this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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When I find a wood working video on YouTube from the states it blows my mind how anyone can not just adopt metric “This is 5” 4/57 and we need to cut it to 5” 5/45 and a half” bzzzzzzz.
I may be biased, but I think it kinda makes sense. All the fractions are really just powers of two:
One half
One quarter
One eighth
One sixteenth
One thirtysecond
etc.
And all of the fractions in metric are just powers of 10: one tenth, one hundredth, one thousand. Powers of two are great when you're working in base 2. It's a big hassle when you're working in base 10.
Everyone also gravitates to length and how fractional powers of two are sensible. I'll grant that they're at least sensible although awkward in base 10. But what about every single other thing? For lengths greater than one inch, there's no consistent pattern. For volumes there's no pattern - mass, weight, etc. The thing is a monstrosity. People pick out one part that's halfway acceptable and act like that's a defense of the rest of the pile of garbage.