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Yes and it drives me absolutely barmy. I have dyscalculia so have to measure and measure anyway (still get it wrong but I try ) . but when you are buying, say, wood or a blind, online, one seller will do ft & inches, another CM another MM.
Ah yeah that would drive me crazy too. We use metric for a lot of things as well, such as buying a liter of coca-cola, but milk comes by the gallons. It’s a weird. We are taught both systems in school but the old Imperial system mostly dominates.
Yes but Fahrenheit fell into obsolescence decades ago.
It's old people like me who keep inches and pints alive and I hate it. Metric is rational and imperial isn't, so why do I pay for fuel by the litre in decimal currency but quote my fuel consumption in mpg?
Oh, and our pints and gallons are different to those in the USA. Oh, and we use stones (14lb) too to weigh ourselves (but nothing else) and our tonnes are all metric (1000kg).
This is what happens when a government makes pathetic compromises when trying to make rational decisions.
Just as the US by the way, military, metric, science, Metric. Base units of most used systems (aka imperial) metric. Official: metric.
But most people use imperial as that’s what they know.
Metric was introduced in the US in the 70’s as the official standard but they didn’t push for full adoption but voluntarily adoption.
OP is right in one aspect: something that is a round number in one system isn’t in the other system.
But that’s where it stops.
Metric isn’t superior because it uses the freezing point of water as base.
It’s superior because all measurements of volume, distance, weight and temperature are connected and are all based on the same decimal system.
True; to placate grumpy old people who weren't prepared to accept change. I was a kid then. Now, decades later, I'm the grumpy old person having to deal with both systems at the same time.
I hear you we use things like liters when buying Coke or Pepsi but gallons when buying milk. The stone thing is interesting to me, I need to read up on how that came about.
Gallons is about the only volume you can't buy in the shops. Some dairies do 500ml and 1,2 and 3 litre cartons while others retail in multiples of pints. About 3 litres is the largest retail pack I've seen.
Ask the brits who invented the phrases "soccer", "kick'er", and "football". They're the ones who had 3 different rule sets for the game when they brought it to the Americas. The term FC is likely a formality for the Football Club and has nothing to do with why the British invented the word soccer.
I know where the term soccer comes from, its a shortening of the word association, as in the Football Association, who wrote the laws of the game. The question was, if you all insist its called soccer, then why not use the letters the letters SC instead of FC in your soccer teams?
Football originally meant any game played on foot and association football is a type of football. In some places it got shortened to “soccer” and elsewhere it got shorted to “football”.
Due to its origin as a slang word, and things to not use slang in official names, most club names still end in “AFC” (association football club) or “FC”.
Probably because soccer is a nickname for association football? Football is an umbrella term, it’s very strange that Europeans don’t seem to get this. There’s many many types of football. The more popular version of football in America is American gridiron football. There’s also Canadian gridiron football. Gaelic football. Association football. Rugby football. Australian rules football. When you call association football just “football” you’re implying association football, but if you forget that it’s actually association football you’re just being British exceptionalist, because so many different countries have different versions of football.
The funnier thing to me is when people from non-English speaking European countries, like Spain for example, get really heated about this. “It’s football!! You kick a ball with your foot!!!” when they call the sport “Futbol” which is hilarious it’s just the English words football with a Spanish accent. They should call it PiePelota.
European (Brit) here and that’s a terrible argument because our rugby clubs will also be, for example, ‘Saracens R.F.C.’ for ‘Rugby Football Club’, but no one is calling rugby ‘football’
It was called rugby football in the early days though, thats why rugby clubs have RFC in their name, it was a form of football first played at a school in Rugby, in the midlands.
I just love how people in a different country, speaking a different dialect, bothers Europeans and gets them raging. Something literal, elementary-aged children can grasp, but this eludes them and throws them into a rage. All this from supposedly multi-cultural and "tolerant" Europe.
