We’re taught both metric and US customary units in school. I prefer metric for most things, to the point I have a metric-only tape measure among other things.
However, I’ll die on the hill that Fahrenheit is superior for ambient air temperature. 0 degrees to 100 degrees neatly encompasses the range of average surface temperatures seen throughout the year in the contiguous US.
Then I whipped it out and said, yeah baby, it’s 200 long…
Celsius does seem like a horrible measurement for weather.
Otherwise, metric is the clearly the best, but it’s foreign to me. I honestly have no idea what 175 cm looks like, or how heavy 5 kg is.
What is wrong with celsius?
They probably just aren’t familiar. I’m not. I like the idea of 0-100F being what humans can safely and directly experience (+/-30) but I have plenty of contacts that intrinsically know what C means to the same degree.
Then again, as someone from a cold northern country, using celsius and having 0 as the temperature where water freezes is very handy when you need to think about driving conditions. Anything below 0 means the roads are probably icy and you should be careful.
I haven’t had to think twice about 32F being the freezing point since before I could drive. It’s just one of a thousand numbers I can remember. There’s no particular advantage between g being 9.8m/s/s or 32ft/s/s. Nothing round about pi being 3.14. Whatever you use becomes recognizable quickly. My car takes 87 octane gas, takes 5w30 oil, has a wheel bolt pattern of 5x108mm or 5x4.25in, has a 63.4mm center bore, 320mm front brake rotors… The list goes on.
Where I live, in southern Europe, we get 40ºC several days a year (104ºF), and the odd 40 to 45ºC (113ºF). Thankfully dry. If humidity is low, and you have water and shadow, know how to dress, and you are reasonably healthy, 100 to 113ºF are safe, albeit not comfortable. People do live in Arizona, no?
Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It’s roughly the range, not an exact definition. More humidity, laboring to survive, or not having modern access to water would make 100+ considerably dangerous. Similarly, not having shelter, having high wind, or being wet makes 0- considerably dangerous. So yes, with current tech and convenience, we can casually survive -20 to 120, but it’s still pretty awful.
I was also saying the range in regards to what we can touch and perceive. I know 1000 is very hot and melts some metals, but I can’t really touch a 200 degree pot of water, either. I don’t have intrinsic knowledge of the difference.
There’s only about 30° difference between freezing and unbearably hot. Doesn’t seem accurate enough.
Accurate? It’s accurate; 0º water freezes. 100º water boils. 40º weather is hot AF. 40º and humid, is miserable.
Sure, for science, it’s brilliant. In the real world nobody really cares about anything beyond halfway to boiling.
Under 40, bundle up
40s wear a coat.
50s jacket
60s hoodie
70s indoor clothes
80s as little as possible
90s naked
Vs.
4-10 wear a coat
10-15 jacket
15.6-20.5 hoodie
21.1 -26.1 indoor clothes
26.6-32.2 as little as possible
Over 32.2 naked
I didn’t have to add decimals to any of the F values. There is no noticeable difference at half a degree fahrenheit.
100% metric
I much prefer metric, but I live in the US so the Imperial units are what I grew up with and can work with most easily. The rest of the world uses metric, so I end up dealing with metric units quite a lot too. I have gotten to the point where I have a fairly good intuitive grasp of most metric units. I almost always use metric when I’m measuring things for my own use.
I do prefer Celsius to Fahrenheit for temperature. Fahrenheit may have made sense in the era and location where it was created, but in the larger world, where climate change is well underway, it no longer fits. The idea that the normal range of temperature fit into 0 F to 100 F was never true outside of the temperate zones. Just within the lower 48 states in the US we regularly experience temperatures above 110 F in the south and below 0 F in the north.
Also, it has always been true that the temperature that matters most is the freezing point. Putting that at 32 has never made any sense.
It frustrates me that the US came so close to adopting metric, then backed away, while the rest of the world moved forward. Now we’re stuck with the worst of both systems.
Talking about distance, miles.
The limited wood working that I do, Metric. It’s just easier to calculate.
Measuring things for other purposes, such as measuring windows for blinds… Imperial, because most places use it.
I like using metric for measuring with a tape measure. Feels a bit more accurate and easy to remember as you go.
But wire size I think AWG (American wire gauge) is far superior than metric. Easy to remember, 18 16 14 12 or 10 AWG. Compared to metric which just lists the outside diameter. So those same sizes in metric are 1, 1.5, 2.5, 4, 6 mm²
I’m sure if I used it every day it’d be different. And the larger sizes in AWG are kind of a mess. It’s even numbers til 1 AWG, then there’s technically a 0 AWG, then it goes 1/0 to 4/0, then 250 - 1000 MCM (but also some people call it kcmil?)
