Alternate Metrication

The aviation industry still uses feet to measure altitude and nautical miles to measure distance because the United States Air Force won both World War 2 and the Cold War.
They use nautical miles (6040 feet) to measure distance because it is much easier to mentally relate 6000 feet to the 60 seconds in a minute when doing time and speed calculations.
OTOW aviators cheerfully calculate air pressure in mm of mercury because that makes for easier mental math. They even calculate mm of mercury to feet of altitude because the mental calculations are simpler.

An earlier poster made a valid point about "cultural inertia" .... though I would ca it "generational inertia" because after a certain age (long and rousing debate) people can no longer learn new systems and you need to keep the old systems intact until the grandfathers die off.
That is why I had to learn the Imperial measurement system in elementary school and the metric system in high school and still use both systems every day. That also means that I need both a yard-stick and a metre-stick along with inch-wrenches and a duplicate set of metric wrenches.
Now I get it, metrification was all a plot by the tool manufacturers!

But I am still baffled as to why I cannot compare metric weights to my own body. All the other metric units are easy to relate to my body size: height, temperature, etc. Why is a gram so confusingly tiny? I cannot measure a gram by hand! Frustration!!!!! GRRRR!
It would be far easier to understand if a "gram" weighed 2.2 pounds??????????
 
Only problem it was the 25 yard line and its now the 22 metre line.
My bad!I think that I got it confused with a cricket pitch which is 22 yards (aka a chain (1/80 of a mile))

A gram(me) was originally the mass of 1 cc of distilled water. It makes sense but is quite small!
 
5380 feet to a mile
224 ounces to a stone
If you're used to it, because you use it all the time, it isn't a problem.
5280 feet to a mile ... :(

4 lines to a barleycorn
3 barleycorn to an inch
12 inches to a foot
3 feet to a yard
5 1/2 yards to a rod
4 rods to a chain
10 chains to a furlong
8 furlongs to a mile
3 miles to a league
and some more that I do not remember ...
 

Zagan

Donor
I would love that but even smart people often struggle to comprehend when you try to explain that 4 x 4 is 14 in the more logical base 12 system.

If you spell it, like four multiplied by four is dozen-four, then it makes more sense.
 
But I am still baffled as to why I cannot compare metric weights to my own body. All the other metric units are easy to relate to my body size: height, temperature, etc. Why is a gram so confusingly tiny? I cannot measure a gram by hand! Frustration!!!!! GRRRR!
It would be far easier to understand if a "gram" weighed 2.2 pounds??????????

A gram(me) was originally the mass of 1 cc of distilled water. It makes sense but is quite small!

Well, it's the kilogram that was the standard defined weight. It was originally called the grave but that had connotations of nobility (cf margrave etc) that the revolutionaries could not abide.
For reasons I cannot recall they kept it as standard but based notation on the "gramme".
 
5280 feet to a mile ... :(

4 lines to a barleycorn
3 barleycorn to an inch
12 inches to a foot
3 feet to a yard
5 1/2 yards to a rod
4 rods to a chain
10 chains to a furlong
8 furlongs to a mile
3 miles to a league
and some more that I do not remember ...

I don't know how it is possible not to remember it all when it is that simple:

English_length_units_graph.svg
 
But I am still baffled as to why I cannot compare metric weights to my own body. All the other metric units are easy to relate to my body size: height, temperature, etc. Why is a gram so confusingly tiny? I cannot measure a gram by hand! Frustration!!!!! GRRRR!
It would be far easier to understand if a "gram" weighed 2.2 pounds??????????

Actually, the SI unit of weight is the kilogram (which confused me as a child). If you want to relate to a gram, I've found that a hazelnut weights almost exactly 1g (as in, I was consistently able to find exactly 100 nuts in 100g, with less than 1% of error). If you want to relate to a kg, then a 1-litre bottle of water weighs 1kg :D. (For you barbaric types, that' about one quart). As far as body parts go, I do not know the weight of most of them (and I assume that most people don't), but a female breast usually weighs on the order of 500g (or so I heard).
 
......................................................................

And which French-speaking region suffered a disastrous train de-railment last year?

Right, because someone not setting all the brakes before leaving the train is related to the mile markers.... sheesh.
 
Sooner or later with inceased cross-national research done, someone is going to figure out a logical system. They did for everything but Weight and length, and thats most likely only because someone got ahead of them, in one of their rare cases of 'making sense'

and NASA lost more rockets by failing to use the International Standard, than they've gained, and what they've gained haven't been because of them using SI but because they just happen to be based out of the behemoth of the world
 
Sooner or later with inceased cross-national research done, someone is going to figure out a logical system. They did for everything but Weight and length, and thats most likely only because someone got ahead of them, in one of their rare cases of 'making sense'

and NASA lost more rockets by failing to use the International Standard, than they've gained, and what they've gained haven't been because of them using SI but because they just happen to be based out of the behemoth of the world
Those damn barbaric French revolutionaries, using crazy notions like the distance between the equator and the north pole, or even water (!) to define weight and length! Thank god this unilateral nonsense never convinced anybody. :D
 
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