Can anyone say it isn't? You're using a valid prefix, so people will understand what you're saying, if they have no idea in hell why you're measuring out 1024 meters.
I think that's one thing that's actually fine about the English language though. Constantly switching between something ending with "ion" to "iard" instead of just counting up doesn't make much sense to me personally.
Million (1A), Milliard (1B), Billion (2A), Billiard (2B) seems odd compared to Million (1), Billion (2), Trillion (3), Quadrillion (4)
I suppose the upside is that you don't have to learn as many prefixes, but it'll take another few years of inflation and wealth centralization (at least with currencies like the Euro, Dollar, or Pound) until Quadrillion is relevant in the financial sector and Mathematicians generally use letters. I suppose it makes other natural sciences a tiny bit easier, but there it's usually written in scientific notation anyways.
The million-milliard system means a billion has double the zeroes compared to million, trillion has triple the zeroes, etc. In the English system, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, so 4 times 3 plus 3? A quadrillion should have 4*6=24 zeroes.
I must admit I still don't see the point. Whether it's double/triple/quadruple of a million or just 3*n+1 doesn't seem to matter much. Of course it'd be better if a "thousand" was just called a "million" then, since that'd remove the +1, but the million milliard system doesn't seem to have any notable advantages otherwise, especially considering every "iard" step is a .5 one, which isn't much cleaner.
While the word is still in use in some languages, the short system has mostly replaced the long system for numbering, especially in the English speaking world.
When translating to Finnish it's confusing sometimes:
Billion = miljardi = 1 000 000 000
Trillion = biljoona = 1 000 000 000 000
Quintillion = triljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000
You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.
So you escape the newline and you get a newline? That's some black magic voodoo. But hey if it works. Much simpler to handle than double space since you can see them and your phone doesn't try to make them into period space instead of space space.
Newlines with double space (or space backslash apparently) also let's you have newlines in a quote block without exiting the block. I see a lot of people struggle with that on Lemmy. E.g.
> A quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newline
Or exit if you don't handle the newline
will render as:
A quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newline
Or exit if you don't handle the newline
So you want to do
> A quote with multiple lines \
Will eat the the newline \
Or exit if you don't handle the newline
A quote with multiple lines
Will eat the the newline
Or exit if you don't handle the newline
Or add space space at the end instead of space backslash.
The inventors of Markdown thought they would do something devastatingly clever and eat newlines if the next line has content. That way, if you're writing Markdown in the Stone Age and your editor doesn't support soft-wrap (it's a stone tablet), you can do your own soft-wrap and Markdown will "helpfully" eat all the newlines (unless there are two or more).
Of course this has done nothing to help and instead caused chaos and confusion for anyone non-technical. Very clever
It would be more useful if there were comments in markdown.
Like, it's helpful when organising your writing and thoughts in LaTeX that you can write one line per sentence, double newline for end of paragraph.
It becomes immediately clear when a sentence is too long and comments for collaborators (or yourself) are easier to handle than in something like Word or Google Docs.
It's also simpler to move sentences around which is important for good writing.
Again, anglocentrism strikes. Your feeling is strictly based on your personal experience with your own words. It is like when Americans claim fahrenheit is more for humans than celsius, because they are unable to fathom things they have no experience with.
Will they though? I don't talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it's about the distance between Paris and Berlin).
Sweden is quite long, so talking about traveling>1 000 km is not uncommon, but here we have mil, which is equal to 10 km. So on my vacation I traveled 120 mil is more useful and common
In Scandinavia we have "mil" which everyone uses, 1 mil, or Scandinavian mile as it is known in English, is 10km. Cuts down ln zeroes. I love this but no one else(outside of Scandinavia) uses it.I typically get a lot of pushback mentioning it to my international peers.
Decameter is 10 meter, not 10 kilometer. 10km would be a myriadmeter. (SI prefix names are based on greek, and myriad is the greek-based name for 10 000).
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
It might be funny if it were true, but it's just a sad show of ignorance. It is exactly as possible in one as in the other for obvious reasons. It's just not as easy to memorize.
To be specific:
energy required to heat to boiling point 1180 kJ
energy required to convert to vapor 8420 kJ
energy required to heat to boiling point and convert to vapor 9600 kJ
I usually just go with 1.5 because adding half/subtracting a third is way easier to do in my head, and I'm not worried about a ~10% error in casual conversation.
A yard is about 1.4 litres in my book, or 2.1/2 pints - imperial pints mind, not US ones.
I'm not ignoring away that 20% difference; it's bad enough with all the fucking "pint to brim" glasses these days.
2.2 pounds per kilogram. For a rough conversion just multiply or divide by two. For a more precise conversation do the same thing, then wiggle a decimal and do it again.
"Because we are free men, we will be free to measure liquids in liters and milliliters... but not all liquids, only soda, wine, and alcohol because for milk and paint we will use gallons, pints, and quarts, god willing"
"How many liters are in a gallon, sir?" "Nobody knows."
"Why not use meters and kilometers?" "We sill, soldier. But only in certain unpopular sports like track and swimming."
The only positive thing I see about imperial is that things are easily divisible by 3 and 6, but that's about it. Then again, if doing the same with metric, you're usually fine rounding to the nearest millimetre, and if that isn't accurate enough, it's probably not supposed to be done by hand anyway.
It's not nonsense, just old and focused on priorities that don't matter anymore. A mile was initially a thousand paces. So you send a group of people out, one counts each time their right foot takes a step and after a thousand times they build a mile marker. Bam, roman road system. 1000 strides per mile, 5 feet per stride.
Later the English used the unit as part of their system of measurement, and built the furlong around it, which is the distance a man with an ox team and plow can plow before the ox need to rest. A mile is eight furlong. This got tied into surveying units, since plots of land were broken up into acres, or the amount of land an ox team can plow a day.
When some unit reconciliation needed to be done, they couldn't change the vitality of oxen, and changing the survey unit would cause tax havock, so they changed the size of a foot.
All the units and their relationships were defined deliberately and intentionally. They just factored in priorities that we don't care about anymore.
Because there's a extra system of measurement change hiding in the middle. The Inches, Feet and Yards system (with the familiar 12:1 and 3:1 ratios we know and love), and Rods, Chains, Furlongs and Miles system. Their conversation rates are generally "nice", with ratios of 4 rods : 1 chain, 10 chains : 1 furlong, and 8 furlongs : 1 mile.
So where do we get 5,280 with prime factors of 2^5, 3, 5 and 11? Because a chain is 22 yards long. Why? Because somewhere along the line, inches, feet and yards went to a smaller standard, and the nice round 5 yards per rods became 5 and 1/2 yards per rod. Instead of a mile containing 4,800 feet (with quarters, twelfths and hundredths of miles all being nice round numbers of feet), it contained an extra 480 feet that were 1/11th smaller than the old feet.
The fun one is a nautical mile. Which is 6076.12 feet. How'd we get there? A nautical mile is equal to a minute of latitude, which happens to be just a bit bigger but on the order of magnitude of most "miles" to include the US statute mile.
If an alien species has 12 fingers to our 10, would they work in base 12 as normally as we use 10s? Like would their whole system end (or start) with a 0 or equivalent and not end all different?
My maths coherence is too high-school for this thinking, but now its in there.
There's really nothing special about base 10 numbering, it just feels natural to us. They probably would use base 12 and just have 2 extra symbols for the digits after 9. Example 10 x 10 = 100 in both base 10 and base 12 math. It's just the translation of that in base 12 to base 10 looks like 12 × 12 = 144 to us.
The Babylonian number system was base 12, that's why there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. Afaik they had the normal number of fingers, they were just smarter about making their numbering system divisible.
That gets you base 11, which is what we count on our fingers in now.
They counted, at least for tallying, by putting their thumb on the three finger bones if the other four fingers on the hand. One hand can count to 12, and then you lift a finger in the other when starting over. That method gives you a count of 60'on your fingers. That's why 12 and 60 still crop up all the time.
You can use your hands to count in base 12 if you want to, and some cultures have done so. Just use the segments on your fingers on one hand, using your thumb to count each segment.
I think a mile is specified in terms of 'chains' not really feet or yards.
Feet and yards are meant for measuring smaller stuff, like the size of a foot, or a courtyard.
The 'chain' was a specific surveyors tool for measuring larger land areas. I imagine defined to be a length of physical chain practically manageable by the surveyor - probably pre-dating optical / triangulation methods before lenses got cheap.
I think an acre was then defined as 10 square chains or something.
But go back in time far enough and different jurisdictions have different lengths of standard chain, so different miles and acres derived from it. But it doesn't really matter because if you were buying land in Scotland, then you'd probably want to use a Scottish surveyor and his big long chain.
The nautical mile is then a whole other kettle of fish.
I've banged on about this at length before. I prefer woodworking in inches because I have to divide by 3 and 4 a lot more often than divide by 5. It turns out that the fractional inch system evolved alongside woodworking for a very long time and it solves a lot of the problems woodworkers actually face...as long as you're not a European scraping in the dirt for something to feel superior about.