Still just “feels” right to me after using it for so long
What is an “outside diameter” supposed to be?
mm² is also not a diameter, radius or circumference, but the area of the wire cross section.
How are AWG defined?
They’re defined like all American measurements. By “feel” of each size
I’ve been doing electrical work for 11 years and I can feel a 12, 14, 16, or 18 awg wire in my hands and tell you the difference.
I mostly don’t like how there’s no rhyme or reason to the metric equivalent. All the numbers are basically random in order of each other so it’s a crapshoot tryin to say something is one or the other. But again, I don’t use it regularly
I’m sure that’s mainly being used to one or the other? 0,5…0,75…1,5…2,5…4mm² are all quite distinct if you work with them a little. Imperials break my head though, can’t do all these fractions and conversions in my head.
I’ll tell you, it’s the opposite of what you think, big number awg is absolutely tiny and 0 or 3/0 is huge. It’s used in the UK sometimes for the thickness of sheet steel, mainly seen it for ducting, it’s just an ass backwards measurement systems. They take the diameter in inch then take the logarithmic of it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge
Prefer metric. So much easier conversions. However, it is hard for me to think long distances and weight in terms of metric, on the fly, and ambient temperature.
Also a lot of tools are still in “standard” so have no choice but to use it.
Metric seems to be the superior measurement. Problem is , I can visualize 6in and NOT 6cm.
You can measure the length of your fingers, forearm etc in metric to gain some reference points
But a classic 12" ruler is 30 cm.
Half of that is 6" or 15cm
Half again is 3". Or 7.5"
Then realize visualizing didn’t need to be accurate because it never will be anyway and go from there.
An inch is about 2.5 cm if you need a quick and dirty reference.
Converting by halfs was my go to.
the range of average surface temperatures seen throughout the year in the contiguous US.
So give it a few more years of global warming and you won’t want to use that anymore either.
I always preferred metric and Celsius. When I lived in South Korea, I was able to adapt immediately. Now I live in Europe and it makes all of the conversions easier.
Americans resistant to metric, in my opinion, are not very smart.
Murican’ here. The only place I prefer Fahrenheit is in weather mainly for how ironically base 10 it scales for human related comfortability for outdoor activity.
100°+ dangerous heat
90s very hot, drink lots of water
80s shorts weather
70s comfortable
60s long sleeves
50s jacket weather
40s bring a coat
30s coat and hat (water freezing is here at 32°)
20s layers
10s insulated layers
0s very cold, protect exposed skin
-0s dangerous cold
Everywhere else I’m fine for C°
Dangerous heat depends on humidity, it varies wildly.
You can just scale it down and have the same experience. It’s all just habit and familiarity
The whole point is that it is ironically base 10. I thought that was the goal?
Base 10 is nice for crossing regimes of scales, orders of magnitude. But we don’t really engage with temperature that way. The problem I have with F-heit on its own, is that it’s much too precise. The difference of a degree is meaningless, especially when considering weather. Fahrenheit weather maps are cluttered, dials and buttons on thermostats and in cars are slow, thermometer readings change too frequently, etc. USian shoe sizes have the opposite problem. If you need to use half sizes all the time then FFS just multiply the scale by 2.
That’s incidental:
he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees, and body temperature 96 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval 6 times (since 64 = 2⁶).
I mean, base 2 is superior imho.
30 is hot
20 is not
10 is cool
0 is freezing
-10 is terribly cold
metric for math, F for temperature, whatever the fuck ounces/cups are for cooking because thats what my measuring receptacles say
I’m in Canada, I swear I use both on a daily basis
I prefer to use standard but metric was used very little when I was in school. Just advanced science classes. Like a little intro in grade school, somewhat in high school and then standard in college. Still every day usage is vastly dominated by standard. Now that being said I would prefer for america to fully use metric. It would suck for me but its just so stupid to be using standar measurements. I will say though that standard measurements are very human.
I was not taught both, but I try to use both when I post stuff on Lemmy, for the sake of readers. I typically have to look up the conversion.
Beyond that, I’ve started baking in metric because my super-precise scale handles it nicely, and there are an absolute ton of metric weight-based recipes but not a lot in imperial. Volume-based baking is just bad. It never turns out consistently. Volume is ok for cooking, not baking.
I also use Celsius for temps in games because that’s usually the default, but not meatspace because everything around me is presented in freedumb units. I don’t really have a preference between the two, but I’d just love if we switched to kelvin. I’m a big fan of scales that start from 0. It’s not even remotely practical for everyday use, but it IS precise!
Metric. I do a lot of woodworking and auto repair and anytime I have to use not metric it’s annoying
