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wolfgke

> For example, a foot is a more useful measurement than the meter.

Why? 1m is about the length of one step (heel to heel)

> Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius

Why? Freezing water has 0°C, boiling water 100°C.

> Pounds are more useful than kilos

By a numeric coincidence (gravity of earth is nearly 10 m/s^2) 1 kg has a weight of about 10 N. This makes it really easy when going climbing to compute what mass you can put on some part of the safety chain.

Generally: It is a pain in the ass to convert these non-metric units among one another. For one example 1 P̸ = 12p, 1 in = 6 P̸, 1 ft=12 in, 1 yd = 3ft, 1 mi = 1760 yd. Sounds very simple and logical to me. :-(

Alone this fact is for me argument enough for metric units.

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Do you actually need to convert units a lot in your daily life? Or compare things to the freezing/boiling point of water?

For me, the major advantage of the imperial units is that they're all approximately human-scale. My foot is about a foot, my stride is about a yard, and it's surprising if I encounter weather outside 0-100F. A pint is a big drink; a cup is small one.

I'm a scientist, and all this goes out the window in the lab, of course. Even there though, a lot of the useful conversions do need some arbitrary constant (e.g. density, molarity) and the SI prefixes are not incredibly useful. I've literally never heard anyone measure something in deci/decameters. In practice, we tend to pick a unit that's approximately the right size and and stick with it--tiny things might be between 0.05µm and 2,500 µm, for example.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm an expat, and it bothers me to no end when I encounter thermostats which can only be adjusted in whole degrees Celsius - I end up being either too cold or too hot.

Given its origins in Revolutionary France, the metric system is quite literally a communist plot.

So you're saying you can feel the difference between 20 and 21 degree Celsius?

> Given its origins in Revolutionary France, the metric system is quite literally a communist plot.

That must be a joke

To ease calculations scientists tend to work around 10^(3*n) kind of numbers. This is why you seldom see hecto- or deca- units, rather than kilo, mega, milli, micro, nano, etc.

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