It’s not that there is a relation, it’s that it’s simple. If you put 288/187 inch of water on a standard letter paper, you get exactly one cubic foot of water, but I wouldn’t say “The fact that a cubic foot of water has a relation with the size of the paper we use is just poetry”.
It also is a happy coincidence that the idea “if we cut a page in half, the two parts should have the same proportions” leads to usable paper sizes. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have this system.
And has this ever been tried for 3D, say in storage boxes? The proportions of a box would be about 1 : 5/4 : 25/16. That’s a bit cube-ish, but doesn’t look unusable to me.
The metric system is great for symmetry and calculations but that doesn't always map to practical quantities in those units, in my personal opinion. It's kind of funny when foreign friends will explain to me metric units, when I already know them, but they don't understand anything about non-metric units or their practicality.
Edit: I should have known to make this comment, because it's going to get bikeshedded to death (already is). The summary of my point was to say that the metric system is perfect for calculations and representations, but the non-metric systems can often serve more practical purposes. Not always but often. In other words, for daily, non-engineering uses, there's really not much of a strong winner aside from people's country of origin. Even for paper, it's a toss-up for me. I find for notebooks, the A<x> sizes are nice and preferred by me, but US letter size is sometimes more preferred over A4 paper. A4 paper is nice for mathematical notes but can often get in the way of diagramming due to the narrowness.
There just seems to be a superiority complex of those that use the metric system, but I don't really get it. Note the use of the word "shocking" in the comment I replied to.
Edit 2: Commenting on scales really seems to grind some gears and gets people going. I'm okay with stating that the scales used for various measurements are fairly arbitrary in daily life and that there's pros and cons to both, but still disagree that it's shocking various places don't use the metric system. They certainly cause issues in engineering systems though.
Fahrenheit maps to your human experience because it's what you grew up with.
To me, Celsius maps to my human experience, because it's what I grew up with.
That's it. That's all it is, and that's the only reason you think it maps better.
1. 0 Fahrenheit is close to the typical minimum temperature, and 100 close to the typical maximum temperature, which can be tolerated by humans. Celsius 0 and 100 aren't even remotely close to this: it's surprisingly awful.
2. Fahrenheit has nearly twice the integer resolution of Celsius. This is particularly helpful in describing body temperature.
3. Celsius seems like it'd be useful in cooking but it is not really. Sure, 0 and 100 describe the boiling point and freezing points of water -- in Paris only -- but these are phase changes in water. Nobody says "now hold the temperature at 100C", because water naturally fixes to 100C the entire time it is undergoing its phase change. You don't need to measure it. And Fahrenheit's higher resolution is again very helpful.
4. Scientists don't use Celsius or Fahrenheit. They use Kelvin. Both Celsius and Fahrenheit convert to Kelvin with a linear transformation.
This is a theory of mind issue.
For metric users, Celsius is 100% familiar. Intuitive means that there are a bunch of hints that can give you an idea of values that you don't know. The fact that 0° Fahrenheit is about as cold as you can easily stand and 100° Fahrenheit is about as hot as you can easily stand is something that gives you an intuition: if it's as hot as I can stand, it's about 100°, if it's as cold as I can possibly stand, it's about 0°. I can figure out intermediate values through converting my feelings into a percentage.
You can of course do that with Celsius too, but Celsius hasn't been built around a range of human feeling, it's been built around the phase changes of water. You just have to remember the human comfort range in Celsius, do all the same calculations as above, multiply the result by the difference between your low human range and your high human range, then add that to your low human range to get an answer. There's no help, and it might as well be arbitrary.
The first is that the Fahrenheit scale wasn't built around a range of human feeling, but originally around a substance whose temperature is easy to stabilize. Following this, the human temperature was set at 96 (later adapted to 98.6) and the melting point of ice at 32 to have 64 gradations to help with measurements linked to specific hardware. If it was designed around human feeling, then 98.6 and the freezing temperature of brine is hardly helpful.
The second is that if it were intuitive on its own, people who don't use the system regularly would still be able to remember the logic, but that's not what typically happens. Every time I need to think in Fahrenheit (which tends to only be online debates about this very topic), I can't picture anything clearly even with the purported 0 to 100 concept. It is a subjective appraisal of temperature that can't help me convert feelings into anything useful because the limits are still arbitrary. If -17.7C is the lowest a person can possibly stand, then Canadians are gonna be iced out. If 37.7C is the highest a person can possibly stand, Saudis are cooked. The number of regions that hold a range that's appreciably close to that 0 to 100 is quite small.
How and why Fahrenheit was developed is completely immaterial: what is material is whether and how its range is of value to its users now.
> Every time I need to think in Fahrenheit (which tends to only be online debates about this very topic), I can't picture anything clearly even with the purported 0 to 100 concept.
Your argument is "because I'm not used to Fahrenheit, it must not offer an advantage to people used to it"? Really? C'mon.
But that's your argument for Fahrenheit...
Really? Barely long sleeve weather.
Here we see the difference between subjective and objective plainly expressed.
"Typical" maximum and minimum temperature as limits are meaningless, different places have significantly different minimum and maximum temperatures.
The resolution might be better for body temperature (I have my doubts, we measure to decimal point in C), but certainly not for cooking. Nobody needs to know the difference between 200 and 201 F in cooking.
> Both Celsius and Fahrenheit convert to Kelvin with a linear transformation.
