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by AlotOfReading 142 days ago
Even in construction, feet/inches/yards kinda sucks. 1:10 scale drawings are painful to do manually, division by 2 is a bit erratic, and bolt sizing is a horrible mess. Metric bolts are nice and consistent.

With you on temperature though.
1 comments
briffle 142 days ago
My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot. It is just so weird to see. Forcing decimal on a measurement that does not normally have it just makes me uncomfortable.

https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...

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nayuki 142 days ago
The tension that you experienced is common in imperial and traditional systems of units. Here's another example for you: Carpenters working with wood use mixed feet, inches, and fractional inches (like 2' 5 3/8"), but machinists working with metal use exclusively decimal inches (like 29.375"). Both hold steadfast to their traditions and won't consider adopting the other system.

If you take a look at American grocery stores, you'll see things like: “40 × 16.9 FL OZ (1.05 PT) 500 mL BOTTLES / NET 676 FL OZ (5.28 GAL) 20 L” https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/...

To dissect that product: It's a pack of 40× 500 mL of bottled water. I have zero problems with the metric labeling. But for the US customary units, you can see a jumble: decimal fluid ounces, decimal pints, a large number of fluid ounces, and decimal gallons. Note that the gallons can be broken down into mixed units (and some packaging does that); 676 fl oz = 5 gal 1 qt (0 pt) (0 cup) 4 fl oz exactly. The US units are basically "whatever I feel like using" (don't forget tsp and tbsp, which aren't used in the current example). The metric units for liquid consumer products are always mL and L, which greatly simplifies learning and comparison for the consumer.

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kurthr 142 days ago
Note that ft/100 is almost exactly 1/8", which is also the most standard resolution used in construction. I love decimal feet (it's worth noting that there used to be a survey foot, but it has been deprecated).
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AlotOfReading 142 days ago
I was an archaeologist, but use a similar tape measure. It's fantastic. It also works very well with GIS systems, since decimal degrees almost perfectly correspond to metric powers of 10 at tropical latitudes.
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zokier 142 days ago
> My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot

Survey foot or international foot?

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