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u/davasaur 9h ago
82°f is 28°c
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u/KlangScaper 9h ago
Thanks that actually useful
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u/Bladrak01 9h ago
-40°F is -40°C
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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 8h ago
Found two people that can solve for zero in an algebraic equation !
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u/golgol12 7h ago
The most useful one is 0°f is fucking cold, and 100°f is fucking hot.
That's how the F scale actually got made.
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u/corzajay 6h ago
I want to know what that debate was like around deciding what is hot and cold. Because I know for a fact my wife and I's idea of fucking hot and cold would be 2 very different numbers.
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u/justintheunsunggod 5h ago
Eh, I'd argue that you'd disagree on what's uncomfortably hot or cold. But fucking hot and cold? Especially as it pertains to weather, I'd bet it's right around 100 and 0.
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u/Blacksad9999 4h ago
Humans can detect the difference in temperature by 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit, so it makes sense in that respect.
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u/Smiedro 8h ago
It’s currently 84 and I’m gonna try to play games with my Canadian friend shortly. Maybe I’ll tell them the weather. Thanks
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u/velvetcrow5 2h ago
I have better.
Memorize 2 things: 1) Freeze point. 0C = 32 F (or even easier, make it 30 F) 2) C is base 5. F is base 10.
Take any C measurement, how many times does it divide by 5? Take that number and times it by 10, then add 32 (or 30).
If doing F, divide by 10, take that number x 5, add to 0 C.
Example: 18C /5 = 3 steps. 3 steps x 10 = 30. 30 + 30 baseline = 60. 60F = 18C.
It's close enough and works -40C to 110 F. Above and below that it starts to break down/get too inaccurate but who cares unless you're cooking etc.
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u/FlyingNope 6h ago
Except Fahrenheit wasn't invented by the Americans. It was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit who was lived in the Netherlands. Americans used it because that's what the English colonizers used when they came here. The English themselves didn't adopt Celsius until 1961.
America did try to transition to Celsius in the 70s, but they made the transition voluntary. Since the masses don't generally like change it didn't take off.
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u/Hot-Chip6034 5h ago
I less and less understand why we don't fully switch to metrics, I understand a full switch not to be too disruptive has to be slow, but especially with so much international trade and production often spanning multiple countries it makes more and more sense, I was a machinist and often switched back and forth converting. Many modern very high end measuring equipment or equipment reliant on measurements are digital and can be set to either easily. Also metrics are far simpler going between units. 12 inches in a foot 3 feet in a yard, 5280 feet in a mile which are all common measurements makes no logical sense to keep track of and the math between them is a lot more work then moving the decimal point. F scale was not based on a common sense relatable set of reference points.
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u/Unlikely-Demand0 3h ago
Most US science is done in metric at this point, the mile is even defined by the metric system. The US only really uses the imperial system on the surface and in day to day things
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u/Addicted2Qtips 1h ago
The mile was originally a Roman measurement, meaning 5,000 feet. The English added 280 additional feet to it in the 16th or 17th century to accommodate the furlong, which is 660 feet - so you could easily map and subdivide agricultural land. A mile is eight furlongs.
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u/Hot-Chip6034 3h ago
Work in manufacturing, I did quality control then cnc machinist starting around 2006 till last yr, the majority of blueprints were in imperial everywhere I worked even when the customer original blueprint was in metric, we still use it in a large part of our manufacturing.
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u/RKGamesReddit 2h ago
I work in logistics, and it's 50/50 on if the ladding documents are in one system or another, generally if it crosses the border somewhere it'll have metric on it, and sometimes I get both units. The plant I work for now is primarily imperial, but I get the occasional metric documents when I'm sent to canada or have cargo where the final destination is international.
Legally all trade has to be conducted in metric, which is why packaging of items in stores all include a metric value.
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u/BandicootGood5246 5h ago
Aww... now that we know that how are we supposed to post ragebait variations of this meme once a month
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u/chris5070 9h ago
Don't mention the order of Day Month Year.
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u/cnaughton898 6h ago
As a European, when I'm messaging Americans I always do YYYY-MM-DD just so nobody gets confused.
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u/GrimSpirit42 9h ago
You mean Month Day Year.....
Personally I use the YDDD format. Where today is 6285.
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u/_ficklelilpickle 2h ago
Until the 4th of July comes around, then they don't have any argument for their stubbornness.
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u/Suspect-Lump 9h ago
A bunch of measurements in the metric system are based around water because it provides an easily replicatable base of measurement.
The freezing point of water was made 0°C, the boiling point was made 100°c.
1 kilogram is the weight of 1 litre of water. 1 Millilitre of water has a volume of 1 cubic centimetre (cm3) and weighs exactly 1 gram.
I'm too young to have ever used imperial measurements on a daily basis, but it seems absolutely insane to me that anyone could argue using a system of apparently random integers (14 pounds to a stone, 2 stone to a quarter. 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, etc.) could be a better or more efficient system than one based off the properties of a substance that can be found for free across most of the world, which are then divided into even separations (100cm to a metre, 100 grams to a kilo, etc)
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u/SereneDreams03 8h ago
It's not so much that most Americans think it's better it's just that it is what we are used to, and there isn't really a huge push to change it.
Personally, I do agree that the metric system is better, and it's annoying having to do metric to imperial conversions. Or needing metric tools for hardware not made in the US.
