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That's a good question, actually. Surely, they can. But if you look at countries which really embrace the metric system, like Japan, or Germany, and look at the products they design, you'll find that the dimensions are not given in centimeters. The centimeter is, empirically, not a very useful length. Instead, what you find is that they measure things in millimeters--and curiously, the lengths in millimeters tend to be numbers like 48, or 120, i.e. numbers which have lots of factors of 2 and 3 in them. Don't just take my word for it!! Go browse Amazon.com and see what typical lengths of objects designed in those countries are, and what units they are stated in. Which is to say, if you are really going to use the metric system, you are going to be using lots of lengths divisible by 12 anyways. Which means they are not powers of 10, and probably not divisible by 10, which means you've largely lost the biggest advantage of the metric system--easy arithmetic for numbers which are powers of 10 and divisible by 10. Cf with a ruler, which is divided into 12 inches, and each inch into tenths. There is a line on that ruler for 1/2 a foot, 1/4 of a foot, 1/5th of a foot---and 1/3rd and 1/6th of a foot. All of the smallest and most commonly used prime numbers are present and accounted for. cf with a 10-centimeter ruler, each cm divided into 10 milimeters. You've got lines for powers of 1/2 and 1/5--that's it. If you want to divide it by any other factor, you are squinting your eyes and guesstimating between lines. |