Ya know what. I like that tomato shit to remember the conversion. I like SI far more than US customary tho
5 tomatoes
Submitted 6 months ago by ickplant@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/161b9c27-c875-4317-bdac-d3d1b9fc0030.jpeg
Comments
tungsten5@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Angelusz@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I count 8.
brown567@sh.itjust.works 6 months 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.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 6 months ago
Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard
That is not the win you think it is since metric only has one unit, the meter, to begin with so no conversion needed at all. 12 meters in 12 meters, three meters in three meters.
Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
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.
What’s more 0.203 cm or 0.291 cm? How about 3/8" or 19/64"?
How far is 1/3 of a mile? 1/3 km is 333m. How about 1/9? 1/9 km is 111m How long is 10 x 5/16"? 10 x 3.1cm is 31cm
Yeah, a foot breaks down easy in whole inches with many factors, but that’s about it
Twelve20two@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
You can also count on your finger joints (excluding thumbs) for base 12, too
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Okay so to fuck us all over we can go to base 9.
We can divide evenly by 1,3,9. But actually remember:
1/9 - .11111
2/9 - .2222
…
8/9 - .8888
So easily divisable right? /s
nonentity@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Metric is used from all around the world, but comes from a quarter of it.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 6 months 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.
cute_noker@feddit.dk 6 months ago
How do you do weight measurements? I noticed a lot of Americans use grams
EmilieEasie@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
Nutrition is in grams on purpose to be confusing to a population corpos knew weren’t really raised with it. By 9th grade all Americans have studied the metric system for science class, but it never really becomes intuitive for most people whereas we can hear “a cup of sugar, oh wow that’s a LOT of sugar for just one pitcher of liquid” without doing any in-head conversions
glitchdx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Weight is in pounds. Only pounds. don’t ask me how much a gram or a ton is.
Volume, though, I still remember “Gallon Man” from 1st grade.
2 cups in a pint
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon
What’s after gallons? not a clue.
bier@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Drugs are done in grams i think
ebolapie@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We use both. Body weight is in pounds, but nutrition is in grams.
In general we use metric more for smaller, more precise weights and imperial for everything else. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone measure anything except cocaine in kilograms.
Rooty@lemmy.world 6 months 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?
mst@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Remembering 12, 3, 22, 10 and 8 does indeed sound way easier than remembering 1000.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 6 months 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
glitchdx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I know right? it’s such an intuitive system with a convenient unit for every scale you might want to work with.
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
You monster.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The dark side can be a pathway to many abilities some might consider … stupid.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months 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”
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 6 months 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.
foo@feddit.uk 6 months ago
I am glad someone else has noticed this. Why is my TV’s power consumption reported in kWh/1000 hours?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Because your power is billed in kWh. Figuring out the kWh cost of a 77 watt TV is straight forward, but a lot of consumer labeling standards are about quick and easy side by side comparisons as opposed to perfect application of units. Easiest way to give a comparison that’s accurate enough and doesn’t involve odd numbers is to convert that way.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Urgh. There’s a unit for that, it’s WATTS. That’s literally 77 Watts.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months 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.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I don’t believe that “watt hours” are more convenient than joules, especially when they’re not just watt hours but kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. At that point just use megajoules or gigajoules.
I can understand things like eV where the scale is so different that you’d have to constantly use tiny and unusual prefixes. But, for most other things like calories, it’s just tradition rather than a well thought out reason.
Mobiuthuselah@mander.xyz 6 months 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.
philosloppy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
the only thing more aggravating than using imperial having to listen to all the complaining about how metric is better.
cristo@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What about a nautical mile?
angrystego@lemmy.world 6 months 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?
madjo@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Was it even tomatoes? Maybe it was potatoes?
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months 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.
toddestan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’d assume that if we are ever communicating with aliens and trying to figure out each other’s way of expressing numbers and doing math, dimensionless constants like pi, Euler’s number (e), the fine structure constant, etc. will be important first steps. As you say, our units of measure are purely human inventions. But the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is the same no matter what units you use to make the measurement.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I like you.
These are all good points. Thank you.
oneofmany@lemmy.world 6 months ago
…which is based on seconds, which is based on ??? IDFK (neither would they)
“The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δν~Cs~, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.” www.bipm.org/en/si-base-units/second
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
I don’t think that was the idea when the second was created.
The solar rotation cycle is naturally divided into 365 rotations of Earth (give or take), each daily rotation was divided into 24 segments called hours, each hour was further divided into 60 units called minutes, and each minute was then further divided into 60 units which we call seconds.
In the modern era, we have refined how we measure a second by a very stable natural phenomenon, the emissions of cesium (which we also refer to as an “atomic” clock). But we got there first by dividing one of Earth’s rotations by 86400. It just so happens that 9 192 631 770 oscillations from cesium also equals 1/86400th of one rotation of Earth.
Additionally, neither a “second” nor even “one rotation of Earth” would have any meaning to someone who has never been to earth before.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
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
The neat thing about math is it’s built upon universal truths that exist independently of how you describe them. 1+1=2 regardless of how you represent those numbers. Even among humans we have plenty of different ways of describing numbers.
Also, the best thing about science is that physics works the way it does regardless of how you describe it. An atom of hydrogen will always have the same spectral peaks, regardless of what units you describe those peaks in.
It’s these kinds of things we consider when trying to communicate with aliens. Take a look at:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
These messages will probably never be received, even if there is intelligent life out there. But if something intelligent does find these messages, they will probably determine they are artificial, and hopefully manage to decode some of it.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
See, this is all fascinating for me. I love this stuff.