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u/stefanica 6h ago
It isn't like we invented it. Fahrenheit came up with his scale a couple decades before Celsius, in Poland and Sweden, respectively. Imperial measurements were standardized in the early 1800s by the British and the US quickly adopted the standardization. The French, meanwhile, had thousands of regional variations of weights and measurements themselves, and fully adopted the metric system in the mid 1800s. Other countries followed piecemeal.
The US, though, has been using the metric system for scientific purposes since the late 1800s, and most day to day printed labels are in both metric and imperial. The only things I can think of that aren't, as a rule, have to do with land measurements and, like, speed limits. It's just that our typical packaging sizes are still in whole or fractional pounds or gallons, and a lot of that is probably due to inertia of changing factory equipment. If it's not broke, etc. Though with shrinkflatation these days, they might as well switch and be done with it. 😂
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u/robot_guiscard 7h ago
Everyone in the world was used to some other system but switched to metric because it's superior. I really couldn't care less if the US wants to stay imperial, but it is bizarre.
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u/MerelyMortalModeling 7h ago
I watched a economy video today where these Indian rail transport experts were using draw rods, chains and pintus to measure power, distance and weight.
Same thing in China and Pakistan, officially they use metric but in reality the all use traditions market measurments. Between China India, Pakistan and America we are talking nearly half the human population.
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u/SereneDreams03 7h ago
Yep, in Japan they still use the Shaku in some industries, and Canada and the UK use a mix of metric and imperial.
Even in the US it is a mix. Federally metric is the preferred system for federal grants and for some industries. When I was in the military, it is what we used for measuring distances. It's just not a federal mandate that people have to use it.
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u/jamesph777 6h ago
Before Imperial and Metric system. Uniform measurements didn’t really exist. France for example had at least over 250,000 different measurement systems that did not interact with each other. So that made a lot easier to move to the Metric system because of how much more uniform it is. Even then people still had to go to prison for France to enforce the metric system.
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u/throwmamadownthewell 6h ago
Millennial Canadians are even weirder with it. We go mm, cm, cm/inches (depending what you're measuring and the accuracy e.g. if it's able to be a bit inaccurate I'll use inches; otherwise, I'll use cm and mm), feet, metres, km i.e. inches and feet are intermediate scale measurements
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u/Informal_Plastic369 6h ago
It’s pretty fucked up getting plans in metric and getting your material in imperial and having to do the conversions.
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u/SereneDreams03 7h ago
Yeah, the US did pass the metric conversion act in 1975, but there was resistance to the switch the the board they created to coordinate the effort didn't have much authority. The effort stalled out and Reagan abolished the board in 1982.
At the federal level they did make it the preferred system, though, and many federal agencies including our military use metric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States
Most of the public seems to prefer staying with the imperial system though, and it's just not been something either major political party thought worth the effort to force on people.
You should hear my parents complain about roundabouts even though they are clearly a better way of managing traffic at intersections.
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u/Suspect-Lump 8h ago
That does make sense to be fair. I absolutely hate change, especially if I'm used to doing something a certain way
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u/angrydeuce 4h ago
I just can't think in metric. I have to mentally convert to imperial before I can imagine it. Say a kilometer to me it means nothing, say "half a mile" and I could probably eyeball it to a reasonable margin of error.
It has nothing to do with imperial being better, I know it's not, metric is just rational in a way imperial isn't. But I was born after the US had already given up on trying to make metric happen, so outside of science class, we didn't touch it, and none of that exposure was practical, we were talking about rolling marbles and burning gases.
The only unit of measure I can reliably convert between imperial to metric without thinking real hard about it is ounces to grams. 28 grams to an ounce, dont need to really look that one up.
I probably don't need to explain why that is lol.
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u/ninjax247 8h ago
Funny thing is Fahrenheit is based partially on the freezing point of water. My understanding is it was based on the temperature of an easily reproducible brine solution (0 degrees), the freezing point of water (32), and normal human body temperature (96, the units were originally slightly different). The reason these numbers were chosen is because the difference between them are both powers of two (32 and 96-32=64), which means that if mark the measurements of the three above points, you can just keep marking the halfway point between mark, and get to a mark for each degree. This had its advantages in a time before mass production, but isn't all that helpful in the modern era so it's essentially lost it's purpose.
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u/MistakeBorn4413 8h ago
Interestingly, the adjustment/recalibration of human body temp (from 96) happened because, after Fahrenheit's death, they wanted the freezing point of water (32) and boiling temp of water to both be integers (212). It all kinda made logical sense at the time, but doesn't make a ton of sense now.
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u/Sage1969 7h ago
The boiling point of water is actually 94.4°C here. Also 1 liter of water at room temperature is 998 grams. Its all arbitrary anyhow, doesnt really make a difference. But I agree base 10 systems make a lot more sense on the modern day
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u/niemir2 6h ago
In the modern day, base two systems make more sense than base ten, because all of the actual math is done in binary anyway.
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u/BarryTownCouncil 7h ago
But this often is felt (and is) illogical because of the decimal system itself. If we user duodecimal instead, e.g. 123456789AB0, the maths would be a lot easier due the notable increase in factors of "10".