C doesn't need multiplication tho.
But the slope of the Celsius<->Kelvin is 1.
> Fahrenheit has nearly twice the integer resolution of Celsius. This is particularly helpful in describing body temperature.
Yet medical practitioners insist on using Celsius in the most of the world, what fools!
> 0 Fahrenheit is close to the typical minimum temperature, and 100 close to the typical maximum temperature, which can be tolerated by humans. Celsius 0 and 100 aren't even remotely close to this: it's surprisingly awful.
I am very rarely exposed to 0 F, in fact, I actively go out of my way to avoid it by seeking shelter during blizzards while on mountain tops.
You're more likely to encounter 0 F in a continental country, but in my temperate maritime climate country, a populated locale hitting -10 C / 14 F is big news, and only rarely would it get to -4 C / 25 F where I live. In other words, I have very little use case for 0 - 32 F.
So its intuitiveness to you, is opaqueness to me. Because you grew up with Fahrenheit, and I grew up with Celsius.
Scientists do use Celsius and Fahrenheit sometimes, unless your definition of scientist excludes everyone who isn't a chemist or physicist.
TL;DR - you prefer Fahrenheit because you think in it. I prefer Celsius because I think in it.
I can perhaps relate my subjective experience to better explain what's going on. I grew up with Celsius temperatures, so temperatures like 27C or -5C tell me exactly what I should wear when going outside. For Fahrenheit, even though we are told that it maps to human experience, I have to consciously try to remember what these 10F, 20F temperatures mean and often forget. The intuition just isn't there at all.
For height, I'm used to the metric system, but I can also understand the imperial system in that specific area because of seeing so many discussions about it over the years.
I actually learned to cook while in an Imperial zone, and now I am more used to certain temperatures in F.
The reason people find it shocking, is that we are essentially forced to deal against our will with Imperial measurements, because the US is a powerful country. The annoyance has more to do with the sensation of being trapped by another culture and having to adapt to their way of life rather than the reverse.
Feet or inches are, I think, a bit more human friendly than meters, but only when used by themselves, that factor of 12 is just weird in a base 10 system. I know that the argument is that you can divide by 3 and 4 easily, but when it matters, metric countries simply make standard sizes a multiple of 12 (ex:120mm).
For volumes and weights, I find absolutely no redeeming feature to the imperial / US customary system. The kilogram is a perfectly fine unit, so is the liter, and that both are the same when we are weighing water is a very useful property. Because many things are around the density of water, you know that most things that fits in a 1L bottle weight around a kg, and you can often measure volumes with a scale without conversion.
Metric is not the most practical for every single situation, but it is more practical when used as a whole, that is, when you need to deal with with several quantities at the same time (ex: masses and lengths). And there are everyday situation where it is simply better in my opinion, like cooking.
As far as I'm aware, there's no winner for cooking. I've never seen a recipe that required temperature more than as a value that could be provided in any units as long as you have equipment in those units (i.e. I'm not doing math with them). Putting "400°F" or "200°C" or "475 K" or some arbitrary "oven level 5" into my oven shouldn't really change how it comes out.
On the stovetop, I've never had an instruction with a temperature attached besides "interior temperature must reach X" or keeping something at a near-boiling temperature, which I've never needed a thermometer for, and 90% of the time I'm improvising without caring what the temperature is outside of "hot enough to cook the way I want but not too hot".
Sous-vide? It needs the temperature within a tight range, but the scale attached to the numbers doesn't matter as long as it's the one my thermometer uses. Double boiler? Doesn't even need you to use a thermometer to keep the temperature right. Give me a kitchen with everything in unpronouncible alien temperature units and I'd do just fine.
Can you elaborate on the cooking though? I've seen that mentioned here a couple of times, and I'm not sure I follow. I'm from a Fahrenheit country and my wife from a Celsius country, and it's never caused any issues or confusion in the kitchen. But maybe you mean also for the volumetric measurements as well (or primarily)?
But there is something else, and I am asking you the question. Since you and your wife live in countries with different unit systems, isn't problem when doing each others recipes?
I mean I live in Europe, and if the recipe calls for 4 ounces of butter, I don't have a 4 ounces stick of butter, I have a 125g stick, which is not exactly that. A quart of milk is not exactly the liter I have. And my oven doesn't do 350°F, it does 180°C which is not exactly the same. In the end, I will have to adjust the recipe to my standards, and things may be lost (or gained) in translation, but it won't be the same.
Not really. Celsius maps to the boiling and freezing points of water in Paris. Live in Denver and you're screwed. And -- this is important -- nobody measures the freezing points and boiling points of water, because during its phase changes water holds to that temperature automatically.
Fahrenheit is also twice the resolution of Celsius. This is highly advantageoous for body temperature, medicine, cooking, and other functions. Celsius's integer resolution is horrible.
As for body temperature the rule of thumb as I know it is sth like this:
36 - fine
36.6 - the theoretical perfect temperature (but it's a lie [1])
37 - observe
38 - go see doctor (but no rush)
39 and higher - go see doctor immediately
As for "requires medicine" - I don't remember having to make that decision, if I had 38+ C fever I just went to a doctor anyway.
[1] the actual perfect temperature changes by almost 0.5 C between people, time of day, time of month (for women) and other factors (measurement error). If you used thermal method of anticonception you'll know how variable it really is.
