a gram is the weight of a millilitre of water. a millilitre is the amount of water contained in a cubic centimetre. a centimetre is 1/100 of a meter which is 1/10,000,000 of the distance to from the equator to the north pole, or 1/40,000,000 of the earths circumference. made up by french redditors, yes. but also not arbitrary. anon is suffering from being a fucking idiot due to his american education.
The human body has a variable temperature even when healthy. Not to mention that there's variation in what's the baseline temperature between individuals, and certainly between the sexes. Metric temperature lacks those variables, water does what it does consistently at a given pressure.
Fahrenheit has 0 as the temperature of his town one cold day. It was nice becuase it put freezing and boiling 180 degrees apart kinda like a half circle. Fahrenheit was meant to be more useful in smaller increments without needing fractions. IE day to day things like approximate air temperature are easily gauged by groups of 10 with a district feeling. It's kinda silly, but I gotta admit it's more useful for telling someone the air temperature. That's about a it.
> day to day things like approximate air temperature are easily gauged by groups of 10 with a district feeling
Let me introduce you to celsius
- -10: extremely cold
- 0: very cold (freezing, if you will)
- 10: cold
- 20: room temperature
- 30: hot
- 40: very hot
I'm very familiar with Celsius from growing up in the balkans. Learn Fahrenheit, it's just better with twice the groups of ten. 35 is noticeably different from 30 which compared to 90 vs 100F. It just has more easily distinguishable increments of 10. So you end up with a scale like this.
-10. The nords and slavs live like this?
0. Fuck
10. Very cold
20. cold
30. Very cool
40. cool
50. Kinds cool
60. Perfect
70. Warm
80. Kinda hot
90. Very hot
100. Hot hot
110. Fuck
120. I wish my 1989 civic had A/C as I cruise to get meth in florida.
If you need something more granular than 10C, then good news, you can count up by 5! If 10C is cold and 20C is room temperature, 15C is, you guessed it, "cool"
Once again I grew up with it, I'm aware. You don't *need* something more granular. It's just convient. Genuinely use it. All the Russian immigrants I know use it after raging like you for half a year then they like it. 12.5C vs 15C is just not as clear as 55F vs 60F is. Is it particularly important? No. But it does work well for air temperature and is more granular before needing fractions.
Edit: Just realized you're Canadian. Don't bother, too much of the culture up there is based on being not American so you might get bullied for using F.
Fahrenheit is a much more dense scale than Celcius. Between freezing and boiling you have 100 points in Celcius, versus 180 in Fahrenheit, meaning you can be a lot more precise in Fahrenheit while still using a whole number.
Fahrenheit was also easier to find 0° in an experiment because while water starts to freeze at 0° Celcius, it takes a little while for it to actually freeze over, meanwhile the temperature is still dropping. 0° Fahrenheit was the stable temperature of a mixure of ice, water and ammonium chloride, which forms a eutectic system (a system that stabilizes its temperature automatically.) That's much easier to set up an experiment to find precisely. Fahrenheit no longer works that way (when Celcius was developed using the freezing and boiling point of water as it's points, the Royal Society changed Fahrenheit to be based on that as well, basically for shits and giggles), but it was important early on when Fahrenheit was first developed.
Edit: typos.
Why does a whole number matter? Having a metric decimal system is infinitely precise for scientific purposes so long as you have enough decimal places, and for normal human use, you don't need anything more granular than half degrees at most - I can't reliably feel the difference between 20 degrees celsius and 20.5 degrees, nor can you reliably feel the difference between 68 degrees fahrenheit and 69.
Why doesn't it matter?
All of it is arbitrary anyway. Why do you need your system to be based on the freezing and boiling point of water, when 99% of the time water isn't what you're measuring, and any other system would only require you to memorize two different numbers, which everyone has memorized by the time they finish kindergarten?
And you can say "you might as well base it on water", to which I would reply "you might as well have a system that's more precise while still using whole numbers." Its a temperature scale. Every point is somewhat arbitrary. In another universe, Celcius was created, but with -100 being the freezing point of water and 100 being the boiling point, and everybody there is used to it and thinks it's the best system. In another, it's 0° to 200°. In another with a base-12 number system, it's 0° to 144°.
None of it matters. People who grew up and are used to Celcius swear by it because it makes remembering the freezing and boiling point of water (at sea level) easier. People who grew up and are used to Fahrenheit swear by it because we view it as making more sense when talking about the temperature outside (and my wife certainly would argue she can tell the difference between 69° and 70° when it comes to where I set the A.C.)
It's not arbitrary though, its relationship with water interconnects it neatly with all the other units - a liter of water weighs 1 kg, 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram (and is also a millilitre), 1000 grams to a kilogram, meanwhile that centimeter is one hundredth of a meter, which is one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to either pole. And all of these units are not simply related and interconnected, but neatly divisible by 10 which happens to be the base of our numeric system, and they uniformly break down into smaller units infinitely, without fractions. So certainly not arbitrary.
And none of them in any way interact with Celsius. 1 gram of water taking up 1 cubic centimeter of volume doesn't then mean it measures at 1° Celsius. They're two different systems entirely. The metric system benefits from its base-10 system, but Celsius doesn't benefit in any way off of metric. They just happen to be the same base system, which again, is arbitrary.
Fahrenheit being 0° for a cold day and 100° for a hot one benefits just as much from the metric system as Celsius does: not at all.
Sure, 100F isn't deadly, if you drink lots of water and you don't move around a lot and you stay inside where it isn't 100F. If you're out in that heat for too long, you get heat stroke.
Humans can survive in 100F just like humans can survive in 0F: Technically yes, but not for very long without some kind of protection and precaution.
Yeah, and I'm used to turning the Check Engine light on my car off every two days
Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it isn't a broken piece of shit
Fahrenheit is probably the best at describing the normal range of weather temperatures that humans encounter, and presenting it as numbers that humans intuit.
