Non scientists: does the metric system make everyday life easier?
Posted by fi-ri-ku-su@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 5 comments
I used to live in France and I would sit in traffic in my car for 5km and nobody ever said "well at least the 5km is exactly divisible by 10 into 50,000 metres. It makes the traffic easier". Similarly, when the price of a 500ml glass of beer went up, nobody said, "well at least 500 is a factor of 1000, so it makes the beer taste better and it makes it cheaper, " and having 500g jars of jam instead of 484g (=1lb) jars of jam didn't change anything at all about the jam. Am I missing something? Is there some other part of everyday life that actually gets easier when you can divide it by 10 or by 100?
Now if we switched to metric time and had 100min hours, and maybe the same number of days in each month, that would genuinely make everyday life easier, right? But nobody seems promote that.
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
It's arguably easier mental arithmetic to work in a decimal system. Also it means everything is easily understood and concise, kilometres, grams, millilitres etc. All follow the same principles. Millimetres follow into centimetres and then meters consistently.
By comparison wtf Is going on with 12 inches to a ft, 3ft to a yard and 1760 yards in a mile
LondonCycling@reddit
A foot was set at the length of an average man's foot.
Yard origins are contested, so will leave that.
A mile was historically around 1000 paces, so it was easy to count, and would be marked with a stick as a way of counting.
Most imperial measurements relate to parts of the body, which made convenient ways of measuring them since most men had feet, fingers, arms, etc.
curious_trashbat@reddit
I don't know anyone with a foot long foot. That would be a size 13-14.
As people in days gone by were shorter on average, it would follow that the average foot size was smaller.
helpful__explorer@reddit
The size of 1 ft wasn't even consistent across places. A French Foot was 12.8 inches, for instance, which is what led to the myth that Naploeon was short.
IncestHarem@reddit
12.8 British inches. The French foot was 12 French inches