I do woodworking a bit too, but I normally just do the slanty ruler/tape trick to divide any straight parallel face into n equal lengths.
I hate all forms of mental arithmetic; I also avoid measuring as much as possible too. Maybe that's why everything i make is so shit.
I guess if you're mass producing things you can't just manually mark off each and every part though - but even then I'd probably want to work to a template rather than to measure.
A template or jig, yeah. If I've got more than one part to make, especially if they need to match in some substantial way, I set up a stop of some kind.
At some point I may attempt to build a project to a scored storey stick rather than to measurements, but on the other hand I may not.
It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
What are you even trying to say here? Yeah, in real-life use we use "close enough". I don't need to know that it's 1,546 metres to the nearest supermarket. 1.5 km is close enough.
But nobody is suggesting it because it's "so accurate". Any system can be accurate, depending on how many sig figs you use. The advantage of metric is on how easy it is to convert between different scales. Use millimetres, metres, or kilometres for the appropriate case, depending on the need you have for precision. And just move the decimal point if you decide you don't need as much precision...or need more. In archaic measurements, you can't do that. If you've got 342 feet and decide you actually only need to be accurate to the chain, you have to memorise the arbitrary number of 3 feet to a yard, and 22 yards to a chain, and divide 342 by those numbers, to arrive at 5.2 chains.
It's accurate when you need it to be and gets out of the way when you don't. And if you do need the accuracy, you have a unit that doesn't need fractions.
How is "accurate" an argument?? You can use any unit with any amount of decimal places. The argument is that it's regular. You learn the prefixes once and apply them to length, volume, weight, ...
The biggest argument for metric is that it's consistent. It takes 1 calories to heat 1k of water by 1 degree. State something similar in imperial units.
No I will not define it. I will just tell you I ran 2/3 mile and that I am prussian, now you have to look it up, convert it to meters, convert that back to your mile and then you know what I am talking about.
Btw this mile is way easier to remember because a mile is 24000 feet.
If you want to convert between imperial units, going straight from feet to miles is impractical. You'd be better off knowing the chart of survey units, and they're all small numbers so they're easy to remember.
12 inches in a foot
3 feet in a yard
22 yards in a chain
10 chains in a furlong
8 furlongs in a mile
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
The imperial units were created for practical every-day measuring, so if you know how to apply them, they still hold up to the task. Just more difficult to use for large data sets like architectural models etc.
We use both. Body weight is in pounds, but nutrition is in grams.
In general we use metric more for smaller, more precise weights and imperial for everything else. I don't think I've ever heard anyone measure anything except cocaine in kilograms.
Nutrition is in grams on purpose to be confusing to a population corpos knew weren't really raised with it. By 9th grade all Americans have studied the metric system for science class, but it never really becomes intuitive for most people whereas we can hear "a cup of sugar, oh wow that's a LOT of sugar for just one pitcher of liquid" without doing any in-head conversions
When you use a cup, we use a deciliter-cup. I agree that cooking gives intuition on units. But who will buy a deciliter cup if no recipe uses deciliters?
the only thing more aggravating than using imperial is having to listen to all the complaining about how metric is better. We get it, bro; it's out of our control at this point
Not in defense of the imperial system, but if you're curious why it's so arbitrary, it's a crazy story about untangling a ton of proprietary guild measurements. The mile itself isn't quite proprietary (it was defined as 8 furlongs, and you can blame the English for ruining a perfectly good roman measurement) but they needed to make it a certain number of chains, rods, yards, and feet, plus a few other obscure measurements I forget about. Naturally that results in a stupid conversation rate (mostly vs yards and feet since it was basically a different system).
Why we still use it, dunno. I can see an argument for keeping feet and inches for things like carpentry (in the similar way I like hexadecimal in programming) but miles is not that. It's about as logical as this point as fahrenheit, which is to say it's outdated nonsense.
Arguing with the imperial system is like arguing with my mother. She knows her ways and methods are insane, but she will try to explain why she needs each of those eight furlongs. Either ADHD will steal her ability to finish the explanation or the audience will perish from exhaustion. And she still will be the smartest person in the room.
In traditional carpentry inches and feet make sense because of the high divisibility. We don't get as much benefit from that now though.
We still use hex with computers because that's what they're made using (rather binary, but hex is just a natural group of binary digits). The usage of binary is ultimately more grounded in the objective than the usage of base 10 in the SI system. Nature dictates the relationships between the units, but we pick the quantities so it works out to a nice base 10 set of ratios.
Base 2 naturally arises when dealing with information theory that underpins a lot of digital computing.
Say what you will about the imperial system, but you can pry binary, octal, and hex from my cold dead hands.
To me, Fahrenheit is a lot like inches and feet for carpentry. As in it's fine for things like describing the weather and setting my house's thermostat. It mostly falls apart for must other things, though it's still okay for cooking and baking. From a scientific perspective, any temperature scale that isn't zero at absolute zero is nonsense, so it's pretty much Kelvin or bust.
First: The SI unit for mass is the kilogram. That's fucking stupid. A kilogram is 1000 grams, the base unit for something can't be "1000 of this other thing". Because the kilogram is the SI unit for mass, that means that a gram is, by definition, 1/1000th of a kilogram. The stupidity, it burns!
The second one isn't really an issue with the metric system, it's more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the "Watt Hour" for measuring energy use. You know, there's already a way of measuring energy use: the "Watt Second", also known as "The Joule"
Because your power is billed in kWh. Figuring out the kWh cost of a 77 watt TV is straight forward, but a lot of consumer labeling standards are about quick and easy side by side comparisons as opposed to perfect application of units. Easiest way to give a comparison that's accurate enough and doesn't involve odd numbers is to convert that way.
Whilst this answer is correct, it's not entirely accurate, because it is dismissive of the root cause. The logical follow-up question is: "Why is energy billed in kWh?". If the question/cycle answer continues down this line there will probably be an answer like "because had to make a decision once, and they chose this because of , and now we're all stuck with it because of convention."
Anyone who doesn't understand what joules are probably doesn't understand what kWh are either. If the billing convention (and every other power consumption label) used joules (of course MJ or GJ) instead, then most people would just accept that as the unit of billing and measurement, and those who understand what the units mean would have an easier time of it.
Well, the follow up answer is pretty straightforward.
Selling power by the megajoule is silly. You want a unit that puts time in the name and the unit of power that's on appliances. If I run a 35 watt fan for an hour I know I've used 35 watt hours of energy. Or I can say I've used 126 kilojoules.
It's not highschool. You don't lose points for not reducing your answer all the way. The goal is to describe reality clearly, not to use the most concise units of measurement.
If I'm running a powerplant I need to know how many joules I get from my fuel and what my customers need and what my generators can deliver. The customer needs to know the efficiency of their appliances, and how how much that costs them. These are the same thing, but life isn't made simpler by having them be the same unit.
Lot's of people are confused by watts and watt-hours tho. I think having the power rating of appliences as a rate (J/s) is more intuitive. If I use a 5MJ/s fan for 10s I used 50MJ of energy. The only inconvenience here comes from our weird time conversions, so I think J/h would be more convenient
it's more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the "Watt Hour" for measuring energy use.
Energy is just so important to physics and engineering that it will be measured in whatever unit is most convenient to convert in that particular context: joules as the SI unit, watt hours for electricity usage, calories for certain types of heat or food energy calculations, electron volts in particle physics, equivalent tonnes of TNT for explosion energy, things like that.
I don't believe that "watt hours" are more convenient than joules, especially when they're not just watt hours but kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. At that point just use megajoules or gigajoules.
I can understand things like eV where the scale is so different that you'd have to constantly use tiny and unusual prefixes. But, for most other things like calories, it's just tradition rather than a well thought out reason.
I don't believe that "watt hours" are more convenient than joules
Clearly you've never had to do the calculations where these things come up, where hours are a much more common unit of measure for time than seconds, so that multiplying and dividing by time is easier when working with hours.
I like metric because it's structured around an abstract amount. Even something like Celsius is pretty abstract, because the freezing and boiling point of water changes depending on the atmospheric pressure. The measure of a second? Why is a second, 1 second long? Why is it 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of a day?
There's other stuff based on seconds too, like Hertz, which is literally "cycles per second"
I like to think about how abstract these things are, because if we were to ever try to communicate with a truly alien race, we couldn't really use numbers, because their base numbering system would be different than ours, their symbols for numbers would be different, their entire understanding of math and how to calculate stuff could be wildly different, possibly because they understand things we do not. We couldn't even say to them to communicate on a specific frequency of EM, because that frequency is based on Hertz, which is based on seconds, which is based on ????? IDFK (neither would they).
We base everything we know on the world around us, and that's entirely unique to earth. We make so many assumptions about how things are because we've only ever experienced life on this planet.
The only thing that kind of makes sense is how many days of the year there are, because it's based on solid science about our solar system. It's still unique to earth, but at least it makes sense on a larger scale. Everything else? Who the hell knows. Why is a meter as long as it is? Who defined this? Why? What abstract Earth-based thing was this based on that other societies of individuals would have no point of reference to relate to?
It's wild we've made it this far, to be honest.