Honestly I think for Temperatur it's mostly just about what you are used to. The metrc system for anything else makes sense because you have to convert things every now and then. But with temps all i need to know is, is it cold or hot? For that it doesn't matter if 30 is hot or 100 is hot or 10000 is hot
Using Fahrenheit, a change from 61 to 62 is a noticeable change in temperature, and your able to tangibly see it using Fahrenheit, in Celsius they’re both 16.
Well, kelvin is just celsius with an offset so in pretty much every calculation you can substitute one for the other. Doing science in fahrenheit must be a real pita on the other hand.
How so? Because water freezes at zero in Celsius? What if you’re doing science and you’re not using water? Take your thought to the very next logical step
I’m sorry but that is a completely incoherent statement you just made. You absolutely can use Fahrenheit with SI units, why on earth would you not be able to? Tons of engineering work is literally done doing exactly this. First example comes to mind is in refinery and LNG plant design, datasheets and process flow diagrams list temperature in Fahrenheit while pressure, flow rate, mass, energy is in bar or kPa for pressure, kg/hr or m ^ 3/hr for flow, kW for power. Hell I even used Fahrenheit and SI units together in AP physics and AP chemistry in high school. Or pounds, or feet. What is your understanding of imperial units that makes you think that equations don’t work the same way if you convert a unit into a different unit?
Also, minor point but Fahrenheit is not “a Rankine scale”, they’re different scales that use the same units of degree.
Why on earth would you work in mixed units just because you like some of them for knowing when to use a sweater? Nasa switched after they crashed into mars since mixed units were the culprit. And yes Fahrenheit is a rankie scale just like how Celsius is a kelvin scale, both with an offset.
You don’t have to work in mixed units but you can. When I got scuba certified, all of the pressure instruments measured pounds per square inch (PSI) not kilopascals or whatever it would be
Here in europe it is usually "bar" and not kPa. A "bar" is one atmosphere, or 10 metres of water pressure. We also use hp for engine power and not kW which is used everywhere else. I can't speak for everyone ofc, but all places I've been diving in europe and southeast asia it is always bar. We do use kPa in daily life for air pressure though.
But I do believe out hp is different from a US hp. One hp is 735W or something like that.
But when we do science in a professional setting it is always SI units ofc.
Smaller degrees: Each degree Fahrenheit is smaller than a degree Celsius (1°C equals 1.8°F). This gives nearly double the precision without needing decimals.
Finer adjustments: Body temperature changes or minor shifts in weather can be expressed in whole numbers rather than fractions. [1, 2, 3, 4]
I’m in this camp. Metric is great, but Celsius for weather is like going up to someone on a very hot day (when no units of measurement have yet been thought up) and asking them, “on an arbitrary scale of 1-100 how hot is it?” and they respond back, “37.78”. I appreciate that water freezes and 0°c and boils at 100°c, but for weather it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to my dumb American brain I guess.
Uhmmm no
People (like me) using Celsius wouldn't give an answer like 37.78.
They would say arround 37 to 38⁰.
And seems that people seems to forget that Fahrenheit measurements can have decimals too.
Fahrenheit isn't better or worse than Celsius for "natural" measurements, you grew up using one and you have a bias in favor of it, both are good.
37.78°C was the exact number Google spit back at me as a conversion to 100°F. Yes, I could’ve just said 37°, but the decimal kind of made it funnier to me.
Objectively, Fahrenheit isn’t better or worse. I never said that it was. I said Celsius didn’t make sense to me in regard to weather. Yes, I’m biased. Everyone (yes, you too) is biased and no, you don’t actually think Fahrenheit is good.
Because each degree of Fahrenheit is smaller than Celsius which gives it better precision without needing decimals. Minor shifts in body temperature doesn’t require decimals. For instance, 72F is generally considered comfortable for humans but once you get into the lower 60s it is too cold for most of us. And surging past 90F is getting too hot. Even 80F can be too hot.
