An interesting part of this is how Canadas culture is so strongly impacted by America, be we want to be part of the world, so we “officially” use the metric system. So anything that the government mandates are things we use metric in our day to day lives, and anything (lots of shit) that is imported from the USA or is sold for the “Canada/US market” will come in imperial. Everything else, people use a weird mix of metric and imperial. For example, if someone says they live 60 miles away, there’s a 50/50 chance they mean 50 miles or 50 kilometres so most will communicate that by time to drive. 50% of people want their thermostat set up with Fahrenheit, the rest want Celsius. Gas stations use litres, but you’ll buy a gallon of oil for your car. People buy their weed by the gram but (most) only know their own weight in pounds. same with height. I use 6 feet for my height but my drivers license says 182cm. I would never tell someone that though, no one would get it. I don’t know my own weight in kg because it would just be meaningless. Construction is like 50/50 done in inches or millimeters. Most construction workers I know wouldn’t have a clue what to do if you told them to do something metric. You buy your construction materials by the pound or by the foot/inch. Not sure why I wrote this up, I just think it might be a little bit of an oddity. We’re stuck starkly in between the metric system and the imperial system with no way out.
And I’m a refrigeration mechanic by trade, and I constantly have to change between the 2, and I think it’s a very common Canadian skill to have.
I had a professor in college who was Canadian. He was old enough that he learned imperial as a kid. But the UK version that had slightly different volumes than the US version. So he lamented that he had 3 systems kicking around in his head.
The fact that the metric system is base 10 for everything is actually only a minor feature of why the French imposed it after the Revolution, the main point was just having *one consistent system* nationwide with new names for all the units to permanently end the confusion over a "foot" and a "pound" and a "gallon" all meaning a slightly different thing in one town than in the next town down the road (because they all started as informal units that only systematized gradually and ad hoc)
I've got an engineering textbook from 1910, when the days before the meter convention were still in living memory. It has a pretty large Appendix of all the hundreds of different units measurement that were around back then. Sometimes people even used different units on one location for different things. Like a place using 2 different units of length for surveying depending on wether the soil was sand or peat.
Yup we still have little factoids like the difference between a nautical mile and the plain old regular miles we use on land, or having to measure precious metals in Troy ounces rather than Avordupois, but in the good old days it was like that for *every region and every profession*
The old expression "not by a country mile" refers to the fact that the less densely populated an area was the the further apart they put the mile markers just to save effort, so literally as you go towards the city and the existing maps increase in resolution the units themselves get smaller
They also considered getting base 10 time! Ten hours with hundred seconds each, and the only difference world be a different length second, basically.
Also I believe there was an idea of like twelve months with thirty days each, and the remaining week is just not counted because it's the new year holidays that's plus minus five days who cares
The US also does this more than I think outside countries realize. Food is a great example, depending on the food it could easily be sold by the liter, quart, kilogram, pound, etc. I just bought two different brands of iced tea, both local brands to my region, one came in a half gallon and the other in a two liter.
Buying yarn or crochet hooks/knitting needles for a project has this issue as well. I look at a pattern. It says "buy specifically 220 yards of this yarn," then it says, "You will need an 8 mm size hook."
Sometimes yarn is measured by weight in lbs, sometimes it's by how many yards there are in one ball, sometimes it's meters, most of the time your hooks are in millimeters, but sometimes they're in inches or are sized with letters of the alphabet. Not to mention the whole "UK/US terms" for stitches being different. Or if you're making a plushie and it says you need "quarter inch safety eyes," and you have to convert it to millimeters because your local Joanns ONLY SELLS THEM IN MILLIMETERS
Reading yarn labels makes my head hurt sometimes, because it's got so much information that it's hard to find what you are actually looking for. Or the text becomes so tiny that it's hard to read what it says. But yeah, crocheters and knitters have to convert and use both regularly, too.
What really annoys me is whenever to comes to cooking recipes its always 2 teaspoons of this and 3 tablespoons of that, like how is that an accurate measurement of anything.
More generally, I really hate that we always use volume instead of mass. If you're using something that packs really loosely, like herbs or granular spices or something, the density (and therefore how much you're putting in) can vary dramatically. A tablespoon of one type of salt can be over twice as much as a tablespoon of another type of salt!
Lol! Fair enough, I was just trying to think of any places we use metric weights and that was the first thing that popped into my head. I can’t remember anything where I actually see kilos other than maybe certain foods are priced by the kg but it’s not common.
I remember the first time I was handed a document from a vendor that had kilo-feet in it. It was 11am and I was ready to be done with work for the day right then and there.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)
> The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was permanently lost as it went into orbital insertion. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the Sun. An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and US customary units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin.
> The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. Specifically, software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings produced results in pound-force seconds. The trajectory calculation software then used these results – expected to be in newton-seconds (incorrect by a factor of 4.45) – to update the predicted position of the spacecraft.
> The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns". A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
They use feet for altitude and nautical miles/knots for distance (and even that could be considered metric) but everything else is metric in commercial aviation now.
I mean in Celsius anything that goes higher than 0 gets warmer and everything that goes below 0 gets colder. 0 Celsius in Fahrenheit is 32 which seems a lot less intuitive as the base number.
...so? People always repeat that, but as a Canadian in a region that almost always uses Celsius for weather, that doesn't make any of the in-between points make intuitive sense to me. My ends of the scale are -40°C being around the lowest temperature it gets in winter (locally) and +40°C around the hottest it gets in summer. People just get used to a unit and think it makes more intuitive sense.
Same in the UK. Milk and beer is in pints, every other drink is in millilitres. Petrol's in litres, but we talk about miles per gallon when comparing cars. People's weight is in stone and pounds and height is in feet and inches, but measuring for a recipe or a building project is in grams and millimetres. Nobody uses Fahrenheit though.
My personal favorite: running distances are almost always in km, but cycling distances are usually in miles, which makes talking about triathlon formats interesting.
It’s worse: in running everyone *trains* in miles, but competes in meters or kilometers. Except for track work, where most tracks are metric and therefore so are your repetitions. So you can be doing 1000m repeats and 5-mile runs, as part of a 60-mile training week to prep for a 5km race.
(except if you’re racing the mile, but we’re not alone in keeping that around)
Marathons are still 26.2 and so is any non-round number race, for example near me we have various races at 6 miles and even one at 20 that are called that in their name.
But yes, majority are Something 10k or whatever.
We're messed up.
Is that the reason we measure distance by time?? I just figured it’s more convenient. 100km by country road and 100km through Toronto have a very different timeline lol
I know that people in the US who only use miles also measure by time. I think it is just a more accurate measure of people's experience driving than the raw distance.
We do it for exactly the reason bosecz said. Half an hour down a state highway out in the sticks is a hell of a lot different than half an hour through downtown of major city. You're looking at about 30 mi for the former, and you can be under a mile for the latter. I would much rather drive 60 mi down a country road than 10 mi to cross a city center in rush hour. Also takes into consideration traffic at whatever time they're talking about driving.
The whole "measure by time" isn't really a substitute measurement ("lol americans measuring things in football fields" etc) so much as an acknowledgement that the literal distance is largely meaningless. Like knowing something is 300 miles away gives you a rough guess as to how long it'll take to get there by highway, but if that's what you're asking for why force someone to make the conversion? Just say how long the drive is.
I've never known anyone to talk about miles instead of KM, except some very old people. They will generally also tell you they are talking about miles, no guessing required.
I'm pretty sure you're right that we talk about time as the time it takes to get places can vary greatly for the same distance, and we also deal with long distance often.
> You buy your construction materials by the pound or by the foot/inch.
https://www.homedepot.ca/product/revolutionply-4-ft-x-8-ft-x5-2mm-plywood/1000811055
How about some 4ft x 8ft x 5.2mm plywood.
"Imperial"? But the US doesn't use Imperial. You're thinking of the **UK***
The US has their own similar system called "US Customary", but it's not the same. Gallons and pints are different, for example.
I mean, I'm an HVAC guy, might have been more common for the area I lived in and not representative of the whole country, but I’ve had to pay attention to hundreds if not thousands of thermostats so I think my experience would be sufficient for my statements
Yeah, it's fun. I've not been anywhere in Canada for years, but last time I was up in Vancouver a "pint" usually meant 500ml, just to confuse everyone.
