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My argument is mostly for things like day-to-day practical measurements, there's no difference between the two units, so it doesn't affect people. Temperature
by atonse 7y ago
My argument is mostly for things like day-to-day practical measurements, there's no difference between the two units, so it doesn't affect people.
Temperature – absolutely no difference in _practicality_ in communicating about the daily weather in C or F. People that claim otherwise are usually just arguing for the system they grew up with.
Weight – no difference in measuring most larger weights in pounds vs kgs. (weighing people, furniture, cars, trucks, comparing the weight of laptops, etc)
Distance – Whether DC to NY is 220 miles or 352 kilometers makes no difference.
In most daily use, the differences in units probably don't make any difference to most people, which is why the cost of switching (so that it looks good on paper) just hasn't caught on.
However, in the sciences, in cooking, areas where you need precise measurements, grams, KG, etc all give you nicer units to work with.
When measuring things for DIY and home improvement, God, I wish I could do everything in meters and centimeters than 1/8 or 1/6 of an inch (mainly for doing calculations).
And when cooking, I cringe with "cups" and "tbsp" – I wish it were all grams and ml.
- theandrewbailey 7y ago> And when cooking, I cringe with "cups" and "tbsp" – I wish it were all grams and ml. "tsp", that's tablespoons, right? Teaspoons? Argh!
- oarabbus_ 7y agoTsp is teaspoon; tb/tbl/tbsp is tablespoon
- dragonwriter 7y agotsp (or just t) is teaspoon, Tbsp (or TB, Tbl, or just T) is tablespoon. The little one has a little t, the big one has a big T.
- XCSme 7y agoTemperature - at what temperature does the water freeze? 0C, 32F. At what temperature does the water boil? 100C, 212F. Which ones are easier to remember on a day-to-day basis? Weight, Distance - conversion is a lot easier in the metric system You just mentioned that there were no differences, than why would you use units which have strange relations between each other instead of units that are easy to remember, easy to convert are based on math instead of historical/common knowledge?
- atonse 7y agoHow often are you boiling and freezing water when deciding what clothes to wear? Ok so when measuring water freezing, you have a nice 0. But how do you measure hot weather? 30C? 35C? Meaningless numbers, correct? I am talking about daily weather. Celsius is no more intuitive than Fahrenheit when discussing it. Even with cooking, when you are around a certain system, you're just used to it. I bake a cake at 350F, I fry things at 350-400F. 175C is no more practical than 350F. I need to cook meat to at least 140F-160F to kill the bacteria. The equivalents in Celsius are no easier to remember from a practical standpoint. Even body temperature, from my understanding, almost everyone uses 98.5F, correct? (At least in India, where everything was KG and KM, people still used to measure body temperature in F).
- galaxyLogic 7y agoWell fridge should not go below 0 Celsius or you have trouble. Teach your children that. When thinking about boiling water it is easier to think how close to it you are in Celsius, 50% if temp is 50 Celsius. Personally I'm from Europe but live in US and have trouble with weather forecasts in Fahrenheit. They don't make sense especially when it gets cold. Even IF Celsius and Fahrenheit were equally good for most purposes, it would be easier if every continent used the same system. Why, because people travel, often from continent to continent. So if we (the people of Earth) should choose we should most probably choose Celsius, even if it were just slightly better than Fahrenheit.
- saagarjha 7y ago> Well fridge should not go below 0 Celsius or you have trouble There are things in the world other than fridges. > When thinking about boiling water I only really do this about 1% of the time I need to use temperature. > Even IF Celsius and Fahrenheit were equally good for most purposes, it would be easier if every continent used the same system. Why, because people travel, often from continent to continent. This is really the only reason to use Celsius: it works well with other things.
- tigershark 7y ago
- simion314 7y agoI would disagree about weight and distances, having multiple of 10 units make computation easy, it is unfortunate that time is different. Though I agree most people this days would maybe avoid calculating things and use a calculator/software1
- hugey010 7y agoUntil hardware stores in the US start stocking measuring devices longer than a foot with cm and mm markings, I'm going to disagree with the DIY aspect. Yes I can use a tape measure or buy one online. Discussing lumber here is always inches even when precision is necessary, still inches. It's all very frustrating imo.
- galaxyLogic 7y agoYes it is. I bought a tape-measure maybe part of a tool-kit or something and lo and behold it is ONLY in inches. It could easily have cm on the other side but it doesn't. I guess its cheaper to produce a one-sided measuring tape.
- mrob 7y agoI can't think of any good reason to use volumetric measurement in cooking. Even if you only need approximate measurement, it's still better to use weight because you can put the cooking container directly on the scales and avoid having to wash your measuring cups. And if you do need accuracy, measuring by weight wins every time.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> I can't think of any good reason to use volumetric measurement in cooking A good reason is because you rarely need exact measurements in cooking (vs. baking), and it's easy to eyeball approximate volumetric measurements, especially with help from the known volume of a container; also because many recipes need quantities of some ingredients (most frequently water) that would require a much larger and more expensive kitchen scale than most people would like to keep.
- agrajag 7y agoSmall quantities under a tablespoon or 10ml by volume can be quite challenging to weigh, and is much easier to fill up a fixed size tsp/tbsp measure. If your ingredient is a commodity and has a known density ahead of time (water, olive oil, salt, whatever) its mechanically simpler. There are also times when you can't measure into your cooking container directly - maybe it's hot.
- firethief 7y agoThe old British system is good for one thing: tea. Want to brew some tea? 1 teaspoon per cup.
- sb057 7y agoRegarding temperature, Fahrenheit offers more granularity. I, for one, can definitely perceive the difference between 22, 22.5, and 23 degrees C (71.6, 72.5, and 73.4 degrees F, respectively), but on a typical metric thermostat, fractions of a degree aren't allowed.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- talaketu 7y ago"day-to-day practical measurement" as distinct from what? Theoretical physicists might be able to skip the units, but the rest of us farmers, engineers, cooks, are doing something practical when we measure. I'm not really sure what you are arguing.
- atonse 7y agoLook at my arguments. I'm saying exactly what you're saying. Areas that need precise measurements (especially the sciences) are already using metric. I also prefer metric when cooking. However, think of it this way: In conversational transfer of information, it makes zero difference. If I'm telling you something is 300 miles away, it isn't more useful for me to tell you it's 480 kilometers away. What extra information do you get from that? That it's 480,000 meters away? Humans can't properly visualize probably more than 100 meters. So what practical use when calculating driving distance is knowing that Kilometers vs meters the distance is?
- talaketu 7y agoYou are making a distinction between daily use and specialist use and then suggesting it doesn't matter, I suppose because everyone has a daily use. Day-to-day using miles or inches for distance, gallons for volume, and now we have specialists using miles-per-gallon for fuel efficiency, cubic inches for stroke volume ...