Comment on Energy drink can used for scale, yet fruit used as unit of measurement
blackbelt352@lemmy.world 5 months agoIt’s not that it’s hard to learn, it’s that we don’t have a strong intuition. It’s not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn’t be able to pick up an object and say, “that weighs about a pound” or look at an object and say “that’s about 3 feet long” but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.
MotoAsh@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I agree, that’s why I said, “… they simply don’t use the units enough.”
I know imperial VERY well, but that’s because I lift weights listed in lbs and craft things all the time, which takes measuring. I also do 3d printing in metric, so I have a solid feel for millimeters, centimeters, and decimeters, but less so full meters because I seldom work on that scale.
Considering I had an intuition for lbs as a child, though… I don’t really buy that people suck at their native units as adults. If they do, they’re simply not paying attention.