• ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As someone who’s all about science and all the things that use metric as it’s standard, I understand why us Americans argue for imperial measurements.

    We know them.

    I can general look at something and relatively tell how big it is based on my experience with the imperial system.

    I’m not saying metric isn’t better but there’s also different languages with some of them being able to express certain emotions or features better than others. Yet you don’t see people demanding we all adapt a singular language.

    • SamirCasino@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      People who grow up almost anywhere else on earth can also tell how big something is based on their experience with metric. That’s not something inherently based on the imperial system. The same way you go “oh that’s about 3 feet”, we go “oh that’s about 2 meters”.

      And of course, switching systems overnight is insane, people are used to imperial, you’re right. But at the very least do what Britain did, and have both systems in parallel at the same time, everywhere. And in time, people would get used to metric too.

      • RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        What I’ve noticed is that for those using other measurements, intuitively knowing about how long a meter is seems like witchcraft. But for use who are used to metric, it’s just “about this much 🫲🫱” or “about this much 🚶”.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        We have to exist in a context that resists it. The weatherman will tell you the temperature in Fahrenheit. The road speed limit is listed in mph. You buy milk and gas in gallons.

        If anything, Americans who force themselves to use metric in everyday use are working much harder at it than any European.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      You should start by adopting metric in anything remotely scientific. Like

      • voltage ✔️
      • current ✔️
      • power ❗ - horses are no longer really relevant, not to mention this - at least appliances use watts
      • pressure ❌ - we got lucky that 10⁵ pascals is around 1 atmosphere so use Pa or bar, not mmHg or PSI
        • BTW, PSI is a dumpster fire of an abbreviation, the correct one is lbf/in²
      • force ❌ - the lb/lbf confusion is not worth it when we have newtons
      • energy ❗ - joules and watt-hours are both fine, calories, electronvolts and TNT-tons less so, but don’t use BTU which nobody can really comprehend, or gasoline-gallon-equivalents that nobody knows how to translate to anything else
      • gun caliber ✔️
      • engine volume ☑ (it’s cm³ or ml, not cc FFS)
        • strange that motorcycle and gun enthusiasts are the few users of metric length & volume measurement in the US - too bad that these two measurements are never really used in calculations or conversion
      • torque ❌ - this post says Lb-Ft which is wrong on so many levels
      • data ✔️ - OK but data rates should be abbreviated MB/s or kb/s, not kbps, Kb/s, kbit/s or Mbit
      • wire diameter ❌❌ - holy shit, AWG is such a mess - larger wire is smaller number and the formula is so insane that people use lookup tables, also you’re afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large wires are 00, 000 etc.

      Can you imagine having different units across the world for voltage or data? Like a 2¾-lemon battery or a 2 million floppy hard drive. That would be absolutely insane.

      There is an awful lot of inconsistency in the imperial system too, like pound being abbreviated lb, P (in PSI) or even £, or miles being mi or M in MPH

      • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Recommended units for data have been mibibytes (MiB), gibibytes (GiB), etc. for a few years now

        They’re more accurate because they use powers of two (actually 1024 instead of 1000)

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          “Accurate” is probably not the correct word anymore. It was when technical limitations dictated power-of-two capacities. Commodore 64 came out with 64 kiB = 216 B of memory, and FAT32 cannot handle file sizes ≥4 GiB (232 B). However, RAM/ROM/Flash chips manufacturers no longer make exclusively powers-of-two capacities, instead opting for (decinal) GB to save 7 % of the cost (and other fake capacity shenanigans). I prefer binary too but the two unit systems can coexist, people just need to label them correctly.

      • applebusch@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You acknowledge what they really mean is ft lbf right? Usually pronounced foot pounds. It’s a common unit of torque in the imperial system. I feel like people are just jumping on the bandwagon. This is coming from a diehard Nm preferrer, we need to choose our battles. How bout we die on the hill of bite force being measured with units of pressure? Like really? Fucking pressure? Utterly meaningless as a unit of comparison between bite strength of animals, since all you need to get a bigger number is SHARPER FUCKING TEETH.

      • Schmuppes@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        About torque though: If my memory doesn’t betray me, one Newtonmeter is 100 grams hooked to a one meter long lever. Is that really different from one pound hanging off a one foot lever? I might be wrong, since I was born metric and have no clue in general.

        • drmugg@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          That’s an approximate rule of thumb. The definition of a newton is the force required to accelerate 1 kg by 1 m/s². The ocean level gravity of earth just happens to be around 9.82 ≈ 10 m/s², thus a 100g weight feels approx 1N of gravitational force.

        • blujan@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          It’s 1 Newton at 1 meter.

          As simple as 1 pound at 1 feet to be fair, the bad part is that pound is used as a measure of force as well as of mass. It works on the surface of the earth but not anywhere else.

      • frezik@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Gasoline gallon equivalents should die in a fire. It’s an invented statistic that’s meant to give you an idea of how much you’ll be spending to run an EV compared to an ICE car, but there’s so much slop in the numbers, and they can change over time.

        Also, can we kill off hp for cars? Your EV’s battery will be rated in kwh. Your motor can be rated kw. These numbers work together and is exactly what the metric system is best at.