Re:Every South Korean turns a year younger
by tzs on Tuesday June 27, 2023 @09:44PM
(#36501254)
> Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4). Feet are made up of 12 inches, a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Very convenient. One yard is three feet, gaining all the divisibility benefits that feet already have, and then some.
That doesn't work out so conveniently when you are measuring natural things. You get something that is say 73 inches long and dividing it in 3rds won't come out even. It's convenient for many manufactured things because for things where people will have to subdivide them manufacturers pick lengths that will be easily divisible into those subdivisions.
But manufacturers can do that in SI units too. E.g., if you were making say rods and you expected customers to need to cut them into equal pieces you could make them 84 cm (just over 33 inches). That's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84.
> How about temperature?
What I don't get about metric temperature is why it even exists. All C really changed from F (once they flipped the direction of Celsius' original scale when had higher numbers mean colder!) is the size of the degree and the zero point.
With the other metric units (length, volume, area, mass) the new units cleaned up messes of a whole bunch of named units in all kinds of relationships. But there was no mess with F. F would have been fine as the temperature for metric and (as you noted) it actually fits in a lot better with the range of temperatures that most people have to deal with.
That doesn't work out so conveniently when you are measuring natural things. You get something that is say 73 inches long and dividing it in 3rds won't come out even. It's convenient for many manufactured things because for things where people will have to subdivide them manufacturers pick lengths that will be easily divisible into those subdivisions.
But manufacturers can do that in SI units too. E.g., if you were making say rods and you expected customers to need to cut them into equal pieces you could make them 84 cm (just over 33 inches). That's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84.
> How about temperature?
What I don't get about metric temperature is why it even exists. All C really changed from F (once they flipped the direction of Celsius' original scale when had higher numbers mean colder!) is the size of the degree and the zero point.
With the other metric units (length, volume, area, mass) the new units cleaned up messes of a whole bunch of named units in all kinds of relationships. But there was no mess with F. F would have been fine as the temperature for metric and (as you noted) it actually fits in a lot better with the range of temperatures that most people have to deal with.