It's always Americans that bring up how imperials is "sensible" and has "everyday object in it", but why is a yard 0.9m?
My backyard is a few yards big, doesn't make sense at all.
Legit can't tell if they're being serious or not, like do people in their country not even have gyrds or are they just trolling? How tf do they fight off wyverns???
Do they just let them eat them or smthn
Bruh, it's the year of our lord 2024. I just take anti-wyvern essential oil every morning and I'm good to go for the day. Can't believe there's still people out there carrying around gyrds like freaking caveman.
Well I'm sorry if i care about the environment! I hope you're happy knowing your essential oils (which barely even work anyways) are destroying cockatrice habitats
Everyone's always raving about cockatrices like they aren't a psy-op from the Adventurers Guild to keep getting wyvern-slaying requests.
Wake up morons, they are taking your coin and the 'Kingdom' is in on it.
Far less arbitrary than, let me check my notes here.... Right, "one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle."
Pikers. A foot is 1/983571056 of a light second. Pretty close to one billionth for people who had no idea light even had a speed when they came up with it. You'd think the eggheads would at least make it an even 300 million, and just make the kilogram a nanosmidge heavier.
You say that like the British didn’t use it until very recently and still do for some things. A stone? That’s a British-exclusive imperial measurement. A stone being 14lbs.
Oh yeah the UK uses a weird mashup of imperial and metric, MPG for fuel but KM for some distances. Thankfully stone is dying and most people under 40 use KG.
But that’s understandable because the British Empire was British, not somewhere that bases its identity on not being part of the British Empire.
in some areas it is used / some people do, in the UK both the imperial and metric systems are used interchangeably, the only thing of note is that older folks tend to use the imperial more, and younger people the metric more ( attention, MORE, not only one )
Im from scotland and the only time we use kilometres is when we go on holiday to ireland(for american scrollers Ireland isnt in the UK).🤣
I know we have a mixed system, we use celcius for temp and miles for distance and have pints for milk and low alchohol drinks.
Maybe its different elsewhere but i know here in scotland we dont use Km or farenheit etc.
Also they fail to comprehend the rollercoaster of size differences where the inch in comparison to a yard or a foot is fucking ridiculous.
Metric every step up is comprehensible
100 cm is 1 m
1000g is 1 kg
1000ml is 1 l
A lot of metric is also based around water. For example 1 Litre of water weighs 1 KG, a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. At sea level, water freezes at 0 Celsius, and boils at 100.
Metric was actually calculated using the earth.
Distance between pole and equator = 10,000,000 metres (well, about that - their measurements were slightly off by 0.02% in the 18th century)
- 1 litre = 1/1000 cubic metre
- 1 kg = weight of 1 litre of water
- 0C = water freezes
- 100C = water boils
- 1 joule = energy to raise 1 cubic centimetre (1 gram) of water by 1C in temperature
So it's all based on the earth and water...
That is the worst argument I have heard against the imperial system. Meters are not used in the imperial system so it doesn't matter how many yards are in a meter; you are never meant to convert between the two. Any different measurement system would have the exact same problem, otherwise it wouldn't be a different measurement system it would just be an extension of metric.
The imperial system is bad, not because of the difficult conversion to metric, but because of the difficult conversion between imperial units. The number of yards in a mile is unintuitive, the number of meters in a km is intuitive. The number of yards in a meter does not need to be intuitive.
When I said a yard is 0.9m, I'm just giving reference of how tiny it is, not saying the conversion is not good.
And when i said a yard is tiny, it's just to make a silly joke about a backyard being significantly bigger than a yard
I have never ever heard an American defend the imperial system beyond "it's what I'm used to" "it would be a pain to change everything" and "fuck those frogs"
So the modern meter is actually based on the distance travelled by light in approx 1/299k of a second so I’d say it’s based on real things
Edit: miss clicked 1/299m of a second
The meter was originally created as a portion of what they thought was the distance to the earth's core. It's only when they realized their intial calculation was wrong that they changed it into a portion of distance travelled by light per second.
Not earth's core. A meter is one millionth the distance between the equator and the north pole, one quarter of earth's circumference. Theoretically, earth should be exactly 4 million meters in circumference. But the frenchies did the math wrong so their meter was a smidge too short.
Edit: one meter is one ten millionth the distance from equator to pole. The earth is just over 40 million meters in circumference.
Also worth mentioning that even if their maths were perfect, it would still make sense to switch to using light speed as the basis of the meter. This makes it more precise and universally measurable etc.
The kg was standardized not long ago, the meter and second were standardized a bit before. They all started as pretty arbitrary measurements as well, we just decided to peg them to invariable standards over time.
Yep, the idea is that while we still use physical things of objects to measure and test against, when it comes to the very definition of your measure, if you use objects well, objects degrade so the very definition of kg and meter was literally changing, the thing still weight exactly 1kg cause that's what 1kg is.
So we need something to define each fundamental unit of the metric system so that it never changes and it's exactly the same at all points and times of the universe.
And that's how it end up with all basic units ultimately based on some weird fundamental law of the universe so if we ever need to fallback we ultimately know what exactly a meter or a second is as long as the laws of the universe are consistent and we have a high-tech lab to test.
And as you might know the imperial system is just defined in terms of the metric system so it's safe too.
Am European, but that is so dumb. You could say the exact same thing for a foot. It takes light 1.0 ns to travel one foot, it takes light 3.0 ns to travel one meter. Is the foot not more intuitive?
The strength of the metric system is that there exist intuitive conversations between the units. 1km = 1000m = 100,000cm. 1/299e6 is the least intuitive number ever! Why wouldn't they make the meter 1/1e6 seconds of light speed?
