11 ms·

Imagine it being 2020 and not using the metric system.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
I don’t really mind that we’re not on the metric system. I just wish our measurements were consistent as they increase. E.g. foot, kilofoot, etc. instead of foot, yards, miles.
- thechao 7y ago
  And base-2, rather than the computer-unfriendly base-10. Aaaaactually ... with a bit of squinting the U. S. customary volume system(s) define a complete set of base-2 nouns (which could be used as prefixes): tbspn oz jill gill cup pint quart half gallon peck kenning bushel rundlet barrel hogshead butt tun Where each item below the next item is exactly 2x the previous one. It turns out there's also some base-3 stuff (for measuring simplicity), like the teaspoon, etc. I've always imagined we could redefine a few things to make a "completely rational" U.S. customary measure. That'd be: 1 in == 2.5 centimeters (as Thomas Jefferson wanted) 256 in^3 == 1 gallon (water at 32° F) 1 in is a bit awkwardly small. A cup-inch is ~1.3ft. A pint-inch is exactly .8125m. Luckily, a 'tun-tun-inch' (65536in) is 1.0343 miles, so we could define a a 'tun-tun-inch' to be a mile, etc., etc.
  - madcaptenor 7y ago
    That gives you a gallon of exactly 4 liters (256 * 2.5^3 = 4000 mL). Alternatively, a quart is now just another name for a liter.
  - ranger207 7y ago
    Fractional lengths in the US are commonly in base-2, ie, 1/2", 1/4", 1/8", 1/16", etc. Still annoying to remember that the next socket up from 1/2" is 9/16".
    - 1-6 7y ago
      Just use Highly Composite Numbers... Babylon used base-60 and we still tell the time with it today. Base-12 is good too. It's divisible by 1,2,3,4,6,12. Base-10 is only 1,2,5,10 which is less usable for fractions.
  - Taniwha 7y ago
    At this point one has to point out that US gallons (and pints and cups and flu ounces) are different from the gallons/pints/cups/flu ounces used everywhere else on the planet (for reasons that mostly have to do with English kings trying to get around the parliament's limits on taxation they made some gallons smaller, the US standardised on one of the smaller ones) - fortunately most of the rest of us have stopped using those units so we don't care as much, but we do have to have to be careful with, for example, US recipes. When visiting Starbucks I'm often tempted to ask the person behind the register "Venti? that's Italian for 20 right? 20 what?" they invariably will say "20 fluid ounces" .... of course the correct comeback is "I'm pretty sure they use the metric system in Italy, it must be litres, or maybe mililitres" - usually they will choose "litres"
  - anticensor 7y ago
    Added binary teaspoon and dessert spoon, also renaming a few units: tspn dspn tbspn oz jill gill cup bottle quart half gallon peck jimmyjohn bushel rundlet barrel hogshead butt tun
- Yhippa 7y ago
  IDK, if you're going to be non-standard might as well go all the way.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  What you want is metric, so 10 inches to a foot and so on. Switching makes of units isn’t so bad so long as the multipliers are 10,100,1000 Next you want your units to make sense across dimensions. You want your volume units to ALL be based on your length units. A cubic foot is ok. It then contains 1000 cubic inches. There are no quarts, gallons, pints (unless they are names for decimal quantities of cubic units).
adamtj 7y ago
That's not hard to imagine. Quick, what's 1/3 of a meter? The sometimes problem with metric is it's base-10. The prime factors of 10 are 2 and 5. Feet are in base-12, which has the prime factors 2 and 3. Three is much more useful than five. There are marks on your measuring tape at exactly 1/3 of a yard or 1/3 of a foot. Metric is often easier and more convenient, but not always. So, in the US, we tend to use metric or customary units depending on which is more convenient for the task at hand. Actually, it's a lot like the UK and other countries where older systems still exist alongside metric. The difference with the US is that we don't have as many unnecessary laws mandating metric. You're an adult. You're working with other adults. You're perfectly capable of figuring out what to do without the input of lifelong politicians who've never measured a thing in their lives. Except for the amount of your money that they're going to spend. They like measuring that.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  > Quick, what's 1/3 of a meter? 33.3 cm?
  - thomk 7y ago
    Oh, you rounded. Got it. ;)
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      Let's not pretend that any real world application of a third of a foot has infinite precision.
  - 1-6 7y ago
    That's why you pick highly composite numbers to create your object. 'Quick, what's 1/3 of 12 meters?' Why do they make raised floors 600mm tiles?
- thomk 7y ago
  Agreed. If you have ever done any type of construction you are very thankful that you can divide a foot evenly by 2, 3, 4 and 6.
war1025 7y ago
The metric system doesn't really have anything intrinsically better about it. Sure the power of ten thing is convenient, but really that is just sticking to one unit and adding a prefix. You could call "thousandths of an inch" a "milli-inch" and it'd be about the same. Fahrenheit is absolutely a more useful human-scale measurement than Celcius. The boiling point of water is mostly irrelevant to everyday life. At that point you might as well just do things in Kelvin. Perhaps the usefulness of Fahrenheit is only a thing when you live in a continental climate though. 100F is about as hot as it's going to get here in Iowa. Similarly, 0F means that it's the depths of winter. Anything above 0F is pretty manageable. When you start going below 0F you're getting into "real cold" territory. Point being, Fahrenheit is a scale that matches well to the climate extremes (at least around here), which I think is a significant advantage for it. As to the rest of it, a meter is basically a yard. A liter is basically a quart. A kilogram is just two pounds. Not really that difficult.
- mark-r 7y ago
  The boiling point of water may not be useful on a day-to-day basis, but the freezing point certainly is. 0C is a lot less arbitrary than 32F. Other temperature mileposts are just a matter of getting used to them; 100F is pretty hot, as is 35C. I think you underestimate the usefulness of powers of 10.
  - war1025 7y ago
    > The boiling point of water may not be useful on a day-to-day basis, but the freezing point certainly is The freezing point of water is interesting, but in practice it is pretty variable depending on what adulterants are mixed with it. Realistically, any day that it gets up to the 20s F you will get some amount of snow melt. Any time it is above ~0F the roads will de-ice during the day from the salt they put down. I don't have any issue with people preferring C to F, but I think any choices come mainly down to what you have been exposed to. My main point is that Fahrenheit is a very practical temperature scale. > I think you underestimate the usefulness of powers of 10 Powers of ten are just scientific / engineering notation, they aren't really all that dependent on the underlying base units. The fact that people gravitate toward the measurement system they were first exposed to suggests that they are both adequate in practice.
dang 7y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1-6 7y ago
Hmm... Autodesk makes a widely popular software called Revit and it started in Massachusetts. The API's base unit is in feet. How can I convince them to rewrite software so it uses SI units?
basicplus2 7y ago
I get the impression that fractions are very much engrained in American psychi and cultural identity and thus is a strong influence for opposition to a metric system.
- doctor_eval 7y ago
  Yes, as an Australian I find the idea of using fractional measurements to be super weird. People in these threads talk about 1/3rd of an inch as if that’s a real number :) But seriously I think you are right. I never use fractional notation or thinking when I’m building something, while it seems very common when reading US sites. I have a socket set which US Customary sizes in fractional inches and mm; I cant tell which of the US sockets is bigger without comparing them, but 11mm is obviously larger than 10mm (to me). I think your observation about cultural identity is spot on, but as always it goes both ways - I think the US system is nuts because of all these crazy fractions. Until now I didn’t realise that this was my own cultural bias against fractions leaking in.

