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Also 1L water ~ 1kg
Just came here to nit-pick that the metric prefix for 103 is k and not K.
Case in point: Platinum melts around 2kK.
BUT THIS IS HOW WE ALWAYS DID IT
Ah yes, the reason I am teaching myself as an American adult the metric system
We were taught it in my rural red state elementary school in the '80s. Maybe because metrification seemed like a more real possibility, I guess.
Should be pretty easy to learn, right? I mean, that’s the whole point.
except for intuition formed from a lifetime of daily usage
I’m an American and every last bit of my shop is metric. It is the superior unit of measurement in every aspect. I don’t bother with imperial at all. If I have to list dimensions online in imperial, just multiply mm x 25.4 which gives me inches. That’s as far as Ill go into inches and feet.
I’ve said this before and Ill say it again, the US was robbed of the superior unit of measurement.
What temperature is the shop kept at?
Fahrenheit. Switching to Kelvin soon, tho. For shop temp accuracy!
So, from my perspective, your experience gives me the exact opposite view. The fact is: no one is stopping us. Anyone in American can use metric any time they want. We use Imperial a significant amount of time because it’s useful. Feet and inches are related to body parts. Kilometers are too small for our giant country. I design surgical tools, and I use metric. I design buildings, and I use feet and inches.
I don’t really think it’s slowing us down to have more than one system.
Lol. Dude, with all due respect, did you skip breakfast or something? First, body parts? Take a drink of water, please. You’re dehydrated. Also, although I agree imperial isn’t completely useless, one of its strengths is not because the size of the contental United States. It’s not like miles and kilometers are orders of magnitude different when measuring an identical distance. Lightyears and astronomical units are terrible units to use to describe a drive from LA to NYC for this reason, but is it really that big if a deal between choosing miles and kilometers? I don’t see it that way.
The main reason why I use metric with my work is because I commonly deal in millimeters / sub-inches. If I used inches, everything would be shitty fractions and I hate fractions. To me, metric is just cleaner when increasing or decreasing magnitudes. Which I generally stay within cm and mm.
Within industrial applications, such a building a structure in the US, yeah, it makes sense to stick ti imperial because it is indeed the national unit of measurement. But outside that reason, I don’t find much of a benefit. Coincidentally, I moved off grid 3 weeks ago and am building a cabin way out in the woods. Because its just me and I plan to stay here until my end, I’ll definitely use metric. If I was just developing a place I intended to flip, I’d use Imperial singularly because I’m in the US.
Ad hominim attacks. The bread and butter of Lemmy.
I don’t think you read my response. I wasn’t attacking you at all. I’m not one of those mean shits on here. I certainly meant no aggression.
I don’t really think it’s slowing us down to have more than one system
Say that to the Mars Climate Orbiter
You still have to know which system you’re using, obviously.
Which would not ever be an issue if you knobheads just switched to metric.
Kilometers are too small for our giant country.
Fortunately for NASA, space is actually smaller than the USA. Otherwise km would be totally unworkable.
I’m guessing that you have to use meters instead of yards when designing tall buildings? Yards would be too small for most skyscrapers.
The reasonable reaction I’ve come to expect from Lemmy users.
Uh, I’m pretty sure you divide mm/25.4 to get inches.
Yes. I misspoke. Millimeters ÷ 25.4= inches. Inches x 25.4 = mm.
Sorry. I just thought it was funny in the context of a post about how it’s hard to remember all the conversions for imperial.
Thank you for your efforts!
I like metric weight for cooking (on the rare occasion I make something that involves careful measuring, and for my bread making) and MILES can fuck right off, km are fine for measuring long distance. And fine with meters, cm for short distance.
But I do like how feet are 12 inches, because 12 is so evenly divisible, and like that a gallon splits in half and half again and again until you get cups. It’s like RAM,
Cup is 8 oz
Pint is 16 oz
Quart is 32 oz
Half Gallon is 64 oz
Gallon is 128 oz.
That doubling sequence is satisfying.
Your 16 oz pints are a pathetic 455ml. Europeans have 500ml.
Meanwhile a true UK pint is 568ml.
You can see why we cling to Imperialism.
specifically woodworking I like doing in inches, because 12. For the tasks I often do in the wood shop, fractional inches work well.
I’m confortable working in both systems, but I build furniture in inches.
In metric, the 12 really isn’t important anymore which kinda invalidates that. We normally go to the nearest mm or, if needed, some fraction of that (not normally needed in my life at least)
One of the many failures of American public education system that I was subjected to. It’s speaks volumes about how normalized exceptionalism is in this country.
“Oh, the measurement standard the rest of the world uses? You don’t need to learn that. You’re an American, so people from other countries will just accomodate you because they want to be like us.”
