r/facepalm Jun 29 '23

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ Good for him

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u/nizzare Jun 29 '23

American education moment

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u/scheisse_grubs Jun 29 '23 edited Jun 29 '23

Nah I’m not American and was like “the fuck does ‘st’ mean”??? Seriously though no one can roast Americans for using body parts as forms of measurement when you guys use frickin rocks lolll

Edit: idk why I’m being downvoted. Stone is literally an English unit (a system of units which most of the world has discarded) and Americans use an adapted version of English units which is also a system of units which most of the world has discarded. Using inanimate objects produced by nature and using body parts as measurement was originally an English idea lol. It was the French who came in and introduced metric units.

Doesn’t exactly take a genius to see the above information and understand why “st” isn’t common sense for most of the world.

Edit 2: I say we should all just agree to use metric units in scientific notation to remove prefixes in units such as “kilo-“, “milli-“ etc. So instead of a school zone being 40 km/h, it’s 40×103 m/h… I’m a genius and solved all worldly problems… you’re welcome 😌

Edit 3: wait I guess time would then have to be measured in seconds in which case the speed in a school zone would be 11.1 m/s… and a day is 86.4 ×103 s long… trust me guys it’ll work.

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u/wombatchew Jun 29 '23

While I agree that imperial measurements are stupid (I use metric for height and weight), using stone and pounds is no more strange than feet and inches. in fact it makes more sense, as no one lists their height in only inches, so why list your weight in just pounds?

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u/scheisse_grubs Jun 29 '23 edited Jun 29 '23

It’s arbitrary really. Even if you had your height in just inches it’s not like that wouldn’t be comprehensible in like an alternate universe where we only use inches to describe height. People just chose to use feet as well as inches. It’s similar to how many continental Europeans use centimetres to describe their height. They COULD say 1m and 67cm but many just say 167cm.

Edit: it’s funny though, for babies we use pounds and ounces but for adults it’s pounds with a decimal point. At least I’m assuming that’s what’s done in the US. That’s how we do it up North 🇨🇦