I like the US system for road distances, because averaging travel at about 60mph makes it easy to estimate travel times. If you know Disneyland is 250 miles away, you can easily figure it will take a bit over 4 hours to get there from where you are.
Metric works better for just about everything else though.
We should switch to metric, but this is 'Murica and we do what we want with no care for what the rest of the world thinks or does.
I'm sure it'll happen, but not for a long time. And of course I'm sure there will be hilariously idiotic and misdirected vitriol about the whole thing.
@JonT Damnit, man. I really have nothing to add here. Other than . . . universal healthcare, which most of the rest of the developed world already has. (Ducks and runs away.)
@cinoclav@PocketBrain Give me my fucking shoes back. Unless you want to buy them. $100, cash only. Put your own damned shoes on and get the fuck out of here.
I mean geez quarts, pints, stones, lbs, pennyweights have all over grams, kilogram milligrams where's the hack there? The English system is chaos, dynamic, a game ready to be exploited.
@Moose Yeah, I always find it weird when my Canadian friend says it's 35 degrees out and she's dying from the heat. There definitely is not enough range in the Celsius system.
@AnotherHiggins But we rarely care about the temperature of water in our day to day lives. Really, the most important measurement is air temperature which is typically between 0º and 100º F or -17.7ºC to 37.7ºC
@Moose@katylava well at least at -40 they are more or less the same - not to mention too damn fucking cold (and yes I have camped out in those temps, used outhouses in those temps, chopped through 8' of ice to get to the lake to get water because we didn't start far enough from the shore earlier in the winter before the lake froze to the bottom where our hole originally was in those temps…)
@cinoclav 35 is hot. 36 is also hot. The average human can't tell the difference between them, nor between their slightly finer Fahrenheit equivalents. But if you're going to go for precision, please please dump your pounds and ounces and adopt grams.
I think there are redeeming qualities to both, but I'm starting to see the allure of metric more than imperial. Still, it's like ipv4 and ipv6. Ipv6 is infinitely better than ipv4, but we probably won't switch over for another decade or four.
We were told by a teacher in the late 60's that we were lucky. We would understand metric because it would start while we were children. Guess he was wrong.
@smilingjack That was the original plan. The I-19 shown above was built metric in 1960's. However, the effort was minimum and many documents made in the government and civil sectors were still in the Imperial unit. Finally, the Reagan administration killed the metric board, which, although frankly did little effort, but still something, and everything went to nothing.
@thismyusername I hate it. I lived there and it was confusing when someone said they weigh 11 stones. Why not Kg? 11 stones is almost 70 Kg.
I like the accuracy of the millimeter verses inches. I also like how 0 degrees Celsius is freezing and 100 is boiling (water at sea level) but there's only 100 levels between them. Fahrenheit is weird with 32 degrees and 212 giving 180 data points. The point is when you say there's a 1 degree difference. In Celsius, that's a big difference but minor in Fahrenheit.
@cengland0 For some reason the personal data on orders we get in my hospital occasionally show up as metric measurements. I'll see a patient weighs 150 and think, "Oh good, they're pretty light." Then I'll notice the 'kg' and think, "Oh no, they're kinda fucking large."
@cengland0 There's not a single damn thing we could do for someone that weighs 2,100 pounds besides roll them into the street and hope for a very large truck to come by and put them out of their misery.
@cinoclav That seems like a recipe for disaster at some point if sometimes you get pounds and sometimes kilograms. If someone's not paying attention...
@jqubed You'd think, but considering we have to see the person before giving any weight based dosages our staff is intelligent enough to differentiate. So far, so good...
I'm still confused when someone says something weighs a ton. How heavy is that? Some people say it's 2000 pounds but I was taught it was 1000 kg which means it should be closer to 2205 pounds. That extra 200 pounds can make a huge difference.
So do you have to say, that weighs a metric ton or an imperial ton?
The metric system does have a lot of benefits. For example, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg. Coincidence or did they set 1 liter to be that amount for that reason? (I know, technically it's 1.000028 kg but it's close enough).
@Cerridwyn@no1 I don't do math with my fingers, but for most of my life I've tended to count syllables and beats with them. And I tend to count by fours in that context. Just, yaknow, FWIW.
@cj0e I love the numberphile! Also to point; 8 ounces per cup, two cups per pint, two pints per quart, four quarts per gallon = 128 ounces per gallon. All powers of 2, so it can be reckoned directly in binary. Sometimes we use an encoding technique called BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) which essentially throws out 10-15 in binary. BCDz would waste two fewer binary values and thus be more efficient. Eight bits would encode 144 unique values instead of 100.
