?" "Nobody actually knows."
Gleddified 22 points 3 years ago
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
Sharpiemarker 11 points 3 years ago
Looking forward to your new animated series!
NathanielThomas 8 points 3 years ago path: 0 2112106, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 2
MetricIsRight 8 points 3 years ago
I feel like this is my wheel house.
Killing_Spark 2 points 3 years ago
That is an unfortunate name for a numbers system
CapraObscura 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 2028675 2032931 2038839, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 1
yA3xAKQMbq 1 point 3 years ago
What‘s 1/4 * 10^3?
What‘s 1/4 * 16^3?
CapraObscura 5 points 3 years ago path: 0 2028675 2032931 2033882 2038910, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 1
yA3xAKQMbq 0 points 3 years ago
You do realize that this was an example to illustrate that it’s easier to just add to zeroes, right?
assassin_aragorn 2 points 3 years ago
I'll bite.
4^-1 * (4^2)^3 = 4^5 = 256 * 4 = 1024
yA3xAKQMbq 1 point 3 years ago
Thank you, Wolfram Webster Alpha
ScrivenerX 7 points 3 years ago
Outside of school I don't think I've ever had to convert feet to miles or yards to miles.
NoIWontPickaName 3 points 3 years ago
What about grams to ounces or pounds to kilos?
ZodiacSF1969 6 points 3 years ago
Drug dealing.
CapraObscura 0 points 3 years ago path: 0 2030186 2030725 2038781, hotness: undefined, score: 0, children: 1
CaptainBlagbird 5 points 3 years ago
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 😄🍿
orphiebaby 3 points 3 years ago
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.
assassin_aragorn 2 points 3 years ago
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
atx_aquarian 2 points 3 years ago
The amount of downvotes for a thoroughly explained opinion tells me this is Reddit now.
assassin_aragorn 1 point 3 years ago
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.
assassin_aragorn 0 points 3 years ago
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:
It's baffling that someone would spend so long on a critique while completely missing the point. My argument has never been that imperial is better than metric. I regularly use both, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. The advantages of metric here have been covered ad nauseum, so there was no need for me to mention them again. And since engineering is a field that intimately deals with both unit systems, I thought it would be good to offer that perspective
I was clearly right to offer that perspective, because the majority of your argument focuses on ideality and exactness. Engineering doesn't deal with ideality or absolute precision. A scientist uses just the right amount of tape to patch a hole. An engineer eyeballs it, adds more tape as needed, and calls it good enough. I don't need my feet to exactly be 1 imperial foot or for my knuckle to be exactly 1 imperial inch. As long as it's within 75-125% of it, I've got the right ballpark. And if it's closer to 50% or 150%? I can do simple math to scale it.
Thank you for illustrating my point on how this thread is an emulation of Reddit, complete with arrogant arguments which miss the OP's point and also fundamentally misunderstanding their perspective. Plus, not even understanding parts of their argument apparently -- I didn't label 0 or 100 when talking about temperature because I was talking about the abstract number itself. That should have been obvious from me talking about the simplicity of using 0 for very cold and 100 for very hot.
dancing_umbra 1 point 3 years ago
There are some places that do use a base 12 number system.
Again, I wasn't defending it, just explaining it.
bastian_5 1 point 3 years ago
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.
reverendsteveii 0 points 3 years ago
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.
UnculturedSwine 0 points 3 years ago
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.
RyeBread 0 points 3 years ago
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.
adeoxymus 10 points 3 years ago
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 😂
Zoomboingding 10 points 3 years ago
since growing up with Celcius I just can’t intuitively convert the numbers
Aaaand that's why Americans don't want to switch~
randint 4 points 3 years ago
Also growing up with Celsius, I also don't have any idea how temperatures in Fahrenheit should feel like. (except that 98°F is the human body temperature?) By the way, please don't use ChatGPT for math stuff, not even for converting temperatures. It can be really wrong at times.
Misconduct 1 point 3 years ago
Welcome to the club. I can't even deal with recipes from other countries because I don't have a kitchen scale lol
Mr_nutter_butter -5 points 3 years ago
Could Always Use both it's not confusing at all
MiddleWeigh -5 points 3 years ago
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.
curiousPJ -6 points 3 years ago
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.
elscallr -11 points 3 years ago
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.
elscallr -6 points 3 years ago
Then you don't know how to calibrate thermometers.
