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Just came here to nit-pick that the metric prefix for 103 is k and not K.
Case in point: Platinum melts around 2kK.
Also 1L water ~ 1kg
And 1000 cm³ = 1L
Ah yes, the reason I am teaching myself as an American adult the metric system
We were taught it in my rural red state elementary school in the '80s. Maybe because metrification seemed like a more real possibility, I guess.
A lot of thing’s seemed more possible in the 80’s
Should be pretty easy to learn, right? I mean, that’s the whole point.
except for intuition formed from a lifetime of daily usage
BUT THIS IS HOW WE ALWAYS DID IT
One of the many failures of American public education system that I was subjected to. It’s speaks volumes about how normalized exceptionalism is in this country.
“Oh, the measurement standard the rest of the world uses? You don’t need to learn that. You’re an American, so people from other countries will just accomodate you because they want to be like us.”
One of the most annoying things in the world are American websites that claim to sell internationally but they only offer USD and all provided measurements are in American imperial.
Right up there with online stores that only have boxes for “state” and “zip code” even if the selected country doesn’t use those.
I was taught the metric system in American elementary school.
I don’t doubt it. My elementary education out in East Bumfuck, New Hampshire in the late 80s/early 90s wasn’t exactly top notch. My third grade teacher taught us that the appendix was located in the leg and banned certain books and items from the classroom for being “satanic”.
Funny, by stereotype the North is supposed to be ahead of the South, yet I got a decent education in North Carolina in the 90’s and early 00’s.
Rural areas of New England are pretty ass-backwards. If you want a decent education, you basically need to live in the Boston Metro area or the seacoast.
Americans are really falling behind these day in all the metrics 😂
We actually use both. Imperial is easier to break into 3rds, but can still break down into other bases easily without any irrational numbers. Metric is more useful for science, but my mom who does landscaping prefers Imperial for her designs because it’s not stuck in base-10.
Europeans are the ones who refuse to learn more than one system lol
It annoys me so much that a small decision could have had me growing up with metric.
Damn Tucker Carlson must’ve stumbled upon this post. Someone should tell him that Russians use metric.
I like metric weight for cooking (on the rare occasion I make something that involves careful measuring, and for my bread making) and MILES can fuck right off, km are fine for measuring long distance. And fine with meters, cm for short distance.
But I do like how feet are 12 inches, because 12 is so evenly divisible, and like that a gallon splits in half and half again and again until you get cups. It’s like RAM,
Cup is 8 oz
Pint is 16 oz
Quart is 32 oz
Half Gallon is 64 oz
Gallon is 128 oz.
That doubling sequence is satisfying.
Your 16 oz pints are a pathetic 455ml. Europeans have 500ml.
Meanwhile a true UK pint is 568ml.
You can see why we cling to Imperialism.
specifically woodworking I like doing in inches, because 12. For the tasks I often do in the wood shop, fractional inches work well.
I’m confortable working in both systems, but I build furniture in inches.
In metric, the 12 really isn’t important anymore which kinda invalidates that. We normally go to the nearest mm or, if needed, some fraction of that (not normally needed in my life at least)
When building wooden furniture, the ability to divide by 3 and 4 comes in handy a lot more often than dividing by 5, and I don’t have to start rounding to nearest or stuff like that. For this task, inches work out better.
If I never see another inch size bolt in my life it’ll be too soon.
I do woodworking too, my father did it since youth, and he did it just fine. We don’t feel the need to divide everything.
My point is, if you’re using feet and inches you maybe want to divide by that. We in the metric world don’t so it’s not that big a deal. Our woodworking is done in CM and MM and we rarely need fractions of mm.
As a brit, the only thing I care about is the extra 68ml I get in my pint.
My favorite fact about the metric system that blows imperial believer’s minds is that if you take a 1cm thick tube you put 1 liter of water it weights 1kilogram and it it 1 meter tall the measure.
Everytime I see one of these posts I have to make the same comment. The US is metric, everywhere that it matters. In the military, in the medical field, and in the scientific field. The ONLY reason we haven’t converted every other part of our lives to metric is that our country is 50 times the size of the average European country. Do you know how expensive it would be to replace the infrastructure we’ve built and maintained over the past 200 years? The tax payers could not handle that burden, and it would require every state to agree to the terms of the change for a total conversion.
At this point, it is just part of our identity. It would be like asking the French to eat day old bread. They could, but why?
Then why are all your english content in freaking fantasy units???
