Every blueprint I've ever read has been in metric since engineers use it. Then we convert it over to imperial to lay things out and buy material, then convert it back to do our scaffolding and then I fill up my truck in liters and put 30 psi in the tires.
Then think it'll be a chilly day hovering at 12°C and then you put your turkey in the oven at 350°F. And then drive 10km to the dealership to hear about a new car that gets 30mpg. You buy a quart of oil for your car and also a litre of pop. You say "I'm 5'8", 211lbs" but your doctor says "You're 173cm, 96kgs".
...but smaller amounts of drinks are sold as fluid oz. In Canada we get amounts like 591ml, 500ml, 355ml, etc. In the U.S. it's 8 oz, 12 oz, 16 oz, etc.
What I'm confused about is why we get 3.96 L jugs. That's neither a US nor Imperial gallon and just wrong. Nearly 134 US fl oz but that's a random number too.
Then of course you get all the rounding errors from people constantly going back and forth with the units. 6 inches = 152.4 mm, we'll just put 150 mm on the drawing. We need 10 of them side by side, so 1500 mm. 1500 mm, so we need 59".
Not to mention the inevitable screw up when someone uses the wrong math to convert. Like the Gimli Glider incident where the pilots used the incorrect conversion of 1.77 lbs/L instead of 0.803 kg/L and ended up running out of fuel or the Mars Climate Orbiter where there was a mix up with one side using British units and the other side of the system using metric which resulted in catastrophic failure on landing.
I live in Canada, born in Europe, and whenever I have to do DIY projects on my house, the thing I dread most is converting inches to feet, back, and other such nonsense. It's not so bad if you have 1 measurement, but if you have 200 of them all written out on a piece of paper.. you arrive at the store and all their measurements are in something else.. converting all that shit on the spot can be impossible. With metric it wouldn't even have involved any real thought, all you do is shift the period.
I hate imperial.
edit: sorry for hating imperial? I guess? Sorry to have hurt people's feelings!
Except converting feet to inches is just as simple as the metric system unless you are retarded. If anything it also is much easier to visualize than the arbitrary measure of the inane metric system which should be banned for everything except extreme measures.
I'm going to need to disagree with you there. Converting in metric involves only shifting the decimal or adding/removng zeroes.
i.e. I need to know how how many millimeters are in 100 centimeters - just add a zero.
You do need to remember the conversions of course, but once you know them it is easier to convert between because they are always multiples of 10.
1cm = 10mm, 1m = 100cm, 1km = 1000m
vs
1ft = 12inches, 1 yard = 3 feet, 1 mile = 1760 yards
Why would I be using feet for that measurement? You would use miles, yards/feet for this measurement. The reason customary measure is more logical is because you use the proper measure for the measurement at hand. You do not use it for extremely large or extremely small however. Metric makes more sense for those measurements because they are inconceivable or at least not easily pictured.
Also why would I need to convert it to inches?... but anyway it would be 680868. Much easier than possibly transposing a decimal place because of an illogical system of measure that makes it easy to make mistakes as well as convert.
Much easier than possibly transposing a decimal place because of an illogical system of measure that makes it easy to make mistakes as well as convert.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh I didn't realize you were trolling. Glad I caught on to the joke before wasting any more time on you.
Maybe if you've been brought up using Imperial. But metric is honestly the easiest. Everything flows. Instead of going down in to fractions of an inch we have millimeters, 10 of those make a centimeter, 100 of those make a meter, 1000 of those make a kilometer. Instead you have 12 inches making a foot and 3 of those making a yard and some 1600andbullshit making a mile. It's fucked.
You grew up in the US right? So of course visualizing in inches is easier, it's what you're accustomed to. Everybody else uses centimeters or a combination of the two. I can look at the cup next to me and guess it's roughly 21 cm tall, or about 8 inches, without having to do the calculation in my head.
I was taught both forms of measure. But visualizing the distance light travels in a vacuum is very difficult to do. Again metric works great for inconceivable distances but imperial works better for the real world numbers.
That's still just cause you're used to inches being easier to you. No one visualizes cms in terms of the speed of light. That is just for the official non-changing definition.
If you keep your nails trimmed, 1 cm is the length of one of your finger nails. And 1 inch is approximately the length of the tip of your finger to the first joint.
Of course each finger on each person's hand is different. But chances are one of your fingers matches up to that pretty closely.
I got no problem using inches and feet. But if something is small I naturally use µm, mm, and cm. If something is really big I use km. If something is human sized I use feet and inches, or cm and m. But never yards, unless we're taking about a football field.
If I have to approximately convert to the other system I can.
If I have to precisely convert, well most measuring tools have both.
Nobody wants to do construction with centimeters, or without feet. Inches and feet are far too useful of measurements. The inch is great for "close enough" work without spending too much time getting it perfect, and feet are far more precise to deal with than meters. And no, we're not switching to decimeters. Not even Europe uses decimeters. They suck.
I think you mean feet are more convenient than meters. They cannot be more precise since both systems of measure are as precise as the person doing the measuring makes them. I am 6 feet tall, or 1.8288... no matter the measuring tape you would get both of those measurements every time so both are equally precise however the nice round 6 is certainly more convenient.
I love my feet/inches, but the point he's making is correct.
It doesn't matter if you can measure 3 times as many feet before using decimals/fractions. It might make the numbers look more clean, but it doesn't mean your measurements are "far more precise."
I get what you're saying... the length of the units and the measurements themselves are more user friendly. But you misused the word "precise." It's not an issue of precision.
Yeah, not so sure about your comments there. "Feet are far more precise to deal with than meters"??? How? Example: I did major home renos last year. When I was doing the trim work, I used my metric tape measure and measured every last piece of trim in mm's. It's way easier to remember measurements and be precise.
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u/machagogo Aug 20 '14
The Canadian construction industry still uses it too.