Comment on A metric tonne (1000 kg) should be called a megagram (1 Mg).

• yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Sigh, here we go again…

  Yes YOU don’t do that. Because you can’t.

  Everybody in Europe can and does so. There’s nothing arcane or mysterious about the metric system. I have no issues telling you how many litres of water go into a 50 x 50 x 200 cm aquarium, or a pool with a 3.5 m diameter and 80 cm height. Good luck doing that with your inches and feet and quarts and gallons.

  There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter. Either you know how much it is or you don’t. Everybody knows what a meter is. For me it’s a large step. My arm from elbow to fingertips is 50 cm. Or 1/2 m… A sheet of paper is 30 cm (actually it’s 297 mm, but that’s another story), and so are rulers. Which, btw, is very close to a „foot“.

  Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.

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  • sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes YOU don’t do that. Because you can’t.

    I won’t argue that, its a flawed measurement system. My goal isn’t to show you why imperial is so much better than metric, because its obviously not. That doesn’t mean imperial is never useful though.

    There’s nothing „more useful“ about either a foot or a meter.

    They can both do the same job, but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you’re measuring. I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren’t priorities.

    Your foot btw most likely is not as long as a „foot“, and a small woman’s size is easily 20% off. And no, that’s not „in the ballpark“.

    We don’t literally measure it with our feet, that’s just what its called.

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    • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      but its more convenient to have smaller units depending on what you’re measuring.

      See, that’s what apparently many people don’t understand: with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs. It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between. There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.

      I find the size of a foot to be convenient for measuring things in casual situations where accuracy and precision aren’t priorities.

      Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial. You have a mental image of a „foot“ the same way I have a mental image of a ruler or a sheet of paper, i.e. 30 cm.

      I don’t really know what a litre is. I know what a beer bottle looks like, or a milk carton, the same way you know what a quart of milk looks like. Pour a quart on the floor and ask someone how much that is, they probably don’t know.

      We don’t literally measure it with our feet, that’s just what its called.

      Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.

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      • sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        with metric you don’t have „larger or smaller units“. You have one unit and you scale it to your needs.

        That’s the same thing, the units are just proportional.

        It’s not like we have „the meter“ and „the centimeter“ and have no clue what’s in between.

        I know, its just easier to say a foot than 30 centimeters. That’s why I use it in casual conversation, and not in anything important.

        There’s absolutely nothing more convenient about having multiple units for the same physical property.

        That’s not the part I’m saying is convenient.

        Again: There’s nothing more or less precise about metric or imperial.

        They can both be used to measure things precisely, but metric is more convenient in those situations usually. If I need to accurately measure something, I would use metric because the advantages of imperial are probably not applicable. If I’m just estimating and it doesn’t matter much, I’ll probably use imperial because I won’t have to do any conversions with that number, or anything else imperial struggles with.

        Oh, I definitely had other people tell me imperial is „more human“ because a foot is the size of your foot and an inch is the size of the tip of your thumb.

        Those people are wrong.

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• fubbernuckin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I wish decimeter was used more commonly. It kinda takes up the place of the imperial foot.

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• tunetardis@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Sometimes I think there was a missed opportunity in defining an easy conversion between inches and cm. It is 2.54 cm to 1". Why couldn’t it simply be 2.5? Then a 2x4 from the building supplier could simply be renamed a 5x10. 5.8x11.6 doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as well.

  My understanding is that the metre was inspired by nautical measures? So the distance from pole to equator along sea level is supposedly 10000 km. But that’s pretty approximate, and there is a more rigorous definition that involves the wavelength of a certain type of radiation. But that number is quite arbitrary-sounding. Couldn’t they have chosen it to line up with the imperial system at some level to aid migration? Anyway, that train has left the station and I’ll stop ranting now…

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  • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    At the time when the metric system was created, imperial units weren’t standardized at all, so if centimeters lined up with one definition of inch, they wouldn’t line up with the many other definitions anyway.

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    • tunetardis@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Point taken. Reading up on it on wikipedia, I love the the legal definition from 1814, wherein one inch = “three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row”.

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