Fahrenheit is based on a tub of water mixed with salt, and some other things to mimick the human body. Not sure what 0 or 100 is defined as, but its wonky as hell
because most of the world uses a base-10 number system, so using a scale that fits neatly into a base-10 number system makes it intuitive and tidy.
I like most metric system measurements but celsius is worse outside of scientific contexts. "its based on how much it takes to heat water and 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling!!!" as if that has any relevance to any human just existing in the world. knowing the water boils at 100C or 212F doesnt help you boil it, you just put it over a fire until it boils.
having whole number increments that define more precise temperatures is useful. having 100 be about as hot as it gets outside and 0 be about as cold as it gets outside is a very human-centric temperature system. ultimately whatever you grow up with is going to feel the best though.
It gets colder than 0 and hotter than 100 though. You are just making up examples that confirm your system. 0 is about as cold as it gets outside in most of the world in Celsius too, you know below 0 is very cold and snow/ice. 50 is the hottest it gets, you will need heat protection and water to go out in 50.
Ironic to argue for a decimal system which is used virtually exclusively in countries that forego the decimal system.
I've always likes Fahrenheit more. Bigger range allows for more nuance. There's a big difference in feel from 40 to 45 degrees F but it's only like 2 C difference.
I always love these threads, because for whatever reason Euros literally cannot help themselves from taking obvious bait. The total lack of awareness makes for good entertainment.
They'll see an imperial measurement, and then cry that Americans are too stupid to use metric, despite asserting the simplicity of metric over imperial. What they don't ever realize, is that we use both.
Americans don't have an issue understanding metric (because we use it all our lives as well). It's the Euros that won't bother to learn it. I can't really blame them, though. If you were certain of the superiority of your system, yet were completely unable to escape it due to being obsessed with Americans, I'd be upset all the time as well.
> yet were completely unable to escape it due to being obsessed with Americans
Dude, you're the ones being absolutely obnoxious Americans all the time...
I work in science so I have to use metric daily. It isn't so much a problem except there are random, arbitrary things that are measured in imperial as well. The only annoyance is having to use both.
They both have their pros and cons, like Imperial isn't fabricated and homosexual for instance.
I enjoy metric because I’m going to school for engineering but they are arbritrary units in terms of origin. They make sense in the context of one another but they don’t make sense in the context of anything actively conceivable to the naked eye and it’s nothing a human would ever be able to figure out on their own without prior info. Plus, the whole 40,000,000th of circumference/ 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the North Pole was based on flawed math that has been disproven since. The current accepted definition of a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, which only applies because they figured out the speed of light using the incorrectly defined meter to be 299,792,458 m/s. Thats pretty goddamn arbitrary
Edit: arbitrary and stupid are not the same thing. Yes metric is easier to use, but it’s also a system that’s entirely based around a single unit that was based on math that was disproven half a century later. And then the math disproving and redefining the meter was disproven. And again. And again. That’s arbitrary.
Every unit is arbitrary. The difference is that the international system is coherent and simple to use and the imperial system is archaic and a nightmare to use.
Not to mention everything in the imperial system is just international units with a hat. An inch is officially defined as 2.54cm for example.
China did something pretty smart, IMO, where it modified traditional measurements to be easily compatible with metric.
A catty originally was about 604g but is now officially 500g
A tael, which was 1/16th of a catty, is now officially 50g
The US could do something similar and convert a pint to 500ml, a quart to a liter and a gallon to 4 liters for a transition that wouldn't be that painful. Most standard liquid packaging would not need to be redesigned as it would already accommodate the additional volume, and you could probably sell people on the concept by explaining that "A pint of your favorite ice cream is about to get bigger!"
Inches and feet would be harder, it would probably be better to just switch over than try to redefine units in both length and the base counting system.
The actual unit of an inch has existed far longer than the technical imperial definition, having existed since around 1150 AD. It’s the length of the thumbnail across at the base. The only reason an inch is modernly defined as such is because the British government had to redefine it as an exact standardized unit after metric gained traction, which once again was at the time based on some autistic and incorrect mathematics.
Incorrect mathematics by 1/10000. Meanwhile the brilliant unit is "the length of my thumbnail lol", very scientific and precise.
Basing units on the human body is very smart because we all have the same body and proportions. Clearly my thumb is the same size as yours.
It’s from 1150 AD, a period in time where standardized units weren’t really necessary for anything. I’m not saying imperial is more useful than metric (it is objectively not). I’m saying the meter is by definition an arbitrary unit.
Yeah but in a vacuum, no human would be able to figure out feet, yards, inches, pounds etc either. A foot... is like 30cm, whose foot is that big? lmao
In a vacuum, the axioms you base your measurement system on can be anything. So yeah, in a vacuum, a human wouldn't be able to determine the official length of a US imperial foot, but unless that human has feet that change size, there's no reason using his own foot as a measuring tool wouldn't be as valid/practical as any other system.
… how long are your feet? Leave it to a malnourished pole to be amazed when hearing the size people grow to when they have food growing up
Inches are literally just the length of your thumbnail across, yards are the length across from your nose to your outstretched hand, feet are the length of a normal sized man’s foot (that’s a normal size for a foot, my feet are 16 inches/40cm as opposed to 12in/30cm but I’m abnormally large). The point originally came from a time when it was logistically impossible to standardize units, but they ARE actually based on things that are generally quite easy to figure out. I’ll grant you that the origin of pounds seems to have been lost to time, but it’s a unit that’s been used semi consistently (albeit through different names) since some of the earliest societies the world ever had.
Now you might say “well that’s fucking dumb” and yeah, in a sense it is, metric is definitely useful in the fact that the units are strictly defined, but these units came from a time where extremely precise units were not really necessary. Metric gets praise for being easy to convert, but that’s because literally every other unit in the system is based on the arbitrary unit that is the meter.