Anyways, I kind of got sidetracked... I guess all I'm really trying to say is that metric makes more sense than whatever the USA is doing. Even if it's just as abstract in its conception.
their base numbering system would be different than ours, their symbols for numbers would be different, their entire understanding of math and how to calculate stuff could be wildly different
The neat thing about math is it’s built upon universal truths that exist independently of how you describe them. 1+1=2 regardless of how you represent those numbers. Even among humans we have plenty of different ways of describing numbers.
Also, the best thing about science is that physics works the way it does regardless of how you describe it. An atom of hydrogen will always have the same spectral peaks, regardless of what units you describe those peaks in.
It’s these kinds of things we consider when trying to communicate with aliens. Take a look at:
These messages will probably never be received, even if there is intelligent life out there. But if something intelligent does find these messages, they will probably determine they are artificial, and hopefully manage to decode some of it.
See, this is all fascinating for me. I love this stuff.
It's also a good exercise in recognizing the assumptions we make every day. I'm trying to get to a point where I can articulate my thoughts and I don't have to struggle through the curse of knowledge.
...which is based on seconds, which is based on ??? IDFK (neither would they)
"The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical
value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine
transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the
unit Hz, which is equal to s−1."
https://www.bipm.org/en/si-base-units/second
I don't think that was the idea when the second was created.
The solar rotation cycle is naturally divided into 365 rotations of Earth (give or take), each daily rotation was divided into 24 segments called hours, each hour was further divided into 60 units called minutes, and each minute was then further divided into 60 units which we call seconds.
In the modern era, we have refined how we measure a second by a very stable natural phenomenon, the emissions of cesium (which we also refer to as an "atomic" clock). But we got there first by dividing one of Earth's rotations by 86400. It just so happens that 9 192 631 770 oscillations from cesium also equals 1/86400th of one rotation of Earth.
Additionally, neither a "second" nor even "one rotation of Earth" would have any meaning to someone who has never been to earth before.
It doesn't matter how these units were originally defined. They have all been redefined as science progressed. As long as you relate the arbitrary unit to a constant it can be translated.
Except an alien species wouldn't know what cesium is... We would need to represent it to them as it's molecular makeup, which is the only absolute representation of it, and would they know what a proton/neutron/electron are? Would they have a deeper understanding of the physics, and thereby have a different understanding of what we consider to be quantum particles?
We only generalize protons, elections and neutrons because we don't really know what those things are made up of. Maybe they do, so when we show them our representation of it, would it be too rudimentary for them to comprehend what we mean?
There's still a lot we don't know. And these are the kinds of questions that tickle my brain.
I think one useful comparison would be to convert their measurement of the speed of light to our measurement and vice versa. They will use different units of distance and time, but the values themselves will be proportional unless they live in a black hole.
That could work for velocities, but any measure of distance is based on our notion of time, like "light year" (the distance light can travel in one rotation of the Earth around the sun), which is relative.
Even an AU is the distance from Earth to our sun.
To be fair, we don't really have another point of reference with which to measure stuff.
A good way to portray distance could be a blip the length of time it would take light to travel that far. Like an RF signal that lasts as long as it would take for light up travel from one edge of an object to the other edge of the object.
... It's a difficult problem to try to solve even as a mental exercise.
I'd assume that if we are ever communicating with aliens and trying to figure out each other's way of expressing numbers and doing math, dimensionless constants like pi, Euler's number (e), the fine structure constant, etc. will be important first steps. As you say, our units of measure are purely human inventions. But the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is the same no matter what units you use to make the measurement.
They're right. Altitude sickness is absolutely real. I live in CT pretty close to sea level. I hiked the flatirons in Boulder and puked my guts out when I came back down.
The first time I ever took a non-pressurized aircraft to 10,000 feet was an interesting experience. I noticed myself breathing...not heavier, that feels like the wrong word, because I had the opposite problem to "heavy." I needed to breathe noticeably deeper and faster just sitting still at the controls of the plane doing maybe slightly more work than typing this sentence. Somebody from a lower area going up to Denver (about half the altitude I flew to that day) to play a sport has an elevated chance of Not A Good Day.
I use both in my wood shop. Sometimes it's easier to lay things out in metric or divide numbers, but other times it's easier to remember an imperial number to go make a cut.
At first I thought that's how Americans measure it - in San Franciscos. But given how "San Francisco" doesn’t sound like "One seven six oh" I'm not sure if they don't.
Take heart. You can easily remember that a stride is 5' 3 9/25” because that's the height of the typical Roman soldier after adjustment for 15th century English agricultural tax methodology.
Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it's used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn't be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is "new number name" if that's all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I'm used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn't mean much until I think about it like 12 (or 8) million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head.
Yeah I'm sure it's not as difficult as I'm making it out to be but it never seems to stick. It's just as simple as 2 numbers: "million = 100 ten thousands" (hyaku-man) and "billion = 10 hundred millions" (juu-oku).
Let's just say there a lot of frustrations I have with the language even after decades of studying.
Maybe think in numbers if you're more inclined to think like that? 10 million is 7 zeroes, in base-3 means the you "buy" the 6 zero unit and you got one (10) left; In base-4 you "buy" the 4 zero unit and you get 3 (1000) left.
I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"
I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
Do you want to develop imperial measurements? Because that's how you invent imperial measurements. Next thing you know you've got a cup that's really good for measuring liquids and a couple spoons you like to scoop with....
Oh, certainly. I just enjoyed that, in a thread about the vagueness and oddness of the imperial system, the suggestion came up to use a casual approximation for the inch instead of the word "inch".
It's not helpful for us seriously distracted people. To remember a number, I must remember a smaller number. Damn, how many was it? Three tomatoes? Eight tomatoes?
I've never once had to convert miles to feet or vice versa in nearly 40 years (besides a couple test questions in school). It's a total non issue in the whole SI vs US system debate
Your basic unit for speed is m/s, but for most day-to-day purposes you use km/hr. The conversion between the two isn't even an integer!
Not only that, but your system, by virtue of being decimal, inherits all the shortcomings of our quite flawed numbering system. You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
In my opinion, a good measuring system would make up for those shortcomings instead. It should be divisible by at least the numbers you can count on one hand. Decimal covers 2 and 5, so ideally the measurement unit would cover 3 and 4. So that would be a base 12 system. Technically 4, being 2², would be covered too, so 3 would do just fine. Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.
My ideal would be 21 though, get that 7 factor
If you like intervals of 1000, you'll be delighted (or mortified like me) to know that 7×11×13 is almost exactly 1000 (it's 1001)
Not only that, but your system, by virtue of being decimal, inherits all the shortcomings of our quite flawed numbering system. You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
What's more 0.203 cm or 0.291 cm?
How about 3/8" or 19/64"?
How far is 1/3 of a mile? 1/3 km is 333m. How about 1/9? 1/9 km is 111m
How long is 10 x 5/16"? 10 x 3.1cm is 31cm
Yeah, a foot breaks down easy in whole inches with many factors, but that's about it
It's a lot of memorization that I simply haven't done and won't ever have to do.
The fraction reduction doesn't help intuitive thought. If imperial operated on 'significant digits' and marked any set or document with a 64th always as 64ths, as in 16/64ths, I'd be more on board.
We just need to replace out base 10 system of counting with base 12 and we'd get the best of both worlds!
That is not the win you think it is since metric only has one unit, the meter, to begin with so no conversion needed at all. 12 meters in 12 meters, three meters in three meters.
You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
You technically don't have to use decimals, you can use fractions too. Ta-da! 1/3 meter. See? No repeating decimals!
Also yall literally use the decimal system for US customary too
Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
You count up in incremental numbers until you reach 5280 and then finally increment from 0 to 1 miles. That's base 5280. Just because we didnt invent more symbols to easily represent that does not mean its not a different numeric base.
What a weak argument. You shouldn’t have to be good at math to do basic calculations in daily life. Metric is much more accessible in this regard. Even if you lack math skills it is easy to understand.
Did you read the words I wrote? It looks like youre responding to a "imperial units are better than metric" strawman which you may notice I didnt say or even allude to
Metric will never recover from not being base-12. Ease of use and intuitiveness suddenly trumps "objective" design. We'd have metric time right now, smh.
250 Comments
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 157 pts · 344d
I’m always disappointed that megameter isn't a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.
Tyr_Raidho_Othala@reddthat.com · 66 pts · 344d
Make it a gigameter for my 1000 megameter needs
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 24 pts · 344d
The only bad thing about metric is that billionaires technically do have giga dollars.
Klear@quokk.au · 45 pts · 344d
I'm a fan of light nanosecond, which works out to roughly 30 cm.
markz@suppo.fi · 28 pts · 344d
Infinitely cooler than a "foot"
Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 344d
Which is also approximately 30 cm
markz@suppo.fi · 12 pts · 344d
Exactly, but those foot fetishists with their stinky units seem to think otherwise.
exu@feditown.com · 28 pts · 344d
Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Passerby6497@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 344d
Can anyone say it isn't? You're using a valid prefix, so people will understand what you're saying, if they have no idea in hell why you're measuring out 1024 meters.
