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When I was a student one of my mates was going on about the superiority of the metric system and how he wished the UK would adopt it fully rather than the heter
by BoxOfRain 2mo ago
When I was a student one of my mates was going on about the superiority of the metric system and how he wished the UK would adopt it fully rather than the heterogenous mix we actually have. The football was on in the background, and shortly after a goal was scored he exclaimed 'that must have been from thirty yards!' Personally I quite like the fact we use both, it underlines that our human systems of measurement are arbitrary rather than baked into the fabric of reality.
I'm too old to be a zoomer and too young to be a millennial, but I'm more or less bilingual with unit systems. Useful for a European who deals with the US often!
- CDRdude 2mo agoI find it mildly amusing that fully metric countries are seemingly stuck with some standardized measurements based on imperial units. Like how a soccer/football goal is 8 feet x 24 feet / 7.32 m x 2.44 m. Or how a standard shipping conatiner is 40 feet x 8 feet x 8 feet 6 inches/ 12.192 m x 2.438 m x 2.591 m. Or standard gague railways being 4 feet 8.5 inches / 1.435 m.
- oblio 2mo agoThat's due to outsized British and American influence, but even that is waning. Nobody will change legacy sizes such as football goals, but every sport invented outside of those countries will use metric sizes. As the US wanes in influence, this will happen more and more.