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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2217 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 22, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Your displeasure is misplaced. There's a very good reason why our time measurements are centered around a solar day. When we someday leave the cradle of Mother Earth forever we might switch to a kilo- and mega- second timekeeping method, but as long as all our daily activities are dependent on the Sun's position in the sky the day of 86400 seconds is there to stay.

In contrast, there's nothing about US customary units that makes them have any relationship to our everyday lives. They are as arbitrary as metric units, but at least with metric units conversions are simple and intuitive.

The conversions which actually get used in imperial units are also quite easy. The ones I use with any regularity are:

12 inches : 1 foot, 3 feet : 1 yard
16 oz : 1 lb
3 tsp : 1 tbsp
2 cups : 1 pt, 2 pts: 1 qt, 4 qts : 1 gal

These are not onerous or difficult to remember. They are even easy to calculate, in this day of having a computer in your pocket at almost all times. People advocating for the metric system always go "BUT DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY STONE ARE IN A BUSHEL" and have a good laugh, but this is a bad faith gotcha. For the typical every day use, imperial conversions are quite easy to remember and work with.

How many fluid ounces are there in a tablespoon? How many ounces of water in a fluid ounce? Or are they equated via a different substance?

I don't know, nor are those conversions which I've ever needed.

Customary units aren't arbitrary. If I need to measure feet without a tape measure I can use my own feet and get a reasonable approximation. For inches I can use the distance between knuckles. The mile is based on how far you travel in one minute at normal highway speeds (at least in the days of the 55 mph speed limit, assuming 5 mph of leeway), a gallon is based on the amount of milk a family of four uses between grocery trips, the pound is based on the weight of the average cantaloupe, etc.

Joking aside, the point is that these measurements aren't arbitrary, but based what people find useful and convenient in their everyday lives. When metric proponents are pressed on the time question, they always point out that dividing the day into ten 100 minute hours doesn't result in any useful units of measurement. Well, so what? The last I checked, the distance between the equator and the north pole doesn't have any reasonable relationship to my everyday life, why should I expect units of time to? And the argument about ease of conversion never made any sense to me either; I couldn't tell you the last time I had to convert between customary units. Maybe occasionally when altering a recipe, but even then it's only a mild inconvenience that wouldn't even be appreciably improved by a switch to metric. It's definitely not worth changing our entire system over. I just find most of the metrification arguments dumb, because they never seem to apply in any other contexts.

This part is confusing two entirely separate things:

The last I checked, the distance between the equator and the north pole doesn't have any reasonable relationship to my everyday life, why should I expect units of time to?

One is the need for an independently verifiable definition of your measures, these days generally based on fundamental physical constants. Instead of building your system on a prototypical example and then accumulating measurement errors outward from it. Every system needs this, and in fact your current imperial units are defined as fractions of SI units, piggybacking on the definitions work of metric.

The other is the scale of the default unit, which is completely independent from your method of definition. After deciding to base the meter on the earth's circumference the actual fraction can still be freely chosen. The meter was picked specifically as a length useful in everyday life, it's pretty much the same scale as a yard.

dividing the day into ten 100 minute hours doesn't result in any useful units of measurement.

That's different from redefining the day itself. One day being exactly 100000 "decimal seconds" long would've worked just fine and scaling various processes would've been much easier. If one brick firing cycle takes 7 normal hours, how many days will it take to make 17 batches? If it takes 30 metric hourons (100 hourons in a day), then it's 510 metric hourons or a bit more than 5 days.

I couldn't tell you the last time I had to convert between customary units. Maybe occasionally when altering a recipe, but even then it's only a mild inconvenience that wouldn't even be appreciably improved by a switch to metric.

You could at least number your wrenches in 1/32ths of an inch, so they don't go 5/8, 11/16, 23/32.

And I do conversions all the time when doing technical sketches by hand. On mm graph paper I can directly measure any distance and convert it on the fly. Is it a 1:10 scale drawing of a staircase? This means 6.8cm is 67l8cm. Is it a 1:50 house plan? 6.8cm is 3.4m.

When we someday leave the cradle of Mother Earth forever we might switch to a kilo- and mega- second timekeeping method,

Multi-planetary timekeeping is something that doesn't really have a firm academic basis currently. Relativistic time dilation means that clocks, even Cesium sources, run at perceptually (for an Earth-based observer) different rates due to differing gravitational potential. I have talked with experts in the field before, and there is general agreement that the current "time is defined relative to Earth sea-level" probably doesn't work for precise applications (notably navigation) even on the Moon.

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