this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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And in the sciences and drug dealing and the military, we use metric exclusively.
But for some idiotic reason, construction engineers often use imperial units and I have no idea why. Like buildings are built in pounds and feet and stuff, with half inch bolts and 2x4 (ish) lumber and half inch plywood. It’s idiotic.
I don't generally defend imperial, but feet and inches are actually really useful in construction. Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 4, and 3. You often need to divide architectural elements in thirds.
I was a welder for years and I have to disagree. Using millimeters is way easier than inches, mostly because decimals are faster and easier to use than fractions. And it's not that hard to divide 10 by 2, 3, or 4.
As a former structural engineer who lived on a Jobber 5 all day, that's still pretty niche overall. Easier because it's what your used to maybe, but outweighed by situations where it's not. Try doing trig with fractions and then tell me imperial is better.
Does it matter whether you punch 3/8 or .375 into a calculator? Don’t tell me you calculate stuff by hand…
Trig is literally the math where you start dividing a circle in fractions and doing the math in base 360.
What the hell are you talking about?
I'm talking about trig using feet and inches. You know, rise, run, slope... Have you ever used trig outside of school? I don't understand what you're confused about.
right now i use it for waves and reflections. that's all fractions and degrees. before it was machining and tbh for me that was faster to go to the book for the answers than calculate everything out.
truly trigonometry is a land of contrasts.
4 1/2 inches divided into 2 is 2 1/4. Finding center with imperial on a tape measure is actuality faster than metric. (I use a tape with both while fabricating).
Also (good) metric fasteners cost 50% more than imperial in the US. Unless it’s for a car, I don’t use metric to save money.
That might be somewhat useful if it was consistently applied, which it is not.
And it’s maybe useful for fractions, but how many feet are in a mile again? 5280? A square yard is what now… 1296 square inches?! Who the fuck is supposed to memorize all that?
What’s a 1/4 square yard in square inches?
That’s not easy, that’s putting the mental into mental arithmetic.
Again people making me defend imperial, I think metric is better.
I see this argument all the time, converting between these units is hard cause the numbers are weird. You have to stop thinking about imperial as a system, it's not. No one should convert miles to feet, they are not intended to measure on the same scale.
None of the conversions are easy because imperial is just a random collection of units that were being used to measure different things.
Yeah, no one should be able to make a quick sanity check for things that span multiple powers.
"Hey Bob, we have 5000 of those 78 ft rails, that enough for the 100 mile railroad?"
"What do I look like, a fucking calculator?"
vs
"Hallo Heinz, how mäny hecto-liter do ve kneed für 1000 0.5l bottles of Bier?"
"20, boss."
The amount of people going completely out of their way to die on their little cubic ft hill actually defending they're incapable of easily and consistenly calculating units is just utterly ridiculous. "Nobody should be doing this!!!1!"
No, wait, the people in here telling people that "dozenal" is superior, but not realizing they're not using a "dozenal" system at all, they're just counting to twelve in decimal. Those are also making me question whether humans actually went to the moon...
Keep putting those words in my mouth. I'm not dieing on any hill, just trying to provide some context about why imperial is so weird. I still think metric is better.
You seem really upset about something that really doesn't matter that much, are you okay?
Did I mention you specifically when I said „the amount of people…“? See.
And if it doesn’t matter much to you, why do you keep commenting? Nobody’s „making“ you defend anything. Are you okay?
You were replying to me...
I'm just replying to people who respond. I had seen your argument about imperial measurements a lot and since that's really not an intended use case, if anything about imperial can really be called intended, I responded.
I'm doing fine thanks for asking. If my responses are agitating you I can stop. I hope you have a great life!
Yeah, I’m just replying to people who respond. Look, I’m not the one having issues here, you are the one who keeps responding to me. Just stay out of my inbox if I’m agitating you.
Glad you aren't having issues. No agitation here. Have a great weekend!
🤡
Funny clown emoji. Hope you enjoy your day!
Yeah. Because it’s a shitty system.
Except it’s not.
People will either say „half a kilometre“ or „500 meters“, because that’s something you can actually easily calculate …
And your GPS will tell you „turn left in 100/200/etc m“, or and not „in a quarter of a mile“…
No... Actually, the person you're talking to is correct. We switch back and forth in metric all the time, fluidly, because it's easy. The things you're describing and many more are normal parts of the metric system, and your flat assumption that it never happens because you assume it's too hard and unnatural is kind of a solid demonstration of how metric is superior.