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social · 10 pts · 344d
Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 343d
Engineers use milliinches all the time! They call it thous but it's the same thing.
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 344d
How about kilo-klick?
Johanno@feddit.org · 9 pts · 344d
Megameter gigameter,
Next thing is one astronomical unit.
And then we are using light years.
Not very linear those last two.
And I am sure that gigameters would still be better than light years.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 344d
well neither astronomical unit nor light years use meters as a reference. and one of those isnt even accurate (AU)
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
I think AUs are just meant to mean "far away (like much much further away than the pub)".
warm@kbin.earth · 9 pts · 344d
I'm more disappointed the world renamed one thousand million from milliard to billion.
chellomere@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 344d
"the world"?
If you came over to the other side of the pond, you'd find that most of Europe is still using milliard, billiard, trilliard etc.
CitizenKong@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 344d
Anglocentrism strikes again!
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 344d
I think that's one thing that's actually fine about the English language though. Constantly switching between something ending with "ion" to "iard" instead of just counting up doesn't make much sense to me personally.
Million (1A), Milliard (1B), Billion (2A), Billiard (2B) seems odd compared to Million (1), Billion (2), Trillion (3), Quadrillion (4)
I suppose the upside is that you don't have to learn as many prefixes, but it'll take another few years of inflation and wealth centralization (at least with currencies like the Euro, Dollar, or Pound) until Quadrillion is relevant in the financial sector and Mathematicians generally use letters. I suppose it makes other natural sciences a tiny bit easier, but there it's usually written in scientific notation anyways.
Hoimo@ani.social · 9 pts · 344d
The million-milliard system means a billion has double the zeroes compared to million, trillion has triple the zeroes, etc. In the English system, a quadrillion has 15 zeroes, so 4 times 3 plus 3? A quadrillion should have 4*6=24 zeroes.
CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 344d
I must admit I still don't see the point. Whether it's double/triple/quadruple of a million or just 3*n+1 doesn't seem to matter much. Of course it'd be better if a "thousand" was just called a "million" then, since that'd remove the +1, but the million milliard system doesn't seem to have any notable advantages otherwise, especially considering every "iard" step is a .5 one, which isn't much cleaner.
1,000 -> 3x0+1 zeroes
1,000,000 -> 3x1+1 zeroes
1,000,000,000 -> 3x2+1 zeroes
vs
1,000,000 -> 1x6 zeroes
(1,000,000,000 -> 1.5x6 zeroes)
1,000,000,000,000 -> 2x6 zeroes
(1,000,000,000,000,000 -> 2.5x6 zeroes)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 -> 3x6 zeroes
guy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 344d
In the long system: Million - 1 000 000¹ Billion - 1 000 000² Trillion - 1 000 000³
Short system: Million - 1 000² Billion - 1 000³ Trillion - 1 000⁴
It just doesn't follow as smoothly with the increase in power
warm@kbin.earth · 1 pts · 344d
Crazy assumption.
While the word is still in use in some languages, the short system has mostly replaced the long system for numbering, especially in the English speaking world.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/milliard#Translations
chellomere@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 344d
Crazy assumption. Yes, it's true for the English speaking world, but it's much more nuanced outside of it. Here's a map from Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales#/media/File:EScalas_corta_y_larga.svg
Keep in mind that your link to wiktionary only covers languages where it is spelled exactly "milliard".
TeNppa@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 344d
When translating to Finnish it's confusing sometimes:
Billion = miljardi = 1 000 000 000
Trillion = biljoona = 1 000 000 000 000
Quintillion = triljoona = 1 000 000 000 000 000 000
You can tell how bad a news site is when they translate billion to biljoona and thus making the amount 1000 times higher.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 344d
You probably want double new lines in your posts. Or two spaces at the end of your paragraphs but that's usually a bit annoying to do.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 344d
Or just \ at the end, like so
Becomes
Like this
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 344d
So you escape the newline and you get a newline? That's some black magic voodoo. But hey if it works. Much simpler to handle than double space since you can see them and your phone doesn't try to make them into period space instead of space space.
Newlines with double space (or space backslash apparently) also let's you have newlines in a quote block without exiting the block. I see a lot of people struggle with that on Lemmy. E.g.
will render as:
Or exit if you don't handle the newline
So you want to do
Or add space space at the end instead of space backslash.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 344d
The inventors of Markdown thought they would do something devastatingly clever and eat newlines if the next line has content. That way, if you're writing Markdown in the Stone Age and your editor doesn't support soft-wrap (it's a stone tablet), you can do your own soft-wrap and Markdown will "helpfully" eat all the newlines (unless there are two or more).
Of course this has done nothing to help and instead caused chaos and confusion for anyone non-technical. Very clever
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 344d
It would be more useful if there were comments in markdown. Like, it's helpful when organising your writing and thoughts in LaTeX that you can write one line per sentence, double newline for end of paragraph. It becomes immediately clear when a sentence is too long and comments for collaborators (or yourself) are easier to handle than in something like Word or Google Docs. It's also simpler to move sentences around which is important for good writing.
TeNppa@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 344d
Thanks! Forgot to do that. Now edited.
guy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 344d
The long system with milliard and billiard increases with every potens which makes sense. The short system on the other hand 🤷
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 344d
Heh that's a funny word.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 1 pts · 336d
Looks like we have something in common! Hämmästyttävä!
umbrella@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 344d
markz@suppo.fi · 5 pts · 344d
I think that's just not being used to it.
Rothe@piefed.social · 3 pts · 344d
Again, anglocentrism strikes. Your feeling is strictly based on your personal experience with your own words. It is like when Americans claim fahrenheit is more for humans than celsius, because they are unable to fathom things they have no experience with.
umbrella@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 344d
python@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 344d
Will they though? I don't talk about distances that large anywhere near often enough to really need a shorthand for it, personally. Had to even look up what things are approximately 1000km apart to even know what to imagine it as (it's about the distance between Paris and Berlin).
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 344d
Yes, every time I’ve ever heard someone use metric to describe distances of >999km, they keep using kilometers.
Holytimes@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 344d
Comes up a literal metric ass load (8 bushels) when your talking about travel in the USA.
We big
guy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 344d
Sweden is quite long, so talking about traveling>1 000 km is not uncommon, but here we have mil, which is equal to 10 km. So on my vacation I traveled 120 mil is more useful and common
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 344d
Oh no, over here a mil is 1/1000 of an inch, haha
squaresinger@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 344d
Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)
People don't say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?...
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu · 2 pts · 344d
In Sweden we say 20 000 mil. I always have to stop for a second to convert when people use km.
logi@piefed.world · 1 pts · 344d
You should consider adopting metric and avoid these conversion steps.
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu · 1 pts · 343d
It is metric as fuck
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu · 8 pts · 344d
In Scandinavia we have "mil" which everyone uses, 1 mil, or Scandinavian mile as it is known in English, is 10km. Cuts down ln zeroes. I love this but no one else(outside of Scandinavia) uses it.I typically get a lot of pushback mentioning it to my international peers.
ArcaneGadget@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 344d
Sweden and Norway only. Few people in Denmark know what a mil is. And virtually no one here uses it.
Yeah-yeah; something something Denmark. I know....
boboliosisjones@feddit.nu · 1 pts · 344d
It's never too late to change the path you are going down, friend.
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 344d
but there is already decameteredit: nevermind i didnt see the "k" after the 10
squaresinger@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 344d
Decameter is 10 meter, not 10 kilometer. 10km would be a myriadmeter. (SI prefix names are based on greek, and myriad is the greek-based name for 10 000).
SaltyIceteaMaker@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 344d
i did correct myself like 3 minutes after posting
but according to wikipedia there is no prefix for 10 000 in the SI system. only for 1 000 and 1 000 000
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 2 pts · 336d
Especially with several thousand kilometres.
“Eleven mega metre” rolls off the tongue much better than “eleven thousands kilo metre” IMO.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 343d
I'll never forgive the French for going from grave to gram to kg as the base unit of mass.
All my other base units don't have a prefix :(
Such a pity.
BRING BACK THE GRAVE
CAVOK@lemmy.world · 97 pts · 344d
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” ― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 16 pts · 344d
"High. You put the stove on high."
TwoDogsFighting@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 344d
I love this quote.
Smeagol666@crazypeople.online · 5 pts · 344d
I remember reading this quote a few years ago (probably Reddit), but I don't remember if attribution was given. Kudos to you CAVOK.
Arcka@midwest.social · -1 pts · 343d
It might be funny if it were true, but it's just a sad show of ignorance. It is exactly as possible in one as in the other for obvious reasons. It's just not as easy to memorize.
To be specific:
CAVOK@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 343d
Nobody said impossible, just that you can't directly relate any of those quantities.
Can't we just agree that metric is superior?
Arcka@midwest.social · -1 pts · 343d
But they are just as directly related.
CAVOK@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 343d
Ok, so rewrite the statement using imperial instead. Let's compare them.
Djehngo@lemmy.world · 60 pts · 344d
The only metric to imperial conversion I remember is kilometers to miles since it's pretty close to the golden ratio.
