4 ms·
> That's why you get ridiculousness as things being 13/64th of an inch Such fractions are very rarely used, you're more likely to use mils (1/1000 of an inch)
by chungy 1y ago
> That's why you get ridiculousness as things being 13/64th of an inch
Such fractions are very rarely used, you're more likely to use mils (1/1000 of an inch) at that scale.
> or that there's 63360 inches in a mile.
Likewise, something that will probably never come up in your life. Inches/feet/yards and miles just remain separate things, never mixed.
> With a metre and standard prefixes, you don't need any conversion factors, and you can represent any distance at any scale with a single unit.
There's no intuition for them. Knowing what a meter is does not help with getting a feel for a kilometer. They might as well be as separate as feet and miles at that scale.
> Quick, what's 11/64" + 3/8"?
That one's not even hard, it's just a fraction. 35/64"
> Quick, which weight is bigger: 0.6lbs or 10oz?
Another arbitrary problem that will probably never come up, but to entertain you: since 0.5 lbs is 8oz, adding 1.6oz to that (another tenth of a lbs) results in 9.6oz. 10oz is bigger than 0.6 lbs. Not hard, but at least mildly harder than the first question.
None of this really had to do with the convenience highlighted initially: 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard make extremely convenient divisible factors. You can trivially divide things by 2, 3, 4, and 6 and keep with whole integer values. The same definitely cannot be said of metric.
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- Symbiote 1y ago> Inches/feet/yards and miles just remain separate things, never mixed How tall are you, maybe 70 inches? Or 5⅚ft? 178cm or 1.78m are so obviously equivalent it doesn't matter which is used. > 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard make extremely convenient divisible factors. This requires you to start with 12 inches. If you're making a cupboard to fit in an 18¾" (476mm) space, it's no use, or is only randomly useful. If you can choose, then you can just as easily start with 36cm. For example, European kitchens are designed around a 300mm base size.
- chungy 1y ago> How tall are you, maybe 70 inches? Or 5⅚ft? Are you purposely doing this? That is obviously not what I meant. Nobody says "3 miles, 500 feet", they say "3.1 miles". Effectively two systems of distance measurement: inches/feet/yards (near scale), and miles (distant scale). "5 feet 10 inches" is completely normal and fine. > This requires you to start with 12 inches. If you're making a cupboard to fit in an 18¾" (476mm) space, it's no use, or is only randomly useful. So you cut the cupboard to fit a 18¾" space, no big deal. Same as anything else, and just as random as 476mm. Typically they come in (integer!) 12-inch, 24-inch, 36-inch, or 48-inch variants.
- saalweachter 1y agoThis is honestly the problem with critiquing any system from without: you don't know what's really wrong with it. Fucking bushels, man.
- simpaticoder 1y agoThey are talking past each other. One is saying, "metric is better than imperial", the other is saying "imperial works". Neither claim is relevant to the other.