“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” ― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
5 tomatoes
Submitted 3 weeks ago by ickplant@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/161b9c27-c875-4317-bdac-d3d1b9fc0030.jpeg
Comments
CAVOK@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
“High. You put the stove on high.”
TwoDogsFighting@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I love this quote.
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 2 weeks ago
I remember reading this quote a few years ago (probably Reddit), but I don’t remember if attribution was given. Kudos to you CAVOK.
Arcka@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
It might be funny if it were true, but it’s just a sad show of ignorance. It is exactly as possible in one as in the other for obvious reasons. It’s just not as easy to memorize.
To be specific:
- energy required to heat to boiling point 1180 kJ
- energy required to convert to vapor 8420 kJ
- energy required to heat to boiling point and convert to vapor 9600 kJ
CAVOK@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nobody said impossible, just that you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
Can’t we just agree that metric is superior?
Djehngo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only metric to imperial conversion I remember is kilometers to miles since it’s pretty close to the golden ratio.
Even if you don’t remember that the golden ratio is 1.6 and a bit, you can approximate it by using successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 …
So 8 miles is about 13km (actually 12.87)
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Its 2.54 cm to the inch. Its close to 2.5 and as an engineer in America I am stuck doing that conversion a lot
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If it makes you feel any better, most pipe standards around the world are based on the American system, as well as bloody valve coefficients.
I am far too aware that 1" is 25.4 mm :(
And I’m in Australia. Grumble
aarRJaay@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This has blown my mind
VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Fucking Dan Brown in the comment section
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
A meter is a Baker’s yard. 3 free inches!
Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I usually just go with 1.5 because adding half/subtracting a third is way easier to do in my head, and I’m not worried about a ~10% error in casual conversation.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
2.2 pounds per kilogram. For a rough conversion just multiply or divide by two. For a more precise conversation do the same thing, then wiggle a decimal and do it again.
notarobot@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Forma me it’s the yard. It’s so close to the meter its ridiculous. I just ignore the difference an treat as the same. One yard = 0.9144 meters
bryndos@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
A yard is about 1.4 litres in my book, or 2.1/2 pints - imperial pints mind, not US ones.
I'm not ignoring away that 20% difference; it's bad enough with all the fucking "pint to brim" glasses these days.
kamen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The only positive thing I see about imperial is that things are easily divisible by 3 and 6, but that’s about it. Then again, if doing the same with metric, you’re usually fine rounding to the nearest millimetre, and if that isn’t accurate enough, it’s probably not supposed to be done by hand anyway.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
It’s not nonsense, just old and focused on priorities that don’t matter anymore. A mile was initially a thousand paces. So you send a group of people out, one counts each time their right foot takes a step and after a thousand times they build a mile marker. Bam, roman road system. 1000 strides per mile, 5 feet per stride.
Later the English used the unit as part of their system of measurement, and built the furlong around it, which is the distance a man with an ox team and plow can plow before the ox need to rest. A mile is eight furlong. This got tied into surveying units, since plots of land were broken up into acres, or the amount of land an ox team can plow a day.
When some unit reconciliation needed to be done, they couldn’t change the vitality of oxen, and changing the survey unit would cause tax havock, so they changed the size of a foot.All the units and their relationships were defined deliberately and intentionally. They just factored in priorities that we don’t care about anymore.
chaonaut@lemmy.4d2.org 2 weeks ago
Because there’s a hidden system of measurement change hiding in the middle. Inches, Feet and Yards are familiar 12:1 and 3:1 conversions, and Rods, Chains, Furlongs and Miles. Their conversation rates are generally nice conversion, with rations of 4 rods : 1 chain, 10 chains : 1 furlong, and 8 furlongs : 1 mile.
