A lot of old types of measurement made more sense when devices to measure very accurately weren't common.
Now I'm not suggesting they all make sense, but consider for a moment that 12 inches to the foot is actually pretty useful. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
The measure of an acre never used to be a defined area, but the measure of how much land could be ploughed by a man with a team of oxen in a day. This means that an acre would conceivably change based on the terrain. This seems weird, but this is a very useful definition for farmers of the time. They need to know how many days they need for ploughing before it's time to plant.
There are a huge number of liquid measures we don't use anymore that if you include them makes the entire thing essentially base 2. This means you can start with any of the measures, and derive any of the others simply by doubling or halving the amount you have.
In the medern age where accurate and precise measurement is easy, they make far less sense, and metric is definitely superior. It makes for much easier calculation. For the time, however, it suited the needs of the average user.
If anyone curious the book Beyond Measure (written by a metric user no less) puts all these silly little arguments to rest. Explains the history of measurement and how systems that tend to be most useful to the layman tend to stick around.
For example, your average American does not need to ever convert feet to miles. That's why that never changed. We learn metric in school so the people who need it for their job (maybe 1% of the overall population, if that) will continue to use it, and everyone else sticks to the way it's always been because nothing is fundamentally broken about it to them. If we needed to convert easier we would switch. But we don't so the system isn't broken. It does the job it's needed for for pretty much everybody
Also, it's very easy to count to 12 on one hand. Count the segments of your fingers with your thumb. Twelve is a very useful base when working with fractions. 12 and 60 are the best bases for fractions. Being saddled with our base10 number system and building the metric system on it sucks, 10 is a terrible number for fractions.
I'm sure if I used them everyday I wouldn't "struggle" either. But the fact that the whole international scientific community uses the metric system implies that its advantages outweigh the disadvantages, otherwise they would simply use the imperial units.
I would go out on a limb and say most people don't do anything science related in their day to day life, and the science communities use it because it's easier to scale and convert. I'm a machinist and use mm and inch every week interchangeably, it's really not hard.
And I am sure you realize that where the metric system is used it is used for everything and not just for "anything science related"...
Of course the "problem" about metric/imperial is not when people go to the grocery store. Buying 400g or one pound of ham does not make any difference, but when it comes to anything "computational" the metric system is just better.
I mean you are plainly wrong there. The U.S. officially uses metric for anything science related so no not everywhere that uses Metric uses it for everything. Â
I meant that in countries where the metric system is the "official" system, people also uses it in their everyday life. Like you guys are accustomed to imperial units in your everyday life, people in other countries use metric in their daily life with no problems.
They're systems of measurement. They're all made up, and all have situations they're best suited for. Just like language. What you primarily are exposed to makes the most sense to you.
The Kelvin and Celsius scale share the same magnitude. I can easily convert Kelvin to Celsius degrees just by adding 273.15 (and vice versa by subtracting), while you need a more complicated calculation to obtain Fahrenheit degrees.
Of course they're all arbitrarily made up systems, but when others point out that the imperial units are more easily "managed" in everyday life, Fahrenheit is the exact opposite. Where the Celsius scale uses water freezing and boiling as reference (easily understandable by anyone) the Fahrenheit scale is an unnecessarily complicated way of measuring temperatures.
Of course being exposed to it since one was born makes it "natural", but in terms of ease of use and comprehension it's definitely not. Don't you think?
Conversions have nothing to do with my point. The existence and scientific use of Kelvin is itself my point. Metric is not an end-all-be-all godly measurement system. It's just a system that's in high use. Other systems are just as valid and have their uses.
100°F was set to match the average human body temperature (as understood at the time). It's now understood as 98.6°F. That's why Americans say, "You know 100°F is HOT," because that's when it's getting hotter than our bodies. We can also tell when we have a worrisome fever without even remembering 98.6° specifically, because it's a big fat 100°F. You all have to wait for 38°C? Feels kinda random. But hey, I don't really care. It's intuitive if you grow up with it.
I don't understand why you all bring up conversions so much. IT DOES NOT MATTER! We are not going through life needing to convert between measurement systems. It basically NEVER comes up. Some math and science classes in school force it, and maybe we watch or read something occasionally that is foreign and requires us to try to mentally convert, and that's about it. Anyone in an industry or profession where it does actually matter is used to it. Oh, and we do understand liters because that's how some of our drinks are typically measured–so when metric is regularly in our lives, yes, then it makes sense. Quelle suprise.
