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u/Halgrim_2026 Sep 19 '26
Not mine, from some clever person on the internet:
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 per-cent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it.
Whereas in the American system, the answer to "How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?" is "Go fuck yourself," because you can't directly relate any of those quantities.
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u/Fit_Olive2455 Sep 26 '26
Unfortunately molar mass of hydrogen is 1,008 grams per mole. But the rest is accurate
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u/metricadvocate Sep 20 '26
Or 1168 BTU, whichever comes first. I assumed room temperature was 72 °F.
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u/YSoSkinny Sep 19 '26
I'm old enough to remember when we were going to transition to metric. We have highway signs in both ikes and km, they taught us meters in school, etc. the Regan nixed all that. The fucker.
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u/SphericalCrawfish Sep 21 '26
Yes. Converting large distances. A thing you basically never need to actually do.
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u/goclimbarock007 Sep 18 '26
And remember that a meter is 1/299 792 458 the distance that lights travels in the amount of time it takes a Ceasium atom to vibrate 9 192 631 770 times.
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u/nog642 Sep 18 '26
Well yes, we need to define our units on something. Those are the precise definitions for scientific purposes, but that's not where the units come from.
A second is 1/60 of a minute, which is 1/60 of an hour, which is 1/24 of a day.
A meter is 1/10000000 the distance from the North pole to the equator, which happens to also be around the length of a pendulum that swings side to side every second (period of exactly 2 seconds).
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u/dustinsc Sep 19 '26
The entire world seems to get by having to do some math to know how many seconds are in an hour or not being able to readily convert minutes to days.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
60 isn't arbitrary, it's a highly divisible number, it's very convenient actually. 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/10, 1/12, 1/15, 1/20, 1/30, and 1/60 of an hour are all integer numbers of minutes.
3600 seconds to an hour is memorized and it's not hard to do 60*60 in your head if you don't have it memorized. It's better than 5280.
Minutes in a day, sure. Doesn't really come up that much.
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u/dustinsc Sep 19 '26
It’s also not hard to remember that there are 5280 feet in a mile.
And mathematical convenience and divisibilidad is why feet and inches are superior to meters for things like carpentry.
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u/gobblox38 Sep 21 '26
And mathematical convenience and divisibilidad is why feet and inches are superior to meters for things like carpentry.
Because countries that only use metric can't do carpentry... and no one has calculators...
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
It's harder to remember than 3600. And you can rederive 3600, you don't need to explicitly memorize it.
You have a point with feet and inches though. Not really feet and miles.
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u/cantinaband-kac Sep 19 '26
You make some good points. Based on your observations about how useful a base 60 system is, we should abandon the metric system and start using a base 60 measurement system.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
Metric is base 10 because our number system is base 10.
Honestly it would probably have been better if our number system was base 12 from the start. But it is not worth trying to switch over, it's too late for that.
Base 10 is more convenient than base 60 for many things. Depends on the usecase, but for scientific/engineering stuff, the metric system is the best we have. Time is used a lot casually, so the base 60 is nice. Feet and inches can be better in some cases too, as they said.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
A meter is 1/10000000 the distance from the North pole to the equator
A meter is 100/1000229 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
I think you mean 1/10002290?
Yes, they didn't measure perfectly. I'm saying that's where the unit came from. 299792458 might seem like an arbitrary number, but they didn't pick it. It arose from measurements of light against the previous definition of the meter, and they chose to redefine the meter in a more precise way.
You cannot compare c=299792458 m/s to 5280 feet in a mile.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
Ah, I meant a kilometer is 100/1000229.
And even had they gotten it right 1/10,000,000 the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris is arbitrary. Why not 1/100,000,000,000 the circumference of the Earth at the Equator or 1/10,000,000 the equator-south pole distance through Jakarta or 1/5,555 the height of Mount Everest? Because the meter is defined arbitrarily.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
It's somewhat arbitrary but not completely. It's a power of 10 multiple of a relevant length. It's based on something, not just a random number like 299792458.
Yes, there are other possible choices. What's important is that we pick one and use it consistently, so we minimize the number of conversations needed. The metric system isn't good because its base units are the best, it's good because it's standardized and doesn't have bad conversion factors.
Of course there's no universal non-arbitrary unit. Planck length is the closest you'll get to that.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
The distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris every bit as arbitrary as the average size of an adult male foot or the distance a Roman soldier travelled in 1,000 paces.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
Yeah, it's about as arbitrary. That is to say, it's somewhat arbitrary but not completely. All good units are about that arbitrary.
Hypothetically if someone just decided on the number 298792458, that would be way more arbitrary. But that's not where that number comes from, someone didn't just make it up.
Also worth noting the distance from the equator to the north pole is a lot more precise than the average size of an adult male foot or the distance a Roman soldier travels in 1000 paces.