So where do we get 5,280 with prime factors of 2^5, 3, 5 and 11? Because a chain is 22 yards long. Why? Because somewhere along the line, inches, feet and yards went to a smaller standard, and the nice round 5 yards per rods became 5 and 1/2 yards per rod. Instead of a mile containing 4,800 feet (with quarters, twelfths and hundredths of miles all being nice round numbers of feet), it contained an extra 480 feet that were 1/11th smaller than the old feet.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
If an alien species has 12 fingers to our 10, would they work in base 12 as normally as we use 10s? Like would their whole system end (or start) with a 0 or equivalent and not end all different?
My maths coherence is too high-school for this thinking, but now its in there.
bryndos@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I think a mile is specified in terms of 'chains' not really feet or yards.
Feet and yards are meant for measuring smaller stuff, like the size of a foot, or a courtyard.The 'chain' was a specific surveyors tool for measuring larger land areas. I imagine defined to be a length of physical chain practically manageable by the surveyor - probably pre-dating optical / triangulation methods before lenses got cheap.
I think an acre was then defined as 10 square chains or something.
But go back in time far enough and different jurisdictions have different lengths of standard chain, so different miles and acres derived from it. But it doesn't really matter because if you were buying land in Scotland, then you'd probably want to use a Scottish surveyor and his big long chain.
The nautical mile is then a whole other kettle of fish.
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Base 60 can do 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 12.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It’s funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it’s so accurate but in real life use it degrades to “close enough”. My main problem with metric is that I can’t get my pencil that sharp.
kamen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s accurate when you need it to be and gets out of the way when you don’t. And if you do need the accuracy, you have a unit that doesn’t need fractions.
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
How is “accurate” an argument?? You can use any unit with any amount of decimal places. The argument is that it’s regular. You learn the prefixes once and apply them to length, volume, weight, …
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The biggest argument for metric is that it’s consistent. It takes 1 calories to heat 1k of water by 1 degree. State something similar in imperial units.
BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Most standard measuring tapes have 1/16th of an inch as the smallest fraction on the tape. 1mm is 1/64th. Which is one is “close enough”? Lol
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Okay, but I don’t use a measurement system for close enough, I use a measurement system when I want to be precice.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’ve banged on about this at length before. I prefer woodworking in inches because I have to divide by 3 and 4 a lot more often than divide by 5. It turns out that the fractional inch system evolved alongside woodworking for a very long time and it solves a lot of the problems woodworkers actually face…as long as you’re not a European scraping in the dirt for something to feel superior about.
bryndos@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I do woodworking a bit too, but I normally just do the slanty ruler/tape trick to divide any straight parallel face into n equal lengths.
I hate all forms of mental arithmetic; I also avoid measuring as much as possible too. Maybe that's why everything i make is so shit.I guess if you're mass producing things you can't just manually mark off each and every part though - but even then I'd probably want to work to a template rather than to measure.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you want to convert between imperial units, going straight from feet to miles is impractical. You’d be better off knowing the chart of survey units, and they’re all small numbers so they’re easy to remember.
12 inches in a foot
3 feet in a yard
22 yards in a chain
10 chains in a furlong
8 furlongs in a mile
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
mst@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Remembering 12, 3, 22, 10 and 8 does indeed sound way easier than remembering 1000.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I know right? it’s such an intuitive system with a convenient unit for every scale you might want to work with.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Than remembering 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10; because metric has more measurements most people don’t use as well!
- 10 millimetres to a centimetre
- 10 centimetres to a decimetre
- 10 decimetres to a metre
- 10 metres to a decametre
- 10 decametres to a hectometre
- 10 hectometres to a kilometre
Rooty@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
Did the metric system kill your family or something?
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
You monster.
cute_noker@feddit.dk 2 weeks ago
How do you do weight measurements? I noticed a lot of Americans use grams
cute_noker@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
If Americans don’t stop the foot thing soon I will bring back the havoc and destruction of using local measure!!
en.m.wikipedia.org/…/German_units_of_measurement
No I will not define it. I will just tell you I ran 2/3 mile and that I am prussian, now you have to look it up, convert it to meters, convert that back to your mile and then you know what I am talking about.
