@Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social
2026-10-17 12:50 UTC
Replies (14)
-
@gastroglizzy@piefed.social 2026-10-17 13:00
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). 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. The US agreed to switch to the metric system centuries ago, but the ship carrying the official units sank on the way over.
-
@Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-10-18 03:54
I want this but with diet coke.
-
@SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-10-17 23:45
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. Imperial doesn’t care about how many units of energy it takes to boil x quantity of water at y elevation pressure etc, and that’s the whole point, it’s about how many approximately hands tall is this horse. You look at your hand, look at the horse, and go “about 15”. If you want to know exactly how tall a horse is, relative to human height, you use feet and inches. Everything has its own, weird systems of measurement that got made up over time, organically relative to other human approximation. Metric if you want standardization and exactness and conversion, but imperial works fine as long as you know of the units, because we make up our own units that make sense. Like, the south park kouric unit is an example. It doesn’t matter what the unit is derived from, you just need to know is it ten or eleven or twelve, because the units are relative to us, not how many units of energy it takes to heat a cubic meter of water to boiling at exactly one atmosphere, because that’s insane. Cool, and converts well and is universal, but the numbers don’t really mean anything. I really think context matters, and if you work well with metric for everything - fantastic. If you work well with imperial - great. They’re just different systems for different purposes for different situations.
-
@Omnipitaph@reddthat.com 2026-10-18 04:00
Having read a good portion of the comments in this thread and the anti-american sentiment attached, I am convinced that the only reason the US isn’t wholly metric at this point is out of spite. I know the actual reason is that it would cost too damn much to convert all the infrastructure we’ve built in imperial, but now I just want the USA to keep kicking everyone in the balls at the Olympics, in the military, and with global corporate supremacy just to own it to the world that they’re better than all of you AND they use imperial.
-
@brown567@sh.itjust.works 2026-10-17 21:17
Found out recently that a fluid ounce of water doesn’t weigh an ounce, and that makes me mad
-
@huquad@lemmy.ml 2026-10-17 13:42
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.
-
@ReCursing@feddit.uk 2026-10-17 14:18
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”
-
@heh@lemmy.world 2026-10-18 04:43
My favourite part of the metric system is that it it’s water weight being 1-1 with volume; measuring liquids is super easy with a scale.
-
@Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 2026-10-18 04:48
a gallon of water boils in 10 minutes on a whirlpool electric range in turbo mode
-
@spicytuna62@lemmy.world 2026-10-17 13:20
Violet Huh. I must have missed this book in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
-
@BitUnWise@programming.dev 2026-10-17 23:58
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
-
@uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-10-18 03:06
When I learned the consistency (synergy?) between metric measures, I thought that was so amazing. In the olden days sciencey types and engineers kept fact books listing such relations. They had a specific name that escapes me. Before handheld calculators, they also kept books of pre-calculated mathematical operations, so they were used to having numbers books around.
-
@agent_nycto@lemmy.world 2026-10-18 15:21
Funny how the French got the calculations wrong for the entire basis of metric though.
-
@laz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-10-19 06:52
I have got bad news for you your HOA sounds like communist scum good news is you can CIA for a coup they are probably hiding in the bushes your HOA is smoking