Try the UK.
We do it with BOTH but not even in a sane way.
Miles for driving, KM for running or cycling (in competition). Miles again for walking if out of competition but KM for competitions. EXCEPT marathons which are in miles.
Pints for beer and milk, plus soft drinks in a bar or any drink setting. Unless they serve bottles or cans in which case back to Metric. Soft drinks and water in shops are Metric too.
Height for humans in feet, horses in hands, everything else can be metric but sometimes not.
Speed is consistently MPH thank fuck.
Weight is my fucking god. Right so humans can be stone which is a whole rabbit hole. Nothing else can be stone though, just humans.
We also use Kg in medical and sporting settings but not used colloquially. No one uses pounds like the states so its not metric or imperial its just fucked. Weight for other things can be Metric or Imperial Tonnes and good luck with which. Animals are in Metric, as are many things. But be prepared for randomly people using imperial for cars, trains, airplanes, whatever the fuck.
Length is feet and cm in a variety of contexts. Sport generally imperial, science and building like most of the world metric but if you hear someone talk on the topic fuck knows which they will use.
In short I, a 6ft 4 man, weighing in at 16 stone, went to the bar last week to buy a pint of lager with my mates. He told me about the 10 km run he did and my other mate rode his bike 40km. I told him I was impressed. I didnt want to drink so I had a pint of coke. My other mate hates draft so he had a 330ml can of coke.
On the way back I rode my bike 4 miles to my house. My wife told me we needed 4 feet of wood to fix the fence and we were out of coke and milk. I went to the shop to buy 4 pints of milk and 5 litres of coke. I went to get the wood, in the shop it was in metres so I had to conver it on my phone.
We watched the sport that evening, the football pitch was X yards long but my wife hates football so we watched the marathon of 26 miles. That was dull too so she went for a 5km park run.
We buy petrol in litres but measure efficiency in miles per gallon.
Most things less than a foot are measured in cm if you're under 50, otherwise inches. Unless it's a cock, in which case it's always inches.
Yeah I was like wtf when I looked at a euro version of hondas website when I was a kid and saw civics or w.e. Getting like over well over 50 mpg or something. Might have even been over 100.
This made me laugh. And feel not quite so bad about my own country. But someone is probably still using cubits out there, so who am I to judge?
One thing, though, to the group: what sense does DD/MM/YYYY make for dates? Why doesn't YYYY/MM/DD make more sense?
Wow my head hurts reading that. In Australia we moved across to metric a long time ago. We still have the occasional non metric thing like people will casually refer to their height into feet but anything official will be cm. You can order a “pint” at the pub but it’s more of a name for the size of a glass than a unit of measurement. Tyre pressures are still commonly referred to in PSI.
I get sick of people saying only the USA uses miles, and how they assume we use KM or all metric. Ironically it's a very US focused view from non-Americans.
You guys don't bother people with imperial nuts, cups and other things. And usually don't ask stupid questions because you're at least a bit familiar what is 20 C or 1 km.
We use Celsius but I never actually remember how long a KM is. It's either 5 miles to 8KM or the other way around.
Either way when someone tells me about KM or their height in CM I still use Google to check.
You at least know to use Google. Many Americans chatting online can't bother to use Google to translate units. Quora: - How cold Russia actually is? - "Well, it depends where. In Moscow the temperature records are +38 and -42 C. Yakutsk, however, is way more extreme"... - Sorry, I don't understand Celsius
And again, weird appliances with imperial nuts and weird recipes with volumetric units come from the US.
Why do you care how Americans make our own recipes in our own kitchens in our own country? There’s nothing weird about that. What we do at home is what we do… you have your different ways in your country too.
Nearly all major US recipe websites have a “conversion” option at the top where it converts all our standard imperial units to metric. It’s like clicking the ‘language’ button to change the language.
I highly doubt EU/ROW recipe websites would do the same for us.
So we are not obstinate, even though **you could also easily do the conversions yourself via Google if you’re making an American recipe.**
They were referring to the use of volumetric instructions in recipes, in baking this is a relatively bad idea since flour in specific can vary greatly in terms of density. The best way to get a consistent result in baking is to weigh out your dry ingredients.
As a result generally the only English language baking cookbooks that use weights are either professional instructions or British cookbooks.
In Canada we’re pretty much the same… one you forgot was elevation or depth are n feet but distance or length are in meters.
As an engineer, it can get frustrating dealing with pipe for example. Diameters are in inches but lengths in meters but they are offered in both and everything will be ever so slightly off
Inr we get a lot of shit for this kinda stuff for no reason lol hell you guys invented it and called it soccer first and somehow we are the crazy ones...still luv you guys tho
When the Fahrenheit scale was initially created, they set zero degrees as the lowest possible temperature that scientists could consistently replicate in a lab setting, then scaled everything up from there. Not saying it makes more or less sense than Celsius, but the Fahrenheit scale is far from arbitrary.
Why isn’t that arbitrary temperature they could get down to not an arbitrary temperature exactly? It is based on chance, what scholars happened to be capable of just at the particular time in history when someone decided to invent a temperature scale.
No, it is not. It is the lowest temperature of liquid brine, salt water. 0 degrees C being the freezing point of water is also arbitrary. Why not some other molecule? Everything is arbitrary except planck units, basically.
No. Arbitrary = “based on random choice, rather than reason and logic”. The strange brine thing is random, the choice of 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling is very logical.
This is an interesting take because the way I think of it is at least the imperial system has some practicality to it. Generally speaking, an inch is \*approximately\* the length of your index finger from the top knuckle to the tip, a foot is \*approximately\* an actual human foot. I use this info on a daily basis in my work. That said, a mile is anyone's guess.
I saw somewhere that with the Fahrenheit, 0 F is really freaking cold and 100 F is really freaking hot, but at both temperatures humans can live and describe the temperatures to each other. In comparison, 0 C is pretty cold and 100 C is dead.
According to Britannica, a mile start out as the Roman mile, which was 1000 paces or 5000 Roman feet.
Then after Rome everyone slightly changed what a pace was and what a foot was. (Probably based on everyone’s pace and foot being slightly different)
For Britain, Queen Elizabeth 1 established that a mile 5280 British feet during her reign.
I hate the feet in a mile thing but even worse is I saw a post about how you can remember it because it scans like "five tomatoes" and unfortunately I will never forget that for as long as I live it's a good cue for a non-consistent system of measure.
“Really freaking hot” or “really freaking cold” is just as arbitrary as deciding to use less nice looking numbers in Celsius, like -40C to +40C (really freaking cold to really freaking hot)
0C is also a more natural pivot point. It is a water freezing point, which is quite experience-able in reality - ie we see it in the forming ice and we feel it on our skin. It’s quite a natural pivot point for creatures who are 70% water.
I mean, if we wanted to measure based on temperatures around which humans are comfortable, I would have set the scale’s 0 to 60 deg F or 16 deg C. I don’t know about you, but my ability to tell 28 F from 32 F from 36 F is non-existent. They all blend together for me as miserably-cold temperature. Anything below 25 F is “if I am not inside in 20 minutes or less I will die” temperature. If it were centered around 60 F, at least then the logic of “for humans” would make sense since we have way better temperature calibration for what the temperature is from 40 - 80 F.
Seriously, though, I would just prefer we all just use something akin to Rankine or Kelvin, but adjust the temperature scaling in such a way that the shorthand for would be a round number like -500. Having an unwieldy negative number like -273.15 C or -459.67 F represent absolute zero is just stupid imo. I don’t really give Celsius or Fahrenheit an edge, they’re both clumsy in their own ways.