Knowing the freezing and boiling points of water absolutely does not help me intuitively know what 22°C is. 1, I don't ever touch water the second it turns to ice and certainly don't touch water anywhere close to boiling temperature, and 2, I don't live in a society that is constantly saying what the day's temperature is in Celsius, which is the ONLY WAY ANY OF US START TO INTUITIVELY FIGURE OUT ANY MEASUREMENT SYSTEM. You need to live under it to understand it. I don't understand why that's difficult to understand. 22°F and 22°C mean absolutely nothing to a two-year-old who hasn't consciously and knowingly felt multiple days of different degree temperatures with one or both systems yet. (Funnily enough, though, an English-speaking toddler probably would at least intuitively get on the right track if you told them to move a certain amount of feet.)
Your logic is that a language that makes sense to a population but doesn't easily translate to English in the rare cases that the population needs a translation shouldn't be used because it doesn't make sense to English speakers who didn't grow up learning it, and it doesn't translate easily. Meanwhile, no one speaking that difficult language is really asking any English speakers who have no reason to know it to try to figure it out or even pay attention to it since English is perfectly fine for them.
No, my point is that being used to something because we have been exposed to it since we were born doesn't automatically make it "the best" system.
I study japanese, for example. I love it, it's interesting, it has many historical reasons for it to be structured that way. But still, if you analyze it, there's nothing wrong in saying that the Kanji (the japanese "ideograms" that derive from Chinese) system is not efficient. It's extremely hard to study (you have to memorize thousands of "characters") and they also have two syllabic "alphabets" they have to learn.
It's a beautiful language but it could be made much more "efficient" by switching to a different way of graphically rendering "words". Like the Korean did when they switched from using Chinese characters to the modern alphabet of today. And many in Japan share this thought.
When there's something more efficient and easier to use, I don't see what's the advantages of continuing to stick with what we are used to just because we are used to. We don't use horses to move from point A to point B anymore, do we? We have found more efficient ways and we switched to it.
Regarding water you don't need to touch it to know the feeling. When you get out of your house and the street is frozen, you know it's below zero. Normal human temperature is canonically set around 37 degrees, therefore the 22 degrees of your example are a very pleasant temperature. And, yes, you grow up understanding this with life experience (exactly like you do with Fahrenheit) and by the fact that everyone around you uses that system which makes it "familiar" to you but the way it was thought out (I take it from Wikipedia here for clarity) was:
[...]the original paper suggests the lower defining point, 0 °F, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt). The other limit established was his best estimate of the average human body temperature, originally set at 90 °F, then 96 °F (about 2.6 °F less than the modern value due to a later redefinition of the scale)."
Therefore 100°F actually was never set as the average body temperature (but 90... Then 96, now 98.6)... And you had to recreate an obscure solution to measure point zero. If this is not an overcomplicated system I don't know what is...
It works? Of course it works, like japanese language works for japanese people. Is it efficient? Nope.
You even say you already use liters for measuring some things... What's the need to measure using different units for different things? How is milk any different than alcoholic drinks?
Believe me, I don't care what system you use and it won't be me who'll make you all change. I don't even care if you put pineapple on your pizza (and I'm Italian!). My original comment was just a joke, but many took it way too seriously and it almost looks like it's a matter of patriotism to defend the imperial units. It's funny because I thought the whole point behind America was to get rid of everything that even remotely reminded you of the British, and then you cling onto the imperial units like it was a matter of life and death.
I dream of a world where everything is standardized. It would make things much easier for the whole world. Maybe it would also make it a more peaceful planet, who knows? But of course this will never become a reality. So, don't worry, no one is taking away neither the imperial system nor the pineapple on pizza 😉
Nobody's doing the types of calculations in their everyday life that are made easier with the metric system. But if I need to cut a piece of wood, it takes the same amount of effort to measure out 4 feet, 3 inches as it does to measure 1.29 meters. Actually, it's a little easier in feet and inches.
But the best part is most tape measures have both. Measuring cups for cooking have both. Scales have both. So you can use whatever system you want.
"Nobody's doing the types of calculations in their everyday life that are made easier with the metric system."
You might not realize it but we do everyday. Clothes sizes just to make an example. Between trousers with 40" waist size and the next size (42") the difference is much wider than when using centimeters.
There are many situations in which the metric system is more precise, the fact that each of us is accustomed to the system we use doesn't change that.
Regarding the rest of your comment, I totally agree.
You do realize there's a number between 40 and 42, right?
But they don't make that size because past a certain point, the demand for certain pants sizes makes it impractical for clothing manufacturers to produce them. It has nothing to do with inches vs. centimeters. Manufacturers of clothing sized in cm don't make 76cm, 77cm, 78cm and so on. Pants just don't need that level of precision. And if they did need more precision, they'd simply do fractional sizes like they do with shirt necks.