You can't use boiling or freezing water. The boiling and freezing point of water changes based on pressure.
Any mixture of liquid water, frozen water, and ammonium hydroxide is 0°F at any pressure (assuming it itself isn't boiling or freezing), which you can then calibrate to STP with a bit of math.
NoSpotOfGround 6 points 3 years ago
Interesting! I bet you need a second point for calibration though. It would be funny if it was boiling water, i.e. 100°C.
QuadratureSurfer 3 points 3 years ago
You'd half to take elevation into account. It's 100°C at sea level. For every ~150m (500ft) you go up in elevation, you should expect the boiling temperature to be about 0.5°C less.
yata 8 points 3 years ago
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).
Reverendender 1 point 3 years ago
American here. A ⅓lb burger is smaller than a ¼lb because 3 is less than 4 something something metric system.
XTornado 7 points 3 years ago
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...
elscallr -6 points 3 years ago
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.
bouh 2 points 3 years ago
It absolutely doesn't make any sense! 38°C is a heat wave where I live and it's a hot place, and - 10 is never reached in most places in my country. Besides, you can get a thermometer between - 30 and +50 and you'll have all temperatures you need. 0 is freezing cold, 21 is comfort room, and 25 is when the chocolate starts to melt in your fingers.
elscallr 1 point 3 years ago
Well, 0°F comes from the temperature of any mixture of ice, water, and ammonium hydroxide. 100, idk, but I'm guessing Fahrenheit had an upper bound.
Either way, he made a scale that said, for people, "really cold" to "really hot" and it is pretty instinctual to me.
Prof_Eibe 4 points 3 years ago
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?
Lizardking27 -71 points 3 years ago
Oh my god get a new joke. The U.S. uses both systems just like everyone else.
Buffaloaf 9 points 3 years ago
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.
BowtiesAreCool 12 points 3 years ago
And no one brings up that the UK actually uses both and in a lot more confusing way. Fuel in Liters but efficiency in miles per gallon. Speed in miles per hour but how far you drive in Kilometers. Weight of produce in grams and people in stone.
CapraObscura 3 points 3 years ago
And even then British gallons are different from American gallons so the efficiency numbers look really frickin' weird.
DXD 1 point 3 years ago
This isn't very accurate. Imperial is used for car and travel related measurements, metric is used elsewhere (officially). It would be nice if we switched to metric but it is OK.
Fuel in Liters but efficiency in miles per gallon.
Yeah, I think this is basically the only confusing and annoying imperial/metric thing we have.
Speed in miles per hour but how far you drive in Kilometers.
We don't use kilometers for how far we drive. We still use miles on signage and in everyday speech, along with miles per hour. I imagine if we switched to kilometers per hour, we would start using kilometers.
Weight of produce in grams and people in stone.
Older generations might still use stone but it is disappearing. Even my retired dad uses kg now. Younger generations are not taught stone (for decades now), as they grow up it will disappear.
It is a similar story to height in feet and inches. It is becoming less common, but probably slower than the switch away from stone.
Zink 8 points 3 years ago
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. :)
assassin_aragorn 4 points 3 years ago
I go back to what my professor in my first engineering class told us -- a good engineer can work in any unit system.
At the end of the day, imperial vs metric is an argument you have over some beers with friends. It's inconsequential.
NoIWontPickaName 3 points 3 years ago
That's a damn good point, the distance doesn't change regardless of what you call it.
CapraObscura 2 points 3 years ago
Hell, I'm not an engineer and that's something I was taught in school. In Texas. In the 80's.
Man, this place has devolved so horrendously...
Norgur 29 points 3 years ago
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!
khannie 3 points 3 years ago
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).
assassin_aragorn 1 point 3 years ago
Are you saying that only the US really constantly has to do conversions between both systems? Are you saying that Americans are always doing a bunch of math that the rest of you aren't?
22decembre 1 point 3 years ago
Yes, only places where it is mixed is the anglosaxony... try to open to the world.