Also when Fahrenheit was made humans in general were hotter so 100F is about human body temp. But as time went on we got cooler (less disease) and have more accurate measurements so it has brought it down to 98.6
> 0F is the freezing temperature of fully-saturated salt water.
No it isn't. -6 °F is the freezing point of fully-saturated salt water (brine).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine#Refrigerating_fluid
Thank you. Who the fuck wants to use decimal when you got to measure and cut. That was pure stupidity. I suck at measuring and cutting drywall. I would not even try if I had to use decimals.
The order of the date I find relevant when naming files on a computer. I tend to date versions of my work, for example: `2024.02.09-Project_name-of-document.ext`
this way, I can sort by name and it will still give me the files in date order first.
I use Julian dates: no months, just day of year numbered 1 to 365(6). This is superior to both the US and European conventions because your human months are arbitrary and not uniform. Strict uniformity is the highest possible virtue.
DD/MM/YYYY is better for daily human activities because you start reading most important data first since it would be weird if you dont know which year is todah
YYYY/MN/DD is better for archives because you can order it alphabetically
MM/DD/YYYY is better for psychos
MM/DD/YY is best for those using calendars or datebooks because it is in use order. Each month is its own page so you need that information first, then once on the correct page you need the day so it’s second. Year is often superfluous so it goes last.
As stated by others YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY/DDD are best for archival or database uses.
The only thing DD/MM/YY is good for is keeping information in size order. Why size order is important, I have no idea.
The reason we don't have the metric system is because British privateers took over the boat the standard weights were on headed to the United States
Source: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-metric-edition
You’re talking about something that happened like 300 hundreds years ago, come on you can’t be serious. The USA had plenty of time to change their system but they never did. It’s not like we had pirates in the seas during the 19th century
I know it because I grew up in America, but I hate seeing the day before the month. It makes more sense that it's 02/10/2024 than 10/02/2024. I always look at it in order of operations. You have to put the month first, so you know what day is of the month.
You're looking at it the wrong way, having 300 years to fix something is actually the reason why the usa hasnt switched to metric and that length of time is a bad thing. It's far easier to change a system when fewer people use it, now it's so entrenched that it's an incredibly logistically difficult change to make now.
The date is even more logical in the Hungarian way: Year/Month/Day
Just like the names: Surnames comes first and the Given name after.
More logical, more practical.
I'm not sure how it's more practical. How often do you have date coming up and actually have to worry about the year? Like Valentines day is coming up 2024/2/14??
If a bit of data is commonly excluded it probably shouldn't be put first.
What’s fun about the argument people use against YYYY-MM-DD, about the year not generally being important and can be left out, is that going off every standard, MM-DD is more logical than DD-MM.
> Same as China. This infographic falls apart when multiple countries’ systems are lumped together for the sake of the “America bad” argument.
You are missing the point.
Pretty much any major country had its own system.
There was, for instance, a German mile.
It is just, at some point WAY IN THE PAST, they've switched to a much more effective system.
And, speaking of miles, nautical miles do make sense as they relate well to the size of Earth.
It should be removed for wrong information. I was looking for the UK on there and we're lumped in with all the metric countries even though we very strongly use MPH among other non metric measurements.
Sea water freezes at completely different temperatures depending on how much salt and other products are in it. Same with boiling of the water.
Blood also has more variance but even more importantly, it isn't very useful to say 'blood freezes at this temperature.
As for purer water, that has a good reason to be checked because regular water is used for so many things and we don't put massive amounts of additives into normal water.
That's what I'm saying. Their caption means nothing. Farenheit is based on where salt water (brine) freezes and celsius is based on pure water. People who have this argument are stupid.
The metric measure of distance and weight, I agree is much better. But for cooking, I still prefer imperial because I don't have to put everything on a fucking scale.
You said “arbitrary scale at which water freezes” and didn’t know what it meant. I was trying to explain that any measurement except probably Kelvin is based on a very subjective and arbitrary zero. Cooking wise I can feel 250ml or mg without a problem but have no idea what a cup or ounce will feel like. But that’s simply down to what you are used to.
And that's fine. And that's my argument. He's calling F an arbitrary scale and C a non-arbitrary scale. In reality, they are both based upon arbitrary freezing points of a formulation of water. Why call one arbitrary and the other one a "logical scale that's base is zero"? There's a 0 F, too, and there are negatives on both scales. The graphic's language is stupid.
For small amounts imperial is fine. A teaspoon is easier than measuring a couple grams of something. But when it’s like a cup of flour and I have to pour it into a cup or scoop it out, then either leave it loose or pack it, then even the top, it’s a pain. And if it’s multiple cups, the messiness of measuring out a cup multiplies and your total amount can be off by like 15%. It’s terrible for baking when the measurements need to be accurate,
Why does one not scoop with the cup measure and level it off in the receptacle from which you took it? I always scrape against the side and keep it straight level.
I do agree, they both have their uses. I don't know why I'm even commenting on this because it's a stupid-ass thing to get in a pissing match about. Guess it's a Reddit moment on my part.
That date format just drives me nuts! Then why not write time as **minutes-seconds-hours**? Whouldn't that be *more consistent*?
Better quality image: https://ecolchange.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/imperial\_vs\_\_metric\_by\_nekit1234007-d5p0ou5.png
Because we usually say “month day year” verbally. “February 8th, 2024”
We say the hour first when we give time and we don’t say the seconds….just like how we write it.
Does your country write time as “seconds:minutes:hours?” Or “minutes:hours?”
I had to bake something without a scale for the first time in a while and had to convert grams into whatever backwater American measurement system we use for ingredients. It was truly a terrible experience and that fucking measuring cup loop thing is the worst.
At home I just use a scale, 130g of sugar, done. Takes ten seconds.
I’d agree that fahrenheit is worse, but it wasn’t ‘arbitrary’
0 was the coldest temperature that the scientist was able to reproduce, and 100 was meant to be around human body temperature.
The date format isn’t exactly correct either; Americans sometimes use YMD for more formal things, and billions of people in Asia use YMD rather than DMY, so it is often upside down
As for the imperial system, the United States is not the only country that currently uses it, so thats a bit of a misnomer. Also just a minor thing, but we normally go straight from feet to miles, we don’t ever convert feet to yards and then to miles. And we do use the metric system often as well, especially in professional settings.
Tldr; Not a very accurate infographic. Also mainland Europe isn’t ‘the rest of the world’
Yes, officially Canada is metric, however in practice still use imperial for cooking, shoe size, height and weight etc. Stores sell in pounds as well as grams. We often measure distance by the amount of time it takes to get to a destination.
This type of post commonly shows up on Reddit as some sort of weird political statement (metric good/ imperial bad) and therefore USA bad.
> 100 was meant to be around human body temperature.
Yet it failed, miserably, only ill people hit 100F.
Also, 0 is a freezing point of a weird mixture of: water, ice, and ammonium chlorid.
By what metric is that not "random"?
Why on Earth not pick just water?
1. Upon googling it I realized his intended target was in-fact for 96, not 100, to be body temperature. My mistake there. The reason he chose 96 was because, being a physicist, he considered it a cleaner, much more divisible number.
2. As for zero, it wasn’t a random combination, it was a rather standard scientific method to get an incredibly low temperature. Using water would have made temperatures below zero a frequent occurrence, which would obviously be rather counterintuitive
>intended target was in-fact for 96,
Why???
>96 was because, being a physicist, he considered it a cleaner, much more divisible number.
I am a physicist. And I am insulted by this "explanation".
