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The metric system is such a beauty, that it's shocking that is not used everywhere. The fact that a liter of water has a relation with the size of the paper we
by ktzar 4y ago
The metric system is such a beauty, that it's shocking that is not used everywhere. The fact that a liter of water has a relation with the size of the paper we use is just poetry.
- danielbln 4y agoThe three holdouts being the US, Myanmar and Liberia: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/18300.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/18300.jpeg
- sgjohnson 4y agoWhy does everyone forget the UK and Canada?
- anonymous_sorry 4y agoThe UK has adopted the metric system for most purposes, except for a few high-profile holdouts (speed limits and beer measures).
- sgjohnson 4y agoAnd area. It's not uncommon to see land sold by the acre or apartments by the square foot.
- midasuni 4y agoRare to see square foot only, but 108 square foot sounds bigger than 10 square meters, 2.7 acres sounds bigger than 1.1 hectares, so obviously salesmen are going to include those numbers.
- digestives 4y agoFilling up on fuel in litres and then using miles per (Imperial) gallon to measure fuel efficiency is wonderfully convoluted.
- gmac 4y agoIndeed. I suspect the driving and oil lobbies are keen to keep it that way, to help obscure the cost per unit distance and thus keep us all driving as far and burning as much gas/petrol/diesel as possible.
- midasuni 4y agoMiles per litre would be fine, even km per litre, but the metric way of measuring flips it over so bigger is worse rather than better, so it doesn’t catch on The numbers don’t work out too, “litres per 100km”. Why not millilitres per km (or litres per gigametre) I drive X miles (or X km), I then fill up with Y litres (or Y gallons) If I put 40 litres in my car and do 16 km per litre that’s 640km of range, simple calculation of 40x16 If I need to travel 260km at 20km/litre I need to but 260/20 litres or about 13 litres. If I put 40 litres in my 3.6 litre per 100 km my range is 40/3.6 = 11 x 100 = 1100km. If I need to do 260km at 3.6l/100km I need to do 260/100 = 2.6, times 3.6 = 9 litres. With the “metric” way you need to do two calculations. if you insist on using volume per length, I’d personally prefer 36ml/km, then I know I need 36x260 ml of fuel to go 260km, or my 40,000ml tank will take me 40000/36 = 1100km.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- doikor 4y ago> The numbers don’t work out too, “litres per 100km”. Why not millilitres per km (or litres per gigametre) > I drive X miles (or X km), I then fill up with Y litres (or Y gallons) This isn't what most use the liters per 100km for though. People just fill up whenever the light on the car tells them to. Mainly the number is used to compare cars when buying a new one. Some keep track of the actual consumption to notice if something is wrong with their car (just write down the current number on the odometer and how many liters you put in on some paper/app/whatever. you can do the actual calculations later) At least this has been my experience here in Finland.
- manholio 4y ago> If I need to travel 260km at 20km/litre I need to but 260/20 litres or about 13 litres. > With the “metric” way you need to do two calculations. That's really an absurd way of looking at it, because one of those calculations is a division or multiplication by 100, and 100km happens to be a typical distance someone might be interested into finding fuel efficiency. So the answer to me is an immediate mental computation, 2.6 x 5l = 13, you never ever need to compute consumption per km, express things in ml etc. Your own "easy" examples look to me very intuitive and convoluted, so I guess the systems are 100% comparable, the only difference is the power of habit.
- donedealomg 4y ago
- williamdclt 4y agoI dont think that's true. I see imperial much more than metric. Measures are much more common in inches, foot and miles than metric. Volumes are much more common in cups, gallons, pints than metric. Weights are more common in pounds and ounces than metric. That's in almost all domains, not just "a few high-profile holdouts" (even cooking, where it kills me that quantities of solids are in "cups" rather than grams...)