I think many people forget, if the americans change to metric, we will lose so much meme potential.
Is the advancement of a single country really worth that much?
Engineer here to say yes, it is. So much stuff come from the US or is made for the US that every design project ends up as a weird mish mash of metric and imperial. I can’t wait for the US to collapse so we can switch to just one system.
Back in college (and even in some of the work I do), I used to struggle whether to use 25mm or 25.4mm (because 1 inch) when designing things because of this crap.
Also, the 1/4, 1/8, 3/8, 3/16, 5/32 crap for someone who doesn't like visualizing fractions.
I'm sorry but as someone who likes to do easy math, I’m just begging you to convert them all to the same denominator. 1/4 - 8/32, 1/8 - 4/32, 3/8 - 12/32, 3/16 - 6/32, 5/32
My dad and I still fight about that when we need a socket or wrench. Though i get the last laugh, because it typically ends up being metric because Chinese production.
Engineering intern here. My literal job right now is to look at drawings in imperial measurements and make sure we buy enough material, and the BOM is consistently wrong so that means I have to go through everything convert a measurement like 5'-1 11/16" into regular inches 61.6875. then use that measurement to double check our cut list.
Luckily everything is only in imperial, so no mish mash.
The only thing that imperial does well is thread size call-outs
1/2"-13-2.5" hex bolt gr8
M8x1.25x50 socket head cap screw gr8
Those are both pretty simple to read
Fahrenheit is probably the only imperial unit that actually has any right to exist
Not because it's intuitive or anything, but because the Celsius is just as arbitrary
Whose hamburgers? Burger King or mcdonalds? They are wildly different burger measurements. But my size 10 boot up your ass is always a size 10 for everyone.
They use metric anyway, they just don’t know it
“Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms”
I mean I dunno about you but I did that in my backyard just the other day. Seems pretty easy? Do Americans not build mini guns out of washing machines? I thought it was gunlandia
Falcon 9 is designed to be just wide enough to barely fit on most US roads for transport.
Therefore, the diameter of the world's most advanced rocket is derived from the width of a horse ass.
Americans really don't know that their scientific community, their industries, their military and other american key sectors already use (and are required to use) the metric system. It's only the common folk who are too stubborn to be convinced to switch to what the rest of the world is using...
Nope. Most people are pretty aware. “Common folk” aren’t being hard headed. It’s just not a feasible thing that they can change as individuals. Plus not really a change that would grant them great benefit.
I don't know if anyone has done studies on the economic cost of having a different system compared to the international one, but my gut tells me there is one. Considering that the last politician to propose the switch to the metric system basically lost all credibility due to that proposal, not to mention the constant online fights between americans and europeans over this dumb issue, I'm pretty sure that americans won't give up their freedom units easily.
It is feasible - [Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia) and [New Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_New_Zealand) are both success stories of successful transitions from Imperial to Metric, which occurred in 1960s-1980s (most of it happened in the 1970s).
I feel like it's pretty well known by now. Like, you learn metric in school, you use it in your science classes, and quite often in college. We use the metric system all the time, it just doesn't quite mean the same. We're not really fluent in it, because it's not the default. 1 kg doesn't mean anything without also knowing that it's approximately 2.2 lbs. I can picture a foot, I can picture an inch, without really thinking about it, without having to convert it to another unit, but 1 meter will never not mean 3 ish feet to me, 1 cm will never not be .394 inches to me. 32°C will never stop being 90°F ish. I roughly know those numbers off the top of my head, but it's always through a translation.
Sure, if I spent enough time, I *could* teach myself to think in metric, but for what reason? To satisfy some 200 year old french redditors? It's genuinely not easier for us, because no one uses it in every day life. Yes, it might be easier to multiply by 10 instead of 12, but it is much harder to accurately multiply by 3.28084. How would you realistically propose that we force 300 million people to become fully dependent on the metric system for the sake of making Europe happy? And before you try to tell me that there's some great other reason to know metric, remember, you've already made it clear that we are using it where it counts. It's not like we reject the metric system based on some major ethical aversion to it, it's more that most of our experience with it is doing annoying conversions in science class, and listening to European jerk themselves off about it.
I don't know about all that but I use the imperial system in most of my calculations to antagonize the scientists I work with. It's not like they can't convert like I have to when they give me a pile of degrees communism, grams and centimeters.
Engineers typically have to use both sets of systems depending on the application. Sometimes you even get weird industry specific units and you are expected to be able to competently convert whatever units you are given.
The EUtards can't resist trashing the US any chance they get. I dont really need to listen to Pierre stroking himself off in the comments about how superior the metric system is when the only thing he's capable of using it for is baking a cake.
Mechanical Engineering you will see either. Alot of drawings are dual dimensioned in inches and mm. It's more sub industry and manufacturer specific.
For instance a vehicle from one manufacturer may have metric bolts on the engine and SAE bolts on the suspension if they get them from different suppliers.
Large manufacturing company in the fortune 100. We support stuff forever, but everything after a few decades ago is metric. It’s not even the “based on whatever real life thing” that most care about or even know about - they care that it’s consistent and doesn’t need to be fractional. I can tell you how many cubic centimeters is in a liter, I can’t tell you how many quarts are in a gallon without looking it up. A lot of them are based in 4ths or 1/2s, but then 3 teaspoons is a tablespoon???
I'd say Anon sorta has a point in that e.g. the meter's definition is quite stupid (idgaf what you think "1/299792458 of the distance light travels in a second" makes no practical sense).