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u/No_Butterscotch_5612 8h ago
While US Customary measurements are easy to criticize, they (mostly) aren't as bad as they look on a flow chart. No one uses stones or quarters or hands or fingers. For length, the important units are feet/inches (occasionally yards) for most things, and miles for particularly large distances. The conversion for feet-inches isn't too bad (12 inches to a foot), and has some legitimate plusses (a third of a foot is 4 inches, where a third of a meter is 33.3333333333333.... cm).
Weight is a little funky, with 16 ounces to a pound and 2,000 pounds to a ton, but those are the only units you have to worry about.
The only one that is actually THAT BAD is volume. Two cups to a pint, two pints to a quart, four quarts to a gallon. And all of those do get actual use.
One spot where the measurements DO work well together, though: One pint of water weighs ~1 pound. So for liquids, volume-weight conversion is doable (as long as you can remember the other friggin' volume units, which as said are easily the worse part of the system).
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u/BaakCoi 8h ago
Our volumetric measurements are all in powers of two (except tsp), which is very convenient for scaling recipes up/down. You can quadruple or quarter a recipe and still be using convenient measurements
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u/Far_Echo5918 8h ago
Guess what other measurement system scales fantastically easily up or down by four :)
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u/BaakCoi 8h ago
Not metric. Decimal isn’t great for scaling by powers of 2
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u/ThetaReactor 6h ago
The problem isn't metric, the problem is base-10 metric. Base-12 metric would be fantastic.
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u/Own_Reaction9442 7h ago
The British still use stone to measure body weight.
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u/MD_______ 6h ago
Long distance is miles short distance is cm. Milk and beer are pints. Weight we mix with kg for like sugar and I never used ounces since maybe making cookies with my gran when I was five. But our rugby guys are stones still
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u/gjk-ger 8h ago
"isn't too bad", "a little funky" and "actually THAT BAD" aren't qualities i want in a system i have to use in my day-to-day life, to be honest. I prefer to have less headaches when possible.
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u/Vulpes_Corsac 7h ago
I'll add that for some stupid reason, if you're measuring gold, then it's only 14 oz to a pound. "Troy weight".
Got asked that in a quiz competition that was being hosted at a nearby private school. And of course the rich blood home team knew that one.
One of several things from that school hosting In still bitter about.
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u/haggisbreath169 5h ago
also, one ounce of water by volume weighs one ounce. and may I point out, that ounces -> pints quarts -> gallons works out pretty well in binary - a gallon is 28 ounces, and 23 pounds
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u/Herr_Tilke 8h ago
I have to agree with you, once you move to fully metric system of measurements, there is no rational use case for the imperial system.
I kind of think of it as a "universal language" like Esperanto. In theory it fits every use case and simplifies communication between parties. In practice, it's quite hard to get a critical mass of people to learn and use it regularly enough that it supplants the existing language for every day use.
And then with examples like the UK, where they will use a quite insane combination of units out of convenience and tradition (i.e. a person's weight is measured in Stone, their height in cm, the distance they drive in Km, the speed in miles per hour, the fuel economy in miles per gallon, and the fuel itself in litres) you start to consider whether it's worth pushing for a new system if it's unlikely to get adopted whole sale.
As for the US, the main reason we maintain the SAE standards is because we manufactured a lot of stuff up until the 70's, and when the push from the federal government came to adopt metric, the manufacturing industry didn't have the spare capital to retool their factories without a really good reason. So one of our biggest industries said "now's really not a good time," the rest of the country pretty much echoed their statement, and the issue petered out over the course of a couple decades.
I do really wish we'd switch to metric for baking and cooking, because SAE in that context is confusing and frustrating while metric works so well.
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u/Hitei00 7h ago edited 7h ago
The only reason you see people defend Imperial is because of dunces like the guy in the image.
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u/Beer-Milkshakes 7h ago
Its also because very old engineering still uses inches. So copper pipe comes in imperial diameters only. However, it is commonly listed with its metric equivalence (15, 22, 28, 32 etc) because its often sold alongside steel and plastic pipe/tube which is almost always metric.
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u/SnazzyStooge 2h ago
Imperial measurements are not designed to be converted from one to the other, that’s why they seem odd to our modern sensibilities. Why is one mile 5,280 feet? It isn’t, that’s just a byproduct of the fact that a foot is the length of a foot and a mile is 1,000 paces. If you don’t own a ruler, using your foot to measure is pretty damn handy. And if you’re a Roman general, counting long distances in thousands of soldier paces is pretty damn handy.
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u/Potato-Engineer 8h ago
The focus of imperial measurements is that they're human-scale. An inch, a foot, and a yard are all sizes you'll use throughout your daily life. (Metric's decimeter never really caught on, as far as I can tell, but at least there's "50cm" that almost-kinda works for foot-sized things.) A cup, pint, quart, and gallon are all volumes you'll deal with daily. Nobody uses "the boiling point of water" in their daily life (though the freezing point is definitely useful), so Fahrenheit has 0 at "damn cold" and 100 at "damn hot", which is how you will personally feel in those temperatures.
And yes, I've done engineering calculations in imperial units, and I hated every minute of it (slugs can go die in a corner, and gallons-to-cubic-inches means memorizing an arbitrary constant), which is why increasing amounts of the manufacturing sector are using metric units, or at least metric screws.
I find imperial convenient for daily life, and metric convenient for engineering.
