Imperial measurements just feel better

In summary: If I want to know how many meters are in a kilometer, it's 1000. In summary, the metric system is widely used and considered to be more practical and easier to work with compared to the imperial system. It uses consistent and logical unit names and conversions, making it easier to understand and remember. In contrast, the imperial system has confusing and inconsistent conversions, making it difficult to work with in a scientific setting.
  • #1
vjk2
90
0
Metric holds an advantage in simplicity, but imperial seems to have better unit amounts.

For instance, temperature. I cannot think in celcius. 60's weather is 15-20 celcius. 70's is 20-26 celcius. 80's weather is 27-34 celcius.

Lengths: a mile is a significant accomplishment for human endurance. A kilometer is barely enough to get your heartbeat up.

Weights. having to say 1800 kilograms instead of saying 2 tons is unwieldy, and is . Tons seems right because they indicate when you've reached industrial capacities.

Liquid. Gallons vs liters. A gallon seems to be a substantial amount of liquid, while a liter is basically too small to really be of substantial measure, and too big for personal consumption compared to the pint.

Even when calculating like interstellar distances, any advantage from metric is going to be non-existent because the unit you're using will either be miles or kilometers and there won't be much conversion to other units going on. Or, for microscopic measurements, you could probably use micro-inches as a measure just as easily as nano-meters are commonly used today.
 
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  • #2
I think it is a matter of what you've become used to over the years.

For example, I've been told temperatures in celcius for years, so I know that 32C is ambient temperature here. If someone now tells me that it is 90F outside, because I am not used to referencing F I'll be a bit lost. And well the conversion from C to F is a bit tedious.
 
  • #3
I'll try to answer your highly intelligent question with an equally sophisticated response.
First, nearly the whole world uses the metric system. Imperial units are only used by a small fraction of the worlds population. That alone makes them bad since nearly no one knows what they mean.
Furthermore imperial units are impractical. Water for examply freezes at 0 and boils at 100°C. Thats easy. With imperial units I get ugly numbers like 32 and 212. Who is supposed to remember that? In metric units the body temperature is a nice cosy 37. In the imperial system it's 100 which sounds really unhealthy.
Liquid - 1 litre is the perfect amount for beverages. At the oktoberfest for example beer is always served in 1 litre glasses. And every experienced beer drinker will agree that that is the perfect size.
Weights - the metric tonne is used in industry everywhere in the world and of course it's a lot more practical than the imperial ton since it's exactly 1000kg. The imperial ton however is 907kg in the US and 1016kg in the UK. Again really ugly numbers that no one can be bothered to remember.
So in short the metric system is clearly far superior.
 
  • #4
To water boiling: how often do you have to worry about that? Worthy tradeoff for getting temperatures in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

Hadn't realized the metric tonne. my bad.

Still, it seems like a 180 lb body weight is easier to envision than a 80kg bodyweight.
 
  • #5
The problem with imperial units is that different magnitudes of numbers are measured in different units with confusing and inconsistent conversions between the different sized units.

For example, a mile is 5280 feet. A foot is 12 inches. A ton is 2000 pounds. A pound is 16 ounces (weight). A gallon is 16 cups and a cup is 8 fluid ounces. You need a chart to remember all the conversions.

It really wouldn't be bad if we measured larger distances in kilofeet and megafeet. Weights in kilopounds, etc. In that case, there really wouldn't be any good reason to choose metric over imperial, except out of popularity.
 
  • #6
And all of the unit names in SI are instantly comprehensible without referring to an SI dictionary to figure out the component units.
 
  • #7
My only complaint about SI is the kilo in kilogram as a base unit. Is 1000 kg = 1 kkg or 1 Mg?
 
  • #8
I remember the chaos when Tchernobyl happened to explode just after introduction of the SI and people got completely confused with Rem, Sievert, Gray, Curie, Becquerel and the like.
So you can guess my surprise when I learned after Fukushima that the Japanese authorities where still using the old units whose definition I long had forgotten. And this with Japan, (I am tempted to say: In contrast to the USA) being a high tech state.
 
  • #9
DaleSpam said:
My only complaint about SI is the kilo in kilogram as a base unit. Is 1000 kg = 1 kkg or 1 Mg?

I also don't quite understand why we differentiate between Hz and Bq on one hand and Sievert and Gray on the other.
 
  • #10
vjk2 said:
To water boiling: how often do you have to worry about that? Worthy tradeoff for getting temperatures in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

Hadn't realized the metric tonne. my bad.

Still, it seems like a 180 lb body weight is easier to envision than a 80kg bodyweight.