I was taught the metric system in American elementary school.
I don’t doubt it. My elementary education out in East Bumfuck, New Hampshire in the late 80s/early 90s wasn’t exactly top notch. My third grade teacher taught us that the appendix was located in the leg and banned certain books and items from the classroom for being “satanic”.
Funny, by stereotype the North is supposed to be ahead of the South, yet I got a decent education in North Carolina in the 90’s and early 00’s.
Rural areas of New England are pretty ass-backwards. If you want a decent education, you basically need to live in the Boston Metro area or the seacoast.
Americans are really falling behind these day in all the metrics 😂
One of the most annoying things in the world are American websites that claim to sell internationally but they only offer USD and all provided measurements are in American imperial.
Right up there with online stores that only have boxes for “state” and “zip code” even if the selected country doesn’t use those.
We actually use both. Imperial is easier to break into 3rds, but can still break down into other bases easily without any irrational numbers. Metric is more useful for science, but my mom who does landscaping prefers Imperial for her designs because it’s not stuck in base-10.
Europeans are the ones who refuse to learn more than one system lol
It annoys me so much that a small decision could have had me growing up with metric.
Damn Tucker Carlson must’ve stumbled upon this post. Someone should tell him that Russians use metric.
Being purposefully stupid and arrogant about it is the single most American thing.
Growing up in the Metric environment, I only have to deal with the Imperial system very rarely before the Internet. But later, I found out there’s a whole country that only use Imperial, and that they almost always demand you convert your system to the one they understand, and almost never bothered with Metric when they write anything. But then again, I found out that they also use units that are totally novel. I just have to accept that this is the character of them, and continue using Metric.
Probably. Because their understanding of metric is next to none. So they don’t even know what to convert it to. We also often take for granted with that we grow up with.
It wasn’t until I was 25 that I realized woodworking and sewing, isn’t part of the normal elementary school curriculum abroad.
It’s far from easy for someone that grew up in a different system to get a good reference of what different units feel like. It’s the kind of change you need multiple new generations for.
The only reference Americans have for metric is 9mm
The only reference Americans have for metric is 9mm
Way to show your ignorance. We also buy our soda in liters.
It’s because they believe they’re so exceptional that everything that works for the rest of the world doesn’t work for them.
That includes not only the metric system but also things like healthcare, student debt and gun control.
There is no country that only uses Imperial. Americans use grams for weed. And technically what the US uses is called US Customary. Some units are different from Imperial. Funny thing is both Imperial and US Customary are legally defined in metric.
Yeah measures like a foot were never standardized across countries using imperial before napolean introduced metric, as the french foot was 13 inches or so, making napolean at least as tall as putin and not the 5 1 under that measure.
I’m having way too much fun with refusing to convert to or even learn that abomination of a system. Whenever a Murrican starts a conversation with inches, feet, ellbows or whatever I ask them what they mean and whether they can convert that to real units please.
Middle Earth?
This thread is full of middle schoolers who don’t realize that you can measure things in whatever system you want, regardless of country. The whole premise of this circlejerk is faulty.
You can but there are real examples where mixing units results in failure. NASA lost a 125 million dollar mars probe in 1999 because JPL and NASA use metric but Lockheed Martin added acceleration data in American imperial units.
It might be a circle jerk but it is also best practice to use a standard system and there’s really only one holdout on not using that system. I say this as an American who wishes people would just use metric because it’s just easier unless you just fucking love fractions of an inch.
Your example of not mixing systems up within projects is somewhat valid, but not applicable to the whole. There are a lot of uses for Imperial, and using Imperial in landscaping does not have a chance of causing catastrophic failure in rocket science.
There are a lot of uses for Imperial
Other than it being “cultural” and laziness there’s no point in keeping imperial. Stop using an obsolete system so we Canadians can switch our stoves to Celsius without having to worry about you yanks cooking with our equipment and hurting yourselves.
I’m going to use metric for height and weight. I don’t care if some wanker American complains they can always head south if they want or visit Liberia for a getaway, get with the times already.
The metric system, base 10, is not easily breakable into thirds without irrational numbers. In aesthetic fields, such as landscaping or interior design, the ability to break something into exact thirds, quarters, halves, fifths, sixths, and so on, is invaluable. It’s not just cultural. It sounds like it is to you, which is weird… why are you personally identifying with a unit of measurement?
I also don’t understand your Liberia reference. Could you elaborate?
Liberia, until 2018, used the imperial system. They were one of three countries that used the imperial system, Myanmar being the third one. They are currently in the process of using metric, but it appears they are using both for now.
