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by Broken_Hippo
3624 days ago
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There is a huge difference in learning metric in school, using it for specific jobs, and actually having any realistic grasp on the metric system in daily life. Using it in STEM feilds narrows the use to very specific uses - I can measure something in any system giving me numbers, and memorize the system making it faster. It isn't hard to switch to metric mechanics tools. Every day life is a completely different ballpark. I used 'standard' for some time, and now live in a metric-only country. I have little practical knowledge of the weather forecast, for example. I know 9C is colder than 12C, but it is rather difficult to assess what clothes I need to wear for that temperature change. I have no real notion for how far 350km is compared to miles or travel time. A 2kg bag of flour isn't so different from a 5lb bag of flour, and 2 liter cartons of milk look to be about half a gallon. But measuring recipies in deciliters? How big an apartment is in square meters? How big is a cm compared to my thumb? How can I estimate lengths shorter than a meter (which is approximately a yard)? How do I know if I have a fever? What is normal comfortable room temperature? Some of these questions folks in STEM professions will have some awareness of, but it is definitely not something that makes us fluent enough. And I think the only way to do this is to switch completely. |
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I learned metric in school and used it in college science courses, but didn't become fluent until I lived in Germany for a few years. It was trippy having "non-science" people talking about grams and centimeters. Metric fluency has come far more easily than German.
Oddly enough though, I've found that I react like the Germans around me to weather forecasts in Celsius (30 degrees - it's going to be HOT!) when if I heard it in Fahrenheit, I'd react more like a Texan (86 - pleasantly mild for a summer day)