Wait, no, this isn’t really correct.
Metric is the first part, but it is also the second part. The entire point of imperial units is that they ARE humanistically intuitive measurements.
Science = metric, relatable = imperial.
Banana for scale
Submitted 13 hours ago by Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social to [deleted]
https://media.piefed.social/posts/au/qy/auqyKPyMvRseyUa.jpg
Comments
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
rbos@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Only if you’re used to it.
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
I expanded my comment, but, basically, you can get used to any system. Humans are incredibly adaptable.
But for the same reason we’re bad at conceptualizing how rich a trillionaire really is, metric may not be better than imperial. Or, maybe imperial is the reason we’re bad at conceptualizing! I haven’t thought about that before! But it’s an interesting idea!
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Like, I’m at a shop right now, and outside the window are some scooters.
How many scooters?
I think in units of scooters, not pieces of metal in scooter shape that add up to a volume of mass and energy. Because that’s not what I’m thinking about right now, I just see six scooters, and you instantly know that there are six scooters.
BitUnWise@programming.dev 2 hours ago
One mole of hydrogen-1 isn’t 1 gram because of the binding energy of protons and neutrons. One mole of hydrogen-1 is about 1.008g
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Wild Thing by Josh Bazell, in case anyone was wondering what book that is.
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 hours ago
We need to go deeper, america needs to come up with new time measurements too. Everything must go!
gastroglizzy@piefed.social 13 hours ago
Metric is great for scientists in a lab with equipment to measure things.
Imperial was created during a time when peasants in the middle of nowhere needed to measure something “close enough” to trade with others, even without tools or measuring equipment, which was only owned by scribes and other members of the nobility.
This is why all imperial length measurements relate to parts of the body and why all volume and weight measurements relate to containers that were commonly used to store the thing you’re measuring (a bushel of grain, for example).
The US agreed to switch to the metric system centuries ago, but the ship carrying the official units sank on the way over.
lauha@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Metric is great for scientists in a lab with equipment to measure things.
Metric is just as great for everyday life as imperial units.
Also, a foot can be divided equally into 2, 3, 4, or 6 equally-sized pieces without resorting to estimation or irrational numbers; a meter cannot.
While I agree in principle, I also enjoy the chaos that imperial system causes when you try adding up 1 1/8 inches + 5 27/32 inches + 7 3/64 inches instead of just using decimal numbers.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Metric is just as great for everyday life as imperial units.
This is what the metricians say to feel better about themselves, but they never mean it.
“Oh yes, I’ll have a 236.588 milliliters of tea, thank you for offering”
“The kids are out playing in the back 0.914 meters”
“Doctor, I think I broke my left 30.48 centimeters”
Do you see how silly you would sound if you didn’t use imperial?
aMockTie@piefed.world 10 hours ago
1 1/8 inches + 5 27/32 inches + 7 3/16 inches
1/8 = 4/32 3/16 = 6/32 4 + 6 + 27 = 37 37/32 = 1 5/32 1 + 5 + 7 + 1 = 14 Total: 14 5/32
I wouldn’t call it chaos, it’s a straightforward algorithm:
- Identify the largest denominator
- Multiply each other fraction by [largest denominator divided by current fraction’s denominator]
- Determine the sum of every numerator
- Divide and simplify the number if necessary
- Determine the sum of the integers, including any integers added in the previous step
This works for every measurement because the denominator is always a power of 2.
With that said I absolutely prefer metric.
JustPlainDave@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Having done my share of automotive and carpentry work, I’ve never in my life had to go down to 64ths. 32nds is the smallest fraction I’ve ever had to use and the amount of times I’ve had to get that small could probably be counted on one hand.
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
If someone were adding those figures they would switch to decimal. I built furniture for 2 years, 64ths are almost never used over thousands of an inch. If you need to be finer than 32nds you use thou. And that pretty much only for wood. Machine shop I worked in used thou exclusively.
taiyang@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Wheeeeeeee fractions!
But after multiplying, 8 + 54 + 3 over 64 is just clean fun, you end up with 14 1/64 inches and wanna die because you accidentally cut the material at 14 inches and now your whole day is ruined.
im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 12 hours ago
Metric allows you to convert between length volume and mass in your head. Someone smarter than me could probably take a reasonable estimate of how long a kettle will take to boil just by knowing it’s wattage and estimating its volume.
You’re right that “pounds” may have e been a practical measurement back when people didn’t have calibrated and everyone’s hand weighed a pound. However, that advantage ceased once everyone standardised those measurements.
A metre is equally divisible by 50, 25, 20, 10, 5, and 2. There arr numerous advantages to a base 10 system.
Krudler@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
The last bit of rationalizing is hilarious .
We can figure out what 70% of a meter is.
Good luck with your peasant system
save_the_humans@leminal.space 3 hours ago
So pounds can be either a mass or a force, or context dependent, or a slug might be the unit for mass derived from the pound force. The foot pound force is a unit for energy.