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u/theturtlelord9 7h ago
I’m a physics student in the US and I would feel weird if I ever use imperial measurements for anything science or math related, the metric system is by far the most precise and makes the most sense in those contexts.
On the other hand, I would never see myself using the metric system in my day-to-day life. I’m not going to describe my height or weight or other random things in a system that I and other people are not familiar with using for those situations. Switching every measurement in every facet of life in the United States to metric system makes no sense because it would take much more work than it is worth, and it isn’t a problem that we are already facing. It’s not that we think the imperial system is more efficient, it’s just that it would be really inefficient to switch to metric for no good reason.
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u/ltlearntl 6h ago
In my country everything is in metric.....except for land measurements, we still used square feet for those, suffice to say, it's no problem at all, people are living things, there may be some intermediate awkwardness, but people adapt, it's just life. The older generation here still uses feet to describe height, my generation uses a mix, the younger generation mostly metric, no issues at all.
Also, like you I was a physics major.
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u/Vox_Causa 9h ago
The Fahrenheit scale was developed in 1724 in the Netherlands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit
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u/Alypius754 8h ago
No, it was invented in 1978 by Freddie Mercury in his treatise, “Don’t Stop Me Now”
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u/Pizza4u45 7h ago
I hear that’s why they call him mister Farenheit
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u/throwmamadownthewell 6h ago
No, they call him that because he's 200 degrees. He's stated this on the record.
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u/Guynith 8h ago
Right, because Americans are the ones who created the Imperial system of measurements.
Good ol’ Bob Fahrenheit from Schenectady.
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u/MongolianDonutKhan 6h ago
I'll have you know Bob is a friend of mine and a good man. Except for that business on Cato Nemoidia. That... that doesn't count.
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u/Snoo_67993 8h ago
It doesn't matter with F and C they're both kind of metic as their measurements are done in 10s and 100s.
That said metric is superior because it's simple to convert between different systems like energy volume and weight etc.
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u/Doomhammer24 8h ago
Its like that one of a guy asking god why he made the speed of light such an odd measurement of 299,792,458 m/s only for god to answer "first off the speed of light is 1"
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u/This-Present4077 6h ago
I think metric is the better system. I also think that most of arguments for metric (or, to be fair any system) are silly and based on status quo bias. This is true for language learning too. It’s just how people often are
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u/TemporarySun314 6h ago edited 6h ago
The thing is that metric units are made to be consistent and easy to use even for complex units. The interesting thing is the metric system and the framework it makes.
The definitions of what is exactly 1m is always somewhat arbitrary. But the concept of having a few base units and make every physical unit describable by a simple multiplication or division of units is not. The same goes for a reasonable definition of magnitude prefixes, etc.
And that you tried to base a unit system on objectively observable things in nature that never change, so that you can precisely make up a unit representation again without any other knowledge than the definition, was also historically quite new with the metric system. Even though it took quite a while to fully realize it.
These imperial system never had these to the same degree metric had. And nowadays inch, pound, etc. are just defined via metric units.
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u/Own-Loan2390 3h ago edited 3h ago
Fahrenheit is s German word. You wanna know why? Because it was made by someone who had a German last name. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. He was born in Poland and died living in Switzerland. Never was he an American.
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u/BBQFLYER 3h ago
Actually he died in The Hague, Netherlands. Just clarifying in case you ever have that as a jeopardy question.
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u/Ill_Confusion_5368 7h ago
I have always liked the perspective that Fahrenheit is how people feel temperature, Celsius is how water feels temperature, and Kelvin is how atoms feel temperature.
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u/Orielsamus 1h ago
People attach their feelings of reference to the scale they are used to. No one except americans could say that farenheit is intuitive to the body. If you grew up with celsius, that’s your point of reference.
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u/Onetap1 8h ago
The really stupid thing is using a unit of linear measurement that was 304.8mm, the size of some dead king's foot and saying "let's call that distance a foot".
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u/ZasdfUnreal 3h ago
Water freezes at 273.15 Kelvin at standard atmospheric pressure. Now I grab my popcorn and watch the fight between C and F.
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u/Western-Willow-9496 6h ago
Both systems were invented in Europe, Fahrenheit was first by almost 20 years.
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u/axe1970 9h ago
imperial measurements are European British to be precise as in the British empire
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u/Great_Specialist_267 8h ago
American “imperial” measurements are different from British “imperial” measurements.
That’s why the inch had to be redefined in metric to exactly 25.4mm in 1955 (the British inch was slightly smaller and the American inch was slightly longer).→ More replies (1)2
u/metal_maxine 8h ago
Unless they're in America. I think their number of flozzies in pint is different from our number of flozzies in a pint.
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u/Atlas7-k 8h ago
That’s because the Imperial Standard was invented after American Independence. The US has never used Imperial.
The US uses US Customary which is based on the Winchester system
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u/Additional_Ear_9659 9h ago
Funny how Americans refuse to see the logic in Metric. Everything divisible by 10s. No fractions. Just logical math. But I guess from a culture that thinks Jeezus was born in Texas….it is what it is.
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u/Dazzling-Path6438 9h ago
It's much better to base it off the size of some dudes feet
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u/Pizza4u45 8h ago
lol I don’t Americans don’t see the logic in the metric system. 99% of us have no say in that battle and weren’t raised on the metric system.
