Perhaps I'm biased, but sometimes it's easier to work in fractions. Also, setting room temp is objectively better in F. I can tell the difference between 74 and 75. That said, I'm also a scientist so I'm permitted these opinions.
There are (huge) costs to retooling production to move from imperial to metric. Even if a company wanted to make that move they'd have to transition in phases and will likely end up with additional equipment to maintain. There's also significant training for workers (who will likely commit errors in the beginning) which will impact production. And what happens to the old equipment? I'd guess a significant portion of that would end up getting scrapped and landfilled.
What's so special about the 0 - 100 range? For either system, there's temperatures that have significance.
-20 C is getting dangerously cold (wear all winter gear available if you must be outside for anything longer than brief durations).
-10 C is very cold (winter coat, gloves, hat).
0 C is freezing (winter coat necessary, gloves and hat optional).
10 C is chilly (winter coat unzipped, or jacket and sweater).
20 C is comfortable (t-shirt and pants).
22 C is about room temperature (shorts become viable above this).
30 C is hot (nude comfortable; minimize clothing).
40 C is getting dangerously hot (depending on humidity and personal heat tolerance) (clothing that protects from heat might be more desirable than minimising clothing).
F has finer whole number resolution for temperatures typically experienced by humans. Obviously C can be represented by decimals, but I tend to think whole numbers are clearer.
Personally I use C and metric for all my scientific work and F for representing outside temperature.
I honestly can't say I need resolution finer than Celsius for air temperature. So many other factors have such bigger effects on the perceived temperature (humidity, UV index, if the sun is shining, wind speed, etc) that a granularity of 1°F doesn't make sense to me.
Pool temperature, on the other hand, yeah, 1°F or 0.5°C resolution is perceptible.
I responded a few posts higher with more detail about this, but after teaching myself Celsius I actually prefer the lower resolution. A change of degree Celsius has more meaning than a change of degree Fahrenheit. (Also many, though not all, weather sources are using the Celsius values anyway and then converting and rounding them to Fahrenheit, so you don’t really get the benefit of that granularity.)
I really like Farenheit system for temperatures. 0 is really cold and 100 is really hot, but both survivable. It's a human-centric system.
I used to make this argument, that Fahrenheit made more sense for weather, but I decided to be (somewhat) scientific about it and test the hypothesis (with a sample size of 1).
So I switched everything I own over to Celsius and set about teaching myself.
This was back in 2019, and here I am still using Celsius 5 years later. I like it a lot more than Fahrenheit.
A couple of major reasons: first, you don’t actually need the precision Fahrenheit gives you for weather. The difference between 68°F and 69°F is so small that degrees Fahrenheit have very little meaning. It was startling to me how quickly I came to understand the differences between degrees Celsius because they have a lower resolution. And of course you can always use half degrees if you need to, but honestly it’s fine without.
What I realized is that, very often, the temperatures that you see on weather reports or apps are really just the Celsius degree values converted and rounded. For example, you’re far more likely to see 68°F or 70°F rather than 69°F, since 20°C=68°F and 21°C=69.8°F. This isn’t true for every weather source, but it was still interesting.
But more importantly, 0 is freezing.
This never seemed like it mattered when I was using Fahrenheit. I know 32°F is freezing, if it’s below that it’s gonna be snowing instead of raining. But the first winter I experienced in Celsius was eye-opening.
I realized that temperatures below freezing in Fahrenheit never really meant much to me. This is sort of hard to explain, but while I knew they were progressively colder there wasn’t much specific understanding. That is, 23°F doesn’t really mean anything to me.
But -5°C? That instinctively meant something to me the very first time I experienced it in Celsius. That’s going to be as far below freezing as 5°C is above freezing. No math involved. Simple. Valuable. Obviously you can do the math to figure the same thing out in Fahrenheit, but with Celsius you don’t need to.
Once you get to know the numbers, it’s just as good as an other system of measurement, and I find I like it more for the weather than I like Fahrenheit.
This is exactly my experience. I've worked for four different manufacturing companies in the Midwest. Three of them were multi billion dollar companies. All four of those companies used metric almost exclusively.
Such a stupid misconception that is constantly reposted
I have to agree 100%. The slavish devotion of small brained regressive idiots to base 12 time keeping has bugged me for fucking ever. Swatch solved this decades ago, but people are too stuck in their "But this is what we've always used" bullshit mindset.