@katylava and 4 tbsp per 1/4 cup, so 12 tsp per 1/4 cup, therefore 48 tsp per cup, and so on. But seriously though, for basic around the house and day to day, I like imperial. I've taken too many biology and chemistry courses not to appreciate metric.
@cj0e Those damned frogs and their decimation of numbers. This actually makes a lot of sense. As others have suggested, I'm not sure that the Imperial system is actually dozenal. I'd be all for it. As I mention above, when I count with my fingers (rhythm and meter), I count by fours.
@cj0e well next time you have a relative or friend turning one of those dreaded 40's or 50's or 60's instead make them a handmade card congratulating on turning whatever in base two. They should feel so much better as 50 sounds so much younger than 110,010
@PocketBrain Agreed, most people in STEM fields think in metric. It's kinda hard to get an accurate 1/2 teaspoon of H2SO4, but getting 2.5mL is much simpler.
@DoorMatt And that reminds me. It is annoying that we use ounces for both weight and volume. If I say 8 ounces of flour, how much is that? Should I measure out a cup or should I weigh it until it's an ounce (aka, 1/16 pound)?
@no1 No, I don't think so. A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds and there is 128 ounces to a gallon. So one ounce of water weighs 0.06515625 pounds. An ounce is 1/16th of a pound so an ounce is 0.0625 pounds. That's close but not close enough especially when you talk about quantities like a gallon that makes it .34 pounds off. That's more than a third of a pound off.
@cengland0 that's only a 4% difference! i challenge you to tell the difference between 8.34 and 8 lbs just by lifting with your hand (that is, w/o using a scale of any type). are you telling me that the word "about" doesn't cover 4%?
@cengland0 We apparently based our gallon on the old British "wine gallon" which was 8lb/gal (at x% abv, which has been lost to history) Alcohol is ever so slightly less dense than water.
I'm an engineer, and I have to switch back-and-forth between english and metric constantly, based on customer preference. I really don't care. SI is easy for a lot of stuff, but so is SAE, so... If we change systems, I suggest the FFF system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
@lumpthar Next time you get pulled over by a cop and he asks, "Do you know how fast you were going?" Don't say 70 mph, answer in weird measurements like 188,160 furlongs per fortnight.
@jersully Perfect. This led me to discover that the answer is, 'she should calculate the temperature using cricket noises.' Of course, it's all so clear now!
We probably should change. But I'm too aged to change. Make my kids change.
I recall in middle school our Science teacher, Mr. Morinelli saying with confidence, "There are two things you kids won't have to use in the future: 1) the Slide Rule and 2) the old English measurement system."
He forced us to learn both the Slide Rule ("because I had to") and the Metric System. For some reason 2.54 is stuck in my head.
@parodymandotcom At first, I thought this was funny but then I thought about it and it's possible to determine how many liters fit in a cubic mile. The answer is 4,168,181,843,056.296 liters.
@parodymandotcom A liter is actually quite large compared to a paper dollar bill. Let's do another bit of math. A 1-cent coin is approximately .36 cc and you can fit 1,000 cc in a liter. So that means approximately 2,777.778 1-cent coints fit per liter which is about $27.77778 dollars per liter. Today, our national debt is $18,152,362,814,977.42 so divide that by $27.77778 and you will need about 653,485,009,060.386 liters of 1-cent coins. Since there are 4,168,181,843,056.296 liters in a cubic mile, it only takes 0.15677939055106630639353935636061 cubic miles to equal the national debt using the smallest value coin we currently use (there were fractional cent coins a long time ago but they are no longer in circulation).
I'd be curious how heavy all those coins would be but it's difficult to calculate because they changed the composition of the 1-cent coin thoughout the years. At first, they weighed 13.48 grams, then 10.89 grams, then 4.67 grams (beginning in 1856) and keeps getting lighter until today's version is 2.5 grams per coin.
Trivia Post Script: I did not call that coin a penny. Technically speaking, it's a "one cent" coin. If I'm not mistaken, our treasury has never called that coin a penny (and it does not say penny on the coin) to prevent from confusing it with the British currency.