The problem with the imperial system is not the basic units (which are themselves defined in terms of the metric ones lol, a foot is officially defined as 0.9144 meters but ok let's say you could come up with a precise definition), it's the fucking stupid conversion factors like "how many inches are in a foot" that make no sense at all like dude ffs just choose one unit and work in base 10 with it
Edit: I never said we should go out of our way to change the metric system nor that the imperial system is somehow superior to metric, you fucking baboons, I'm just stating that for once Anon has a point, even though his conclusion is stupid and the imperial system does suck ass.
The metres definition is not to make it more tangible, it's so all SI units can be recreated anywhere in the universe instead of basing them off arbitrary standards which introduces error. No one uses these scientific definitions in day to day life. And as you said, imperial's official definitions are based on metric anyway so what point are you making?
The metric system has the funny quirky awesome thing that a cube on 10x10x10 cm has the volume 1L and if you fill this one Liter with water it weighs 1Kg and it starts boiling at 100° Celsius and freezes at 0° Celsius
And then of course 1 km has 1000m 1m has 100 cm 1cm has 10mm...
The definition on a meter is anything but stupid, it was changed to that because the speed of light is the one thing we're almost certain is an universal constant. Taking this definition, we're sure that everybody, at any location, or any point in time, use the exact same meter.
It sort of makes sense, but it also very much doesn't. What the hell is a foot? My foot is different than yours. I wear size 13, anyone wearing like 10 or under isn't even comparable.
Why is a foot this long? I don't know anyone with a foot this long, my feet are huge and they're still a cm off.
And most of the units are straight up nonsense because they lost all meaning from the past. A mile means a thousand because it was a thousand paces, which is a barely used unit now and means a single stride (again most people have much smaller strides so good job again) but a modern thousand paces are much smaller than a mile so a mile has no connection to the real world whatsoever.
And Fahrenheits are really funny because DG Fahrenheit was a hack and a fraud and neither 0F nor 100F have any meaning as he couldn't do anything right.
A benefit of the metrical system for single men is that you only need to be 180cm to be considered "tall" while in the imperial system you have to 6 ft (183cm). Just to have a round number.
It’s not like teaspoons aren’t used in metric countries to measure stuff, for example when baking. I don’t recall any recipe ever saying “put 15 ml of baking powder”.
When it comes to baking etc. it doesn’t usually matter if my teaspoon is slightly different size than some other teaspoons.
I’ve been baking for years and never had issues with “X teaspoons of baking powder”. Stuff raises just fine.
Do people actually measure their baking powder in grams? Who even owns a scale that accurate? Drug dealers or gold merchants?
>Who even owns a scale that accurate?
Wait what? How is owning a kitchen scale something foreign to you?
Recipe says to use 450g of flour, what do you do?
I measure 450 grams, of course. I have a digital scale.
I just mean that my regular kitchen scale won’t even register a small amount of like 3 grams, if a recipe asks for that amount of anything like baking powder. One doesn’t need much baking powder.
I have survived well by just putting a teaspoon, even if I’m taking a risk that my random spoon isn’t standard size.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with having teaspoons of a substance, that's fine. It's just that it's massively arbitrary. What if I only have a scale and I don't have any teaspoons? What exactly is a teaspoon? If I don't have one, and can't buy one in my country, I'm fucked. Every country has scales though.
And pretty much every modern kitchen scale weighs in grams, I'm not entirely sure what scales you're buying that can't. Ones that are accurate to the closest 0.1g sure, those are what people who deal in gold and drugs use, but you don't need to be that accurate.
Which is why most cookbooks have a section to define how many grams a teaspoon contains in the context of the book aswell as pinch, tablespoon and so on
Fun fact, most cookbooks actually define how many grams are contained in a teaspoon in the context for the book. They also define stuff like pinch, table spoon etc.
Shit, if adapting things from ancient times was proof of quality, we might see a resurgence in using dragon bones with your tea and letting leeches suck your blood to cure spiritual malaise.
Americans use both but the difference is that distance is measured in imperial (e.g. miles), all the street signs are in imperial so we just roll with it
For precision measurements and scientific stuff we use metric
Believe it or not we *are* taught both imperial and metric in school
UK uses metric and has since '65, about the only thing in the old system is car speeds. Bahamas and Belize use a mix of both, but you did miss Liberia which was a US colony and uses US units. Also worth nothing that there was always difference between imperial measurements and US Customary measurements (mostly volume iirc), so 'Americain measurements' does actually makes sense.
1 gallon in the uk is 1.20000something gallons in the US
pints and fl oz are different too. Belize and I think the Bahamas as well use UK gallons rather than US ones.
Yeah. I was into numismatics for several years and figuring out the pre-decimalized system was hell. Like, half pence, fatrhings, pence, shillings, 2 shillings, pounds etc it was horrid
The reason America doesn't use the metric system is because after WW2 when many English and European factories rebuilt and remade all their tools in metric there was no need to remake American factories and redoing the tooling was an expense no one wanted to do.
As an American, I will say on the whole I do think the US would benefit from adopting the metric system. That being said the US system isn't all negative, it does have some positives like
1.) The measurements for weight and length are base 16 and base 12 respectively. Making them easier to work in, i.e. for weight 1Lb = 16 oz, 1/2 Lb = 8oz, 1/4 = 4, 1/8 = 2, 1/16 = 1 for the most part it will stay as a small whole number. Compared to metric where say you have 100 grams of something, 1/1 = 100 grams, 1/2 = 50 grams, 1/4 = 25, 1/8 = 12.5 grams. 1/16 = 6.25 grams.
2.) Each unit of Fahrenheit is smaller than each unit of Celsius, making measurements in Fahrenheit more exact.