Buddy. Take the L. You know how there's the popular saying: if you think everyone else is an arsehole, it's probably you. The anology here being you think everyone is else is blind, when it's you.
No one is suggesting not to use base 8 and 16 in computing because those are appropriate for thei use-cases.
If the imperial system was internally consistent it would be just as great as metric. A fully dozenal system would be dope! So many fractions (for real, that'd be sick. Microfeet, 1/(12⁶) of an ft, or 10-⁶ ft in base 12, sign me up. Take a ft³ relate that to a unit of volume and mass via water..... Wait this is just metric but base 12). But it isn't, So take the L.
Metric is objectively (removing things that are just preference) better or the same in every, single, way. It's entertaining for you to try find examples, so please, continue.
"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." Josh Bazell
WE ABSOULTELY DO MIX UNITS LIKE THAT. You just don't because it's too hard, or don't work in an industry where you have to. For you, yes, imperial is juuuuust fine. And it is fine. It works, okay. But it just is worse.
It's silly to judge a measurement system solely by "everyday use", because these measurements are for everything, not just you walking around, or reading about the weather. They need to be suitable for all scales, all industries, all locations. 1 system of identical units. Conversion errors are serious business across history and today.
Every conversion is a risk of error, and you're just adding more sources of it in imperial because a mental sanity check after using a calculator is harder when it's not base 10. (Our numbers are base 10, unless you want to change our international number system too, then base 10 is best for a system of measurement, full stop)
I'm going to use random numbers as examples, because in the real world, not everything ends up being nice numbers.
This is just a single example of how for design, metric conversion is useful. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it holds true everywhere.
Construction, for example, in most industries use mm, including houses, because it means you can just put a number and it will never be confused for anything else (lower chance of error). Building plans, will literally have 21,578 as a total length on them if you have a large building, pipe, whatever. I immediately know it's 21.578 m, which is useful conceptually, and all the smaller lengths shown are also immediately understood without having to show the unit on the drawing, I can happily have a room 3500 wide and the whole building length on the same drawing, and usually no decimals because 1mm is precise enoi 1ugh. It's all round mm. No chance to mess up or cram the drawing full of units.
Yes, in an imperial plan you can have a single unit, but what? 1000ths of an inch? Barley corns? 26,808 is how many feet with decimals or remainder fractions? Lemme get the calculator... Slowing down work on the worksite or design office and leading to errors. Or you'll use inches, and then need to use fractional inches for things smaller than an inch (frequent in most construction) Or feet. What's 3/8 if an inch in feet? Oh easy! 3/8 × 12 = 36/8 = 4.5... and that's an easy one. What's 267 5/16 inches in feet? Better grab the calculator. You can develop a sense of roughly how big, but not exactly because...
We use base 10 numbers. This is objectively harder. It's not what's "easier" for people to use. We don't use base 12. The above would be great in base 12. (I use X and E for 10 and 11) 1X3.39 inches = 1X.339 feet. Booyah. (Or base the whole thing on feet with prefixes every 10³ (every 12³ base 10).
In such a beautiful duodecimal system, all the benefits would be the same as for metric. But we don't use base 12 and neither do you.
The phonecians did stuff, good for them. Hell, the US has done a lot of stuff with imperial units, good for you. Imperial isn't confusing. It's just harder to mentally calculate quickly and accurately (objectively, again, we use base 10. You use base 10, this isn't up for debate).
Why is this important when we have calculators? For checking. I don't work in building construction, in piping being able to check design drawings quickly and accurately is sooo important, and made so much easier when really long and really short lengths are all in 1 unit. Not 3 (yes pipes need that difference in scale).
Pls
I don't think they at any point said "it's impossible to not build something that can be divisible by 4 and 3"
Modern 2x4s are 1½x3½ and rounded edges and nobody knows why.
What do mean no one knows why? It's to use less lumber. Back when there was unlimited old growth timber they used true dimensions at the mill, even extra dimensional, I've seen 2x4's that are closer to 3x5.
Finished 2x4s are smaller, but unfinished are true
No they aren’t- they are allowed by their respective grading agencies to be scant of truly 2” x 4” because they are most often dried after sawing, which causes them to shrink.
As an engineer it’s because the people building it complain if I draw in metric
"Give me eight cups of cocaine, good sir!"
There is tradition with buildings having measurements connected to the human body. It makes looking back at ancient ruins and cathedrals intriguing and people who learn that stuff want to hold onto it so it isn't lost knowledge.