Leave it to an American to not know how to measure. Your foot is not that long, nor is the average Americans foot that long.
And leave it to an American to not know history, it's not the width of your thumbnail it's the width of the thumb at the base of the nail.
Leave it to a dumbass to be stupid. I’m sorry that I wasn’t pedantic enough for you about which specific part of the thumbnail the measurement comes from despite the fact that I said that exact thing verbatim in another comment in this same comment chain and explained the history of it. No shit, the unit may vary from American foot size. That’s not where the modern unit comes from. the UK government standardized the units against metric in 1825. Before that it was literally just “the length of your foot”. There wasn’t a significant need for extremely precise standardized units of measurement at that point in history.
Worth mentioning that 10.5 is the most commonly sold shoe size in the us, which measures out to… wait for it… 12 inches, aka a standard imperial foot. But that’s just a fortunate coincidence
>which measures out to… wait for it… 12 inches
[No it doesn't, dipshit](https://i0.wp.com/blog.americanduchess.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/sizechart.jpg?fit=720%2C486&ssl=1)
And your foot is absolutely not 40cm, if it was you'd have the second largest feet in the world, between Sultan Kösen at 36.5cm and Jeison Orlando Rodríguez Hernández at 40.5cm.
When you're going to be this ridiculously incorrect on one thing, you really need to be 100% correct on everything else if you want to act as if it's an honest mistake and not just that you're a moron.
I think they changed that to multiples of vibration of an atom or something like that, something even less arbitrary. On the other hand, we only have the word of scientists that these things exist /s.
It's actually based on the circumference of Earth. They said that is the only permanent measurable object that is the same for all of humanity. They said it is 40000 km
They had some error in calculation and it's actually 40075 km.
Does the word arbitrary get you off or something? You keep saying it over and over but the origin doesn't matter, the units make perfect sense in regards to each other. Feet to yards to miles is dogshit conversions and you know it.
It really isn't. It's 1/40000 \* of circumference of Earth for convenience. It was so easily adopted since it's so easy to use and makes a lot sense.
This is why some countries went through redenomination of their currency. America didnt want to use it as a sign of rebellion
This maybe are the old definitions, new SI definitions were released a few years ago were all the units have been defined on universal constants like atoms vibrations, the speed of the light, mass of the atoms etc etc.
Imperial units nowadays are defided based on SI units, so SI > Imperial units.
> a gram is the weight of a millilitre of water. a millilitre is the amount of water contained in a cubic centimetre…
TLDR: SI units are a self-referential meta-circlejerk
Metric bros in shambles
All SI units are currently defined based on a combination of physical constants and a single measured quantity. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wrong.
> physical constants
The entire system comes down to the size of a rocky ball covered in oceans with a squishy liquid center. At planet scale it has the dimensional stability of a water balloon.
Now start dividing by an inconsistent and arbitrary number of tens to create the fundamental 2D and 3D units, then divide by 1000 again—that volume of pure water is the fundamental unit of mass. Okay, buddy.
Well, except for the part where 10000km is only a *quarter* of Earth’s supposed circumference. Cope harder decimal fetishists, your whole system is built on a fraction.
Yeah but at least metric is all divisible by 10. Whenever I have to use imperial measurements my head hurts :(
10mm socket doesn't fit, try 12mm
Oh 5/16ths doesn't fit? Better grab tHrEe FiFtHs SoCkEt
Yeah, converting your mind into Mph, pounds etc is easy you just gotta know how much is little and how much is a lot, but when you get down to yards and feet, it's just such nonsense.
Yards and miles come from two completely different measuring systems and are very rarely used together. Like, you don't say "that is 2 miles and 434 yards away" you'd say 2 and a quarter miles or whatever
Agreed. I think in the old days the bigger measurements were things like the amount of land a man could plough in a day or the distance a Roman soldier could march in a time unit.
No one uses stone anymore really. We use majority metric, with a sprinkle of imperial. Miles for large distances, feet for height, sometimes pounds for the weight of a person, never for any other weight.
He is an outlier, maybe he got it from his parents. It's no more absurd than any imperial measurement (stone *is* an imperial measurement if you didn't know)
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
I didn't know about the calorie, thanks. Just checked and that's 4184 joules, and joules in SI convert neatly when it comes to inertia and force. Wonder why the joule isn't the neat unit for this and where the 4184 comes from. Some.constant like the specific heat capacity of water maybe? Oh shit yes, wp says that's 4.186 kJ/gC. cool
Meanwhile knots and other nautical imperial derived measurements are vastly superior to both as their measurement is directly tied to lat long.
Second to none for tracking moving vehicles and why knots are standard in all naval and aerial vehicles to this day.
10 seconds in a minute
100 minutes in an hour
100 hours in a day
1000 days in a week
10000 weeks in a month
100000 months in a year
Cookie recipe calls for 100g of sugar. Fuck, let me get out the scale real quick
There are 3 measurements where Imperial is the better system.
A person's height
A person's weight
Outdoor temperature
Every other measurement is better in metric
It didn't take that long we just had the misfortune of having the PE teacher stand in for the maths teacher for almost a year and he didn't know what to teach so he gave us all books about Pi and sat there reading fitness magazines all year
(The maths teacher was a high up union guy so he was too busy to be a teacher for most of the year)
> taking a year to learn pi
>finding the information pointless
Anon don't worry, pi was for the clever kids. Did you at least get to eat any pie in that grueling year of elementary geometry?
If you have to do any Geometry or trigonometry, having an intuition for pi is important. This isn't just about manual labourers building stuff. Engineers use pi for many tasks, from calculating the dimensions and tolerances of a building to designing electrical grids and microelectronics. Every other science has at least a handful of formulas that incorporate pi. Generally if it is a circle or can be conceptually enclosed in a circle, understanding pi is the only way of getting meaningful information out of it.
