Yeah, imperial is... confusing... like you have inches, but then you don't get decainches, you get feet 😒. And then you don't have kiloinches, you have miles 🤦.
What drives me nuts is that everyone likes to pretend America came up with this shit. But it was Britain, they just decided to abandon it for a new standard and were were too busy building a damn country and hating Britain to just adopt a new measurement system.
Then they also use 1000ths of an inch. Because fuck it, let's just throw in a single base 10 unit.
Biggest dislike is lb-mol and Rankine. Like, it you're gonna do science, use the metric system, Jesus. Ain't no one gonna take you seriously using your off-brand clown units.
Then they also use 1000ths of an inch. Because fuck it, let's just throw in a single base 10 unit.
Well, to be completely honest, you could say the same about miliseconds... I mean, they are the only ones that do base 10 regarding time measurement 😂.
Ain't no one gonna take you seriously using your off-brand clown units.
And now let's look at our time units... leap years, leap second. A month has 28, 29, 30 or 31 days. A day has 2*12 hours. An hour has 60 minutes or 3600 seconds (Babylonian mathematics :) )
It's mostly just people like to attack conversions no one really does. Even with it's nice easy conversions, the average person isn't going to tell you how many nanometers are in a megameter, which isn't qualitatively different than barleycorns in a league.
Science also just invents new units of measure when it's convenient, light years, parsecs, astronomical units, moles, etc.
Where is the first picture from? I've only seen the statue in Bremen (Germany), but never really looked up what it meant or where it really comes from.
Imperial was based on using body parts and common items to measure things. Inch was about the width of a mans thumb, foot the size of his foot, yard was the length of his arm, etc. But we have more access to things to measure now so like its kinda pointless but just stuck.
As others have pointed out, it's not just the Europeans (Australian here). But really it's because of how prominent the US is. We can't avoid them more often than we'd like.
Irks me as an engineer whenever I'm forced to use such an annoying set of units in my work. Btu/hr is especially awful. Like it's got British right there in the name, how embarassing for a system of units touted to be patriotic.
(There are many reasons metic is better, but it's a foregone conclusion at this point, so I'd rather focus on the petty reasons to soothe my frustration)
to add insult to injury – US “considered” metric conversion back in the ’70s and did manage to pass through a couple pieces of legislation that architectural and engineering plans were allowed to be submitted in metric – but any home owner attempting to submit plans in millimeters will still get stomped on
We wouldn't mind so much if your system wasn't so damn arbitrary, and if you weren't literally the only country on earth to refuse to come together with the rest of us.
It is bait. Human mind can adapt to anything, either it's metric or imperial, even bananas. However unlike imperial, metric is systematic and you really only need to know one rule: Multiply by 10. It's also transitive, meaning 1 liter equals to 10 dm^3. Other than this, rest of the world using metric so it's tedious to being have to convert measurements every time, from both sides.
Also scientists, gun owners and drug dealers already using metric. /j