this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
2892 points (97.0% liked)
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
7463 readers
2 users here now
A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is essentially incorrect; the vast majority of people here use the inferior system in everyday usage.
But there are everyday examples where both are used.
E.g. If you see someone drinking a soda and ask them how much sugar is in it they'd probably tell you a number in grams.
Or if you have to take cough syrup the dosage is usually in milliliters.
Or if you ask someone what size engine their car has they'll most likely tell you in liters.
And no one brings up that the UK actually uses both and in a lot more confusing way. Fuel in Liters but efficiency in miles per gallon. Speed in miles per hour but how far you drive in Kilometers. Weight of produce in grams and people in stone.
And even then British gallons are different from American gallons so the efficiency numbers look really frickin' weird.
This isn't very accurate. Imperial is used for car and travel related measurements, metric is used elsewhere (officially). It would be nice if we switched to metric but it is OK.
Yeah, I think this is basically the only confusing and annoying imperial/metric thing we have.
We don't use kilometers for how far we drive. We still use miles on signage and in everyday speech, along with miles per hour. I imagine if we switched to kilometers per hour, we would start using kilometers.
Older generations might still use stone but it is disappearing. Even my retired dad uses kg now. Younger generations are not taught stone (for decades now), as they grow up it will disappear.
It is a similar story to height in feet and inches. It is becoming less common, but probably slower than the switch away from stone.
Plus, many of us are in STEM fields and appreciate/prefer the metric/SI system. However, we think in imperial units because that’s what we used in daily life in our formative years.
I have no problem with metric units, but I do a rough mental conversion to imperial to relate to the measurement, and get a “feel” for it. This goes for temperature, distance, speed, volume, weight/mass, pressure, and essentially anything else that’s an everyday unit.
It’s analogous to how much of the world thinks of nuclear explosions in terms of kilotons or megatons of TNT. I mean, all you have to do is multiply megatons by 4.184e+15 and you’re back to the sensible unit of Joules. :)
I go back to what my professor in my first engineering class told us -- a good engineer can work in any unit system.
At the end of the day, imperial vs metric is an argument you have over some beers with friends. It's inconsequential.
That's a damn good point, the distance doesn't change regardless of what you call it.
Exactly. This isn't rocket science, it's simple math. And by knowing two unit systems, you can describe the distance in the most convenient way possible.
Hell, I'm not an engineer and that's something I was taught in school. In Texas. In the 80's.
Man, this place has devolved so horrendously...
Man :/