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago> Measures are much more common in inches, foot and miles than metric. I think this is partially true, particularly with the older generation. People often talk about their height in feet and inches, and their weight in stone and pounds. > Volumes are much more common in cups, gallons, pints than metric. Weights are more common in pounds and ounces than metric. Your experience seems to be very different to mine. To be honest I have no idea what a gallon even is, and no intuitive concept of an ounce. The only place I have ever seen measurements in "cups" is one chicken biryani recipe I found on an American website. (I agree it's bizarre: half a cup of mint leaves - wtf?!). Any recipe published in the UK in the last couple of decades tends to be in grams and millilitres. Example picked at random: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chocolate-courgette-cake https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chocolate-courgette-cake
- barnabee 4y agoSeems like this must vary a lot as my experience is very different. I rarely see/hear/use imperial outside pints and road signs, or for “sizes” like screen or clothing waist sizes, unless I’m talking to people a generation older than me (I’m 40). Every recipe site I use either has both or is entirely metric, and I only ever use metric. I’d probably look elsewhere if a search turned up a recipe in imperial only. Even distances are in KM outside of driving (because of the road signs). Pretty much everyone I know talks about their weight in KG. Heights do seem pretty split between cm and ft/inches but everyone understands both. Most liquids except beer and cider (including other alcohol like wine and spirits) are in litres and ml. It’s very obvious to me how metric-first life is for me because visiting America involves constant conversion and thinking whereas everything in other European countries (which are generally entirely metric) comes easily.
- DharmaPolice 4y agoMaybe officially but I don't know many people born in the UK who would give (when asked) their height in centimetres. Weight is a little more even split - using kilos is becoming more common but most conversations I have with people still use stone. The NHS's BMI calculator defaults to feet/inches and stones/pounds although you can switch to CM/KG.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y agoThe picture acknowledges both
- sgjohnson 4y agoNot Canada though, which is definitely more imperial than the UK.
- thrwyoilarticle 4y ago>In Canada, Australia, India and some other former Commonwealth countries vital statistics, living and commercial spaces, oven temperatures and recipe measurements might still be imperial.
- Milner08 4y agoBecause they are a weird middle ground. UK uses metric paper, metric weights and measures for _most_ things, metric temperature. Where Imperial starts to slip in is distance when driving (but not when running...), volumes of Beer and Milk (mainly cause we want more beer than 500ml) and body weight (where we use Stones, which is weird). There are probably some other things as well, but metric is the dominant system (for people under 60) for sure.
- sgjohnson 4y agoBut so is the United States. In all industries where it matters (science, technology, military, medicine) metric is virtually the only measurement system that's used, not to mention that a lot of products are sold in round metric quantities, not imperial.
- mcjiggerlog 4y agoThe difference is that in the UK nearly everything you interact with in your daily life is in metric. You won't find anything in a UK household in imperial measurements other than the bottle of milk in the fridge.
- timrichard 4y agoFor supermarket milk at least, I can only remember seeing both units for quite a while. I had a glance at the one in our fridge, and it says "2.272L 4 pints" on the label.
- Symbiote 4y agoThere is a huge difference. Ask an average American to give you the length of their car, size of their kitchen or weight of a brick in metric and they'll have no clue. The average British person can do this, because education has been metric for 50+ years and the least-technical industry (e.g. construction, DIY) is metric. (See e.g. https://www.diy.com/ https://www.diy.com/, the largest consumer-facing DIY shop in Britain. It's 20kg of 10mm gravel, doors in millimetres, paint in litres. I can't even see a button offering an imperial conversion.)
- dr_dshiv 4y agoYou mean minimemerica and America’s hat?
- bearmode 4y agoAll kids in the UK learn metric, and possibly some imperial (but only as a side thing). There are still things colloquially said in imperial, such as weight and height, but if you go to a doctor it will be in cm and kg. We're still a bit of a mishmash, but it's not as bad as it might seem from outside.
- _the_inflator 4y agoUK is also reversing in parts due to BREXIT.