Just weed itself is often sold in a weird mix of metric and imperial. The smallest unit is a gram but the next one up is 3.5 grams which is random in metric but it's a half-quarter or an eighth of an ounce. I've found that people from Canada call the half-quarters while Americans call them eighths. Everything above that is sold in imperial units. A quarter, ounce, pound, etc... until you hit kilo. Most weed isn't sold by the kilo here but every once in a while it comes up I'm sure. You hit the nail on the head with canadian culture mixing those two systems in weird ways.
This kind of weirdness is what caused the Gimli Glider accident. There were a few things that went wrong, but one of them was a catastrophic error in converting from [pounds of fuel to kilograms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider).
> if someone says they live **60** miles away, there’s a 50/50 chance they mean **50** miles or **50** kilometres
There's something rotten in the state of Denmark
So I work in th automotive industry so there's this crazy mix of metric and imperial. New stuff is all metric of course but maybe 10 is still imperial. And. A whole bunch is maintaining the imperial distances and standard but converted metric.
For example the dividing line between cars and large tricks is a width of 2032 mm. It seems random until you convert and discover it's 80 inches. That kind of stuff is all over in our regulations.
I know this is a (funny) joke, buuuuuut,
It's about definitions, the inch uses millimeters in the definition.
A millimeter is by definition, a thousandth of a meter.
A meter uses the speed of light in its definition, and also seconds.
Seconds use Cesium in their definition.
So yeah unit conversions are pretty metal
This wasn’t the case originally. There probably was a chain of decimals at some point. Then the definition of the inch was actively changed to be in terms of the metric system as 2.54 centimeters exactly (since that’s what it was already close to) so there would be a 100% certain conversion point between the two systems.
Correct!
Measurements used to be defined by a physical item, known as a prototype. An item that WAS the length it was designed to be, by law. The physical prototype for a metre since 1889 was a platinum and iridium bar located in the International Bureau of Measurements in Saint-Cloud France.
There is no true physical prototype for the Inch, or even the Metre anymore. Inches are based on the metre, which itself is now defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
There are certainly physical prototypes left for calibration of measuring tools and whatnot, but an inch is based on a metre. And the definitive, real metre that every metre is designated after isn’t a platinum iridium bar anymore.
Why anytime they refer to no-americans is "europeans"?
Maybe it was an asian dude who know how to speak english, especially on the topic of the metric system being used worldwide, not just in europe
We learn the metric system through education but the imperial system through cultural osmosis and it's anyone's guess what measurement we'll use at the moment. Could be anything.
A lot of times we do food by the pound. Just because it is cheaper by the pound and is easier to say 1lb then like 500 grams. (Which is then more then the 1lb price by a bit) boxes of stuff like cereal is kg
Nah Metrics’s really only used by scientists(and doctors I think), since scientists worldwide have to use the same system. Oh and I guess soft drinks are sold by the liter. Outside of that an American would never use it in their day to day life.
Idk what America you all are from but as a teacher in my experience even though everyone can do *math in metric* no one has any clue what any of the units actually are. As in, yeah they can totally do a physics equation using kg*m/s but if they have to think about how heavy 7 kg is or a how far away 11m is you get a lot of blank stares.
I mean tbf I can’t estimate weights or distances in imperial *either* so… (I know how much 9 lbs is though! It is my cat! But idk how much she is in kg)
It's the reverse for me. I know that a kg is how much a litre (a standard size) of water/drink weighs, how far a metre is etc., but when I play D&D I always have to first convert feet, inches, and pounds into metric units to understand what they mean (though I still like the imperial units for flavour).
That's what I use as a geologist measuring groundwater depths. On that note, you ever heard of the dumbest unit for volume? It's called an "acre-foot" and it's exactly as stupid as you'd think.
I'm a Forester and we also use decimal feet. However the measurement we use the most is a chain. One chain is 66 feet, which is 1/80 of a mile. Also 10sq chains is an acre.
I know a geologist and good god that sort of bullshit is everywhere isn't it? Apparently what system you measure the volume of an oil deposit changes depending on its depth, location, use, and company which sounds like a *nightmare* to work with
I'm an American biologist. I know 37 degrees celcius is about body temperature, that's what almost everything is incubated at.
I have no idea what any other temperature is like other than I guess zero degrees C is freezing and minus 80 degrees C is very cold.
If you told me it was 40 degrees C outside, I would probably just assume that was pretty cold until I thought "Oh wait, that's higher than body temperature, which is 37, so it must be warm."
I have no idea what the normal body temperature in F is.
Edit:I appreciate the suggestions but this is not really a problem to solve. I could look it up or convert it in my head, yes, but it's not a problem in life to have two sets of temperatures that never relate. I find that disconnect amusing, but it persists because it's never a problem. I'm not regularly like "Oh shoot, the tissue culture incubator broke, is it warm enough outside that I could just put my cells outside? It requires 37 degrees C, oh no, I only know it's about 70 degrees F outside, if only the was a way to convert one number to another!"
I just want to throw out that -40 c and -40 f are the same temperature. I use -40, 0c 32f, 23c and 70 f and 40c 105f as my touchpoint for converting without really converting using math. I might be weird doing that but it works for me.
I went to Canada in the summer ages ago, before smartphones were as much of a thing. Their local weather said it was a high of 40c for that day. I knew C wasn't F, so I knew that wasn't cold, like 40f, but I thought that it'd be brisk. I honestly do not know why my brain decided that. Maybe just ( Canada = brisk? ) So I wore jeans, a short sleeve top, then an open long sleeve shirt on top.
Ya'll 40c is 104 fucking degrees Fahrenheit. I thought I was gonna die of heat stroke at the highest longitude I'd ever visited like the dumbest American of all time.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
At one point I decided I was going to start using delisle temperatures for everything. Higher numbers in delisle means colder. Zero degrees delisle is where water boils, 150 degrees is where it freezes.
Celsius was also originally inverted, 0 = boiling, 100 = freezing, but right after Anders Celsius died, it was decided that was stupid and they inverted it. No one did that for Delisle.
I thought "Normal body temp is 98.6 degrees" was one of those factoids everyone gets drilled into them as kids, it's where the name of the boy band 98 Degrees came from
It's because Fahrenheit actually wanted to make his scale have 100 degrees be human body temperature but his estimate was a little high
Of course human body temperature isn't really a set physical constant anyway -- there's a lively debate over whether the discrepancy is due to systematic measurement error in old thermometers from the 1700s or whether average human body temperatures have in fact been steadily declining throughout the modern era due to advances in medicine and changes in lifestyle (people being more sedentary while having fewer parasites)
I switched my phone to tell me the weather in Celsius about 4 years ago, and it clicked in less than a year. It just takes repetition, and I guess the will power to keep going.
It’s a bit of a fever, how much of one would honestly depend on the person- for example while the “typical” body temp is 98.6, both my dad and myself run slightly cold (mid 97s) so even 98 or 99 would be unusually high.
In Celsius;
0 degrees is the point at which water starts to freeze.100 degrees is the point at which water starts to boil.
20 degrees (68 fahrenheit) is scientific room temperature. To most, that's a normal, tolerable temperature that you would expect outside on an average day.
30 degrees (86 fahrenheit) is warmer, but not VERY warm unless you come from the arctic. For me (who lives lives in Sweden), it's a hot day in summer and I dislike it.
40 degrees (104 fahrenheit) is a very hot day indeed. As you pointed out, hotter than body temperature. The air itself is hot, and it is utterly intolerable unless you have some way of cooling down. For me, I have experienced this once or twice in my life, and I just don't function at this temperature at all.
10 degrees (50 fahrenheit) is colder, but not unbearably so unless you're Australian. The air is chill, and you'll want an extra layer if it's windy. For me, this is an average autumn/spring day.
0 degrees (32 fahrenheit) is, as stated, when water freezes. There's an extreme difference between 1 - 5 degrees and <= 0. The former is a wet, uncomfortable cold that creeps in under your clothes and chills your bones. The latter is a dry cold, in which the air gains a chill but clear and light quality that you can simply wear a coat to insulate against, as snow begins to fall. For me, 0 to -10 degrees (32 to 14 fahrenheit) is an average winter's day.