Every country switched at one time in history, the longer you wait the more expensive it becomes.
One, they aren’t fantasy units— this is real life, son.
Two, the country was built on imperial, so the trades use imperial to maintain the country. Everyone in the US grows up learning in imperial, and then learns metric when they get into physics and chemistry.
Three, I addressed the fact that WE CAN NOT AFFORD TO SWITCH. It does not matter if it is going to be more expensive in the future. We can’t afford it NOW.
I understand the spirit of your reply. This is just the reality of what having 50 different states, who can’t agree on anything and are loosely tied together by an over-arching government, is like.
There are 27 counties in the European Union, and they are filled with reasonable people in government(for the most part). We have 50 states that are filled with greedy little assholes who will do everything in their power to gain more power to leverage in a bid to destroy what they deem “the enemy”, so they can make even more money and gain more power.
We are never going to convert wholesale to metric. We can’t even agree, as a country, that poor people are people, at a government scale. That is entirely motivated by profit and nothing more.
It simply does not pay to switch to metric.
I have seen US companies try, but it is so slow.
We did customs tooling. In the 80s 90s it was inch sizing and inch components. Late 90s still inch tooling but Metric components, and so drawings would have REAM for .236 Dowel ( instead of 6mm) LOL In mid 2000s tooling was metric sized as long as it was close to a purchasable inch size from the steel foundary. So block would be 608mm wide, to order a 24" block.
So 2025 mostly you can see places working full metric.
Then there are places I have worked recently that still use Fractional inch on projects and then wonder why assembly problems arise. Like design intent is 8.541 and maybe clearance to adjacent part has to be .039". Drawing has 8 9/16 + 1/32, so not only is sizing wrong compared to mating part, the fractional inch means dude uses a tape measure by eye, rather than a 3 place decimal measure tool. It’s such a mess.
It’s also that imperial uses body measurements for basic stuff. Your foot is about a foot long, so you can pace off distances. One yard is about the length from your collarbone to the opposite wrist, so I can roughly measure fabric quickly. From your fingertip to the crook of your thumb is about five inches, and the knuckles on your fingers are about an inch apart.
I used to do industrial embroidery at an immigrant-owned shop, and the boss switched from metric to imperial because measuring a couple inches with your fingers is faster than finding a meter stick and measuring centimeters exactly. When you’ve got multiple inches in your margin for error, there is no need for the precision of metric, and the speed of imperial just makes more sense.
That first diagram looks exactly like the dumbass step functions in my company
This thread is full of middle schoolers who don’t realize that you can measure things in whatever system you want, regardless of country. The whole premise of this circlejerk is faulty.
You can but there are real examples where mixing units results in failure. NASA lost a 125 million dollar mars probe in 1999 because JPL and NASA use metric but Lockheed Martin added acceleration data in American imperial units.
It might be a circle jerk but it is also best practice to use a standard system and there’s really only one holdout on not using that system. I say this as an American who wishes people would just use metric because it’s just easier unless you just fucking love fractions of an inch.
Your example of not mixing systems up within projects is somewhat valid, but not applicable to the whole. There are a lot of uses for Imperial, and using Imperial in landscaping does not have a chance of causing catastrophic failure in rocket science.
There are a lot of uses for Imperial
Other than it being “cultural” and laziness there’s no point in keeping imperial. Stop using an obsolete system so we Canadians can switch our stoves to Celsius without having to worry about you yanks cooking with our equipment and hurting yourselves.
I’m going to use metric for height and weight. I don’t care if some wanker American complains they can always head south if they want or visit Liberia for a getaway, get with the times already.
The metric system, base 10, is not easily breakable into thirds without irrational numbers. In aesthetic fields, such as landscaping or interior design, the ability to break something into exact thirds, quarters, halves, fifths, sixths, and so on, is invaluable. It’s not just cultural. It sounds like it is to you, which is weird… why are you personally identifying with a unit of measurement?
I also don’t understand your Liberia reference. Could you elaborate?
The metric system, base 10, is not easily breakable into thirds without irrational numbers.
Says the metric that freaking uses fractions…
Find me a fraction on a meter stick, go ahead!
Liberia, until 2018, used the imperial system. They were one of three countries that used the imperial system, Myanmar being the third one. They are currently in the process of using metric, but it appears they are using both for now.
Not sure why you can only go to Liberia, I’m sure you can buy a meter stick when you arrive in Europe.