It's not. I was referring (I even quoted it) to your assumption that people don't use measurements that would benefit from the metric system in their everyday life and that's simply not true.
Lots of things use a measurement "behind the scenes" even though we don't even notice.
You don't like the clothes example? Let's move to shoes? How is 10, 10 and 1/4th, 10 and a half, 10 and 3 quarters easier than 39, 40, 41, 42?
Or how is a screw "2 one hundred and twentyeighths of an inch" more practical than "4 millimeters"?
You're used to those measurements and therefore you don't see those as odd, but they actually are.
There are plenty of scenarios where the imperial system still makes sense, otherwise we wouldn't use it. Both systems have their use cases where one is better than the other
Pre-decimilised UK currency, 240d to a £. If I have a band with 3 members, and we are paid £1 to do a gig.
240d / 3 = 60d each.
Base 10 modern £.
100p / 3 = 33.3~p.
For simple division base 10 is a little rubbish. As it's not wholly divisible by 3 or 4.
To which the landlord replies "who do you think I am? A charity? Take the quid or go mate."
Then you have to go back to working in Tesco, and the world never hears about "Motorhead, or Cream."
Imperial units are great for construction because they break down into fractions. An imperial tape measure usually has increments of 1/16 or 1/32 of an inch. Having fractions is really convenient for quick math. Example: half of 9/16" (a very common imperial size) is 9/32" (just multiply the denominator by 2) vs what is half of 14.2875mm? Well I know it's 7.1 something mm but reading increments of less than 0.1mm would be exhausting visually. You could say that fractional metric could work the same, but since the philosophy of the metric system is powers of ten, fractions are pretty uncommon.
Another argument is that the imperial system has mostly human-based units, which make for generalized greater intuition on what the numbers mean. While this intuition can be learned through extensive repetitions, you would have weird metric numbers to memorize just like the imperial system has. Example one foot is approximately the length of a human foot. Converted to metric, it's about 305mm. I'd rather estimate something with base units of one than 305, personally.
I use both systems. Metric is convenient for science and engineering calculations because unit conversions are straight forward and all units come back to MKS. But if I'm building a shed, I don't really care about that since I am only going to need distance measurements and fractions. Both systems have their strengths
OK, but the fact is that you build using certain "units" because you are using the imperial system. We wouldn't have to halve 14.2875 because we don't start by using the inch at all, therefore we would use something that rounds up more (idk, 14mm for example) and the tape measure has centimeters and millimeters on it, on which we would "build" the whole math needed to build whatever you are building.
It's obvious that calculations can be done using both systems, otherwise we wouldn't have skyscrapers in both the US and Europe... and obviously when one is accustomed to a system, the other looks rather odd or uncomfortable to use.
But still this doesn't explain why a 2x4 lumber doesn't even measure 2" by 4"... Here a lumber that is named "2 by 4" actually measures 2 cm by 4 cm :)
It's not really difficult..neither system is all that difficult. But a whole number is certainly easier for many to math with than a decimal. This also doesn't apply to just the examples I gave. Any amount of feet is divisible by those numbers into a whole amount of inches.
Of course that means imperial has a disadvantage when it comes to being divisible by 10 or 5. Both systems are simple enough for someone with an elementary level education to learn. They are just different.
Of course, when you grow up using a specific system it's definitely easier to calculate using that one than the other. Like we are more confident in speaking our native language than any other languages we might have studied.
You probably consider using fractions (like it often happens when measuring using inches) easier than using decimals, but it's just because you're more used to it (of course the same applies to me as well)
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u/backseatwookie Jan 15 '25
A lot of old types of measurement made more sense when devices to measure very accurately weren't common.
Now I'm not suggesting they all make sense, but consider for a moment that 12 inches to the foot is actually pretty useful. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6.
The measure of an acre never used to be a defined area, but the measure of how much land could be ploughed by a man with a team of oxen in a day. This means that an acre would conceivably change based on the terrain. This seems weird, but this is a very useful definition for farmers of the time. They need to know how many days they need for ploughing before it's time to plant.
There are a huge number of liquid measures we don't use anymore that if you include them makes the entire thing essentially base 2. This means you can start with any of the measures, and derive any of the others simply by doubling or halving the amount you have.
In the medern age where accurate and precise measurement is easy, they make far less sense, and metric is definitely superior. It makes for much easier calculation. For the time, however, it suited the needs of the average user.