Not sure why you can only go to Liberia, I’m sure you can buy a meter stick when you arrive in Europe.
Man, we should all just use the same currency so we don’t have to do all these crazy conversions! Maybe we all start just using the US dollar? /s
I was just explaining the Liberia part of the comment, I was not the commenter. I am American and like both metric and imperial. I prefer metric for baking and applications where higher precision is useful, but use imperial for most other things since that is what is commonly used around me.
anyone can do whatever on their own, but if it affects anyone else than that one person its not just that one person’s business. I cant see the insistence of using imperial system as anything else than america has used it in the past, and therefore its american system and because america is the best it must be the best system to use and to claim anything else is to hate america.
I’m sorry that you can’t seem to see it any other way, but that is just not reality. The imperial system has many uses that the metric system is not apt for.
for example?
Base 10 measurement systems such as the metric system cannot divide distances into thirds or sixths without creating irrational numbers. This can be a problem for interior designers and landscape designers, for instance, who regularly need to create drafts for projects that break up measurements that way. The imperial system is more versatile in this particular instance because you can break a foot into 12 inches, which is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (yes, still wouldn’t be irrational), and 6. Much more versatile when your contractor needs to actually go out and make a measurement in the real world. While metric could be “good enough” for that purpose, it is not the most ideal.
i’d say its still easier to just choose desired level of precision with 3.333333333 than deal with imperial’s conversion maddness, even if you can divide them evenly. I guess imperial is ok if you dont ever have to use it with any other system, but lack of combitability is quite isolationist.
With imperial, every unit is like it’s own singular instance where in metric each unit is part of the system. Trying to convert between them seems like a nightmare (i dont want to even try, but i assume those who use imperial just have to.)
Like, how many inches are on 1000 miles? Try to convert that exactly in your head without using calculator or paper and within 10 seconds. How many square feet are on 37 acres? How much does 5,5 gallons of water weigh in stones?
Or lets say we have container with measurements of 3x3x3 inches (i’ll be merciful and use same unit for each dimension) MysteryLiquid™ (use calculator for this one if you try to calculate it) with density of 3,337 pounds / …perch…? or more commonly 0,00625 acres (not many area units in imperial). How much does the MysteryLiquid™ in the container weigh in stones?
In metric the density would be about 301 kg/m3.
3 inches is 0.0762 metres so container would be 0.07623 which is 0,000442450728m3 which is 442.450728 cm³
So m =p x V = 301kg x 0.000442m3 = 0.133kg, try calculating that whole thing in imperial, using crazy different units without ripping out your hair. I used sensible units for metric in this one, but i could have used nanograms, mm3 and decimeters instead and it would just mildly inconvenience me when calculating, and also produce way bigger numbers but at least the conversion factors would remain same.
Not being able to divide some measurements in even numbers is very small price to pay for being able to calculate things more easily.
You can use both without using them in the same project. Yes, I understand how conversions work.
You can make the same argument going the other way. Isn’t is complicated to go from metric to imperial? May as well just use imperial! See, it’s not a good argument.
well my point was to make those calculations using only imperial units, not randomly go between metric and imperial. Metric calculation was there to just illustrate how it would go using metric units.
“1 brick equals about 1kg” - Plain. Boring. No pizazz.
“1 brick equals about 37 baby chicks.” - Fun. Whimsical. Oozing pizazz.
Ah, you need The Reg online standards converter
So, a 1kg brick = 0.1149 Adult Badger
I did not know this page. Thanks for the link. This is so 100% The Register! Shoutout to the team from the “guy with the open university style beard” ;-)
Everytime I see one of these posts I have to make the same comment. The US is metric, everywhere that it matters. In the military, in the medical field, and in the scientific field. The ONLY reason we haven’t converted every other part of our lives to metric is that our country is 50 times the size of the average European country. Do you know how expensive it would be to replace the infrastructure we’ve built and maintained over the past 200 years? The tax payers could not handle that burden, and it would require every state to agree to the terms of the change for a total conversion.
At this point, it is just part of our identity. It would be like asking the French to eat day old bread. They could, but why?
I have seen US companies try, but it is so slow.
We did customs tooling. In the 80s 90s it was inch sizing and inch components. Late 90s still inch tooling but Metric components, and so drawings would have REAM for .236 Dowel ( instead of 6mm) LOL In mid 2000s tooling was metric sized as long as it was close to a purchasable inch size from the steel foundary. So block would be 608mm wide, to order a 24" block.
So 2025 mostly you can see places working full metric.
Then there are places I have worked recently that still use Fractional inch on projects and then wonder why assembly problems arise. Like design intent is 8.541 and maybe clearance to adjacent part has to be .039". Drawing has 8 9/16 + 1/32, so not only is sizing wrong compared to mating part, the fractional inch means dude uses a tape measure by eye, rather than a 3 place decimal measure tool. It’s such a mess.