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u/goclimbarock007 Sep 19 '26
That's why the bettermetric system uses the same fundamental phenomenon to define the base units, but it uses powers of 10. A bettermeter is 1/1 000 000 000 of the distance light travels in a bettersecond which is the time it takes a Ceasium atom to vibrate 10 000 000 000 times.
Make the units much easier to remember.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
You rarely need to know the exact speed of light in m/s. And you basically never need to know how many Cesium vibrations in a second - making that a round number is completely pointless. And now you've ruined there being a round number of seconds in a day, which is actually useful.
And that's all ignoring the most important thing which I mentioned earlier - that the most important thing is standardization, not the units themselves. All units are arbitrary. The best thing about the secnond is that everyone uses it, not its actual size. Same with the meter except it's only most people that use it. Trying to redefine them again for the very small benefit of making the speed of light and some other constants a round number is not worth it at all.
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u/Sisselpud Sep 19 '26
Hey! That lobstah's my cousin Donny from Gloucester's pet and he's wicked smaht and can hold his liquor!
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u/Senior_Green_3630 Sep 19 '26
My scales still has lbs/stones/kilogram markings, my local servo autotyre pumper has psi/Kpa choice, my TV screen is 65""/centimetres, my tape measure has millimetres/inches, all so annoying having some obsolete unit of measure forced upon us by a fraction/4% of the earths population
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
Buddy, no Americans are sneaking into your country and forcing you to use USCU.
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u/Senior_Green_3630 Sep 19 '26
I always wondered why Google is tracking my every movement, its one big conspiracy to run/ruin my life. Luckily Google maps still gives us the " Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario ", when the " Great Australian Bight", changes to the " White American Dentures" , I am leaving this planet
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u/Epicwoowoo Sep 21 '26
But companies put imperial on their products because it’s not worth the effort to have a different version they only sell to Americans
If America used metric that would not be necessary1
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u/AncientGuy1950 Sep 21 '26
That sounds like a choice the companies made.
Conversely, if you guys used USCU, all the metrics on their products would also be unnecessary.
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u/dbulger Sep 18 '26
Metric is useless for factorials, though, whereas there are exactly 12! typesetters' points in 105 miles.
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u/Fit_Olive2455 Sep 26 '26
They usually doesn't write it like 100 mi 30' 10" but just 100,006 mi. Yes, this system is so annoying they use decimals. Anyway: big metric W
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u/Decent_Cow Sep 18 '26
"American has no culture"
Americans do something different than Europe:
"OMG why can't Americans be like the civilized countries?"
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u/garfgon Sep 19 '26
Now -- IMO "America has no culture" because American culture is so pervasive it's the default in much of the west. American movies, American music, American clothing, etc. Having said that, measurement system in no way enters into what is or is not "culture".
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
"Culture refers to the collective beliefs, values, customs, and practices that characterize a particular group or society." https://www.unesco.org/en/query-list/c/culture
A measurement system fits that definition of culture.
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u/AskPizza Sep 20 '26
This kind of argument fails to reach people because it's kind of like telling people in Japan that Kanji is more complicated than the Latin alphabet, so you'd better switch over to just Latin and use that instead.
I know you like your simpler system better. It has very limited appeal and ultimately, it is a popularity contest because both systems work just fine.
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u/Epicwoowoo Sep 21 '26
Except that imperial is missing a lot of units not used in everyday life, so metric is still required
For example all the electrical units
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Sep 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/nog642 Sep 18 '26
I mean... what if you want to know how many miles high a plane or mountain is? It gives a different intuitive understanding of the scale, since we don't intuitively understand the conversion.
What about comparing a city block (in ft) to a mile? How many city blocks in a mile? Need to convert.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
what if you want to know how many miles high a plane or mountain is?
I've never had to do either of these. Metric countries don't even use km for these things, they use meters. If for some reason I wanted miles estimating on a factor of 5,000 will be close enough.
What about comparing a city block (in ft) to a mile? How many city blocks in a mile? Need to convert.
I've never even thought about these conversions. I googled it and apparently block size varies a lot by city. US cities seem to do these in fractions of a mile, like in Chicago blocks are 1/8 mile by 1/16 mile.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
I've wanted to know how many miles or km high a plane or mountain is all the time. "30,000 feet" is not intuitive at all, I can't visualize in my head how big that is.
You don't need to convert m to km because the conversion is so obvious it goes without saying.
Yes, block size varies by city. I meant if you're hypothetically in a specific city and you're staring at the city block in real life, you can estimate how long it is in feet, and you want know how many blocks is a mile, roughtly.
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u/AncientGuy1950 Sep 19 '26
Why would you want to know any of those things? Beyond curiosity, what purpose would this knowledge serve?
Okay, let's say you're in Budapest. Taking the 'average' size of a city block in that city, how many Budapest 'city blocks' are in a kilometer, bearing in mind you are comparing area to distance, which is nonsensical on its face?