We can leave hands in water at 50°C. Above, it slightly start to cause burns.
This is a range that make a lot of sense IMHO.
> Temperature near 100°C is important when we cook (eggs, pasta, rice).
When does that matter on the scale being used? Someone else mentioned this, but I've never known anyone to be taking direct measurements of these things when cooking aside from baking. It's pretty clear when water is boiling.
> We can leave hands in water at 50°C. Above, it slightly start to cause burns.
When has that been useful and dependent upon a temperature measurement (and thus a temperature scale)?
I'm not sure why 0f is a big dangerous milestone in outdoor temperature. Is -18c/-1f really that different to -17c/1f? If anything, there's a much stronger argument that 0c is the dangerous milestone because that's when you get ice.
Really the only temperatures I care about on a day to day basis are like, freezing temperature (0c/32f), room temperature (20c/70f-ish) and various benchmark outdoor temperatures, like 30c/90f being hot and 40c/100f being potentially dangerous. You can +- a few C either way on any of those (except freezing) and it doesn't really make a difference. Cooking, even baking, is usually fine within around 10c. Sous vide is apparently a lot more sensitive but I've never done that.
Very occasionally I deal with something something like a kettle thermostat or boiler thermostat, where I might choose something like 100c/212f or 50c/120f respectively. I also use an IR thermometer for cooking pancakes, pizza and monitoring my wood stove - but neither Farenheit or Celcius are any more useful in that context.
I think the idea that it is indeed relatively arbitrary probably summarizes a more accurate reaction to the comment I originally replied to.
0°F is a big milestone? I'll claim 1°F should be the milestone instead, or -5.4°F, or 2.33333°F.
15°C or 12°C or something is an important temperature if you live in the tropics without a heating system.
bmitc reacted to the comment that said "Temperature near 100°C is important when we cook (eggs, pasta, rice)." By asking when that info is important. They are not the one here that put weight in arbitrary numbers, at least in that last comment.
I see nothing special about -17.8°C +37.78°C range except that 37.78°C is very hot. But why 37.78 and not some other value? It is arbitrary. And -17.8°C is even more arbitrary - it is not the coldest weather in many northern regions.
0C outside means the ground is hard to work with. 32F is such an arbitrary number when dealing is concrete reality outside.
Yes, 32 degrees F is arbitrary, but so are several of the milestones in Celsius.
I think my argument is that Fahrenheit is more natural most of the time, but both scales have their sweet spots (which makes sense given their relative nature). But I can't see any clear argument that says Celsius is superior all the time.
0C wear a woolly hat
10C wear a jacket or sweater
20C Teeshirt and jeans weather
30C Teeshirt and shorts weather
40C Get in the shade and keep hydrated
50C You want to avoid this end of the scale
It's almost all defending against the pro-Fahrenheit folks making strange arguments promoting it, like somehow you can't measure your life unless it's in F.
I didn't make that argument. Fahrenheit is more natural in a lot of cases because of the range and delineation between whole number temperatures. Celsius is slightly less so but not all the time.
My entire point, which was lost in the bikeshedding is that it is not "shocking" that the metric system isn't used everywhere in daily experience because non-metric systems were literally invented to be useful and practical. Are they perfect? No. Neither is the metric system for daily human use.
The U.S. is a big place and thus has wide-ranging temperatures, and that probably contributes to resistance to getting rid of Fahrenheit, amongst other things and other measurement systems. The U.S. built a huge amount of modern infrastructure before anyone else and has never experienced a "rebuild" period. For non-engineering purposes, there's no downside to using non-metric units, and a lot of downsides in converting. As the back and forth here shows, there's probably a strong argument to be made that the measuring systems don't matter at all in an ideal world where it's free to convert entire countries back and forth between them. But for some reason, a lot of the world feels very superior for using the metric system.
Again. Not "shocking" as the original comment I replied to mentioned.
Every other argument seems to boil down to "I'm not familiar with it, so it's hard", "dealing with 10s is easier than 5s", and "Fahrenheit has more resolution because I've forgotten decimal numbers exist".
The actual superpower of metric is that all the units relate to each other in simple ways. For instance most liquids you and I deal with on a daily basis have a similar density to water, so if you've got 100g of it, it's going to be ~100ml. You don't need to deal with arbitrary artifacts of the measuring system beyond the unit prefixes.
Fahrenheit being more natural is purely subjective, there's no good reason at all for it.
Keeping the imperial system is just a matter of convinience because Americans are used to it and changing everything is difficult. Also some people think producers of food and any objects to sell might lose some margin by converting and rounding to the next round number of the new unit
You mean "I'm already used to something and I dislike other things."
You don't cook?
I've used temperatures in the 60 something to 80 something range to measure the inside of food, my oven goes anywhere from 160 to 220 degrees, but water boils when it goes all bubbly. I know that that's at 100 degrees, but I don't do anything with that info.
I don't agree with bmitc's point that Fahrenheit feels more natural. But it seems like that anytime someone has something positive to say about Fahrenheit or imperial measurement, 10 different people need to tell them how wrong they are, and how there can't be anything positive about those systems of measurement. That doesn't seem necessary to me. Especially with temperatures where everyone just remembers a couple of numbers and associates them to a certain feeling or application, and whatever you've used your entire life will feel better or more natural.
