5 ms·
You're right - imperial is far superior for precise building or manufacturing work. Take drill bits, for example. Obviously it's much easier to figure out that
by jameshart 8y ago
You're right - imperial is far superior for precise building or manufacturing work.
Take drill bits, for example. Obviously it's much easier to figure out that 11/32" is less than 3/8". Or is it more? No, I'm pretty sure I was right the first time. The metric ones with their 5.5mm, 6mm, 6.5mm sequencing are just too complicated to work with, in comparison. And half a millimeter isn't very precise - it's much bigger than 1/64". Well, a bit bigger. Let's not get into tenths of millimeters.
And at larger scales, of course, base 12 is much easier when it comes to dividing distances. Taking a distance of 2'7" and dividing it by three in your head is much easier than dividing 79cm by three, because... well, 2' divided by three is 8", obviously. If you need to be sure, just tap it into a calculator. That supports base 12...
Anyway, you'll quickly determine that it's 10 1/3", which is much more precise than 26.3333cm. Now I just need to subtract the radii of these two 5/16" holes from that, which is easy - imagine trying to subtract 8mm from 26.3333cm! What folly.
- umanwizard 8y agoWhether decimals or fractions are used is not necessarily related to metric vs. customary units. I just weighed myself on my bathroom scale -- 191.2 pounds.
- wolf550e 8y agoPeople use "stones" for weight of humans. As if 14 pounds is a convenient amount.
- stephen_g 8y agoThese are problems you actually pretty much never have in actual precision manufacturing in metric... Most general machining is done to a tolerance of +/- 0.1 - what does half a millimetre have to do with anything? As for building, that's mostly just rounded to the millimetre, centimetres aren't usually ever used.
- stavros 8y agoThe gp was being sarcastic.
- vlehto 8y agoDo I detect sarcasm here? I'm pretty sure I detect sarcasm here.
- Natanael_L 8y agoMuch of the sarcasm targets the mixing of multiple units that is everpresent in imperial measurements. Feet + inches instead of one or the other?
- Iv 8y agoI detect 1.23 furlongs of sarcasm.