Even if you don't remember that the golden ratio is 1.6 and a bit, you can approximate it by using successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ...
So 8 miles is about 13km (actually 12.87)
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 344d
Its 2.54 cm to the inch. Its close to 2.5 and as an engineer in America I am stuck doing that conversion a lot
MisterFrog@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 343d
If it makes you feel any better, most pipe standards around the world are based on the American system, as well as bloody valve coefficients.
I am far too aware that 1" is 25.4 mm :(
And I'm in Australia. Grumble
aarRJaay@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 344d
This has blown my mind
VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 18 pts · 344d
Fucking Dan Brown in the comment section
jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 344d
Lmao your username is awesome
VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 344d
Thank you, kind stranger on the internet!
jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 344d
You’re welcome, @VolumetricShitCompressor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 💖
mere@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 344d
and your username is scary
jia_tan@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 344d
You should use a rolling release distro and always update to the bleeding edge.
You will not regret using a rolling release distro and always updating to the bleeding edge.
It is not easier for me to sneak backdoors into your system when you are using a rolling release distro and are always updating to the bleeding edge.
🙂
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
A meter is a Baker's yard. 3 free inches!
Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de · 3 pts · 344d
I usually just go with 1.5 because adding half/subtracting a third is way easier to do in my head, and I'm not worried about a ~10% error in casual conversation.
i_am_hiding@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 344d
I just go with 1.6 because its still easy enough to do in your head.
Eg. 60mi = 60 + (60/2) + (60/10) = 96km
notarobot@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 344d
Forma me it's the yard. It's so close to the meter its ridiculous. I just ignore the difference an treat as the same. One yard = 0.9144 meters
bryndos@fedia.io · 1 pts · 344d
A yard is about 1.4 litres in my book, or 2.1/2 pints - imperial pints mind, not US ones. I'm not ignoring away that 20% difference; it's bad enough with all the fucking "pint to brim" glasses these days.
notarobot@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 344d
Liters? Pints? How are you converting from distance to volume?
bryndos@fedia.io · 1 pts · 343d
A yard of ale is a large beer glass, based on a glass that is quite long probably less than a metre.
notarobot@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 343d
Hope you meant hat the glass is tall
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
2.2 pounds per kilogram. For a rough conversion just multiply or divide by two. For a more precise conversation do the same thing, then wiggle a decimal and do it again.
UnwrittenProtagonist@lemmyusa.com · 51 pts · 344d
"Because we are free men, we will be free to measure liquids in liters and milliliters... but not all liquids, only soda, wine, and alcohol because for milk and paint we will use gallons, pints, and quarts, god willing"
"How many liters are in a gallon, sir?" "Nobody knows."
"Why not use meters and kilometers?" "We sill, soldier. But only in certain unpopular sports like track and swimming."
kamen@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 344d
The only positive thing I see about imperial is that things are easily divisible by 3 and 6, but that's about it. Then again, if doing the same with metric, you're usually fine rounding to the nearest millimetre, and if that isn't accurate enough, it's probably not supposed to be done by hand anyway.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 344d
Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 12
5,280 ft in a mile is fucking nonsense though
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 344d
It's not nonsense, just old and focused on priorities that don't matter anymore. A mile was initially a thousand paces. So you send a group of people out, one counts each time their right foot takes a step and after a thousand times they build a mile marker. Bam, roman road system. 1000 strides per mile, 5 feet per stride.
Later the English used the unit as part of their system of measurement, and built the furlong around it, which is the distance a man with an ox team and plow can plow before the ox need to rest. A mile is eight furlong. This got tied into surveying units, since plots of land were broken up into acres, or the amount of land an ox team can plow a day.
When some unit reconciliation needed to be done, they couldn't change the vitality of oxen, and changing the survey unit would cause tax havock, so they changed the size of a foot.
All the units and their relationships were defined deliberately and intentionally. They just factored in priorities that we don't care about anymore.
chaonaut@lemmy.4d2.org · 5 pts · 344d
Because there's a extra system of measurement change hiding in the middle. The Inches, Feet and Yards system (with the familiar 12:1 and 3:1 ratios we know and love), and Rods, Chains, Furlongs and Miles system. Their conversation rates are generally "nice", with ratios of 4 rods : 1 chain, 10 chains : 1 furlong, and 8 furlongs : 1 mile.
So where do we get 5,280 with prime factors of 2^5, 3, 5 and 11? Because a chain is 22 yards long. Why? Because somewhere along the line, inches, feet and yards went to a smaller standard, and the nice round 5 yards per rods became 5 and 1/2 yards per rod. Instead of a mile containing 4,800 feet (with quarters, twelfths and hundredths of miles all being nice round numbers of feet), it contained an extra 480 feet that were 1/11th smaller than the old feet.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 344d
The fun one is a nautical mile. Which is 6076.12 feet. How'd we get there? A nautical mile is equal to a minute of latitude, which happens to be just a bit bigger but on the order of magnitude of most "miles" to include the US statute mile.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 344d
If an alien species has 12 fingers to our 10, would they work in base 12 as normally as we use 10s? Like would their whole system end (or start) with a 0 or equivalent and not end all different?
My maths coherence is too high-school for this thinking, but now its in there.
Marz157@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 344d
There's really nothing special about base 10 numbering, it just feels natural to us. They probably would use base 12 and just have 2 extra symbols for the digits after 9. Example 10 x 10 = 100 in both base 10 and base 12 math. It's just the translation of that in base 12 to base 10 looks like 12 × 12 = 144 to us.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
The Babylonian number system was base 12, that's why there are 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour. Afaik they had the normal number of fingers, they were just smarter about making their numbering system divisible.
saimen@feddit.org · 2 pts · 344d
The just started counting with zero (fist)
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 344d
That gets you base 11, which is what we count on our fingers in now.
They counted, at least for tallying, by putting their thumb on the three finger bones if the other four fingers on the hand. One hand can count to 12, and then you lift a finger in the other when starting over. That method gives you a count of 60'on your fingers. That's why 12 and 60 still crop up all the time.
Liz@midwest.social · 5 pts · 344d
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 1A, 1B, 20, 21, ..., A0, A1, A3, ...
You can use your hands to count in base 12 if you want to, and some cultures have done so. Just use the segments on your fingers on one hand, using your thumb to count each segment.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ThOuUa_iLnM
Olhonestjim@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Base 60 can do 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 12.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 341d
True.. Honestly never really thought about it, but I guess it kind of is superior
bryndos@fedia.io · 2 pts · 344d
I think a mile is specified in terms of 'chains' not really feet or yards. Feet and yards are meant for measuring smaller stuff, like the size of a foot, or a courtyard.
The 'chain' was a specific surveyors tool for measuring larger land areas. I imagine defined to be a length of physical chain practically manageable by the surveyor - probably pre-dating optical / triangulation methods before lenses got cheap.
I think an acre was then defined as 10 square chains or something.
But go back in time far enough and different jurisdictions have different lengths of standard chain, so different miles and acres derived from it. But it doesn't really matter because if you were buying land in Scotland, then you'd probably want to use a Scottish surveyor and his big long chain.
The nautical mile is then a whole other kettle of fish.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
I've banged on about this at length before. I prefer woodworking in inches because I have to divide by 3 and 4 a lot more often than divide by 5. It turns out that the fractional inch system evolved alongside woodworking for a very long time and it solves a lot of the problems woodworkers actually face...as long as you're not a European scraping in the dirt for something to feel superior about.
bryndos@fedia.io · 1 pts · 344d
I do woodworking a bit too, but I normally just do the slanty ruler/tape trick to divide any straight parallel face into n equal lengths. I hate all forms of mental arithmetic; I also avoid measuring as much as possible too. Maybe that's why everything i make is so shit.
I guess if you're mass producing things you can't just manually mark off each and every part though - but even then I'd probably want to work to a template rather than to measure.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 344d
A template or jig, yeah. If I've got more than one part to make, especially if they need to match in some substantial way, I set up a stop of some kind.
At some point I may attempt to build a project to a scored storey stick rather than to measurements, but on the other hand I may not.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · -28 pts · 344d
It's funny how the biggest argument for metric is that it's so accurate but in real life use it degrades to "close enough". My main problem with metric is that I can't get my pencil that sharp.
Zagorath@aussie.zone · 21 pts · 344d
What are you even trying to say here? Yeah, in real-life use we use "close enough". I don't need to know that it's 1,546 metres to the nearest supermarket. 1.5 km is close enough.
But nobody is suggesting it because it's "so accurate". Any system can be accurate, depending on how many sig figs you use. The advantage of metric is on how easy it is to convert between different scales. Use millimetres, metres, or kilometres for the appropriate case, depending on the need you have for precision. And just move the decimal point if you decide you don't need as much precision...or need more. In archaic measurements, you can't do that. If you've got 342 feet and decide you actually only need to be accurate to the chain, you have to memorise the arbitrary number of 3 feet to a yard, and 22 yards to a chain, and divide 342 by those numbers, to arrive at 5.2 chains.
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 344d
Aren't chains only used by railworkers?