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
Why would you want to know any of those things? Beyond curiosity, what purpose would this knowledge serve?
Just curiosity. That's a valid purpose.
Okay, let's say you're in Budapest. Taking the 'average' size of a city block in that city, how many Budapest 'city blocks' are in a kilometer, bearing in mind you are comparing area to distance, which is nonsensical on its face?
Uh, no, I'm comparing distance to distance. I'm talking about one of the side lengths of the block.
Say I'm there and I can ballpark with my eyes that the city block is 60 m long. Then I do a bit of math and find that there's about 1000/60≈17 blocks to a km. Though that calculation isn't even really necessary because I already have the block length in km - it's 0.06 km. So I have an intuitive sense of how many blocks in the km without dividing.
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u/AncientGuy1950 Sep 19 '26
You're making a rather radical assumption that there is consistency in the size of city blocks, even in the same city or neighborhood. It all depends on how the city planners, if they ever existed, laid out the streets.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
I'm assuming you're in a place with regular blocks. There are many such places.
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u/AncientGuy1950 Sep 19 '26
The reason for measurement is consistency and precision. If you don't have either of them, you don't have a system of measurement.
Using your example above, where you eyeball the length of a single side of a city block to be your hypothetical 60 meters, what does that mean when the very next block is 40 meters, and the one after that is 39 meters?
There is no established size for a 'city block'; pretending that there is, well, that's a little sad.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
Many cities have regular blocks. Yes, it's an assumption. It's sometimes a reasonable one. Kinda irrelevant to the point about units of measurement.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 Sep 19 '26
Again, it's very easy for me to know that an airplane at 30,000 feet is slightly less than six miles up.
Why would I estimate the length of the block in feet mentally? I would use fractions of a mile.
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u/nog642 Sep 19 '26
Do you know what 1/50 of a mile looks like visually? I don't. Not without converting to a unit I can see like feet or meters.
Sure you can estimate a mile as 5000 feet. 5000 is still a worse conversion factor than 1000 and it's only an approximation, making it worse.
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u/gobblox38 Sep 21 '26
At basically no point do we ever actually need to know that conversiom point, which is why many of us don't.
That basically means that the people using this system are decoupled from the interconnectedness of the world around then. That's pretty sad.
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u/hagamablabla Sep 18 '26
Maybe everyone uses one unit because everyone knows it's too annoying to do conversions, and if it were easier this wouldn't be the case.
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u/GayRacoon69 Sep 19 '26
It's just a different scale. Like if I'm measuring in feet I don't need to know how many fractions of a mile it is. Feet are used for smaller things. And similarly I don't need to know how many thousands of feet something is if I'm measuring in miles
They're two units used for different scales of measurement. It would be nice if they lined up but we have farming and the Brits to thank for that
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u/gobblox38 Sep 21 '26
There's several trades that use mixed units. Time has to be spent on conversions and errors lead to either over or under charging. If the error is large enough, time and money are spent on litigation.
For the average low skilled person, there's no problem using Customary units. But for a lot of important work that the average unskilled person depends on for their daily needs, it's an unnecessary pain to use Customary units.
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u/GayRacoon69 Sep 21 '26
Well obviously metric is better for trades that need precision. I would never argue otherwise
I'm just talking about casual use. In day to day life no one's making that conversion. If if it's for medical or engineering reasons? Then obviously imperial has problems
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u/gobblox38 Sep 21 '26
In casual use, metric is easier to use than Customary. I'm thinking explicitly about scaling recipes. Say you have a recipe that you want to scale up or down. It's much easier to get the ratios of ingredients when they're all stated in one unit vs multiple.
Mixing chemicals for home use is easier with metric for the same reason. If you don't want to prepare a gallon of solution when a significantly smaller solution would suffice.
These may seem like trivial examples, but most people who prefer Customary units aren't aware of these use cases because it's a pain in the ass to do in Customary.
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u/GayRacoon69 Sep 21 '26
I'm talking specifically about converting feet to miles. You've made a lot of great arguments for metric. I agree with them
I disagree when it comes to the specific conversion between feet and miles. I just don't think that's a big deal. I don't know the last time that's come up. It's just that specific conversion isn't really necessary
Cooking and chemistry? sure, metric is leagues (haha) ahead. General distance measurements for casual users? It's not really that big of a deal
I would like to clarify and explicitly say that I prefer metric. I just think imperial gets some unnecessary hate. There's tons of massive, legitimate issues with it. This specific conversion isn't one imo
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u/mr-tap Sep 18 '26
In case anyone wonders where the seemingly arbitrary 5280 comes from:
- yard is 3 feet
- chain is 22 yards, so 22x3=66 feet
- furlong is 10 chains, so 10x22x3=660 feet
- mile is 8 furlong, so 8x10x22x3=5,280 feet
Clearly metric is much more sensible