Man, we should all just use the same currency so we don’t have to do all these crazy conversions! Maybe we all start just using the US dollar? /s
I was just explaining the Liberia part of the comment, I was not the commenter. I am American and like both metric and imperial. I prefer metric for baking and applications where higher precision is useful, but use imperial for most other things since that is what is commonly used around me.
anyone can do whatever on their own, but if it affects anyone else than that one person its not just that one person’s business. I cant see the insistence of using imperial system as anything else than america has used it in the past, and therefore its american system and because america is the best it must be the best system to use and to claim anything else is to hate america.
I’m sorry that you can’t seem to see it any other way, but that is just not reality. The imperial system has many uses that the metric system is not apt for.
for example?
Base 10 measurement systems such as the metric system cannot divide distances into thirds or sixths without creating irrational numbers. This can be a problem for interior designers and landscape designers, for instance, who regularly need to create drafts for projects that break up measurements that way. The imperial system is more versatile in this particular instance because you can break a foot into 12 inches, which is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (yes, still wouldn’t be irrational), and 6. Much more versatile when your contractor needs to actually go out and make a measurement in the real world. While metric could be “good enough” for that purpose, it is not the most ideal.
because you can break a foot into 12 inches, which is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (yes, still wouldn’t be irrational), and 6.
12 ÷ 5 = 2.4Yeah, I get the idea that 12 is nicer than 10 to divide by 3, 4 and 6, but I’m pretty sure that 2.4 is an irrational number.
Edit: Is this what makes it somewhat useful anyway?:
2.4 × 10 = 24 12 × 2 = 24So, for instance,
120 ÷ 5 = 24would still be useful?
Been ages since I was in a math class and I misquoted why it’s useful. It’s not that it is rational, as 10/3 is also rational. However, 10/3 is not an integer, and therefore cannot be found on a measuring stick or tape measure. There are projects where being able to divide into exact thirds, 6ths, etc are required, and metric is not as useful for that. In a country that also uses imperial interchangeably, it makes sense to use it with projects that are better served with imperial.
i’d say its still easier to just choose desired level of precision with 3.333333333 than deal with imperial’s conversion maddness, even if you can divide them evenly. I guess imperial is ok if you dont ever have to use it with any other system, but lack of combitability is quite isolationist.
With imperial, every unit is like it’s own singular instance where in metric each unit is part of the system. Trying to convert between them seems like a nightmare (i dont want to even try, but i assume those who use imperial just have to.)
Like, how many inches are on 1000 miles? Try to convert that exactly in your head without using calculator or paper and within 10 seconds. How many square feet are on 37 acres? How much does 5,5 gallons of water weigh in stones?
Or lets say we have container with measurements of 3x3x3 inches (i’ll be merciful and use same unit for each dimension) MysteryLiquid™ (use calculator for this one if you try to calculate it) with density of 3,337 pounds / …perch…? or more commonly 0,00625 acres (not many area units in imperial). How much does the MysteryLiquid™ in the container weigh in stones?
In metric the density would be about 301 kg/m3.
3 inches is 0.0762 metres so container would be 0.07623 which is 0,000442450728m3 which is 442.450728 cm³
So m =p x V = 301kg x 0.000442m3 = 0.133kg, try calculating that whole thing in imperial, using crazy different units without ripping out your hair. I used sensible units for metric in this one, but i could have used nanograms, mm3 and decimeters instead and it would just mildly inconvenience me when calculating, and also produce way bigger numbers but at least the conversion factors would remain same.
Not being able to divide some measurements in even numbers is very small price to pay for being able to calculate things more easily.
You can use both without using them in the same project. Yes, I understand how conversions work.
You can make the same argument going the other way. Isn’t is complicated to go from metric to imperial? May as well just use imperial! See, it’s not a good argument.
well my point was to make those calculations using only imperial units, not randomly go between metric and imperial. Metric calculation was there to just illustrate how it would go using metric units.
“1 brick equals about 1kg” - Plain. Boring. No pizazz.
“1 brick equals about 37 baby chicks.” - Fun. Whimsical. Oozing pizazz.
Ah, you need The Reg online standards converter
So, a 1kg brick = 0.1149 Adult Badger
I did not know this page. Thanks for the link. This is so 100% The Register! Shoutout to the team from the “guy with the open university style beard” ;-)
But it’s really easy. Wanna know how many inches are in a mile? One inch is 0.0254 m. One mile is 1609.344 m. 1609.344 / 0.0254 is 63360. There.
