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by pacaro 3606 days ago
The thing that always gets me about this is how incomplete it is (at least in most people's experience)

What is the unit of mass smaller than an Ounce? Some people know that this is a Grain (7,000 in a pound, which means the awfully convenient division of 437.5 per oz - assuming avoirdupois of course)

What if anything is smaller than an inch? Power of two fractions until 1/64 then "thous" - 15.625 thous in 1/64" - although I do like how biblical (KJV) it looks to be writing "thou"
2 comments
dragontamer 3606 days ago
> What if anything is smaller than an inch?

Then we use Pica and Points. You know, like 12-point font. Which is 1/6th of an inch tall. 72-points to an inch, 12-points to a pica.

Get with the program man!

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saghm 3606 days ago
Too bad we had to go and make displays with different pixel densities...
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Turing_Machine 3606 days ago
Most people never use units smaller than can be accounted for by fractional inches and ounces in their daily lives, and never did. The only people who ever used grains were pharmacists, jewelers, and the like. The only people who ever had to resort to thous were precision machinists and the like.
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int_19h 3606 days ago
Open Amazon, and search for something as mundane as plastic bags or trash cans. Notice that their thickness is specified in "mils". How many people make purchasing decisions on those products, for use in their daily lives?
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Turing_Machine 3606 days ago
All you need to know there is that a 3 mil is thicker than a 2 mil. That doesn't require any kind of calculation at all.
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int_19h 3605 days ago
Most units are used in the same manner - no-one is mentally converting kilometers into meters to compare two km distances, for example.

The point is that people do have a need for units that are tiny fractions of an inch, even in day to day life.

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Turing_Machine 3605 days ago
Miles and km are the same, just on the the other end of the scale. A straight magnitude comparison requires no calculation.

The units that people need to perform calculations with are the ones used in measuring for cooking, sewing, home improvement projects, and things of that nature.

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