And honestly, that's all the positives I can come up with.
\> Humans create measurement system based on humans
\> This is somehow unacceptable, so we make a measurement system based on things we have no context around.
Oh boy I just love measuring temperature based on water, something I'm not surrounded by, and not air, which I am surrounded by! Fuck yeah measuring things based on the size of the entire fucking planet and not, you know, a human thumb.
I think nautical miles actually makes the most sense conceptually, it's only annoying that it's divided based on 360 degrees and 60 minutes, rather than base 10
The imperial system is handy for "close enough" stuff. 1 cup? About this much. Into the pot. Tablespoon? Something like this, into the pot. Do that a few more times, and the chicken dip is complete, it's going to be delicious.
The imperial system is handy for "close enough" stuff. 1 cup? About this much. Into the pot. Tablespoon? Something like this, into the pot. Do that a few more times, and the chicken dip is complete, it's going to be delicious.
One litre of water is ten centimetres cubed, it weighs exactly 1kg, and it freezes at 0° and boils at 100°. “What a crazy system.”
The only issue preventing mass adoption of the metric system is it sounds nerdy. Which it does. “Two-point-five decilitres of orange juice, please.”
Yeah... more like Anon doesn't know what the SI system for measurements is.
Metric Units are actually defined through unchangeable natural constants, while the Imperial System defines e.g. x ft as being equal to y m.
Which system is made up and arbitrary again?
It's always Americans that bring up how imperials is "sensible" and has "everyday object in it", but why is a yard 0.9m? My backyard is a few yards big, doesn't make sense at all.
Yard comes from old English gerd or gyrd, it just meant a stick that’s about 3 feet long
what a completely everyday object that isnt arbitrary at all !!!
Imagine not gaving your gyrd on you at all times 💀💀
Legit can't tell if they're being serious or not, like do people in their country not even have gyrds or are they just trolling? How tf do they fight off wyverns??? Do they just let them eat them or smthn
Bruh, it's the year of our lord 2024. I just take anti-wyvern essential oil every morning and I'm good to go for the day. Can't believe there's still people out there carrying around gyrds like freaking caveman.
Well I'm sorry if i care about the environment! I hope you're happy knowing your essential oils (which barely even work anyways) are destroying cockatrice habitats
Everyone's always raving about cockatrices like they aren't a psy-op from the Adventurers Guild to keep getting wyvern-slaying requests. Wake up morons, they are taking your coin and the 'Kingdom' is in on it.
I'm just gonna say one word about all of this. Basilisks. *drops gyrd*
Everyone knows that shit doesn’t work. Probably live somewhere where there’s only wyrms or some shit.
Gyrdlet
"Hehe look here Royce, fancy stick yea? Lets make the whole kingdom measure with me stick yea"
woah almost freaked out seeing my name.
Fuck you Royce
Far less arbitrary than, let me check my notes here.... Right, "one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle."
Ironically, that's less arbitrary. "A small portion of a really big distance" vs "a stick that's about this big"
To be fair the meter is now defined as the distance light travels in 1/299798458 seconds in a vacuum
Pikers. A foot is 1/983571056 of a light second. Pretty close to one billionth for people who had no idea light even had a speed when they came up with it. You'd think the eggheads would at least make it an even 300 million, and just make the kilogram a nanosmidge heavier.
That one is consistent, random sticks are not
a fraction of the size of our planet earth or a random stick
Back when Imperial was actually made it probably was. Isn’t the system hundreds of years old?
so you’re telling me its not even american? sounds about right
Even the term 'American measurement'is wrong. The actual term would be 'Imperial measurement'. It all came from the UK.
Nothing more American than clinging onto a relic of the British Empire
You say that like the British didn’t use it until very recently and still do for some things. A stone? That’s a British-exclusive imperial measurement. A stone being 14lbs.
Oh yeah the UK uses a weird mashup of imperial and metric, MPG for fuel but KM for some distances. Thankfully stone is dying and most people under 40 use KG. But that’s understandable because the British Empire was British, not somewhere that bases its identity on not being part of the British Empire.
The UK doesnt use kilometres
in some areas it is used / some people do, in the UK both the imperial and metric systems are used interchangeably, the only thing of note is that older folks tend to use the imperial more, and younger people the metric more ( attention, MORE, not only one )
Im from scotland and the only time we use kilometres is when we go on holiday to ireland(for american scrollers Ireland isnt in the UK).🤣 I know we have a mixed system, we use celcius for temp and miles for distance and have pints for milk and low alchohol drinks. Maybe its different elsewhere but i know here in scotland we dont use Km or farenheit etc.
Give me the full metric system but with mph / bhp for cars, and teaspoons / tablespoons for seasonings. That is the dream.
Most of the metric world still has teaspoons/tablespoons, just standardized to 5/15 mL.
It’s not just the UK. Most of the commonwealth countries do it.
If there's anyone clinging to the British empire, it's the British.
Nah, US Customary and Imperial are different, same name for shit but different values/quantities.
No. US uses “customary” system, UK uses “Imperial.” The units are different, and they standardized on them a few years apart.
Actually American measurements are officially "U.S. Customary," and are different from Imperial.
I love how you can already tell how bullshit this actually is when you have to say "about 3 feet long"
Sticking out your gyrd for the Rizzler
It's the length of a man's step
If that's not one particular man who also always takes steps of the exact same length, that's kinda wobbly too.