But Fahrenheit actually makes a lot more sense for weather. It’s basically on a scale of 100, which makes it a lot easier to understand what 50 degrees vs 100 vs 20 means. Celsius is only intuitive for those raised with it.
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u/perplexedtv 6h ago
Like German is only intuitive for those raised with it. That doesn't mean English makes more sense than German just because it's the language you speak.
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u/Pizza4u45 6h ago
Well no. But that’s also kind of my point. German and English don’t necessarily make more sense to someone who speaks Chinese. But every Chinese person understands what a triangle is.
0-100 scale is easily and globally communicated. We’re all familiar with percentiles and measuring things on a 0-100 scale. Celsius is nothing like that.
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u/Additional_Ear_9659 7h ago
What? So freezing at 32 Fahrenheit makes sense? But zero Fahrenheit has no significance? Not intuitive and I was raised on imperial but converted to metric in the late 70s while in High school. I can’t go back.
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u/Pizza4u45 7h ago
You get the one trade off of 0 vs 32, but that’s pretty minor, and yea I guess not intuitive. But you’re also talking about the freezing point of water, not all substances. 40 degrees F is 4.4 C and 70 degrees F is 21.1 C. To me, if you are explaining what temps feel like to someone not familiar with either system but familiar with a tens based numbering system, then 70 vs 40 sounds a lot more intuitive to me than 4 vs 21.
And I find it funny that 40 is 4. Freezing is a lot colder feeling than 40, and that’s more intuitive to me with Fahrenheit. 4 and 0 aren’t very far from each other, just doesn’t sit right in my head.
I think it’s just the wider range on basically a scale of 100. It fits more neatly, especially when only a few degrees can decide between a jacket or none.
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u/inide 8h ago
While that makes sense to us, many cultures historically have used duodecimal number systems (base 12) instead of the decimal (base 10) that we're most familiar with.
It actually is a lot more useful, just less intuitive. Like, you can divide 12 by 2, 3, 4 or 6 instead of just 2 or 5, and you can count to 12 on one hand (use your thumb to track the knuckles of your fingers), and then use the other hand to count sets to total up to 60.→ More replies (2)2
u/Altruistic-Web13 8h ago
You can count up to 144 in base 12 by tracking your other knuckles. A little bit easier for someone who is used to thinking in based 12 since that is the 10s place.
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u/Izzy-of-Albion 9h ago
The biggest problem is that they don't understand it's what is used in science. Physics calculations don't work in feet and inches, pounds and ounces, or Fahrenheit. It's almost like using Roman numerals in the 21st century.
I remember watching Mythbusters where they'd take measurements in imperial, convert them to metric, do the calculations, get the result, and then convert it back to imperial. That's a lot of completely pointless extra work. Almost the entirety of the rest of the world has worked this out.
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u/thedrew 8h ago
Anything important in the US (except for aviation) is metric.
But aviation isn't metric anywhere.
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u/GetInTheHole 8h ago
The entire US standards system is backed by SI units. Those are the fundamental base measurements as kept by the government's Bureau of Weights and Measures.
The pound/mile units are derived from there.
And that fact matters exactly ZERO to most people's lives.
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u/RandomUsername78421 7h ago
FFS scientists in the US use metric. I work in healthcare and we use metric. The federal government officially prefers metric. NASA and the military use metric. All measurements in the US are legally based on metric. The US adopted metric as an official system in the 19th century.
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u/CarelessCreamPie 6h ago
This is probably the most incorrect comment in this thread. American scientists use metric. What the fuck are you talking about?
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u/Worried-Pick4848 9h ago
America is a global technological leader. Nearly everything at NASA is run in metric. We do an enormous about of trade and scientific collaboration with the rest of the world. Everyone involved in that knows how to measure in both systems.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
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u/Mr__Strider 8h ago
NASA literally fucked up one of their missions because they had to convert between imperial and metric. And tbh, this was bound to happen. Imagine they didn't have to do that, and could just use the logical system instead...
I don't know why you guys decided to maintain almost every old measurement standard from the British empire, which they have themselves either partially or fully dropped, but DID decide to change some spelling after the revolution, randomly, because... why not or something?
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u/peadar87 7h ago
Because pirates.
Not even joking. Pirates captured the ship carrying a set of metric measuring standards from France, so they never reached Thomas Jefferson, who wanted to use them as a basis for switching the US system.
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u/myname777777777 7h ago
Technically it was British "privateers" so British paid pirates
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u/HoneyBadger19000 6h ago
The British got to invent the imperial system, imported it to the US and then prevented us from using Metric.
It all goes back to being the British's fault lol.
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u/purrcthrowa 7h ago
I wouldn't mind so much, but our fluid volumes are different anyway. US pints, fl oz and gallons are different from UK pints, fl oz and gallons.
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u/egg_squisite 8h ago
Physics calculations absolutely do work in imperial units. It's just much more inconvenient.
Source: am engineer in Murica. HVAC calculations are a pain in the ass.
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u/Rosesandbubblegum 7h ago
What are you talking about. Everyone uses metric in science these days. US and elsewhere. It's how we can all share our research. You can't genuinely be this stupid.
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u/Appropriate-Crab-379 6h ago
Physics works just fine with feet and inches, slightly different constants but big deal. Myth busters are hardly engineers. Yeah I love them, but no.