It’s also a good exercise in recognizing the assumptions we make every day. I’m trying to get to a point where I can articulate my thoughts and I don’t have to struggle through the curse of knowledge.
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I think one useful comparison would be to convert their measurement of the speed of light to our measurement and vice versa. They will use different units of distance and time, but the values themselves will be proportional unless they live in a black hole.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
That could work for velocities, but any measure of distance is based on our notion of time, like “light year” (the distance light can travel in one rotation of the Earth around the sun), which is relative.
Even an AU is the distance from Earth to our sun.
To be fair, we don’t really have another point of reference with which to measure stuff.
A good way to portray distance could be a blip the length of time it would take light to travel that far. Like an RF signal that lasts as long as it would take for light up travel from one edge of an object to the other edge of the object.
… It’s a difficult problem to try to solve even as a mental exercise.
Tikiporch@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Me watching a BBC TV show: “The suspects home is five miles away.”
shocked pikachu
bignate31@lemmy.world 6 months ago
there’s a very important video on the measurement rules in the UK, if you haven’t seen it: www.instagram.com/reel/DNh9z3IzG8t/
antonamo@feddit.org 6 months ago
Without seeing it let me guess: If it is serious --> metric units and if you want to confuse customers --> imperial
Pulptastic@midwest.social 6 months ago
Do we have meter cola?
CAVOK@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“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
Arcka@midwest.social 6 months 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 6 months ago
Nobody said impossible, just that you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
Can’t we just agree that metric is superior?
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online 6 months 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.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
“High. You put the stove on high.”
TwoDogsFighting@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I love this quote.
antler@feddit.online 6 months ago
And to remember the number of yards in a mile: 1 San Francisco
One-seven-six-oh
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I just remember that a mile has 1000 strides in it.
antler@feddit.online 6 months ago
Of course. I was trying to make something less useful than knowing the strides in a mile.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 6 months ago
At first I thought that’s how Americans measure it - in San Franciscos. But given how “San Francisco” doesn’t sound like “One seven six oh” I’m not sure if they don’t.
antler@feddit.online 6 months ago
It's not a good tip, but this is how I hear it:
1: One
San Fran: Seven
Cisc: Six
O: OhI just came up with it off the cuff, but I may use it going forward. I've never been able to remember feet or yards in a mile.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So whose foot exactly?
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Some European king or another. We didn’t invent the system, we just decided it was too expensive to bother with changing it.
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Cousin Merle’s (including toenails).
Dojan@pawb.social 6 months ago
Could also be his dad’s feet, but then it’s only the toenails.
Octavio@lemmy.world 6 months ago
[deleted]ickplant@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Heeey, I’m currently living in Northglenn. Same, it’s forever etched in my memory.
HoopyFrood@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
What the heck does this mean? Is the number 5280 just painted all over billboards in Denver?
Flamekebab@piefed.social 6 months 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.
deltapi@lemmy.world 6 months ago
We kind of do have metric inches, insofar as machinists work in 'thou’s (thousands of an inch) But that’s kind of specialist
antler@feddit.online 6 months ago
Thousandths of an inch are also used in some engineering applications and are called "mils." Not to be confused with millimeters.
colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Why not say ‘2-3 cm’ for the first one? Or ‘a couple centimeters’? It doesn’t feel too different from saying ‘about an inch’ to me
Flamekebab@piefed.social 6 months ago
It's to do with how I think about numbers, rounding, and margins of error. I don't know how to express that better, I'm sorry.
I was not raised using inches for anything. It's not a cultural thing, it's a use case I've found them useful for.
kameecoding@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Taking it even further who the fuck uses inches or cms for vegetable cutting measurements anyway, it’s like, one or two fingers thick
nexguy@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Just remember God giving you a single grain of sand. “One thou sand”.
Not a easy to remember as 5 tomatoes.
Gustephan@lemmy.world 6 months 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
Bahnd@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The feet to mile conversion is still in base-10… Its the ratios between the units that are seemingly arbitrary. Come on…
Gustephan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
This comment brought to you by a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to use a different base numeral
Spezi@feddit.org 6 months ago
What a weak argument. You shouldn’t have to be good at math to do basic calculations in daily life. Metric is much more accessible in this regard. Even if you lack math skills it is easy to understand.
Gustephan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Did you read the words I wrote? It looks like youre responding to a “imperial units are better than metric” strawman which you may notice I didnt say or even allude to
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
I hate to point this out, and will likely be shunned for it - but it is base 12 and kinda easier.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Found the Summerian astronomer.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 6 months 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.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
It helps to memorize million and billion both ways since those are what you’ll be using most, and are good signposts.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Yeah I’m sure it’s not as difficult as I’m making it out to be but it never seems to stick. It’s just as simple as 2 numbers: “million = 100 ten thousands” (hyaku-man) and “billion = 10 hundred millions” (juu-oku).
Let’s just say there a lot of frustrations I have with the language even after decades of studying.
kamen@lemmy.world 6 months 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.
daggermoon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Did someone say feet?
taiyang@lemmy.world 6 months 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.
smnwcj@fedia.io 6 months 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.
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Why not just keep it simple and use the 5.4 microseconds * speed of light approximation? People just love making things overly complicated.
Djehngo@lemmy.world 6 months 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)
cute_noker@feddit.dk 6 months 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.
cheloxin@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I’ve never once had to convert miles to feet or vice versa in nearly 40 years (besides a couple test questions in school). It’s a total non issue in the whole SI vs US system debate