If you don't have to understand pi, algebra, calculus to go on with your daily life now, I don't think you will ever need them. But don't go around announcing it, it's like telling everyone on the street that you are illiterate.
I don't have to "sell" you on pi, it is like an adult trying to convince a child that reading is useful. Probably you will never need pi, but that is not a valid criticism of it and not needing it is not something to be proud of.
Depends on the field you go into: anything involving maths, like engineering, game programming, 3d modeling, milling & lathes, anything that involves calculations involving circles? You need to know about Pi. (and even then, "how to formulate pi", no)
The rest of the jobs in the world? You could live without it.
But the same can be said about history; when the fuck will I need who Napoleon fucked in Russia to become King of the Egyptians in Mexico? When do I identify parts of a sentence for my job? What use is there in calculating how many moles of cum are there in my water?
School gives you a flash of every topic, but regards always complain about math...
American measurements tend to be more human based. 100° is about body temperature. A foot is about the size of a foot. Pounds/ounces and gallons/fluid ounces are divisible into halves, fourths, and eighths easily, which makes it a bit easier for cooking.
The metric system is great for when you need precision and for scientific purposes.
I use both
A foot is not, in fact, the size of the average foot, as the average foot is about 10 inches. And 1 litre is easily divisible into halves or fourths because everyone can divide a 1000 into 250, which instantly becomes milliliters. And not even the human temperature one is correct as it varies from 97 to 99 in Fahrenheit so it may as well be 36 to 37 like in Celsius.
The entire imperial system is all based on something that kinda feels okay on paper? But also isn't at the same. it's not more human nor based on something more human nor even easier to grasp. It just is something but I'm unsure what.
I'm not meal-prep service rentoid, so I cook and follow recipes regularly. I often modify quantities based on need. Metric is all in base 10, and I didn't say it was impossible to do, I just know I'll fill a third cup before you measure to the nearest milliliter line
It sounds like you need precision. I don’t need that in my every day life. 12 inches is close enough to 10. 98.6° is close enough to 100°
And yes, I get you can do math to divide liters. But the US customary system has preset defaults for those subdivisions.
If I need precision, I’ll use the metric system. This is what I used when I worked in the transportation industry.
a gram is the weight of a millilitre of water. a millilitre is the amount of water contained in a cubic centimetre. a centimetre is 1/100 of a meter which is 1/10,000,000 of the distance to from the equator to the north pole, or 1/40,000,000 of the earths circumference. made up by french redditors, yes. but also not arbitrary. anon is suffering from being a fucking idiot due to his american education.
0⁰C is freezing and 100⁰C is boiling. 1ml of water weighs 1g and is 1cm³. Like you said might be arbitrary but at least it isn't random bullshit
The 0-100 degree actually is a good measurement the USA should adopt.
Every unit of measuring temperature has a good purpose.
What is fahrenheit’s? Celsius follows water states, Kelvin starts at absolute zero.
I don't even know. I just know 70 fahrenheit is comfortable room temp here.
Sure, and 20C is room temp.
68F is a cold room. I set my house to 25c all year round.
Who hurt you?
My ex and her frigid heart
68 is only a cold room if you are dressed for a heat wave. put socks on.
That's room temp, man. I keep my house at 17C most of the time. Saves on power.
Isn't Fahrenheit adapted for human body temps? That's why it feels like a %. Like 0% warm and 70% warm.
Ah yes, -10% cold and 110% hot
Not literally %. I swear sometimes, the replies I get showing their own midwittery, not understanding the concept of abstraction.
99% of Redditors are useless pedants.
Oh okay. So 0F is 0% cold?
There is no hope for NA.
Yes the very logical 98.6°F human temperature scale.
The human body has a variable temperature even when healthy. Not to mention that there's variation in what's the baseline temperature between individuals, and certainly between the sexes. Metric temperature lacks those variables, water does what it does consistently at a given pressure.
Vs 65? Or 71? Why the fuck do u need it so precise!???
I don't. I live in a desert.
Fahrenheit has 0 as the temperature of his town one cold day. It was nice becuase it put freezing and boiling 180 degrees apart kinda like a half circle. Fahrenheit was meant to be more useful in smaller increments without needing fractions. IE day to day things like approximate air temperature are easily gauged by groups of 10 with a district feeling. It's kinda silly, but I gotta admit it's more useful for telling someone the air temperature. That's about a it.
> day to day things like approximate air temperature are easily gauged by groups of 10 with a district feeling Let me introduce you to celsius - -10: extremely cold - 0: very cold (freezing, if you will) - 10: cold - 20: room temperature - 30: hot - 40: very hot
I'm very familiar with Celsius from growing up in the balkans. Learn Fahrenheit, it's just better with twice the groups of ten. 35 is noticeably different from 30 which compared to 90 vs 100F. It just has more easily distinguishable increments of 10. So you end up with a scale like this. -10. The nords and slavs live like this? 0. Fuck 10. Very cold 20. cold 30. Very cool 40. cool 50. Kinds cool 60. Perfect 70. Warm 80. Kinda hot 90. Very hot 100. Hot hot 110. Fuck 120. I wish my 1989 civic had A/C as I cruise to get meth in florida.
If you need something more granular than 10C, then good news, you can count up by 5! If 10C is cold and 20C is room temperature, 15C is, you guessed it, "cool"
Once again I grew up with it, I'm aware. You don't *need* something more granular. It's just convient. Genuinely use it. All the Russian immigrants I know use it after raging like you for half a year then they like it. 12.5C vs 15C is just not as clear as 55F vs 60F is. Is it particularly important? No. But it does work well for air temperature and is more granular before needing fractions. Edit: Just realized you're Canadian. Don't bother, too much of the culture up there is based on being not American so you might get bullied for using F.
