Re: Units question for Americans

Nate Edel wrote:
[SNIP]
Of all things of units of measure, F over C is the one I have the strongest
sense of. Tell me it's 40f or 60f or 80f and I'll know whether it's cold,
comfy, or hot. Tell me it's 5C, 15C and 25C and I'm going to have to think
about the conversions.
And, for a person who in a country which started going metric (from the "imperial" Imperial system) in the 1960's (Australia), the *exact* opposite applies.

The terms 5C, 15C, 25C all tell me *exactly* what I should wear, but 40f, 60f, and 80f convey very little - I suppose my vague memories (and knowing that 32f == 0C) would give me "cold" for 40f, but the rest is a blur. And I can vaguely recall that "double the C and add 25" (or was it 30?) gave a rough f, but that was decades ago.

For weight and most units of length, "approximately" equal conversions are
enough to have some sense of what they mean.
Until they break down. Or enter the realm of stupidity, as in "how many yards are there in a mile?" I have no idea, and I *must* have learnt it at school at some point.

I know that a foot is about 30cm, and therefore a yard is around 90% of a metre, and a mile is sort of 5/3 km, but I have no feel for it any more.

After all, it's just immersion, we are now used to it. And the kids growing up since then have *no* idea what a mile or a gallon or a rod might be. We still say things like, "that's a million miles from here," but I doubt many could pace out a mile, whereas as l think most could pace out a kilometre (assuming they could count high enough).

As someone upthread pointed out - the only real reason for not switching to the metric system is familiarity, the units in any system are essentially arbitrary, avoiding negative values in temperature measurement is not bad reason, but since most people on Earth live in areas where it doesn't get below 0C/32f, it's a tad precious, and "100f is near the temperature of the human body" is frankly pathetic, if it *was* the average temperature of the human body it would make sense.

Cheers,
Gary B-)

--
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Armful of chairs: Something some people would not know
whether you were up them with or not
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