this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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When my American friends insist that feet and inches is just easier for them, I just nod in agreement and give them measurements using rods, chains and furlongs as well. If you're going to go Imperial, you have to know 'em all. An acre is a chain by a furlong, totally logical as that would be 4x40 rods which is of course 43560 square feet. I guess it makes complete sense when your world is only a few furlongs across.
Most people who insist that imperial is better still have absolutely no idea how many spoons there are to a cup, how many cups to a gallon, how many inches to a mile, how many square yards to an acre.
As an American, anyone who claims the Imperial system is better about anything is lying or stubborn. An argument could be barely made for Fahrenheit and even then it’s not worth it.
Imperial is definitely worse, but the number of teaspoons or tablespoons to a cup (48 and 16) is useless information. Do you measure out 50 grams one gram at a time? Do you regularly use the fact that a kilometer is 100,000 cm?
Its pretty useful information when you're converting recipes. Most measuring sets don't come with a 1/8 cup or smaller, so it's pretty helpful in the case that you end up with a small fraction of a cup.
I've worked in both, and if precision isn't as important as accuracy feet and inches, and only feet and inches, can be easier. A third of a foot is 4 inches, yay whole numbers. A third of a meter is 33.33 cm. Way harder to measure and calculate on the fly. If anything I'm working on has measurements or tolerances under a quarter of an inch, I prefer metric.
And why is 1/3 m harder than 2/7 foot?
That's not a common measurement. So like if someone wants to split something in half, or thirds or fourths it's easy to measure on the fly with feet/in. How often do you hear someone say "I want to cut this board into 2/7th pieces"?
1/4 of a meter is not not a common measurement but 25 cm is. I think it's just a matter of whichever system you're used to, like discussing which language is better.
That being said, meters are just more precise, hence why american measurements are all defined by metric and then turned into feet, thumbs and dicklengths.
Well not a board but I often have situations where I need to divide by more than a third or a quarter.
Usually I use a calculator since I am on the pc anyway. But I don't see the advantage over Imperial. I only have to shift my comma for conversion (which I need much more often than calculations) in Imperial I would go crazy
I mean, it really depends on your line of work. I work in physics and I often just say 1e-9 m instead of converting to nm. Or I'll say 1e-4 in instead of .1 mil (a mil is one thousandth of an inch). So I just don't care what unit system I work in when I do science related work, as long as the units are explicitly stated so that you don't compare inches to mm on accident.
I have multiple relatives in construction though and they seem to like being able to just divide boards into thirds without dealing with decimals.
In the end though, now that everyone has calculators in their pockets, it's all arbitrary. It's so trivial to convert between different units and unit systems.
Yeah, but a foot is about 30 centimeters. Easy to calculate half, a third, a fifth, a sixth of that. Yay. Whole numbers.
Not particularly hard to measure and calculate on the fly.
For what it's worth, a chain is a literal standardized metal chain that surveyors used when physically staking out parcels. It's not a unit normal people have ever used.
An acre is a chain by a furlong because a furlong is the distance you'd plow with an ox, and an acre is about the area you'd plow in a day. They derived the standard chain from that, much as metric chains are 20 meters or 30 meters. France used to use 10 meter chains, with 20cm links.
Normal people don't measure things in chains, whether metric chains or imperial.
But what happens if you have a weak ox or a really fast ox? Then the distance would change, affecting the area, no?
Not really, since plotting land would be based off of the average Ox. That just means you'd be done with that field slightly sooner.
The main issue is, over great distances, the chains will stretch so the measurements will end up varying.
I mean I can respect that if they've just really known imperial forever. I just take issue with them confusing it being easier for them for that specific reason with it being intersubjectively better, which is dumb.