Comment on Why do Americans measure everything in cups?

• SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Imperial measurements were based on arbitrary things, metric has specific scientific definitions for their weights.

  1l of water is 1kg at sea level, why the fuck is kings foot size the defacto foot?

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  • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Imperial measurements were based on arbitrary things, metric has specific scientific definitions for their weights.

    What do you mean? A pound is legally defined as 0.45359237 kilograms.

    And the kilogram is defined:

    The kilogram, symbol kg, is the SI unit of mass. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the Planck constant h to be 6.62607015×10^−34 when expressed in the unit J⋅s, which is equal to kg⋅m^2 ⋅s^−1, where the metre and the second are defined in terms of c and ΔνCs.

    These are all currently defined off of the same universal constants, just with different multipliers, which are all arbitrary numbers: 6.62607015 is just about as arbitrary as 0.45359237. Hell, the number 10 is arbitrary, too, so we still use a system for time based on dividing the Earth’s day into 24 and 60.

    Like, I get that there’s some elegance in the historical water-based definitions derived from the arbitrary definition of length, but the definition of “meter” started from about as arbitrary a definition as “foot” (and the meter was generally more difficult to derive in the time of its adoption based on the Earth’s dimensions).

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