Btw this mile is way easier to remember because a mile is 24000 feet.
guy@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Whose feet‽
philosloppy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
the only thing more aggravating than using imperial having to listen to all the complaining about how metric is better.
merc@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
My 2 main annoyances with the metric system:
First: The SI unit for mass is the kilogram. That’s fucking stupid. A kilogram is 1000 grams, the base unit for something can’t be “1000 of this other thing”
The second one isn’t really an issue with the metric system, it’s more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the “Watt Hour” for measuring energy use. You know, there’s already a way of measuring energy use: the “Watt Second”, also known as “The Joule”
foo@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
it’s more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the “Watt Hour” for measuring energy use.
Energy is just so important to physics and engineering that it will be measured in whatever unit is most convenient to convert in that particular context: joules as the SI unit, watt hours for electricity usage, calories for certain types of heat or food energy calculations, electron volts in particle physics, equivalent tonnes of TNT for explosion energy, things like that.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Or calories on packaging.
Or inches in Europe when talking about a screen from S. Korea, which was designed in cm to begin with.
taiyang@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not in defense of the imperial system, but if you’re curious why it’s so arbitrary, it’s a crazy story about untangling a ton of proprietary guild measurements. The mile itself isn’t quite proprietary (it was defined as 8 furlongs, and you can blame the English for ruining a perfectly good roman measurement) but they needed to make it a certain number of chains, rods, yards, and feet, plus a few other obscure measurements I forget about. Naturally that results in a stupid conversation rate (mostly vs yards and feet since it was basically a different system).
Why we still use it, dunno. I can see an argument for keeping feet and inches for things like carpentry (in the similar way I like hexadecimal in programming) but miles is not that. It’s about as logical as this point as fahrenheit, which is to say it’s outdated nonsense.
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why not just keep it simple and use the 5.4 microseconds * speed of light approximation? People just love making things overly complicated.
nexguy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Just remember God giving you a single grain of sand. “One thou sand”.
Not a easy to remember as 5 tomatoes.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
All units of measure are abstract.
I like metric because it’s structured around an abstract amount. Even something like Celsius is pretty abstract, because the freezing and boiling point of water changes depending on the atmospheric pressure. The measure of a second? Why is a second, 1 second long? Why is it 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of a day? There’s other stuff based on seconds too, like Hertz, which is literally “cycles per second”
I like to think about how abstract these things are, because if we were to ever try to communicate with a truly alien race, we couldn’t really use numbers, because their base numbering system would be different than ours, their symbols for numbers would be different, their entire understanding of math and how to calculate stuff could be wildly different, possibly because they understand things we do not. We couldn’t even say to them to communicate on a specific frequency of EM, because that frequency is based on Hertz, which is based on seconds, which is based on ??? IDFK (neither would they). We base everything we know on the world around us, and that’s entirely unique to earth. We make so many assumptions about how things are because we’ve only ever experienced life on this planet.
The only thing that kind of makes sense is how many days of the year there are, because it’s based on solid science about our solar system. It’s still unique to earth, but at least it makes sense on a larger scale. Everything else? Who the hell knows. Why is a meter as long as it is? Who defined this? Why? What abstract Earth-based thing was this based on that other societies of individuals would have no point of reference to relate to?
It’s wild we’ve made it this far, to be honest.
Anyways, I kind of got sidetracked… I guess all I’m really trying to say is that metric makes more sense than whatever the USA is doing. Even if it’s just as abstract in its conception.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Did someone say feet?
Octavio@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Fair, but I lived in Denver for 26 years. I will never forget the number of feet in a mile. 😂
brown567@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Oh, get off your high horse
Your basic unit for speed is m/s, but for most day-to-day purposes you use km/hr. The conversion between the two isn’t even an integer!
Not only that, but your system, by virtue of being decimal, inherits all the shortcomings of our quite flawed numbering system. You can’t divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
In my opinion, a good measuring system would make up for those shortcomings instead. It should be divisible by at least the numbers you can count on one hand. Decimal covers 2 and 5, so ideally the measurement unit would cover 3 and 4. So that would be a base 12 system. Technically 4, being 2², would be covered too, so 3 would do just fine. Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.