Also slander feet and pounds all you want. But Fahrenheit was a scale set by the dudes coldest day and hottest garden in England. Pretty much defined as a weather measurement scale. So if you live in a climate similar to the range of England it’s pretty damn perfect. Why does England get to set the temperature? Same reason they set the world clocks everyone.
Also Celsius only works (the water bit) at sea level, if you’re high in mountains, on the moon, in space etc Celsius is highly arbitrary. Which is why astrophysics, partical physics etc use kelvin.
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u/Vivid-Operation-5078 4h ago
Many of us do. However, imperial is still used in some calculations. We learned both in engineering school, and occasionally use both.
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u/Worried-Pick4848 9h ago edited 9h ago
It's not that we don't see the logic. We'll use metric when it suits us, or when we're cooperating with someone else who uses it. Most of us practice metric conversions in school.
If the whole nation switched formally to metric tomorrow, within less than a year anyone under the age of 55 would be fluent in it because a lot of us do use metric when there's an obvious advantage to doing so.
It's the metric evangelism that feels weird to us. The people who clutch literally all the pearls, all the time, about Americans not using metric seriously have issues. Like, who cares what scale we use as long as we measure correctly? Metric conversions are child's play for the most part anyway.
It's really none of your business, at all. We're fully capable of using metric, we're just also happy using these other scales of measurement too. This is a good thing. It makes us more versatile than you.
Britain and Canada quietly do the same thing, and you guys don't seem to care, so why are your panties bunched tighter than the naked singularity when America does it?
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u/Ape_With_Clothes_On 8h ago
I was in high school in Australia during one of the steps in conversion from the imperial system to the metric system. Up to that point we had only used the imperial system in science - some other conversions had already taken place. Our fuckwit science teacher insisted that we do calculations in both metric and imperial for each problem. After about 3 problems working in both there was almost a riot with the students refusing to continue using the imperial system.
Yes you can use both, but for fuck's sake why would you.
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u/Vivenemous 7h ago
American school children grow up using metric in science class these days. That's what we're taught early on: use metric for science because it's easier to do math with. But the everyday use of the old units is just a cultural quirk, it's just our way.
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u/_Clem_Fandango_1 8h ago
I gave you an upvote based on your perfectly polite and sensible response. I’m from the UK and I suspect we still use imperial measurements to keep the oldies happy. Most of the time it’s metric. SI units make way more sense.
Trouble with our older generations is that if you give them an inch, they take a mile.
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u/darkfireice 6h ago
Technically, the USA was the first nation to embrace the Metric system (its why we have the standards), and we convert everything to Imperial (officially all Imperial measure are percentages of Metric units). The main reason we (technically the "royal we" as my family wasn't even on this Hemisphere yet) never fully embraced Metric was because we only stopped expanding in the 1910s
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u/Worried-Pick4848 6h ago
The real reason is simpler than that
We don't need to.
It we fully switched to Metric it would change nothing, except that a handful of gray heads would complain about it.
At the same time, the very fact that so little would actually change is the primary argument for not switching. There are administrative costs to switching over, changing signage, setting new bureaucratic standards for government and academia, etc, and no actual material benefit to count that cost against.
When we need to use metric, for example to cooperate internationally on scientific and engineering things, we rarely have an issue doing so. We teach metric conversions in schools, and by so doing, teach metric in our schools. I learned metric units in third grade, and every ruler in America has demarcations for both units.
Bottom line, it's much ado about nothing, and the more of our higher end math is handled by computers, the less and less this stuff actually matters in the first place. After all, metric is considered simpler for HUMANS to do math with, but humans are barely doing the math anymore, and computers don't care what standard of measurement you use as long as you define it properly.
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u/RejectingBoredom 8h ago
No no no no no
Jesus wasn’t born in Texas, but he does plan on returning to Missouri
Which makes even less sense
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u/DulcimerString3437 8h ago
No American is downright refusing to use the metric system. It's used in science. I don't understand American hate, like grow up? Idk generalizing us all to be like the few nutheads is immature.
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u/MrSurly 5h ago
I'm American, and Idesign things -- electronic things and mechanical things. I use metric. All my circuit boards are an even # of millimeters in size, all the screw holes are on even mm. All the holes are metric. I use metric screws and nuts.
But I also use inches / feet / yards when appropriate.
It's really not a problem. What's baffling is other countries being fucking weird about this stuff.
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u/KarmicWhiplash 5h ago
I'm an American engineer and if you gave me a fluid dynamics problem in imperial units, I'd convert it to metric, solve it there and convert it back rather than work on the fucking imperial system, because it would be easier and more intuitive.
What's truly baffling is why the US clings to the imperial system despite the entire rest of the world having moved on.
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u/okiesillydillyokieo 8h ago
Until the few smart people start doing something about the millions and millions and millions of nuthead trouble makers, then you will all be rightfully grouped together
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u/RedRabbit720 8h ago
Careful now, these are the same people that wouldn’t buy a 1/3 pound cheeseburger because they thought 1/4 was larger.
https://www.facebook.com/zackdfilms/posts/why-aws-bigger-burger-lost-to-mcdonalds-/1081663944816752/
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u/egg_squisite 8h ago
While (as an American) I agree that Celsius is overall a better scale, and works much better for scientific measurements like the boiling and freezing points of water, I hate when people say "Americans really [some tired way of saying we invented Fahrenheit]".
