5 ms·
Unpopular opinion: english units make sense to normal humans. metric units make it easier to do physics. (i'm a physicist)
by spullara 4y ago
Unpopular opinion: english units make sense to normal humans. metric units make it easier to do physics. (i'm a physicist)
- nikanj 4y agoThat’s just familiriaty bias
- akie 4y agoCounter opinion: no one who grew up in a country with the metric system would know how to understand "I weigh 14 stones". What stones? Small ones? Big ones? Who decides if it's a big one or a small one? Also, how would I know how much a stone weighs? It's just silly. It has no more bearing on reality than a kg does.
- midasuni 4y agoEnglish units like my 2 litre kettle which I use to fill my 300ml cup with tea? Yes they do make sense.
- stephen_g 4y agoIf you grow up in a country that uses metric basically exclusively, it’s not. I literally cannot visualise 10 feet but if you say three metres I instantly have a feel for how long that is (I even Googled the conversion because I couldn’t be bothered working it out). I wouldn’t have any idea what 100 degrees Fahrenheit felt like if I didn’t know it’s about 38 degrees C. And so on…
- Bakary 4y agoThis is not an unpopular opinion. Millions of anglophones seem to be unable to grasp or accept that metric measures make intuitive sense to people who use them.
- wizofaus 4y agoI'll grant that words like inches, pounds and miles have more literary gravitas to them than centimetres, kilograms or kilometers, and it would be a shame to lose those former words completely, but arguing they make more "sense" is really pushing it. I literally have no "sense" of what a "stone" weighs, how deep a "fathom" or a "league" is, how much area a "rood" covers, or how much liquid makes up a fluid ounce, and I doubt I ever will. And they're just some of the more common units!