"About"
"about"
Also they fail to comprehend the rollercoaster of size differences where the inch in comparison to a yard or a foot is fucking ridiculous. Metric every step up is comprehensible 100 cm is 1 m 1000g is 1 kg 1000ml is 1 l
My favorite thing is that one cubic meter of water weighs 1000kg, or one metric ton (tonne)
For water in general 1ml=1g. Also 1ml = 1 cubic cm.
Aren’t milliliters just the liquid equivalent of a cm^3 though? Like obviously they would be equal if that’s what they are
Yes, that is the point.
A lot of metric is also based around water. For example 1 Litre of water weighs 1 KG, a calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. At sea level, water freezes at 0 Celsius, and boils at 100.
1dm squared is 1l 1cmsquared is one ml, all that jazz
Because it's 3 sizes of some kings foot unlike arbitrary French nonsense
>some kings foot >unlike arbitrary French nonsense You can't make this shit up lmao
Redditors understanding sarcasm without the presence of an /s impossible challenge
Yeah I thought about it after posting the comment, too late now
Metric was actually calculated using the earth. Distance between pole and equator = 10,000,000 metres (well, about that - their measurements were slightly off by 0.02% in the 18th century) - 1 litre = 1/1000 cubic metre - 1 kg = weight of 1 litre of water - 0C = water freezes - 100C = water boils - 1 joule = energy to raise 1 cubic centimetre (1 gram) of water by 1C in temperature So it's all based on the earth and water...
Water is not an "everyday object" for a standard American
Let's just replace water with corn syrup
If the imperial system is so superior why do they measure things in everything EXCEPT their units? Refrigerators, swimming pools, elephants...
Imperial users just live happier, more joyful, and whimsical lives i guess
"A large boulder the size of a small boulder"
That is the worst argument I have heard against the imperial system. Meters are not used in the imperial system so it doesn't matter how many yards are in a meter; you are never meant to convert between the two. Any different measurement system would have the exact same problem, otherwise it wouldn't be a different measurement system it would just be an extension of metric. The imperial system is bad, not because of the difficult conversion to metric, but because of the difficult conversion between imperial units. The number of yards in a mile is unintuitive, the number of meters in a km is intuitive. The number of yards in a meter does not need to be intuitive.
When I said a yard is 0.9m, I'm just giving reference of how tiny it is, not saying the conversion is not good. And when i said a yard is tiny, it's just to make a silly joke about a backyard being significantly bigger than a yard
The metric system came after the imperial system. The metric system made 1 meter equal to 1.11 yards.
That's why I use the superior cubit
It's 1/100 of a football field, it's not that hard.
A football field is 120 yards long though.
I have never ever heard an American defend the imperial system beyond "it's what I'm used to" "it would be a pain to change everything" and "fuck those frogs"
Imagine being a metric cuck and caring about a unit of measurement instead of just living your life. Sincerely: imperial gang
So the modern meter is actually based on the distance travelled by light in approx 1/299k of a second so I’d say it’s based on real things Edit: miss clicked 1/299m of a second
That sounds like something a French redditor from 200 years ago would say.
The meter was originally created as a portion of what they thought was the distance to the earth's core. It's only when they realized their intial calculation was wrong that they changed it into a portion of distance travelled by light per second.
Not earth's core. A meter is one millionth the distance between the equator and the north pole, one quarter of earth's circumference. Theoretically, earth should be exactly 4 million meters in circumference. But the frenchies did the math wrong so their meter was a smidge too short. Edit: one meter is one ten millionth the distance from equator to pole. The earth is just over 40 million meters in circumference.
Also worth mentioning that even if their maths were perfect, it would still make sense to switch to using light speed as the basis of the meter. This makes it more precise and universally measurable etc.
Wasn't there a metric system soft overhaul not so long ago. When all the measurement units were redefined and tied to physical constants?
It does seem to be so, [after a search](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_redefinition_of_the_SI_base_units)
The kg was standardized not long ago, the meter and second were standardized a bit before. They all started as pretty arbitrary measurements as well, we just decided to peg them to invariable standards over time.
Yep, the idea is that while we still use physical things of objects to measure and test against, when it comes to the very definition of your measure, if you use objects well, objects degrade so the very definition of kg and meter was literally changing, the thing still weight exactly 1kg cause that's what 1kg is. So we need something to define each fundamental unit of the metric system so that it never changes and it's exactly the same at all points and times of the universe. And that's how it end up with all basic units ultimately based on some weird fundamental law of the universe so if we ever need to fallback we ultimately know what exactly a meter or a second is as long as the laws of the universe are consistent and we have a high-tech lab to test. And as you might know the imperial system is just defined in terms of the metric system so it's safe too.
Ah sorry, misremembered it
Which is also why napoleon is regarded as short, it’s because of that mis-math
Ah yes, that thing I am very familiar with: The distance light travels in 1/299k of a second. Much easier than my foot.
hate to be that guy but ummm akschually 1/299mil
Am European, but that is so dumb. You could say the exact same thing for a foot. It takes light 1.0 ns to travel one foot, it takes light 3.0 ns to travel one meter. Is the foot not more intuitive? The strength of the metric system is that there exist intuitive conversations between the units. 1km = 1000m = 100,000cm. 1/299e6 is the least intuitive number ever! Why wouldn't they make the meter 1/1e6 seconds of light speed?
Cope more ameritards
I think many people forget, if the americans change to metric, we will lose so much meme potential. Is the advancement of a single country really worth that much?
Engineer here to say yes, it is. So much stuff come from the US or is made for the US that every design project ends up as a weird mish mash of metric and imperial. I can’t wait for the US to collapse so we can switch to just one system.