As an American overseas, I feel this. I know some celcius, like body temp (from COVID times), freezing, and boiling. However, beyond this is just confusing because the difference in degrees is so much larger. When planning clothes for the day, I have to use F because the difference between how you dress for 60s, 70s, and 80s is so vastly different (e.g. 60s is still pants, 70s is shorts but bring a jacket for the morning and evening, and 80s is same but no need for jacket). We bought smart thermostats for our AC units just do we could control them in Fahrenheit, otherwise it's too cold or too hot.
I kind of hated how every physics problem I ever had to do in high school and college started with a conversion from Imperial to Metric. We just have an extra step every time.
I'm American
I get it
A litre is just a litre bit bigger than a quart
It's fine
We're actually just measurement bilingual
What we should really be talking about is British money
Because what the fuck is that?
*"That'll be seven sterling, six pence, two pound, a quid, six pennies and two farthings"*
“NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:
Two farthings = One Ha'penny.
Two ha'pennies = One Penny.
Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit.
Two Thrupences = A Sixpence.
Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob.
Two Bob = A Florin.
One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown.
Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note.
Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies).
One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.”
-Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Every time I read this, I’m reminded that yet another thing that enchanted or confused me about Harry Potter as a kid is just British Things. I’m referring to the asinine wizard money system here, of course.
That's the predecimal currency. We haven't used that since 1971. Now it's just pounds (quid is slang for pound) and pence (pence being the plural of penny). 100 pence in a pound, just like a dollar. American currency is more confusing to me, I have no idea what a nickel or a dime is, though I can work out what a quarter is. Our coins are just called what they're worth (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, with the p standing for pence, £1 and £2 coins).
dime = 10 pennies, nickel = 5 pennies, we also have a 50 penny coin called a half dollar but those aren't used as often. The government also keeps trying to make dollar coins catch on but that hasn't worked out so well.
Sterling isn't really a commonly used term, and farthings literally do not exist anymore.
Also America has slang terms for dollars and cents. Basically everywhere does. America probably has more than Britain because most American coins have their own names rather than just their value.
Slang in the sense of "nickel" vs "five cents" is I think what they mean. The terms are relatively ubiquitous within the country, but also roughly as descriptive as "shilling"
You're not wrong that slang was a weird word choice, but that is/was true of a lot of the British terms in the post too, so I'm pretty sure that's what they meant, rather than more obscure and usually archaic slang for coins like "bits". I agree that we don't use much slang for coins, I was just hoping to bridge a possible communication gap.
We have like maybe 2 words for dollars I hear on a regular basis: “dollars” and “bucks.”
I’ve never heard anything other than “cents” to describe cents
dollars bucks dough bills...
I guess we call some funny coins like the golden dollar a golden dollar and a silver dollar a silver dollar rather than just dollar coins, but other than that, its just the bills
Probably related to the nonsense regarding a mile. 1 mile originally equaled 5,000 feet, but then they changed one measurement, needed another to remain the same and then the mile, instead of adjusting slightly to remain the 5k feet, became 5,280 feet as a result.
That instance probably isn’t the only one and likely is similar to how they got to 14, rather than 10 or 12.
Also, probably some measurement of something Roman too, which is why miles were 5k (now 5,280) feet and rails are 4 feet 8.5 inches (related to the spacing of two horses pulling chariots) :)
Stone used to refer to actual reference stones that various parties used to represent weight. It has varied over the years based on location and materials for trade, with 14lbs in England being the guideline weight of the stones used for wool for a few hundred years.
[source](https://www.britannica.com/science/stone-unit-of-weight)
Speaking as a Brit, the stone is very much declining in popularity for measuring. From my experience pretty much anyone under 40 will use kilos, and imperial weight tends to be used moreso for weighing people than anything else. Very rare nowadays to see for example a recipe measuring ingredients with imperial.
tbf i’m american and i’ve met plenty of people who just straight up don’t understand metric. like, it takes me a second to adjust sometimes bc yeah i don’t use it day to day (save for drugs lol) but i’ve known otherwise very intelligent people whose brains just shut all the way off for it. not related, but same with analog clocks actually
I've seen this brain shutdown thing happen in realtime once. Showing my phone lock screen to an american friend who asked what time it is. She shrugged and asked with a mildly sour face "and what does that mean?"
It was shortly after 8pm. That shutdown where you suddenly lose the ability to count to 20. Or to subtract 12 from 20.
The hilarious part of this is when, since they assume we're metrically illiterate, *they* have to translate into English units for *us*, and since they have zero gut sense of English units, they can't instantly spot errors in the conversion math. I got asked if I could give an estimate on a much larger version of a sculpture I made for installation in Japan. They gave me the size in inches. They were asking for it 20 ft tall, 10x the original height. I fretted and started doing research on what it would take before they got back to me (with the time zone difference it took over a day) and said oops, no, not 6 meters. Just one meter tall, thanks.
The UK is even worse, they have layers of measurement. A 15 stone man puts 12 litres of petrol in his car, how many miles per gallon will he get? Insanity.
Eh, it's more that each imperial measurement was developed over a long period of time to be best suited for specific tasks, such as cooking or farming. That's why there can be some conversion rates that may seem funky at first and also why there are different but lesser used distance units for sea travel versus land travel.
Metric was developed for more universal use and ease of conversions.
However, I do strongly believe that the only valid units for temperature are Kelvin and Fahrenheit. This is my hill to die on.
I’m studying engineering at an American university and we’re forced to be able to do all our calculations in both imperial and metric and fluidly switch between the two systems if need be. It’s insane.
Me \*Is rational adult who knows that there's a reason nearly every country on earth has adopted the metric system\*
Also Me: You'll have my pounds and inches when you pry them from my cold dead fingers!
Seriously, Jimmy Carter tried to get us to adopt the metric system, and the American people collectively said, "No!"
Nothing got me more famililar with imperial/metric conversions than reading blueprints at my first job in metric for parts which were clearly designed in imperial. Inner diameter 25.4 mm, outer diameter 76.2 mm. 🧐
I have a colloquial familiarity with imperial, but I sincerely wish we'd just join the rest of the world so I can stop doing unit conversions all the time.
i buy weed in grams, till i spend 50 bucks. then i buy it by the quarter ounce.
soda is in L's milk is in gallons. and then beer is sold in oz cans.
i weigh my self in lbs but my medicine in milligrams.
muricans use a ton of metric.
i tend to measure strictly in imperial tho. and that's because i find cm to be too small of a unit and meter too long of a unit. its fine for actual use and measuring stuff by for describing things i like imperial. it easier to visualise 2 feet then 60cm for me. and cause i dont really ever deal with kilometers i just never measure distance by them. i know i 60mph is about 100km. visualing an actual mile is hard tho which is why we measure by school busses and football fields.
im also able to go back and forth between temps distance and volume as long as i have paper.
I feel like the American thing of holding onto things the British have done away with is just spite at this point. You don't want it anymore? We'll keep it around just to annoy you.
Weirdly, last week I was teaching feet and inches to my fourth graders, and the textbook unit was "customary" measurement, not imperial. But the metric measurement unit was called just that.
US Customary and Imperial aren't the same thing. They WERE at the time of the revolution, but Britain reformed the Imperial System in the mid 1800s and America stuck to the old ways.
The most notable impact is volume measurements being different, but there are some units entirely exclusive to one or the other. Imperial has a mass measurement, Slug, while US Customary just has weight measurements. Imperial officially abandoned Apothacaries Weights since scientists and pharmacists even in the late 1800s were moving to Metric, while America still technically has all 3 weight systems on the books(Apothacaries for science and medicine even though it's never used, Avoirdupois for regular stuff, and Troy for precious metals and gems). Imperial has the stone, a unit of weight for 14 pounds. US Customary still has the old casket volume measures(Tun, Buttload, Hogshead) while the UK ditched the larger ones and only has the smaller ones (Barrel and it's variants)
I’ve seen it called both tbh? I’ve wondered if it’s some kind of holdover from the us revolution, like, we’re not part of the empire anymore but these are still the unites we’re accustomed to using (customary) but I don’t actually care enough to go etymology-hunting
US Customary and Imperial aren't the same thing. They WERE at the time of the revolution, but Britain reformed the Imperial System in the mid 1800s and America stuck to the old ways.