But what if there are no inches in that mile, only yards? Or parsec? Oh, wait…
or just eagle elbows
i tooked astronomy in college a while ago, to know how long is 1 parsec.
I always assumed 1km = 0.6 miles because all all of the car guys yapping about 0-100 and 0-60. Good enough, tbh. Inch is 2.5cm, and there are 12 of them in a foot for some reason. Pint is slightly less than half a liter, pound is slightly less than half a kilo, and anyone mentioning stones gets stoned to death. Simple enough.
Just wait until you try to understand American cooking recipes. Cups everywhere! My favorite was “A cup of spinach”, without any mentioning if they were talking about fresh spinach (losely or densily packed) or cooked/frozen one.
I always assume there’s absolutely no point in expending brain cells to store this information and therefore exclusively deal in metric. (Except for DnD for some reason, but that’s also about to change)
I’ve never wanted to know how many of any unit are in a mile. It’s just something I’ve never had reason to care about. So there’s 1000 meters in a kilometer. That’s just trivia to me. There’s no need to know that.
Wanna know how many inches are in a mile?
No. Nobody wants to know that. Nobody needs to know that.
Nobody needs a measurement with a magnitude of a mile to the precision of an inch. And if they did, they’d either measure the whole length in inches or decimal miles, not some bullshit multiple-unit travesty.
Ya’ll are solving a problem that never existed in the first place.
Railways? Large tunnels? Bridges?
Show me.
If I’m building a railroad, I’m going to need mm precision in laying sleepers and rail, sure. But I’m not particularly interested in km magnitude while I’m driving spikes.
If I’m driving a train over that rail, I’m interested in km lengths, but I can tolerate several hundreds of meters of imprecision in those measurements. No need to convert to meters, let alone mm for that measurement.
The closest I’ll come to needing both km magnitude and mm precision is in figuring out how much material to order.
But, when I do that, what I will actually be converting isn’t length to length. I’ll be figuring out how many sleepers per km, how many rail segments per km, how many buckets of spikes per km. None of those will be simple metric unit conversions.
But, when I do that, what I will actually be converting isn’t length to length. I’ll be figuring out how many sleepers per km, how many rail segments per km, how many buckets of spikes per km. None of those will be simple metric unit conversions.
This is actually the primary strength of imperial and the impetus behind most of its conversion ratios. Base 10 is just terrible for being divided. But if you have a mile of railroad, you can place your rail and stakes regularly at almost any foot-length and come out even.
Exactly. Our base-ten number system is cursed. A base-twelve metric system would be gorgeous. Our existing clocks would already be metric.
In addition to scaling by “10” (pronounced “ten”), current Metric Rulers commonly scale by 2 when going from centimeter to 1/2 centimeter markings, or by 5 when going from cm to 2mm markings, depending on the degree of precision required. Rarely do rulers actually scale from cm to 1mm. You typically need calipers to make measurements smaller than 2mm.
With base-twelve, we’d still be able to scale by “10” (pronounced “twelve”), but we’d also be able to scale by 2, 3, 4, or 6.
Rarely do rulers actually scale from cm to 1mm. You typically need calipers to make measurements smaller than 2mm.
I’m pretty sure most rulers and measuring tapes I’ve ever seen had 1 mm markings.
We’re talking rulers of typically 10-30 cm marked length and made of plastic or metal, and longer measuring tapes made of either flimsy metal (in a casing with a lock-button) or those softer textile tapes.
The only exception I can think of, that has only 1 cm markings, is a wooden 1 m teachers’ ruler made for blackboard use. But you do you with the calipers.
Shows you how many metric rulers I’ve used… In my experience, most have four marks, at 2mm, 4mm, 6mm, and 8mm. Some have only had the 5mm mark. But searching for images, I can’t find any that look like the tapes I’m using, so my experience must not be the norm.
Well the main reason why the metric caught was there were many many mny versions of older systems in place. You may have heard a french inch was different then an English inch. But it was way more complex then just that.
Even in a single country different industries could all use a gallon but have it be different. Need 39 yards of rope for your ship? Well is that paris or vince yards? Also better remember the currency conversion.
Having one system was better since everyone could now agree on how long something was. This is also why metric time failed to catch on. Everyone agreed on days, weeks, years etc etc.
Bingo. That’s the true advantage of the metric system: everyone uses it. Unit conversion is a highly overrated function.
Metric time will only catch on if and when we adopt interplanetary travel and are no longer fundamentally tied to the rotation and revolution of a particular rock around a particular star.
