3 ms·

What amazes me the most is how I never see any Americans online trying to convince others that the imperial system is better than the ISU. Like... they know tha

What amazes me the most is how I never see any Americans online trying to convince others that the imperial system is better than the ISU. Like... they know that it's just out of habit :]. Day-to-day the inches/feet dance is more annoying to me than the celsius-farenheit thing though.

int_19h 8y ago
Inches and feet are easier to approximate though (e.g. 3 feet = 1 m is "good enough" for most practical uses), whereas Fahrenheit and Celsius have this weird 5/9 conversion factor. There are simplified formulae for F/C conversions as well, but they produce deviations that are too large for practical use for many common temperatures, especially if you live in an area with real winter & summer.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  I'm fond of 1 sq mile ~= 256 hectares.
- baddox 8y ago
  You don't really need to remember that many mappings of Fahrenheit to Celsius, at least for weather. Remembering approximately mappings for 0-100 by 10s should be enough for most people.
anilakar 8y ago
Mostly because there are fewer Americans using international units of measurement than there are non-Americans having to deal with the imperial system.
AngryData 8y ago
Maybe because many of them realize all our unit systems are entirely arbitrary and are use to converting units already when they do something that requires it. If the entire world did switch to US imperial, nothing would actually change, you would just learn a different set of arbitrary rules in school. Especially considering how little anyone does advanced sciences without a computer or calculator of some sort these days. Nobody is going to do months of work by hand when a computer can do it in 30 seconds in multiple different ways.
- gsich 8y ago
  They be arbitrary, but at least SI units are logically scaled. 1 km is 1000 m. Unlike miles to feet, which have no logical scaling. Related picture: https://i.imgur.com/MQ7LVC3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/MQ7LVC3.jpg
reissbaker 8y ago
I've read some good arguments online in favor of Fahrenheit: degrees are more granular, so you can be more precise without needing decimal points; and in terms of air temperature it more easily approximates the human body (at above ~100 — well, 98.6, but it was intended to be 100 — the air is hotter than your skin, and below ~100 the air is cooler than your skin). But yeah haha, imperial units of distance, weight and volume are trash; we all know it. I still have to Google how to convert feet to miles, and I was born here. Ounces to gallons? Oof.
- gsich 8y ago
  Skin temperature is not 37 °C usually. It's more like in the range 33-34 °C. And drops rapidly when it's colder outside, 15 °C outside ~25 °C skin temperature.
toasterlovin 8y ago
Can you explain to me, as an American, why our country should put in the absolutely enormous amount of work necessary to change to a new system of measurement? The value in a standardized system of measurement is that other people are using the same thing. As an individual American, I essentially never deal with non-Americans, so no issue there. As a country, we're a big enough market that companies importing here will go through the effort to add imperial measurements to their products.

int_19h 8y ago

Inches and feet are easier to approximate though (e.g. 3 feet = 1 m is "good enough" for most practical uses), whereas Fahrenheit and Celsius have this weird 5/9 conversion factor. There are simplified formulae for F/C conversions as well, but they produce deviations that are too large for practical use for many common temperatures, especially if you live in an area with real winter & summer.

saalweachter 8y ago
I'm fond of 1 sq mile ~= 256 hectares.
baddox 8y ago
You don't really need to remember that many mappings of Fahrenheit to Celsius, at least for weather. Remembering approximately mappings for 0-100 by 10s should be enough for most people.

anilakar 8y ago

Mostly because there are fewer Americans using international units of measurement than there are non-Americans having to deal with the imperial system.

AngryData 8y ago

Maybe because many of them realize all our unit systems are entirely arbitrary and are use to converting units already when they do something that requires it. If the entire world did switch to US imperial, nothing would actually change, you would just learn a different set of arbitrary rules in school. Especially considering how little anyone does advanced sciences without a computer or calculator of some sort these days. Nobody is going to do months of work by hand when a computer can do it in 30 seconds in multiple different ways.

gsich 8y ago
They be arbitrary, but at least SI units are logically scaled. 1 km is 1000 m. Unlike miles to feet, which have no logical scaling. Related picture: https://i.imgur.com/MQ7LVC3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/MQ7LVC3.jpg

reissbaker 8y ago

I've read some good arguments online in favor of Fahrenheit: degrees are more granular, so you can be more precise without needing decimal points; and in terms of air temperature it more easily approximates the human body (at above ~100 — well, 98.6, but it was intended to be 100 — the air is hotter than your skin, and below ~100 the air is cooler than your skin). But yeah haha, imperial units of distance, weight and volume are trash; we all know it. I still have to Google how to convert feet to miles, and I was born here. Ounces to gallons? Oof.

gsich 8y ago
Skin temperature is not 37 °C usually. It's more like in the range 33-34 °C. And drops rapidly when it's colder outside, 15 °C outside ~25 °C skin temperature.

toasterlovin 8y ago

Can you explain to me, as an American, why our country should put in the absolutely enormous amount of work necessary to change to a new system of measurement? The value in a standardized system of measurement is that other people are using the same thing. As an individual American, I essentially never deal with non-Americans, so no issue there. As a country, we're a big enough market that companies importing here will go through the effort to add imperial measurements to their products.