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In the USA I'm going to start asking mechinists and mechanics "Do you use the royal feet or scientific meters?"... maybe that will finally get people offended enough to switch to metric :)
@freemo meh, plenty of us are proud to use royal feet over scientific meters because they just make more sense for the particular application.
We proudly use the better tool rather than following the crowd!
@volkris There is no application where it makes better sense unless you mean something that already uses that and therefore youjust dont have the choice (often the case)
@freemo as we apply measurements, we disagree :)
We find that, for example, inches are scaled far better for so many projects than cm or mm, in the same way that degrees F are scaled better for human application than degrees C or K.
When it comes down to something ranging in size from around a baseball up to a table leg--roughly human sized things--the royal feet units are simply more practical, so we prefer them.
They make more practical sense.
@freemo you say proper precision and grading, but that's the whole point: in so many real world applications we find that the precision and grading isn't the most convenient for the work in front of us.
Say you're aligning a platform by eye, see that you need to raise it by about the length of your thumb, so you call out to the lift operator to raise it by a quantized amount.
"Two inches" happens to be a pretty convenient call out rather than "five centimeters" or, heaven forbid, "fifty millimeters."
It's simply more intuitive at common human scales.
Or, to put it another way, they're big and bulky, which is perfect for dealing with big and bulky human scale tasks!
@volkris how is 2 inches more intuitive than 5 cm.... i dont get it. Sounds like whatever is more intuitive is just what youre used to
@freemo Well, would you agree that 2 inches or even 5 cm is more intuitive than 50 mm? Many of the same reasons, I'd say.
One is a matter of scaling of error. If your perception of any unit is off by a bit, then the more of the unit that you stack up stacks up those errors too.
You might intuitively know about how big a cm is and about how big an inch is, but once you start stacking them, the errors add up.
@volkris I would say that 50 mm is equally intuitive. Its just more verbose than you need because you dont need that level of precision. In fact in this case I would use 1/2 dm myself.
Reading up on what Fahrenheit is based on: "0 ยฐF, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt)."
Hmm...right...because everyone does that, obviously. ๐คฃ
Seriously though, why would he be mixing water, ice (!) and salt? Over here (in Sweden) we know that water freezes at 0C (that is 32F I believe). But why mix with ice, which is already frozen water? And salt? Over here we put salt on the roads and sidewalks to make them _not_ freeze.
Over here anything below 0C means icy roads and rain comes down as snow. You are likely to be late for work if you drive and you haven't started earlier. I think that is more relevant, and applicable, than "there will be icy roads at 31F but not at 33F".
So, water freezes at 0C and it boils at 100C. I have no idea what the boiling temperature of a brine solution of tree sap, gasoline and sugar is, but as that isn't something I normally do either, actually about as often as I mix water, ice and salt, I can get by quite well without that knowledge. I do need to know when I should get up 1 hour earlier to dig out my car from the snow. ๐
@freemo
@m @volkris > Reading up on what Fahrenheit is based on: “0 ยฐF, was established as the freezing temperature of a solution of brine made from a mixture of water, ice, and ammonium chloride (a salt).”
Despite what the definition is based on I’d argue Fahrenheit is far more intuitive than Celsius as it is generally the tolerance of a human from 0 to 100.
Also not sure why the boiling of one chemical is any more or less sane than the boiling of another.
Also Celsius is not the primary temperature unit in metric, kelvin is.
For me it is about application and daily reference relevance. Sure it could be anecdotaly interesting to measure when red butterflies, or yellow paper bags, freeze or boils, but I know for my daily use I more often boil or freeze water, something which is present in most foods and beings. I use water for my morning eggs and my tea/coffee. If I freeze food it turns hard when the water inside it has frozen. Water is what falls from the sky unless it is below 0C when it no longer comes down as water, but you possibly can take your ice skates over the lake (ok, you should probably let it be colder for a while before doing that). In a country with winter 6 months of the year, measuring water temperature is a necessary way of life as it affects almost everything. It probably isn't a coincidence that Anders Celsius was a swede.
Celsius is the primary temperature measurement in most parts of the world, though Kelvin indeed is used by scientists pretty much everywhere (including in the US I believe).
@volkris
I agree its about applicability. Water freezing is as arbitrary as brine freezing. If anythi g your argument about roads makes more sense for farenheight, we salt our roads, so f is when roads freeze at 0 not C, when salted.
Moreover 100c is useless i the real world, it never gets that hot. But 100F represents the limit of human comfort so it ia very much applicable.
@volkris As someone who has used inches his whole life I cant say I agree... they are big, bulky, and divided in an awkward way. There is literally no application they are better suited for that I can think of.
how are they more practical? Im not getting it.. Even at that size, cm and mm give you the proper precision and grading. If you need something closer to feel you have dm which is a perfect size for something where a foot woould be appropriate. Not sure I get how inch is somehow more practical? How, why?