3 ms·

> Thanks, America! Erm, they didn't invent it. Most (all?) American units were inherited from British. Farenheit was invented in Europe. I have also warmed to

> Thanks, America! Erm, they didn't invent it. Most (all?) American units were inherited from British. Farenheit was invented in Europe. I have also warmed to Imperial/American units for certain things. A lot of simple recipes are easier to remember in ounces than in grams. For example, 5 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of butter gives you enough shortcrust pastry for a 9 inch tin. Inches seem about the right size, but centimeters are too small. People's heights tend to fall around 5-6 feet which is nice, or 150-180/1.5-1.8 which is kind of awkward. Basically, imperial measurements seem much more "human" while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light which have absolutely no bearing on our lives. None of this means that "cups" are a sane way to measure ingredients for cooking, though. There's just so many reasons why it's bad but even just from a laziness point of view it's an extra thing to wash up.

perilunar 3y ago
> while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light Um, No. Metric is based on the size of the Earth and the density of water. The original definition of the meter was "one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator", making the circumference of the Earth 40,000 km or 40 Mm. The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one litre of water. (1 m³ = 1000 kg). It wasn't arbitrary.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Well yes but those measurements are still "arbitrary" in the sense that they have no relation to anything that humans regularly deal with or have an intuition for. Basing a unit of measurement on the size of the Earth? Why not base it on the size of the Sun, or on the distance between Toronto and Timbuktu, or on the combined height of every member of the U.S congress if they all laid head to toe? Those numbers mean nothing to me, but I have a good intuitive feel for distances like "the general range of human heights", "the size of my foot", or "how far I can walk in an hour". Imperial measurements have their origins in those kind of intuitive, everyday quantities that we humans have a natural feel for; that's the sense in which they're not "arbitrary". That doesn't nmake imperial measurements unconditionally "better", it just makes them more useful and relatable in certain contexts.

perilunar 3y ago

> while metric seems based on arbitrary universal constants like the speed of light Um, No. Metric is based on the size of the Earth and the density of water. The original definition of the meter was "one ten-millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator", making the circumference of the Earth 40,000 km or 40 Mm. The kilogram was originally defined as the mass of one litre of water. (1 m³ = 1000 kg). It wasn't arbitrary.

arrowsmith 3y ago
Well yes but those measurements are still "arbitrary" in the sense that they have no relation to anything that humans regularly deal with or have an intuition for. Basing a unit of measurement on the size of the Earth? Why not base it on the size of the Sun, or on the distance between Toronto and Timbuktu, or on the combined height of every member of the U.S congress if they all laid head to toe? Those numbers mean nothing to me, but I have a good intuitive feel for distances like "the general range of human heights", "the size of my foot", or "how far I can walk in an hour". Imperial measurements have their origins in those kind of intuitive, everyday quantities that we humans have a natural feel for; that's the sense in which they're not "arbitrary". That doesn't nmake imperial measurements unconditionally "better", it just makes them more useful and relatable in certain contexts.