I use pounds because I do archery, where my bow's power is measured with that unit, which I translate as 1/2 a kg. I don't care that it's inaccurate.
There are also inches (I think) for Tv and computer screens, which is shitty.
But no one else uses imperial.
I worked with croncrete blocks (prefabricated building elements) some years ago and I was all the time making fast calculations of sizes and weight and I cannot imagine making that in imperial (admittedly because I am not used, but in present case it would just have been massively impractical)
Lizardking27 -9 points 3 years ago
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.
Norgur 9 points 3 years ago
Ah... No mate, there are no "somethings" for "most countries". Most of the world uses straight up metric and that's it. What "local systems" do you know of that get used alongside metric?
And regarding the grow up part... See, here in Europe everybody will crack jokes about everybody else. French laugh at Germans, Polish mock the Spanish and everyone laughs at the British because they can't come back at us since they had their little voting oopsie and now need a form to import jokes into the EU.
Remember that one kid that never got the joke, took what was said in jest at face value, got upset and thus mocked even more? Americans have a surprising tendency to be that kid.
22decembre 3 points 3 years ago
There are "something" for a lot of things that are not in metrics.
Like tire sizes. My bow's power is measured in pounds (and I should use inches there too normally. I don't bother.) Screen sizes are in inches I think...
95% work in metrics. But there is always a little stuff in some weird units.
Lizardking27 -2 points 3 years ago
"Remember that one kid that never got the joke, took what was said in jest at face value, got upset and thus mocked even more?"
Please stop, the irony, it's too much.
khannie 1 point 3 years ago
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.
NoIWontPickaName 2 points 3 years ago
Not really, they can use them until they need to be replaced and then have the replacements have both.
You'd have to have them in different cookies like Texas does with those bullshit fucking day/night speed limits
Lizardking27 -6 points 3 years ago
True. The U.S. is one of them.
In reality, while most countries don't use metric and imperial, they do use metric and some other local system of measurements. Many countries use both metric and their historically preferred system.
CapraObscura 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 2027831 2030872 2035405 2037210 2039150, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 4
Lizardking27 -3 points 3 years ago
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.
RagingNerdoholic 10 points 3 years ago
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.
Nepenthe 6 points 3 years ago
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
khannie 8 points 3 years ago
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.
Cabrio 2 points 3 years ago
The only thing we use imperial for now is height and pints in the pub.
There's a really good reason for this, the first being that there is no metric equivalent of a pint because if there was it would be 500ml and an imperial pint is 570ml, nobody wants less beer in their pint. Poor Americans have a 475ml pint.
The height one (and any other remnants of imperial numeracy) is largely due to American cultural media exports and it's easier for non Americans to convert to American imperial units due to exposure to both, to engage in effective communication.
the_itsb 4 points 3 years ago
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.
Diprount_Tomato 2 points 3 years ago
everything but guns and drugs
Really shows their priorities
CapraObscura 0 points 3 years ago
Drugs, guns, baking, construction, manufacturing... actually, the better way to put it would be "literally fucking everywhere but the road signs and speedometers."
22decembre 3 points 3 years ago
The vast majority of the world does not use imperial units.
yA3xAKQMbq 1 point 3 years ago path: 0 2027831 2031023, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
GrumbleGrim -4 points 3 years ago
Oh really? So if I send blueprints to a steel fabricator in metric, they will not have a problem with that? Lol try again.
assassin_aragorn 4 points 3 years ago
They'll only have a problem if you don't label your units or say somewhere what they are. And if you don't do that, that isn't an imperial vs metric problem, that's flat out bad engineering.
GrumbleGrim 1 point 3 years ago
You clearly have never worked with structural steel fabricators.
Buffaloaf 4 points 3 years ago
Um, they wouldn't have a problem with that. That's exactly what I used to do, fabricate steel parts for companies like Liebherr and Komatsu, who would send us blueprints in metric. My coworkers and I actually preferred it.
GrumbleGrim 1 point 3 years ago
I'm talking about architectural steel. Not mechanical engineering, structural. I-beams.
GCostanzaStepOnMe -5 points 3 years ago
No. Also ur fat and eat hambugers
Diprount_Tomato 1 point 3 years ago
Now it's time for the school supplies joke
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A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.
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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.
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