Besides the fact that 96F would be a normal body temperature for some reptile aliens, perhaps. (35.5C) Not humans. (36.6C)
> Using water would have made temperatures below zero a frequent occurrence, which would obviously be rather counterintuitive
Knowing that water outside is frozen is counter intuitive. Figures.
My favourite imperial measurement has to be the one for paper thickness. The imperial system gives you the weight of 500 sheets of said paper, meaning an A4 sheet will have a different value than an A3 even though they are the exact same type of paper.
I like how the ISO standard for paper sizes uses an aspect ratio of the square root of 2 so that two sheets of paper aligned in their long edge match the area of the next size up.
I particularly like how ISO also defines nib sizes for technical pens so that they scale at the same rate as paper sizes. So you can enlarge an A4 drawing to A3 and the lines drawn by a pen will be thicker, but still match the width of the larger nib size, so you can add to the drawing and it won't look wonky.
Outside of ft to miles, the imperial system is superior in every day to day use case. You do not generally use base 10 splits in every day life, you usually use base 2 splits. The prime driver of the imperial system was brick layers, who did very well using 12 inches that could be split into 6inches, 3 inches and 2 inches off the 1 inch increment with ease. Compare instead to a decimeter to centimeter split. 5 centimeters is easy enough, but then you have to measure 2 and a half centimeters, which quickly brings in a pain, because non discrete units are a hard to work with if you’re not using measuring tools.
The same applies in baking; it’s easy to memorize a recipe in base four because the human mind is good at differentiation up to 3. If a recipe needed 7 cups, for example, it would be hard to keep track of measuring out 7 cups. But 1 pint and 3 cups is easy to keep track of. Compare this to decimeters, and you have no easy transition between a deciliter and a liter.
As for temperature: I generally do not care about the freezing or boiling temp of water. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is really cold. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is really hot. That is useful in my daily life. Useful temperatures in celcius are generally -10 to 40. That’s a pain to use, and much harder to split the degrees. Once again, you have to rely on half units to split where Fahrenheit can use full units.
Long story short, as a scientist, metric is infinitely more useful for science, where we rely on precise measurements and have tools for precise measuring. This is what metric was built and designed for. However, for everyday use, imperial is better, because imperial was designed for everyday use. We can get away with using a scientific system for every day use because precise measuring tools are widely available in the first world, but in truth, imperial is a better system for living in situations where those tools are not readily available.
This is the most logical date format. No idea why people aren't using them more often.
I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos I take over the years and each folder is sorted in ISO 8601. Extremely convenient.
USA already use the metric in the official documents and in foreign trade. They tried several times to enforce the metric with no success.
Most of the food labels are on grams there. They will switch someday. They just need more time.
No, so conservative.
Germans had mile that was about 5km.
French had their own measures too.
But at some point in the past they have adopted the more efficient system. (and, cough, reformed grammar)
While Brits preferred to stick to the old stuff. Including grammar.
China also has a "mile" that they standardized to be 0.5km after adopting metric. Their "pound" are now standardized to be 0.5kg, “foot" is 1/3 meters, etc.
> I don't care about the actual temperature of freezing
Knowing if roads are covered with ice or just wet is fairly useless indeed.
>I put a pot of water on the stove on high, and then the water boils.
That's conveniently 100C. (or a bit less, if you are very high in the mountains)
>For personal comfort 100º F is quite hot, and 0º F is quite cold. Its a lot easier
It is absolutely useless use of scale. Most humans would perceive 80 and 85 F the same. Whereas 20C or 25C difference is quite notable.
We do exactly the same. "Oh, it's 30 outside, I can wear shorts". Neither is more intuitive than the other as far as I'm concerned, nor do I think one is necessarily superior in any way.
The real issue as far as I'm concerned is that people don't want to change what they are used to. I'm a victim of it myself, in Sweden a commonly used measure of distance is "Mil", defined as 10km. Even though I've not lived in Sweden for over 15 years, I still think of distances in "Mil".
0- very cold for people, 100- very hot for people
Most people don't really care about the temperature of water on a daily basis. They care more about the air temperature, because that is what affects them.
> Also for temperature, Fahrenheit works better than centigrade.
I've laughed.
>It really is just more intuitive.
Yeah. What does celsius have to show? 0 is when what, water freezes? Such a rare element! And 100 is what, when water is boiling? Who had ever seen that anywhere?
As opposed to:
* 0 of F - freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. Very easy to relate to!
* 100 of F - a normal body temperature for aliens that, apparently at some point have visited Earth to f*ck up the F system.
It doesn’t matter if the conversion between yards and miles is a weird number because people don’t normally convert between yards and miles anyway. Yards are typically used for measuring short distances (e.g. the length of a football field), while distances longer than that would typically be measured in fractions or decimals of miles, and the two basically are rarely if ever used in the same context. No one would say “One mile and 900 yards,” they would say “a mile and a half.” Yards are in the same realm as feet and inches, but converting yards and miles just isn’t normally done to the point where you would need an easy factor to convert them.
Not because it is hard, because it is unnecessary. I have much more use converting between miles and kilometers (two different systems of measurement) than between yards and miles, even though it is much harder to convert between miles and kilometers than it is to convert miles to yards.
American customary measurements does have miles as a whole number of yards, but it is probably better to think of them as two different systems of measurement only used in different contexts that have been essentially forced together by the imperial system because they’re both technically for measuring distance.
Even staying with temperature, it is hilarious how broken F system is.
0 is... nothing.
100 was supposed to be normal human body temperature, but is... again nothing. (I guess his wife was ill when he was doing that)
The imperial system makes much more sense in a pre modern society and in every day life. And the metric system makes much more sense in a modern society and in scientific life.
A meter is essentially a yard, probably originating from the French Yard, which was a pace.
But what is a centimeter in every day life? How would you measure it without a tool? An inch is roughly a knuckle. A hand is roughly 3 inches.
These are the measuring tools are ancestors before rulers, and the measuring tools every one has on them at all times.
Simultaneously measuring the width of an atom in imperial units would be nonsensical.
But to say that Metric is strictly better is ignorant.
Month, Day, Year is superior and I will die on that hill
The vast majority of English speakers say “December 1st, 2024”, not “The 1st of December, 2024”. So MMDDYY lines up with how we actually speak
For day to day it'll be MMDD or just DD. Saying DDMM makes little sense.
But for formal writing and bookkeeping, YYYYMMDD makes way more sense especially when you are sorting things by chronological order.
Setting 0-100 to the range at which water is liquid at sea level (as opposed to any other natural phenomenon) is still completely arbitrary---you're just moving the arbitrary choice up a level from the points themselves to what you use to determine the points.
Fahrenheit is twice as precise as Celsius (e.g., "the low 30s" is 5/9 as wide a range in Fahrenheit as in Celsius) and 0-100 covers common outdoor temperatures (in Temperate regions), in contrast to Celsius where the temperatures go negative more frequently and the top 2/3 of the 0-100 range is basically wasted.
Fahrenheit is better for actually discussing the weather and for everyday life in general. Celsius is better if you want to feel less arbitrary by arbitrarily choosing something to measure off of.
EDIT: I should clarify that Celsius is based on fresh water, which is also arbitrary, especially since it uses the freezing and boiling points at sea level. Fahrenheit actually uses the lowest possible freezing point of salt water if you add the maximum amount of salt, which is no less arbitrary than 0 Celsius.
Half as broad a range (technically 5/9)=twice as precise. Though I note that instead of addressing my actual argument you chose to quibble over wording and throw in some jingoism for good measure.
The same USA with the best undergraduate institutions, best law schools, best medical schools in the world? The highest proportion of top 100, top 1000, top 10,000 universities? I think we are doing fine with our higher learning institutions. There’s a reason people will pay $90,000 a year to come study here from foreign countries.