The Fahrenheit scale was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a scientist born in Poland to a German family, and was meant to scale such that human body temperature (which he estimated at 96) would be exactly 64 degrees, or exactly 2^6 degrees, away from the freezing point of water. 0F was defined as the coldest known air temperature in his area at the time.
He was slightly off in his measurements, but having a temperature scale with body temperature close to 100 means we can scale weather based on how it feels to us humans, which is very useful. 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside basically translates to being "one hundred percent hot", 50 degrees is fifty percent (not too hot, not too cold) and 0 degrees is absolutely bone-chilling. Fahrenheit is also a finer-grain scale, meaning we can describe smaller changes in temperature without having to use decimals. It has about 1.8 times the precision of Celsius.
In my opinion, Celsius and Fahrenheit have their place; Fahrenheit for weather, Celsius (or, even better, Kelvin) for everything else. But even if you don't think so, stop saying Americans "invented" Fahrenheit. We may have adopted it, but it certainly wasn't our original idea.
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u/Waffenek 6h ago
The percentage argument is absurd. Does it mean that -10°F is -10% hot (the fire gets extinguished)? Or does it mean that 110°F is 110% hot (you burst into flames)?
I get that you consider it more natural, but only because you are used to it. Having a finer scale sounds good on paper, but in practice, I cannot really reliably differentiate between temperatures that differ by 1°C, and especially when they differ by a single degree Fahrenheit. If having such resolution were useful day-to-day, decidegree Celsius would be used in practice, just as decimeters have their own place.
Discussing how temperature feels like is flawed either way, as relative humidity can be even more important that measured temperature.
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u/ToneyBits 6h ago
but in practice, I cannot really reliably differentiate between temperatures that differ by 1°C
I both agree and disagree here. My body can't perfectly tell the difference, but my thermostat is pretty close.
I can definitely feel the difference when I change the thermostat up or down by 2 degrees F.
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u/Japjer 8h ago
Man, Fahrenheit was invented by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1724, 50 years prior to the introduction of the Metric system and 150 years before it's proper adoption.
His thermometers were straight up the most accurate thermometers on the planet, and he did not fuck around with his quality. He was respected as all fuck and people would do crazy shit even for a chance to be his apprentice.
Memes like this are tired and old
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u/shunshuntley 8h ago
As an American, in most cases there's no point at all to hold onto imperial units, but there are a few cases where imperial is experientially more comfortable that is sometimes hard to convey to anyone else around the world.
Temperature is the most obvious one, like the meme lampoons. While Celsius is more scientifically appropriate, Fahrenheit is very comfy for common use for its own relationship to decimal notation. Namely, 0-100 is a pretty comfy range for the most common temperatures humans experience. It makes temperatures outside those bounds rightly stand out as extreme. -2 C is a very common temp we experience, but -2 F is extreme. It actually makes sense as a percentage range.
Cooking is another arena where imperial notation is just comfy. As silly as teaspoons, tablespoons, cups, and quarts are - they each have their own character and are therefore easy to remember and define as different. Measuring grams while cooking is never intuitive, and there is actually less universality in their utensil size.
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u/MSGdreamer 2h ago
A temperature gradient based roughly on human body temperature makes sense as a human being.
A measurement system based generally around human sized increments like the width of a thumb and the length of your foot make things easier to envision.
Of course I’m American and I don’t want to get out of my comfort zone
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u/Alarming_Possible729 7h ago
Most of what you say is just "being used to a measurement". It feels "comfortable" because you know if and are very used to it. There's nothing innate about the measurement, it's just your training.
If a kid is trained on metric, metric feels comfortable.
Counterpoint on teaspoons, etc. for ages American recipes confused me because I have so many different sizes of teaspoon, and was never sure if it meant "flat" teaspoon, small teaspoon, heaped teaspoon. It wasn't until I looked it up one day that I realised it meant a specific actual volume from a specific type of spoon that I could get.
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u/b4k4ni 6h ago
It's more about "growing up with it" than anything else. It's not better, it's just what you know and have experience in. It's the same as they introduced the Euro here. It felt different and you needed to calc, how much the new stuff is worth in the old currency, to get a feeling.
If you would change everything to metric in the US today (that means all signs etc. Too), it would take maybe a week for all people to get it. Maybe a few weeks or 6 months to get the hang of it. After a year or two it doesnt matter at all anymore.
And I mean - the whole imperial system you use is actually based on the meter now anyway.
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u/Rent_A_Cloud 6h ago
Mg, g, kg
They actually are very intuitive if you are used to them. The same goes for all measurement systems. The main problem I see with imperial is non regular conversions.
• 1 pound (lb) = 16 ounces (oz) • 14 pounds (1 st) = 1 stone
I have 17 pounds of flour, how many ounces do I have? Calculation 17x16.. how many drams is that..... 17x16x16... How many grains is that? 17x16x16x27.344... or 119.001,088 grains..
I have 17kg of flour, how many g do I have? 17.000. How many milligrams is that? 17.000.000. how many micrograms is that? 17.000.000.000
In day to day use it wouldn't matter, you're used to what you're used go, but when going into precision driven fields...
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u/shunshuntley 5h ago
Oh for sure! No science should even be in a room with an imperial measurement.
