Uh, no.
10 feet = 1 decafoot
100 centiyards = 1 yard
1x10^18 attoacres = 1 acre
I’m gonna start estimating distances in millimiles.
1 millimile ~ 5 feet, 3 and 23/64 inches.
makes perfect sense.
333.3 yards = 1 kilofeeter
This guy gets it
This would be acceptable
It’s obvious that there’s 1760 yards in a mile.
There’s 22 yards in a chain, which we can all remember because of the 22 yard line in rugby.
There are 10 chains in a furlong, which fans of metric can’t complain about.
There are 8 furlongs in a mile, just like there are 8 pints in a gallon.
And 22x10x8 = 11x10x16 and 11 is easy to multiply by in your head, so it’s really very simple to get to 1760.
/s
this but unironically.
one thing i enjoy way more than i should is use units that are technically correct, but no one uses them like ever.
like megagrams instead of metric tonnes.
or 1 dekameter instead of 10 meters.
I measure battery capacity and electricity consumption in J/kJ/MJ, as intended. None of that kWh bullshit.
It also makes for fun comparison with energy value of foods.
Energy is energy, after all.
im a fan of giving energy in: kg • m² ÷ s²
What, you still multiply by an arbitrary constant? I remember back before I switched to: kg • c²
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I only use metric when it’s in forms nobody else uses or recognizes at a glance because I need to be difficult. Decimeter is perfect for like, height of a person, for example. Why do they use CM?
Why do they use CM?
Precision. “17dm” can be anything between 16.5dm or 17.5dm.
You could of course say “I’m 17.5dm tall”, but at this point “I’m 175cm tall” is shorter (no dot).
That said I’ve seen plenty people measuring height in metres and then centimetres. Usually something like “I’m one [metre] and 75 [centimetres] tall”.
decimeters is perfectly fine. basically all volume calculations boil down to dm³ as 1 dm³ = 1L
I’ve said it on this platform before: I will build furniture in inches until my hands can’t hold a chisel anymore. The inch system arose around the needs of carpentry and woodworking, it works in base 12, which is outright superior to base 10, especially when you divide by 3 and 4 more often than by 5.
Also, the closest tape measure I have to hand is my 5m metric tape. I build things in metric, just…not furniture.
Wow, base 12, I never thought of thas! You halve it, quarter it, and third it, and still end up with clean integers.
Yeah; you’ll often find boards in America milled to 3/4" or 1 1/2". Those are 1/16th or 1/8th of a foot. A lot of boards used in furniture are 3/4" thick. Half of 3/4 is 3/8, a third of 3/4 is 1/4. It solves the problems we need to solve, and the metric woodworkers start sounding how teaspoon/cup/quart cooks do.
A dozenal metric system would work as well as the decimal metric system, as long as everything else was base-12:
in base 12 in base 10 1m’m = 10⁻³m = 0.001m 1m’m = 12⁻³m = 1/1728m 1c’m = 10⁻²m = 0.01m 1c’m = 12⁻²m = 1/144m 1m = 1m 1m = 1m 1k’m = 10³m = 1000m 1k’m = 12³m = 1728m Since we’re at this might as well say the day has 10₁₂k’s = 20736₁₀s. Each k’s is exactly two of our current hours, and each “new second” is roughly
twofour of our current seconds. Enough of this Sumerian mixed base already!What do you do when a piece you’re cutting isnt exactly a foot, say, 11 or 13 inches? I know nothing about woodworking, but I’m assuming there isnt a unified standard to make everything match to the nearest whole foot, so then this whole base 12 thing goes out the window, or am I missing something here?
Basically there is a conflict going on amongst the woodworkers of the world between those who think clearer in decimals, and those who think clearer in fractions. The fraction folks will tend to prefer standard units, the decimal thinkers will tend to prefer metric.
What’s interesting to me is: you only ever hear Americans complaining about metric, but you never hear woodworkers from Europe or Japan talk about the advantages of standard units… while the Europeans and Japanese are also pumping out generally much higher-quality woodworking than most folks in the USA are. You can probably tell which I prefer lol
My take is, if the standard units were really that much better, I think Japanese and French folks would be using them, because their cultures care a looot more about fine woodworking than the USA’s culture does.
