[adrianratnapala]

As much as I hate the metric system myself, I don't think it's true that U.S. measuring culture is a self-consistent system that avoids unnecessary conversions.

For example the energy content of fossil fuels tends to be measured in BTU per (whatever), while electrical energy is measured in kilowatt hours. On the other hand, automobile engines are often rated in horsepower.

I find this sort of thing is ubiquitous in engineering. In metric-only countries, the situation is slightly less bad because that system provides somewhat fewer opportunities for mischief.

[exDM69]

In imperial vs. metric, I don't think the actual units are as big of a difference as the convention of using fractions vs. decimals.

When doing manual work, e.g. woodworking or metalwork it's pretty convenient to use fractions. You tend to divide things in half or quarters.

With most things not made by hand any more, using fractions and inconsistent units like inches, feet, yards and miles is a nuisance for engineers.

[adrianratnapala]

Inches, feet, and yards and miles aren't really inconsistent, becuase they are all related by somewhat reasonsable integer ratios. In this computer age, there isn't even much advantage in replacing all those ratios with powers of ten.

It's when people inflict mixtures of BTUs with h or Joules with eV on us that I get aggravated. Each of those units has its place, but only in particular domains. Worse, the people most likely to use domain-specific units, are the ones most likely to not name the unit they are using.

Engineers are such people.

The SI system helps reduce the risks a little. But only a little, I have seen German engineers measure velocity in degrees.

[exDM69]

If you're working with floating point in meters, all it takes is a look at the exponent (e.g. 1.75923e-5) to figure out whether it's micrometers, centimeter or kilometers. Not as practical with a non base-10 unit system.