Permanently Deleted

  • crosswind [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It seems like dividing a foot into thirds is nearly the only time imperial has this advantage. So all you need is a meter stick where, on one side, the centimeters are subdivided into millimeters, and on the other they are divided into thirds. Then a third of a meter would be 33 1/3 cm. You would have exact markings for 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, and 1/6 of a meter. If rulers like this were more common, what reason would there still be to use imperial?

    Also if you have something that is built to be 1 foot long, under the metric system it would probably be built to be 30cm long, so 1/3 of it would be exactly 10cm.

    • KnilAdlez [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You use base-12 telling time right? Technically base-24 or base-60, but it's the same concept. Dividing things into whole numbers is easier mental math. I can say a quarter after 4 have you'll know what that means a lot faster than if I said 3 1/4 meters in cm, for example.

      • crosswind [they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I agree with the benefits of a base 12 system, but I'm saying the situations where the imperial system can actually leverage that to be easier to use than the metric system are very limited. You can pick out examples where it's true, but there's cases where it goes the other way, and a lot of the time you won't get round numbers when you divide by 3 in either system.