The metric prefixes we know and love are a huge plus. If you convert from Volt to kV or to mV, you just need to move your comma. Ah see what I did there? I uses a metric prefix on a unit that is also used in the US.
The thing is 1V is also 1Nm or 1J or 1Ws. So suddenly we have the meter there right besides the Newton. In fact if you look beyond "I build my own shed in the US"-scenarios, you will find the meter everywhere intertwined in the definition of other units. In fact the definition of imperial length units is based on the metric definition of the length light travels through vacuum in 1/299792458s. So the foundation of the meter is light speed, which helps with all kind of practical issues in physics.
The metric system has maximum compatibility to all these unit systems (except the °C which is a more-practical-for-every-day-use offset version of Kelvin).
Unit systems are always something you grow up with and are therefore an emotional topic. People will take fractions of inches as an example of how metric fractions fail to deliver, when in fact no european woodworker has even remotly a problem with doing their thing in mm. In front of me lies a ruler with a 0.1mm scale and a caliper with 0.01mm or 1/128In accuracyIf I really wanna be ±0.01mm accurate on a cut of 1/3m or 333.33mm getting that accuracy would not be easier in inches. My saw blade is precisely 2mm wide anyways..
They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.
I have never, in around four decades of living, had an actual need to determine the mass of a given volume of water, or the volume of a given mass of water.
When cooking, I routinely need to split some quantity of an ingredient into thirds or quarters.
Yet I am also constantly told that I'm ignorant and backwards and irrational for preferring a system that optimizes for the latter, rather than for the former. Base 12 is genuinely better for many real-world applications than base 10, those applications are more common in the lives of non-scientists than the applications metric is optimized for, and I doubt you're going to be able to produce a rational argument otherwise.
But that's because your recipes are built on the easy divisibility, no? If your recipes are built on weight measurements, suddenly "easy divisibility" brings nothing to the table. If you cook with a kitchen scale, "one ml of water is one gram" is used all the time.
So you never went hiking for a longer period of time or did anything that actually involves carrying water.
I remember when some guys thought about building a pool on the balcony, calculating how much water weighs is admitably not ver often used, but when it is the consistency of the metric system is nice.
I work with wood in mm for years and never had any problem with the metric system. Finding the third, fifth or sixth or whatnot is not hard if you are used to it at all. Converting from mm to meters isn’t hard, etc.
Having a number like 666.66 mm probably sounds scary to measure (beyond the religious connotations), but in fact it is a point on a line that is easy enough to find.
Are they globally “standard?” China uses Mou to measure land area. A pyeong is used in Korea for housing floor area, the British use pints in the pub and stone when weighing themselves. The US uses feet and pounds. We use clocks that have 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, weeks, months. If we want to be consistent, “minutes” should perhaps be 100 seconds, for instance. Horses are measured in “hands.”
“Global standard” isn’t necessarily an argument for “good.” Why aren’t imperial units the standard? Who actually decided that metric was the right answer?
And as a previous poster mentioned; why don’t we say a megameter or gigameter when talking about long distances? Because ultimately measurement units are really about human understanding, despite ostensibly being “scientific.” A foot as just as scientific as a meter. NASA went to the moon with imperial units and it worked out just fine. People and countries are entitled to their preferences. We don’t advocate English or Chinese to be the global standard language. Or that all countries use euros or dollars. Weights and measures can be perfectly accurate regardless of the units used; the idea that we should either create or adhere to a global standard is not unlike suggesting everyone speak the same language.
There's a reason measurements have a global standard, NASA attempted to work with a team from elsewhere that used Metric, and this lead to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter when they couldn't work well together and had a conversion problem.
Standards make it easy for people to work with each other across borders, and most of the world uses metric already.
NASA has since then started all of their new projects on Metric too.
I do agree with your point about the fact that weights and measures can be accurate regardless of the units used, the argument against Imperial isn't about accuracy, it's about ease of conversion and changing bases of the unit scale. (Like 12 inches to a foot, but 3 feet to a yard etc)
> Who actually decided that metric was the right answer?
People who wanted actual definition of units.
Once upon a time if you wanted to sell stuff in my home City you would need to use the city measurements made via a really big stone tablet in the old roman center with various units of lengths.
This was hard to communicate and stuff.
