this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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I may get a lot of flack for this, but here is my perspective as someone with over 20 years experience as a machinist in the US. Over the course of my career, I have become more than comfortable using metric, imperial, and us custimary units.
For science? Metric is fantastic. For literally everything else - us customary is faster, easier, more understandable, and actually more approachable in terms of trying to actually build something.
Let's start with simply building something as the first example. Fractions, (and angles relative to fractions) are more intuitive to work with, faster, and overall easier to work with than decimal equivalents. One could easily spend more time trying to measure 1.905 cm vs very quickly dividing 1 into 3/4".
Furthermore, units are just that. An arbitrarily agreed upon measurement. None of them make any "more sense" than any other. If the Royal Society had agreed on a hogs head as a standard unit of volume, we'd likely still be using it.
I may be rambling at thus point. However, my entire point here is that there is objectively no such thing as a superior unit of measure. They are all made up and have uses that they are best suited for.
If the standard is written in Metric, the factory that makes the parts uses metric, and the place where the parts are used uses metric, why don't they just use 2cm screws instead?
Your argument for the convenience of imperial is that the standard uses imperial. No shit. It would be just as hard to cut something to 0.787" inches if the standard were in metric.
Also the reason metric makes more sense is I don't need a calculator to convert centimeters to kilometres. You need a calculator to convert inches to miles. AND you have to memorise the conversion factor! What a waste of brainpower
Yes, obviously dozenal metric is better than decimal metric, but decimal metric is better than imperial.
Where Metric really shines is conversion between unlike units. In Metric, the equation for voltage is V=IR, and it's so convenient Imperial didn't bother to make their own version of it, so americans use metric for electricity. I can use kilograms and meters to calculate force, while you silly americans have to convert inches and pounds into different pounds using a conversion factor. Then I can use meters again to get pascals, or I can use meters differently to get joules. You're stuck using a conversion factor to get calories. Then I can use seconds to get watts, and we're back in electricity territory where you fools have to convert over to our measurements to keep up. Metric is awesome!
That was also part of my point. I am tired of people trying to impose one unit or series of units being superior when they are all just made up.
The reason metric makes sense is because its standard, and 90% of the world uses it. Being the odd one out just causes problems in the long term, especially as we move towards a more globalized world.
More then 90%, there are only 3 countries who don't.
This is where the French messed up not using base 12. We could have had the best of both worlds.
This. Base 10 sucks because it's harder to evenly divide. People give imperial a bunch of shit because the conversion factors are weird (and they really are), but have no problem with time units which are even more fucked up. We use a metric-like system for measuring units smaller than a second (milli, micro, nano seconds), but then there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, etc etc. The Gregorian calendar doesn't even have a simple conversion between things like days and months! It depends on the fucking month!
Time up to days isn't even that bad - it's just base 60 because we get that part from ancient Mesopotamians who liked base 60 for the same reasons people like 12 (but maybe went a little overboard?). Since 12 is a factor of 60, going to base 12 would make hours-minutes-seconds jive better with other numbers. Only changing to base 12, a half day would be written as 10 hours, full day 20 hours. An hour as 50 minutes. A minute as 50 seconds.
I think there's no helping higher than that - there's no relation between months and days or months and years - they're separate cycles that we just smushed together one day and refuse to separate. And days and years aren't related in a convenient integer. Some things would coincidentally work out - 2 years could be written as 20 months - but for the most part there's no way to line it up nicely.
What is your professional opinion on decimal feet? I had to use such a measuring tape at work, it took me half a day to figure out what was going on with that abomination.
Edit: to clarify, feet were divided in 10 units, not 12, so one and a half feet was at the "5" mark between 1 and 2 ft, not the "6" mark.
Sadly, at that point, you need to know the decimal equivalent (this happpens often with precision measurement) for instance 1/4 is 0.25 etc. I agree that it is horrible for a tape measure style measurement, but it isn't so bad once you're used to seeing the fractional equivalent as a decimal.
You can divide 1cm into 3/4 too if you want. There's no point using inches.
Americans keep saying this shit as if the vast majority of the world doesn't use grams for baking, celcius for temps, and cm for height daily - nobody is imposing anything on you guys, but you are going to continue to be ridiculed for using the dumbest measurement system. Yes, some systems absolutely make more sense than others - having even division of all orders of magnitude is a good example of that.
How many inches in a foot? thats easy - how many feet in a yard?....uh okay a little weirder, yards to a furlong? the fuck - furlongs to fathoms to miles to -...... its inconsistent unpredictable garbage because it's not in any way related to the units above or below it. That's all WITHIN DISTANCE - good fucking luck if you want to convert that to volume or energy or anything else. mm > cm > m > km - all base 10. Predictable, consistently divisible.
There is no persecution here - you can use fucking apples to measure distance if you like - but please stop portraying SI units as this scientific conundrum which is incompatible with daily life or professional ease. Imperial isn't actually any easier, americans are just familiar with it All but 2 countries in the entire world have switched over because the benefits self-evidently outweigh the costs....america acts like using dumb dumb units is a patriotic holdout but it is such an ongoing own-goal.
you're not hearing me - Its fine - please stop trying to convince me how difficult millimetres are, I went to school, I use them with no difficulty It's really not rocket science to say '1.75m' - we're all surviving just fine. (Believe it or not, there are even craftsmen using millimetres! 😱) Base 12 is lovely, it's very cute that you can say '3/8ths of an inch' but it isn't some universal human truth that fractions are easier than decimals - wait till you see that you can express inch subdivisions as decimals, and metric subdivisions as fractions!
SI is more logical in paper, it is also still more logical in practice. A base 10 unit I have never heard of before intuitively tells me what it measures and how big it is by the word alone. "Decilitres" is not really used outside of europe, but I immediately know it's volumetric and 10x the scale of litres. Inherently logical. How many fluid ounces are in a liquid gallon? The answer is 'good fucking luck' or '12 is easy to subdivide by, but now I have to remember every single measurement relation by writ'
The 'S' in 'SI' literally is the standard measurement system. It is the only universal and internationally standardised system. US feet are slightly different to UK feet, and Australian tablespoons were different to german ones - and if you think SI was dreamt up by a bunch of rich French people, firstly, that's a bit disingenuous - not how that happened at all, but secondly, you're going to absolutely lose your shit when you find out the basis of the 'foot' (it was the kings fucking foot, a super standardised unit of measurement)
As I said before, I'm not forcing you to use the dreaded centimetre - but please stop advocating against SI units because of hOw hArD tHeY aRe - it's fine, complete idiots use kms without issue, we're all gonna survive without reverting to fucking cubits.
I mean, 1m is ca. 1 step. My dad is farmer, uses that a lot.