The SI system is also based on the length of body parts though
The second is the length of a single heartbeat. During one heartbeat, the heart muscle consumes 1 J of energy, which makes 1 J per second, roughly, which is 1 W.
Also the 1 m is the length of the spinal chord. Some might not get the significance of the spinal cord and that’s fine but it’s the central canal in the body so there’s that. Edit: yeah yeah i get it it’s not the “official origin”. However i remember reading a paper where they discussed that the meter should be the length of the spine, but they didn’t outright wanna say it, so they searched for a natural circumstances that just so happened to approximate that.
Also i believe that 1 kg is what you can comfortably carry. Or about the amount of food (cereals) that a worker gets paid for a day of field work. Compare to japanese Masu.
You do know that people used to be significantly shorter when they came up the meter, right?
I’m honestly astounded by the amount of misinformation in this comment.
Second derives from sexagesimal measurements of day and night cycles. Metre derives from early Earth measurements. One gram is the weight of one cubic centimeter of water.
yeah ikr but why is the second 1/60 of 1/60 of 1/24 of a day? early people in antiquity could have made it 1/60 of 1/60 of 1/60 instead, or just 1/60 of 1/60. What inspired people to divide the day that way?
It looks like you could do a quick search and find an answer yourself, instead of making stuff up.
first result (https://www.discovermagazine.com/why-1-second-is-1-second-227) does not explain it
nope does not seem like i can find it easily and quickly. so, what is the reason?
Didn’t say it would be easy.
But just to be clear here, why would I do your job? And is it the alternative that you make things up instead of educating yourself?
I don’t know why the U.S. gets shit for using the system that our colonial overlords forced us to use in the first place.
The only reason we’re still using it today is inertia. If we gradually tried phasing it out we’d have a lot more people on board with officially switching over to it versus the “ripping the band-aid” method of doing it all at once and causing culture shock to a bunch of ignorant Americans who haven’t done math since 8th grade.
In the 1821, John Quincy Addams (at the time secretary of state) was told to give congress a report on the new metric system. He presented them a very detailed document, making comparisons between the two, but ultimately recommending the metric system.
…so detailed, in fact, that none of them bothered to read it and no decision was made. The treasury ended up taking the initiative on their own, and went with what everyone was already using.
This was barley 30 years after the constitution was ratified, and the report was made by a guy who’s dad helped to draft the damn thing. We don’t get to blame the Brits for this one. Our stubborn anachronistic measurements are entirely a Yankee phenomenon.
I don’t know why the U.S. gets shit for using the system that our colonial overlords forced us to use in the first place.
When America was colonized, the metric system did not exist. Saying that your “colonial overlords” forced it on you is silly - there were no better options at the time.
In fact, the metric system was created after US independence. So the US can only blame itself for not adapting it, unlike the UK which mostly adapted it.
According to my elementary /middle school-aged kids, it seems they are in fact learning the metric system in school. And this is in a red state in the south. 🤷♂️
~Check back in a couple of years and I can tell you what they’re doing in high school.~
Wow, that’s actually quite cool. Change will come from the ground up, imo. Good for them learning a better system. In another generation or two they will probably be the ones to spearhead the effort to do away with the old Imperial system entirely.
Metric has been a part of our science curriculum for a long time. There was even a push to change completely in the '70s until we figured out how much it would cost to do it. That’s why there are two liter sodas and why there’s one highway with kilometer markers instead of mile markers.
As for completely doing away with imperial, given that Europe hasn’t even entirely done that, it seems unlikely.
Yup blame America.
On the same page when will Africa stop letting people speak Dutch? Stupid Africa still using that useless language that they chose to accept.
A defense of the imperial measurement system.
I will not be arguing that the imperial measurement system is better than metric, because it isn’t. metric is obviously better.
I stopped watching after this.
How many cubic inches are there in a gallon, without just looking it up?
Oh fuck I didn’t even get to volume mesurments, I knew the imperial system was fucked but until I actualy did some Wikipedia. Well my God what the fuck.