Fuck your decimal system. Dozenal is the most intuitive number system. Arithmetic is so much easier to learn in dozenal and you can even count higher on your hands if you use phalanges instead of fingers. Base 10 is a crap number system. It's barely composite, it only has two prime factors.
For anything construction-scale, all supplies sold in the US are based on 4x8' sheet goods and 16-24" on-center framing. I also concede that king George the 74th's foot length is more human-scale when dealing with large measurements: 20 feet vs 6096 mm. I still use metric when possible, however - I find it easier and more accurate.
For EVERYTHING else I've switched to using metric.
Context: I grew up in the US using imperial units and only pivoted to the metric system in 2020. If I grew up thinking in metric and building supplies/standards used it, it'd be superior in every way.
TL;DR I like my imperial/metric combo tape measure.
I get angry when hardware uses imperial units because I can't use my metric tools, which are way the fuck easier. Who wants to use 5/8" when you can use 16?
All plans use mm exclusively. Airport blueprints, for example, are in mm. At first blush it seems excessive, but it makes sense from a consistency & accuracy POV - 6.096m takes up 2 more characters than 6096 - they don't even need to specify the units "mm", because it is assumed, and anything else introduces room for error.
I’m terrified of driving the day they move the US from miles to kilometers. People go well over the speed limit as it is. I can only imagine how many people would read the kilometer per hour speed limit as miles.
Division no is the problem in one unit, inch, feet, etc, because use fraccions instead of decimls, but the problem is the conversion from inch, feet to others (yards, miles), which is the source of a lot of errors, like those from the Mars probes or some catastrophigs breaks of bridges in the past, apart of some problems in physics, because using for weught and mass the same unit.
No, imperial are not human measures, never has been since humans count with 10 fingers.
Nothing against metric, but base-10 is a complete train wreck of a numbering system. Mathematics in general, and geometry in particular, are gorgeous and elegant in base 12.
And also ells, rods, cubits, paces, furlongs, oxgangs, lots, batmans... all with subtly different regional definitions (with regions sometimes as small as one village).
People used loosely defined measurements based on things like their own body parts or how much land they guessed their ox could plow on an average day. Things like mathematical convenience or precision were not all that important; being able to measure (or estimate) without tools was.
Divide a metre by 4 and you get 0.25 meters or 25cm
Dived a foot by 4 you get 3 inches.
Dived a yard by 4 you get 9inches
Metric here wins in my opinion.
Now let's go by 3
1m by 3 is yes 33.3r not great but 1m is 100cm and that's how it is.
1ft by 3 is 4 inches. Sure looks great now.
Except size resolution is far greater in metric in simple forms
Every inch is 2.54 cm obviously they dont round up nicely.
Once we have to go smaller than an inch we need 15/16s of a inch, smaller then a cm we drop down to mm.
10mm makes a cm.
In super practical terms i need a spanner, 16mm is to big, i get the 15 next.
5/8 is to big what do i get next?
(I know the answer)
Also another argument is well whats if you need half a mm etc we just use 0.5m or
0.7mm etc
Very small sizes for most everyone day to day.
Sure it's not great breaking it too 0.whatever, but metric does it so much smaller as imperial made that jump to incorporate a size smaller then an inch.
Really though, the most ardent defence of USC units is fuelled by great amounts of Copium. The US Customary set of measurements is several independent systems of measurements which often radically different origins and sometimes irrational conversions, all stacked upon each other and dressed in a trench coat. For instance, the mile has Roman origins while the inch and foot were defined separately, much later, and with a lot of regional variation. The French foot was longer than the English foot, which is why Napoleon was listed as 5'2" tall while he was actually closer to 5'9", or 1.71 m, which was pretty average for the time.
Which one of these is more straightforward to calculate:
You are tasked with installing a rail along a 1 mile long bridge. You know you can use two half inch bolts to affix it every three feet. How many bolts do you need?
You are tasked with installing a rail along a 1,5 km long bridge. You know you can use two M12 bolts to affix it every metre. How many bolts do you need?
Conversions within dimensions in USC require you to memorise arbitrary conversion numbers. Conversions within dimensions in SI require you to move the comma a few spots.
Besides, if the US Customary system of units is so great, why did most of the world voluntarily switch to SI units?
I don't like the bridge example because the values were chosen (intentionally or not) conveniently for metric. Change it to every 4 feet or 1.3 metres and it's no longer convenient in either system. There are better examples that demonstrate the superiority of metric.
For example, pool cleaner says 1 unit per 10,000 gal or 40,000 L.