Gustephan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
Tikiporch@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Me watching a BBC TV show: “The suspects home is five miles away.”
shocked pikachu
Mobiuthuselah@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
I use both in my wood shop. Sometimes it’s easier to lay things out in metric or divide numbers, but other times it’s easier to remember an imperial number to go make a cut.
cristo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What about a nautical mile?
Flamekebab@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
antler@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
And to remember the number of yards in a mile: 1 San Francisco
One-seven-six-oh
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So whose foot exactly?
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I hate to point this out, and will likely be shunned for it - but it is base 12 and kinda easier.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it’s used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn’t be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is “new number name” if that’s all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I’m used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn’t mean much until I think about it like 800 million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head.
Angelusz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I count 8.
nonentity@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Metric is used from all around the world, but comes from a quarter of it.
smnwcj@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Metric will never recover from not being base-12. Ease of use and intuitiveness suddenly trumps "objective" design. We'd have metric time right now, smh.
tungsten5@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Ya know what. I like that tomato shit to remember the conversion. I like SI far more than US customary tho
angrystego@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s not helpful for us really distracted people. To remember a number, I must remember a smaller number. Damn, how many was it? Three tomatoes? Eight tomatoes?
Pulptastic@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Do we have meter cola?
hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I’m always disappointed that megameter isn’t a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.
Tyr_Raidho_Othala@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Make it a gigameter for my 1000 megameter needs
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
The only bad thing about metric is that billionaires technically do have giga dollars.
Klear@quokk.au 3 weeks ago
I'm a fan of light nanosecond, which works out to roughly 30 cm.
markz@suppo.fi 3 weeks ago
Infinitely cooler than a “foot”
exu@feditown.com 3 weeks ago
Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Can anyone say it isn’t? You’re using a valid prefix, so people will understand what you’re saying, if they have no idea in hell why you’re measuring out 1024 meters.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How about kilo-klick?
warm@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
I'm more disappointed the world renamed one thousand million from milliard to billion.
chellomere@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“the world”?
If you came over to the other side of the pond, you’d find that most of Europe is still using milliard, billiard, trilliard etc.
TeNppa@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
When translating to Finnish it’s confusing sometimes: Billion = miljardi = 1 000 000 000 Trillion = biljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 Quintillion = triljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Johanno@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Megameter gigameter,
Next thing is one astronomical unit.
And then we are using light years.
Not very linear those last two.
And I am sure that gigameters would still be better than light years.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
well neither astronomical unit nor light years use meters as a reference. and one of those isnt even accurate (AU)
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu 3 weeks ago
In Scandinavia we have “mil” which everyone uses, 1 mil, or Scandinavian mile as it is known in English, is 10km. Cuts down ln zeroes. I love this but no one else(outside of Scandinavia) uses it.I typically get a lot of pushback mentioning it to my international peers.
ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sweden and Norway only. Few people in Denmark know what a mil is. And virtually no one here uses it.
Yeah-yeah; something something Denmark. I know…
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
but there is already decameter
python@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Will they though? I don’t talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it’s about the distance between Paris and Berlin).
hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yes, every time I’ve ever heard someone use metric to describe distances of >999km, they keep using kilometers.
guy@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Sweden is quite long, so talking about traveling>1 000 km is not uncommon, but here we have mil, which is equal to 10 km. So on my vacation I traveled 120 mil is more useful and common
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Comes up a literal metric ass load (8 bushels) when your talking about travel in the USA.
We big
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)
People don’t say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?..
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 week ago
Especially with several thousand kilometres.
“Eleven mega metre” rolls off the tongue much better than “eleven thousands kilo metre” IMO.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ll never forgive the French for going from grave to gram to kg as the base unit of mass.
All my other base units don’t have a prefix :(
Such a pity.
BRING BACK THE GRAVE