How is it difficult? Someone weighing 2.5 is a baby, 50 is normal and 100 is overweight. Nice even multiples of 20 and 2. Contrast with imperial system of ugly numbers like 6, 145 and 210.

Also, how much does 10000000 people weigh and express in units such that the answer has absolute value between 1 and 10? lol. Try it without metric.
 
  • #11
As others have said, the fact that you find it easy to work with one vs. the other is due to experience and members from metric countries have pointed out that our imperial system is confusing to them.

The REAL problem is conversions in a scientific setting. Let's say you're a cook and you received a 10lb package of meat. Let's say you have a recipe to duplicate that calls for 4oz portions. You have to do this very stupid 16oz = 1 lb conversion. What if you have a gallon of water and you need to use 1 pint of it. I actually don't even know what the heck that conversion is. In SI units, you don't have these ridiculous conversions to try to remember. If I want to know how many feet are in a mile, you got to remember this 5280 number. Metric? Just knock off a few decimals to go from meter -> km. There are plenty of other examples but the more you have to use numbers, the more annoying it is.
 
  • #12
I work at a research institution and when a directive was issued that all papers for domestic consumption (U.S.) had to use English units, I immediately responded that I refused to discuss the transmit power of radios in horsepower.

The English system can be much more confusing than the metric system. Wikipedia lists many units whose measurement has been long forgotten by most people. It is far too long for this post but please check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units

The English system can also cause much confusion. What percentage of people using the English system understand that the ounce used for measuring gold is different from the ounce used to measure most anything else? To find out, ask a sampling of people, which weighs more, an ounce of feathers or an ounce of gold. What proportion of people think a fluid ounce is a measurement of weight?

I used to work for a company that specified dimensions only in English units, yet we ordered most of our components from China. There were instances in which the components arrived dimensionally out of spec., most likely because the supplier didn't understand English units, resulting delays to our production.
 
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  • #13
Quite honestly i hate this difference around the world.Well I understand that people have been proud of their achievements and want to name some things different just to stand out and many other factors come to play but it would be great to make one universal measurement system, because physics is the same no matter where you go.Yet some countries teach their children one system the others other ones.
Ofcourse they can be calculated from one to another but why the extra problems?
I fully agree to the quote that "Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler" Albert Einstein although there is a debate whether it is his quote but that's not the point here anyways.
A kg is just as heavy in the US as in EU or Russia.

@ DrDu yes while the Fukushima I wasn't actually following the details that much but the media sometimes mixed up their own heads when they were reporting the official radiation readings once in roentgens and later on in sieverts only they changed the name but forgot to convert the numbers themselves.

Not about this topic but one world language would be a disaster from a cultural point of view but a relief and a huge step forward from trading business and scientific progress point of view.
 
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  • #14
Using metric would have saved us a Mars orbiter:
http://articles.cnn.com/1999-09-30/tech/9909_30_mars.metric.02_1_climate-orbiter- spacecraft -team-metric-system?_s=PM:TECH [Broken]
 
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  • #15
chill_factor said:
How is it difficult? Someone weighing 2.5 is a baby, 50 is normal and 100 is overweight. Nice even multiples of 20 and 2. Contrast with imperial system of ugly numbers like 6, 145 and 210.

As a Brit, I find these "body weight" examples mystifying. I have no idea if "180 pounds" means fat or thin without thinking about it, but I know what "a 12 stone weakling" means.

When the UK currency was based on 20's and 12's not on the decimal system, every kid learned to deal with that as soon as "money" became an interesting concept. So dealing with a few more factors in other measurement units wasn't a big deal.
 
  • #16
DaleSpam said:
My only complaint about SI is the kilo in kilogram as a base unit. Is 1000 kg = 1 kkg or 1 Mg?

The base unit is the gram, as the meter or the liter. Then as with all, you have kilogram, kilometer and kiloliter as 1000 times the basic unit. And 1000 kilograms or 1000000 grams will be the 1 Mg (usually called 1ton) as with meter and liters. That's all.
The fact is that meter and liter are more 'standard human' sizes when compared to gram, but not that much.
 
  • #17
rock.freak667 said:
I think it is a matter of what you've become used to over the years.

For example, I've been told temperatures in celcius for years, so I know that 32C is ambient temperature here. If someone now tells me that it is 90F outside, because I am not used to referencing F I'll be a bit lost. And well the conversion from C to F is a bit tedious.

32C is ambient temperature where you live? Are you in the Sahara? Usually room temperature is around 21C.
 
