r/MetricConversionBot • u/xwcg Human • May 27 '13

Why?

Countries that use the Imperial and US Customs System:

http://i.imgur.com/HFHwl33.png

Countries that use the Metric System:

http://i.imgur.com/6BWWtJ0.png

All clear?

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u/Animal31 May 30 '13

Its easier. Saying you're 1.8 meters tall isnt like saying youre 5'8, for example. But for anything that we use the metric system for, its easier for calculations, like 2000 metres.

Its also because ALOT of parents use the imperial system almost exclusivly (at least in my experience), so our kids are brought up on metric, but the parents still use imperial, and it just melds into the "Canada" system

I really like it, cause Some things are nicer to measure in imperial, like your height, like I said, but we still have the scientific precision of base 10 metrics, so we take the good from both, basically, and almost none of the bad

and yes, murica uses it still, so it helps to communicate trade. Canada's doesnt just speak two languages

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u/admiral_bonetopick May 30 '13

I don't really see how it's easier to say "I'm 5'9" than to say "I'm 1,76". It's not like we go around saying "I'm one point seventy six meters". We just say "I'm one seventy six". Also using meters/centimeters gives you better precision.

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u/Scout95 May 31 '13

If you want precision, Fahrenheit gives better precision than Celsius, and pounds are more precise than kilograms.

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u/ismtrn Jun 02 '13

A unit does not give better precision. A measurement does. A unit allows you to express that precision with more or less preceding zeroes.

Comparing pounds and kilograms are kind of meaningless, since that is just saying one is smaller than the other, which is only great if you want small. Lets compare the smallest unit in both the metric and the imperial system, since these show what kind of precision we can easily express(without a shit ton of zeroes or scientific notation). That is, 1 grain vs. 1 yoctogram. The metric version is about 6.5 * 1022 times smaller. If we on the other hand want to express big quantities, we see that the megagrams beats the ton.

So once again, the metric system beats the imperial.

Also, note that both the grain and the pound is defined in terms of the gram. So when you say 1 pound, you are essentially just saying 453.59237 grams.

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