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Comment by yetihehe | Hacker News Reader

There's a meme that americans will use anything to avoid metric system. Typically with examples like "hole in the road with the size of 2 washing machines".

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There's a great Simpsons joke where Grandpa says, "the metric system is the tool of the devil, my car gets 40 rods to the hog's head, and that's the way I like it!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5-s-4KPtD8

Those are/were real units

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_(unit)

Are there, by chance, any fake units that exist?

I’m fond of the shit ton.

The Canadian metric equivalent is the metric crap tonne.

Buttload is not fake however

Us brits have “shed load”

The shit tonne and the fuck load come to mind.

F**stick?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas...

Yes, the smoot

Does the Register's measurement converter count?

https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-conver...

That's why it's Grandpa and funny.

So his car takes roughly 300l to move 200m in SI units, or 45000l/100km.

For those who are curious, 1 rod is 0.003125 miles. Thus, 40 rods is 0.125 miles. 1 hogshead is 1/63 of a US gallon.

Thus, 40 rods to the hog's head is 7.875 miles per gallon, 29.87 L/100km, or 3.348 km/L.

EDIT: sorry, 1 hogshead is 63 US gallons. This comes to about 0.002 miles per gallon... yikes! (divide all the numbers in the previous paragraph by 63^2)

Huh. Why is a hogshead so small? If you had asked me to guess I would have said like 3 1/32nd (or some weird small additional amount) gallons.

Wait. I’m seeing that hogshead is like 63 “wine” gallons, not 1/63 gallon. (Not sure conversion of wine gallons to usual gallons though.)

Ooh you're totally right, thank you for pointing it out!

I think my brain was subconsciously seeking a miles-per-gallon result in a "reasonable" order of magnitude. Edited original comment.

They don’t make hogs like they used to

From a quick search it seems both a normal gallon and a wine gallon are measured at 231 cubic cm of liquid, so they're the same. There is a proof gallon which only counts the ethanol content of the liquid towards the gallon, so a 100 proof alcohol would require 2 gallons of liquid to equal 1 proof gallon of liquor.

The greatest Simpsons car-and-measurement-unit bit is of course this one: "She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene" which maybe makes sense if you're plowing a field... Part of a pretty amazing 20 second bit. Pure old Simpsons gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07vdtBMG4Kg

If you wish that 20 seconds would last a little longer, and also be remixed into a song, check out "Put it in H" by Dankmus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HXT7fDkf9I

I like the "Large boulder the size of a small boulder" measurement system by the San Miguel Sheriff. - https://twitter.com/SheriffAlert/status/1221881862244749315

This is great lol

It can get more extremes than memes. Some government agencies have policies specifically avoiding the metric system in public announcements. Issue a statement about a 30 centimeter wave event and a good percentage of people in coastal areas might panic. Trial attorneys also coach witnesses to never speak in metric as at least one person on every jury won't be able to follow ... and two more will hate you for forcing them to remember words they last heard in highschool.

American here, lived in Europe a while, but back.

I got decent with meters. Recently, I've been thinking about ways to visualize a billion. Here's one:

There's a billion cubic millimeters in a cubic meter (cubic yard). If you take a meter (yardstick) and visualize the 1000 millimeters in it, then make a plane of that 1000x1000, i.e. a million, then stack a thousand of those, that's a billion.

I still can't get my head around it, TBH. A billion is a lot!

But "billion cubes" are a nice unit; you can stack up a lot of them to get more billions.

I mean that's easier to visualize than saying a "hole in the road that is about 92 cubic centimeters."

I think that's because they're not really equivalent. At least for me, a hole the size of 2 washing machines is something that will look close to two washing machines put together. That limits the shape it can have. On the other hand, 92 cubic centimeters doesn't. It could be a 1cm x 1cm x 92cm hole, which wouldn't be possible with 2 washing machines.

If we assume that the two washing machines are side to side, and that the average washing machine is 60cm x 60cm x 85 cm (height), that would be a hole 1.20m width x 60 cm depth x 85 cm height. The washing machine example is still easier to visualize, but it's also better than "a 612 000 cubic centimeters hole".

I think 'hole in the road' comes with its own visualisation more likely to be accurate than anything you get from 'two washing machines'.

How do you accurately visualize whether "hole in the road" means you saying "what was that?" And driving on without slowing. Or whether the hole will require a crane to get your car to a place where it can be towed if you, possibly inadvertently, attempt to drive over it?

I meant regarding shape.

holes can be all sorts of shapes

But rarely like washing machines. (Which can also be all sorts of shapes anyway.)

Aside from side by side vs stackable, every washing machine I've ever encountered is roughly the same shape. Some edges are rounder and the door might be on the front or the top but the shape is the same.

The vast majority are approximately cuboid boxes, sure. Ever seen a hole in the road like that?

Yes, all the time when I lived in Atlanta. They frequently do road construction where they dig up rectangular underground vaults, then cover them up with giant “temporary” steel plates for years at a time. When the steel plates get dislodged, which they always do because they are not supposed to be permanent repairs, it leaves a gaping rectangular hole. I would estimate that the remaining hole is around the 4-washing machine size. When I was working on my MS at Ga Tech, a friend drove over one at speed, the car made it past but it sheared the oil pan right off the engine. Any Atlanta resident can validate that this is not BS. https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/why-at...

So like 1/20th of a cubic fathom?

You'd say something like "2 cubic metres". Which is roughly the size of 2 washing machines.

Where I’m from, we’d just say “There’s a big ass hole in the road”

Is that an imperial ass or a metric ass?

Around here that's just a normal morning commute

> hole in the road that is about 92 cubic centimeters

92 cubic centimeters is a pretty small hole...

a hole in the road 1.5mx80cmx60cm is pretty easy to understand or imagine, when you know metric system and absolutely trivial to convert: ~0.70 cubic meters or ~700 liters or ~700.000 cubic centimeters

Washing machines comes of all sizes.

Is it like the slim one I have at home to save space or like the ones I find in laundromats?

Metric units have standards.

I don't know how many people would understand "a hole in the road the size of 137 trays of home made tiramisù"

TBF here too when the media want to make analogies, they are pretty terrible: "an asteroid the size of 8 soccer fields" means nothing to me, ~800 meters makes much more sense.

A big bottle of soda is 1000 or 2000 cubic centimeters. A can of soda is 200 or 300 cubic centimeters. A glass of water has 200 or 300 cubic centimeters. 92 cubic centimeters is half a glass of water.

I wonder if folks do that because its easier to picture a hole the size of two washing machines. That would be like 4-6 sq ft which can be more difficult to visualize.

How many libraries of congresses is that?

Doesn’t “avoid” imply that Americans are actually giving the metric system any thought?

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