5 ms·

As someone from european continent. Those US measurements units look and feel so hard to work with. Instead metric system is predictable and easy to work with.

by tariky 5mo ago

As someone from european continent. Those US measurements units look and feel so hard to work with. Instead metric system is predictable and easy to work with. Real question is why US just don't move to metric system?

reddalo 5mo ago
> why US just don't move to metric system? They've been trying for a long time, but apparently it's not an easy task. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
georgemcbay 5mo ago
> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? Because we live in a land of liberty! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
cityofdelusion 5mo ago
The U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.
- Jblx2 5mo ago
  Can't wait for us to adopt the metric Avogadro constant. I wonder what units they use for the Hubble constant in Europe (love me some megaparsecs).
LtWorf 5mo ago
> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? The maga people are ready to die on this hill.
iacelmiv 5mo ago
Points are not American, they are used for typography in Europe and everywhere else equally as much as in the US. The metric system is poorly suited for font sizes. Most designs require a series of sizes within a small range: a typical book or poster might use 9pt for footnotes, 12pt for main text, 16pt for subtitles, and 24pt for titles. Aesthetically speaking the most attractive ratios of sizes are small ratios like 3:2 and 4:3. Using points it is very easy to construct an attractive range of font sizes like my example above. It is difficult to imagine how this would look in a metric system that's not a mess.
- perilunar 5mo ago
  Font sizes would be perfectly fine in millimetres. 9 pt ≅ 3 mm, 12 pt ≅ 4 mm, 18 pt ≅ 6 mm, 24 pt ≅ 8 mm. The difference is about 6%.
  - WillAdams 5mo ago
    A 6% difference in type size would markedly change number of characters per line, number of lines per page, and pagination.
    - perilunar 5mo ago
      [dead]
analog31 5mo ago
In industry, we have. At home, most households have little or no use for US dimension tools such as wrenches. You can service a bike with all metric tools. "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. The latter would cause a brief but massive inventory management problem, that nobody's ever willing to put up with, even if there's a long term benefit. I believe we made a mistake in how we tried to teach the metric system. I learned in first grade: Metric is easy because it's just math. Most people heard "math" and freaked out. Metric was taught as a bunch of conversions and units. Inches were taught as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things. I remember talking to a machinist, and he said: "I hate the metric system because there's so much math." That was 30+ years ago. Today, machinists just read mm or inches from the same digital readout or CAD program. My Canadian friends learned metric as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.
- perilunar 5mo ago
  > "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. You adopt ISO sizes FFS. They are international standards. You really want to invent a whole new set of incompatible 'standards'? You think the US is the first to go through this? Australia, Canada, and the UK went metric in the 1970s (we also decimalised our currencies). Yes it was challenging for some adults but mostly pretty easy for kids. People adapted. Industries adapted. Now we hardly think about it except when dealing with Americans or in some historical contexts.
  - SoftTalker 5mo ago
    For the piping example, you have all the installed infrastructure that's in the old "IPS" (straight) and "NPT" (tapered) sizes. So now a plumber needs to carry additional fittings or carry conversion fittings. Easier to just stay with what we have.
    - perilunar 5mo ago
      Of course it's easier to stick with what you have in the short term. Change is difficult. You do it for the long term gain. If you had done it 50 years ago like the rest of the English-speaking world you wouldn't be in this mess.
projektfu 5mo ago
My countrymen are shockingly dumb. Presented with something rational like 24-hour time, they prefer to not learn and be confused all the time instead of adopting the better way. Unless it's mandatory, such as in military or aviation, then they are happy with it and feel like part of a special in-group.
- Jblx2 5mo ago
  >something rational like 24-hour time Shouldn't the real smarties be using 10-hour days using metric time? 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. https://timeity.com/metric-time/ https://timeity.com/metric-time/
  - stackghost 5mo ago
    My grandfather gave me a mechanical pocketwatch stopwatch that counts tenths of a minute. Every gradation on the dial is 6 seconds. It's bizarre.
  - projektfu 5mo ago
    Clearly we should just use seconds, hectoseconds, kiloseconds and megaseconds, and stop worrying about whether our time lines up with the celestial movements.
    - Jblx2 5mo ago
      And here I thought maybe time zero would be the big bang, but alas, that is too celestial, so I guess January 1st, 1970 it is. Or whatever that is in the metric calendar (10 months per year, 10 days/week, 100 days/month)
      - perilunar 5mo ago
        It's a bit difficult to use the Big Bang as time zero when the current uncertainty of when it actually happened ±0.02 billion years, which is what, a thousand times longer than all of recorded human history. We could use the birth date of that jewish prophet, except we'd still be off by a few years. Oh well, in a few centuries no one will care, and we'll just use Unix Epoch.
AngryData 5mo ago
Because you have to ask what benefit will it serve in exchange for the effort? In places werwere it really matter we already do, and conversions are pretty simple otherwise. Sometimes fractional units are just slightly easier for a specific task, and having used them our whole lives they are second nature. To me asking why we don't have a single measuring standard is similiar to asking why we don't all agree on a single language. Sometimes it would be easier, sometimes it wouldn't, but in the end it doesn't matter all that much.
CyLith 5mo ago
Because I don't want to deal with a hundred of anything, and I don't want to deal with decimal points. I want everything I measure to be near single digit numbers. Hence, inches for common dimensions like a "2x4". I can handle something being 5 1/4 inches. How the hell large is 133 mm? Humans are not good at intuiting numbers far from unity. Miles are great. The typical highway speed limit is about a mile a minute. You can easily lower bound how long it will take to get somewhere if you know how far it is in miles. In cooking, I often need to halve quantities in recipes, hence pounds and ounces. Watching cooking channels give metric quantities is absolutely baffling to me. You see things like 175 mL. That is 2 sigfigs too many.
- nonfamous 5mo ago
  >> That is 2 sigfigs too many Don’t take up baking then, where the difference between 175 mLs of water and 200 mLs of water can be the difference between unworkable dough and the perfect pie crust.
- mahkeiro 5mo ago
  You don't want to manage a decimal point but you are fine adding two set of units? Like in 6'3?
  - Jach 5mo ago
    When Europe switches to metric time I'll switch to reporting centimeters for my height.
  - CyLith 5mo ago
    Yes. I see the 6 and I think: pretty tall, just a bit taller than me as a baseline. Then the 3 indicates another bit more. At no point am I adding the quantities to achieve a total. It’s two pieces of information in something akin to a binary search. I do woodworking and framing and approach is similar. Measure out to 6 feet first, then move out 3 inches more. It’s iterative refinement. To measure lengths I always do a few bisections like 3 feet, 2 inches, and 3/4 plus a sixteenth. I can remember a sequence of 3 or 4 integers for about a minute, long enough to transfer the measurement. Give me something like 135mm, and I’ll forget in a few seconds.