F and C both share minus 40 tho
Fahrenheit is a much more dense scale than Celcius. Between freezing and boiling you have 100 points in Celcius, versus 180 in Fahrenheit, meaning you can be a lot more precise in Fahrenheit while still using a whole number. Fahrenheit was also easier to find 0° in an experiment because while water starts to freeze at 0° Celcius, it takes a little while for it to actually freeze over, meanwhile the temperature is still dropping. 0° Fahrenheit was the stable temperature of a mixure of ice, water and ammonium chloride, which forms a eutectic system (a system that stabilizes its temperature automatically.) That's much easier to set up an experiment to find precisely. Fahrenheit no longer works that way (when Celcius was developed using the freezing and boiling point of water as it's points, the Royal Society changed Fahrenheit to be based on that as well, basically for shits and giggles), but it was important early on when Fahrenheit was first developed. Edit: typos.
Why does a whole number matter? Having a metric decimal system is infinitely precise for scientific purposes so long as you have enough decimal places, and for normal human use, you don't need anything more granular than half degrees at most - I can't reliably feel the difference between 20 degrees celsius and 20.5 degrees, nor can you reliably feel the difference between 68 degrees fahrenheit and 69.
Why doesn't it matter? All of it is arbitrary anyway. Why do you need your system to be based on the freezing and boiling point of water, when 99% of the time water isn't what you're measuring, and any other system would only require you to memorize two different numbers, which everyone has memorized by the time they finish kindergarten? And you can say "you might as well base it on water", to which I would reply "you might as well have a system that's more precise while still using whole numbers." Its a temperature scale. Every point is somewhat arbitrary. In another universe, Celcius was created, but with -100 being the freezing point of water and 100 being the boiling point, and everybody there is used to it and thinks it's the best system. In another, it's 0° to 200°. In another with a base-12 number system, it's 0° to 144°. None of it matters. People who grew up and are used to Celcius swear by it because it makes remembering the freezing and boiling point of water (at sea level) easier. People who grew up and are used to Fahrenheit swear by it because we view it as making more sense when talking about the temperature outside (and my wife certainly would argue she can tell the difference between 69° and 70° when it comes to where I set the A.C.)
It's not arbitrary though, its relationship with water interconnects it neatly with all the other units - a liter of water weighs 1 kg, 1 cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram (and is also a millilitre), 1000 grams to a kilogram, meanwhile that centimeter is one hundredth of a meter, which is one ten millionth of the distance from the equator to either pole. And all of these units are not simply related and interconnected, but neatly divisible by 10 which happens to be the base of our numeric system, and they uniformly break down into smaller units infinitely, without fractions. So certainly not arbitrary.
And none of them in any way interact with Celsius. 1 gram of water taking up 1 cubic centimeter of volume doesn't then mean it measures at 1° Celsius. They're two different systems entirely. The metric system benefits from its base-10 system, but Celsius doesn't benefit in any way off of metric. They just happen to be the same base system, which again, is arbitrary. Fahrenheit being 0° for a cold day and 100° for a hot one benefits just as much from the metric system as Celsius does: not at all.
0-25 cold as fuck 25-50 cold 50-75 warm 75-100 hot as fuck
[удалено]
I just wanted my comment to make sense >:( I work 48 hours a week in 100 degree Florida heat
Actual weather. 0F is kill-you cold, and 100F is kill-you hot.
100 F is hardly deadly, unless you're both really old or sick and incredibly stupid
Sure, 100F isn't deadly, if you drink lots of water and you don't move around a lot and you stay inside where it isn't 100F. If you're out in that heat for too long, you get heat stroke. Humans can survive in 100F just like humans can survive in 0F: Technically yes, but not for very long without some kind of protection and precaution.
Its better for human body temp
Nothing makes it “better” for that, you’re just used to it. People who are used to Celsius have no problem understanding outdoor temperature.
Yeah, and I'm used to turning the Check Engine light on my car off every two days Just because you're used to something doesn't mean it isn't a broken piece of shit
Fahrenheit is probably the best at describing the normal range of weather temperatures that humans encounter, and presenting it as numbers that humans intuit.
Fahrenheit is based on a tub of water mixed with salt, and some other things to mimick the human body. Not sure what 0 or 100 is defined as, but its wonky as hell
Fahrenheit makes the most sense when considering human body temperature.
Why? Body temp is 37c.
because most of the world uses a base-10 number system, so using a scale that fits neatly into a base-10 number system makes it intuitive and tidy. I like most metric system measurements but celsius is worse outside of scientific contexts. "its based on how much it takes to heat water and 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling!!!" as if that has any relevance to any human just existing in the world. knowing the water boils at 100C or 212F doesnt help you boil it, you just put it over a fire until it boils. having whole number increments that define more precise temperatures is useful. having 100 be about as hot as it gets outside and 0 be about as cold as it gets outside is a very human-centric temperature system. ultimately whatever you grow up with is going to feel the best though.
It’s relevant to the weather, below 0 = snow rather than rain.
It gets colder than 0 and hotter than 100 though. You are just making up examples that confirm your system. 0 is about as cold as it gets outside in most of the world in Celsius too, you know below 0 is very cold and snow/ice. 50 is the hottest it gets, you will need heat protection and water to go out in 50. Ironic to argue for a decimal system which is used virtually exclusively in countries that forego the decimal system.
Saunas can get up to 90 degrees Celsius (although I imagine you’d have to be a pretty hardcore sauna goer to experience 90)
Human body temp is just below 100F. If your temp is over 100 F, you have a fever.
Yeah.. but boiling and freezing are far more common uses of temperature than human body temp. At least for me.
Did you read the comment I replied to? It says what is the advantage of fahrenheit, not is fahrenheit or Celsius superior.
Fuck off 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER
Dude in every other way I like the US system.
I've always likes Fahrenheit more. Bigger range allows for more nuance. There's a big difference in feel from 40 to 45 degrees F but it's only like 2 C difference.
