5 ms·

I wish we used a unit more similar to the foot as the base. Its much more useful for human-scale understanding - as seen by many civilisations (from the Japanes

I wish we used a unit more similar to the foot as the base. Its much more useful for human-scale understanding - as seen by many civilisations (from the Japanese, Chinese, indians, ancient egyptians, romans, etc.) adopting something similar (something between about 10 and 18 inches). You can build off that as you need of course.

2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
You mean, imperial?
- twelvechairs 3y ago
  No you can still use a metric system, just use the foot (or similar) as a base and then kilofoot, megafoot, microfoot etc. rather than inches, yards, miles, links, chains, rods and perches etc.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
    We already kind of do that. I’ve seen things like 1.5 gallons, 2.5 miles, 10.7 feet. I’ve never seen the intermediate imperial units being used.
    - tomatocracy 3y ago
      At least in the UK my experience is we don't really use decimals with Imperial units - it seems much more natural to use fractions. For example, "10 feet 8 and a half inches" not "10.7 feet" (yes I know the rounding is slightly different). For a smaller distance you might say "three sixteenths of an inch" (since thats what the imperial side of a tape measure is typically divided into) though there are some exceptions eg "0.1 inch spacing". Pints and fl oz the same (you see this quite often in recipes for example) - "1 pint 3 fl oz" or even "23 fl oz" not "1.15 pints". For gallons I think most Brits would likely use a whole number of pints rather than subdividing (ie "21 pints" not "2 gallons, 5 pints"). But I'll give you that we don't really use furlongs outside of horse racing :)
bestouff 3y ago
That's an education bias. I find meters way more intuitive than feets.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Same here.. especially feet can have a 100% difference in small and large feets, even in adults alone. Any human measure is prone to personal bias then, similarly obscure as if we had defined 2m to be the height of the average human?!
The_Colonel 3y ago
I think something similar to stride length would be more useful as base, about 70-80cm. Riugh measuring by strides is something everybody does from time to time. Meter kind of works for that, but you need to compensate by concsciously making longer strides. I don't thik foot is particularly useful in day to day life - it's awkward to measure walking distance with that, and for measuring smaller objects it's awkwardly placed, an arm length unit might be more useful for measuring smallish objects.
Ekaros 3y ago
If feet is so universal and superior why is yards and miles used?

2muchcoffeeman 3y ago

You mean, imperial?

twelvechairs 3y ago
No you can still use a metric system, just use the foot (or similar) as a base and then kilofoot, megafoot, microfoot etc. rather than inches, yards, miles, links, chains, rods and perches etc.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
  We already kind of do that. I’ve seen things like 1.5 gallons, 2.5 miles, 10.7 feet. I’ve never seen the intermediate imperial units being used.
  - tomatocracy 3y ago
    At least in the UK my experience is we don't really use decimals with Imperial units - it seems much more natural to use fractions. For example, "10 feet 8 and a half inches" not "10.7 feet" (yes I know the rounding is slightly different). For a smaller distance you might say "three sixteenths of an inch" (since thats what the imperial side of a tape measure is typically divided into) though there are some exceptions eg "0.1 inch spacing". Pints and fl oz the same (you see this quite often in recipes for example) - "1 pint 3 fl oz" or even "23 fl oz" not "1.15 pints". For gallons I think most Brits would likely use a whole number of pints rather than subdividing (ie "21 pints" not "2 gallons, 5 pints"). But I'll give you that we don't really use furlongs outside of horse racing :)

bestouff 3y ago

That's an education bias. I find meters way more intuitive than feets.

throwbadubadu 3y ago
Same here.. especially feet can have a 100% difference in small and large feets, even in adults alone. Any human measure is prone to personal bias then, similarly obscure as if we had defined 2m to be the height of the average human?!

The_Colonel 3y ago

I think something similar to stride length would be more useful as base, about 70-80cm. Riugh measuring by strides is something everybody does from time to time. Meter kind of works for that, but you need to compensate by concsciously making longer strides. I don't thik foot is particularly useful in day to day life - it's awkward to measure walking distance with that, and for measuring smaller objects it's awkwardly placed, an arm length unit might be more useful for measuring smallish objects.

Ekaros 3y ago

If feet is so universal and superior why is yards and miles used?