5 tomatoes
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I’m always disappointed that megameter isn't a common word. People will say “one thousand kilometers” instead of just “one megameter”.
I'll never forgive the French for going from grave to gram to kg as the base unit of mass.
All my other base units don't have a prefix
Such a pity.
BRING BACK THE GRAVE
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How do you do weight measurements? I noticed a lot of Americans use grams
wrote last edited by [email protected]Drugs are done in grams i think, methric
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Do you want to develop imperial measurements? Because that's how you invent imperial measurements. Next thing you know you've got a cup that's really good for measuring liquids and a couple spoons you like to scoop with....
We are talking about cutting vegetables maybe meat, the room for error is enormous...
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Because your power is billed in kWh. Figuring out the kWh cost of a 77 watt TV is straight forward, but a lot of consumer labeling standards are about quick and easy side by side comparisons as opposed to perfect application of units. Easiest way to give a comparison that's accurate enough and doesn't involve odd numbers is to convert that way.
Whilst this answer is correct, it's not entirely accurate, because it is dismissive of the root cause. The logical follow-up question is: "Why is energy billed in kWh?". If the question/cycle answer continues down this line there will probably be an answer like "because <some person> had to make a decision once, and they chose this because of <some reason>, and now we're all stuck with it because of convention."
Anyone who doesn't understand what joules are probably doesn't understand what kWh are either. If the billing convention (and every other power consumption label) used joules (of course MJ or GJ) instead, then most people would just accept that as the unit of billing and measurement, and those who understand what the units mean would have an easier time of it.
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How many BTUs are there in a big mac?
No acknowledgement at all that I literally just answered your question?
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No acknowledgement at all that I literally just answered your question?
I see my trap was fallen into.
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Ya know what. I like that tomato shit to remember the conversion. I like SI far more than US customary tho
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How would you convert to e.g nautical miles?
Oh, what’s interesting about a nautical mile is that it wasn’t originally even based on a number of feet or meters or whatever. It represented one minute of latitude (60 minutes in a degree type of minutes). Since the earth is an oblate spheroid instead of a perfect sphere, that meant that traditional nautical miles varied based on your position until they were standardized it in 1929.
I think it’s about 1.85 kilometers, but I wouldn’t have occasion to do the conversion because I’m a landlubber.
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It doesn't matter how these units were originally defined. They have all been redefined as science progressed. As long as you relate the arbitrary unit to a constant it can be translated.
Except an alien species wouldn't know what cesium is... We would need to represent it to them as it's molecular makeup, which is the only absolute representation of it, and would they know what a proton/neutron/electron are? Would they have a deeper understanding of the physics, and thereby have a different understanding of what we consider to be quantum particles?
We only generalize protons, elections and neutrons because we don't really know what those things are made up of. Maybe they do, so when we show them our representation of it, would it be too rudimentary for them to comprehend what we mean?
There's still a lot we don't know. And these are the kinds of questions that tickle my brain.
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We are talking about cutting vegetables maybe meat, the room for error is enormous...
Oh, certainly. I just enjoyed that, in a thread about the vagueness and oddness of the imperial system, the suggestion came up to use a casual approximation for the inch instead of the word "inch".
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I'd assume that if we are ever communicating with aliens and trying to figure out each other's way of expressing numbers and doing math, dimensionless constants like pi, Euler's number (e), the fine structure constant, etc. will be important first steps. As you say, our units of measure are purely human inventions. But the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is the same no matter what units you use to make the measurement.
I like you.
These are all good points. Thank you.
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I've never once had to convert miles to feet or vice versa in nearly 40 years (besides a couple test questions in school). It's a total non issue in the whole SI vs US system debate
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Whilst this answer is correct, it's not entirely accurate, because it is dismissive of the root cause. The logical follow-up question is: "Why is energy billed in kWh?". If the question/cycle answer continues down this line there will probably be an answer like "because <some person> had to make a decision once, and they chose this because of <some reason>, and now we're all stuck with it because of convention."
Anyone who doesn't understand what joules are probably doesn't understand what kWh are either. If the billing convention (and every other power consumption label) used joules (of course MJ or GJ) instead, then most people would just accept that as the unit of billing and measurement, and those who understand what the units mean would have an easier time of it.
Well, the follow up answer is pretty straightforward.
Selling power by the megajoule is silly. You want a unit that puts time in the name and the unit of power that's on appliances. If I run a 35 watt fan for an hour I know I've used 35 watt hours of energy. Or I can say I've used 126 kilojoules.It's not highschool. You don't lose points for not reducing your answer all the way. The goal is to describe reality clearly, not to use the most concise units of measurement.
If I'm running a powerplant I need to know how many joules I get from my fuel and what my customers need and what my generators can deliver. The customer needs to know the efficiency of their appliances, and how how much that costs them. These are the same thing, but life isn't made simpler by having them be the same unit.
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Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
Engineers use milliinches all the time! They call it thous but it's the same thing.
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You should consider adopting metric and avoid these conversion steps.
It is metric as fuck
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Liters? Pints? How are you converting from distance to volume?
A yard of ale is a large beer glass, based on a glass that is quite long probably less than a metre.
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Hope you meant hat the glass is tall
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How do you do weight measurements? I noticed a lot of Americans use grams
Weight is in pounds. Only pounds. don't ask me how much a gram or a ton is.
Volume, though, I still remember "Gallon Man" from 1st grade.
2 cups in a pint
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon
What's after gallons? not a clue.
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Base 60 can do 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 12.
wrote last edited by [email protected]True.. Honestly never really thought about it, but I guess it kind of is superior
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Oh, get off your high horse
Your basic unit for speed is m/s, but for most day-to-day purposes you use km/hr. The conversion between the two isn't even an integer!
Not only that, but your system, by virtue of being decimal, inherits all the shortcomings of our quite flawed numbering system. You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
In my opinion, a good measuring system would make up for those shortcomings instead. It should be divisible by at least the numbers you can count on one hand. Decimal covers 2 and 5, so ideally the measurement unit would cover 3 and 4. So that would be a base 12 system. Technically 4, being 2², would be covered too, so 3 would do just fine. Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.
My ideal would be 21 though, get that 7 factor
If you like intervals of 1000, you'll be delighted (or mortified like me) to know that 7×11×13 is almost exactly 1000 (it's 1001)
wrote last edited by [email protected]Ta-da! 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard.
That is not the win you think it is since metric only has one unit, the meter, to begin with so no conversion needed at all. 12 meters in 12 meters, three meters in three meters.
You can't divide something by the second smallest prime number without breaking out repeating decimals.
You technically don't have to use decimals, you can use fractions too. Ta-da! 1/3 meter. See? No repeating decimals!
Also yall literally use the decimal system for US customary too
