Not listing alternate units second, not converted on screen, not called “freedom units” and not hiding behind the excuse of “most our audience is in the US”
Mostly thinking YT channels like Wendover, Bluejay, sometimes Practical Engineering and even some European ones like TLDR News
The difference between a meter and yard is less than that of a measured vs “eyeballed” yard and everybody knows what 0 C and 100 C are so the learning curve is also massively (by at least 50 kg) exaggerated
Unpopular opinion: metric is great for people who only measure distilled water at standard pressures and temperatures. Anyone working with any other substance is going to have to do the same kinds of conversions that Americans regularly use.
The ability to divide by 3 without recursion is a useful characteristic.
We would be much better off if metric had been developed with a duodecimal number system.
I’m not sure I understand your first paragraph. The annoying thing about imperial units is the non-standard conversion factors between different unit sizes, e.g. miles to yards. In metric they are much easier to learn and work with, and they don’t rely on “distilled water at standard pressures and temperatures”. Could you try to explain?
Converting between mass and volume measures only gives 1:1 ratios when you’re working with distilled water at standard temperatures. 1 cubic centimeter of distilled water is one gram.
Doesn’t work for jet fuel or milk or depleted uranium or any other substance you might be working with.
For the miles/yards thing: the circumstances where you need the length of a mile, you rarely need the accuracy of a yard, and vice versa. You just use the unit whose accuracy you need. For example, a builder wouldn’t measure 3 yards 1 foot 2 inches. They’d just use 122 inches.
I think some of this might be right but I expect much more people to calculate/estimate more regularly than they are measuring. And if you are working fully in numbers metric seems much more reasonable. You can easily calculate without converting and even if you have mixed units you can just throw in 10^-+N very simply.
First, What?
Second, why does the method of division matter?
Because if I’m measuring a board to cut, imperial divisions give me many more whole numbers that are way easier to deal with in most practical applications.
12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, while 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5. That means that all of the most common divisions are straightforward to calculate, instead of me trying to guess how far between 3 and 4 on my ruler 3.3333333333 centimeters is if I want my 1/3 cuts to line up correctly.
That’s why the base of the system matters, and it’s why imperial is objectively 20% more based than metric.
In a duodecimal number system, metric would be absolutely gorgeous. We’d even have a metric unit circle: Each position on a standard clock would be represented by a single digit, and those positions line up with the most important angles in geometry.
Base-10 is the ugliest part of metric. 10 sucks.
Metric construction doesn’t start with 10cm or 100cm as a basic size. It uses a 600mm “module”. Dimensional lumber pretty much aligns with US sizes, not powers of 10 in mm.
And, are you telling me you can find an exact 1/3” on your ruler?
funny thing, most construction measurements in metric countries are subdivisions of 120cm, not 100cm, for this reason (120x240cm is also conveniently close to the US standard of 4’ x 8’ width for panel material)