- mickeyp 4y agoHardly. Britain's converting to metric -- one inch at a time.
- azatom 4y agoLike USA will begin in 2023!? I could hardly believe it when I heard it, it is barely three centuries away!
- xnorswap 4y agoIt isn't really. The government proposed a consultation on doing so, mostly as a distraction. I'd eat my hat if anything actually changes, the UK was (partially) metricated over 50 years ago, there's zero appetite for reversing it among people of working age and business concerns will dominate any serious consultation around changing legislation.
- sgjohnson 4y agoThere’s also 0 appetite for completing the metrication process.
- littlestymaar 4y agoInterestingly enough per wikipedia[1], Myanmar and Liberia uses the A4 format while not using the metric system. [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4_(format)#/media/Fichier:Prevalent_default_paper_size.svg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4_(format)#/media/Fichier:Pre...
- defrost 4y agoThe irony there being that the US was in fact one of the first early adopters of the metric system, metric being the official weights and measure system within the USofA and the US foot being literally defined in terms of the underlying base metre.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoAll imperial units have now been redefined in terms of metric.
- vidarh 4y agoNot just adopter: The US was one of the original 17 signatories of the Metre Convention in 1875.
- Nokinside 4y agoAccording to US law SI has been the preferred system of weights and measures for US trade and commerce". The transition was not mandatory, so nothing happened.
- Semaphor 4y agoIt’s like how they made yyyy-MM-dd the law in Germany for official communications. No one cared, so they changed it to make it optional when used within Germany or when there is no ambiguity a few years later :D
- ygra 4y agoDIN 5008 should be required reading for anyone ;-) I do care, though, and use ISO 8601 almost exclusively in writing. And I do know a few others. Perhaps things will change eventually.
- Semaphor 4y agoBy "no one", I meant those that were supposed to use it: Government officials ;) I personally use it as well, and so does my workplace, surprisingly.
- Ma8ee 4y agoWe have been using it in Sweden as long as I can remember.
- WastingMyTime89 4y agoNothing happened because the US decided to elect Reagan and the plan was effectively shelved.
- nikanj 4y agoDon’t pretend UK and Canada are metric.
- tankenmate 4y agoThe UK is far closer to metric and will be even more so shortly, for anyone unaware most kids in the UK aren't even taught imperial units at school any more. There really are only vestigial units left; feet / inches for human height (but not for buildings for example), pints for liquids that are drunk (but not for hot water tanks for example), stone for human weight (but not for boxed items), etc. And for places like N. Ireland it's even less so, milk is sold in litres, etc because of the proximity to (Ro) Ireland (which now has its speed limits in km/h for example).
- Gordonjcp 4y agoMilk is sold in litres in the UK, it's really only beer that's sold in pints.
- avvt4avaw 4y agoThe most common sizes for milk to be sold in are 1.136 litres and 2.272 litres (i.e. 2 pints and 4 pints)
- Gordonjcp 4y agoWhere is that sold? I've never seen anything other than 500ml, 1l, and 2l.
- Symbiote 4y agoNormal supermarkets. If you only buy milk in multiples of 500mL, you're buying a luxury brand or from a corner shop -- both situations use the slightly smaller (vs 568mL) size to make the price seem lower. You can see at Tesco [1] that Yeo Valley, Arla, Cravendale, Finest, Tesco Filtered are all 1 or 2 litres. "Normal" milk is 2 or 4 pints. (The EU used to have regulations around this sort of thing, but I think they've unfortunately been repealed for most products. It's why bread was only sold in multiples of 400g -- it meant the merchant couldn't discreetly reduce the size of some/all products.) [1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/fresh-food/milk-butter-and-eggs/milk?shelf=Whole%20Milk&viewAll=shelf https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/fresh-food/milk-b...
- odiroot 4y agoUnfortunately UK still regularly mixes both systems. Plus pints and stone.