Zagorath@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 343d
Not really the point.
But no, it's not only used by rail workers. At the very least, I know it's also used in cricket.
kamen@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 344d
It's accurate when you need it to be and gets out of the way when you don't. And if you do need the accuracy, you have a unit that doesn't need fractions.
lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 344d
How is "accurate" an argument?? You can use any unit with any amount of decimal places. The argument is that it's regular. You learn the prefixes once and apply them to length, volume, weight, ...
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 344d
The biggest argument for metric is that it's consistent. It takes 1 calories to heat 1k of water by 1 degree. State something similar in imperial units.
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 344d
1 BTU heats 1 pound of water 1 degree Fahrenheit.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
How many BTUs are there in a big mac?
FridaySteve@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 343d
No acknowledgement at all that I literally just answered your question?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 343d
I see my trap was fallen into.
deltapi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
And isn't 1kg of water 1L? And 1L is 1000 cubic cm? So a 10x10x10 cube?
guy@piefed.social · 2 pts · 344d
You mean 1 gram of water
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 344d
I do. Wrong letter.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 344d
100 degrees out is 100% hot. 0 degrees F is 0% hot
BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 344d
Most standard measuring tapes have 1/16th of an inch as the smallest fraction on the tape. 1mm is 1/32nd Which is one is "close enough"? Lol
Edit: 1/32, not 1/64
SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social · 1 pts · 344d
Way off! There are 25.4 millimeters per inch, not 64, and most measuring tapes have 1/32" markings.
BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Haven't had my coffee, you're right it's closer to 1/32.
Most measuring tapes in US don't go smaller than a 1/16th though.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 0 pts · 336d
Okay, but I don't use a measurement system for close enough, I use a measurement system when I want to be precice.
cute_noker@feddit.dk · 27 pts · 344d
If Americans don't stop the foot thing soon I will bring back the havoc and destruction of using local measure!!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_units_of_measurement
No I will not define it. I will just tell you I ran 2/3 mile and that I am prussian, now you have to look it up, convert it to meters, convert that back to your mile and then you know what I am talking about.
Btw this mile is way easier to remember because a mile is 24000 feet.
guy@piefed.social · 5 pts · 344d
Whose feet‽
cute_noker@feddit.dk · 3 pts · 344d
Mine, but I didn't cut my toenails, so today's its 1/26th foot longer that the normal foot.
UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 344d
It does not matter, all feet have roughly the same size.
-- the shoe company
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 344d
If you want to convert between imperial units, going straight from feet to miles is impractical. You'd be better off knowing the chart of survey units, and they're all small numbers so they're easy to remember.
12 inches in a foot
3 feet in a yard
22 yards in a chain
10 chains in a furlong
8 furlongs in a mile
Of course, i know this because I do 3d art in blender and refuse to set it to metric.
mst@discuss.tchncs.de · 22 pts · 344d
Remembering 12, 3, 22, 10 and 8 does indeed sound way easier than remembering 1000.
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 344d
I know right? it's such an intuitive system with a convenient unit for every scale you might want to work with.
EldenLord@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 344d
I genuinely can‘t tell if you are being serious. Could you tell me at face value, I just want to know.
Octavio@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 344d
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 343d
yeah, it sucks. There's no actual case for imperial over metric. it's just what I've spent years getting used to and I'm not changing now.
EldenLord@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 343d
The imperial units were created for practical every-day measuring, so if you know how to apply them, they still hold up to the task. Just more difficult to use for large data sets like architectural models etc.
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 341d
Metric? True it's nice to have the scales evenly spread
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 1 pts · 336d
Than remembering 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10; because metric has more measurements most people don't use as well!
Rooty@lemmy.world · 21 pts · 343d
Did the metric system kill your family or something?
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 344d
You monster.
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 344d
The dark side can be a pathway to many abilities some might consider ... stupid.
cute_noker@feddit.dk · 3 pts · 343d
How do you do weight measurements? I noticed a lot of Americans use grams
bier@feddit.nl · 8 pts · 343d
Drugs are done in grams i think, methric
ebolapie@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 343d
We use both. Body weight is in pounds, but nutrition is in grams.
In general we use metric more for smaller, more precise weights and imperial for everything else. I don't think I've ever heard anyone measure anything except cocaine in kilograms.
EmilieEasie@lemmynsfw.com · 1 pts · 336d
Nutrition is in grams on purpose to be confusing to a population corpos knew weren't really raised with it. By 9th grade all Americans have studied the metric system for science class, but it never really becomes intuitive for most people whereas we can hear "a cup of sugar, oh wow that's a LOT of sugar for just one pitcher of liquid" without doing any in-head conversions
cute_noker@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 334d
When you use a cup, we use a deciliter-cup. I agree that cooking gives intuition on units. But who will buy a deciliter cup if no recipe uses deciliters?
EmilieEasie@lemmynsfw.com · 1 pts · 334d
Yeah, that's an important point. Someone needs to think of the deciliter cups if they try to get rid of imperial units in the US.
glitchdx@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 342d
Weight is in pounds. Only pounds. don't ask me how much a gram or a ton is.
Volume, though, I still remember "Gallon Man" from 1st grade.
2 cups in a pint
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon
What's after gallons? not a clue.
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 341d
You use fluid ounces and liters as well tho
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone · 23 pts · 344d
Imperial actually makes sense if there system was invented by someone who only had polyhedral dice to count with.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 1 pts · 336d
Okay, show me your d5280 or d72, then.
philosloppy@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 344d
the only thing more aggravating than using imperial is having to listen to all the complaining about how metric is better. We get it, bro; it's out of our control at this point
taiyang@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 344d
Not in defense of the imperial system, but if you're curious why it's so arbitrary, it's a crazy story about untangling a ton of proprietary guild measurements. The mile itself isn't quite proprietary (it was defined as 8 furlongs, and you can blame the English for ruining a perfectly good roman measurement) but they needed to make it a certain number of chains, rods, yards, and feet, plus a few other obscure measurements I forget about. Naturally that results in a stupid conversation rate (mostly vs yards and feet since it was basically a different system).
Why we still use it, dunno. I can see an argument for keeping feet and inches for things like carpentry (in the similar way I like hexadecimal in programming) but miles is not that. It's about as logical as this point as fahrenheit, which is to say it's outdated nonsense.
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz · 9 pts · 344d
Arguing with the imperial system is like arguing with my mother. She knows her ways and methods are insane, but she will try to explain why she needs each of those eight furlongs. Either ADHD will steal her ability to finish the explanation or the audience will perish from exhaustion. And she still will be the smartest person in the room.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz · 6 pts · 344d
You don't have to use it though. Reject it.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
In traditional carpentry inches and feet make sense because of the high divisibility. We don't get as much benefit from that now though.
We still use hex with computers because that's what they're made using (rather binary, but hex is just a natural group of binary digits). The usage of binary is ultimately more grounded in the objective than the usage of base 10 in the SI system. Nature dictates the relationships between the units, but we pick the quantities so it works out to a nice base 10 set of ratios.
Base 2 naturally arises when dealing with information theory that underpins a lot of digital computing.
Say what you will about the imperial system, but you can pry binary, octal, and hex from my cold dead hands.
toddestan@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 343d
To me, Fahrenheit is a lot like inches and feet for carpentry. As in it's fine for things like describing the weather and setting my house's thermostat. It mostly falls apart for must other things, though it's still okay for cooking and baking. From a scientific perspective, any temperature scale that isn't zero at absolute zero is nonsense, so it's pretty much Kelvin or bust.
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 344d
Why not just keep it simple and use the 5.4 microseconds * speed of light approximation? People just love making things overly complicated.
feannag@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
Especially when you just set c = 1
merc@sh.itjust.works · 16 pts · 344d
My 2 main annoyances with the metric system:
First: The SI unit for mass is the kilogram. That's fucking stupid. A kilogram is 1000 grams, the base unit for something can't be "1000 of this other thing". Because the kilogram is the SI unit for mass, that means that a gram is, by definition, 1/1000th of a kilogram. The stupidity, it burns!
The second one isn't really an issue with the metric system, it's more when people are almost using the metric system then fuck it up, like the "Watt Hour" for measuring energy use. You know, there's already a way of measuring energy use: the "Watt Second", also known as "The Joule"
foo@feddit.uk · 12 pts · 344d
I am glad someone else has noticed this. Why is my TV's power consumption reported in kWh/1000 hours?
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 12 pts · 344d
Because your power is billed in kWh. Figuring out the kWh cost of a 77 watt TV is straight forward, but a lot of consumer labeling standards are about quick and easy side by side comparisons as opposed to perfect application of units. Easiest way to give a comparison that's accurate enough and doesn't involve odd numbers is to convert that way.
foo@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 343d
Whilst this answer is correct, it's not entirely accurate, because it is dismissive of the root cause. The logical follow-up question is: "Why is energy billed in kWh?". If the question/cycle answer continues down this line there will probably be an answer like "because had to make a decision once, and they chose this because of , and now we're all stuck with it because of convention."