@cengland0 The US Treasury / Mint simply calls the coin a "Cent" and does not mention the word penny in any technical specification of value or manufacture. However, the US Mint does refer to the Cent coin as a penny (lowercase) in the common lexicon when speaking of or referring to the coin outside of the technical specification of manufacture. Source: Family member that works at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
You'll notice that in many places on their Website, the Mint refers to the Cent as a penny. The term "one cent" she said was never used as an authorized denomination, it was always simply a "Cent" (singular). She said although Congress refers to a "one cent" coin, the mint has only ever adopted "Cent" - anything else was a half or multiple thereof. She's kinda nutty about things like this . . . just thought it was interesting, so I wanted to share.
@cengland0 Forget the pennies. Use 100's. And while you are at it fold them into cranes for world piece. Then send them all to me and I will take care of them for you.
If I remember correctly, back at the beginning of the USA the British penny was 1/240th of a pound. The new US cent was 1/100th of a dollar and so got its name from the Latin centum.
@parodymandotcom That was when the pound was divided into 20 shillings and each shilling was divided into 12 pence. 20 x 12 = 240. It happened to be a weight pound of silver that was divided into 240 smaller pieces. The weight pound is defined as 0.45359237 kg which is also 16 ounces. They still call their currency the pound today even though it is not related to the value of a pound of silver.
The metric system is horrible. Let's stick to what we have.
Us moving to the metric system would be just as bad as us adopting the UK's spelling system. Colour. Blech. Armour. Double blech. I'll put your food in the boot. vomit
@juststephen I love the way the British spell. Sometimes I type "grey" just to make myself smile. I just wish I could figure out how to spell "shed-jool."
@KDemo Favorite Valentine's card ever (for first wife) had a version of that song that included the line: "I've got a haddock and you've got a headache . . ."
I hate the US system the most when I'm cooking. I have to remind myself how the various quantities relate to each other (i.e. 3 teaspoons per tablespoon, 16 ounces in a pound, etc.). Inevitably, I dirty up my phone by pulling it out of my pocket to Google the quantity conversions.
The fact that 1 mL of water equals 1 gram (not technically true, but the relationship is close enough to a 1:1 ratio that I don't care) is so incredibly useful when I'm cooking.
@dongism Memorizing illogical relationships is something we're great at here in the US! 3 tsp = 1 TBSP = 1/2 ounce = 1/3 frog leg = 4 eyes of newt = heeeey macarena.
I like the US system for road distances, because averaging travel at about 60mph makes it easy to estimate travel times. If you know Disneyland is 250 miles away, you can easily figure it will take a bit over 4 hours to get there from where you are.
Metric works better for just about everything else though.
@Starblind So what's wrong with 100km/h to travel 400km?
@narfcake HE'S A WITCH! BURN HIM!
We should switch to metric, but this is 'Murica and we do what we want with no care for what the rest of the world thinks or does.
I'm sure it'll happen, but not for a long time. And of course I'm sure there will be hilariously idiotic and misdirected vitriol about the whole thing.
@JonT Damnit, man. I really have nothing to add here. Other than . . . universal healthcare, which most of the rest of the developed world already has. (Ducks and runs away.)
@joelmw flees with you to Canada
@joelmw actually that's kind of weird
@joelmw oh well I'm going with it
@JonT But, if you flee to Canada, then Meh won't deliver to you....
@PurplePawprints
@PurplePawprints im sure he has connections, freight forwarding connects
A switch to metric is worth it just to shut up folkies singing about walking a mile in their shoes.
@editorkid
@editorkid @rockblossom
@cinoclav If you walk a mile in my shoes, you'll end up with fungus.
@cinoclav @PocketBrain Give me my fucking shoes back. Unless you want to buy them. $100, cash only. Put your own damned shoes on and get the fuck out of here.
Read this as "Meh-tric" system. That is all
@lichme you win the internet today.
BORING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean geez quarts, pints, stones, lbs, pennyweights have all over grams, kilogram milligrams where's the hack there? The English system is chaos, dynamic, a game ready to be exploited.
Ok maybe less Red Bull would be good
@cranky1950 i'm sure even if we switch to metric the old units will still be used for poetry
@cranky1950 @katylava (Some joke about poetic meter that I can't quite conjure at the moment.)
Fahrenheit forever. Celsius sucks.
@Moose
@Moose iow, i agree.
@Moose Temperature is the only example that I agree. Otherwise I think we should switch.
@Moose Yeah, I always find it weird when my Canadian friend says it's 35 degrees out and she's dying from the heat. There definitely is not enough range in the Celsius system.
@cinoclav Also, 95F isn't all that hot.
@PocketBrain Guess it is when you live in Canada. Personally, it's more than hot enough for me. I'm a cold weather person.