- geowwy 4y agoAlmost everywhere on earth mixes metric with some other system. Some places even mix metric, imperial, and some traditional pre-imperial system.
- ktzar 4y agoThat's not the case in the European and Southamerican countries I've visited or have acquaintances in. What countries do you have in mind? I'm quite interested.
- FreeFull 4y agoThe only thing I can think of is that screen diagonals are still measured in inches. Ignoring that, a lot of countries are definitely fully metric with regards to the basic length/weight/time measures
- Symbiote 4y agoYou can find occasional uses in many countries. TV screens are advertised in inches here in Denmark, although I noticed the last one I bought was "34 inch, 86.00cm" in the detailed specification -- the inches were just marketing. Old water pipes have some sort of pre-metric size. Several countries (e.g. France) use the word pound (livre) to mean 500g, which could confuse visitors into thinking something non-metric is being used. I noticed that in south America.
- Svip 4y agoNo one really does it any more, but "half-pound" (halvt pund) in Danish means 250g, which was the common way of ordering butter before the supermarkets took over (and why butter used[0] to come in packages of 250g). Similarly, in Sweden, one mile is 10 km. [0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.
- donedealomg 4y ago
- tsm 4y agoI used letter-sized paper when I was a kid in Honduras, and if memory serves a number of people use US units.
- smcl 4y agoIt’s worth remembering that the UK can almost be counted in that group to some extent - road distance and speed as well as human height and weight are normally defined in imperial measurements. Additionally the Conservatives have proposed return to imperial measurements (though just as a pretty transparent appeal to the “back in my day…” crowd)
- mathieuh 4y agoI was watching a guitar repair video on YouTube this morning and the luthier referred to the action of the guitar as being "five-and-a-half sixty-fourths". This blew my mind.
- checkyoursudo 4y agoEasier than saying "five sixty-fourths and one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth"
- pessimizer 4y agoI don't know how easy halving is genius when it comes to A4 paper, but somehow considered hopelessly convoluted when giving measurements in base 2.
- almostdigital 4y agoThis standard isn't part of the metric system though
- anonymous_sorry 4y agoNo, but the post mentions that A0 was chosen to have an area of one square metre. (Actually 0.999 square metres - you need a bit of fudge factor if you want sides in integer millimeters and a ratio of root 2)
- mkl 4y agoI'd say it's part of it in the sense that it's based completely on it. It's not a unit or set of units though.
- beefield 4y ago> The metric system is such a beauty, that it's shocking that is not used everywhere. You can check with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I think he nails it. The imperial system is much more natural for people to grasp. A pound is roughly a fist sized rock, but there are no natural objects that weight around one kilogram. And one yard is roughly the length of a step, completely unlike a meter. And so forth. /s Seriously, I propose a compromise. Europeans give up decimal comma and US gives up imperial measurements. Everyone wins.
- dunefox 4y ago> Europeans give up decimal comma Never!
- b112 4y agoFrom a Canadian comedy group, in the 80s, when we were transitioning to metric.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc I can hardly wait for first contact, and the planet has to transition to some galactic standard...
- PostOnce 4y agoIs it shocking that the number of hours in a day or months in a year is not divisible by 10? Doesn't it make sense for some things to divide by 3 and 4, like a year, so that a season is 3 months long, instead of 2.5 months long (as in the old 10-month year system, ending in December)? Does it not make sense to use a human scale for certain things, like outdoor weather (as opposed to say, temperatures inside of machinery): In Fahrenheit: 0: very cold to people; 100: very hot to people. In Celsius: 0: not that cold; 100: I died 50 degrees ago. The metric system seems to me to be forced onto things where it does not fit, when in fact it's fine to use more than one system when contextually appropriate. After all, none of us think it weird to use bases 2, 10, or 16 for different things on our computers.