Now I think these discussions often go about cherry picking examples and just limit the discussion to outside temperatures is such a cherry picking.
The real power of the metric system comes from going all-in. You can't use everything but the temperature scale. If you would do that it would be even more obvious how disconnected the temperature scale is to the whole system.
There are endless examples of where this argument doesn't stand up because the "averafe==ge human experience" is nothing like yours. But of course, it's more or less applicable in most of the US, so you imagine it's universal. Whereas, for the rest of us, 0 is cold, 10 is cool, 20 is warm, 30 is hot, and extrapolate from there. That's simple and relatable enough for me.
They don't see it the same way that you don't see that the units are totally irrelevant, the brain just have to form habits around the relation between the numbers and the world, but as soon as there are consistant and predictable, the extra effort or lack of doesn't change much about their practicality. The habits are formed early, and doesn't require any extra work once set.
Having physical relationships between units without having to remembering ratios can be handy time to times, and for your entire life.
(Or 7.75" x 11", approximately, if you prefer.)
There are other paper sizes based around the A series that fit relate back to it as part of a geometric progression, which means stuff fits neatly together. For instance, the C and DL series, which are used for envelopes, with a C4 envelope being exactly the right size for a sheet of A4 paper.
Bad for origami though. Ditto with regard to A4. :-)
But wait for it. If you look at the pendulum formula [1] you will realize that g ≈ π^2 (i.e. 3.14^2 roughly equals 9.8) is not a coincidence, it's a consequence of the original definition of the meter!
The metre was _actually_ originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. Obviously, that ended up having its own issues, hence the subsequent refinements until we settled on using the speed of light in a vacuum as the basis for it.
I don't think you can call it the original definition, because (a) that definition never got any universal acceptance (not even among scientists), (b) didn't work (as it gave different results on different locations) and (c) wasn't particularly close in value to the current definition.
It all makes sense and seems really clever when you are at school with your little ruler with those weird inch things on the unused side. I could bark at any adult daring to use an outlawed measurement unit, to put them in their place.
To a certain extent we do that with Americans and their usage of 'weird' units that make no sense to people outside of the UK. However, as I have got older, I have learned to appreciate why these quaint measurements have survived the test of time. For example the 0.1 inch pitch spacing of integrated circuits is a gentle reminder that Americans pioneered and invented all of this stuff and that, despite the politics and sentiment of the time, some respect is deserved for the non-metric giant shoulders we stand on.
Every British person knows what a metre is but most British people will give their height in feet and inches. Ask those people what their height is in metres and your guess is as good as mine.
Weight has made a slow transition to kilograms in the UK. Stone is still a measurement. But when an American describes weight in pounds the average British person has not the foggiest.
I find more beauty in the vernacular measurements and I can play devil's advocate - 'Metric is French Napoleon conquest bad'.
Nowadays we have electronic gadgets to do the simplest arithmetic. Nobody does long division on paper these days. They don't even have a pen. The benefits of the decimal system are somewhat moot. I can see why base 12 measurements stick around but no idea why base 14 is a thing.
Anyway, couldn't the A4 problem have been solved with non square pixels?
Not sure if this is valid (celsius looks fine to me) but if it is, sure, fahrenheit makes sense.
But for the rest, like distance and weight? What the fuck?!
[1] I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling").
On the other hand, I completely agree that the rest of the non-metric measurements are just a mess. However, the binary nature of cups, pints, quarts, half gallons, and gallons are kind of quaint I suppose.
It's not like I didn't explicitly cover that:
"I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling")."
So, no, I'm not saying temperature perception is logarithmic and Fahrenheit is logarithmic to match it.
I'm just saying that similarly to how dB suits sound perception better (because it's logarithmic and more appropriate to our logarithmic perception of volume), fahrenheit might fit intuitive temperature perception better (because it's more appropriate to our perception of temperature).
Actually, I'm not even saying this is the case. Just that I've read and heard people claim that, so it could be (I'm not from a fahrenheit using country, so can't speal for how it intuitively feels), for one example:
https://thevane.gawker.com/fahrenheit-is-a-better-temperatur...
I do care, though, and use ISO 8601 almost exclusively in writing. And I do know a few others. Perhaps things will change eventually.
[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4_(format)#/media/Fichier:Pre...
#/media/Fichier:Prevalent_default_paper_size.svg){kind=link}
The whole thing is absolutely mad and most efforts to standardise the systems historically lead to the adoption of the SI unit system for "important" things, as well as a few good intentioned bits of legislation, like the International Yard and Pound agreement [1] which standardised those measures between the US and other former imperial users. Don't get me started on the survey foot, or the hell that arose when the units of classical mechanics, electromagnetism or similar scientific systems had to meet imperial or US customary units...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound
Well, in the middle ages, the furlong was important, because it was the standard size for farmers' fields (based on how long a furrow an ox could plow without resting). But 8 furlongs didn't fit neatly into a mile, so to make things easier for everybody, the mile got expanded to a nice round 5280 feet, or exactly 8 furlongs.
Some places even mix metric, imperial, and some traditional pre-imperial system.
This leads to two interesting consequences for aircraft that perform international flights from/to China: [1]
- they need to be equipped with two altimetry systems;
- they need to perform small climbs or descents when entering or leaving Chinese airspace, as metric flight levels do not usually match Imperial ones (flight levels are defined by round numbers).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_level#Metric_flight_lev...