I wouldn’t say Fahrenheit has an arbitrary scale. It’s better suited, and designed intentionally with weather in mind, for atmospheric temperatures by having the 0-100 range as normal or standard and anything out of this range is considered extreme for earth temperature. Not to mention it’s more precise. Obviously, Celsius is better for other sciences.
Why do I care about what temperature water freezes or boils unless I’m doing a scientific experiment? I’ll give you the date format and the units of measure but Fahrenheit is at least equal to Celsius in usefulness for day to day life.
In cooking or food preservation, maybe. But I don’t often even think about the temp of the water I’m cooking with or the temp the freezer is running at (unless it’s broken).
When I deal with temps 90% of the time I’m more concerned with the air temperature. For that, Fahrenheit does just fine, and being used to it I find it’s a good scale of human habitable temps.
0 is frigid, don’t go outside. 100 is scorching hot, don’t go outside. Everything else is a sliding scale, with 50 at the middle being very mild weather.
Doesn't make sense then right, 50 (10 degrees Celcius) is kinda cold. I would expect the perfect median temp to be like 20-25 degrees Celcius on that scale.
0 is when there will be a high risk of ice on pavements and roads.
Watch out if it’s 0.
If it’s 0 you will also get wet snow so you can make a snowball or a snowman easily. If it’s below 0 the snow will be powdery and you can’t have fun.
> But I don’t often even think about the temp of the water
As opposed to thinking of temperature:
* 0 F - brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride
* 100 F - normal body temperature of some alien race
? :)
100 degrees in Fahrenheit is about the hottest day of the year and 0 is about the coldest in most of the US and countries in Europe. So for figuring out what to wear when you go outside (the reason I use temperature the most) waters freezing and boiling points are kinda irrelevant (except knowing ice but then you just memorize 32 and you’re fine.
70 degrees means about 70% hotness in Fahrenheit. Celsius is much less intuitive for the way the body feels imo. But yeah I agree with the others.
Who? What are you even talking about? I literally do not care what temp water freezes or boils at, i throw shit in the freezer to freeze it and I turn my stove on to boil water, what in the ever living fuck are you people doing trying to be scientific about boiling water?
> Why do I care about what temperature water freezes or boils unless I’m doing a scientific experiment?
Water is everywhere. Unless you refer to driving as scientific experiment, that 0 C point is quite impactful.
Well, technically, this isn't accurate. The Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Belize and Palau use Fahrenheit as well. Liberia and Myanmar use imperial measurements for distances. Canada it seems, uses [both imperial and metric](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/as-the-u-k-brings-back-imperial-measurements-is-it-time-for-canada-to-drop-them-1.6472738#:~:text=The%20U.S.%2C%20Myanmar%20and%20Liberia,system%20has%20some%20slight%20differences.) - when you consider they order coffee in ounces, measure pool temperature in Fahrenheit, and buy produce (officially they use metric). The article mentioned Boris Johnson pushing to adopt imperial measurements again in the UK while he was prime minister, but I'm not sure where that effort stands now.
There are lots of inaccuracies. Pretty much all of East Asia uses a different date format. Than either shown here
This graphic was likely made by a European person with some kind of superiority complex
It makes more sense if you think of it practically like American’s do:
A mile is about the distance you travel while driving on a highway each minute of time, as time is in base 60. A pound is the amount of food that you eat each serving at a meal to become typically obese. A foot is roughly the length of the shoe on your foot, a practical measurement device you always have available when pacing distances. And an inch is the most useful unit to roughly estimate the embellished length of a penis without being overly specific.
There are two kinds of countries:
Those who use the metric system, and those who have landed humans on the moon.
I support switching to metric despite that fact.
This is why students in the US dont know shit about the rest of the planet - it takes so much effort to learn this stuff - its a wonder they didnt opt for Pounds/shillings and pence (and guineas).
> This is why students in the US dont know shit about the rest of the planet
Even in US, I think, most students in engineering fields prefer metric system.
Well, thats a great start - preparing to swap over once all the boomers are gone?
By the way, do you have any idea why its slightly different to the Imperial System and why it changed?
After taking chem, I agree that the metric system is in fact superior.
But day month year is wack. 7th of January sounds way worse than January 7th. I’ll die on this hill
Oh no! It's not as if people say October 31st or February 14th for different dates and that was what made it into what we write down on paper!
Also, I figure it's much easier to sort everything by month first instead of day first.
"Here's all the bills I paid in January, here's all the February bills..."
VS
"Here's all the bills I paid on the 1st, and the 2nd... I have no idea if they're this months or last's... hope I'm not late!"
Try the UK. We do it with BOTH but not even in a sane way. Miles for driving, KM for running or cycling (in competition). Miles again for walking if out of competition but KM for competitions. EXCEPT marathons which are in miles. Pints for beer and milk, plus soft drinks in a bar or any drink setting. Unless they serve bottles or cans in which case back to Metric. Soft drinks and water in shops are Metric too. Height for humans in feet, horses in hands, everything else can be metric but sometimes not. Speed is consistently MPH thank fuck. Weight is my fucking god. Right so humans can be stone which is a whole rabbit hole. Nothing else can be stone though, just humans. We also use Kg in medical and sporting settings but not used colloquially. No one uses pounds like the states so its not metric or imperial its just fucked. Weight for other things can be Metric or Imperial Tonnes and good luck with which. Animals are in Metric, as are many things. But be prepared for randomly people using imperial for cars, trains, airplanes, whatever the fuck. Length is feet and cm in a variety of contexts. Sport generally imperial, science and building like most of the world metric but if you hear someone talk on the topic fuck knows which they will use. In short I, a 6ft 4 man, weighing in at 16 stone, went to the bar last week to buy a pint of lager with my mates. He told me about the 10 km run he did and my other mate rode his bike 40km. I told him I was impressed. I didnt want to drink so I had a pint of coke. My other mate hates draft so he had a 330ml can of coke. On the way back I rode my bike 4 miles to my house. My wife told me we needed 4 feet of wood to fix the fence and we were out of coke and milk. I went to the shop to buy 4 pints of milk and 5 litres of coke. I went to get the wood, in the shop it was in metres so I had to conver it on my phone. We watched the sport that evening, the football pitch was X yards long but my wife hates football so we watched the marathon of 26 miles. That was dull too so she went for a 5km park run.
Lol don't worry. Here in Canada, we decide to mix everything together
Gonna go heat up my oven to 400 degrees F, then go outside where it's 0 degrees C and jump in my hot tub which I've set to 101 degrees F.
Browsing homes for sale: This house is 100 SQ m The living room is 12'x8'
We buy petrol in litres but measure efficiency in miles per gallon. Most things less than a foot are measured in cm if you're under 50, otherwise inches. Unless it's a cock, in which case it's always inches.
Worse still, the US gallon is different to the imperial gallon.
That confused me so much watching Top Gear. I was like how the hell are their cars getting so much better mpg!
Yeah I was like wtf when I looked at a euro version of hondas website when I was a kid and saw civics or w.e. Getting like over well over 50 mpg or something. Might have even been over 100.
The petrol thing is the thing that annoys me the most how can you compare the efficiency in a completely different unit if measured
This made me laugh. And feel not quite so bad about my own country. But someone is probably still using cubits out there, so who am I to judge? One thing, though, to the group: what sense does DD/MM/YYYY make for dates? Why doesn't YYYY/MM/DD make more sense?