I don’t really mind that we’re not on the metric system. I just wish our measurements were consistent as they increase. E.g. foot, kilofoot, etc. instead of foot, yards, miles.

thechao 7y ago
And base-2, rather than the computer-unfriendly base-10. Aaaaactually ... with a bit of squinting the U. S. customary volume system(s) define a complete set of base-2 nouns (which could be used as prefixes): tbspn oz jill gill cup pint quart half gallon peck kenning bushel rundlet barrel hogshead butt tun Where each item below the next item is exactly 2x the previous one. It turns out there's also some base-3 stuff (for measuring simplicity), like the teaspoon, etc. I've always imagined we could redefine a few things to make a "completely rational" U.S. customary measure. That'd be: 1 in == 2.5 centimeters (as Thomas Jefferson wanted) 256 in^3 == 1 gallon (water at 32° F) 1 in is a bit awkwardly small. A cup-inch is ~1.3ft. A pint-inch is exactly .8125m. Luckily, a 'tun-tun-inch' (65536in) is 1.0343 miles, so we could define a a 'tun-tun-inch' to be a mile, etc., etc.
- madcaptenor 7y ago
  That gives you a gallon of exactly 4 liters (256 * 2.5^3 = 4000 mL). Alternatively, a quart is now just another name for a liter.
- ranger207 7y ago
  Fractional lengths in the US are commonly in base-2, ie, 1/2", 1/4", 1/8", 1/16", etc. Still annoying to remember that the next socket up from 1/2" is 9/16".
  - 1-6 7y ago
    Just use Highly Composite Numbers... Babylon used base-60 and we still tell the time with it today. Base-12 is good too. It's divisible by 1,2,3,4,6,12. Base-10 is only 1,2,5,10 which is less usable for fractions.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  At this point one has to point out that US gallons (and pints and cups and flu ounces) are different from the gallons/pints/cups/flu ounces used everywhere else on the planet (for reasons that mostly have to do with English kings trying to get around the parliament's limits on taxation they made some gallons smaller, the US standardised on one of the smaller ones) - fortunately most of the rest of us have stopped using those units so we don't care as much, but we do have to have to be careful with, for example, US recipes. When visiting Starbucks I'm often tempted to ask the person behind the register "Venti? that's Italian for 20 right? 20 what?" they invariably will say "20 fluid ounces" .... of course the correct comeback is "I'm pretty sure they use the metric system in Italy, it must be litres, or maybe mililitres" - usually they will choose "litres"
- anticensor 7y ago
  Added binary teaspoon and dessert spoon, also renaming a few units: tspn dspn tbspn oz jill gill cup bottle quart half gallon peck jimmyjohn bushel rundlet barrel hogshead butt tun
Yhippa 7y ago
IDK, if you're going to be non-standard might as well go all the way.
alkonaut 7y ago
What you want is metric, so 10 inches to a foot and so on. Switching makes of units isn’t so bad so long as the multipliers are 10,100,1000 Next you want your units to make sense across dimensions. You want your volume units to ALL be based on your length units. A cubic foot is ok. It then contains 1000 cubic inches. There are no quarts, gallons, pints (unless they are names for decimal quantities of cubic units).