[1] https://skybrary.aero/articles/china-reduced-vertical-separa...
I'm not saying I agree with it, but it is at least understandable!
Notice that before the end of WW2, continental European aviation was metric too. For this reason, the instrument panel from a Messerschmidt BF-109 is almost readable for a layperson: https://live.staticflickr.com/3746/14275081012_1f74be13b4_4k...
Several countries (e.g. France) use the word pound (livre) to mean 500g, which could confuse visitors into thinking something non-metric is being used. I noticed that in south America.
Also in Italy, when dealing with agricolture, forestry, and related services, non-SI surface units are still commonly used, at leat in the north:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertica_(unit%C3%A0_di_misura)...
[0] These days, and selling butter in 200g packages to keep the prices seemingly low.
And that's why i do my shopping now based on €/kg. There are some very telling differences between even the same manufacturer: last thing i was looking at was gin [the drink] € per litre. Just a visually minor difference in bottle size was a substantial difference in a) cost and perceived value and b) cost and actual value.
Note that nobody I know below the age of 70 uses the "livre" unit in France. It's something you see pretty much only in old recipes
These are basically “sizes” that are imperial by tradition/accident more than people using them as measurement. If I wear size 32 waist jeans is that imperial? Maybe. I’m not measuring I’m just using it as a known size. Might be inches.
Same for wheels, rifle ammunition, …
I use inches for TVs/monitors and although I’m as metric as they get, I have a 55” TV and my car has 20” rims and so on. Everything has cm, kW instead of horsepower etc listed as well for a TV of course.
As far as I know only a few countries - presumably because of regulation - have switched for absolutely everything. Australia is an example of a country where you can get a 100cm TV.
"But being (as?) this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question ..."
(Which totally illustrates your point because it's not really 0.44 inches.)
On the other hand:
"Seven-six-two millimeter. Full metal jacket."
It's actually a pretty convenient unit, as long as you're familiar with how large tatami mats are.
Note that this unit isn't used for measuring an entire apartment's floor area though, that's done in meters.
Other examples are screen sizes: I have no intuition at all about how big 5.5" actually are, but I know where in the current phone market 5.5" would fall (awesomely non-huge!), whereas to my mind, the metric equivalent would carry no information at all ("bigger than a stamp, smaller than a TV"). And for sensor sizes you even have the situation where the imperial number is a "size class" with very little relation to actual size, whereas the metric number usually describes actual size. Completely different numbers. All countries use a combination of metric and some other system.
> Other examples are screen sizes
that's common, but not as units of measure, but as marketing.
Same as megapixels in photo cameras.
Nobody measure power in HP, we say "that car has 85 HP" only in speech, but when it matters (for example on car papers) power is express in KW and screens are measured in cm that are also written on the package, they are only marketed in inches.
You would be correct if people had an idea of how much power 1 HP is or the surface of 1 MP camera shot, but they don't know, they only know that 16 MP > 12 MP and 300 HP > 100 HP, they (we) ignore what it actually means.
It is also perceived completely differently depending on context.
A 120HP tractor is not the same thing than a 120HP car or a 120HP motorbike.
According to US measures I'm 5'11, which means nothing to me, while it's obvious to them, because they actually use foot and inches all the time and do math using them.
Also 90F means nothing to me.
295mm tyre width, sidewall height is 30% of the width and the wheel it fits in is 20 inches (can't recall whether it's 20 inch radius or diameter).
(Is there anywhere that doesn't use this mix of measures for tire sizes [tyre syzes]?)
Also naval folks are stubborn too. Own miles, knots as speed, craaazy! : )
But here in Finland (a completely metric country) things like televisions are still marketed/sold as 44" etc where the cm value could very easily be used.
E.g TV sizes are mainly compared with each other, and so the unit used doesn't really matter, and if you want to know the external dimensions it'll typically be given in metric in countries which uses it.
Instead of DPI, one could use µm per px, or px per (c)m if you want something easier to work with at very high DPI.
I know what DPI and points are, but just because I know a few values and can say "that one's large", "this one is small", with no idea how much they act iually measure. With other units I could approximate the viewing distance much better.
Easy halving, the same reason why A4 has been extolled.
Normal text would be 40mpt = 4mm = 11.33pt.
But there are already metric point definitions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(typography)
The numbers don’t work out too, “litres per 100km”. Why not millilitres per km (or litres per gigametre)
I drive X miles (or X km), I then fill up with Y litres (or Y gallons)
If I put 40 litres in my car and do 16 km per litre that’s 640km of range, simple calculation of 40x16
If I need to travel 260km at 20km/litre I need to but 260/20 litres or about 13 litres.
If I put 40 litres in my 3.6 litre per 100 km my range is 40/3.6 = 11 x 100 = 1100km.
If I need to do 260km at 3.6l/100km I need to do 260/100 = 2.6, times 3.6 = 9 litres.
With the “metric” way you need to do two calculations.
if you insist on using volume per length, I’d personally prefer 36ml/km, then I know I need 36x260 ml of fuel to go 260km, or my 40,000ml tank will take me 40000/36 = 1100km.
> I drive X miles (or X km), I then fill up with Y litres (or Y gallons)
This isn't what most use the liters per 100km for though. People just fill up whenever the light on the car tells them to. Mainly the number is used to compare cars when buying a new one. Some keep track of the actual consumption to notice if something is wrong with their car (just write down the current number on the odometer and how many liters you put in on some paper/app/whatever. you can do the actual calculations later)
At least this has been my experience here in Finland.
