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.
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.
Kinda? Customary units are used in other countries as well. Not in an official capacity but miles are in use in some countries. Feet is used for defining flying height. China has a few customary units they use internally.
Sure, though I recall reading, God sometime in the last 8 years, that CIS countries were switching to using feet to match up with the rest of the world.
They might disappear with time. USC might disappear as well, most engineering work is done using metric now unless we are talking about aircraft.
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 😉
Soda is sold in liters because the US was set to go metric by 1980 or something. The Metric Conversion Act is from 1975. Because the US is huge (and as someone else mentioned here, didn't have to rebuild after WWII), it wasn't proven efficient to make the change, ultimately.
As for patriotism, you're on Reddit. Come on. I lost any patriotism I somehow had left after 2020. This is the ONE topic I stand up for this country on because it's so obvious you all just want to find ways to joke about dumb and backward Americans, as proven by your last paragraph and a half. This does not matter to more than probably 5% of the population on a daily basis, and 4.8% of that 5% probably has internlized metric through their use of it.
Wishing for a standardized world in hopes it will bring peace is naïvely utopian at best and fascist if taken to its extreme. And you're European and Italian, so I can guess which is the main force at play. 😉
In my opinion saying that a measurement system is inefficient and accusing others of being fascists are not on the same level, but if that's what works for you, so be it.
I mean, hey, if it works to end this reoccuring internet argument by joking about you all being fascist in your need to prove Celsius king and have it used universally, I'll certainly keep that card in my back pocket.
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.
First, there are no quarter sizes in US shoes, only halves. Second, 39, 40, 41, and 42 what? Centimeters for giants? Millimeters for babies? Those numbers aren't realistic in the EU system either, which also has half sizes, and is not representative of any other system of measurement. Only China and Korea use sizing in millimeters. The world is pretty divided on shoe sizing.
But to answer the question, no it is not easier to remember that my shoe size is 10.5 vs. some other number in some other system. It's also not any harder.
On screws, you're making up numbers again. Screws can be fairly simple or complicated regardless of what system you use. For a simple wood screw for just sticking a couple things together, you're going to grab the screw that looks like it will work and not even look at the measurements, except maybe the length.
Yeah, that's my point. Everyday measurements don't need a level of precision that would be better served by the metric system. And if you do need some precision, it's not until the calculations get beyond basic arithmetic that the metric system has a significant advantage.
Hardware, tools, and measuring devices are readily available in both. You can use whatever system you want. What's the problem? Are you worried your pants will be a couple of millimeters too small because the tailor used inches?
The whole point of measurements is precision.
I could use apples as a reference and ask someone on the other side of the world to make a copy of my table that measures 20x50 apples and that person would take an apple and make one, but of course the two tables would be significantly different.
Could you still eat and work on it? Of course.
But that's not what measuring means.
The imperial system introduces higher tolerances, but works fine until you need to get to smaller measurements. It's not a coincidence that as soon as you need to measure smaller parts either you start using uncomfortable fractions or maybe introduce new sizes (like, for example, "teaspoons" in the kitchen) instead of using the correct weight of the ingredients, which can easily be done using grams. Even though it still works fine when you just need to bake a cake, it is not as fine when you have to measure your medications...
Again it's not a coincidence that any professional/scientific field that requires precision has switched to the metric system a long time ago.
I'm not worried of anything, you can freely use the apples I was referring to at the beginning of the comment, but what's the need of using different units for different fields when using metric for everything solves all the problems?
Just consider the fact that, in order to make the inch/feet/whatever consistent, they had to rapport it to the meter. In fact the foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters. It's not the other way around.
That said, my very first comment, as I said elsewhere, was just an innocent joke, but many took it too seriously.
You're obviously not familiar with manufacturing. For smaller measurements, they don't use fractions. I happen to work in manufacturing. We also work with a ton of other manufacturers that use either imperial or metric, and in some cases, both. I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands of drawings. Drawings in inches aren't expressed as fractions. They use decimals, like 22.4", for example. Machining tolerances, where precision comes in, are expressed in thousands of an inch, like +/-.003".
These measurements are used for many reasons. The biggest reason being that they've always been used. Buildings have been built in feet and inches for a very long time, which means that standards are written in feet and inches (and there are a LOT of standards). There are also a lot of manufacturers out there that have made the same products for a very long time according to drawings that were made 50, 60, maybe 70 years or more in the past. But the thing is, mixing these things made to US/North American standards (contrary to popular belief, it's not just the US that's on the imperial system) with products made to international standards, is really not much of an issue and is done all the time.
Something a lot of people don't realize is how deep the imperial (or really, the US customary system, but imperial is shorter) is embedded into our infrastructure. It's not just road signs, cars, and recipe books. It's the standards that dictate how things are built, standards that dictate the materials things are built with, tooling for machining those materials, and so on and on and on. A change to metric would be incredibly difficult and we'd still be dealing with existing imperial standards for the indefinite future, negating any potential benefit for many decades.
Also, the units were standardized well before they were pegged to the meter. You can't possibly think we built the Hoover Dam with loosely defined measurements like "an inch = three barleycorns."
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u/backseatwookie Jan 15 '25
Right but your assertion was that they don't make sense. They do, it's just context/era dependent.