  • #18
kevinferreira said:
The base unit is the gram, as the meter or the liter. Then as with all, you have kilogram, kilometer and kiloliter as 1000 times the basic unit. And 1000 kilograms or 1000000 grams will be the 1 Mg (usually called 1ton) as with meter and liters. That's all.
The fact is that meter and liter are more 'standard human' sizes when compared to gram, but not that much.

and my only complaint is that ... even tho some don't like to use the metric system
( one particular country in mind ... wink)
I wish they would at least spell the metric words correctly

Metre not meter ... meter is usually a thing with a needle indicating Volts, Amps etc
Litre not liter ... don't know what a liter is ? is it a smaller than usual litter of puppies ? ;)
Tonne not ton

cheers
Dave

... just a little fun dig in the ribs :)
 
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  • #19
kevinferreira said:
32C is ambient temperature where you live? Are you in the Sahara? Usually room temperature is around 21C.

no, that would be 40C avg/ambient daytime temp

anywhere in the tropics is nominally around the 30C area

Darwin city in northern Australia its temp day or nite doesn't vary much from 30C all year round ( approx 28 - 32)
Where my wife comes from in the southern Philippines is very similar hot and humid 27/7/365

Dave
 
  • #20
kevinferreira said:
The base unit is the gram, as the meter or the liter.
No, the base unit is the kg. Otherwise the derived units would be in terms of g not kg. E.g. 1 N would be 1 g m/s². See:
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-2/table3.html [Broken]

kevinferreira said:
Then as with all, you have kilogram, kilometer and kiloliter as 1000 times the basic unit. And 1000 kilograms or 1000000 grams will be the 1 Mg (usually called 1ton) as with meter and liters.
It appears that you are correct about this:
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter3/3-2.html [Broken]
 
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  • #21
What we really should do is:
1) use the Heaviside-Lorentz unit approach to get rid of all units with dimensions other than mass, length, and time
2) use the Geometrized unit approach to get rid of the units with dimensions of mass and time as well as setting the fundamental dimensionful constants all to 1
3) use prefixes to "humanize" units as needed

Given how tightly people have held on to imperial units I won't hold my breath.
 
  • #22
Meters and kilograms are not just a craze
That the world is metric doesn’t seem to faze
The US and England who remain in a daze
Confined to their islands immersed in a haze
At two ostriches the world continues to gaze
 
  • #23
  • #24
davenn said:
and my only complaint is that ... even tho some don't like to use the metric system
( one particular country in mind ... wink)
I wish they would at least spell the metric words correctly

Metre not meter ... meter is usually a thing with a needle indicating Volts, Amps etc
Litre not liter ... don't know what a liter is ? is it a smaller than usual litter of puppies ? ;)
Tonne not ton

cheers
Dave

... just a little fun dig in the ribs :)

Oh ****! :) I'm not a native english speaker, and thus I tend to mess it up completely, as you can notice... I'll start writing "mètre, litre et gramme" and this way I have no problems! (yeah right...) :)
 
  • #25
davenn said:
no, that would be 40C avg/ambient daytime temp

anywhere in the tropics is nominally around the 30C area

Darwin city in northern Australia its temp day or nite doesn't vary much from 30C all year round ( approx 28 - 32)
Where my wife comes from in the southern Philippines is very similar hot and humid 27/7/365

Dave

Well, I have no experience to argument against that, in Europe I think people feel fine with 23C...
 
  • #26
DaleSpam said:
No, the base unit is the kg. Otherwise the derived units would be in terms of g not kg. E.g. 1 N would be 1 g m/s². See:
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-2/table3.html [Broken]

It appears that you are correct about this:
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter3/3-2.html [Broken]

Maybe I employed 'base unit' in the wrong way. What I meant was not physically, but 'gram' as being the unit which all other units are compared to, kg being 1000 grams and mg being 0.001 grams. But yes, SI unit for mass is kg.
 
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  • #27
Well even though no one asked me for my opinion I think that the metric system is easier to convert unit to unit and easier to remember well ofcourse it's like saying that one likes oranges and the other one likes apples as long as their both food but just as @my_wan posted if we could just come to agree to use one system which is better than the other we wouldn't loose progress or in his posted case millions worth of space equipment.
The problem is I think that the US has used their system for so long that it would be quite hard for the everyday man to get used to different system.
Not to mention how many books should be rewritten.
 
  • #28
This all demonstrates how we can justify a totally subjective feeling in such erudite ways that we can appear to be objective. We just love what we know.
The real problem with Imperial Units is the stupid ratios of the sub-units. Yards feet inches: tons cwt qrs stones lbs oz dwt. Totally ridiculous. I could ask why the US decided on a decimal currency - what was the advantage? :biggrin:
 
  • #29
sophiecentaur is right to point out the crazy ratios involved and conversion factors needed to manipulate Imperial units. The idea that some King’s thumb, or distance from his extended fingertip to his nose should be a standard of measurement is ludicrous. Metrication will eventually become the Global Standard, no doubt. It simply will take an effort and an unbiased attitude on the part of the citizens.