Honestly the system shouldn’t exist.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
“Decimalized currency is great for all those labcoats, but for us regular ol’ normal folk, it’s much easier to use real, easily divisible livres, which can be divided into 20 sous and subsequently into 12 deniers.”
“In fact, imperial is so great because duodecimal invites so much divisibility! What’s that? You’re saying it goes 12 –> 3 –> 1760 for length, 16 –> 2000 for units of mass, that and units of volume aren’t even consistently multiples of 4, and that pounds, short tons aren’t cleanly divisible by 3? And that not a single unit of volume is divisible by three unless you bring it down to the level of teaspoons?”
“‘Why not just switch to a fully duodecimal system if divisibility is so important to you’, you ask? Well fuck you, a foot is about as long specifically as my forearm, and there’s no way my poor, emaciated monkey brain would ever have found something similar to latch onto with SI units. ‘How many square inches is a 300 x 300 foot room?’, you ask? Well fuck you again.”
Darkmuch@lemmy.world 12 minutes ago
I hate imperial. But I do think it would be neat if we had also changed our common numeral system to base 12 when making metric. Dividing by 3 and 4 is WAY more common than dividing by 5.
But no way that would happen unless we had a massive linguistic shift occur as well. Base 10 is too rooted in our culture.
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Every country used a system based off body parts or similarly easy-to-measure parts. When the metric system was invented, most of them switched because it was the logic thing to do. Some just decided that the dumb system was better who knows why.
Spain adopted the metric system in 1852 and by the time, they weren’t the most advanced country.
adarza@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
Spain adopted the metric system in 1852 and by the time, they weren’t the most advanced country
perhaps when the u.s. finally reaches the level of 1852 spain, americans will switch too.
Morotsgubbe@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
What do you mean you can not divide a meter without estimations or irrational numbers? Do you mean fractions or decimal? 1m/3=3.33… dm ( repeating, which means it is a rational fraction)
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Also, US Customary units share many of the same terms as Imperial, but the actual quantities differ.
spicytuna62@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Violet
Huh. I must have missed this book in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 15 minutes ago
Did she undelete her account?
cannedtuna@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
How unfortunate
huquad@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
True except for calorie. Metric typically uses Joules, which is good because it’s just the product of force (N) and distance units (m), instead of requiring a conversion factor.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 8 hours ago
If by “metric system,” you mean SI. But then, SI uses m3 for volume, not litres. The author didn’t specify which metric system, so this could be valid.
Corndog@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I’d just like to point out that this example has TWO metric volume units (mililiters and cubic centimeters) and that they’re not equivalent (ie 1 liter is not equal to one cubic meter), AND the weight of water is 1 gram and also doesn’t align with EITHER of those volumes in terms of scale because they randomly made their mass unit the size of a grain of rice for some fucking reason??? AND the calorie is ALSO not ever used, because it’s so small. We use the kilo calorie as standard (or Calorie) for nutrition of all kinds.
Like… They could have made the meter smaller, so a cubic meter was 1 liter, which was 1 gram of water and 1 calorie of energy.
Like… They fucked up the metric system so bad guys. It’s so monumentally stupid. They made it from scratch and still couldn’t get it right. There’s two definitions of ‘million’? Like, a mili meter is 1/1000 of a meter (not a millionth) because ‘thousand’ and ‘million’ both used to just mean ‘real big number’, but rather than pick one to use they used both??? So a Mega meter is a million meters, but a mili meter is a thousandth.
It’s just so dumb. Like… Memorizing 20 prefixes is NOT any better than just having bespoke (albeit redundant) measurements for different purposes. Like, I’m not measuring my commute in inches. That’s dumb. And for the record, science uses non metric units ALL THE GODDAMN TIME because it’s way better to have tools specific to your trade. Here’s some non metric length units off the top of my head: light-year, sol, angstrom, parsec, planck length. No one is telling astronomers to stop using light years.
You know what else isn’t metric??? Fucking time. Because having a year be 1000 days long is stupid, for reasons I hope I don’t have to explain. No one complains that we have 12 months in the year, because a month is based on lunar cycles and not just ‘the number 10 is special.’ We appear to be doing just fine with 60 seconds and 60 minutes and 24 hours and 7 days and 52 weeks.
In short, this debate has always been incredibly stupid, and is constantly perpetuated by people who have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
Aedis@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
- mL and cc are the same thing.
- 1 Liter is equal to 1dm³ (which no one uses really but it doesn’t matter since the equivalency is at mL = cc
- a grain of rice is about 0.02 gr so idk where you got that from. Weights were manufactured originally as was the meter (platinum cylinder and bar respectively, the originals are still in a museum in Paris)
- weight is now based off the Planck constant and the meter is based off the speed of light. (2019)
- Calorie, while metric is not an SI unit, that would be the joule.
- the SI uses a hodgepodge of units and not all metric, they are however, all based off of natural constants.