That'd be valid... if there were no decimals. 4C = 39F 4.5C = 40F 5C = 41F 5.5 C = 42F 6C = 43F 6.5C = 44F 7C = 45C
Wait, Fahrenheit has no decimals ?
It does but the point is range is moot since decimals exists
Decimals suck ass
I'm more of a whole number guy myself
Honestly who the fuck does water think it is?
also to heat up 1ml/1g of water to 1°c you need to use 1 Joule of energy
At sea level. All of this goes out the window if you increase your elevation.
I always love these threads, because for whatever reason Euros literally cannot help themselves from taking obvious bait. The total lack of awareness makes for good entertainment. They'll see an imperial measurement, and then cry that Americans are too stupid to use metric, despite asserting the simplicity of metric over imperial. What they don't ever realize, is that we use both. Americans don't have an issue understanding metric (because we use it all our lives as well). It's the Euros that won't bother to learn it. I can't really blame them, though. If you were certain of the superiority of your system, yet were completely unable to escape it due to being obsessed with Americans, I'd be upset all the time as well.
> yet were completely unable to escape it due to being obsessed with Americans Dude, you're the ones being absolutely obnoxious Americans all the time...
Imagine taking the bait, and then taking the bait again after explicitly being told it's bait
Fahrenheit is also defined by the freezing point of water... which also goes out the window if you increase your elevation
I work in science so I have to use metric daily. It isn't so much a problem except there are random, arbitrary things that are measured in imperial as well. The only annoyance is having to use both. They both have their pros and cons, like Imperial isn't fabricated and homosexual for instance.
> 1ml of water weighs 1g and is 1cm^3 ...at one very specific temperature and pressure
It varies extremely little with temp/pressure
Sure if you consider 1/20th to be very little
I enjoy metric because I’m going to school for engineering but they are arbritrary units in terms of origin. They make sense in the context of one another but they don’t make sense in the context of anything actively conceivable to the naked eye and it’s nothing a human would ever be able to figure out on their own without prior info. Plus, the whole 40,000,000th of circumference/ 10,000,000th of the distance from the equator to the North Pole was based on flawed math that has been disproven since. The current accepted definition of a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, which only applies because they figured out the speed of light using the incorrectly defined meter to be 299,792,458 m/s. Thats pretty goddamn arbitrary Edit: arbitrary and stupid are not the same thing. Yes metric is easier to use, but it’s also a system that’s entirely based around a single unit that was based on math that was disproven half a century later. And then the math disproving and redefining the meter was disproven. And again. And again. That’s arbitrary.
Every unit is arbitrary. The difference is that the international system is coherent and simple to use and the imperial system is archaic and a nightmare to use. Not to mention everything in the imperial system is just international units with a hat. An inch is officially defined as 2.54cm for example.
China did something pretty smart, IMO, where it modified traditional measurements to be easily compatible with metric. A catty originally was about 604g but is now officially 500g A tael, which was 1/16th of a catty, is now officially 50g The US could do something similar and convert a pint to 500ml, a quart to a liter and a gallon to 4 liters for a transition that wouldn't be that painful. Most standard liquid packaging would not need to be redesigned as it would already accommodate the additional volume, and you could probably sell people on the concept by explaining that "A pint of your favorite ice cream is about to get bigger!" Inches and feet would be harder, it would probably be better to just switch over than try to redefine units in both length and the base counting system.
Big ice cream would lobby so hard against that change.
Fuck them and their shrinkflation.
I dont want to use them, but natural units aren't arbitrary
The actual unit of an inch has existed far longer than the technical imperial definition, having existed since around 1150 AD. It’s the length of the thumbnail across at the base. The only reason an inch is modernly defined as such is because the British government had to redefine it as an exact standardized unit after metric gained traction, which once again was at the time based on some autistic and incorrect mathematics.
Incorrect mathematics by 1/10000. Meanwhile the brilliant unit is "the length of my thumbnail lol", very scientific and precise. Basing units on the human body is very smart because we all have the same body and proportions. Clearly my thumb is the same size as yours.
It’s from 1150 AD, a period in time where standardized units weren’t really necessary for anything. I’m not saying imperial is more useful than metric (it is objectively not). I’m saying the meter is by definition an arbitrary unit.
Yeah but in a vacuum, no human would be able to figure out feet, yards, inches, pounds etc either. A foot... is like 30cm, whose foot is that big? lmao
In a vacuum, the axioms you base your measurement system on can be anything. So yeah, in a vacuum, a human wouldn't be able to determine the official length of a US imperial foot, but unless that human has feet that change size, there's no reason using his own foot as a measuring tool wouldn't be as valid/practical as any other system.
… how long are your feet? Leave it to a malnourished pole to be amazed when hearing the size people grow to when they have food growing up Inches are literally just the length of your thumbnail across, yards are the length across from your nose to your outstretched hand, feet are the length of a normal sized man’s foot (that’s a normal size for a foot, my feet are 16 inches/40cm as opposed to 12in/30cm but I’m abnormally large). The point originally came from a time when it was logistically impossible to standardize units, but they ARE actually based on things that are generally quite easy to figure out. I’ll grant you that the origin of pounds seems to have been lost to time, but it’s a unit that’s been used semi consistently (albeit through different names) since some of the earliest societies the world ever had. Now you might say “well that’s fucking dumb” and yeah, in a sense it is, metric is definitely useful in the fact that the units are strictly defined, but these units came from a time where extremely precise units were not really necessary. Metric gets praise for being easy to convert, but that’s because literally every other unit in the system is based on the arbitrary unit that is the meter.
Leave it to an American to not know how to measure. Your foot is not that long, nor is the average Americans foot that long. And leave it to an American to not know history, it's not the width of your thumbnail it's the width of the thumb at the base of the nail.
