Comment on Everyday, as an American
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago“intuitive” in the sense you described just means “familiar”. One feels like one. Ten feels like ten.
The magic of metric isn’t that each base unit is somehow more valuable in metric. It isn’t. One will always feel like one.
The magic is how easy it is to convert from the “small one”, the “medium one” and the “big one”.
Also, the convention of fractional inches is ridiculous.
It should be trivial to order 27/64, 3/8, and 7/16. Don’t make me do that math.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Hard disagree on the fractional units. Using rational numbers for those things derives from the frequency with which people need to double and halve things in the fields that use those conventions. Doubling 3/8 to get 6/8 or 3/4 is much easier than doubling .375 to get .75
That one’s nothing to do with the metric system vs imperial, aside from the fields that rely on the convention being largely the ones that created imperial in the first place. If they all switched to metric tomorrow they’d just say they need 3/5 meter spacing.
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Does Germany use 3/5m spacing?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I looked it up and they use 2/5 meter spacing. Some other countries nearby use 3/5th though.
Windex007@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And it’s described locally as 2/5 and 3/6, rather than 40 or 60 cm?