- A yard is just as arbitrary as anything else, it was a rod made somewhere around the 1500’s and was kept in London. Nowadays much like any other imperial unit, the sizes are based off their metric counterparts. is 1yd = 0.9144m exactly.
- Metric time has been attempted (1000 ticks in a day) didn’t work super well. But like I said theres a ton of non metric units in the SI.
rbos@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
Seconds are SI, I believe, and it makes perfect sense to talk milliseconds, kiloseconds, etc.
SingularEye@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
of course a liter isn’t 1 cubic meter. it’s 1000cc, while a cubic meter is 1,000,000cc. that’s just math.
There’s only one definition of million, because “mil” means thousandth.
Also, the metric system generally uses Joules rather than calories. A Joule is the energy it takes to exert a force of 1 Newtons over the distance of 1 meter. An example would be lifting about 102 grams up 1 meter.
These non-metric units that science uses all the time are conveniences based on constants we can measure or estimate. An AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. A sol is the time it takes for Mars to rotate once about its axis. There’s nothing wrong with making up constants that make your numbers easier to explain.
While our calendar isn’t a base-10 system, the second is defined by the metric system and that’s the definition everyone uses.
While I’m American, and I’m used to feet, inches, pounds, miles, gallons, and cups, it is easy to understand the convenience of the Metric system. How many inches are in a mile? Well, it’s 5280 feet, and there are 12 inches in a foot, so that means there’s 63,360 inches in a mile. For the record, it’s easier to figure how many centimeters are in a mile.
A mile is officially defined as 1609.344 meters, so all you have to do is multiply by 100. There are 160,934.4 centimeters in a mile. There are 100,000 centimeters in a kilometer.
Pounds, by the way, are a unit of force, not mass. Or rather, they used to be. So now they’re a unit of mass, but you can still refer to pounds of force. So a pound of force is the force of gravity on a one pound mass. To quote Wikipedia,
Note, however, unlike the other systems the force unit is not equal to the mass unit multiplied by the acceleration unit[11]—the use of Newton’s second law, F = m ⋅ a, requires another factor, gc, usually taken to be 32.174049 (lb⋅ft)/(lbf⋅s2).
Yikes. The metric system is certainly better.
theneverfox@pawb.social 10 hours ago
They probably made the meter about a yard because that’s roughly 1 stride (left step right step)
Which is what’s really cool about imperial. It’s very human, for length and temperature at least. A mile is about a 20 minute walk, 0-100 degrees is about the range most people can endure with reasonable comfort, and I have no idea what the volume measurements are based on. 1 cup is what a small child drinks in a sitting, a quart is more than a normal adult drinks, and teaspoons/tablespoons are really only useful in baking, and even then it’s only sometimes
They must’ve had really weird table wear when they standardized imperial
arctanthrope@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
the meter was originally defined to be one 10,000-th of the distance from the equator to the north pole, along the meridian that passes through Paris
leftascenter@jlai.lu 8 hours ago
The mile is based on roman steps originally : 1000 steps.
The yard was an arm’s length.
Fahrenheit 0 is pure invention. 100 was body temp.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 3 hours ago
A kilometer is about a 15 minute walk (meaning you can walk ca 4 km in one hour - actually a bit less, avg walking speed is around 3.6km/h, but that is so very much individual that it has the same usability as your mile in 20 minutes).
0 and 100 °C is where water changes between frozen/liquid/vapor (and that does NOT change, while “reasonable comfort” is very much dependent on humiditiy - if it’s close to 0° outside, expect slippery roads. 0 and 100 Fahrenheit do tell you fuck all about what to expect outside regarding road conditions without extra knowledge.) Default room temperature is around 22°C, smack in the middle of the personal preference normally being around 20-25°. Having the same scale in mind, everything above 30°C is pretty warm, with 42° the current heat record in Austria, set this year. 60° is the temperature where proteins start to denature a.k.a getting burnt, pretty much 2/3 of the way to water vapor.
One liter is the volume that fits in a 10x10x10 cm cube, just as a milliliter is the volume of a 1x1x1 cm cube (because 10x10x10=1000, and a milliliter is a thousand of a liter). we still use tea/tablespoons in many cooking recipes tho (or if you want, you can use 5 and 25 ml or 5 and 25g if it’s water.)
ReCursing@feddit.uk 12 hours ago
I can’t remember what book this was from, it was a medical thriller about an ex-con in witness protection IIRC. I think it also includes him sending an intern to check on “the LD50 of falling out of a window”
TomMasz@piefed.social 11 hours ago
To be fair, it would be the same answer even if we used the metric system.
GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca 8 hours ago
Yeah, but in one the math is super easy and you don’t need to throw in 6 conversion factors.
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 3 hours ago
Okay, then, how much energy does it take to boil 1mL of water from room temperature? (Note that I said “boil,” not raise it to 100°C.)
SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 8 hours ago
NOOO!!!
America has its own laws of thermodynamics!
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W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 minutes ago
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