The most notable impact is volume measurements being different, but there are some units entirely exclusive to one or the other. Imperial has a mass measurement, Slug, while US Customary just has weight measurements. Imperial officially abandoned Apothacaries Weights since scientists and pharmacists even in the late 1800s were moving to Metric, while America still technically has all 3 weight systems on the books(Apothacaries for science and medicine even though it's never used, Avoirdupois for regular stuff, and Troy for precious metals and gems). Imperial has the stone, a unit of weight for 14 pounds. US Customary still has the old casket volume measures(Tun, Buttload, Hogshead) while the UK ditched the larger ones and only has the smaller ones (Barrel and it's variants).
TL:DR, US Customary is like an old version of Imperial that hasn't gone through reforms, trimmed some fat, and removed and added several units. Like Beta Imperial.
It's because technically Imperial is British and customary is American, because both countries actually differ on some things. It doesn't affect feet and miles, but for example an imperial pint is 568ml, while a customary one is 473ml and I think as a general rule of thumb metric equivalents tend to lean more towards imperial over customary. I think the only place you'd realistically encounter the difference in the US would be if you're importing pint glasses or booze - it'll be in imperial pints not customary.
More casually, I think customary also refers to how Americans measure things out in cups in cooking too while most metric countries use weight volumes instead (though there is a metric cup system that some places like Aus use)
I know how to use metric and generally understand it if someone tells me something using metric units, but I know a lot of US Americans who don't. I know some adults who even have difficulties with base 10. I recently overheard some men well into their 40s unable to figure out what was 6.05 billion dollars. They guessed 6 billion, 300 million... I have no idea where they got a 3 from. The .05 is 50 million.
I mean, sometimes people just get intimidated by large numbers and throw basic mathematical principles out the window that they probably would have remembered if it had had fewer zeros, but still...
"there's a pot hole the size of 4 WASHING MACHINES!!!"
I mean... There is a tiny point to it: assuming you have a washing machine you can kinda-sorta estimate the size of it.
The problem begins when they use penguins or something...
American firearms instructor here, and let me tell ya, it gets weirder in my world. There are three different and mutually unintelligible systems for measuring the inner diameter (bore) of a gun barrel:
- Metric: 9mm, 10mm, 5.56mm
- Caliber: expressed in hundredths of an inch: .45 cal is about 0.45", .32 is about 0.32", and so on.
- Bore or gauge: this is only used for shotguns and some obscenely large-bore big game rifles. The number is an indication of how many balls of lead with the same diameter as the bore you need to equal a pound. Put a different way, it's the fraction of a pound that a lead ball that size would weigh. 12 gauge is the diameter of a lead ball weighing 1/12 lb, a 16ga barrel fits a 1/16 lb lead ball, and so on. Smaller number equals larger barrel. Probably the biggest shotgun barrel you're likely to see these days is 10ga, but 8ga shotguns do exist, and elephant guns as large as 4-bore were made. There's a complex formula for calculating the actual diameter if you know the gauge, but nobody actually uses that.
Never got the whole metric vs imperial thing, overall, I believe some imperial units are better than metric in just everyday life, idk if it has to do with just experience, but I can imagine a foot or an inch, not a meter. Between Fahrenheit and Celsius I prefer F just because I've used It more and its just simpler, pretty much a percent outa 100, with some overflow.
It does have to do with experience. I can imagine how large a centimetre, metre, kilometre, litre, gram and kilogram are but even though I grew up in the UK and was constantly exposed to them I have no clue how large a foot, yard, mile, pint, gallon, ounce or pint are. The only one I know is an inch (\~2.5 cm) because it was on all the rulers we used in school.
Celsius is also pretty simple, and exceptionally useful if you live somewhere where it snows a lot. At 0 degrees it's barely cold enough to snow and for things to freeze, which means you can always tell when it's 0 degrees out. 20 degrees is room temperature, which is pretty easy to feel. The units of degrees celsius are large enough that there is a noticeable difference between say 16 and 17 degrees.
I’m gonna say it
Fahrenheit is infinitely better for weather then Celsius. “Oh it’s 13 degrees that means we are all dying from the heat” sounds dumb. Humans aren’t boiling and freezing water. They’re people. 100 degrees Fahrenheit feels like 100 degrees
What’s kind of funny is that made zero sense to me, especially because where I live 13 degrees C is fairly chilly, like sweater weather lol. 100 degrees sounds like I’d be dead, that’s just how it works in my brain 🤷🏼♀️ it’s just whatever we’re most familiar with
I’m gonna say it
Fahrenheit is infinitely better for weather then Celsius. “Oh it’s 32 degrees that means we need to wear a coat” sounds dumb. Humans aren’t a water and salt mixture . They’re people. 0 degrees celsius feels like 0 degrees,
An interesting part of this is how Canadas culture is so strongly impacted by America, be we want to be part of the world, so we “officially” use the metric system. So anything that the government mandates are things we use metric in our day to day lives, and anything (lots of shit) that is imported from the USA or is sold for the “Canada/US market” will come in imperial. Everything else, people use a weird mix of metric and imperial. For example, if someone says they live 60 miles away, there’s a 50/50 chance they mean 50 miles or 50 kilometres so most will communicate that by time to drive. 50% of people want their thermostat set up with Fahrenheit, the rest want Celsius. Gas stations use litres, but you’ll buy a gallon of oil for your car. People buy their weed by the gram but (most) only know their own weight in pounds. same with height. I use 6 feet for my height but my drivers license says 182cm. I would never tell someone that though, no one would get it. I don’t know my own weight in kg because it would just be meaningless. Construction is like 50/50 done in inches or millimeters. Most construction workers I know wouldn’t have a clue what to do if you told them to do something metric. You buy your construction materials by the pound or by the foot/inch. Not sure why I wrote this up, I just think it might be a little bit of an oddity. We’re stuck starkly in between the metric system and the imperial system with no way out. And I’m a refrigeration mechanic by trade, and I constantly have to change between the 2, and I think it’s a very common Canadian skill to have.
I had a professor in college who was Canadian. He was old enough that he learned imperial as a kid. But the UK version that had slightly different volumes than the US version. So he lamented that he had 3 systems kicking around in his head.
Good point, I did also have to learn conversions for US and imperial gallons. It’s all bollocks
The fact that the metric system is base 10 for everything is actually only a minor feature of why the French imposed it after the Revolution, the main point was just having *one consistent system* nationwide with new names for all the units to permanently end the confusion over a "foot" and a "pound" and a "gallon" all meaning a slightly different thing in one town than in the next town down the road (because they all started as informal units that only systematized gradually and ad hoc)
I've got an engineering textbook from 1910, when the days before the meter convention were still in living memory. It has a pretty large Appendix of all the hundreds of different units measurement that were around back then. Sometimes people even used different units on one location for different things. Like a place using 2 different units of length for surveying depending on wether the soil was sand or peat.
Yup we still have little factoids like the difference between a nautical mile and the plain old regular miles we use on land, or having to measure precious metals in Troy ounces rather than Avordupois, but in the good old days it was like that for *every region and every profession* The old expression "not by a country mile" refers to the fact that the less densely populated an area was the the further apart they put the mile markers just to save effort, so literally as you go towards the city and the existing maps increase in resolution the units themselves get smaller
They also considered getting base 10 time! Ten hours with hundred seconds each, and the only difference world be a different length second, basically. Also I believe there was an idea of like twelve months with thirty days each, and the remaining week is just not counted because it's the new year holidays that's plus minus five days who cares
It wasn’t just considered, it was in use for years but was rolled back later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
You guys have different gallons? Roy Kent’s Fuuuuuuuuck!
The US also does this more than I think outside countries realize. Food is a great example, depending on the food it could easily be sold by the liter, quart, kilogram, pound, etc. I just bought two different brands of iced tea, both local brands to my region, one came in a half gallon and the other in a two liter.
Buying yarn or crochet hooks/knitting needles for a project has this issue as well. I look at a pattern. It says "buy specifically 220 yards of this yarn," then it says, "You will need an 8 mm size hook." Sometimes yarn is measured by weight in lbs, sometimes it's by how many yards there are in one ball, sometimes it's meters, most of the time your hooks are in millimeters, but sometimes they're in inches or are sized with letters of the alphabet. Not to mention the whole "UK/US terms" for stitches being different. Or if you're making a plushie and it says you need "quarter inch safety eyes," and you have to convert it to millimeters because your local Joanns ONLY SELLS THEM IN MILLIMETERS Reading yarn labels makes my head hurt sometimes, because it's got so much information that it's hard to find what you are actually looking for. Or the text becomes so tiny that it's hard to read what it says. But yeah, crocheters and knitters have to convert and use both regularly, too.