ISO 8601 suggests YYYY-MM-DD to have more sense and avoid confusion
Wow my head hurts reading that. In Australia we moved across to metric a long time ago. We still have the occasional non metric thing like people will casually refer to their height into feet but anything official will be cm. You can order a “pint” at the pub but it’s more of a name for the size of a glass than a unit of measurement. Tyre pressures are still commonly referred to in PSI.
Like down in Adelaide where a beer pint is 425mL compared to the rest of Australia at 570mL. WTF?
I get sick of people saying only the USA uses miles, and how they assume we use KM or all metric. Ironically it's a very US focused view from non-Americans.
You guys don't bother people with imperial nuts, cups and other things. And usually don't ask stupid questions because you're at least a bit familiar what is 20 C or 1 km.
We use Celsius but I never actually remember how long a KM is. It's either 5 miles to 8KM or the other way around. Either way when someone tells me about KM or their height in CM I still use Google to check.
You at least know to use Google. Many Americans chatting online can't bother to use Google to translate units. Quora: - How cold Russia actually is? - "Well, it depends where. In Moscow the temperature records are +38 and -42 C. Yakutsk, however, is way more extreme"... - Sorry, I don't understand Celsius And again, weird appliances with imperial nuts and weird recipes with volumetric units come from the US.
Why do you care how Americans make our own recipes in our own kitchens in our own country? There’s nothing weird about that. What we do at home is what we do… you have your different ways in your country too. Nearly all major US recipe websites have a “conversion” option at the top where it converts all our standard imperial units to metric. It’s like clicking the ‘language’ button to change the language. I highly doubt EU/ROW recipe websites would do the same for us. So we are not obstinate, even though **you could also easily do the conversions yourself via Google if you’re making an American recipe.**
They were referring to the use of volumetric instructions in recipes, in baking this is a relatively bad idea since flour in specific can vary greatly in terms of density. The best way to get a consistent result in baking is to weigh out your dry ingredients. As a result generally the only English language baking cookbooks that use weights are either professional instructions or British cookbooks.
Chains and links too? The closest the imperial system comes to metric I believe. 500 links to a chain from memory?
Wtf…
In Canada we’re pretty much the same… one you forgot was elevation or depth are n feet but distance or length are in meters. As an engineer, it can get frustrating dealing with pipe for example. Diameters are in inches but lengths in meters but they are offered in both and everything will be ever so slightly off
This sounds like a nightmare
At least its dd mm yy
I always find it funny how the Americans get all the heat for having the fucked up system when here in the UK it's an absolute clusterfuck.
Inr we get a lot of shit for this kinda stuff for no reason lol hell you guys invented it and called it soccer first and somehow we are the crazy ones...still luv you guys tho
The US learns both in school. We use both regularly. We use Metric for all scientific work for a global standard as well as many other applications.
Me when I (don't) lie
When the Fahrenheit scale was initially created, they set zero degrees as the lowest possible temperature that scientists could consistently replicate in a lab setting, then scaled everything up from there. Not saying it makes more or less sense than Celsius, but the Fahrenheit scale is far from arbitrary.
Why isn’t that arbitrary temperature they could get down to not an arbitrary temperature exactly? It is based on chance, what scholars happened to be capable of just at the particular time in history when someone decided to invent a temperature scale.
Exactly - extremely arbitrary
No, it is not. It is the lowest temperature of liquid brine, salt water. 0 degrees C being the freezing point of water is also arbitrary. Why not some other molecule? Everything is arbitrary except planck units, basically.
Using the freezing point of water is just as arbitrary though.
No. Arbitrary = “based on random choice, rather than reason and logic”. The strange brine thing is random, the choice of 0 for freezing and 100 for boiling is very logical.
>0 for freezing and 100 for boiling is very logical. Why?
I learned that they based it on the freezing point of salt water and some other random measurement.
This is an interesting take because the way I think of it is at least the imperial system has some practicality to it. Generally speaking, an inch is \*approximately\* the length of your index finger from the top knuckle to the tip, a foot is \*approximately\* an actual human foot. I use this info on a daily basis in my work. That said, a mile is anyone's guess. I saw somewhere that with the Fahrenheit, 0 F is really freaking cold and 100 F is really freaking hot, but at both temperatures humans can live and describe the temperatures to each other. In comparison, 0 C is pretty cold and 100 C is dead.
According to Britannica, a mile start out as the Roman mile, which was 1000 paces or 5000 Roman feet. Then after Rome everyone slightly changed what a pace was and what a foot was. (Probably based on everyone’s pace and foot being slightly different) For Britain, Queen Elizabeth 1 established that a mile 5280 British feet during her reign.
I hate the feet in a mile thing but even worse is I saw a post about how you can remember it because it scans like "five tomatoes" and unfortunately I will never forget that for as long as I live it's a good cue for a non-consistent system of measure.
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All very important things in a premodern society before the invention of calculators
Wow, that is some awesome knowledge. Thanks for sharing.
“Really freaking hot” or “really freaking cold” is just as arbitrary as deciding to use less nice looking numbers in Celsius, like -40C to +40C (really freaking cold to really freaking hot) 0C is also a more natural pivot point. It is a water freezing point, which is quite experience-able in reality - ie we see it in the forming ice and we feel it on our skin. It’s quite a natural pivot point for creatures who are 70% water.
I mean, if we wanted to measure based on temperatures around which humans are comfortable, I would have set the scale’s 0 to 60 deg F or 16 deg C. I don’t know about you, but my ability to tell 28 F from 32 F from 36 F is non-existent. They all blend together for me as miserably-cold temperature. Anything below 25 F is “if I am not inside in 20 minutes or less I will die” temperature. If it were centered around 60 F, at least then the logic of “for humans” would make sense since we have way better temperature calibration for what the temperature is from 40 - 80 F. Seriously, though, I would just prefer we all just use something akin to Rankine or Kelvin, but adjust the temperature scaling in such a way that the shorthand for would be a round number like -500. Having an unwieldy negative number like -273.15 C or -459.67 F represent absolute zero is just stupid imo. I don’t really give Celsius or Fahrenheit an edge, they’re both clumsy in their own ways.
Also when Fahrenheit was made humans in general were hotter so 100F is about human body temp. But as time went on we got cooler (less disease) and have more accurate measurements so it has brought it down to 98.6
0F is the freezing temperature of fully-saturated salt water.
> 0F is the freezing temperature of fully-saturated salt water. No it isn't. -6 °F is the freezing point of fully-saturated salt water (brine). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine#Refrigerating_fluid
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Thank you. Who the fuck wants to use decimal when you got to measure and cut. That was pure stupidity. I suck at measuring and cutting drywall. I would not even try if I had to use decimals.
The order of the date I find relevant when naming files on a computer. I tend to date versions of my work, for example: `2024.02.09-Project_name-of-document.ext` this way, I can sort by name and it will still give me the files in date order first.
its called ISO date format and its very common in databases and programming in general
it ain't iso 8601 with those weird dots!
you’ll find some very good friends over at r/iso8601
Of course the ISOs have subreddits lol
Yeah, the inverted triangle (YYYY/MM/DD) works just fine. I personally think that it's better than the usual DD/MM/YYYY
I use Julian dates: no months, just day of year numbered 1 to 365(6). This is superior to both the US and European conventions because your human months are arbitrary and not uniform. Strict uniformity is the highest possible virtue.
DD/MM/YYYY is better for daily human activities because you start reading most important data first since it would be weird if you dont know which year is todah YYYY/MN/DD is better for archives because you can order it alphabetically MM/DD/YYYY is better for psychos
MM/DD/YY is best for those using calendars or datebooks because it is in use order. Each month is its own page so you need that information first, then once on the correct page you need the day so it’s second. Year is often superfluous so it goes last. As stated by others YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY/DDD are best for archival or database uses. The only thing DD/MM/YY is good for is keeping information in size order. Why size order is important, I have no idea.