by tariky 5mo ago

reddalo 5mo ago

> why US just don't move to metric system? They've been trying for a long time, but apparently it's not an easy task. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_Stat...

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

georgemcbay 5mo ago

> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? Because we live in a land of liberty! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk

cityofdelusion 5mo ago

The U.S. uses metric pretty much everywhere that is important, in most science, engineering, and medicine. Specific trades and common household things remain imperial due to inertia and no one really caring. It is much more accurate to say the U.S. has a dual system. We learn metric in school like everyone else.

Jblx2 5mo ago
Can't wait for us to adopt the metric Avogadro constant. I wonder what units they use for the Hubble constant in Europe (love me some megaparsecs).

LtWorf 5mo ago

> Real question is why US just don't move to metric system? The maga people are ready to die on this hill.

iacelmiv 5mo ago

Points are not American, they are used for typography in Europe and everywhere else equally as much as in the US. The metric system is poorly suited for font sizes. Most designs require a series of sizes within a small range: a typical book or poster might use 9pt for footnotes, 12pt for main text, 16pt for subtitles, and 24pt for titles. Aesthetically speaking the most attractive ratios of sizes are small ratios like 3:2 and 4:3. Using points it is very easy to construct an attractive range of font sizes like my example above. It is difficult to imagine how this would look in a metric system that's not a mess.

perilunar 5mo ago
Font sizes would be perfectly fine in millimetres. 9 pt ≅ 3 mm, 12 pt ≅ 4 mm, 18 pt ≅ 6 mm, 24 pt ≅ 8 mm. The difference is about 6%.
- WillAdams 5mo ago
  A 6% difference in type size would markedly change number of characters per line, number of lines per page, and pagination.
  - perilunar 5mo ago
    [dead]

analog31 5mo ago

In industry, we have. At home, most households have little or no use for US dimension tools such as wrenches. You can service a bike with all metric tools. "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. The latter would cause a brief but massive inventory management problem, that nobody's ever willing to put up with, even if there's a long term benefit. I believe we made a mistake in how we tried to teach the metric system. I learned in first grade: Metric is easy because it's just math. Most people heard "math" and freaked out. Metric was taught as a bunch of conversions and units. Inches were taught as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things. I remember talking to a machinist, and he said: "I hate the metric system because there's so much math." That was 30+ years ago. Today, machinists just read mm or inches from the same digital readout or CAD program. My Canadian friends learned metric as: Here's a ruler, go measure some things.