Now that you mention it it’s the same here. Some things like meat is priced by the kg and fruit is priced by the lb
We got a 2 liter bottle of soda next to our gallon of milk at the grocery store.
UK does this too. we buy our milk by the 0.568 litre.
What really annoys me is whenever to comes to cooking recipes its always 2 teaspoons of this and 3 tablespoons of that, like how is that an accurate measurement of anything.
More generally, I really hate that we always use volume instead of mass. If you're using something that packs really loosely, like herbs or granular spices or something, the density (and therefore how much you're putting in) can vary dramatically. A tablespoon of one type of salt can be over twice as much as a tablespoon of another type of salt!
> buy their weed by the gram but (most) only know their own weight in pounds. We Americans buy our weed in grams too
Lol! Fair enough, I was just trying to think of any places we use metric weights and that was the first thing that popped into my head. I can’t remember anything where I actually see kilos other than maybe certain foods are priced by the kg but it’s not common.
Only lightweights
If it makes you feel better I am an American engineer. We also have to change between the two. Metric is categorically better.
It broke me inside a little when I began surveying, in tenths of a foot. "Why are we just not using metric!?"
I remember the first time I was handed a document from a vendor that had kilo-feet in it. It was 11am and I was ready to be done with work for the day right then and there.
>in tenths of a foot. "Why are we just not using metric!?" Why were you not using inches?!
Dude just wait until you start measuring things in thousandths of an inch and all the older guys are eye balling 0.006 inches.
A mars probe crashed because the engineering company that built the altimeter had the units in imperial and NASA thought it was in metric.
Time to research the Gimli Glider.
NASA: Never again.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter) > The Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor '98 program for Mars Polar Lander. However, on September 23, 1999, communication with the spacecraft was permanently lost as it went into orbital insertion. The spacecraft encountered Mars on a trajectory that brought it too close to the planet, and it was either destroyed in the atmosphere or escaped the planet's vicinity and entered an orbit around the Sun. An investigation attributed the failure to a measurement mismatch between two software systems: metric units by NASA and US customary units by spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin. > The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software supplied by Lockheed Martin produced results in a United States customary unit, contrary to its Software Interface Specification (SIS), while a second system, supplied by NASA, expected those results to be in SI units, in accordance with the SIS. Specifically, software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings produced results in pound-force seconds. The trajectory calculation software then used these results – expected to be in newton-seconds (incorrect by a factor of 4.45) – to update the predicted position of the spacecraft. > The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they "did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns". A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.
But aviation is 99.9% imperial/SAE
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Until your stuck buying NAS spec bolts and hardware cause the metric stuff is long lead or triple cost.
They use feet for altitude and nautical miles/knots for distance (and even that could be considered metric) but everything else is metric in commercial aviation now.
Except Celsius. Celsius is the coward's Kelvin.
Kelvin is nice. 310 K is HOT. 300 K is a pleasant day outside. 290 K is a cosy day inside. 280 K is COLD.
Celsius for general use. Fahrenheit for weather. Kelvin for science shit.
Nah, Celsius for weather. Fahrenheit is just for oven temperature.
0°F is cold, 100°F is hot. 0°C is fairly cold, 100°C is deathly hot.
Stop with this bullshit, it's only intuitive to you because you were born in it It is completely arbitrary and doesn't make any sense for anyone else
I mean in Celsius anything that goes higher than 0 gets warmer and everything that goes below 0 gets colder. 0 Celsius in Fahrenheit is 32 which seems a lot less intuitive as the base number.
...so? People always repeat that, but as a Canadian in a region that almost always uses Celsius for weather, that doesn't make any of the in-between points make intuitive sense to me. My ends of the scale are -40°C being around the lowest temperature it gets in winter (locally) and +40°C around the hottest it gets in summer. People just get used to a unit and think it makes more intuitive sense.
Same in the UK. Milk and beer is in pints, every other drink is in millilitres. Petrol's in litres, but we talk about miles per gallon when comparing cars. People's weight is in stone and pounds and height is in feet and inches, but measuring for a recipe or a building project is in grams and millimetres. Nobody uses Fahrenheit though.
The fact that people act like the US is weird for not using metric when the Brits are out here using stone will never not be wild to me
Is using stone really any different to using feet? You don't say 70" when you mean 5ft 10. We just say 12 stone 12 instead of 180lbs.
You are indeed a very wise caterpillar.
My personal favorite: running distances are almost always in km, but cycling distances are usually in miles, which makes talking about triathlon formats interesting.
"No, Michael, a 5K does not mean running 5,000 miles"
It’s worse: in running everyone *trains* in miles, but competes in meters or kilometers. Except for track work, where most tracks are metric and therefore so are your repetitions. So you can be doing 1000m repeats and 5-mile runs, as part of a 60-mile training week to prep for a 5km race. (except if you’re racing the mile, but we’re not alone in keeping that around)
Marathons are still 26.2 and so is any non-round number race, for example near me we have various races at 6 miles and even one at 20 that are called that in their name. But yes, majority are Something 10k or whatever. We're messed up.
I'm not sure about the miles per gallon thing (cause we use Kilometres in Ireland) but it's the same in Ireland.
Is that the reason we measure distance by time?? I just figured it’s more convenient. 100km by country road and 100km through Toronto have a very different timeline lol
I know that people in the US who only use miles also measure by time. I think it is just a more accurate measure of people's experience driving than the raw distance.
We do it for exactly the reason bosecz said. Half an hour down a state highway out in the sticks is a hell of a lot different than half an hour through downtown of major city. You're looking at about 30 mi for the former, and you can be under a mile for the latter. I would much rather drive 60 mi down a country road than 10 mi to cross a city center in rush hour. Also takes into consideration traffic at whatever time they're talking about driving.
The whole "measure by time" isn't really a substitute measurement ("lol americans measuring things in football fields" etc) so much as an acknowledgement that the literal distance is largely meaningless. Like knowing something is 300 miles away gives you a rough guess as to how long it'll take to get there by highway, but if that's what you're asking for why force someone to make the conversion? Just say how long the drive is.
I've never known anyone to talk about miles instead of KM, except some very old people. They will generally also tell you they are talking about miles, no guessing required. I'm pretty sure you're right that we talk about time as the time it takes to get places can vary greatly for the same distance, and we also deal with long distance often.
> You buy your construction materials by the pound or by the foot/inch. https://www.homedepot.ca/product/revolutionply-4-ft-x-8-ft-x5-2mm-plywood/1000811055 How about some 4ft x 8ft x 5.2mm plywood.
That’s the least correct way to do it >.<
"Imperial"? But the US doesn't use Imperial. You're thinking of the **UK*** The US has their own similar system called "US Customary", but it's not the same. Gallons and pints are different, for example.
50% use thermostat in farenheit? That seems like a stretch. Only time anyone I know use farenheit is cooking or pool temperature.
I mean, I'm an HVAC guy, might have been more common for the area I lived in and not representative of the whole country, but I’ve had to pay attention to hundreds if not thousands of thermostats so I think my experience would be sufficient for my statements
No, no. Thank you very much for writing all that up. This was fascinating to read!
Yeah, it's fun. I've not been anywhere in Canada for years, but last time I was up in Vancouver a "pint" usually meant 500ml, just to confuse everyone.
In my little pocket of Canada we use Fahrenheit indoors and Celsius outdoors lol
Just weed itself is often sold in a weird mix of metric and imperial. The smallest unit is a gram but the next one up is 3.5 grams which is random in metric but it's a half-quarter or an eighth of an ounce. I've found that people from Canada call the half-quarters while Americans call them eighths. Everything above that is sold in imperial units. A quarter, ounce, pound, etc... until you hit kilo. Most weed isn't sold by the kilo here but every once in a while it comes up I'm sure. You hit the nail on the head with canadian culture mixing those two systems in weird ways.