> With the “metric” way you need to do two calculations.
That's really an absurd way of looking at it, because one of those calculations is a division or multiplication by 100, and 100km happens to be a typical distance someone might be interested into finding fuel efficiency.
So the answer to me is an immediate mental computation, 2.6 x 5l = 13, you never ever need to compute consumption per km, express things in ml etc.
Your own "easy" examples look to me very intuitive and convoluted, so I guess the systems are 100% comparable, the only difference is the power of habit.
Measures are much more common in inches, foot and miles than metric. Volumes are much more common in cups, gallons, pints than metric. Weights are more common in pounds and ounces than metric.
That's in almost all domains, not just "a few high-profile holdouts" (even cooking, where it kills me that quantities of solids are in "cups" rather than grams...)
I think this is partially true, particularly with the older generation. People often talk about their height in feet and inches, and their weight in stone and pounds.
> Volumes are much more common in cups, gallons, pints than metric. Weights are more common in pounds and ounces than metric.
Your experience seems to be very different to mine. To be honest I have no idea what a gallon even is, and no intuitive concept of an ounce. The only place I have ever seen measurements in "cups" is one chicken biryani recipe I found on an American website. (I agree it's bizarre: half a cup of mint leaves - wtf?!). Any recipe published in the UK in the last couple of decades tends to be in grams and millilitres. Example picked at random: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/chocolate-courgette-cake
I rarely see/hear/use imperial outside pints and road signs, or for “sizes” like screen or clothing waist sizes, unless I’m talking to people a generation older than me (I’m 40).
Every recipe site I use either has both or is entirely metric, and I only ever use metric. I’d probably look elsewhere if a search turned up a recipe in imperial only.
Even distances are in KM outside of driving (because of the road signs).
Pretty much everyone I know talks about their weight in KG. Heights do seem pretty split between cm and ft/inches but everyone understands both.
Most liquids except beer and cider (including other alcohol like wine and spirits) are in litres and ml.
It’s very obvious to me how metric-first life is for me because visiting America involves constant conversion and thinking whereas everything in other European countries (which are generally entirely metric) comes easily.
Ask an average American to give you the length of their car, size of their kitchen or weight of a brick in metric and they'll have no clue. The average British person can do this, because education has been metric for 50+ years and the least-technical industry (e.g. construction, DIY) is metric.
(See e.g. https://www.diy.com/, the largest consumer-facing DIY shop in Britain. It's 20kg of 10mm gravel, doors in millimetres, paint in litres. I can't even see a button offering an imperial conversion.)
The USA only uses metric in some important industries.
Britain uses it for lots of "unimportant" things, like construction/DIY, medicine, health care, cooking, sport/fitness.
I’m not really sure what your point is. If we take as a starting point that the US used the metric system where it matters, then why is it an issue that it isn’t used ubiquitously? I’m not saying you need to agree with the claim “the US used the metric where it matters”, but if we just take that on face value, then why isn’t that enough? Why do you care if Americans talking amongst themselves speak in their own vernacular and system of measurements? What exactly is the problem?
That is not true -- it's in a different middle ground, much further from a fully-metric country. That's all my point was.
> Why do you care if Americans talking amongst themselves speak in their own vernacular and system of measurements?
It's fine if they keep it to themselves. I'm never bothered by traditional Japanese floor area measurements, for example. But Americans attempt to use their own, private system when communicating to the rest of the world, in commerce, software and media. (Search "Weather Taipei" on Google while in Taiwan, with a browser set to not-US-English, and you end up with Fahrenheit etc. Set Windows to "English Ireland" and random bits of stuff will still be in miles/°F.)
This even leaks to non-Americans (or maybe English translators). It's annoying to go to a museum in, say, Brazil and see the Portuguese text uses metric, but this has been translated to pounds and feet in the English text. Most of the tourists reading the English aren't even American!
What’s the difference between that and when the rest of the world tries to communicate with Americans using metric? In my experience foreigners in the US complain significantly more about the US not using metric while in the US than Americans do while in countries using metric.
> Search "Weather Taipei" on Google while in Taiwan, with a browser set to not-US-English, and you end up with Fahrenheit etc.
Can you not set your choice of units as a preference? Or are you annoyed that Google chose a default that is different than the one you wish to see? Given there is no universal choice that pleases everyone, wouldn’t their choice annoy some people no matter what? In any case, this is a complain to direct to Google and not Americans in general. Besides you’re free to use another weather app that matches your defaults.
> It's annoying to go to a museum in, say, Brazil and see the Portuguese text uses metric, but this has been translated to pounds and feet in the English text. Most of the tourists reading the English aren't even American!
This is a complaint that should be directed at a certain Brazilian museum.
We're still a bit of a mishmash, but it's not as bad as it might seem from outside.
The government proposed a consultation on doing so, mostly as a distraction.
I'd eat my hat if anything actually changes, the UK was (partially) metricated over 50 years ago, there's zero appetite for reversing it among people of working age and business concerns will dominate any serious consultation around changing legislation.
On the other hand if nobody over 65 voted every vote would be different.
Business interests align with hard cash. That's going to lean towards metric.