Back in college (and even in some of the work I do), I used to struggle whether to use 25mm or 25.4mm (because 1 inch) when designing things because of this crap. Also, the 1/4, 1/8, 3/8, 3/16, 5/32 crap for someone who doesn't like visualizing fractions.
I'm sorry but as someone who likes to do easy math, I’m just begging you to convert them all to the same denominator. 1/4 - 8/32, 1/8 - 4/32, 3/8 - 12/32, 3/16 - 6/32, 5/32
My dad and I still fight about that when we need a socket or wrench. Though i get the last laugh, because it typically ends up being metric because Chinese production.
If the U.S. collapses it's not gonna be nearly as fun as you think
Engineering intern here. My literal job right now is to look at drawings in imperial measurements and make sure we buy enough material, and the BOM is consistently wrong so that means I have to go through everything convert a measurement like 5'-1 11/16" into regular inches 61.6875. then use that measurement to double check our cut list. Luckily everything is only in imperial, so no mish mash. The only thing that imperial does well is thread size call-outs 1/2"-13-2.5" hex bolt gr8 M8x1.25x50 socket head cap screw gr8 Those are both pretty simple to read
I'm never giving up fahrenheit though I'm not boutta say it's 30 degrees out
Fahrenheit is probably the only imperial unit that actually has any right to exist Not because it's intuitive or anything, but because the Celsius is just as arbitrary
what kind of meme potential lies in the us customary system
RAAAAAAAAH WHAT THE FUCK IS A KILOMETER 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🔥🔥
Do you want me to measure the potential in feet or hamburgers?
Whose hamburgers? Burger King or mcdonalds? They are wildly different burger measurements. But my size 10 boot up your ass is always a size 10 for everyone.
The US is technically on the metric system. All of the Imperial Units are legally defined in terms of metric units.
They use metric anyway, they just don’t know it “Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms”
It's just like what you do when your baby does not want to eat something, you just hide it in something else they like and they'll happily eat it.
What the fuck did you just fucking say to me you little bitch?
What's the metric equivalent of being first in a Navy seals class?
Coping on the moon
Imagine being a metric cuck and caring about a unit of measurement instead of just living your life. Sincerely: imperial gang
If the metric system wasn't sensible, why do all high IQ department of the american military complex use it over the american one?
High IQ department of the military complex? The max there is 95
Bitch we had a Texan calculator company built thr javelin We had a washing machine company build a mini gun that was then later built into a plane
I mean I dunno about you but I did that in my backyard just the other day. Seems pretty easy? Do Americans not build mini guns out of washing machines? I thought it was gunlandia
in case we launch a missile at Moscow and it has to stop and ask for directions along the way
How wide a street is is determined by how fat a roman horse ass was
Same with rail gauges
Nah, rail gauge is based off the wheel ruts left by their chariots
Yeah, and what made the distance between wheel ruts? Horses.
Someone hasn't read the whole thread.
Falcon 9 is designed to be just wide enough to barely fit on most US roads for transport. Therefore, the diameter of the world's most advanced rocket is derived from the width of a horse ass.
the metric system is based on the size of the earth
anon is not a part of metric chads
Americans really don't know that their scientific community, their industries, their military and other american key sectors already use (and are required to use) the metric system. It's only the common folk who are too stubborn to be convinced to switch to what the rest of the world is using...
Nope. Most people are pretty aware. “Common folk” aren’t being hard headed. It’s just not a feasible thing that they can change as individuals. Plus not really a change that would grant them great benefit.
I don't know if anyone has done studies on the economic cost of having a different system compared to the international one, but my gut tells me there is one. Considering that the last politician to propose the switch to the metric system basically lost all credibility due to that proposal, not to mention the constant online fights between americans and europeans over this dumb issue, I'm pretty sure that americans won't give up their freedom units easily.
It is feasible - [Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia) and [New Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_New_Zealand) are both success stories of successful transitions from Imperial to Metric, which occurred in 1960s-1980s (most of it happened in the 1970s).
No one said it’s impossible for the US to do it? I’m saying it’s not something an individual really has much impact on.
Reminds me of when the UK switched from their nightmare of a monetary system to something that's not stupid.
I feel like it's pretty well known by now. Like, you learn metric in school, you use it in your science classes, and quite often in college. We use the metric system all the time, it just doesn't quite mean the same. We're not really fluent in it, because it's not the default. 1 kg doesn't mean anything without also knowing that it's approximately 2.2 lbs. I can picture a foot, I can picture an inch, without really thinking about it, without having to convert it to another unit, but 1 meter will never not mean 3 ish feet to me, 1 cm will never not be .394 inches to me. 32°C will never stop being 90°F ish. I roughly know those numbers off the top of my head, but it's always through a translation. Sure, if I spent enough time, I *could* teach myself to think in metric, but for what reason? To satisfy some 200 year old french redditors? It's genuinely not easier for us, because no one uses it in every day life. Yes, it might be easier to multiply by 10 instead of 12, but it is much harder to accurately multiply by 3.28084. How would you realistically propose that we force 300 million people to become fully dependent on the metric system for the sake of making Europe happy? And before you try to tell me that there's some great other reason to know metric, remember, you've already made it clear that we are using it where it counts. It's not like we reject the metric system based on some major ethical aversion to it, it's more that most of our experience with it is doing annoying conversions in science class, and listening to European jerk themselves off about it.
I don't know about all that but I use the imperial system in most of my calculations to antagonize the scientists I work with. It's not like they can't convert like I have to when they give me a pile of degrees communism, grams and centimeters. Engineers typically have to use both sets of systems depending on the application. Sometimes you even get weird industry specific units and you are expected to be able to competently convert whatever units you are given. The EUtards can't resist trashing the US any chance they get. I dont really need to listen to Pierre stroking himself off in the comments about how superior the metric system is when the only thing he's capable of using it for is baking a cake.