perilunar 5mo ago
> "Going metric" raises the question of whether we adopt metric measures for our existing standards (such as pipe threads) or actually adopt the ISO sizes. You adopt ISO sizes FFS. They are international standards. You really want to invent a whole new set of incompatible 'standards'? You think the US is the first to go through this? Australia, Canada, and the UK went metric in the 1970s (we also decimalised our currencies). Yes it was challenging for some adults but mostly pretty easy for kids. People adapted. Industries adapted. Now we hardly think about it except when dealing with Americans or in some historical contexts.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  For the piping example, you have all the installed infrastructure that's in the old "IPS" (straight) and "NPT" (tapered) sizes. So now a plumber needs to carry additional fittings or carry conversion fittings. Easier to just stay with what we have.
  - perilunar 5mo ago
    Of course it's easier to stick with what you have in the short term. Change is difficult. You do it for the long term gain. If you had done it 50 years ago like the rest of the English-speaking world you wouldn't be in this mess.

projektfu 5mo ago

My countrymen are shockingly dumb. Presented with something rational like 24-hour time, they prefer to not learn and be confused all the time instead of adopting the better way. Unless it's mandatory, such as in military or aviation, then they are happy with it and feel like part of a special in-group.

Jblx2 5mo ago
>something rational like 24-hour time Shouldn't the real smarties be using 10-hour days using metric time? 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. https://timeity.com/metric-time/ https://timeity.com/metric-time/
- stackghost 5mo ago
  My grandfather gave me a mechanical pocketwatch stopwatch that counts tenths of a minute. Every gradation on the dial is 6 seconds. It's bizarre.
- projektfu 5mo ago
  Clearly we should just use seconds, hectoseconds, kiloseconds and megaseconds, and stop worrying about whether our time lines up with the celestial movements.
  - Jblx2 5mo ago
    And here I thought maybe time zero would be the big bang, but alas, that is too celestial, so I guess January 1st, 1970 it is. Or whatever that is in the metric calendar (10 months per year, 10 days/week, 100 days/month)
    - perilunar 5mo ago
      It's a bit difficult to use the Big Bang as time zero when the current uncertainty of when it actually happened ±0.02 billion years, which is what, a thousand times longer than all of recorded human history. We could use the birth date of that jewish prophet, except we'd still be off by a few years. Oh well, in a few centuries no one will care, and we'll just use Unix Epoch.

AngryData 5mo ago

Because you have to ask what benefit will it serve in exchange for the effort? In places werwere it really matter we already do, and conversions are pretty simple otherwise. Sometimes fractional units are just slightly easier for a specific task, and having used them our whole lives they are second nature. To me asking why we don't have a single measuring standard is similiar to asking why we don't all agree on a single language. Sometimes it would be easier, sometimes it wouldn't, but in the end it doesn't matter all that much.

CyLith 5mo ago

Because I don't want to deal with a hundred of anything, and I don't want to deal with decimal points. I want everything I measure to be near single digit numbers. Hence, inches for common dimensions like a "2x4". I can handle something being 5 1/4 inches. How the hell large is 133 mm? Humans are not good at intuiting numbers far from unity. Miles are great. The typical highway speed limit is about a mile a minute. You can easily lower bound how long it will take to get somewhere if you know how far it is in miles. In cooking, I often need to halve quantities in recipes, hence pounds and ounces. Watching cooking channels give metric quantities is absolutely baffling to me. You see things like 175 mL. That is 2 sigfigs too many.

nonfamous 5mo ago
>> That is 2 sigfigs too many Don’t take up baking then, where the difference between 175 mLs of water and 200 mLs of water can be the difference between unworkable dough and the perfect pie crust.
mahkeiro 5mo ago
You don't want to manage a decimal point but you are fine adding two set of units? Like in 6'3?
- Jach 5mo ago
  When Europe switches to metric time I'll switch to reporting centimeters for my height.
- CyLith 5mo ago
  Yes. I see the 6 and I think: pretty tall, just a bit taller than me as a baseline. Then the 3 indicates another bit more. At no point am I adding the quantities to achieve a total. It’s two pieces of information in something akin to a binary search. I do woodworking and framing and approach is similar. Measure out to 6 feet first, then move out 3 inches more. It’s iterative refinement. To measure lengths I always do a few bisections like 3 feet, 2 inches, and 3/4 plus a sixteenth. I can remember a sequence of 3 or 4 integers for about a minute, long enough to transfer the measurement. Give me something like 135mm, and I’ll forget in a few seconds.