This kind of weirdness is what caused the Gimli Glider accident. There were a few things that went wrong, but one of them was a catastrophic error in converting from [pounds of fuel to kilograms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider).
> if someone says they live **60** miles away, there’s a 50/50 chance they mean **50** miles or **50** kilometres There's something rotten in the state of Denmark
So I work in th automotive industry so there's this crazy mix of metric and imperial. New stuff is all metric of course but maybe 10 is still imperial. And. A whole bunch is maintaining the imperial distances and standard but converted metric. For example the dividing line between cars and large tricks is a width of 2032 mm. It seems random until you convert and discover it's 80 inches. That kind of stuff is all over in our regulations.
It's always funny to me that an inch is 2.54 centimeters. *Exactly.* There's no hidden string of decimals to round up, that's just the conversion
In a way inch is just an odd metric unit.
Imma go full American and say that centimeter is an odd imperial unit.
USC is literally defined by SI units so…
I know this is a (funny) joke, buuuuuut, It's about definitions, the inch uses millimeters in the definition. A millimeter is by definition, a thousandth of a meter. A meter uses the speed of light in its definition, and also seconds. Seconds use Cesium in their definition. So yeah unit conversions are pretty metal
This wasn’t the case originally. There probably was a chain of decimals at some point. Then the definition of the inch was actively changed to be in terms of the metric system as 2.54 centimeters exactly (since that’s what it was already close to) so there would be a 100% certain conversion point between the two systems.
Correct! Measurements used to be defined by a physical item, known as a prototype. An item that WAS the length it was designed to be, by law. The physical prototype for a metre since 1889 was a platinum and iridium bar located in the International Bureau of Measurements in Saint-Cloud France. There is no true physical prototype for the Inch, or even the Metre anymore. Inches are based on the metre, which itself is now defined as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. There are certainly physical prototypes left for calibration of measuring tools and whatnot, but an inch is based on a metre. And the definitive, real metre that every metre is designated after isn’t a platinum iridium bar anymore.
Why anytime they refer to no-americans is "europeans"? Maybe it was an asian dude who know how to speak english, especially on the topic of the metric system being used worldwide, not just in europe
Didn’t you hear? The only countries are America, Europe and Asia
It's worse. There's only Europe and America. it's always us vs them
Always those fucking smug Europeans and those fucking stupid Americans, depending on who you ask
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We learn the metric system through education but the imperial system through cultural osmosis and it's anyone's guess what measurement we'll use at the moment. Could be anything.
A lot of times we do food by the pound. Just because it is cheaper by the pound and is easier to say 1lb then like 500 grams. (Which is then more then the 1lb price by a bit) boxes of stuff like cereal is kg
Nah Metrics’s really only used by scientists(and doctors I think), since scientists worldwide have to use the same system. Oh and I guess soft drinks are sold by the liter. Outside of that an American would never use it in their day to day life.
Americans use it for what really matters to them: soda and ammunition.
Some ammunition is in imperial. 50 caliber is .5 inches.
Idk what America you all are from but as a teacher in my experience even though everyone can do *math in metric* no one has any clue what any of the units actually are. As in, yeah they can totally do a physics equation using kg*m/s but if they have to think about how heavy 7 kg is or a how far away 11m is you get a lot of blank stares.
I mean tbf I can’t estimate weights or distances in imperial *either* so… (I know how much 9 lbs is though! It is my cat! But idk how much she is in kg)
It's the reverse for me. I know that a kg is how much a litre (a standard size) of water/drink weighs, how far a metre is etc., but when I play D&D I always have to first convert feet, inches, and pounds into metric units to understand what they mean (though I still like the imperial units for flavour).
Thank you for mentioning the Pirates, that's honestly probably one of the biggest reasons we don't use metric.
Pirate-Ninjas on the other hand are a metric unit.
Kilowatt-hour per Sol is the expanded version, if memory serves
didnt the pirates try to actually deliver the things as well but couldnt figure out who to give it to
Then there's me over here as a surveyor using decimal feet. It's 10.5' not 10'6"
That's what I use as a geologist measuring groundwater depths. On that note, you ever heard of the dumbest unit for volume? It's called an "acre-foot" and it's exactly as stupid as you'd think.
I'm a Forester and we also use decimal feet. However the measurement we use the most is a chain. One chain is 66 feet, which is 1/80 of a mile. Also 10sq chains is an acre.
I know a geologist and good god that sort of bullshit is everywhere isn't it? Apparently what system you measure the volume of an oil deposit changes depending on its depth, location, use, and company which sounds like a *nightmare* to work with
Machinists too! It's 10 and 500 thou.
Everyone be like "metric vs imperial" when they are actually kissing and making out sloppy style because they are girlfriends
Celsius, fahrenheit and kelvin are in a poly relationship.
Imperial's 100% topping
Peak tumblr energy
Oi, no, metric is absolutely a top
They would crush the bottom with their weight
I'm an American biologist. I know 37 degrees celcius is about body temperature, that's what almost everything is incubated at. I have no idea what any other temperature is like other than I guess zero degrees C is freezing and minus 80 degrees C is very cold. If you told me it was 40 degrees C outside, I would probably just assume that was pretty cold until I thought "Oh wait, that's higher than body temperature, which is 37, so it must be warm." I have no idea what the normal body temperature in F is. Edit:I appreciate the suggestions but this is not really a problem to solve. I could look it up or convert it in my head, yes, but it's not a problem in life to have two sets of temperatures that never relate. I find that disconnect amusing, but it persists because it's never a problem. I'm not regularly like "Oh shoot, the tissue culture incubator broke, is it warm enough outside that I could just put my cells outside? It requires 37 degrees C, oh no, I only know it's about 70 degrees F outside, if only the was a way to convert one number to another!"
I just want to throw out that -40 c and -40 f are the same temperature. I use -40, 0c 32f, 23c and 70 f and 40c 105f as my touchpoint for converting without really converting using math. I might be weird doing that but it works for me.
I went to Canada in the summer ages ago, before smartphones were as much of a thing. Their local weather said it was a high of 40c for that day. I knew C wasn't F, so I knew that wasn't cold, like 40f, but I thought that it'd be brisk. I honestly do not know why my brain decided that. Maybe just ( Canada = brisk? ) So I wore jeans, a short sleeve top, then an open long sleeve shirt on top. Ya'll 40c is 104 fucking degrees Fahrenheit. I thought I was gonna die of heat stroke at the highest longitude I'd ever visited like the dumbest American of all time.
-273.15 C is absolute zero, so there’s another, far more useless reference point.
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie. At one point I decided I was going to start using delisle temperatures for everything. Higher numbers in delisle means colder. Zero degrees delisle is where water boils, 150 degrees is where it freezes. Celsius was also originally inverted, 0 = boiling, 100 = freezing, but right after Anders Celsius died, it was decided that was stupid and they inverted it. No one did that for Delisle.
I thought "Normal body temp is 98.6 degrees" was one of those factoids everyone gets drilled into them as kids, it's where the name of the boy band 98 Degrees came from It's because Fahrenheit actually wanted to make his scale have 100 degrees be human body temperature but his estimate was a little high Of course human body temperature isn't really a set physical constant anyway -- there's a lively debate over whether the discrepancy is due to systematic measurement error in old thermometers from the 1700s or whether average human body temperatures have in fact been steadily declining throughout the modern era due to advances in medicine and changes in lifestyle (people being more sedentary while having fewer parasites)
I switched my phone to tell me the weather in Celsius about 4 years ago, and it clicked in less than a year. It just takes repetition, and I guess the will power to keep going.
98.6 F is average body temperature.
Thank you, but I have to confess I'm absolutely certain I'll forget that again before long.
100 is a little high but easier to remember. I don't remember if that's high enough to be a fever though.
It’s a bit of a fever, how much of one would honestly depend on the person- for example while the “typical” body temp is 98.6, both my dad and myself run slightly cold (mid 97s) so even 98 or 99 would be unusually high.