21' diameter, 3' tall. So ~1000 ft³. Multiply by 1728/231 for gallons.
7 m diameter, 1 m tall. So ~40 m³. Multiply by 1000 for litres.
If you're curious where 1728/231 comes from, there are 12³ (1728) in³ for a ft³. Then the gallon is defined as 231 in³
There are 8000 linguistic systems in use today, about 90 calendars, a few hundred legal systems, a few hundred monetary systems, but Redditors fume at the thought that Planet Earth uses >1 convention for weights and distances
Human scale? Not yours or mines, measures of the ffoot, thumbs and random desires of a dead British King in the far past.
No problem in metrics, at least if I don't build a hut in the wood with an axe, then maybe using parts of the body for measures are usefull. Not the first furniture I made, also working in metal. Also in mathematic and physic the metric system is way better (Even NASA now uses the metric system since 2 probes crashed on Marte due to calculation errors in the imperial system)
Just wait for an American to tell you how it's easier to use fractions with imperial. I've legit seen them say shit like 3/8 of an inch is easier to think about than 9.5mm.
~3.2mm. I can't think of any real world application which needs fraction of a millimeter which doesn't include ah calculator and some damn exact measuring tools.
Well I'm building a table right now, and it was pretty easy to choose a size for a mortise and tenon in my 3/4" stock, a third of 3/4" is 1/4". If I wanted half its width, that's 3/8". Mental math is a lot easier than "What's a third of 19mm." In the wood shop, I rarely have to divide things by five or ten. I have to divide things by two, three and four a lot.
I'm building a shaker table out of white oak. I milled all my stock to 3/4" thickness.
Just today, I resawed a board to 3/8", or half its original thickness. I glued two boards together to make 3/2" (1 1/2") thick table legs, and I cut mortises 1/3 the thickness of the stock, or a nice even 1/4".
I'm familiar with the metric system, I learned chemistry and physics in metric. I prefer woodworking in fractional inches because metric seems like a bigger pain in the ass
okay then my answer to the hypothetical is 9.5/3, which is every bit as easy to find on any measurement device, or to use for any practical purpose, as 1/24th
You know what really gets me about these threads? Everybody being like "Can you believe Americans are stupid enough to comprehend fractions? I'm too smart to comprehend fractions."
And the typical USian self-importance, "I can use fractions, so I'm not switching." Fractions work with SAE and metric. Conversions are a pain in the ass.
As someone who was forced to memorize and use unit conversions regularly, needless conversions tend to overcomplicate tasks and result in more mistakes.
Mistakes can result in death and needless loss. Ask NASA about that one.
No, like I said in my edit, my drafting ruler has a three or four inch long 24ths scale.
Even if it didn’t, having to mark the halfway point between graduations is hardly helpless.
18ths would need two divisions by three, but thankfully dividing a known measured length by three is easy with a piece of string.
There’s a reason millennia of our ancestors used fractional divisions of standard lengths and weights. They can be measured, calculated and double checked (this one is doubly important for stuff that really pisses off metroids like the hogshead/tun) using cheap, universally available tools and deceptively simple mathematics that have been the foundation of what constituted a good education for centuries.
18ths would need two divisions by three, but thankfully dividing a known measured length by three is easy with a piece of string.
what kind of cartoon fantasyland do you live in where it's easier to find a piece of string than it is a calculator?
also, all of this is assuming you have your drafting ruler to hand
do you carry it around with you in your pocket on a day-to-day basis? some deep fucking pockets you've got there, although I suppose you already that to the 1/24th inch
They can be measured, calculated and double checked
my guy, we're talking about accuracies of millimeters here: you're not "double checking" your 12" ruler is accurate by slapping your bare carpet gripper up on the drafting table
well, considering i was sitting in the bathroom looking at my phone while wearing clothes when i saw your response, i'd say string and a calculator were both equally close at hand.
only one of those can be used as a measuring tool, though... I guess you could mark off how many calculator lengths something is and measure it later. ngl, i hung a shelf using that technique once, but i wouldn't use it to find one third of a length. the nice thing about string is that if you don't have a measuring stick you can always stuff it in your pocket and measure it later when the appropriate tool is at hand.
apologies for any confusion about checking measurements, i wasn't referring to using my own foot to verify the length of a line, but the common practice of using fractional mathematics to make and verify calculations thousands of years ago and to this very day. we have records of this method being used across language and unit barriers in the ancient world.