Anyone who doesn't understand what joules are probably doesn't understand what kWh are either. If the billing convention (and every other power consumption label) used joules (of course MJ or GJ) instead, then most people would just accept that as the unit of billing and measurement, and those who understand what the units mean would have an easier time of it.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
Well, the follow up answer is pretty straightforward.
Selling power by the megajoule is silly. You want a unit that puts time in the name and the unit of power that's on appliances. If I run a 35 watt fan for an hour I know I've used 35 watt hours of energy. Or I can say I've used 126 kilojoules.
It's not highschool. You don't lose points for not reducing your answer all the way. The goal is to describe reality clearly, not to use the most concise units of measurement.
If I'm running a powerplant I need to know how many joules I get from my fuel and what my customers need and what my generators can deliver. The customer needs to know the efficiency of their appliances, and how how much that costs them. These are the same thing, but life isn't made simpler by having them be the same unit.
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 341d
Lot's of people are confused by watts and watt-hours tho. I think having the power rating of appliences as a rate (J/s) is more intuitive. If I use a 5MJ/s fan for 10s I used 50MJ of energy. The only inconvenience here comes from our weird time conversions, so I think J/h would be more convenient
merc@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 344d
Urgh. There's a unit for that, it's WATTS. That's literally 77 Watts.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 4 pts · 344d
Yea but people are idiots.
_stranger_@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
Honestly that's the most aggravating part.
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 341d
Phone batteries are advertised in thousand milliamp-hours
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 10 pts · 344d
Energy is just so important to physics and engineering that it will be measured in whatever unit is most convenient to convert in that particular context: joules as the SI unit, watt hours for electricity usage, calories for certain types of heat or food energy calculations, electron volts in particle physics, equivalent tonnes of TNT for explosion energy, things like that.
merc@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
I don't believe that "watt hours" are more convenient than joules, especially when they're not just watt hours but kilowatt hours or megawatt hours. At that point just use megajoules or gigajoules.
I can understand things like eV where the scale is so different that you'd have to constantly use tiny and unusual prefixes. But, for most other things like calories, it's just tradition rather than a well thought out reason.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 344d
Clearly you've never had to do the calculations where these things come up, where hours are a much more common unit of measure for time than seconds, so that multiplying and dividing by time is easier when working with hours.
logi@piefed.world · 3 pts · 344d
The real problem here is that there aren't 1000 seconds to the hour. Then this argument would be moot
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network · 2 pts · 336d
Or calories on packaging.
Or inches in Europe when talking about a screen from S. Korea, which was designed in cm to begin with.
nexguy@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 344d
Just remember God giving you a single grain of sand. "One thou sand".
Not a easy to remember as 5 tomatoes.
daggermoon@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 344d
Did someone say feet?
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 344d
All units of measure are abstract.
I like metric because it's structured around an abstract amount. Even something like Celsius is pretty abstract, because the freezing and boiling point of water changes depending on the atmospheric pressure. The measure of a second? Why is a second, 1 second long? Why is it 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of a day? There's other stuff based on seconds too, like Hertz, which is literally "cycles per second"
I like to think about how abstract these things are, because if we were to ever try to communicate with a truly alien race, we couldn't really use numbers, because their base numbering system would be different than ours, their symbols for numbers would be different, their entire understanding of math and how to calculate stuff could be wildly different, possibly because they understand things we do not. We couldn't even say to them to communicate on a specific frequency of EM, because that frequency is based on Hertz, which is based on seconds, which is based on ????? IDFK (neither would they). We base everything we know on the world around us, and that's entirely unique to earth. We make so many assumptions about how things are because we've only ever experienced life on this planet.
The only thing that kind of makes sense is how many days of the year there are, because it's based on solid science about our solar system. It's still unique to earth, but at least it makes sense on a larger scale. Everything else? Who the hell knows. Why is a meter as long as it is? Who defined this? Why? What abstract Earth-based thing was this based on that other societies of individuals would have no point of reference to relate to?
It's wild we've made it this far, to be honest.
Anyways, I kind of got sidetracked... I guess all I'm really trying to say is that metric makes more sense than whatever the USA is doing. Even if it's just as abstract in its conception.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 344d
The neat thing about math is it’s built upon universal truths that exist independently of how you describe them. 1+1=2 regardless of how you represent those numbers. Even among humans we have plenty of different ways of describing numbers.
Also, the best thing about science is that physics works the way it does regardless of how you describe it. An atom of hydrogen will always have the same spectral peaks, regardless of what units you describe those peaks in.
It’s these kinds of things we consider when trying to communicate with aliens. Take a look at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
These messages will probably never be received, even if there is intelligent life out there. But if something intelligent does find these messages, they will probably determine they are artificial, and hopefully manage to decode some of it.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 344d
See, this is all fascinating for me. I love this stuff.
It's also a good exercise in recognizing the assumptions we make every day. I'm trying to get to a point where I can articulate my thoughts and I don't have to struggle through the curse of knowledge.
oneofmany@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
"The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, Δν
Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1." https://www.bipm.org/en/si-base-units/secondMystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 344d
I don't think that was the idea when the second was created.
The solar rotation cycle is naturally divided into 365 rotations of Earth (give or take), each daily rotation was divided into 24 segments called hours, each hour was further divided into 60 units called minutes, and each minute was then further divided into 60 units which we call seconds.
In the modern era, we have refined how we measure a second by a very stable natural phenomenon, the emissions of cesium (which we also refer to as an "atomic" clock). But we got there first by dividing one of Earth's rotations by 86400. It just so happens that 9 192 631 770 oscillations from cesium also equals 1/86400th of one rotation of Earth.
Additionally, neither a "second" nor even "one rotation of Earth" would have any meaning to someone who has never been to earth before.
Arcka@midwest.social · 1 pts · 343d
It doesn't matter how these units were originally defined. They have all been redefined as science progressed. As long as you relate the arbitrary unit to a constant it can be translated.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 343d
Except an alien species wouldn't know what cesium is... We would need to represent it to them as it's molecular makeup, which is the only absolute representation of it, and would they know what a proton/neutron/electron are? Would they have a deeper understanding of the physics, and thereby have a different understanding of what we consider to be quantum particles?
We only generalize protons, elections and neutrons because we don't really know what those things are made up of. Maybe they do, so when we show them our representation of it, would it be too rudimentary for them to comprehend what we mean?
There's still a lot we don't know. And these are the kinds of questions that tickle my brain.
TheOakTree@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 344d
I think one useful comparison would be to convert their measurement of the speed of light to our measurement and vice versa. They will use different units of distance and time, but the values themselves will be proportional unless they live in a black hole.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 344d
That could work for velocities, but any measure of distance is based on our notion of time, like "light year" (the distance light can travel in one rotation of the Earth around the sun), which is relative.
Even an AU is the distance from Earth to our sun.
To be fair, we don't really have another point of reference with which to measure stuff.
A good way to portray distance could be a blip the length of time it would take light to travel that far. Like an RF signal that lasts as long as it would take for light up travel from one edge of an object to the other edge of the object.
... It's a difficult problem to try to solve even as a mental exercise.
toddestan@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 343d
I'd assume that if we are ever communicating with aliens and trying to figure out each other's way of expressing numbers and doing math, dimensionless constants like pi, Euler's number (e), the fine structure constant, etc. will be important first steps. As you say, our units of measure are purely human inventions. But the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is the same no matter what units you use to make the measurement.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 343d
I like you.
These are all good points. Thank you.
Octavio@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 344d
ickplant@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 344d
Heeey, I’m currently living in Northglenn. Same, it’s forever etched in my memory.
HoopyFrood@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 344d
What the heck does this mean? Is the number 5280 just painted all over billboards in Denver?
jballs@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 344d
Pretty much. If you go to a Broncos game, you're going to see a graphic saying we're 5280 feet above sea-level at least a hundred times.
Edit: These are just some examples that in the non-public areas of the stadium to mess with opposing teams.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 344d
They're right. Altitude sickness is absolutely real. I live in CT pretty close to sea level. I hiked the flatirons in Boulder and puked my guts out when I came back down.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 344d
The first time I ever took a non-pressurized aircraft to 10,000 feet was an interesting experience. I noticed myself breathing...not heavier, that feels like the wrong word, because I had the opposite problem to "heavy." I needed to breathe noticeably deeper and faster just sitting still at the controls of the plane doing maybe slightly more work than typing this sentence. Somebody from a lower area going up to Denver (about half the altitude I flew to that day) to play a sport has an elevated chance of Not A Good Day.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 344d
You'd think the Rockies would have a better record but they somehow still consistently suck
Octavio@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 344d
benderbeerman@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 344d
Sounds like they take their distances pretty seriously over there in the mile-high city
ickplant@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 344d
Basically yes. We even have a local magazine called 5280.
Octavio@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Tikiporch@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 344d
Me watching a BBC TV show: "The suspect's home is five miles away."
shocked pikachu
bignate31@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 344d
there's a very important video on the measurement rules in the UK, if you haven't seen it: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNh9z3IzG8t/
antonamo@feddit.org · 2 pts · 344d
Without seeing it let me guess: If it is serious --> metric units and if you want to confuse customers --> imperial
cristo@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 344d
What about a nautical mile?
