[mulmen]

> Because as of right now, only 3 countries in the world (US, Liberia and Myanmar) officially use imperial units

This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system, which has been based on the metric system since 1893.

> If I have to figure out hundredweights per acre, given that X inches of rain fell, I'm gonna need a calculator, a conversion table, and social context to know which kind of "hundredweight" I'm supposed to use.

Nobody is doing this.

> and social context to know which kind of "hundredweight" I'm supposed to use.

Since as you say everyone else uses the Metric system it should be pretty easy to figure out. As an American I have never even heard of a hundredweight, not sure why you are so fixated on this unit.

[usrbinbash]

> This is not true. The US has never used the Imperial system, we use the US Customary system

So how is using yet another different system defining arbitrary measurements that cannot be easily converted, do not directly correspond with the radix 10 numerical system, and are also not widely used make things better?

> Nobody is doing this.

Yes, people are doing such calculations all the time. How many concrete transports will a construction company need to make a foundation, if the depth is 2.2 m², the size is 97.2 m² and the specific weigth is 2.5 tons per m³?

How much rain did fall on Hamburg in 2022 given a city size in square kilometers, and an average fall of cm/day.

What kind of energy output can a solar farm provide given a conversion rate, panel efficiency, panel angle, and land size? Easy to do if all is in SI.

> As an American I have never even heard of a hundredweight

It's an official unit of the us customary system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight

[mulmen]

> So how is using yet another different system defining arbitrary measurements that cannot be easily converted, do not directly correspond with the radix 10 numerical system, and are also not widely used make things better?

For the same reason the metric (literally international standard) system was created. There were many similar systems in use. US Customary was a standard system for the whole country. The problem being solved was different standards for the units. US Customary solves that problem. Only the standard definition of the unit changed. This has been done within the metric system as well, even very recently.

> > Nobody is doing this.

> Yes, people are doing such calculations all the time.

What I mean is that specific conversion with hundredweights.

I’m unclear why anyone would do any of your example calculations in their head. They’re all so important that it would be done precisely on paper or electronically. All a worker pouring a foundation meeds to know is the desired dimensions. All the truck driver needs to know is the quantity ordered. Nobody is actually converting precise quantities of concrete or solar panels in their heads.

[Aloha]

Not to mention, you can do those calculations in your head if you're familiar enough with the subject matter, concrete guys do it all the time.

[Aloha]

Yes hundredweight is an official measurement, but it's not a widely used one (I think it might be used in the sale of nails only?) - which is the parents point. We'd just calculate it in pounds or fractional tons.

You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time.

To go on from this, we've converted everything that meaningfully effects our external competitiveness, as I said in a parallel comment I dont think our competitiveness would be helped or harmed if meat was sold in kilograms vs lbs or if we have temperature on the weather forecast in Celsius.

[saalweachter]

Hundredweight show up in agricultural settings -- you'll see the price of pork being $123/hundredweight, instead of $1.23/lb. I assume this is because the price of meats used to be pennies per pound, and people wanted the numbers to be bigger, $12.50/hundredweight instead of $0.125/lb.

[usrbinbash]

> You act as if these calculations are simply impossible in customary units, they're not and we do them all the time.

No I don't. I said they are more difficult than they have to be, and for no good reason.

> I dont think our competitiveness would be helped or harmed if meat was sold in kilograms vs lbs

https://gizmodo.com/five-massive-screw-ups-that-wouldnt-have...

Maybe not, but it would probably have helped in not having a 125 million dollar space probe go up in flames.

[mulmen]

125 million dollars is precisely nothing in the scheme of interplanetary exploration and we already learned our lesson. I would expect someone so obsessed with radix 10 as yourself to understand orders of magnitude.

In the places it matters the US already uses the metric system. This has been true for more time than Germany has used the metric system.

Since the time the metric system was created a world war was fought, centered around a misguided sense of supremacy. The people with a sense if moderation and the ability to compromise in the face of real constraints won the war. The adherents to strict philosophy were destroyed.

The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because of a miscommunication. We could have done it all in IS Customary units. Nobody did any calculations in their head. This is a hard task. We learned from that, as we always do. The US has still led the largest presence on Mars. We know what we are doing.

[usrbinbash]

> Since the time the metric system was created a world war was fought, centered around a misguided sense of supremacy. The people with a sense if moderation and the ability to compromise in the face of real constraints won the war. The adherents to strict philosophy were destroyed.

Out of the countries that won that war, all but one have either switched to the metric system, or were already using it. So did all the countries who lost that war. In fact, every country other than Myanmar, Liberia, and the US officially uses the metric system.

So what exactly does WWII have to do with using, or not using the metric system, the ability to compromise, or the mathematical, economic, scientific and technical fact that the metric system is more widley accepted, and for good reasons?

[saalweachter]

> How much rain did fall on Hamburg in 2022 given a city size in square kilometers, and an average fall of cm/day.

Oh, now you're in US customary unit territory.

Let me introduce you to the acre-foot.

The acre-foot is the unit of measure for reservoirs. For instance, the Ashokan reservoir is 8300 acres with an average depth of 46 feet. Its volume is 381,800 acre-feet.

If an area 10,000 acres received 3 inches of rain, you need 2500 acre-feet of reservoir to put the outflow in.

How big do you need to make your 2500 acre-foot reservoir? Well, if you're working with 100 acres, you make it 25 feet deep.