[mulmen]

> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha.

It's really very tired.

Americans don't even use Imperial units. We use United States Customary Units [1] which are more like siblings to Imperial units than offspring.

United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893.

School children in the United States have studied the metric system for generations.

The United States was one of the original 17 signatories of the Metre Convention in 1875. As far as I can tell no commonwealth countries were early adopters.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

[CRConrad]

> United States customary units have been based on familiar Metric units since the Mendenhall Order in 1893.

No. They may be defined in terms of Metric units, but they aren't "based on" them. If they were based on them, they'd be a sensible integer (or decimal-factor) multiple of them, not some weird fractional measure. An inch being 25.4 millimeters may be the current definition of an inch, but that arbitrary length isn't based on anything in the metric world -- it's still just as based on the average length of the top joint of a medieval craftsman's thumb as it's always been.

[mulmen]

Ok, fine, defined in terms of.

There’s nothing odd about the fractional scale, nor is it unique to US Customary Units.

[CRConrad]

No, there's nothing odd about the fact that units based on one set of measures become fractional when expressed in units of another measurement system. It just shows that neither is based on the other.

And of course "the fractional scale is not unique to US Customary Units", since there is no fractional scale within that measurement system. Nor within any other, AFAIK. Your pound consists of an integer number of ounces (right?) and your foot of twelve-point-zerozerozero... inches. The "fractional scale" exists only between measurement systems. (AFAIK. Except maybe old British currency, that was really weird, I'd trust those crazy Englanders to have about six Pi pennies to the shilling or something.)

[mulmen]

The meter is based on a fraction of a second.

[genewitch]

https://frinklang.org/frinkdata/units.txt is one of the things i find myself reading and using to complain about things. Frink is a conversion tool and calculator, like "how many grains of rice worth of calories is needed to boil 1 liter of water" and even more esoteric stuff. It also can correctly convert between most of the esoteric units (rods, hogsheads, furlongs).

Frink has phone apps, so you don't need a data connection as you would with wolfram alpha or google.

[CRConrad]

Naah. It's defined in terms of the second, nowadays, but it's based on the circumference of the Earth: The meter was originally defined as one ten-millionth of the distance between the equator and the poles.

[throwaway210222]

> We use United States Customary Units

Actually no, not for potential difference, current, resistance, impedance, luminosity, amount-ofsubstance …

For those you use the SI units.

Its just length, mass, (plus force and torque).

Not far to go.

[mulmen]

The United States does not use "Imperial" units. We use some Customary Units that are defined in terms of SI units and share names with some Imperial units.

The point is that saying "The United States uses Imperial Units" is, generously, ignorant.

[Taniwha]

yes - for example a US fluid Oz is different from everywhere else, as is a cup, a pint, a Venti (twenty what?) and many of the units used in cooking - using American recipes without translation can produce crap - Imperial fluid ounces are totally different largely due tax politics of the 1700/1800s

[mulmen]

Venti is not a US Customary Unit.

[Taniwha]

No but it is one used in commerce ....

Customer: Venti? is that twenty in Italian?

SB Barista: yes

C: twenty what?

SBB: fluid ounces

C: can't be that, they use metric in Italy, must be litres or millilitres

SBB: litres

(at least that's what they usually answer when I try it)