It’s also that imperial uses body measurements for basic stuff. Your foot is about a foot long, so you can pace off distances. One yard is about the length from your collarbone to the opposite wrist, so I can roughly measure fabric quickly. From your fingertip to the crook of your thumb is about five inches, and the knuckles on your fingers are about an inch apart.
I used to do industrial embroidery at an immigrant-owned shop, and the boss switched from metric to imperial because measuring a couple inches with your fingers is faster than finding a meter stick and measuring centimeters exactly. When you’ve got multiple inches in your margin for error, there is no need for the precision of metric, and the speed of imperial just makes more sense.
But it’s really easy. Wanna know how many inches are in a mile? One inch is 0.0254 m. One mile is 1609.344 m. 1609.344 / 0.0254 is 63360. There.
But what if there are no inches in that mile, only yards? Or parsec? Oh, wait…
or just eagle elbows
i tooked astronomy in college a while ago, to know how long is 1 parsec.
I’ve never wanted to know how many of any unit are in a mile. It’s just something I’ve never had reason to care about. So there’s 1000 meters in a kilometer. That’s just trivia to me. There’s no need to know that.
Wanna know how many inches are in a mile?
No. Nobody wants to know that. Nobody needs to know that.
Nobody needs a measurement with a magnitude of a mile to the precision of an inch. And if they did, they’d either measure the whole length in inches or decimal miles, not some bullshit multiple-unit travesty.
Ya’ll are solving a problem that never existed in the first place.
Railways? Large tunnels? Bridges?
Show me.
If I’m building a railroad, I’m going to need mm precision in laying sleepers and rail, sure. But I’m not particularly interested in km magnitude while I’m driving spikes.
If I’m driving a train over that rail, I’m interested in km lengths, but I can tolerate several hundreds of meters of imprecision in those measurements. No need to convert to meters, let alone mm for that measurement.
The closest I’ll come to needing both km magnitude and mm precision is in figuring out how much material to order.
But, when I do that, what I will actually be converting isn’t length to length. I’ll be figuring out how many sleepers per km, how many rail segments per km, how many buckets of spikes per km. None of those will be simple metric unit conversions.
But, when I do that, what I will actually be converting isn’t length to length. I’ll be figuring out how many sleepers per km, how many rail segments per km, how many buckets of spikes per km. None of those will be simple metric unit conversions.
This is actually the primary strength of imperial and the impetus behind most of its conversion ratios. Base 10 is just terrible for being divided. But if you have a mile of railroad, you can place your rail and stakes regularly at almost any foot-length and come out even.
Exactly. Our base-ten number system is cursed. A base-twelve metric system would be gorgeous. Our existing clocks would already be metric.
In addition to scaling by “10” (pronounced “ten”), current Metric Rulers commonly scale by 2 when going from centimeter to 1/2 centimeter markings, or by 5 when going from cm to 2mm markings, depending on the degree of precision required. Rarely do rulers actually scale from cm to 1mm. You typically need calipers to make measurements smaller than 2mm.
With base-twelve, we’d still be able to scale by “10” (pronounced “twelve”), but we’d also be able to scale by 2, 3, 4, or 6.
Well the main reason why the metric caught was there were many many mny versions of older systems in place. You may have heard a french inch was different then an English inch. But it was way more complex then just that.
Even in a single country different industries could all use a gallon but have it be different. Need 39 yards of rope for your ship? Well is that paris or vince yards? Also better remember the currency conversion.
Having one system was better since everyone could now agree on how long something was. This is also why metric time failed to catch on. Everyone agreed on days, weeks, years etc etc.
Bingo. That’s the true advantage of the metric system: everyone uses it. Unit conversion is a highly overrated function.
Metric time will only catch on if and when we adopt interplanetary travel and are no longer fundamentally tied to the rotation and revolution of a particular rock around a particular star.
I always assumed 1km = 0.6 miles because all all of the car guys yapping about 0-100 and 0-60. Good enough, tbh. Inch is 2.5cm, and there are 12 of them in a foot for some reason. Pint is slightly less than half a liter, pound is slightly less than half a kilo, and anyone mentioning stones gets stoned to death. Simple enough.
Just wait until you try to understand American cooking recipes. Cups everywhere! My favorite was “A cup of spinach”, without any mentioning if they were talking about fresh spinach (losely or densily packed) or cooked/frozen one.
I always assume there’s absolutely no point in expending brain cells to store this information and therefore exclusively deal in metric. (Except for DnD for some reason, but that’s also about to change)