The video in question directly addresses that chart, correctly poining out that it’s quite misleading in the implication that the measurements on it are ever converted between in any context ever. But no, there is no context where someone converts between feet and miles, or uses sticks or hands or fingers or palms or chains or all those other units I promise you haven’t heard of. Imperial is bad, but it’s not that bad.
Similarly, it is completely irrelevant to know that a gallon is an integer number of cubic inches at all, that is a conversion that is simply never done.
A spacecraft weighing two tons fires its engine in a straight line for five seconds. It uses up 100 pounds of fuel, and the engine is rated to exert 500 pounds of force. What is the delta V, in miles per hour?
I can do that calculation in metric easy peasy, because all the SI units convert at a 1:1 ratio, and I can easily convert between the different scales. Can you do the math in Imperial without looking up the conversion factors?
Nope, but nobody does calculations like that in imperial either. All science is done in metric, then converted to imperial at the end if that’s needed.
Both the meter and the second were created from a step length, just like the mile.
Second is a measure of time. You think its “the time it take for one step”… ?
A day is divided into hours. An hour is divided into smaller pisces, minute pieces. (See how it works as an adjective and a noun?) Then that measure is divided a second time, into secunda pars minuta
That’s why they’re minutes and seconds.
Metres don’t exactly sound like step lengths either
The mètre was introduced – defined as one ten-millionth of the shortest distance from the North Pole to the equator passing through Paris, assuming an Earth flattening of 1/334.
Remind me — what’s the definition of a meter?
Half of yo mama’s waistline measurement.
The length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second.
Why?
Just trying to wrap my feeble American brain around these extremely intuitive measurements.
As opposed to the foot, a body part notorious for its consistency in size across all people /s
It’s good enough for an estimate of the size of a room, which is what it’s commonly used for.
Oh, really? You use your foot or your girlfriend’s? Because I wager those are somewhat different.
What body part is a quart based on? Because I don’t think it’s any of them, and you could probably still eyeball a quart of water. That’s to say, just shy of a litre.
How about one yard? Think you can do that? Great, just add a bit and you have a metre.
It’s crazy how Americans actually be complaining about how they’re unable to estimate or perceive things if they’re not actually measuring it against the bottom of their feet. Don’t you believe you have the ability to learn? I can see why you wouldn’t, but…
Americans actually be complaining
how are you attempting to disparage americans and talking like one at the same time. it’s just the name of a unit, who cares, a yard’s not the size of the boundary of their average house and barrels of oil don’t come in individual barrels
Because if I don’t assume their language, they won’t understand me, as my native language is Finnish. When talking to or about Americans, I might add a bit of American flare. It’s not grammatically correct, I know. Just double negatives.
Also criticism and disparagement are two different things.
Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium.
Of course. It’s so obvious.
Nor obvious, but based on physical principals and highly reproducible. BTW, what’s the official definition of an inch?
Roughly the length of the last segment of my thumb. Which is roughly 1/12th the length of my foot. Which is roughly 1/3 of my stride.
Things I don’t need a vacuum and instruments that can measure the speed of light to reproduce.
A mole is a very useful unit of measurement in chemistry, but much less so in baking.
Convert me 528 miles to inches without using a calculator. I doubt you can.
And all I need to convert 528 kilometres to centimetres is just add a bunch of zeroes.
Tell me how much 2.3 pints of water weigh without looking up or using a calculator.
I can tell you exactly how much 2.3 liters of water weigh without any aid.
Bonus, if I have a litre of water I can use it to accurately measure weight!
Do you really need to know the number of inches from Los Angeles to Portland outside of a lab? Seems unlikely.
That’s the point. In a lab, where conversions and formulas are frequently used, metric makes sense. I use it all the time. Even the US military uses metric for their specifications.
Outside the lab, it makes little sense.
My point is that the metric system is just as useful inside a lab as it is in the real world everyday scenarios. Why use two different systems, when one does the job and is generally a lot easier to work with?
Do you really think that measuring roughly (without a measurement tool) in inches is better than measuring roughly in centimeters or, meters vs. feet, etc? You learn to approximate in each system and make similar rough measurements, but when you need accuracy and actually do some number crunching, one system is superior.
