• MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    2 hours ago

    There was something I read once upon a time that was like:

    F is how hot/cold people are C is how hot/cold water is K is how hot/cold matter is

    I feel like that’s pretty accurate.

  • prodaccess@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 hours ago

    I got used to Celsius while living abroad in Europe and Japan and prefer it to Fahrenheit. The extra granularity of the latter scale doesn’t really add much more utility.

    However, while 32 F and 212 F are pretty arbitrary, so is calibrating to the freezing and boiling temperatures of water. I’d rather have a scale that’s calibrated to humans rather than H2O.

  • voldage@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    12 hours ago

    0 C being the temperature water freezes is useful for knowing if there is ice outside, which has practical use. If we keep going the way we are, soon 100 will be an indicator that there is no water outside. Practical if you’re a hydrophobe or hydrophile.

  • Smoogs@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    22 hours ago

    Soon it won’t matter anyways. Isn’t AmericaUS like…done now? We can move on with our normal shit and chuckle at it like a museum piece.

  • SystemDisc@piefed.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    13 hours ago

    In my opinion, Fahrenheit is a much better system for weather. Anything below 0°F and above 100°F is actively dangerous for a person to exist in. Anything in between is just normal weather. For anything scientific, I think K makes more sense than C. To me, C is actually only rarely useful.

  • Tiger_Man_@szmer.info
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    18 hours ago

    because celcius is about how aater feels, faranheit is about how you feel and kelvin is about how atoms feel

  • FunnySalt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    23 hours ago

    I’m accustomed to the imperial system. But agree that metric is better.

    Some metric stuff I have no trouble with. I have a good spatial sense of the distance of a mm, m, and km. And can do a rough miles to km (and vice versa) conversion in my head. I have a good sense of how much a kg is and similarly can do a rough conversion to and from lbs in my head. But while I understand that a gram is 1/1000 of a kg, if handed a small object and asked to guess how many grams it is, I’d fail miserably.

    Celsius I can’t ever remember the conversion, but I’ve had enough exposure to it that I understand if it means cold/cool/warm/hot weather.

  • Melllvar@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    ·
    1 day ago

    The one thing that bothers me about the metric system is how much of it is never actually used. No one says “1 megameter”, for example. They say “1,000 kilometers”. When you think about it, most metric prefixes are never used with most metric units.

      • la508@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        19 hours ago

        We use decimetres in chemistry a fair bit. 1 mole of any gas will occupy 24 dm³ at rtp

      • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        23 hours ago

        “deci” is very popular. Just not in the “correct” form “decimeter”.

        In Spanish it’s normal to say “8 décimas”, which means 8 tenths. It is context dependent though. For example if speaking in a context where millimeters are used, it will be 8 tenths of a milimiter. That is, 0,8mm.

        But yeah, it is very uncommon to use deci and deca. Because they’re just not very useful. We are used to 2 digit numbers, or numbers with 2 decimal places. So 87m is not harder to use than 8,7dam.

        It’s probably also the reason there is no prefix between kilo and mega, or milli and micro. (They are x1000 increments instead of x10).

        For the same reason, when in a context of millimeters, it’s preferred to say “87mm” instead of “8,7cm”.

    • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 day ago

      I’ve thought that was weird too. Decimeter’s seems like a good unit for measuring a person’s height, for instance.

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      24
      ·
      23 hours ago

      It’s because metric sucks at anything on a human scale and most people deal with things on a human scale. Imperial was developed over hundreds of years to be extremely narrow and scope in a specific two things at a human scale.

      It’s a big reason why imperial makes far more sense. If you actually need to talk about anything on a human scale, everything no matter how nonsensical makes sense the moment, it’s explained because it’s all extremely intuitive.

      While metric is basically a tiny fraction of a technically Superior system that basically makes no f****** sense in 99% of cases for a day-to-day life.

      Try metric is the measurement of science, engineering and other fields of study because they actually do with things outside of day-to-day human scope

      As the saying goes, use the right tool for the right job and only a dumb f*** uses the wrong tool for the wrong job

      • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        18 hours ago

        I have no idea what you’re talking about… humans are around 1-2m tall, weigh about 40-80kg, have a body temperature of about 37 C, and need to drink a couple litres of water per day. How are these units not the proper order of magnitude for measuring things “on a human scale”?

      • Deme@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        22 hours ago

        Could you give an example of a situation where metric makes less sense than imperial? I will then explain to you that it only appears to you like that, because those are the units you’ve lived your whole life using. Without that baggage, the adaptability and easy conversions make SI-units objectively superior in every situation.