Over 65s don't "vote" much in businesses, they're retired.
It doesn't mention one product that is very much in the news at the moment: energy. I'm fairly sure they still sell it by the kWh rather than the MJ.
Colloquially, people still talk about calories rather than kJ in food. (And they do that even in Germany, I think, one of the few places where they measure font sizes in mm rather than points, or so I've heard.)
EDIT: Perhaps kWh counts as metric, even though it's not SI?
EDIT: According to Wikipedia [0], the Imperial unit of energy is ft⋅lbf.
The kcal (kilocalorie) is what most people mean when they refer to calories in food, and that's just the energy needed to heat 1 kg of water by 1 deg C.
Since a person is mostly water this means that, say if you weigh 100 kg, and eat 1000 kcal of food, that food contains (theoretically) enough energy to heat your body mass by 10 deg C. The units do give a kind of intuitive understanding of the energy in food, while also being based on metric quantities.
It's sold in MWh in the rest of Europe.
No need for perhaps, unless it's btu (or some horse power/hour) it's metric.
Watts are a metric unit, as are seconds. Hours are not formally an SI unit, but at least according to Wikipedia [0] are "officially accepted for use with the SI".
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-SI_units_mentioned_in_th...
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/250871426
And 400g Chicken (these definitely used to be ~450g packs for a long time):
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/304404328
I suspect shrink-flation has ended up rounding things to metric even when they were previously based off round imperial measures.
Unlike inches, I can't remember the last time I saw something marked with lbs, I'm not sure I could even properly process how heavy "2lbs" is.
For example: https://www.builderdepot.co.uk/timber-sheets/carcassing-timb...
Note the listing is primarily in mm with the imperial measure along side.
So of course the actual size is still equivalent to the old imperial size because of the history, from a legal perspective it's metric.
We (Canada) partially transitioned too, but didn't complete the building supplies part of it.
So food is all metric, roads, speed limits, distances, weights, yet wood is imperial, and tools are metric and imperial.
This makes sense, because with the US so close, and the largest trading partner, imperial cannot fully vanish in some repects, until they get rid of it too.
If you only buy milk in multiples of 500mL, you're buying a luxury brand or from a corner shop -- both situations use the slightly smaller (vs 568mL) size to make the price seem lower.
You can see at Tesco [1] that Yeo Valley, Arla, Cravendale, Finest, Tesco Filtered are all 1 or 2 litres. "Normal" milk is 2 or 4 pints.
(The EU used to have regulations around this sort of thing, but I think they've unfortunately been repealed for most products. It's why bread was only sold in multiples of 400g -- it meant the merchant couldn't discreetly reduce the size of some/all products.)
[1] https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/fresh-food/milk-b...
The dairy that delivers here does 500ml, 1l, and 2l, as does the one I bought milk from before I moved, and the one before I moved the time before that.
The normal milk is all in pints.
Distance on road signs, car speed, engine fuel efficiency, beer pints (though I don't mind this since it means our average drink is larger, easier to say than 568ml as well), and that's it as far as I can recall
As such A1 is 1/2 m², A2 is 1/4 m², A3 1/8 m², A4 is 1/16 m².
I would call this tied to the metrics system. It never occurred to me that I could approximate odd 1m² areas with 16 sheets of A4... I found this enlightening from the original article. TIL.
First: The DIN paper standards aren't a part of the metric system. They are a use of the metric system.
Second, the important part: what makes A series paper cool (truly one of my favorite standards) is a ratio, these are by definition independent of metric.
One can imagine a paper standard based on 36 inches, rather than 1 meter, which would have all of the good properties of A and B series paper.
The third reason is that the imperial measurement system is also an application of the metric system. But others have covered that already.
It's an ongoing source of amusement to me that people fluent in just one system of measurement look down on a continent of hundreds of millions whose educated class is fluent in both.
A foot is at least something very closely aligned across many cultures (from ancient Egypt to Japan) because of because of its clear and useful relationship to human scale and building products
Hmm, the largest historic European foot listed on the corresponding Wikipedia page is almost 30 % larger than the smallest foot. So while they indeed all are somewhere roughly 30 cm-ish long, after a few feet those differences will still add up considerably…
Incorrect? It's pretty bloody close for 1793 — The error is less than 0.02% !
You can check with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I think he nails it. The imperial system is much more natural for people to grasp. A pound is roughly a fist sized rock, but there are no natural objects that weight around one kilogram. And one yard is roughly the length of a step, completely unlike a meter. And so forth. /s
Seriously, I propose a compromise. Europeans give up decimal comma and US gives up imperial measurements. Everyone wins.
I’m a European, and I hate decimal comma. When consuming data saved by MS Excel or similar, dealing with decimal commas is an ongoing source of annoyance and compatibility bugs, for all my 22 years in the software industry.
Modern software has American roots. Many programming languages like C, C++ and Python are using dot when printing or parsing floats with their standard libraries. It’s even in the name, these numbers are called “floating point” not “floating comma”.
Yes there is: a liter of water (see the beauty?)
> Europeans give up decimal comma and US gives up imperial measurements. Everyone wins.
And US gives up strange day-in-the-middle date format as a bonus to make everyone there sane.
There was /s at the end of the sentence, meaning I was sarcastic:)
We should all switch to the ISO (and some (most?) Asian country) format of Year-Month-Day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc
I can hardly wait for first contact, and the planet has to transition to some galactic standard...