Mobiuthuselah@mander.xyz · 7 pts · 344d
I use both in my wood shop. Sometimes it's easier to lay things out in metric or divide numbers, but other times it's easier to remember an imperial number to go make a cut.
antler@feddit.online · 6 pts · 344d
And to remember the number of yards in a mile: 1 San Francisco
One-seven-six-oh
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 344d
At first I thought that's how Americans measure it - in San Franciscos. But given how "San Francisco" doesn’t sound like "One seven six oh" I'm not sure if they don't.
antler@feddit.online · 1 pts · 344d
It's not a good tip, but this is how I hear it:
1: One
San Fran: Seven
Cisc: Six
O: Oh
I just came up with it off the cuff, but I may use it going forward. I've never been able to remember feet or yards in a mile.
Also, we only measure length in bananas and fractions thereof.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 344d
I just remember that a mile has 1000 strides in it.
antler@feddit.online · 1 pts · 343d
Of course. I was trying to make something less useful than knowing the strides in a mile.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
Take heart. You can easily remember that a stride is 5' 3 9/25” because that's the height of the typical Roman soldier after adjustment for 15th century English agricultural tax methodology.
ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 344d
So whose foot exactly?
rustydrd@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 344d
Cousin Merle's (including toenails).
Dojan@pawb.social · 2 pts · 344d
Could also be his dad's feet, but then it's only the toenails.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Some European king or another. We didn't invent the system, we just decided it was too expensive to bother with changing it.
Angelusz@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
I count a flat 8.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 344d
Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it's used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn't be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is "new number name" if that's all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I'm used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn't mean much until I think about it like 12 (or 8) million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 344d
It helps to memorize million and billion both ways since those are what you'll be using most, and are good signposts.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 344d
Yeah I'm sure it's not as difficult as I'm making it out to be but it never seems to stick. It's just as simple as 2 numbers: "million = 100 ten thousands" (hyaku-man) and "billion = 10 hundred millions" (juu-oku).
Let's just say there a lot of frustrations I have with the language even after decades of studying.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 344d
Maybe think in numbers if you're more inclined to think like that? 10 million is 7 zeroes, in base-3 means the you "buy" the 6 zero unit and you got one (10) left; In base-4 you "buy" the 4 zero unit and you get 3 (1000) left.
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 3 pts · 344d
I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"
I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
colourlessidea@sopuli.xyz · 15 pts · 344d
Why not say ‘2-3 cm’ for the first one? Or ‘a couple centimeters’? It doesn’t feel too different from saying ‘about an inch’ to me
kameecoding@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 344d
Taking it even further who the fuck uses inches or cms for vegetable cutting measurements anyway, it's like, one or two fingers thick
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 3 pts · 344d
Recipes I use regularly say "2cm chunks" and the like. I've never seen one measure in fingers.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
Do you want to develop imperial measurements? Because that's how you invent imperial measurements. Next thing you know you've got a cup that's really good for measuring liquids and a couple spoons you like to scoop with....
kameecoding@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 343d
We are talking about cutting vegetables maybe meat, the room for error is enormous...
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 343d
Oh, certainly. I just enjoyed that, in a thread about the vagueness and oddness of the imperial system, the suggestion came up to use a casual approximation for the inch instead of the word "inch".
UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 344d
Why not make it even more ambiguous by specifying the desired cutting width in "circumference of my dick".
kameecoding@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
That's too thin
HoopyFrood@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 344d
Would that be flacid dick inches or erect dick inches?
UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 344d
Sure.
Flamekebab@piefed.social · 1 pts · 344d
It's to do with how I think about numbers, rounding, and margins of error. I don't know how to express that better, I'm sorry.
I was not raised using inches for anything. It's not a cultural thing, it's a use case I've found them useful for.
deltapi@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
We kind of do have metric inches, insofar as machinists work in 'thou's (thousands of an inch) But that's kind of specialist
antler@feddit.online · 2 pts · 344d
Thousandths of an inch are also used in some engineering applications and are called "mils." Not to be confused with millimeters.
nonentity@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 344d
Metric is used all around the world, but comes from a quarter of it.
angrystego@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
It's not helpful for us seriously distracted people. To remember a number, I must remember a smaller number. Damn, how many was it? Three tomatoes? Eight tomatoes?
madjo@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 344d
Was it even tomatoes? Maybe it was potatoes?
tungsten5@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 343d
Ya know what. I like that tomato shit to remember the conversion. I like SI far more than US customary tho
Pulptastic@midwest.social · 2 pts · 344d
Do we have meter cola?
Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 344d
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 344d
I hate to point this out, and will likely be shunned for it - but it is base 12 and kinda easier.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 344d
Found the Summerian astronomer.
cheloxin@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 343d
I've never once had to convert miles to feet or vice versa in nearly 40 years (besides a couple test questions in school). It's a total non issue in the whole SI vs US system debate
brown567@sh.itjust.works · -2 pts · 344d
Oh, get off your high horse
Your basic unit for speed is m/s, but for most day-to-day purposes you use km/hr. The conversion between the two isn't even an integer!
Not only that, but your system, by virtue of being decimal, inherits all the shortcomings of our quite flawed numbering system. You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
In my opinion, a good measuring system would make up for those shortcomings instead. It should be divisible by at least the numbers you can count on one hand. Decimal covers 2 and 5, so ideally the measurement unit would cover 3 and 4. So that would be a base 12 system. Technically 4, being 2², would be covered too, so 3 would do just fine. Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.
My ideal would be 21 though, get that 7 factor
If you like intervals of 1000, you'll be delighted (or mortified like me) to know that 7×11×13 is almost exactly 1000 (it's 1001)
Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 344d
What's more 0.203 cm or 0.291 cm? How about 3/8" or 19/64"?
How far is 1/3 of a mile? 1/3 km is 333m. How about 1/9? 1/9 km is 111m How long is 10 x 5/16"? 10 x 3.1cm is 31cm
Yeah, a foot breaks down easy in whole inches with many factors, but that's about it
Octavio@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 343d
I gotta say, you make some fair points.
It's a lot of memorization that I simply haven't done and won't ever have to do.
The fraction reduction doesn't help intuitive thought. If imperial operated on 'significant digits' and marked any set or document with a 64th always as 64ths, as in 16/64ths, I'd be more on board.
We just need to replace out base 10 system of counting with base 12 and we'd get the best of both worlds!
Octavio@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 343d
cute_noker@feddit.dk · 1 pts · 343d
How would you convert to e.g nautical miles?
Octavio@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 343d
Twelve20two@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 344d
You can also count on your finger joints (excluding thumbs) for base 12, too
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 344d
Okay so to fuck us all over we can go to base 9.
We can divide evenly by 1,3,9. But actually remember:
1/9 - .11111
2/9 - .2222
....
8/9 - .8888
So easily divisable right? /s
Zwiebel@feddit.org · 1 pts · 341d
That is not the win you think it is since metric only has one unit, the meter, to begin with so no conversion needed at all. 12 meters in 12 meters, three meters in three meters.
You technically don't have to use decimals, you can use fractions too. Ta-da! 1/3 meter. See? No repeating decimals!
Also yall literally use the decimal system for US customary too
Gustephan@lemmy.world · -13 pts · 344d
Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
Bahnd@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
The feet to mile conversion is still in base-10... Its the ratios between the units that are seemingly arbitrary. Come on...
Gustephan@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 344d
This comment brought to you by a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to use a different base numeral
Bahnd@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 344d
You dont write the number of feet in a mile as 14A0 (base-16 for this example).
Your complaining about ratios used for unit conversion, not base numeral systems... Fuck, this feels like a slashdot comment.
Gustephan@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 344d
You count up in incremental numbers until you reach 5280 and then finally increment from 0 to 1 miles. That's base 5280. Just because we didnt invent more symbols to easily represent that does not mean its not a different numeric base.
Spezi@feddit.org · 4 pts · 344d
What a weak argument. You shouldn’t have to be good at math to do basic calculations in daily life. Metric is much more accessible in this regard. Even if you lack math skills it is easy to understand.
Gustephan@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 344d
Did you read the words I wrote? It looks like youre responding to a "imperial units are better than metric" strawman which you may notice I didnt say or even allude to
smnwcj@fedia.io · -14 pts · 344d
Metric will never recover from not being base-12. Ease of use and intuitiveness suddenly trumps "objective" design. We'd have metric time right now, smh.
Deme@sopuli.xyz · 24 pts · 344d
We don't count in base-12. Redesign the numerical system first and get it adopted world wide. I'll wait.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 344d
If only they made a meter equal a yard. Then we could all be bilingual.
SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world · 2 pts · 344d
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 4 pts · 344d
Base 60 is five times better again
Opisek@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 344d
Let me tell you about base 5040
markz@suppo.fi · 2 pts · 344d
If there's a better base than 10, it is a power of two.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 343d
Nah, highly composite number. A product of multiple primes. 10 is 2 and 5. A power of 2 is just multiple 2s. 12 gets you 2, 2, and 3. 60 adds a 5.