I like how the measurement unit seems to be either small cars or school busses.
How cool would that be? I'd suggest to use a factor that is the easiest to multiply by, in order to simplify operations. I guess the optimal factor would be 10. What is easier to multiply or divide by than 10, right?
I think I need to patent this bright idea. It's amazing nobody has thought about it before.
10 mm = 1 cm
10 cm = 1 dm
10 dm = 1 m
1000 m = 1 km
Makes math and scaling up and down a lot easier than having to remember that
12 in = 1 ft
3 ft = 1 yd
5280 ft = 1 mi
1760 yd = 1 mi
At all other times, your incentive is to make the biggest lie you can get away with.
Perhaps with the exception of fahrenheit most people here will know what you mean if you use units like feet and will often even prefer thinking in feet over metres for certain things. Personally I default to feet for something like height or a floorplan, although I can think in metres quite easily too.
But sailboat length is traditionally measured in feet. Same for aircraft altitude.
So sailors and aviators are more likely to use feet (and nautical miles) as measurement.
It's now defined in reference to SI meter, but it originates as 1/60th of a degree of latitude.
So ... not even a fixed length but one that varies by latitude
(given the Earth is an oblate spheroid | rotated ellipsoid | flattened sphere)
that's something on the order of 20 metres of sloppiness by my reckoning.
…which is why the French Navy (who originally defined the unit) switched it to be SI derived in 1906 and the international standard was updated in 1929.
But I couldn't even tell you how many cm to an inch. I just know how big a 40" TV or a 28" bike is.
The main exception? MacBooks. Those will be labeled e.g. "14 inch" (14インチ).
In this the american football field seems more "reliable" as a unit of measure, seemingly fixed to 91.44 x 48.8 m or 100 yards x 160 feet + the borders that may vary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football_field
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch
Personally I "convert" a "football field" to half an hectare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hectare
or 100 x 50 m.
Science and engineering all use metric in the US. Automative all moved to metric voluntarily. I know construction is still imperial.
Its mostly consumer facing things that still imperial. And if you go to Canada its pretty common to see $/lb printed along side $/kg. People often talk about height in feet and inches, weight in pounds.
Its really not that different.
Machinists still do a lot of work in inches.
Machines last for decades and can’t practically support multiple standards. There’s an enormous amount of inertia in such a system.
Similarly aviation uses feet for altitude in most countries.
The US was an original signatory of the Meter Convention. Our customary units have been based on metric units since 1893. Our food packaging features metric units. Our scientists use metric units. Our school children learn the metric system. Our military uses the metric system. Our cars are built with metric fasteners.
Changing informal habits takes decades and has questionable benefit. Canada tried it in the 70s and is going to take another generation at least to fully convert for informal use.
I actually think we’re somewhat lucky in that most of us can immediately grok a measurement in either system when we see one online.
Canadian metrication follows the rest of the British empire which was centuries behind the rest of the world (including the US) in metrication.
If that unit causes you any pain, @throwaway4good, here is a translator perhaps to more native units:
https://www.converttobananas.com/
1 car == about 26 bananas.
Improvement?
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103
People in the Olympics are the best athletes in the world. And I bet world class athletes need a big pool to compete in.
That gives you a pretty decent sense of the scale of an Olympic sized swimming pool without ever having seen one.
For example, I made a comment about a similar comparison in a post here on HN a while ago because their example was simply ridiculous [0]. The author in that article referenced the volume of a large body of water as being "about 240 billion Olympic sized pools". I believe that they could've used almost anything else that most people would identify as being very large as a reference but instead they chose a large swimming pool. If an item is used as a reference the scale of the reference and the object should be chosen such that the reader could quickly understand that while one may be big, the other is bigger by some easily pictured amount.
The local 50 meter pool here is always filled with people young and old (and on no way elite) that just swim. You don’t need to be very fit to be able to swim 50 meters without a break.
It‘s a different kind of swimming compared to just hanging around and having fun, sure, but it always seems to be quite in demand when I see pools like that.
(The swimming complex close to me has two Olympic size swimming pools and one of those is open to the public, the other is used by actual elite athletes but also kids who are learning to swim. There is also a small 12.5 meter pool with adjustable depth to learn swimming and for aqua fitness courses.)
The NCAA only started to “recommend” that universities, when building new facilities, to make their competition pools Olympic sized in 1996.
Remember that Olympic pools are deep - usually a minimum of 2.15 meters - and don’t usually have ledges for assisting with egress. They are really dangerous. A person that gets into distress, especially near the middle, will find it nearly impossible to self-rescue. Without attentive guards/coaches/onlookers they are nearly certain to drown.
I treat myself to an Olympic swim every now and then, even though it means driving to the next city and expensive parking. Highly recommend it!
Weird thing to downvote folks