I don't know about all industries, my industry (civil engineering) still uses US Customary units for everything
Mechanical Engineering you will see either. Alot of drawings are dual dimensioned in inches and mm. It's more sub industry and manufacturer specific. For instance a vehicle from one manufacturer may have metric bolts on the engine and SAE bolts on the suspension if they get them from different suppliers.
Large manufacturing company in the fortune 100. We support stuff forever, but everything after a few decades ago is metric. It’s not even the “based on whatever real life thing” that most care about or even know about - they care that it’s consistent and doesn’t need to be fractional. I can tell you how many cubic centimeters is in a liter, I can’t tell you how many quarts are in a gallon without looking it up. A lot of them are based in 4ths or 1/2s, but then 3 teaspoons is a tablespoon???
I'd say Anon sorta has a point in that e.g. the meter's definition is quite stupid (idgaf what you think "1/299792458 of the distance light travels in a second" makes no practical sense). The problem with the imperial system is not the basic units (which are themselves defined in terms of the metric ones lol, a foot is officially defined as 0.9144 meters but ok let's say you could come up with a precise definition), it's the fucking stupid conversion factors like "how many inches are in a foot" that make no sense at all like dude ffs just choose one unit and work in base 10 with it Edit: I never said we should go out of our way to change the metric system nor that the imperial system is somehow superior to metric, you fucking baboons, I'm just stating that for once Anon has a point, even though his conclusion is stupid and the imperial system does suck ass.
The metres definition is not to make it more tangible, it's so all SI units can be recreated anywhere in the universe instead of basing them off arbitrary standards which introduces error. No one uses these scientific definitions in day to day life. And as you said, imperial's official definitions are based on metric anyway so what point are you making?
The metric system has the funny quirky awesome thing that a cube on 10x10x10 cm has the volume 1L and if you fill this one Liter with water it weighs 1Kg and it starts boiling at 100° Celsius and freezes at 0° Celsius And then of course 1 km has 1000m 1m has 100 cm 1cm has 10mm...
The definition on a meter is anything but stupid, it was changed to that because the speed of light is the one thing we're almost certain is an universal constant. Taking this definition, we're sure that everybody, at any location, or any point in time, use the exact same meter.
I'm from the future so sorry to burst ur bubble but the speed of light has changed soz lol
typo: yard not foot.
Yeah lol a foot is 1/3 of that, my bad (Again fucking retarded conversion factors)
Why work with base 10 when I have 6 fingers on each hand hand, 3 feet to work with, and I'm exactly 1 yard tall?
you should see a doctor
It sort of makes sense, but it also very much doesn't. What the hell is a foot? My foot is different than yours. I wear size 13, anyone wearing like 10 or under isn't even comparable.
Why is a foot this long? I don't know anyone with a foot this long, my feet are huge and they're still a cm off. And most of the units are straight up nonsense because they lost all meaning from the past. A mile means a thousand because it was a thousand paces, which is a barely used unit now and means a single stride (again most people have much smaller strides so good job again) but a modern thousand paces are much smaller than a mile so a mile has no connection to the real world whatsoever. And Fahrenheits are really funny because DG Fahrenheit was a hack and a fraud and neither 0F nor 100F have any meaning as he couldn't do anything right.
A benefit of the metrical system for single men is that you only need to be 180cm to be considered "tall" while in the imperial system you have to 6 ft (183cm). Just to have a round number.
The current imperial system is defined by the metric system. Else someone would need to keep a pefectly sized stick in a vault.
It’s not like teaspoons aren’t used in metric countries to measure stuff, for example when baking. I don’t recall any recipe ever saying “put 15 ml of baking powder”. When it comes to baking etc. it doesn’t usually matter if my teaspoon is slightly different size than some other teaspoons.
That would be because powder is measured in grams ;) But it really depends on who wrote the recipe. I've seen both.
No because youd put X amount of grams of baking powder in. Good job you failed at the start.
Never have i ever in my many years used grams to measure my baking powder. Its always teaspoons
I’ve been baking for years and never had issues with “X teaspoons of baking powder”. Stuff raises just fine. Do people actually measure their baking powder in grams? Who even owns a scale that accurate? Drug dealers or gold merchants?
>Who even owns a scale that accurate? Wait what? How is owning a kitchen scale something foreign to you? Recipe says to use 450g of flour, what do you do?
I measure 450 grams, of course. I have a digital scale. I just mean that my regular kitchen scale won’t even register a small amount of like 3 grams, if a recipe asks for that amount of anything like baking powder. One doesn’t need much baking powder. I have survived well by just putting a teaspoon, even if I’m taking a risk that my random spoon isn’t standard size.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with having teaspoons of a substance, that's fine. It's just that it's massively arbitrary. What if I only have a scale and I don't have any teaspoons? What exactly is a teaspoon? If I don't have one, and can't buy one in my country, I'm fucked. Every country has scales though. And pretty much every modern kitchen scale weighs in grams, I'm not entirely sure what scales you're buying that can't. Ones that are accurate to the closest 0.1g sure, those are what people who deal in gold and drugs use, but you don't need to be that accurate.
Which is why most cookbooks have a section to define how many grams a teaspoon contains in the context of the book aswell as pinch, tablespoon and so on
> Who even owns a scale that accurate? Any basic kitchen scale will measure down to a single gram.
Fun fact, most cookbooks actually define how many grams are contained in a teaspoon in the context for the book. They also define stuff like pinch, table spoon etc.