- t_mann 4y ago> Doesn't it make sense for some things to divide by 3 and 4, like a year, so that a season is 3 months long, instead of 2.5 months long (as in the old 10-month year system, ending in December)? The metric system also uses twelve months per year, so what is your point? > Does it not make sense to use a human scale for certain things, like outdoor weather (as opposed to say, temperatures inside of machinery): Yes, Fahrenheit works 'better' than Celsuis for describing weather temperatures. But it does arguably worse at pretty much everything else, including other everyday occurrences like cooking or washing clothes. As an aside, 12 would arguably be the better base for an everyday number system, but we are where we are (and contrary to what's commonly claimed, the imperial system isn't derived from base 12 either - 12 is used in a few places, but most proportions are historically grown and fairly random).
- CorrectHorseBat 4y agoIn Celcius, 0 water freezes, 100 water boils. Very convenient for weather and cooking. For the rest, what is hot weather or cold weather is very subjective, so I don't really see any use to define a scale on the base of that.
- bmitc 4y agoDo people actually directly measure boiling water? I've never seen that. It's a self-apparent phenomenon. I've never heard of anyone measuring anything while cooking where it matters which temperature scale they're using.
- Someone 4y ago> The fact that a liter of water has a relation with the size of the paper we use is just poetry. It’s not that there is a relation, it’s that it’s simple. If you put 288/187 inch of water on a standard letter paper, you get exactly one cubic foot of water, but I wouldn’t say “The fact that a cubic foot of water has a relation with the size of the paper we use is just poetry”. It also is a happy coincidence that the idea “if we cut a page in half, the two parts should have the same proportions” leads to usable paper sizes. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have this system. And has this ever been tried for 3D, say in storage boxes? The proportions of a box would be about 1 : 5/4 : 25/16. That’s a bit cube-ish, but doesn’t look unusable to me.
- poorlyknit 4y agoThere's these storage boxes whose size is defined by the dimensions of an EUR-pallet [1]: https://euronormbehaelter.com/faq/arten-euronormbehaelter/ https://euronormbehaelter.com/faq/arten-euronormbehaelter/. Each smaller container divides some dimension by 2. However, I don't think they follow the golden ratio at all. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EUR-pallet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EUR-pallet
- bmitc 4y agoBeauty doesn't necessarily mean practical in all cases. In all honesty, people who grew up with the metric system don't usually understand how practical Fahrenheit and other non-metric units often are (not always are). Are they hard to calculate with? Yes, sometimes. But they usually directly map to average human experience. For example, humans experience temperatures in the range of 0 - 100 degrees F most of the time. That's -17.8 - 37.78 degrees C. The Celsius range doesn't really make sense in the context of daily experience and is less fine-grained at that. Yes, 0-100 degrees C is freezing to boiling, but humans don't live in that range. The metric system is great for symmetry and calculations but that doesn't always map to practical quantities in those units, in my personal opinion. It's kind of funny when foreign friends will explain to me metric units, when I already know them, but they don't understand anything about non-metric units or their practicality. Edit: I should have known to make this comment, because it's going to get bikeshedded to death (already is). The summary of my point was to say that the metric system is perfect for calculations and representations, but the non-metric systems can often serve more practical purposes. Not always but often. In other words, for daily, non-engineering uses, there's really not much of a strong winner aside from people's country of origin. Even for paper, it's a toss-up for me. I find for notebooks, the A<x> sizes are nice and preferred by me, but US letter size is sometimes more preferred over A4 paper. A4 paper is nice for mathematical notes but can often get in the way of diagramming due to the narrowness. There just seems to be a superiority complex of those that use the metric system, but I don't really get it. Note the use of the word "shocking" in the comment I replied to. Edit 2: Commenting on scales really seems to grind some gears and gets people going. I'm okay with stating that the scales used for various measurements are fairly arbitrary in daily life and that there's pros and cons to both, but still disagree that it's shocking various places don't use the metric system. They certainly cause issues in engineering systems though.
- vanderZwan 4y agoYour subjective experience of temperature has three digits of precision? Because mine sure doesn't.