@PocketBrain If you think 95 degrees Fahrenheit isn't all that hot, you've obviously spent too much time in 90+ temps.
@AnotherHiggins But we rarely care about the temperature of water in our day to day lives. Really, the most important measurement is air temperature which is typically between 0º and 100º F or -17.7ºC to 37.7ºC
@Moose @katylava well at least at -40 they are more or less the same - not to mention too damn fucking cold (and yes I have camped out in those temps, used outhouses in those temps, chopped through 8' of ice to get to the lake to get water because we didn't start far enough from the shore earlier in the winter before the lake froze to the bottom where our hole originally was in those temps…)
@cinoclav 35 is hot. 36 is also hot. The average human can't tell the difference between them, nor between their slightly finer Fahrenheit equivalents. But if you're going to go for precision, please please dump your pounds and ounces and adopt grams.
@Moose I vote for Kelvin:
@armchair You win. Kelvin wins. Absolutely.
I think there are redeeming qualities to both, but I'm starting to see the allure of metric more than imperial. Still, it's like ipv4 and ipv6. Ipv6 is infinitely better than ipv4, but we probably won't switch over for another decade or four.
We were told by a teacher in the late 60's that we were lucky. We would understand metric because it would start while we were children.
Guess he was wrong.
@smilingjack That was the original plan. The I-19 shown above was built metric in 1960's. However, the effort was minimum and many documents made in the government and civil sectors were still in the Imperial unit. Finally, the Reagan administration killed the metric board, which, although frankly did little effort, but still something, and everything went to nothing.
@smilingjack Right? I remember being told that when I was in kindergarten. So 1969/70. Metric is so easy, mathematically.
@smilingjack the metric system is why teh russkies beat us to the moon.
@no1 Mr 1, you need to reread the history books.
I'm really looking forward to when we start measuring time in metric; this whole 24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds crap gets old really fast.
Are we going to weigh people in stones like they do in the UK?
@cengland0 I am sorta shocked we still don't actually ;)
@thismyusername I hate it. I lived there and it was confusing when someone said they weigh 11 stones. Why not Kg? 11 stones is almost 70 Kg.
I like the accuracy of the millimeter verses inches. I also like how 0 degrees Celsius is freezing and 100 is boiling (water at sea level) but there's only 100 levels between them. Fahrenheit is weird with 32 degrees and 212 giving 180 data points. The point is when you say there's a 1 degree difference. In Celsius, that's a big difference but minor in Fahrenheit.
@cengland0 We’re going to stone people in ways.
@SSteve Only in certain states.
@cengland0 For some reason the personal data on orders we get in my hospital occasionally show up as metric measurements. I'll see a patient weighs 150 and think, "Oh good, they're pretty light." Then I'll notice the 'kg' and think, "Oh no, they're kinda fucking large."
@cinoclav Lucky that patient wasn't weighed in stones. That would be 2,100 pounds or 953 kg.
@cengland0 There's not a single damn thing we could do for someone that weighs 2,100 pounds besides roll them into the street and hope for a very large truck to come by and put them out of their misery.
@cinoclav That seems like a recipe for disaster at some point if sometimes you get pounds and sometimes kilograms. If someone's not paying attention...
@jqubed You'd think, but considering we have to see the person before giving any weight based dosages our staff is intelligent enough to differentiate. So far, so good...
2 liter soda and a decimal based currency. I think we are done here, it is good enough.
I'm still confused when someone says something weighs a ton. How heavy is that? Some people say it's 2000 pounds but I was taught it was 1000 kg which means it should be closer to 2205 pounds. That extra 200 pounds can make a huge difference.
So do you have to say, that weighs a metric ton or an imperial ton?
The metric system does have a lot of benefits. For example, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg. Coincidence or did they set 1 liter to be that amount for that reason? (I know, technically it's 1.000028 kg but it's close enough).
@cengland0 I always try to be precise so I say "a metric crap ton"
@cengland0 that's because they're saying it wrong, it's a "tonne"
@no1 But tonne and ton sound the same. Unless it's in writing, that doesn't help.
If you bought a ford truck and it's rated at 1/2 tons, how much weight can you haul?
@cengland0 a crapload! er, crappeloadde
@cengland0 Usually in the US it's referred to as a ton (2000 lbs) or a metric ton (1000kg)
Metric
I have 10 fingers
@Cerridwyn i have eight fingers and two thumbs. you some kinda freak.