It would be impossible for a country like the USA or Great Britain to change over to the Metric System overnight. Forty years ago (in 1973) there was a movement in the US to begin the changeover, but many citizens simply resisted and/or ignored it. When it finally becomes obvious that it’s necessary to change there will be a period of overlap when both systems are used. It will not be easy for some older folks, and yes, textbooks and more will need to be revised. But eventually our globalized society will function more efficiently when everyone uses the same, SI, logical system of measurement.

For a good discussion see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States

Cheers,
Bobbywhy
 
  • #30
I might point out that the UK is almost totally SI now, apart from miles and pints of beer. Kg, l and Celcius are universal here. We never did do pounds for people's weight. Always stones and pounds.
 
  • #31
All measurement systems are based on some sort of arbitrary convention.

Imperial is derided because of its legendary foundations as being based on a person's proportions.

Metric is equally arbitrary in being based originally on the
circumference of the earth. The French found to their dismay that the Earth was not as easy to measure as they had assumed. The meter now is based on the
oscillations of an atom of cesium-137. Anybody got cesium-137 in their fridge?

The point is, if a large enough group of people agree to use the convention, then it really doesn't matter if it is 'easier', 'or this system is superior', etc. Oil is still priced in barrels of 42 U.S. gallons, because a large enough number of people agrees to this convention.

In my work as an engineer, I use USCS and SI often, but I prefer USCS because I have worked with it long enough to gauge relative magnitudes easily. I don't particularly have a problem with the conversions, because they are just numbers.

I find that the number of SI derived units have grown like Topsy, and one needs a
dictionary to keep the constituent units straight. If SI were ever revised significantly, I would hope that the thicket of derived units could be pruned back, and that units with more practical magnitudes substituted for the current ones.

In these forums, you will continue to find students who struggle with SI even though that is all that they have ever known.
 
  • #32
I think the debate is not about is the imperial system wrong or right.
Ofcourse you can achieve a moon landing both designing the rocket with metric numbers or imperial ones.
You rightly pointed out that some know one better some the other and some none but if we would use just one global system instead of two separate ones it would be easier for all.
Now someone can't understand the metric system maybe but he is learning and one day he will understand it and be able to use it but with the imperial one around he now has two systems to remember and use.
I think that's just extra unnecessary information , instead we could agree on the best one (i guess we already have) and use it.
No offense ofcourse you can't just suddenly change the whole nations understanding of measurement but slowly trying to make a more practical world wouldn't be a bad idea would it...
 
  • #33
kevinferreira said:
Oh ****! :) I'm not a native english speaker, and thus I tend to mess it up completely, as you can notice... I'll start writing "mètre, litre et gramme" and this way I have no problems! (yeah right...) :)
Don't let yourself be bamboozled by davenn's joke. Both the -er and -re spellings are proper English, only the first one is American English dialect, and the other is British English.
Works the same with e.g. center and centre.

A "tonne" is equivalent to saying a "metric ton".


One just needs to remember to be consistent with usage of dialects from either side of the pond.
 
  • #34
Bandersnatch said:
Don't let yourself be bamboozled by davenn's joke. Both the -er and -re spellings are proper English, only the first one is American English dialect, and the other is British English.
Works the same with e.g. center and centre.

A "tonne" is equivalent to saying a "metric ton".


One just needs to remember to be consistent with usage of dialects from either side of the pond.

Yes, I know that, it was just kind of contradictory to be on the side of the metric system and use American English words to write it down.
 
  • #35
kevinferreira said:
32C is ambient temperature where you live? Are you in the Sahara? Usually room temperature is around 21C.

I live in the Caribbean :)
 

What are imperial measurements?

Imperial measurements are a system of units used to measure length, weight, and volume in countries that were once part of the British Empire. They include units such as inches, feet, yards, miles, pounds, and ounces.

Why do some people prefer imperial measurements?

Some people prefer imperial measurements because they are more familiar with them and have grown up using them. They may also find them easier to visualize and understand compared to metric measurements.

Are imperial measurements more accurate than metric measurements?

No, both imperial and metric measurements are equally accurate. The difference lies in the units used and the conversion factors between them.

Why do some countries still use imperial measurements?

Some countries, such as the United States, still use imperial measurements because they have not fully adopted the metric system. This can be due to historical reasons, cultural preferences, or the cost and effort of transitioning to a new system.

Are there any advantages to using imperial measurements?

There are no inherent advantages to using imperial measurements over metric measurements. However, for some people, the familiarity and ease of use may make them feel more comfortable and thus, more preferable.

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