3 ms·
I honestly love centimeters because 1cm is roughly the width of a pinky fingernail. Makes it easy to visualize. Likewise 1 meter being roughly an arm span, or
by devbent 4y ago
I honestly love centimeters because 1cm is roughly the width of a pinky fingernail.
Makes it easy to visualize.
Likewise 1 meter being roughly an arm span, or 3 feet.
MI often need to guestimate something and being able to use my body parts to do such is super useful!
- mlyle 4y ago> I honestly love centimeters because 1cm is roughly the width of a pinky fingernail. Not bad to think of this as "10mm", though.
- nemetroid 4y agoFor people who grew up with metric units, there is really no thinking involved in conversion between centimeters and millimeters. For everyday usage, using millimeters for everything is cumbersome, as it requires you to use larger numbers and subtly suggests a precision that's usually not present. I've seen the sentiment to avoid centimeters in favour of millimeters before, but only ever from people who don't natively use those units.
- mlyle 4y agoThough I'm American, I use metric units almost exclusively in work and really even outside work. I don't really use imperial units for short measurements other than to occasionally translate for other people. I've had multiple "cm or mm" shouting back and forth across the room conversations that have caused confusion. I've also had a few "vanishing decimal points" in drawings which are a bit more confusing in cgs than mmgs. I've grown to strongly prefer mm. False precision is always a risk. But for most things I do, mm has the correct amount of precision. (Circuit boards like tenths of mm; most small mechanical assemblies like a mm or a tenth of a mm).
- 2b3a51 4y agoUK: the rule in house plans and other macro-sized objects is that measurements where shown are in millimetres. So largish whole numbers and no possibility of decimal point getting lost.