And even in every day life, you often come across knowing you need e.g. 2.3 kilograms of something, but that something is sold in grams. I can instantly convert the numbers on the spot in the store without using a calculator.
I really cannot see a scenario where the imperial system is better.
“Roughly” - yep, that’s the best way to measure everything. Especially in science and calculations.
Hey whats a space shuttle or two between friends
I conceded, in the post you responded to, that metric is better for science. It’s the last sentence in my post.
Do you struggle with reading comprehension?
Uhm… No, you did not.
Are you okay?
Roughly the length of the last segment of my thumb
Real consistent there, Cletus
I mean, it is consistent, compared to itself. If I have a framed artwork held on the wall by two nails and want to raise it roughly an inch, my thumb is right there to measure with. No need to get a ruler.
The fact that there’s no easy conversion between my thumb and the speed of light in a vacuum just isn’t a problem I deal with on a daily basis.
You can do the same with cm… but lets say you’ve got something a yard wide and need it in quarters, have fun. But hey if its a meter that’s 25cm. In fifths? 20cm. In tenths? 10cm. And decimals are super easy to deal with as well. It’s so much easier to deal with Metric for day to day calculations.
And yes, I’m American. There is absolutely no sane reason to keep Imperial measurements besides aversion to change. None.
This a really stupid argument.
You’re going “hmm, this is about and inch and I don’t need to be precise.” You know what the metric equivalent is? Going “hmm this is about 2.5cm and I don’t need to be precise”.
Be better.
So you think if I want to raise framed artwork by an approximate amount I would need a metric ruler? Why? I can use a thumb too, or literally any object.
From John Bazell “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 percent 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.”
You guys must boil water differently than I do. I put water in a kettle on the stove on high and take it off when it boils.
Well yeah, stove kettles are a century out of date, for a start.
Read again. Slowly.
The inch is defined using metric units. 1 in is defined to be exactly 25.4mm. So per definition inch is based on the speed of light. Nice that you have body parts which are roughly the size of an inch thoug
It’s defined as 1/12 of a foot and your wife said my inch was the best she’d ever had.
Who cares what the original reason for using that exact length is? What matters is the relation of that measurement compared to other measurements you want to use. Regardless of whether a length is in feet or meters, I’ll need a ruler to measure it - the thing that influences convenience is how easy it is for me to convert it to other useful measurements like kilometers, miles, centimeters, or inches.
You don’t need a ruler to measure a foot. It’s right there in the name.
And if the variability of people’s feet is too much for a particular situation, then yeah, use metric.
But I can visualize a room’s dimension in feet. You may be able to visualize it given meters, but that’s come from experience, not intuition.
And if your argument boils down to “who cares about arbitrary scales” then you’re going to have to explain what’s wrong with adding decimals to miles.
…what? I’ve spent my whole life in the US, and I’ve literally never heard of anyone legitimately using their own foot as a legitimate measurement tool. Who the hell uses their own foot to measure a foot? You’d have to be crazy lucky to have a foot that measures exactly 12 inches, otherwise you’d be off every single time.
If you care so little about a measurement that you’d take that much variability, you might as well just take a wild guess. Unless you already know what your own foot size is in feet, at which point you could just as easily memorize your own foot size in meters.
And no, I can’t visualize a room in feet, I can take a wild guess and be wrong for any meaningful situation, or I can measure it, which I do with the miniature tape measure I have on my keychain for that exact scenario.
Done it plenty. Still prefer metric, but it is a convenient rough estimate that’s slightly better than guessing
I don’t believe you. Any time you’re looking at an apartment or house and don’t have a floorplan or a 10’+ tape measure, you walk the length of each side of a room side heel-and-toe to get a rough idea. The deviation of the length of your foot from 12 inches isn’t material in this situation.
And if you’re really struggling with this, a room with a 10’ side would be about ten small steps across, a bit more than three strides.
I know intuitively how long my foot is and how long my stride is. I don’t know intuitively what the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second, where the second is defined by a hyperfine transition frequency of caesium.
