this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
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Plus, many of us are in STEM fields and appreciate/prefer the metric/SI system. However, we think in imperial units because that’s what we used in daily life in our formative years.
I have no problem with metric units, but I do a rough mental conversion to imperial to relate to the measurement, and get a “feel” for it. This goes for temperature, distance, speed, volume, weight/mass, pressure, and essentially anything else that’s an everyday unit.
It’s analogous to how much of the world thinks of nuclear explosions in terms of kilotons or megatons of TNT. I mean, all you have to do is multiply megatons by 4.184e+15 and you’re back to the sensible unit of Joules. :)
I go back to what my professor in my first engineering class told us -- a good engineer can work in any unit system.
At the end of the day, imperial vs metric is an argument you have over some beers with friends. It's inconsequential.
That's a damn good point, the distance doesn't change regardless of what you call it.
Exactly. This isn't rocket science, it's simple math. And by knowing two unit systems, you can describe the distance in the most convenient way possible.
Hell, I'm not an engineer and that's something I was taught in school. In Texas. In the 80's.
Man, this place has devolved so horrendously...
Man :/