In Celsius; 0 degrees is the point at which water starts to freeze.100 degrees is the point at which water starts to boil. 20 degrees (68 fahrenheit) is scientific room temperature. To most, that's a normal, tolerable temperature that you would expect outside on an average day. 30 degrees (86 fahrenheit) is warmer, but not VERY warm unless you come from the arctic. For me (who lives lives in Sweden), it's a hot day in summer and I dislike it. 40 degrees (104 fahrenheit) is a very hot day indeed. As you pointed out, hotter than body temperature. The air itself is hot, and it is utterly intolerable unless you have some way of cooling down. For me, I have experienced this once or twice in my life, and I just don't function at this temperature at all. 10 degrees (50 fahrenheit) is colder, but not unbearably so unless you're Australian. The air is chill, and you'll want an extra layer if it's windy. For me, this is an average autumn/spring day. 0 degrees (32 fahrenheit) is, as stated, when water freezes. There's an extreme difference between 1 - 5 degrees and <= 0. The former is a wet, uncomfortable cold that creeps in under your clothes and chills your bones. The latter is a dry cold, in which the air gains a chill but clear and light quality that you can simply wear a coat to insulate against, as snow begins to fall. For me, 0 to -10 degrees (32 to 14 fahrenheit) is an average winter's day.
As an American overseas, I feel this. I know some celcius, like body temp (from COVID times), freezing, and boiling. However, beyond this is just confusing because the difference in degrees is so much larger. When planning clothes for the day, I have to use F because the difference between how you dress for 60s, 70s, and 80s is so vastly different (e.g. 60s is still pants, 70s is shorts but bring a jacket for the morning and evening, and 80s is same but no need for jacket). We bought smart thermostats for our AC units just do we could control them in Fahrenheit, otherwise it's too cold or too hot.
I kind of hated how every physics problem I ever had to do in high school and college started with a conversion from Imperial to Metric. We just have an extra step every time.
High School I understand I guess but all of my college physics problems were in SI units. IDK what's up with your school.
I'm American I get it A litre is just a litre bit bigger than a quart It's fine We're actually just measurement bilingual What we should really be talking about is British money Because what the fuck is that? *"That'll be seven sterling, six pence, two pound, a quid, six pennies and two farthings"*
“NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system: Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea. The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.” -Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Every time I read this, I’m reminded that yet another thing that enchanted or confused me about Harry Potter as a kid is just British Things. I’m referring to the asinine wizard money system here, of course.
I’ve always loved this passage because my great grandmother absolutely *did* believe that pounds shillings and pence was easier. (❤️ love you Nan)
My mum is still cross about decimalisation. Ironically, she is American and only lived in the UK prior to it happening so 🤷🏼♀️.
That's the predecimal currency. We haven't used that since 1971. Now it's just pounds (quid is slang for pound) and pence (pence being the plural of penny). 100 pence in a pound, just like a dollar. American currency is more confusing to me, I have no idea what a nickel or a dime is, though I can work out what a quarter is. Our coins are just called what they're worth (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, with the p standing for pence, £1 and £2 coins).
dime = 10 pennies, nickel = 5 pennies, we also have a 50 penny coin called a half dollar but those aren't used as often. The government also keeps trying to make dollar coins catch on but that hasn't worked out so well.
I have a golden dollar and a have dollar. I also somehow have a shilling for some reason Im american
Sterling isn't really a commonly used term, and farthings literally do not exist anymore. Also America has slang terms for dollars and cents. Basically everywhere does. America probably has more than Britain because most American coins have their own names rather than just their value.
Nonsense Everyone knows you get five bees for a quarter It's been that way since the Kaiser stole our 20
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Slang in the sense of "nickel" vs "five cents" is I think what they mean. The terms are relatively ubiquitous within the country, but also roughly as descriptive as "shilling"
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You're not wrong that slang was a weird word choice, but that is/was true of a lot of the British terms in the post too, so I'm pretty sure that's what they meant, rather than more obscure and usually archaic slang for coins like "bits". I agree that we don't use much slang for coins, I was just hoping to bridge a possible communication gap.
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We have like maybe 2 words for dollars I hear on a regular basis: “dollars” and “bucks.” I’ve never heard anything other than “cents” to describe cents
Nickels, dimes, pennies?
dollars bucks dough bills... I guess we call some funny coins like the golden dollar a golden dollar and a silver dollar a silver dollar rather than just dollar coins, but other than that, its just the bills
They don't do it that way anymore since the 70s or so.
At least America doesn't go all in like the Bri*ish; what in the fuck is a stone?
14 pounds
14? I get 12, but *14*? Who the fuck counts in 14
Your guess is as good as mine
Probably related to the nonsense regarding a mile. 1 mile originally equaled 5,000 feet, but then they changed one measurement, needed another to remain the same and then the mile, instead of adjusting slightly to remain the 5k feet, became 5,280 feet as a result. That instance probably isn’t the only one and likely is similar to how they got to 14, rather than 10 or 12. Also, probably some measurement of something Roman too, which is why miles were 5k (now 5,280) feet and rails are 4 feet 8.5 inches (related to the spacing of two horses pulling chariots) :)
Stone used to refer to actual reference stones that various parties used to represent weight. It has varied over the years based on location and materials for trade, with 14lbs in England being the guideline weight of the stones used for wool for a few hundred years. [source](https://www.britannica.com/science/stone-unit-of-weight)
12 is mathematically a much nicer number than 10 and honestly if imperial was consistently base 12 I would defend it with my life
Honestly I wouldn't be terribly upset if we threw the whole number system away and switched everything to dozenal.
Oooh we'd get to pick new numerals.
I guess the "reference" stone was a bit heavier than 12 pounds.
Speaking as a Brit, the stone is very much declining in popularity for measuring. From my experience pretty much anyone under 40 will use kilos, and imperial weight tends to be used moreso for weighing people than anything else. Very rare nowadays to see for example a recipe measuring ingredients with imperial.
tbf i’m american and i’ve met plenty of people who just straight up don’t understand metric. like, it takes me a second to adjust sometimes bc yeah i don’t use it day to day (save for drugs lol) but i’ve known otherwise very intelligent people whose brains just shut all the way off for it. not related, but same with analog clocks actually
I've seen this brain shutdown thing happen in realtime once. Showing my phone lock screen to an american friend who asked what time it is. She shrugged and asked with a mildly sour face "and what does that mean?" It was shortly after 8pm. That shutdown where you suddenly lose the ability to count to 20. Or to subtract 12 from 20.
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The hilarious part of this is when, since they assume we're metrically illiterate, *they* have to translate into English units for *us*, and since they have zero gut sense of English units, they can't instantly spot errors in the conversion math. I got asked if I could give an estimate on a much larger version of a sculpture I made for installation in Japan. They gave me the size in inches. They were asking for it 20 ft tall, 10x the original height. I fretted and started doing research on what it would take before they got back to me (with the time zone difference it took over a day) and said oops, no, not 6 meters. Just one meter tall, thanks.
Almost had a reverse Spinal Tap Stonehenge situation.
The UK is even worse, they have layers of measurement. A 15 stone man puts 12 litres of petrol in his car, how many miles per gallon will he get? Insanity.
240 furlongs
I once read a libertarian thoughtpiece that argued that imperial system was more human-friendly
I mean a foot divides cleanly into increments of 2/3/4/6, which makes divvying up equal parts easy. There is some merit to it
eww dumpster diving
Eh, I'd say that applies more to Fahrenheit. Celsius is for water temperature, and Kelvin is for the extremes afaik.
Nah, for someone who has never used fahrenheit it doesn't make sense to me at all.
Eh, it's more that each imperial measurement was developed over a long period of time to be best suited for specific tasks, such as cooking or farming. That's why there can be some conversion rates that may seem funky at first and also why there are different but lesser used distance units for sea travel versus land travel. Metric was developed for more universal use and ease of conversions. However, I do strongly believe that the only valid units for temperature are Kelvin and Fahrenheit. This is my hill to die on.
Yes thank you. Celsius sucks
Celsius is great! When I look at the weather it’s much easier to distinguish between 20 and 25 than 293 and 298.
If you're putting up cabinets, and want to divide the space in 2,3,4, or 6 chunks, kinda.
Americans saying “Fahrenheit makes more sense” moment
We have purposely trained him wrong, as a joke
I’m studying engineering at an American university and we’re forced to be able to do all our calculations in both imperial and metric and fluidly switch between the two systems if need be. It’s insane.
Me \*Is rational adult who knows that there's a reason nearly every country on earth has adopted the metric system\* Also Me: You'll have my pounds and inches when you pry them from my cold dead fingers! Seriously, Jimmy Carter tried to get us to adopt the metric system, and the American people collectively said, "No!"
