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Yeah, duodecimal systems (base 12) rock! But is the customary units system consistently duodecimal? Iirc it's not, but I might misremember.
by ithkuil 6y ago
Yeah, duodecimal systems (base 12) rock!
But is the customary units system consistently duodecimal? Iirc it's not, but I might misremember.
- jabl 6y agoNo. E.g. a foot is 12 inches, but a yard is 3 feet.
- masklinn 6y agoAnd a chain is 22 yards and a furlong is 10 chains and a mile is 8 furlong (which is why a mile is 1760 or 5280 feet.
- saalweachter 6y agoIt's mostly binary -- 16 ounces in a pound, 16 drams in an ounce, 8 pints in a gallon, 8 furlongs in a mile, 4 rods in a chain. Then you've got a few odd ones, like 10 chains in a furlong or 22 yards in a chain or 3 feet in a yard. In general, the secret to happiness in customary units is to only ever work in a single unit and never convert between them. If you are working in construction, you probably only ever want to deal in inches. Ceilings are 96 or 120 inches tall, doors are 32 or 36 inches wide, etc etc etc. The moment you start using two units at once you are going to have a bad time, so if you pay attention people tend to only use one, even if it confuses people who don't know why doors are 80 inches high instead of 6 feet 8 inches.
- ithkuil 6y agoI wonder why people feel the need to downvote somebody for not being sure whether this special unit system has some feature or some other feature. I didn't say it's stupid or anything, I wasn't trolling, I just have no idea, I'm not using it. For all I know 12 feet could be some unit I never heard of. Do people really have to be fully acquainted with the US culture and/or have done full research on Wikipedia before asking a question for them to be taken seriously?
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoBase 12 metric should be a real thing. Maybe when we build self sustaining O'Neill cylinders we can use that opportunity to switch.