The French decided that one unit of measurement was better than many and made one "easy" (possible) to replicate and validate when the imperial one still used medium sized wheat seeds as measure of pressure.
But now everything is ultimately standardized on the metric system (even the US).
So one need to ask better at what? Better to standardize? Metric no doubt. Better to use? Well this appears to be controversial
Global standard doesn't mean that every person everywhere uses metric. It means that people everywhere can use metric and they know what it means, and that official weights and measures are done in metric. Use whatever glass size you want at the bar, or measure your horses however you wish, but when you get on the road the signs are in km/h.
Plenty of people are "bilingual" with metric and local. Canadians are universally bilingual with metric and imperial. It's not that hard.
Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....
Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....
I honestly cannot make any sense of this part of your argument. The symbols 10 would only look like ten they would still mean a dozen and the properties would remain the same. Furthermore people don’t think in twelves because we are not taught in a dozenal numbering system. And there is no need for twelve fingers it would be a simple thing to create two additional hand symbols to teach children to count to a dozen.
Twelve is a great base. I would prefer it but it isn’t the sort of thing that can be changed.
Understood, his mistake was this “base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10". That statement is mistaken. A dozen would look like ‘10’ but it would still behave like a dozen.
People don't really think in terms of 10s either - that's just societal conditioning based on the usage of fingers to count. If you can accurately picture 1/3 of set, but your number system cannot, it's not really that accommodating of a system.
By the way, you can count base12 on your hands using the digits of your fingers. We just teach kids to use fingers because it's the norm.
Why are you so obsessed with thirds? If you care about short, clean fractions on a human scale, base 6 is overall better, see this table: https://youtu.be/qID2B4MK7Y0?t=992
Plus you get all the convenience of having five digits on a hand and 5 as the highest counting digit, so you can count to 55 on two hands, and all the rest of the benefits in that (totally serious) video.
You've got it backwards. Counting to ten on your fingers predates the concept of our modern positional number system by hundreds of thousands of years. That's why base 10 was already the well-established natural choice when that system was invented.
Thinking that you could represent the quantity IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII by the string "21" because it's 2 * 10 + 1, or similarly as "three fingers on left hand, three fingers on right hand" seems obvious to us now, but is actually pretty recent technology relative to the whole timescale of human development
I'm not sure what your point is. A numbering system based on five-fingered hands is still base6. It doesn't make mathematical sense to argue that we learn base10 today because our hands have 5 fingers. Even if you argue that we have 10 total fingers, that's base11. Does anybody advocate that? How did we come to such an arbitrary thing as base ten?
No, counting on the hands is not base anything, because positional number systems did not exist. Just like Roman numerals or tally marks aren't base anything.
People counted on fingers like with tally marks - they could express the numbers one through ten. Thus ten became an important and familiar number to humans. Thus it would have seemed natural to use a base 10 number system many millennia later.
Clearly, people do think in 12s, because it's been a common thread in mathematics and measurement and calendaring through many different cultures going back to the Sumerians.
Let me clear something: how do you count? Can you multiply 63895 by 12? By 6? By 3? By 10? This is an standard, there have been coltures where the base was 60 and they could multiply 63895 by 60 easily. But now the whole world counts in 10.
I would be happy if that number was 12 but the simple fact that we write in base ten makes it not the case (also mathematically speaking 12 is divided by a square which causes weird things)
There is nothing wrong with 12 but as long as you cannot do 63895*12 easily 10 is better
In most practical applications that I've seen fractions of imperial measurements used, it tends to be in powers of 2, i.e., 3/16 inch, 1/4 mile, etc. Decimals can certainly be used, but for most applications where you'd use something like a "millionth of an inch," it's vastly more common to use metric.
What applications are you talking about? Just for a general example of the sort of thing I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/EWqThb9Z1jk?t=137
They're resurfacing a surface plate, which has to be very flat. If you listen to the exchanges between them, everything is being done in millionths of an inch.
In my experience (electronics manufacturing), both PCBs and machined parts are usually in mils or decimal inches, although millimeters are becoming more common and many drawings show both systems.
Or nothing is stopping you from using things like 1.3 inches, 2.7 miles, .6 gallons. I tend to use the fractions when doing measurements in my head. But if things get too complicated and I have a calculator I switch to decimal.