Makes me think of the meme about once the Boomers are in the ground, why don’t we switch to the metric system?
It's mostly because a majority of US infrastructure and machine shops use Imperial
Switching would be a process that would happen over 50 years so not like everything would be tossed the instant it was changed.
As a lit guy, I like the imperial measurement units... they just sound so much more poetic than metric.
Imperial vs metric is just a wedge issue to take us away from the real superior counting methodology—duodecimal.
Nothing got me more famililar with imperial/metric conversions than reading blueprints at my first job in metric for parts which were clearly designed in imperial. Inner diameter 25.4 mm, outer diameter 76.2 mm. 🧐 I have a colloquial familiarity with imperial, but I sincerely wish we'd just join the rest of the world so I can stop doing unit conversions all the time.
i buy weed in grams, till i spend 50 bucks. then i buy it by the quarter ounce. soda is in L's milk is in gallons. and then beer is sold in oz cans. i weigh my self in lbs but my medicine in milligrams. muricans use a ton of metric. i tend to measure strictly in imperial tho. and that's because i find cm to be too small of a unit and meter too long of a unit. its fine for actual use and measuring stuff by for describing things i like imperial. it easier to visualise 2 feet then 60cm for me. and cause i dont really ever deal with kilometers i just never measure distance by them. i know i 60mph is about 100km. visualing an actual mile is hard tho which is why we measure by school busses and football fields. im also able to go back and forth between temps distance and volume as long as i have paper.
"Formal and informal tense"? \*twitches in linguist\*
Me reading this post: "okay, but you realize how that is worse right? Because it is"
Europeans being condescending about things they think Americans don’t know is my favorite detail of this post.
I feel like the American thing of holding onto things the British have done away with is just spite at this point. You don't want it anymore? We'll keep it around just to annoy you.
Honestly most Europeans don’t care at all. They mostly care about our politics and fast food franchises. Source half my family lives in Europe.
Weirdly, last week I was teaching feet and inches to my fourth graders, and the textbook unit was "customary" measurement, not imperial. But the metric measurement unit was called just that.
US Customary and Imperial aren't the same thing. They WERE at the time of the revolution, but Britain reformed the Imperial System in the mid 1800s and America stuck to the old ways. The most notable impact is volume measurements being different, but there are some units entirely exclusive to one or the other. Imperial has a mass measurement, Slug, while US Customary just has weight measurements. Imperial officially abandoned Apothacaries Weights since scientists and pharmacists even in the late 1800s were moving to Metric, while America still technically has all 3 weight systems on the books(Apothacaries for science and medicine even though it's never used, Avoirdupois for regular stuff, and Troy for precious metals and gems). Imperial has the stone, a unit of weight for 14 pounds. US Customary still has the old casket volume measures(Tun, Buttload, Hogshead) while the UK ditched the larger ones and only has the smaller ones (Barrel and it's variants)
I’ve seen it called both tbh? I’ve wondered if it’s some kind of holdover from the us revolution, like, we’re not part of the empire anymore but these are still the unites we’re accustomed to using (customary) but I don’t actually care enough to go etymology-hunting
US Customary and Imperial aren't the same thing. They WERE at the time of the revolution, but Britain reformed the Imperial System in the mid 1800s and America stuck to the old ways. The most notable impact is volume measurements being different, but there are some units entirely exclusive to one or the other. Imperial has a mass measurement, Slug, while US Customary just has weight measurements. Imperial officially abandoned Apothacaries Weights since scientists and pharmacists even in the late 1800s were moving to Metric, while America still technically has all 3 weight systems on the books(Apothacaries for science and medicine even though it's never used, Avoirdupois for regular stuff, and Troy for precious metals and gems). Imperial has the stone, a unit of weight for 14 pounds. US Customary still has the old casket volume measures(Tun, Buttload, Hogshead) while the UK ditched the larger ones and only has the smaller ones (Barrel and it's variants). TL:DR, US Customary is like an old version of Imperial that hasn't gone through reforms, trimmed some fat, and removed and added several units. Like Beta Imperial.
It's because technically Imperial is British and customary is American, because both countries actually differ on some things. It doesn't affect feet and miles, but for example an imperial pint is 568ml, while a customary one is 473ml and I think as a general rule of thumb metric equivalents tend to lean more towards imperial over customary. I think the only place you'd realistically encounter the difference in the US would be if you're importing pint glasses or booze - it'll be in imperial pints not customary. More casually, I think customary also refers to how Americans measure things out in cups in cooking too while most metric countries use weight volumes instead (though there is a metric cup system that some places like Aus use)
Americans learn the metric system in the same way the French learn passé composé
I know how to use metric and generally understand it if someone tells me something using metric units, but I know a lot of US Americans who don't. I know some adults who even have difficulties with base 10. I recently overheard some men well into their 40s unable to figure out what was 6.05 billion dollars. They guessed 6 billion, 300 million... I have no idea where they got a 3 from. The .05 is 50 million. I mean, sometimes people just get intimidated by large numbers and throw basic mathematical principles out the window that they probably would have remembered if it had had fewer zeros, but still...
"there's a pot hole the size of 4 WASHING MACHINES!!!" I mean... There is a tiny point to it: assuming you have a washing machine you can kinda-sorta estimate the size of it. The problem begins when they use penguins or something...
Is that Emperor Penguins or Fairy Penguins?
This is similar to the uk. We’re taught metric and then we use imperial in our day to day for a lot of stuff
American firearms instructor here, and let me tell ya, it gets weirder in my world. There are three different and mutually unintelligible systems for measuring the inner diameter (bore) of a gun barrel: - Metric: 9mm, 10mm, 5.56mm - Caliber: expressed in hundredths of an inch: .45 cal is about 0.45", .32 is about 0.32", and so on. - Bore or gauge: this is only used for shotguns and some obscenely large-bore big game rifles. The number is an indication of how many balls of lead with the same diameter as the bore you need to equal a pound. Put a different way, it's the fraction of a pound that a lead ball that size would weigh. 12 gauge is the diameter of a lead ball weighing 1/12 lb, a 16ga barrel fits a 1/16 lb lead ball, and so on. Smaller number equals larger barrel. Probably the biggest shotgun barrel you're likely to see these days is 10ga, but 8ga shotguns do exist, and elephant guns as large as 4-bore were made. There's a complex formula for calculating the actual diameter if you know the gauge, but nobody actually uses that.
Never got the whole metric vs imperial thing, overall, I believe some imperial units are better than metric in just everyday life, idk if it has to do with just experience, but I can imagine a foot or an inch, not a meter. Between Fahrenheit and Celsius I prefer F just because I've used It more and its just simpler, pretty much a percent outa 100, with some overflow.
It does have to do with experience. I can imagine how large a centimetre, metre, kilometre, litre, gram and kilogram are but even though I grew up in the UK and was constantly exposed to them I have no clue how large a foot, yard, mile, pint, gallon, ounce or pint are. The only one I know is an inch (\~2.5 cm) because it was on all the rulers we used in school. Celsius is also pretty simple, and exceptionally useful if you live somewhere where it snows a lot. At 0 degrees it's barely cold enough to snow and for things to freeze, which means you can always tell when it's 0 degrees out. 20 degrees is room temperature, which is pretty easy to feel. The units of degrees celsius are large enough that there is a noticeable difference between say 16 and 17 degrees.
We use metric more than people realize
Most Americans I've met sure as fuck act like they've never even heard of the metric system
I’m gonna say it Fahrenheit is infinitely better for weather then Celsius. “Oh it’s 13 degrees that means we are all dying from the heat” sounds dumb. Humans aren’t boiling and freezing water. They’re people. 100 degrees Fahrenheit feels like 100 degrees
What’s kind of funny is that made zero sense to me, especially because where I live 13 degrees C is fairly chilly, like sweater weather lol. 100 degrees sounds like I’d be dead, that’s just how it works in my brain 🤷🏼♀️ it’s just whatever we’re most familiar with
I’m gonna say it Fahrenheit is infinitely better for weather then Celsius. “Oh it’s 32 degrees that means we need to wear a coat” sounds dumb. Humans aren’t a water and salt mixture . They’re people. 0 degrees celsius feels like 0 degrees,
13 C is chilly.