#FunFact Just listened to Last Week Tonight and learned that in the US, they use the "unit" "acre feet" for water volumes. And I though I was making fun of this imperial unit BS. They do it all on their own! #SystemeInternationalIlliteracy
@cweickhmann Acre feet...? Isn't acre a surface area unit? How do you do volumes with that one?
@trinsec @cweickhmann yes, an acre-foot is the area of one acre times a depth of one foot:
@sojournTime @trinsec The fact that you're saying "one acre is the area of one acre" kind of gives my point away. How many acres are one square mile? Who knows how much an acre is anyway? A km² is just as arbitrary, but at least you can easily calculate with it and convert it into the other subdivisions and multiples of one metre.
In Germany we solve the "who knows how much a km² is"-issue this by comparing everything to the area of the Saarland. So my proposal: Take the smallest US state (that would be Rhode Island at 4001 km²) and compare everything to that. It's just as useless and impractical as using acres because no-one even knew that Rhode Island was the smallest state before reading this comment and that it had 4001 km² of area.
Really, all I was trying to do with my initial post, is selling the SI convention: Saarland International!
@cweickhmann first off, please don't misquote me. I did not say "one acre is the area of one acre". Second, I think you took my comment out of context. I was just answering @trinsec's question on what an acre-foot is. I made no judgement on whether an acre-foot was a good unit of measurement.
I know dunking on Americans' use of the imperial system is an international pastime, but please don't insult Rhode Island. If you're gonna make fun of a state, do it properly: make fun of New Jersey 😉.
PS - Fun fact: Rhode Island had the longest official state name: "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations". Then in November 2020, the people voted to drop the "and Providence Plantations" from the name. So, for a long time, Rhode Island was the smallest state with the longest official name!
@sojournTime @trinsec Sorry for the misquote.
I did not know that. Maybe lengths could be normalised to the length of "tate of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" written in fancy Declaration of Independence letters by ... ehm... maybe a hedgehog? Although, that's probably the definition of a foot... 🤭