there's another post earlier itt blaming the mars climate orbiter failure on sae unit conversion but nasa puts the blame on itself for not double checking the software and measurements they got back from lockheed. I remember back in the day hearing about that failure on the news and seeing how it was not a problem of difficulty of conversion between the compound units involved, but failure to actually convert between them at all!
since you brought up calculators, there's a salient point to be made here using a long winded anecdote: when i was in school there was a point in time when suddenly teachers began providing calculators for the exams. this wasn't that magic moment when the mathematics became just too complicated to expect a middle schooler to do it all on paper. last years class had to use longhand, this years class were provided little blue texas instruments scientific units with a ten digit display and helpful guide to performing logs and other operations that would have been taught using super and subscripts glued to the inside of the cover that would be taken back up at the end of the test.
this didn't happen going from one grade level to another, but right smack dab in the middle of the academic year. a whole classroom of students yanked bodily into the digital age.
when the parents found out you'd think the questions were gonna be written on the proctors inner thigh. "i had to do it by hand, my kid should too!" "you're supposed to be teaching them math, not how to use a calculator!" and it's sister "you're supposed to be testing their ability to do math, not use a calculator!" but the most common one by far was "they'll all just get the right answers and we won't know who studied and learned."
when the grades came in there was almost no change from last years class.
there were some individual students who did better or worse than their test history would suggest and a whole bunch of new common wrong answers, but by and large aside from errors the ability to perform calculations in response to a prompt was unaffected by ten signed digits of precision.
how could it be that a calculator made no difference?
it turns out that understanding what a question was asking for, verifying ones work and recognizing wrong answers that needed to be rechecked couldn't be performed by the little blue rectangles.
and many years (and measurements) later i have the same outlook about metrology: comprehension of the goal of a measurement gives you a much better chance to get it right than a calculator.
i don't really like replying to such a long comment with such a short one, but i feel like i need to remind you that the thing that started this chain was
Quick off the top of your head, what’s a third of 9.5mm?
reaching for a string in that situation would be puzzling to me
string would be tough at that scale but weirdly might be easier to make that measurement with than a ruler. just cut your string to 9.5mm length, then divide it by three, one of those divisions is your target length and you even have the other two to check your division's margin of error against.
to calculate and measure with a ruler would have you measuring 3.16666... which i would not be able to measure with a ruler. now a vernier caliper would be the right tool to make that measurement, and even if mine only had tenths of a millimeter id just round to 3.15mm and mark in between the mm graduations when forced to use that group of tools.
of course that's if you know how to use a set of calipers. its not as easy as one might think.
lets not forget that your response to the one third of 9.5 conundrum, which was posed by a metric defender, is:
okay then my answer to the hypothetical is 9.5/3, which is every bit as easy to find on any measurement device, or to use for any practical purpose, as 1/24th
which is literally not true as i have explained about the 24th scale ruler and even my digital calipers don't do repeating digits or express portions of metric measurements in fractions.
of course, in a real world situation i'd never be trying to mark 3.1666...mms because it's 1/3 of a thou under 1/8 inch. i'd just mark an eighth of an inch like a normal person.
even using a calculator to figure out the length suggests that a person in that conundrum stop using the metric side of their ruler.
the one third of 9.5 conundrum, which was posed by a metric defender
they weren't a metric defender
which is literally not true
what scenario is there in your mind where you'd need a precision answer to what 1/3 of 9.5mm is, but also not have access to a calculator? and of those scenarios, how many of them would be solved by the knowledge that 1/3 of 1/8 is 1/24? i'm willing to bet the answer is more or less "none".
and for those that do exist, you can also get drafting rulers that give you 1/3rds of metric measurements.
the accuracy of your equipment isn't somehow better because you're dealing with fractions rather than decimal points
you're right. the person who initially brought up 9.5 was comparing it to the sae equivalent 3/8 (9.525mm, but whos counting).
Just wait for an American to tell you how it’s easier to use fractions with imperial. I’ve legit seen them say shit like 3/8 of an inch is easier to think about than 9.5mm.
the reply was what i was thinking of, the obvious answer: "what if you need to divide by 3?"
so good eye.
one scenario when i'd want a precision answer to 1/3 of 9.5 but also not have immediate access to a calculator is when woodworking. you know, seeing as how 9.5 is (the actual metric defender this time's approximation of) 3/8... and there's no way that a calculator would help me there because the result of 9.5/3 is 3.16, a length i'd need at least tenth millimeter vernier calipers to accurately scribe. even 9.525/3 is 3.175, a measurement that requires um precision to scribe!