@no1 thumbs are just opposable fingers
@Cerridwyn @no1 I don't do math with my fingers, but for most of my life I've tended to count syllables and beats with them. And I tend to count by fours in that context. Just, yaknow, FWIW.
@Cerridwyn I oppose my thumbs being called fingers.
Imperial. Because. Watch this neat video. We should just go base 12.
@cj0e I love the numberphile! Also to point; 8 ounces per cup, two cups per pint, two pints per quart, four quarts per gallon = 128 ounces per gallon. All powers of 2, so it can be reckoned directly in binary. Sometimes we use an encoding technique called BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) which essentially throws out 10-15 in binary. BCDz would waste two fewer binary values and thus be more efficient. Eight bits would encode 144 unique values instead of 100.
@PocketBrain except 3 tsp per 1 tbsp.
@katylava and 4 tbsp per 1/4 cup, so 12 tsp per 1/4 cup, therefore 48 tsp per cup, and so on. But seriously though, for basic around the house and day to day, I like imperial. I've taken too many biology and chemistry courses not to appreciate metric.
@PocketBrain zzzzzzzz
@cj0e Those damned frogs and their decimation of numbers. This actually makes a lot of sense. As others have suggested, I'm not sure that the Imperial system is actually dozenal. I'd be all for it. As I mention above, when I count with my fingers (rhythm and meter), I count by fours.
@PocketBrain Binary would probably be way better than decimal.
@cj0e well next time you have a relative or friend turning one of those dreaded 40's or 50's or 60's instead make them a handmade card congratulating on turning whatever in base two. They should feel so much better as 50 sounds so much younger than 110,010
I'm an engineer, so I think mostly in Metric. Except driving and weather.
@PocketBrain Agreed, most people in STEM fields think in metric. It's kinda hard to get an accurate 1/2 teaspoon of H2SO4, but getting 2.5mL is much simpler.
@DoorMatt And that reminds me. It is annoying that we use ounces for both weight and volume. If I say 8 ounces of flour, how much is that? Should I measure out a cup or should I weigh it until it's an ounce (aka, 1/16 pound)?
@cengland0 how about this: a fluid ounce of water weighs ... about an ounce!
@no1 No, I don't think so. A gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds and there is 128 ounces to a gallon. So one ounce of water weighs 0.06515625 pounds. An ounce is 1/16th of a pound so an ounce is 0.0625 pounds. That's close but not close enough especially when you talk about quantities like a gallon that makes it .34 pounds off. That's more than a third of a pound off.
@cengland0 that's only a 4% difference! i challenge you to tell the difference between 8.34 and 8 lbs just by lifting with your hand (that is, w/o using a scale of any type). are you telling me that the word "about" doesn't cover 4%?
@cengland0 We apparently based our gallon on the old British "wine gallon" which was 8lb/gal (at x% abv, which has been lost to history)
Alcohol is ever so slightly less dense than water.
@cengland0 The answer is don't cook anything that requires you to be that precise. Problem solved.
@Kidsandliz
@Kidsandliz Of course, here's what happens to that guy:
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
SPOILER ALERT
I'm an engineer, and I have to switch back-and-forth between english and metric constantly, based on customer preference. I really don't care. SI is easy for a lot of stuff, but so is SAE, so...
If we change systems, I suggest the FFF system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFF_system
I get centimehtal about it....sigh.
@eeterrific ba-dum-tssh
@eeterrific That shouldn't last furlong.
@eeterrific We might be out of our league.
@eeterrific I think you should pound the point home.
@lumpthar Next time you get pulled over by a cop and he asks, "Do you know how fast you were going?" Don't say 70 mph, answer in weird measurements like 188,160 furlongs per fortnight.
@jersully The suspense is killing me! What exactly did Violet decide?!
IDK but apparently it's from Wild Thing by Josh Bazell.
@jersully Perfect. This led me to discover that the answer is, 'she should calculate the temperature using cricket noises.' Of course, it's all so clear now!
It's really good, but switching will never happen because it costs too much
We probably should change. But I'm too aged to change. Make my kids change.
I recall in middle school our Science teacher, Mr. Morinelli saying with confidence, "There are two things you kids won't have to use in the future:
1) the Slide Rule and 2) the old English measurement system."
He forced us to learn both the Slide Rule ("because I had to") and the Metric System. For some reason 2.54 is stuck in my head.
@RedOak http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/10/give-him-2-54-centimeters-and-hell-take-1-609344-kilometers/#.VRNoLvnF98E
The conversions are too much for me. I'm still trying to figure out how many liters there are in a mile.