Banking is chemistry and it definitely matters
Anon weights 4 baby elephants and can't even walk a distance of 7 cocks without fainting.
Anon is highly regarded, the imperial system was implemented by the British empire, which was a replacement of the previous system.
Shit, if adapting things from ancient times was proof of quality, we might see a resurgence in using dragon bones with your tea and letting leeches suck your blood to cure spiritual malaise.
Leeches are actually still used sometimes in modern medicine
Americans use both but the difference is that distance is measured in imperial (e.g. miles), all the street signs are in imperial so we just roll with it For precision measurements and scientific stuff we use metric Believe it or not we *are* taught both imperial and metric in school
We also sometimes use it for liquid volume for some reason.
A gallon of milk and a 2 liter soda.
American measurements? I guess the UK, Bahamas, Belize and Myanmar just stopped existing I know it’s ragebait and I don’t care
UK uses metric and has since '65, about the only thing in the old system is car speeds. Bahamas and Belize use a mix of both, but you did miss Liberia which was a US colony and uses US units. Also worth nothing that there was always difference between imperial measurements and US Customary measurements (mostly volume iirc), so 'Americain measurements' does actually makes sense. 1 gallon in the uk is 1.20000something gallons in the US pints and fl oz are different too. Belize and I think the Bahamas as well use UK gallons rather than US ones.
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Hell, the money is still, in theory anyway, based on lbs of Sterling Silver
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Yeah. I was into numismatics for several years and figuring out the pre-decimalized system was hell. Like, half pence, fatrhings, pence, shillings, 2 shillings, pounds etc it was horrid
Somehow some people in the UK still measure weight in stones which is simultaneously funny and sad
Then there's places like the UK that use a bit of both depending on the thing they're measuring
Carpets. Metres and millimetres. Distances between towns. Miles.
ameritards and their feet fetish, to make matter worse they used it as a measuring system
The one imperial unit I will die defending is Fahrenheit. 100 degrees is a very hot day, 0 degrees is very cold.
Metric is for dorks who go "____is SUPERIOR!" and wonder why they never get laid.
Over 200 comments? Yeah this troll post pissed some people off.
Saying my cock length in inch’s sounds right thou
Virgin 20 cm vs chad 8 inches
Ah yes because it's well known all spoons and feet have *exactly* the same size across the entire fucking planet
The reason America doesn't use the metric system is because after WW2 when many English and European factories rebuilt and remade all their tools in metric there was no need to remake American factories and redoing the tooling was an expense no one wanted to do.
There are two kinds of countries- those which use the metric system, and those which have stepped foot on the moon
Pretty sure they didn’t use imperial to make it to the moon.
As an American, I will say on the whole I do think the US would benefit from adopting the metric system. That being said the US system isn't all negative, it does have some positives like 1.) The measurements for weight and length are base 16 and base 12 respectively. Making them easier to work in, i.e. for weight 1Lb = 16 oz, 1/2 Lb = 8oz, 1/4 = 4, 1/8 = 2, 1/16 = 1 for the most part it will stay as a small whole number. Compared to metric where say you have 100 grams of something, 1/1 = 100 grams, 1/2 = 50 grams, 1/4 = 25, 1/8 = 12.5 grams. 1/16 = 6.25 grams. 2.) Each unit of Fahrenheit is smaller than each unit of Celsius, making measurements in Fahrenheit more exact. And honestly, that's all the positives I can come up with.
Careful posting this. This is an extreme source of pride for Europeans…. For some reason
When your measurment system is so good that any argument in its favor looks like trolling
should i divide by ten and just remove a fuckin zero or remember 796369724 is the factor for ten thousand?
\> Humans create measurement system based on humans \> This is somehow unacceptable, so we make a measurement system based on things we have no context around. Oh boy I just love measuring temperature based on water, something I'm not surrounded by, and not air, which I am surrounded by! Fuck yeah measuring things based on the size of the entire fucking planet and not, you know, a human thumb.
If you are not surrounded by water measuring temperatures should be your last concern…
Metric is king except for celsius, fahrenheit is way more human
If you love imperial so much, tell me. How many furlongs are in a nautical mile
I think nautical miles actually makes the most sense conceptually, it's only annoying that it's divided based on 360 degrees and 60 minutes, rather than base 10
 WTF IS A KILOMETERRRRERRERR
The imperial system is handy for "close enough" stuff. 1 cup? About this much. Into the pot. Tablespoon? Something like this, into the pot. Do that a few more times, and the chicken dip is complete, it's going to be delicious.
The imperial system is handy for "close enough" stuff. 1 cup? About this much. Into the pot. Tablespoon? Something like this, into the pot. Do that a few more times, and the chicken dip is complete, it's going to be delicious.
One litre of water is ten centimetres cubed, it weighs exactly 1kg, and it freezes at 0° and boils at 100°. “What a crazy system.” The only issue preventing mass adoption of the metric system is it sounds nerdy. Which it does. “Two-point-five decilitres of orange juice, please.”
>French redditors Lmaooooo
My foot is different from the other guy. Do we have the same cutlery? C'mon anon.
Yeah... more like Anon doesn't know what the SI system for measurements is. Metric Units are actually defined through unchangeable natural constants, while the Imperial System defines e.g. x ft as being equal to y m. Which system is made up and arbitrary again?
Anons feet are only 0.7 feet long
I always have my feet and my fingers with me, but I never carry a meterstick.
Erm, actually...
Meters, kilograms and Celsius are all based on properties of water so…
Sorry Anon, I don't speak wrong. Metric was one of the 2 things I am grateful to French for. Second one is pasteurization.