- happymellon 4y agoMy daily experience absolutely fits into the 0-50 range. 0C outside means the ground is hard to work with. 32F is such an arbitrary number when dealing is concrete reality outside.
- mojuba 4y agoAnother fun fact: meter was originally defined as a length of a pendulum whose half-period is one second. But wait for it. If you look at the pendulum formula [1] you will realize that g ≈ π^2 (i.e. 3.14^2 roughly equals 9.8) is not a coincidence, it's a consequence of the original definition of the meter! [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=pendulum+formula https://www.google.com/search?q=pendulum+formula
- talideon 4y agoThat isn't correct. The pendulum definition was actually something called a "universal toise". Burattini suggested defining a unit called the metre based off of this, but it was found to be unworkable because it's not the same everywhere. A toise is ~1.949m. The metre was _actually_ originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Obviously, that ended up having its own issues, hence the subsequent refinements until we settled on using the speed of light in a vacuum as the basis for it.
- mojuba 4y agoNothing in what I said is incorrect. The original scientific definition of the meter is via a pendulum (1645), then it was refined via toises multiple times, and today it's defined via speed of light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre
- irishsultan 4y agoNo, that's not correct, that unit while intended to be a universal measure of distance never was called a meter (the "inventor" wanted to call it "toise universalle"), all that comes from the wikipedia page you linked to, so the only remaining question is whether you can call it the "original definition". I don't think you can call it the original definition, because (a) that definition never got any universal acceptance (not even among scientists), (b) didn't work (as it gave different results on different locations) and (c) wasn't particularly close in value to the current definition.
- smusamashah 4y agoHow does this size have anything to do with the metric system, it could have been any units of length with same ratio.
- treffer 4y agoFrom the article: A0 is designed to be as close to 1m² as you can get with whole mm side lengths. As such A1 is 1/2 m², A2 is 1/4 m², A3 1/8 m², A4 is 1/16 m². I would call this tied to the metrics system. It never occurred to me that I could approximate odd 1m² areas with 16 sheets of A4... I found this enlightening from the original article. TIL.
- petepete 4y agoWould recommend the documentary Precision: The Measure of All Things by Marcus du Sautoy. It's no longer on iPlayer but thankfully someone's uploaded it to YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g81opjVDAaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g81opjVDAaA
- coldtea 4y agoI could perhaps understand the use of fahrenheit for temperature - I'm not used to it, but people say the changes in different temperature degrees are more like how we perceive them (perhaps temperature is like some things like sound level that we perceive logarithmically, and ferenheit maps better to it [1]). Not sure if this is valid (celsius looks fine to me) but if it is, sure, fahrenheit makes sense. But for the rest, like distance and weight? What the fuck?! [1] I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling").
- Aaronmacaron 4y agoWhat do you mean? Fahrenheit is not logarithmic. The conversion function from Fahrenheit to Celsius is literallay a linear function: c(f) = f(5/9) - (160/9)
- coldtea 4y ago>What do you mean? Fahrenheit is not logarithmic. It's not like I didn't explicitly cover that: "I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling")." So, no, I'm not saying temperature perception is logarithmic and Fahrenheit is logarithmic to match it. I'm just saying that similarly to how dB suits sound perception better (because it's logarithmic and more appropriate to our logarithmic perception of volume), fahrenheit might fit intuitive temperature perception better (because it's more appropriate to our perception of temperature). Actually, I'm not even saying this is the case. Just that I've read and heard people claim that, so it could be (I'm not from a fahrenheit using country, so can't speal for how it intuitively feels), for one example: https://thevane.gawker.com/fahrenheit-is-a-better-temperature-scale-than-celsius-1691707793 https://thevane.gawker.com/fahrenheit-is-a-better-temperatur...
