Re:230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metr...
by wirrbel on Sunday January 22, 2023 @10:54AM
(#34478557)
> If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now.
> The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m.
I find the idea interesting, but it isn't about imperial vs metric, but about a base-(2^n) fantasy metric system vs metric. There is an appeal but of course it will never happen, neither will the imperial-unit world migrate to that nor will the metric world.
What makes Imperial units harder to remember than metric units is not that they are related by factors of 2^n 3^m instead of factors of 10^n. It is that the names of different units of the same kind are not predictable based on their ratios.
If you had a system with the same relationships as Imperial, but say all the weight units were of the form <prefix>pound, where <prefix> indicates the multiplier or divider to go from pounds to that derived unit, and the same prefixes were used also used with length units so lengths were all <prefix>yard, Imperial units would be a lot easier than they are now.
The metric vs Imperial debate would then simply be whether factors of 10^n are better or worse than factors of 2^n 3^m.