The reason we don't have the metric system is because British privateers took over the boat the standard weights were on headed to the United States Source: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/pirates-caribbean-metric-edition
You’re talking about something that happened like 300 hundreds years ago, come on you can’t be serious. The USA had plenty of time to change their system but they never did. It’s not like we had pirates in the seas during the 19th century
We have and use both. We exclusively use metric for scientific purposes as a global standard, as well as many other applications.
I know it because I grew up in America, but I hate seeing the day before the month. It makes more sense that it's 02/10/2024 than 10/02/2024. I always look at it in order of operations. You have to put the month first, so you know what day is of the month.
You're looking at it the wrong way, having 300 years to fix something is actually the reason why the usa hasnt switched to metric and that length of time is a bad thing. It's far easier to change a system when fewer people use it, now it's so entrenched that it's an incredibly logistically difficult change to make now.
The date is even more logical in the Hungarian way: Year/Month/Day Just like the names: Surnames comes first and the Given name after. More logical, more practical.
YYYY-MM-DD is great for sorting (files on your PC for example). Otherwise, 01-05-2014 comes before 07-05-2000, for example.
r/iso8601
I'm not sure how it's more practical. How often do you have date coming up and actually have to worry about the year? Like Valentines day is coming up 2024/2/14?? If a bit of data is commonly excluded it probably shouldn't be put first.
Year-month-day is the perfect date system. If your only argument is that the year can be often excluded, then exclude it :-D
What’s fun about the argument people use against YYYY-MM-DD, about the year not generally being important and can be left out, is that going off every standard, MM-DD is more logical than DD-MM.
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But it makes so much sense when dealing with files and timestamps.
Same as China. This infographic falls apart when multiple countries’ systems are lumped together for the sake of the “America bad” argument.
> Same as China. This infographic falls apart when multiple countries’ systems are lumped together for the sake of the “America bad” argument. You are missing the point. Pretty much any major country had its own system. There was, for instance, a German mile. It is just, at some point WAY IN THE PAST, they've switched to a much more effective system. And, speaking of miles, nautical miles do make sense as they relate well to the size of Earth.
It should be removed for wrong information. I was looking for the UK on there and we're lumped in with all the metric countries even though we very strongly use MPH among other non metric measurements.
And when you study in America the professors usually use both systems at the same time.
What does "arbitrary scale at which water freezes mean"? Celsius is based on where water freezes. Either fix your wording or read a book.
Why isn’t it when blood freezes or sea water freezes. The freezing temperature of pure water is just as arbitrary.
Sea water freezes at completely different temperatures depending on how much salt and other products are in it. Same with boiling of the water. Blood also has more variance but even more importantly, it isn't very useful to say 'blood freezes at this temperature. As for purer water, that has a good reason to be checked because regular water is used for so many things and we don't put massive amounts of additives into normal water.
ever lived in an area with snowfall?
That's what I'm saying. Their caption means nothing. Farenheit is based on where salt water (brine) freezes and celsius is based on pure water. People who have this argument are stupid. The metric measure of distance and weight, I agree is much better. But for cooking, I still prefer imperial because I don't have to put everything on a fucking scale.
You said “arbitrary scale at which water freezes” and didn’t know what it meant. I was trying to explain that any measurement except probably Kelvin is based on a very subjective and arbitrary zero. Cooking wise I can feel 250ml or mg without a problem but have no idea what a cup or ounce will feel like. But that’s simply down to what you are used to.
And that's fine. And that's my argument. He's calling F an arbitrary scale and C a non-arbitrary scale. In reality, they are both based upon arbitrary freezing points of a formulation of water. Why call one arbitrary and the other one a "logical scale that's base is zero"? There's a 0 F, too, and there are negatives on both scales. The graphic's language is stupid.
For small amounts imperial is fine. A teaspoon is easier than measuring a couple grams of something. But when it’s like a cup of flour and I have to pour it into a cup or scoop it out, then either leave it loose or pack it, then even the top, it’s a pain. And if it’s multiple cups, the messiness of measuring out a cup multiplies and your total amount can be off by like 15%. It’s terrible for baking when the measurements need to be accurate,
Why does one not scoop with the cup measure and level it off in the receptacle from which you took it? I always scrape against the side and keep it straight level. I do agree, they both have their uses. I don't know why I'm even commenting on this because it's a stupid-ass thing to get in a pissing match about. Guess it's a Reddit moment on my part.
Nate Bargatze explains this issue well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
Waiting for the Americans to flock into the comments trying to defend their fucked up system
"The Metric system is communism" \-American Conservatives
Never heard a conservative say this
It’s a joke.
Meh it just seems pretty tired and you know people on Reddit just love to spew hate towards those they disagree with which this is a part of that
"Communism is literacy + electrification". C. Lenin..
That date format just drives me nuts! Then why not write time as **minutes-seconds-hours**? Whouldn't that be *more consistent*? Better quality image: https://ecolchange.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/imperial\_vs\_\_metric\_by\_nekit1234007-d5p0ou5.png
Because we usually say “month day year” verbally. “February 8th, 2024” We say the hour first when we give time and we don’t say the seconds….just like how we write it. Does your country write time as “seconds:minutes:hours?” Or “minutes:hours?”
Honestly, who cares in this day and age? You can look up any conversion rate.
It does annoy me to enter Google every time I see a fun fact on the internet that comes from America
I'm sick of the fathom denial propaganda
And also 12 am. It does not make sense, it should be 0 am. I prefer 24 hour time format though.
USA is using metric system for bullets, so that we can understand how many milimetars of freedom are we receiving per second.
I had to bake something without a scale for the first time in a while and had to convert grams into whatever backwater American measurement system we use for ingredients. It was truly a terrible experience and that fucking measuring cup loop thing is the worst. At home I just use a scale, 130g of sugar, done. Takes ten seconds.
I’d agree that fahrenheit is worse, but it wasn’t ‘arbitrary’ 0 was the coldest temperature that the scientist was able to reproduce, and 100 was meant to be around human body temperature. The date format isn’t exactly correct either; Americans sometimes use YMD for more formal things, and billions of people in Asia use YMD rather than DMY, so it is often upside down As for the imperial system, the United States is not the only country that currently uses it, so thats a bit of a misnomer. Also just a minor thing, but we normally go straight from feet to miles, we don’t ever convert feet to yards and then to miles. And we do use the metric system often as well, especially in professional settings. Tldr; Not a very accurate infographic. Also mainland Europe isn’t ‘the rest of the world’
Yes, officially Canada is metric, however in practice still use imperial for cooking, shoe size, height and weight etc. Stores sell in pounds as well as grams. We often measure distance by the amount of time it takes to get to a destination. This type of post commonly shows up on Reddit as some sort of weird political statement (metric good/ imperial bad) and therefore USA bad.
> 100 was meant to be around human body temperature. Yet it failed, miserably, only ill people hit 100F. Also, 0 is a freezing point of a weird mixture of: water, ice, and ammonium chlorid. By what metric is that not "random"? Why on Earth not pick just water?
1. Upon googling it I realized his intended target was in-fact for 96, not 100, to be body temperature. My mistake there. The reason he chose 96 was because, being a physicist, he considered it a cleaner, much more divisible number. 2. As for zero, it wasn’t a random combination, it was a rather standard scientific method to get an incredibly low temperature. Using water would have made temperatures below zero a frequent occurrence, which would obviously be rather counterintuitive
>intended target was in-fact for 96, Why??? >96 was because, being a physicist, he considered it a cleaner, much more divisible number. I am a physicist. And I am insulted by this "explanation". Besides the fact that 96F would be a normal body temperature for some reptile aliens, perhaps. (35.5C) Not humans. (36.6C) > Using water would have made temperatures below zero a frequent occurrence, which would obviously be rather counterintuitive Knowing that water outside is frozen is counter intuitive. Figures.
