Sunday, March 08, 2020

Better than metric units

I never remember how many feet are in a mile, and avoid stones and slugs (and slings and arrows). Imperial units have their little issues, and when distances go to sea they leave me in knots.

But give the Imperial units their due. At least one set of measurements anticipated digital computers with their powers of two--the fluid measures. For a computer, they're better than metric. 2^3 fluid ounces to a cup, 2 cups to a pint 2 pints to a quart, 2^2 quarts to a gallon. If you move to dry measures, 2 gallons to a peck, 2^2 pecks to a bushel.

3 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I've always been fond of Fahrenheit, describing the world humans live in very clearly.
0-100. Below zero is too damn cold and above 100 is too damn hot. The varying degrees of comfort are well marked off in 20-degree increments in between. At 60 degrees one wears a layer of clothing, covering the body to the extremities. At 80, the clothing shortens. At 40 degress, clothing is added, then added again 20 degrees colder.

james said...

And when the outside temperature reaches -100, you sit in a sauna cranked up to 200 and then run outside naked for a few seconds. So I'm told. I didn't ask if they don footwear for the occasion.
Try joining the 300 degree club in metric!

Dumb farmer said...

After a life time of building and fabricating as part of the routine of being a farmer I found the metric system lacks intuitive measures and those increments are too small. For example, when estimating about how long of a board you may need to repair a gate, it is easy to visualize about a foot, two feet or a yard. A foot is roughly the length of a foot, a yard about half as long as your arm span. On the other hand trying to picture 300 mm or 30 cm just doesn't work.Mostly fencing is 10 - 14 ft so imaging centimetres in the hundreds and mms in the 1000s does not work.

On the other hand, Celsius is too broad. James, no foot wear or clothes when running out and rolling around in the snow is necessary.