+1
It uses US Statute Units which are similar but not always the same as Imperial Units.
There are some very important differences...
Hence the reason that no Brit is ever impressed with a "pint" served in a US bar. It looks like the barman forgot to pour all of it. :P
We should retire Imperial, US and Nautical units and switch everything to SI Metric.
Having several definitions of mile, pint, gallon, foot, etc in use, at the same time, is just feckin' silly.
You added sarcasm flag but sometimes it is more natural. I grew up with metric but can visualize "about an inch" better than "about 2.5cm".
It's common for "metric people" to sometimes use inches and feet in casual reference to certain types of measurements. "She is almost 6 feet tall" is another example that will be used instead of "180 cm" or "1.8 metres".
For example, telling a story about their daughter who has grown quickly and is now "almost [n units] tall"? Are you saying they would use centimeters and expect their listener to know what "184 cm" looks like?
I'm not saying metric people use "5 foot 9", but it's common in my country (Australia) at least to use "6 foot" because that's a nice easy rounded benchmark. In metric height, there is no benchmark until 2 metres tall, which is a rare height even for men.
I've seen quite some fists and they all varied in size. This seems like a really bad idea to use as a reference.
Of course pre-metric units were defined by something convenient. A cubit is the length of the forearm.
I don't think Taleb goes into the why.
Metric is clearly superior if you have the social concept that units should be standardized and (as a corralary) that products are commoditized. The idea of a standard commodity, however, didn't really exist before the industrial revolution.
So why would units be standardized before that? The only place units mattered was taxes, and then the unit was whatever the king said it was.
> I don't think Taleb goes into the why.
You can measure rope and cloth using cubits by wrapping them around the fist (which holds one end) and the elbow.
consider it done
Never!
For example, fitted kitchen cupboards are designed in multiples of 150mm, which has plenty of nice factors. A dishwasher might be 600mm wide, or a typical cupboard 450mm.
It's just silly. It has no more bearing on reality than a kg does.
Doesn't it make sense for some things to divide by 3 and 4, like a year, so that a season is 3 months long, instead of 2.5 months long (as in the old 10-month year system, ending in December)?
Does it not make sense to use a human scale for certain things, like outdoor weather (as opposed to say, temperatures inside of machinery):
In Fahrenheit: 0: very cold to people; 100: very hot to people.
In Celsius: 0: not that cold; 100: I died 50 degrees ago.
The metric system seems to me to be forced onto things where it does not fit, when in fact it's fine to use more than one system when contextually appropriate.
After all, none of us think it weird to use bases 2, 10, or 16 for different things on our computers.
The only reason Fahrenheit looks like "a human scale" is because you're used to it. At least Celsius has clear reference points (everybody knows how cold is "freezing water" and how hot is "boiling water").
> Doesn't it make sense for some things to divide by 3 and 4, like a year, so that a season is 3 months long, instead of 2.5 months long (as in the old 10-month year system, ending in December)?
Programmers all around the world would first hate you for changing things, and then love you for making a consistent dating system.
But, seriously now, dates are a bit of a difficult system to change. You want to be able to refer to past dates without too much confusion, and also there are outside restrictions such as the length of a year compared to a day (not many integer divisors of 365 days).
(I now know how to interpret Celsius, but it involved memorising certain fixed points. The "30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is cold, 0 is ice" rhyme is a good one.)
It's the one part of the metric system that isn't innately superior to imperial/customary
For me how it works - 0 is freezing point, 36 is body temperature (you learn that around 4-5y of age), and it's imprinted heavily. Half your body temp is about to begin feeling cold (in general). Picked body temp as it is 100F (originally 100F was meant to be the body temperature)
So calling it "Frankenstein and Science" is a little silly, especially when we have an absolute scientific scale (Kelvin).
Actually, nobody complains that we use both Celsius and Kelvin, so what problem is there with a third scale for people, if the former two are for industry and science respectively?
That was unnecessary, an obvious joke about both, and how people feel about them, etc. C and K scale the same way, so C is just an offset K (or vise versa). Both C and F are arbitrary, of course - zero (as developer) being the phase change of the water does make more sense to me; again arbitrary.
But that's literally the argument given for Fahrenheit.
Also an year is not even 365days.
That's not only subjective but also depends on humidity. 34º with high humidity can feel far hotter than 38º in dry weather.
Celsius and Fahrenheit don’t make much difference. That’s the only part of the imperial system which is not incredibly inferior to metric.
I need to look up sous vide cooking. I've never heard of it before. Seems pretty interesting.
The metric system also uses twelve months per year, so what is your point?
> Does it not make sense to use a human scale for certain things, like outdoor weather (as opposed to say, temperatures inside of machinery):
Yes, Fahrenheit works 'better' than Celsuis for describing weather temperatures. But it does arguably worse at pretty much everything else, including other everyday occurrences like cooking or washing clothes.
As an aside, 12 would arguably be the better base for an everyday number system, but we are where we are (and contrary to what's commonly claimed, the imperial system isn't derived from base 12 either - 12 is used in a few places, but most proportions are historically grown and fairly random).
Celsius 0 and below, warning there could be ice on the road.
Hot/cold is too subjective. My relation to heat/cold was not the same when I was living in north of France, Swiss alps and now in south of Spain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
10 months per year, 10 days per week.