adamtj 7y ago

That's not hard to imagine. Quick, what's 1/3 of a meter? The sometimes problem with metric is it's base-10. The prime factors of 10 are 2 and 5. Feet are in base-12, which has the prime factors 2 and 3. Three is much more useful than five. There are marks on your measuring tape at exactly 1/3 of a yard or 1/3 of a foot. Metric is often easier and more convenient, but not always. So, in the US, we tend to use metric or customary units depending on which is more convenient for the task at hand. Actually, it's a lot like the UK and other countries where older systems still exist alongside metric. The difference with the US is that we don't have as many unnecessary laws mandating metric. You're an adult. You're working with other adults. You're perfectly capable of figuring out what to do without the input of lifelong politicians who've never measured a thing in their lives. Except for the amount of your money that they're going to spend. They like measuring that.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
> Quick, what's 1/3 of a meter? 33.3 cm?
- thomk 7y ago
  Oh, you rounded. Got it. ;)
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Let's not pretend that any real world application of a third of a foot has infinite precision.
- 1-6 7y ago
  That's why you pick highly composite numbers to create your object. 'Quick, what's 1/3 of 12 meters?' Why do they make raised floors 600mm tiles?
thomk 7y ago
Agreed. If you have ever done any type of construction you are very thankful that you can divide a foot evenly by 2, 3, 4 and 6.

war1025 7y ago

The metric system doesn't really have anything intrinsically better about it. Sure the power of ten thing is convenient, but really that is just sticking to one unit and adding a prefix. You could call "thousandths of an inch" a "milli-inch" and it'd be about the same. Fahrenheit is absolutely a more useful human-scale measurement than Celcius. The boiling point of water is mostly irrelevant to everyday life. At that point you might as well just do things in Kelvin. Perhaps the usefulness of Fahrenheit is only a thing when you live in a continental climate though. 100F is about as hot as it's going to get here in Iowa. Similarly, 0F means that it's the depths of winter. Anything above 0F is pretty manageable. When you start going below 0F you're getting into "real cold" territory. Point being, Fahrenheit is a scale that matches well to the climate extremes (at least around here), which I think is a significant advantage for it. As to the rest of it, a meter is basically a yard. A liter is basically a quart. A kilogram is just two pounds. Not really that difficult.

mark-r 7y ago
The boiling point of water may not be useful on a day-to-day basis, but the freezing point certainly is. 0C is a lot less arbitrary than 32F. Other temperature mileposts are just a matter of getting used to them; 100F is pretty hot, as is 35C. I think you underestimate the usefulness of powers of 10.
- war1025 7y ago
  > The boiling point of water may not be useful on a day-to-day basis, but the freezing point certainly is The freezing point of water is interesting, but in practice it is pretty variable depending on what adulterants are mixed with it. Realistically, any day that it gets up to the 20s F you will get some amount of snow melt. Any time it is above ~0F the roads will de-ice during the day from the salt they put down. I don't have any issue with people preferring C to F, but I think any choices come mainly down to what you have been exposed to. My main point is that Fahrenheit is a very practical temperature scale. > I think you underestimate the usefulness of powers of 10 Powers of ten are just scientific / engineering notation, they aren't really all that dependent on the underlying base units. The fact that people gravitate toward the measurement system they were first exposed to suggests that they are both adequate in practice.

dang 7y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1-6 7y ago

Hmm... Autodesk makes a widely popular software called Revit and it started in Massachusetts. The API's base unit is in feet. How can I convince them to rewrite software so it uses SI units?

basicplus2 7y ago

I get the impression that fractions are very much engrained in American psychi and cultural identity and thus is a strong influence for opposition to a metric system.

doctor_eval 7y ago
Yes, as an Australian I find the idea of using fractional measurements to be super weird. People in these threads talk about 1/3rd of an inch as if that’s a real number :) But seriously I think you are right. I never use fractional notation or thinking when I’m building something, while it seems very common when reading US sites. I have a socket set which US Customary sizes in fractional inches and mm; I cant tell which of the US sockets is bigger without comparing them, but 11mm is obviously larger than 10mm (to me). I think your observation about cultural identity is spot on, but as always it goes both ways - I think the US system is nuts because of all these crazy fractions. Until now I didn’t realise that this was my own cultural bias against fractions leaking in.