- dev_tty01 4y agoFahrenheit is nice because the normal range of temps for most climates that humans generally prefer to inhabit is about 0 to 100. Over 100 starts to be dangerous to humans without some form of cooling, evaporative or otherwise. 0 F (-18 C) is about as cold a temp as most (not all) people would want to live in. Ironically, viewed from that perspective, Fahrenheit gives typical temps a nice powers of ten framework, which is normally one of the great advantages of metric systems. Celsius fails in this regard, going from -18 C to 28 C for the same range. Less precision and no intuitive decimal framework. On the other hand, I completely agree that the rest of the non-metric measurements are just a mess. However, the binary nature of cups, pints, quarts, half gallons, and gallons are kind of quaint I suppose.
- samatman 4y agoShame this comment is floating to the top, for a few reasons. First: The DIN paper standards aren't a part of the metric system. They are a use of the metric system. Second, the important part: what makes A series paper cool (truly one of my favorite standards) is a ratio, these are by definition independent of metric. One can imagine a paper standard based on 36 inches, rather than 1 meter, which would have all of the good properties of A and B series paper. The third reason is that the imperial measurement system is also an application of the metric system. But others have covered that already. It's an ongoing source of amusement to me that people fluent in just one system of measurement look down on a continent of hundreds of millions whose educated class is fluent in both.
- twelvechairs 4y agoAlso the metre is a weird unit to use as a base. It is based on an incorrect 17th C estimation of the circumfrence of the earth and is now standardised as some weird fraction of the distance light travels in a vacuum in a second (a second itself being based on a weird fraction of transitions in a stable form of Cesium atom) A foot is at least something very closely aligned across many cultures (from ancient Egypt to Japan) because of because of its clear and useful relationship to human scale and building products
- perilunar 4y ago> based on an incorrect 17th C estimation of the circumfrence of the earth Incorrect? It's pretty bloody close for 1793 — The error is less than 0.02% !
- iggldiggl 4y ago> A foot is at least something very closely aligned Hmm, the largest historic European foot listed on the corresponding Wikipedia page is almost 30 % larger than the smallest foot. So while they indeed all are somewhere roughly 30 cm-ish long, after a few feet those differences will still add up considerably…
- Theodores 4y agoI was a staunch advocate of the metric system, however, I am not the 'fanboy' I once was. It all makes sense and seems really clever when you are at school with your little ruler with those weird inch things on the unused side. I could bark at any adult daring to use an outlawed measurement unit, to put them in their place. To a certain extent we do that with Americans and their usage of 'weird' units that make no sense to people outside of the UK. However, as I have got older, I have learned to appreciate why these quaint measurements have survived the test of time. For example the 0.1 inch pitch spacing of integrated circuits is a gentle reminder that Americans pioneered and invented all of this stuff and that, despite the politics and sentiment of the time, some respect is deserved for the non-metric giant shoulders we stand on. Every British person knows what a metre is but most British people will give their height in feet and inches. Ask those people what their height is in metres and your guess is as good as mine. Weight has made a slow transition to kilograms in the UK. Stone is still a measurement. But when an American describes weight in pounds the average British person has not the foggiest. I find more beauty in the vernacular measurements and I can play devil's advocate - 'Metric is French Napoleon conquest bad'. Nowadays we have electronic gadgets to do the simplest arithmetic. Nobody does long division on paper these days. They don't even have a pen. The benefits of the decimal system are somewhat moot. I can see why base 12 measurements stick around but no idea why base 14 is a thing. Anyway, couldn't the A4 problem have been solved with non square pixels?
- timbit42 4y agoIt would be much more beautiful if it were based on 12 instead of 10. Of course, this would require humanity to switch to dozenal, which will never happen unless almost everyone dies and someone enforces it on the few that remain to repopulate the planet.
- andruby 4y agoCould you expand why base-12 is more beautiful than base-10? Is it because it has more divisors? If so, why not base-2?
- irrational 4y agoNot worth getting worked up over. We will all be dead long before the USA widely uses the metric system.