3 ms·

That's a bit of a mixed bag. Once you do realize that 1 cm3 (1 ml) of water is also 1 g (as it's 1000g/1l = 1g/1ml), and that a 10x10x10 cm cube is 1 l (and is

That's a bit of a mixed bag. Once you do realize that 1 cm3 (1 ml) of water is also 1 g (as it's 1000g/1l = 1g/1ml), and that a 10x10x10 cm cube is 1 l (and is 1 kg), it does get powerful in unexpected ways ("cook half liter of water...hm, how do I measure...well that's 500 ml, so I'll just weigh 500 g, exactly the same thing"); and a 10 l bucket of water weighs 10 kg; similarly with other decimal units. This, I think, is intrinsically useful - how does this translate into US units, are there such simple conversions? (IDK, so this is not a rhetorical question)

mschaef 8y ago
> how does this translate into US units, are there such simple conversions? Not really. I have a couple of these types of conversions committed to memory (1 gal water = 7 pounds, etc.), but it's all pretty ad hoc. That said, I haven't found too much use for it. All that said, I very much appreciate the orthogonality and consistency of SI. In an ideal world, the US would be on it, or at least on something the same as the rest of the world. Aside from sheer habit, I think the most compelling argument for the reason we aren't is that the units we use are so heavily baked into physical objects.