I will say that in the US we do not use "stone" as a unit of measurement. That's strictly for the commonwealth.
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u/shornscrot 1h ago
But why in the flying fuck, if I had 17 pounds of flour, would I need to know how many ounces that is?
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u/One-Web-2698 7h ago
Is this satire? Thing I'm most used to is what I like.
Even in metric land small measures use table and tea spoons because that is relatively consistent.
It's the use of volume for large things which change volume is where we think you are crackers. Or the use of measures which don't scale or ratio easily.
Utensil size is immaterial because 1gram is 1gram the world over.
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u/Resident_Voice5738 8h ago
Americans saw a guy who was 2 meters tall and said "let's make that 6 feet and 56 inches". This game is fun.
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u/Signal_Werewolf_1955 8h ago
Yup, that's how the metric system came about. 6' to 1.89 meters.
Nailed it.
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u/coreyjdl 7h ago
Except it was Polish-Lithuanian-born Dutch physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit who sad that, Can Vardar.
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u/Different_Path999 6h ago edited 6h ago
I'm blanking on who said it, but I don't give a fuck how a glass of water at sea level feels about the temperature. 100 feels really hot and 0 feels really cold. Fahrenheit is just intuitive.
Edit: It was from The Fat Electrician's "why don't Brits just get air conditioning" video
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u/Ok_Programmer_2315 2h ago
we weren't using the *imperial* measuring system or anything. where did that come from again?
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u/insanekid66 6h ago
None of these idiots know that the imperial system what first used in the UK before the metric system.
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u/Frederf220 6h ago
"Americans saw..." is ignorant on a few accounts. It wasn't an American. They didn't decide that pure frozen water at standard pressure would be known as 32. Of the two accusations, none are true.
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u/Worried-Pick4848 9h ago
As I say every time I see this get reposted, Daniel Farenheit was not an American.
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u/Logical_Positive_522 9h ago
Then why did he name himself after their temperature system eh? Checkmate.
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u/Super_Range45 8h ago
The OP is a two week old account and this is the first post it makes.
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u/liam_redit1st 8h ago
0 feet is the same as 0 meters.
But 0 Fahrenheit is -17.77 degrees Celsius. And 0 Celsius is freezing point.
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u/BlueberryOk2667 9h ago
18.9 dm is correct
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u/Apollonbbs 9h ago
What sort of cursed creature uses decimeters casually
Edit: 6 feet are also 182.9cm
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u/BallisticM0use 8h ago
Humans saw moving at 1 and said let's make that 299,792,458 meters per second
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u/123iambill 7h ago
Closer to 1.83 m. Also we measure it in centimeters. So a 6' tall person is 183cm.
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u/Large-Assignment9320 7h ago
He would probably say he is 190, which sounds better than 6 feet 1 inch.
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u/Longjumping-Hair639 6h ago
32 degree F glass of water would be frozen. It wouldn’t appear like a cup of water.
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u/wadsworthgarage 6h ago
The one place I'm in favor of imperial is in measuring air temperature. It makes sense to me to have a 0-100 scale for most of the average daily high and low temps in populated areas.
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u/666BAALofEKRON666 5h ago
This discussion should be as obsolete as the imperial system of which there are only three countrys left that are using it! 🙄
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u/seidful99 4h ago
You could say a guy once saw a 6-foot-tall man and said, 'You're six times the length of the king's foot.
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u/CartographerOk7358 7h ago
Fahrenheit is the older system, and originated in the Dutch Republic (Netherlands). If we're going to make fun of Americans for still using it to the extent they do, fine, but let's not pretend they just pulled the numbers out of their asses.
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u/Hopeful_Hornet4460 7h ago
Farenheit 0 is that way because you could get a rough approximation in any weather by using a frigorific mixture (a mixture that produces a stable temperature) with 100 degrees being the line that is potentially fatal to humans.
For how old it is, the basic ideas weren't that awful.
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u/UnsureAndUnqualified 8h ago
That comparison would make sense if "6 foot" wasn't also a weird number. Why six? Zero is obvious, it's the axis intersect. But 6 is just a round number.
If imperial used "humans" as a unit and the reply said "why use 1.82m if you can have a nice round 1 human" that would be better because the intent of the measurement is clear. But you can't tell me that feet were decided as one sixth of some dude's height. That's a coincidence and not a great argument.
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u/Brief-Equal4676 8h ago
I thought 6 feet was the exact height that got all the ladies turned on
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u/kestral63 7h ago
Might be the biggest sign imperial units are a mental illness because it made a whole demographic arbitrarily fetishize it.
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u/Important_Zombie_485 7h ago
It was modeled after one king or another's actual foot, then standardized.
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u/cigarettejesus 8h ago
"Farenheit wasn't American" yeah that's cool, but it completely ignores the criticism that America is basically the only one who still uses it. Origin isn't what the debate is about, it's about what makes most sense.
There are arguments to be made that farenheit system is better (I still disagree), but pointing out the origin just makes you look like you don't have anything logical to say in the debate
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u/Independent_Media341 7h ago
here's the argument about which is better: unless you're doing science or engineering, it doesn't fucking matter.
The whole "silly Americans don't use the metric system" bit just makes europeans sound like pathetic Dunning-Krugers
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u/perplexedtv 7h ago
Kind of pointless having two systems. Just use Kelvin everywhere for everything
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