the inch side of my ruler, however, is graduated in eighths of an inch and i can make that measurement easily with it.
i've also used a third measurement of a known diameter when drilling holes in metal to use a technique described in machinerys handbook to cut slots.
you were the one who asked what a third of an eighth was. i'm not sure why. why did you bring up a third of an eighth? was it because you thought it would allow a person to more easily answer the question what is 1/3 of 9.5?
i guess my real question is this:
how does a calculator help you make more accurate measurements?
well, it's 3.16 mm, not 31.6, but i get your meaning.
in that case if you wanted to be real precise, you'd measure from the left or right side of one graduation to the same side of the next graduation. using that technique a person could get a better 1/8" off a ruler than someone eyeballing fractional mms would.
even if you're in a situation where it's somehow possible to manually draw 1/3 of a mm to any accuracy, 1/3 scale draft rulers still exist for metric, so it's equivalent
I seem to remember you as the one who brought up calculators
because as soon as you have access to a calculator, "off the top of your head" is an irrelevance
Valid denominators are 2, 4, 8, 16, or 32. Technically, 64, 128, and 256 are also acceptable, but they are never actually used. For precision greater than 1/32nd, we switch to thousandths, or tenths of thousandths.
Are you telling us that you are actually making, say a box, by measuring it with your hands and feet? That’s barbaric!
I’m guessing you actually use a tape measure like the rest of us.
That is what you’re implying by saying that imperial is more intuitive. But if you’re measuring with normal measurement equipment that argument is moot. At that point using imperial is easier for you just because you’re used to it. When normal people have to use imperial for things, all intuition is out the door and it will be hell.
You’re failing to externalise your own experience from the situation. Maybe you should practice that a bit more.
Dude, WTF are you talking about? When I was a machinist it was so much easier to deal with metric. 1 inch ~ 25 mm, from there it is just way easier to deal with measurements such as 27.5 mm instead of 1 5/64 inches and all of these inverse powers of 2. I was always jealous of the French machinist I worked with talking about how the only units you should ever have to work with is meters and millimeters. If you are concerned about "Human Scale" then intuitively a meter and a yard are close enough for estimates and you don't have to deal with "wait, what is 5/8 + 3/16 + 1 7/64?"
In binary it's 0.101 + 0.0011 + 1.000111, or laid out vertically:
0.101
0.0011
1.000111
=
1.111011
Halving numbers is no harder than decimating them, probably easier for most of us. Even computer scientists don't think of base-10 as The Way The Truth and The Light; they use base-2 or base-16 for various things.
Decimal/base-ten is fine as a convention, but insisting that One Convention is perfect and others are heretical is stupid.
Let me ask you something in return: do you think you can't use fractions with metric? If you prefer fractions, that's fine, but you haven't justified why it's better to use a system of measurement based on vibes.
Woodworking, sure. You have a piece of wood 2' 5 5/8“ long that you need to cut into quarters. Can you calculate that in your head? Metric is SOOOO much easier.
Alternatively, the same measurement is 752.5mm / 4 = 188.1mm, to a practical number of significant figures. No convertions between feet and inches (or ridiculous fractions of inches), and only one calculation.
Yes but my measuring tape actually has 32nds on it. The meter side only has whole divisions, not tenth graduations.
So the sae “ridiculous fraction” is a measurement I can easily make with tools I have on hand to the tools own limit of precision and double check in my head with five seconds of fifth grade level mathematics while the metric one can’t be actually measured without a set of calipers and honestly would merit long division or a calculator to double check and still needs rounding off a vile eighth of millimeter to hit what is in your own words “a practical number of significant figures”.
Imma throw something out there and I hope the earnest admission that I can’t divide 752.5 by four in my head with the level of confidence required to cut materials by is enough to recognize it not as an attack but as a real grasp at understanding:
People who make posts like yours either don’t measure things in any meaningful way (cutting, dividing, scribing lines, etc) or don’t know how to work with fractions.
Like I said: it’s not an attack, I just can’t see how someone would suggest that the metric equivalent to 13/32 is easier to work with unless they didn’t intend to actually measure it or couldn’t do fractions.
Woodworker in US here, and I prefer metric. Also consider the thickness of plywood is actually in metric now - "3/4" is actually 18 mm but they have to market it as 23/32.
I've chosen to join the other 8 billion people on earth.
I like imperial for big things. like you said it's easier. For small things like 3d printing and such I prefer metric (basically anything with increments smaller than 1/16"). It just depends on what scale you need to work on.