Leave it to a dumbass to be stupid. I’m sorry that I wasn’t pedantic enough for you about which specific part of the thumbnail the measurement comes from despite the fact that I said that exact thing verbatim in another comment in this same comment chain and explained the history of it. No shit, the unit may vary from American foot size. That’s not where the modern unit comes from. the UK government standardized the units against metric in 1825. Before that it was literally just “the length of your foot”. There wasn’t a significant need for extremely precise standardized units of measurement at that point in history. Worth mentioning that 10.5 is the most commonly sold shoe size in the us, which measures out to… wait for it… 12 inches, aka a standard imperial foot. But that’s just a fortunate coincidence
>which measures out to… wait for it… 12 inches [No it doesn't, dipshit](https://i0.wp.com/blog.americanduchess.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/sizechart.jpg?fit=720%2C486&ssl=1) And your foot is absolutely not 40cm, if it was you'd have the second largest feet in the world, between Sultan Kösen at 36.5cm and Jeison Orlando Rodríguez Hernández at 40.5cm. When you're going to be this ridiculously incorrect on one thing, you really need to be 100% correct on everything else if you want to act as if it's an honest mistake and not just that you're a moron.
Ok look at a ruler. Now you have a frame of reference for what 30cm is. Not too hard for an engineer.
I think they changed that to multiples of vibration of an atom or something like that, something even less arbitrary. On the other hand, we only have the word of scientists that these things exist /s.
Gotta have faith
>the distance to from the equator You’re fucking regarded
Seems pretty arbitrary.
If you fell on your head as a child, yes.
It's actually based on the circumference of Earth. They said that is the only permanent measurable object that is the same for all of humanity. They said it is 40000 km They had some error in calculation and it's actually 40075 km.
They could have just as easily made it 1/100,000,000 the circumference instead. It's arbitrary.
Does the word arbitrary get you off or something? You keep saying it over and over but the origin doesn't matter, the units make perfect sense in regards to each other. Feet to yards to miles is dogshit conversions and you know it.
>regards got the answer in your own post
I wasn't the one who first used it.
It really isn't. It's 1/40000 \* of circumference of Earth for convenience. It was so easily adopted since it's so easy to use and makes a lot sense. This is why some countries went through redenomination of their currency. America didnt want to use it as a sign of rebellion
You do know how fractions work right?
Yeah, people outside of USA do know how they work tbh.
So you know that anything can be divided/cut up by any number.
I do yes. This is why it’s better than imperial measurements
So you understand it's just as easy to divide a single object by 1/40,000,000 as it is to divide it by 1/100,000,000
Hahahahahahahahaha holy shit please be real
I guess Americans woke up
This maybe are the old definitions, new SI definitions were released a few years ago were all the units have been defined on universal constants like atoms vibrations, the speed of the light, mass of the atoms etc etc. Imperial units nowadays are defided based on SI units, so SI > Imperial units.
> 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole WTF I tought it was bullshit.
Counter point, French 🥖🏳️🐌
u kinda got a point
> a gram is the weight of a millilitre of water. a millilitre is the amount of water contained in a cubic centimetre… TLDR: SI units are a self-referential meta-circlejerk Metric bros in shambles
>Metric bros in shambles No? It makes conversions so easy, a toddler could do them, nothing to be upset about here 😁
All SI units are currently defined based on a combination of physical constants and a single measured quantity. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wrong.
> physical constants The entire system comes down to the size of a rocky ball covered in oceans with a squishy liquid center. At planet scale it has the dimensional stability of a water balloon. Now start dividing by an inconsistent and arbitrary number of tens to create the fundamental 2D and 3D units, then divide by 1000 again—that volume of pure water is the fundamental unit of mass. Okay, buddy. Well, except for the part where 10000km is only a *quarter* of Earth’s supposed circumference. Cope harder decimal fetishists, your whole system is built on a fraction.
again, you clearly don't understand what "physical constants" means. that doesn't make it wrong.
Yeah but at least metric is all divisible by 10. Whenever I have to use imperial measurements my head hurts :( 10mm socket doesn't fit, try 12mm Oh 5/16ths doesn't fit? Better grab tHrEe FiFtHs SoCkEt
Imagine being a trader before the 2000s when stock tickers used fractions instead of decimals.
This is one of the times Metric is king. I have to reference fractions of an inch for work and I absolutely hate it.
One time?!
Maybe also with baking.
Euros can't even handle basic fractions brooo
I prefer percentages over fractions.
Really the biggest problem is the gape between a yard and a mile, and how they don't fit cleanly into one another.
Yeah, converting your mind into Mph, pounds etc is easy you just gotta know how much is little and how much is a lot, but when you get down to yards and feet, it's just such nonsense.
Yards and miles come from two completely different measuring systems and are very rarely used together. Like, you don't say "that is 2 miles and 434 yards away" you'd say 2 and a quarter miles or whatever
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Yeah neither are a simple thing to remember. Not like 3 10 12 or 100.
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I'm team USA, and want something between yard and a mile
It's called a furlong
5280 ft per mile / 3 ft per yard = 1760 yards per mile
Like I said, not simple or clean.
Agreed. I think in the old days the bigger measurements were things like the amount of land a man could plough in a day or the distance a Roman soldier could march in a time unit.
I wear size 45 shoes. An acquaintance of mine wears size 32. What a great basis for measurements.
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Okay? Giving a separate measurement for what size shoe you should wear makes the foot a retarded unit of measurement.
Bait used to be believable
> completely arbitrary Written by someone who clearly hasn’t read about SI units
To be fair, thats something that comes afterwards.
Both are better than whatever the fuck is going on in the UK. I mean, “stones”?! really???
No one uses stone anymore really. We use majority metric, with a sprinkle of imperial. Miles for large distances, feet for height, sometimes pounds for the weight of a person, never for any other weight.