@parodymandotcom At first, I thought this was funny but then I thought about it and it's possible to determine how many liters fit in a cubic mile. The answer is 4,168,181,843,056.296 liters.
@cengland0 Wow. So, if liters were dollars, it would take 4 1/2 cubic miles to equal the US national debt.
@parodymandotcom A liter is actually quite large compared to a paper dollar bill. Let's do another bit of math. A 1-cent coin is approximately .36 cc and you can fit 1,000 cc in a liter. So that means approximately 2,777.778 1-cent coints fit per liter which is about $27.77778 dollars per liter. Today, our national debt is $18,152,362,814,977.42 so divide that by $27.77778 and you will need about 653,485,009,060.386 liters of 1-cent coins. Since there are 4,168,181,843,056.296 liters in a cubic mile, it only takes 0.15677939055106630639353935636061 cubic miles to equal the national debt using the smallest value coin we currently use (there were fractional cent coins a long time ago but they are no longer in circulation).
I'd be curious how heavy all those coins would be but it's difficult to calculate because they changed the composition of the 1-cent coin thoughout the years. At first, they weighed 13.48 grams, then 10.89 grams, then 4.67 grams (beginning in 1856) and keeps getting lighter until today's version is 2.5 grams per coin.
Trivia Post Script: I did not call that coin a penny. Technically speaking, it's a "one cent" coin. If I'm not mistaken, our treasury has never called that coin a penny (and it does not say penny on the coin) to prevent from confusing it with the British currency.
@cengland0 The US Treasury / Mint simply calls the coin a "Cent" and does not mention the word penny in any technical specification of value or manufacture. However, the US Mint does refer to the Cent coin as a penny (lowercase) in the common lexicon when speaking of or referring to the coin outside of the technical specification of manufacture. Source: Family member that works at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
@cengland0 She just emailed me this: http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/?action=fun_facts1
You'll notice that in many places on their Website, the Mint refers to the Cent as a penny. The term "one cent" she said was never used as an authorized denomination, it was always simply a "Cent" (singular). She said although Congress refers to a "one cent" coin, the mint has only ever adopted "Cent" - anything else was a half or multiple thereof. She's kinda nutty about things like this . . . just thought it was interesting, so I wanted to share.
@cengland0 Forget the pennies. Use 100's. And while you are at it fold them into cranes for world piece. Then send them all to me and I will take care of them for you.
If I remember correctly, back at the beginning of the USA the British penny was 1/240th of a pound. The new US cent was 1/100th of a dollar and so got its name from the Latin centum.
@parodymandotcom That was when the pound was divided into 20 shillings and each shilling was divided into 12 pence. 20 x 12 = 240. It happened to be a weight pound of silver that was divided into 240 smaller pieces. The weight pound is defined as 0.45359237 kg which is also 16 ounces. They still call their currency the pound today even though it is not related to the value of a pound of silver.
The metric system is horrible. Let's stick to what we have.
Us moving to the metric system would be just as bad as us adopting the UK's spelling system. Colour. Blech. Armour. Double blech. I'll put your food in the boot. vomit
@juststephen I love the way the British spell. Sometimes I type "grey" just to make myself smile. I just wish I could figure out how to spell "shed-jool."
@joelmw I think you just did.
@joelmw - You say tomato, I say tomato . . .
@KDemo Favorite Valentine's card ever (for first wife) had a version of that song that included the line: "I've got a haddock and you've got a headache . . ."
@joelmw That's funny. This is what I had in mind - you'll see it loses something in text.
@KDemo Brilliant.
I hate the US system the most when I'm cooking. I have to remind myself how the various quantities relate to each other (i.e. 3 teaspoons per tablespoon, 16 ounces in a pound, etc.). Inevitably, I dirty up my phone by pulling it out of my pocket to Google the quantity conversions.
The fact that 1 mL of water equals 1 gram (not technically true, but the relationship is close enough to a 1:1 ratio that I don't care) is so incredibly useful when I'm cooking.
@dongism Just put a conversion chart on your fridge with a magnet. Maybe meh will sell both.
@dongism This is where I admit that I have an Echo in the kitchen, where Alexa can answer these kinds of questions while I have my hands full.
@dongism Memorizing illogical relationships is something we're great at here in the US! 3 tsp = 1 TBSP = 1/2 ounce = 1/3 frog leg = 4 eyes of newt = heeeey macarena.
Why Murka still uses imperial measurements is baffling.