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I think temperature is easily the most alien to Americans. Metric distances probably aren't quite as well understood as metric volumes, but I'd wager that know

I think temperature is easily the most alien to Americans. Metric distances probably aren't quite as well understood as metric volumes, but I'd wager that knowledge only trails by a little. The rough equivalence between a yard and a meter is widely know by Americans, as is the rough equivalence between 100km/hr and 60mph (helpfully, American speedometers all provide this education.)

deleted 7y ago
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jcranmer 7y ago
The distances you cite are pretty much the only ones (well, 2.54cm = 1 in as well) that are likely to be well-known. Yards are just not a heavily-used unit, people prefer 10s or 100s of feet instead of using yards. So when you go from tens to hundreds of meters, there is going to be no intuition about what kind of distance that actually is, and you have to mental math your way to familiar units of 100s of feet or quarter/half miles.
- shmerl 7y ago
  The only way to gain intuition is to use units straight, without doing mental translation.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Meters to feet is easy, it's roughly just x3. Yards may not be common (yards are certainly common in sports, and sports are very popular), but three feet to the yard is definitely commonly known. Centimeters might be harder, but in my experience Americans suck at estimating inches too, one American's "half an inch away" is another American's "two inches away." And the average American off the street would be hopeless if asked how many feet are in a mile. They'd actually have a better chance of giving you a kilometer->feet conversion than miles->feet. At least, I certainly would (without looking it up: 1 kilometer = 1000 meters ~= 1000 yards = 3000 feet, +10% fudge, approximately 3300 feet to the kilometer.) Anyway, my point in all of this is that if a pop-sci publication like Wired uses units like kilometers, it is unlikely that their American readers will be confused. They'll probably walk away from such an article with a casual understanding of the subject that is reasonably close to the casual understanding they'd have if the article used miles instead.
mrkstu 7y ago
Yep. Two years in Australia wasn't enough for metric temperature units to become instinctive for me. Speed was easy, relatively. Even weight/height was alright, though Aussies tended to use imperial for those often anyway, including the whole 'stone' thing that threw me off at first.

deleted 7y ago

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jcranmer 7y ago

The distances you cite are pretty much the only ones (well, 2.54cm = 1 in as well) that are likely to be well-known. Yards are just not a heavily-used unit, people prefer 10s or 100s of feet instead of using yards. So when you go from tens to hundreds of meters, there is going to be no intuition about what kind of distance that actually is, and you have to mental math your way to familiar units of 100s of feet or quarter/half miles.

shmerl 7y ago
The only way to gain intuition is to use units straight, without doing mental translation.
catalogia 7y ago
Meters to feet is easy, it's roughly just x3. Yards may not be common (yards are certainly common in sports, and sports are very popular), but three feet to the yard is definitely commonly known. Centimeters might be harder, but in my experience Americans suck at estimating inches too, one American's "half an inch away" is another American's "two inches away." And the average American off the street would be hopeless if asked how many feet are in a mile. They'd actually have a better chance of giving you a kilometer->feet conversion than miles->feet. At least, I certainly would (without looking it up: 1 kilometer = 1000 meters ~= 1000 yards = 3000 feet, +10% fudge, approximately 3300 feet to the kilometer.) Anyway, my point in all of this is that if a pop-sci publication like Wired uses units like kilometers, it is unlikely that their American readers will be confused. They'll probably walk away from such an article with a casual understanding of the subject that is reasonably close to the casual understanding they'd have if the article used miles instead.

mrkstu 7y ago

Yep. Two years in Australia wasn't enough for metric temperature units to become instinctive for me. Speed was easy, relatively. Even weight/height was alright, though Aussies tended to use imperial for those often anyway, including the whole 'stone' thing that threw me off at first.