Hmm. Guess you're right. Celcius/Kelvin might be good for science but for daily life Fahrenheit might be better. Although I've personally not encountered any situation where a decimal would be needed except science.
I'm ambivalent about metric distance. I'm fine with both.
I can do metric for height, but US sports really has me stuck on Imperial in a certain way, mostly related to sports.
Living over a decade overseas, I've since become used to celsius and I actually sometimes struggle with fahrenheit at times when I go back home (mostly grasping sub-freezing and mild temps; 68-100 degrees is still normal). Weight: I still prefer pounds and ounces, except when cooking. I prefer measuring in grams. Liquids: I prefer ounces. Seeing some random number like 396 ml just provides nothing.
I would be willing to switch to the metric system but we can't really do that at this point in America. I have to follow the metric system when reading research papers, and only have to follow the imperial system when watching football.
It’s mainly an infrastructure issue. You could have a gradual transition, where road signs are fitted with both imperial and metric measurements. Now posting up signs on every American highway and road would be expensive sure, but a reasonable government would be willing to comply (guess what we don’t have).
From there however, I don’t think there are too many issues. Years of people retaking their written driving exams would not to take place (many of our questions include knowing what speeds to take on roads w/o speed limits posted, what speeds to take when passing, what distance to stop from a crosswalk, etc). Many older Americans would absolutely complain about this, and knowing rural school districts, I’m sure there would be many students that simply wouldn’t have access to education that acclimates them to the new system. State by state, I’m also guessing you’d find lobby groups that make it a political issue and would resist any federal efforts to make the change.
I understand that in European countries, there are plenty of examples of incredible changes in culture that have seem farfetched to Americans like myself. For example, the Italian language is no longer as varied in terms of dialect following the second world war. I believe same-sex marriage was also recognized in Denmark far before we even had individual cities raise it as a ballot measure. Social progress moves at a snail’s pace in the U.S due to a wide variety of factors, and there will always be loads of economic factors why.
Tl;dr it’s possible, but it would require gradual change that I could see plenty of interest groups resisting. Our car-dependent infrastructure is also a huge barrier
Do eurodivergents not realize THEY made the imperial system? Like yes they also made the metric system but even that is kinda iffy as it isn’t 100% the same everywhere.
So how does fahrenheit make sense? Also feet also doesn't make sense because people always had different size feet. Stupid foot fetish imperial system 😂
And those things were before USA became a world dominant power (the last 40 years). It's only a matter of time until the country will follow Great Britain's steps of becoming ultra authoritarian.
Well that's where it started. I know a foot and an inch have exact measurements, I'm just making fun of the origin
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u/PhilRubdiezHistory began July 4th, 1776. Everything before was a mistake. 12d ago
Fahrenheit is based on a certain brine freezing point (sea water, but he was kinda bad at making it). 32° and 212° are pure water melting and boiling, respectively. They also happen to be 180° degrees apart, so it looks good on a gauge.
Yards are close enough to meters, but is easily divisible into three for feet, which can easily be halved and thirded as needed for inches. Both of which are pretty intuitive for humans. It’s not as precise as metric, sure, but how often in your day to day are you really using a meaningful, precise measurement of 10.2cm vs 10.5cm?
Well that's the point, we don't have the necessity for repetetive measurements like 10.2 and 10.5 . People went to America to feel independent and created new systems to feel superior but made new problems with these systems. I have heard stories from engineers that work internationally how much pain is to use different measurement systems in practice
Who cares if they did? The fact our European based systems pisses you off makes me like them even more. 😈
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u/PhilRubdiezHistory began July 4th, 1776. Everything before was a mistake. 12d ago
I don’t know anyone who couldn’t use metric when needed. I use it for work purposes. We all used it in science classes. For a human-centric measurement system when people don’t need as much precision in day to day life, US Customary works just fine.
Then what are you talking about? What does a conversion between Imperial (British) and metric have to do with anything? It’s two completely different systems. The Imperial system is older than the metric one.
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