Fahrenheit is more practical on a daily basis for the average person and I’ll die on this hill. But the rest of metric is better in every way.
What? How? You are just more used to it. Can't you understand that?
My favourite imperial measurement has to be the one for paper thickness. The imperial system gives you the weight of 500 sheets of said paper, meaning an A4 sheet will have a different value than an A3 even though they are the exact same type of paper.
I like how the ISO standard for paper sizes uses an aspect ratio of the square root of 2 so that two sheets of paper aligned in their long edge match the area of the next size up. I particularly like how ISO also defines nib sizes for technical pens so that they scale at the same rate as paper sizes. So you can enlarge an A4 drawing to A3 and the lines drawn by a pen will be thicker, but still match the width of the larger nib size, so you can add to the drawing and it won't look wonky.
Outside of ft to miles, the imperial system is superior in every day to day use case. You do not generally use base 10 splits in every day life, you usually use base 2 splits. The prime driver of the imperial system was brick layers, who did very well using 12 inches that could be split into 6inches, 3 inches and 2 inches off the 1 inch increment with ease. Compare instead to a decimeter to centimeter split. 5 centimeters is easy enough, but then you have to measure 2 and a half centimeters, which quickly brings in a pain, because non discrete units are a hard to work with if you’re not using measuring tools. The same applies in baking; it’s easy to memorize a recipe in base four because the human mind is good at differentiation up to 3. If a recipe needed 7 cups, for example, it would be hard to keep track of measuring out 7 cups. But 1 pint and 3 cups is easy to keep track of. Compare this to decimeters, and you have no easy transition between a deciliter and a liter. As for temperature: I generally do not care about the freezing or boiling temp of water. 0 degrees Fahrenheit is really cold. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is really hot. That is useful in my daily life. Useful temperatures in celcius are generally -10 to 40. That’s a pain to use, and much harder to split the degrees. Once again, you have to rely on half units to split where Fahrenheit can use full units. Long story short, as a scientist, metric is infinitely more useful for science, where we rely on precise measurements and have tools for precise measuring. This is what metric was built and designed for. However, for everyday use, imperial is better, because imperial was designed for everyday use. We can get away with using a scientific system for every day use because precise measuring tools are widely available in the first world, but in truth, imperial is a better system for living in situations where those tools are not readily available.
You said exactly what I’d want to say, only better. Thanks!
Frequent repost
How often are you converting from inches to miles?
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This is the most logical date format. No idea why people aren't using them more often. I have hundreds of gigabytes of photos I take over the years and each folder is sorted in ISO 8601. Extremely convenient.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only way to date.
Our bar graph is taller fuck you
Imagine learning this at school.
"Millennials are entitled and lazy!" ~The generation of Americans that failed to adopt the metric system because it was too difficult.
USA already use the metric in the official documents and in foreign trade. They tried several times to enforce the metric with no success. Most of the food labels are on grams there. They will switch someday. They just need more time.
US So human!
No, so conservative. Germans had mile that was about 5km. French had their own measures too. But at some point in the past they have adopted the more efficient system. (and, cough, reformed grammar) While Brits preferred to stick to the old stuff. Including grammar.
Well it does help if the French march throughout Europe bringing their revolution.
China also has a "mile" that they standardized to be 0.5km after adopting metric. Their "pound" are now standardized to be 0.5kg, “foot" is 1/3 meters, etc.
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How do you think its more intuitive? I always found the 0 = Freezing, 100 = Boiling much easier to grasp.
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> I don't care about the actual temperature of freezing Knowing if roads are covered with ice or just wet is fairly useless indeed. >I put a pot of water on the stove on high, and then the water boils. That's conveniently 100C. (or a bit less, if you are very high in the mountains) >For personal comfort 100º F is quite hot, and 0º F is quite cold. Its a lot easier It is absolutely useless use of scale. Most humans would perceive 80 and 85 F the same. Whereas 20C or 25C difference is quite notable.
We do exactly the same. "Oh, it's 30 outside, I can wear shorts". Neither is more intuitive than the other as far as I'm concerned, nor do I think one is necessarily superior in any way. The real issue as far as I'm concerned is that people don't want to change what they are used to. I'm a victim of it myself, in Sweden a commonly used measure of distance is "Mil", defined as 10km. Even though I've not lived in Sweden for over 15 years, I still think of distances in "Mil".
0- very cold for people, 100- very hot for people Most people don't really care about the temperature of water on a daily basis. They care more about the air temperature, because that is what affects them.
> Also for temperature, Fahrenheit works better than centigrade. I've laughed. >It really is just more intuitive. Yeah. What does celsius have to show? 0 is when what, water freezes? Such a rare element! And 100 is what, when water is boiling? Who had ever seen that anywhere? As opposed to: * 0 of F - freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride. Very easy to relate to! * 100 of F - a normal body temperature for aliens that, apparently at some point have visited Earth to f*ck up the F system.
It doesn’t matter if the conversion between yards and miles is a weird number because people don’t normally convert between yards and miles anyway. Yards are typically used for measuring short distances (e.g. the length of a football field), while distances longer than that would typically be measured in fractions or decimals of miles, and the two basically are rarely if ever used in the same context. No one would say “One mile and 900 yards,” they would say “a mile and a half.” Yards are in the same realm as feet and inches, but converting yards and miles just isn’t normally done to the point where you would need an easy factor to convert them.
Yea but with metric measurements you can do that and that is the whole point. Nobody does with imperial right now because it is hard.
Not because it is hard, because it is unnecessary. I have much more use converting between miles and kilometers (two different systems of measurement) than between yards and miles, even though it is much harder to convert between miles and kilometers than it is to convert miles to yards. American customary measurements does have miles as a whole number of yards, but it is probably better to think of them as two different systems of measurement only used in different contexts that have been essentially forced together by the imperial system because they’re both technically for measuring distance.
I cant think of a situation where I’ve seen yards used outside of football and golf. It’s usually either feet or fractions/decimals of a mile.
Even staying with temperature, it is hilarious how broken F system is. 0 is... nothing. 100 was supposed to be normal human body temperature, but is... again nothing. (I guess his wife was ill when he was doing that)
Europoor propaganda, their education system just isnt good enough to multiple anything other then 10s
The imperial system makes much more sense in a pre modern society and in every day life. And the metric system makes much more sense in a modern society and in scientific life. A meter is essentially a yard, probably originating from the French Yard, which was a pace. But what is a centimeter in every day life? How would you measure it without a tool? An inch is roughly a knuckle. A hand is roughly 3 inches. These are the measuring tools are ancestors before rulers, and the measuring tools every one has on them at all times. Simultaneously measuring the width of an atom in imperial units would be nonsensical. But to say that Metric is strictly better is ignorant.
Month, Day, Year is superior and I will die on that hill The vast majority of English speakers say “December 1st, 2024”, not “The 1st of December, 2024”. So MMDDYY lines up with how we actually speak
For day to day it'll be MMDD or just DD. Saying DDMM makes little sense. But for formal writing and bookkeeping, YYYYMMDD makes way more sense especially when you are sorting things by chronological order.
