Comment on A metric tonne (1000 kg) should be called a megagram (1 Mg).
dandroid@dandroid.app 1 year agoAs an American, I understand that metric is better for a lot of things. It also would cost a metric fuck ton (ha!) of money to switch over, and it just really isn’t a priority when things work just fine for us here. It’s not like we are constantly running into problems that would be easier to solve by using metric, and the people in the few professions that do run into those problems frequently just use metric.
The original idea behind imperial units is actually quite nice. They used 12 inches in a foot because you could divide it in so many ways without using decimals. You can take 1/2 of it, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 without ever needing decimals. It’s great for mental math with small number. That obviously is no longer the most important thing anymore, as we all have calculators with us at all times, and we deal with much bigger numbers on average than they used 200 years ago.
We all still use 360° in a circle for this exact reason. It can be divided up in 22 different ways (excluding 1 and 360 as factors).
yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You can measure 1/2, 1/3, or 1/4 of a meter, why wouldn’t you? Also, seriously, those common fractions aren’t that hard in decimal. Everybody knows that 125 g is 1/8 kg.
That’s not the issue. The issue is that it’s not consistent between imperial units, you have a zoo of different subdivisions between units. You have 12 inches in a foot, three foot in a yard etc pp.
The issue is it gets really unwieldy in multiplication, 1 cubic ft is how many cubic inches… 1728, how convenient.
Tell me how much is 1/6 cubic ft in inches? How many cups are that? There goes your mental math.
(It is also a common misconception that imperial is „duodecimal“. It’s not. It’s counting to 12 in decimal. If you had a proper duodecimal system, „12“ * „12“ would make 100 not 144.)
And you also say 180°, 45°, 720°. Not 1/2, 1/8, 2.