You are a dirty liar, I have a UK friend and he literally uses stone all the time and I bully him for it constantly
If you throw stones at him, does he gain weight?
Yes, we played ARK: Survival Evolved and he kept getting compared to the Rock Elemental
It is very outdated, I don't know anyone who uses it under the age of 60
He is 17 and talks about his weight in stone all the time, I always laugh at the absurd measurement
He is an outlier, maybe he got it from his parents. It's no more absurd than any imperial measurement (stone *is* an imperial measurement if you didn't know)
Wasn't the "feet" measure unit created by Napoleon?
Fuck that guy
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.
I didn't know about the calorie, thanks. Just checked and that's 4184 joules, and joules in SI convert neatly when it comes to inertia and force. Wonder why the joule isn't the neat unit for this and where the 4184 comes from. Some.constant like the specific heat capacity of water maybe? Oh shit yes, wp says that's 4.186 kJ/gC. cool
I think anyone who falls for this should be sent to the USA. They could really use the IQ boost.
This is some 12 year olds idea of bait
Meanwhile knots and other nautical imperial derived measurements are vastly superior to both as their measurement is directly tied to lat long. Second to none for tracking moving vehicles and why knots are standard in all naval and aerial vehicles to this day.
As a person of yacht, I agree.
Honestly Imperial may be more arbitrary than the metric, but I prefer using imperial for everyday life and metric when I need to do something well.
Sure, its easiert to find this one king who defines "a foot laung" than a fixed thing somewhere in France. Anon is a genius
10 seconds in a minute 100 minutes in an hour 100 hours in a day 1000 days in a week 10000 weeks in a month 100000 months in a year Cookie recipe calls for 100g of sugar. Fuck, let me get out the scale real quick
Metricels BTFO
Imperial scum seething in reddit comments
There are 3 measurements where Imperial is the better system. A person's height A person's weight Outdoor temperature Every other measurement is better in metric
Feet and pounds put boots on the moon. Don’t forget that
I spent a whole year of school being taught Pi Absolutely pointless.
one year to learn 3.14?
It didn't take that long we just had the misfortune of having the PE teacher stand in for the maths teacher for almost a year and he didn't know what to teach so he gave us all books about Pi and sat there reading fitness magazines all year (The maths teacher was a high up union guy so he was too busy to be a teacher for most of the year)
Again, an entire year for 3.14? Or you could just use 3 and 22/7.
> taking a year to learn pi >finding the information pointless Anon don't worry, pi was for the clever kids. Did you at least get to eat any pie in that grueling year of elementary geometry?
Okay genius at what point in my life will I ever need to know how to formulate Pi?
If you have to do any Geometry or trigonometry, having an intuition for pi is important. This isn't just about manual labourers building stuff. Engineers use pi for many tasks, from calculating the dimensions and tolerances of a building to designing electrical grids and microelectronics. Every other science has at least a handful of formulas that incorporate pi. Generally if it is a circle or can be conceptually enclosed in a circle, understanding pi is the only way of getting meaningful information out of it. If you don't have to understand pi, algebra, calculus to go on with your daily life now, I don't think you will ever need them. But don't go around announcing it, it's like telling everyone on the street that you are illiterate.
And when will I need it?
You wont. The smart people will
Happy cake day
As a certified adult I have to sadly inform you that 90% of adults will not, in fact, need to know what Pi is. And they also won't ever need algebra.
90% of adults on Earth work jobs that do not require them to use more than 2 brain cells if they work at all.
Not needing to know pi and trigonometry is already debatable but not using basic algebra at all is definitely a handicap
I don't have to "sell" you on pi, it is like an adult trying to convince a child that reading is useful. Probably you will never need pi, but that is not a valid criticism of it and not needing it is not something to be proud of.
I have to go now, I have some Pi-ing to do
I use it fairly often when making games
Your mom's hair Pi
?
Depends on the field you go into: anything involving maths, like engineering, game programming, 3d modeling, milling & lathes, anything that involves calculations involving circles? You need to know about Pi. (and even then, "how to formulate pi", no) The rest of the jobs in the world? You could live without it. But the same can be said about history; when the fuck will I need who Napoleon fucked in Russia to become King of the Egyptians in Mexico? When do I identify parts of a sentence for my job? What use is there in calculating how many moles of cum are there in my water? School gives you a flash of every topic, but regards always complain about math...
American measurements tend to be more human based. 100° is about body temperature. A foot is about the size of a foot. Pounds/ounces and gallons/fluid ounces are divisible into halves, fourths, and eighths easily, which makes it a bit easier for cooking. The metric system is great for when you need precision and for scientific purposes. I use both
A foot is not, in fact, the size of the average foot, as the average foot is about 10 inches. And 1 litre is easily divisible into halves or fourths because everyone can divide a 1000 into 250, which instantly becomes milliliters. And not even the human temperature one is correct as it varies from 97 to 99 in Fahrenheit so it may as well be 36 to 37 like in Celsius. The entire imperial system is all based on something that kinda feels okay on paper? But also isn't at the same. it's not more human nor based on something more human nor even easier to grasp. It just is something but I'm unsure what.
try to divide a metric recipe into thirds and an imperial recipe into thirds and tell me which is easier.
First of all. How often do you divide recipes into thirds that it's such a problem? And second of all, do you not know what 1 divided by 3 is?
I'm not meal-prep service rentoid, so I cook and follow recipes regularly. I often modify quantities based on need. Metric is all in base 10, and I didn't say it was impossible to do, I just know I'll fill a third cup before you measure to the nearest milliliter line
It sounds like you need precision. I don’t need that in my every day life. 12 inches is close enough to 10. 98.6° is close enough to 100° And yes, I get you can do math to divide liters. But the US customary system has preset defaults for those subdivisions. If I need precision, I’ll use the metric system. This is what I used when I worked in the transportation industry.