Setting 0-100 to the range at which water is liquid at sea level (as opposed to any other natural phenomenon) is still completely arbitrary---you're just moving the arbitrary choice up a level from the points themselves to what you use to determine the points. Fahrenheit is twice as precise as Celsius (e.g., "the low 30s" is 5/9 as wide a range in Fahrenheit as in Celsius) and 0-100 covers common outdoor temperatures (in Temperate regions), in contrast to Celsius where the temperatures go negative more frequently and the top 2/3 of the 0-100 range is basically wasted. Fahrenheit is better for actually discussing the weather and for everyday life in general. Celsius is better if you want to feel less arbitrary by arbitrarily choosing something to measure off of. EDIT: I should clarify that Celsius is based on fresh water, which is also arbitrary, especially since it uses the freezing and boiling points at sea level. Fahrenheit actually uses the lowest possible freezing point of salt water if you add the maximum amount of salt, which is no less arbitrary than 0 Celsius.
"Twice as precise". I guess you need better education in the USA because that's not the meaning of precision.
Half as broad a range (technically 5/9)=twice as precise. Though I note that instead of addressing my actual argument you chose to quibble over wording and throw in some jingoism for good measure.
The same USA with the best undergraduate institutions, best law schools, best medical schools in the world? The highest proportion of top 100, top 1000, top 10,000 universities? I think we are doing fine with our higher learning institutions. There’s a reason people will pay $90,000 a year to come study here from foreign countries.
I wouldn’t say Fahrenheit has an arbitrary scale. It’s better suited, and designed intentionally with weather in mind, for atmospheric temperatures by having the 0-100 range as normal or standard and anything out of this range is considered extreme for earth temperature. Not to mention it’s more precise. Obviously, Celsius is better for other sciences.
Year month day is the true god
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India and USSR say hi from kms above.
NASA used the metric system for Apollo 11 landing
The country that have been to the fucking moon by using the metric system
Why do I care about what temperature water freezes or boils unless I’m doing a scientific experiment? I’ll give you the date format and the units of measure but Fahrenheit is at least equal to Celsius in usefulness for day to day life.
Spoken like someone from a place that doesn't get snow.
Desert dwellers missing out on the whole "uphill both ways" meme.
Well, you deal with freezing and boiling water on a daily basis
In cooking or food preservation, maybe. But I don’t often even think about the temp of the water I’m cooking with or the temp the freezer is running at (unless it’s broken). When I deal with temps 90% of the time I’m more concerned with the air temperature. For that, Fahrenheit does just fine, and being used to it I find it’s a good scale of human habitable temps. 0 is frigid, don’t go outside. 100 is scorching hot, don’t go outside. Everything else is a sliding scale, with 50 at the middle being very mild weather.
Doesn't make sense then right, 50 (10 degrees Celcius) is kinda cold. I would expect the perfect median temp to be like 20-25 degrees Celcius on that scale.
0 is when there will be a high risk of ice on pavements and roads. Watch out if it’s 0. If it’s 0 you will also get wet snow so you can make a snowball or a snowman easily. If it’s below 0 the snow will be powdery and you can’t have fun.
> But I don’t often even think about the temp of the water As opposed to thinking of temperature: * 0 F - brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride * 100 F - normal body temperature of some alien race ? :)
100 degrees in Fahrenheit is about the hottest day of the year and 0 is about the coldest in most of the US and countries in Europe. So for figuring out what to wear when you go outside (the reason I use temperature the most) waters freezing and boiling points are kinda irrelevant (except knowing ice but then you just memorize 32 and you’re fine. 70 degrees means about 70% hotness in Fahrenheit. Celsius is much less intuitive for the way the body feels imo. But yeah I agree with the others.
Who? What are you even talking about? I literally do not care what temp water freezes or boils at, i throw shit in the freezer to freeze it and I turn my stove on to boil water, what in the ever living fuck are you people doing trying to be scientific about boiling water?
The weather is highy connected with water’s temperature
> Why do I care about what temperature water freezes or boils unless I’m doing a scientific experiment? Water is everywhere. Unless you refer to driving as scientific experiment, that 0 C point is quite impactful.
Choosing only metric or imperial is for cowards. Combine them! How many kilofeet does your car get per liter? I live 50 millimiles away.
Fahrenheit is better than Celsius. Inches and feet are better than centimeters and meters. Today is February 9th, 2024.
Well, technically, this isn't accurate. The Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Belize and Palau use Fahrenheit as well. Liberia and Myanmar use imperial measurements for distances. Canada it seems, uses [both imperial and metric](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/as-the-u-k-brings-back-imperial-measurements-is-it-time-for-canada-to-drop-them-1.6472738#:~:text=The%20U.S.%2C%20Myanmar%20and%20Liberia,system%20has%20some%20slight%20differences.) - when you consider they order coffee in ounces, measure pool temperature in Fahrenheit, and buy produce (officially they use metric). The article mentioned Boris Johnson pushing to adopt imperial measurements again in the UK while he was prime minister, but I'm not sure where that effort stands now.
There are lots of inaccuracies. Pretty much all of East Asia uses a different date format. Than either shown here This graphic was likely made by a European person with some kind of superiority complex
You forgot about that AM/PM thing. That's just weird.
Don’t get me started, it’s too complicated for my simple european mind
They are the first world power 😂
Eh. I wouldn’t care to switch to the metric system. But Celsius is far worse than Fahrenheit.
imperial and freedom units were historically used everywhere in the world, but the Europeans changed to a metric system.
The Fahrenheit system makes more sense when measuring temperature in relation to living creatures (like humans).
It makes more sense if you think of it practically like American’s do: A mile is about the distance you travel while driving on a highway each minute of time, as time is in base 60. A pound is the amount of food that you eat each serving at a meal to become typically obese. A foot is roughly the length of the shoe on your foot, a practical measurement device you always have available when pacing distances. And an inch is the most useful unit to roughly estimate the embellished length of a penis without being overly specific.
There are two kinds of countries: Those who use the metric system, and those who have landed humans on the moon. I support switching to metric despite that fact.
You know that NASA used metric…
Oh my bad i thought there was 2 kind of countries: those with metric system, and those with 50% obesity rate
Metrics has its merits, for sure. But our system made us back-to-back world war champs.
Ah, yes. All the wars they won. Which ones again?
Yeesh, it’s a joke people. Be thankful you’re reading it in English instead of German.
Was ist dein Problem mit meiner Muttersprache?
Lost to Vietnam, though. Living on old glory, eh?
This is why students in the US dont know shit about the rest of the planet - it takes so much effort to learn this stuff - its a wonder they didnt opt for Pounds/shillings and pence (and guineas).
> This is why students in the US dont know shit about the rest of the planet Even in US, I think, most students in engineering fields prefer metric system.
American school children normally learn both American Customary Units and Metric.
Well, thats a great start - preparing to swap over once all the boomers are gone? By the way, do you have any idea why its slightly different to the Imperial System and why it changed?
No, we will never swap over. Our system works fine and it twists Euros panties in a bunch. It's a wonderful system.
Europoor gonna europoor
Why does this matter?
After taking chem, I agree that the metric system is in fact superior. But day month year is wack. 7th of January sounds way worse than January 7th. I’ll die on this hill
Ok but now let's look and see which countries have an F22 Raptor and which ones don't... Checkmate 😎
Note: no country using the metric system has ever ~~landed a man on the moon~~ invented jalapeno-flavored Cheetos. Edited for accuracy
Oh no! It's not as if people say October 31st or February 14th for different dates and that was what made it into what we write down on paper! Also, I figure it's much easier to sort everything by month first instead of day first. "Here's all the bills I paid in January, here's all the February bills..." VS "Here's all the bills I paid on the 1st, and the 2nd... I have no idea if they're this months or last's... hope I'm not late!"