Japan had their own system quite similar to inches that was so popular Japan had to ban the sale or transfer of the rulers.
You look at your tape measure, at the number 11 or 13 as appropriate, put a mark there, then take it to the saw and cut it.
I meant, for cutting in thirds and quarters. An exact foot you can cut at 3 and 4 inches, but if a board is 13 inches, divide that by 3 and you have to cut at… 4.3333333 inches?
Same thing you do for cutting 13cm into thirds: make one third a bit fat. Go 4 1/4, 4 1/4 and 4 1/2". Or construct it.
That’s not a problem I face in the wood shop a lot though. A more practical problem: We tend to mill boards to 3/4" in thickness. To do a half-lap joint, you need to cut away half the thickness of each board and then lap them over each other, you can set your depth to 3/8" and you’re there. If I’m going to do a bridle joint or a mortise and tenon, a third of 3/4" is 1/4". Show me a third of 19mm on a metric ruler. I’ll show you where it is: 6, 6, and 7mm.
I’m a carpenter as well, and I hear what you’re saying, but also my coworkers and I were just talking yesterday about how much better metric is 😅 Every base-12 advantage is weakened by the fact that I’m constantly expected to do fractions. Everything in metric is a whole number and it’s so hot. Love it when I get an actual number to build something to, instead of a math problem.
If you’ve ever ordered lumber from a Canadian company, you know how much easier it is to calculate and order in metric units vs. board-feet. I feel bad for their sales reps who have to deal with us Yankeestanis.
Also, all the really nice chisels and hand tools from Japan and Europe are already in metric.
I’ve setup a software that generate quotes, sales invoice and production order for a windows and door company. The sales person enter the dimensions and option of the window and it automatically calculate the price, the exact amount material, deduct it from the inventory and generate the cutting and assembly instruction.
They were all working with fractional inches. I’ve started setting up the system using inches and it was a NIGHTMARE ! I quickly decided to convert everything on metric in the back end and to do all the calculations on that and I reconvert it in inches at the end.
Now most of the workers are using metric because it just make more sense.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s, we measure in common units around here…
shopping for a new mailbox today, they used number of baseballs it can fit as the units and/or basketball for the big ones
I prefer absolute units and natural units.
Natural units? You mean like cup sizes? A/B/C/D/DD… ?
And yet the cowards refuse to use megagrams. If SI prefixes are so great use them consistently rather than stealing other unit names and giving them another definition.
Also metric byte sizes deserve the fires of hell. Powers of 2 or get out.
We don’t use mega grams because kilo is the SI unit. And there’s no such thing as metric byte. That’s the sales department finding out that 104 MB is a larger number than 100 MiB.
In SI units a megagram would be equal to 1000 kilograms, because that’s how SI unit prefixes work. Except we call it a tonne instead, which I believe is what the original commenter is referencing.
Thank you for this pedantry, I will now remove the word “tonne” from my vocabulary and insist I have only ever heard of megagrams. Bless you
Yeah, after learning Japanese in 3 different writing systems, one of which has thousands of characters… I’m never hearing criticism of Imperial units again
If you consider hiragana and katakana to be different writing systems, then English lower and upper case letters are two different writing systems, too.
Not that it makes Kanji any easier to learn.
Sorry, I haven’t gotten to the katakana part yet. Are you saying they’re all the same sounds as hiragana, just slightly different shapes?
あ and ア are pronounced the same. Katakana is used for foreign words mainly if I’m not mistaken.
Pretty much, yeah.
At least the US temperature scale is safe from ridicule, as Lord Fahrenheit was German/Polish.
Edit: /s, obviously.
How is it safe from ridicule? It’s dumb
Meanwhile the UK naming their currency after a sex act.
I kinda want a hexadecimal version of the metric system.
In hex:
10 mm = 1cm
100cm = 1m
1000m = 1km
1km - 1m = FFFm = 0.FFFkmStill works fine.
Wouldn’t it be
- 0xA mm = 0x1 cm
- 0x64 cm = 0x1 m
- 0x3E8 m = 0x1 km
- 0x1 km - 0x1 m = 0x3E7 m = 0x3E7/0x3E8 km = 0x0.FFBE76C8B4395810624D… km
Edit: nvm I see what you mean, but then we should change the units too, to something like xmm, xcm etc.
Yeah, we’d need to change the names and abbreviations of the units too, to show that “km” isn’t 10³ m but rather 16³m = 0x10³m.
Measurement system doesn’t have anything to do with numerical base. You can use any base with any system.
16m = Fm
which is pretty ass if you ask me
The biggest problem is that if you’re still using numbers that are designed for base 10 it’ll look messy no matter how you cut it. Hexadecimal is an approximation.
What do you mean Hex is an approximation?
Each number in decimal is 1/10th and in Hex 1/16th ?
I mean we have numbers that go from 1 to 9 but if it was hexadecimal they would go to the equivalent of 15, not substitute letters.
Americans choose to meassure thier dicks with the thumb of a british king instead of using meters… or GIGAmeters… there are no correct awnsers, right?
0.0000000003448 GIGAmeters just doesn’t sound that impressive…
3,5 10-10 Gm
Also, notice that ypu can round it up a bit…
And, who meassures his dick… you just need an honest aproximation.
Exemple: “my dick? You mean from the root? I think it’s just a fraction of a gigameter…” which is a 100% honest and humble response.
Edit: one can also use astronomic units… 1 AU =~ 150 Gm
As a Canadian, I’m deeply frustrated that we are taught the metric system but everything related to construction uses the feet/inch system, because USA.
It’s more than that
Heights are almost expressed in feet and inches when it comes to people, and oven temperatures in Farenheight
But then outdoor temps are in Celsius, and measurements are often in CM / M oh and boy temp is Farenheight too cause of course lol
Yep. You can add to that the weight of people and other random things expressed in lb, while we are taught kg in school.
It’s easier to use their names
Deci = 1/10th
Centi = 100th
Milli = 1000th
Micro = 1,000,000th
Nano = 1,000,000,000thDeca = ×10
Hector = ×100
Kilo = ×1,000
Mega - ×1,000,000
Giga = × 1,000,000,000
Tera = × 1,000,000,000,000,000Etc prefixing the thing being measured.
So you know what a centimetre, gigabyte, megaton, kiljoule, etc. are.
Other easy conversions too, like 1kg = 1L of water.
And it’s metre. Because a meter is a measuring device and all this shit is Latin (metrum) like proper science stuff be. Americans don’t even use it, so they can fuck off with their misspelling.
And that’s it. You now know the metric system. You probably now realise you’ve been using it all along for many things.
I prefer just to use base units like kg,m,s and just use scientific notation. Converting between units that change scaling like the centimeter with a 10² increment is annoying when most of the prefixes use 10³ increments. And nobody even uses deci- and deca- which are 10¹ increments.
You also have weird metric, but not SI units like the Ångström which is 10⁻¹⁰. You also have plenty of natural units like the speed of light per second or things like the astronomical unit that don’t fit. And pressure is the worst one. It is either kgm⁻¹s⁻², N/m², or a Pascal, but it could also measure atmospheres, millimeters of mercury, or the CGS barye and none of those have convenient conversion factors. And don’t even get me started on temperature cause conversion with that get funky!
The thing with measurement is that it’s best to have one standard unit and measure stuff based on that. The fact that US Customary units even convert between each other was an ongoing effort in standardization as they were each made for a specific purpose and then people had to consolidate them in convenient ways in a world without computers.
All that said, I love the metric system, but I’m still disappointed that it wasn’t based on dozenal or hexadecimal so I could get some better division that 2, 5, or 10. lmao
Plenty of cooking recepies use deciliters.
And I’m not convinced about dozenal or hexadecimal for a unit system as long as base-ten is what we count in. The units should always be in the same base for the sake of simplicity.
Exactly. The OP doesn’t do justice to metric system. The centi- and deci-anything are really to be avoided, the important ones are 3 orders of magnitude apart. So you learn ~5 prefixes and gain ability to interpret a vast range of values from microscopic to cosmic, across all measurable quantities. We should appreciate it for genius it is.
22 yds to a chain, 10 chains to a furlong, 8 furlongs to a mile.
Rods damnit you forgot rods
4 rods to a chain
