[cal2]

I'm American, so I use imperial units in my everyday life. I'm also a (bio)chemist, so I do use metric units about as often as I do imperial units. While I might be slightly biased ("M" is molarity gosh dangit), I don't think I would confuse "M" for "meters (m)" simply because I use imperial units in my everyday life.

I bring this up simply because I've seen a few comments over the past few days to the tone of "imperial sucks" and "imperial is clearly inferior."

To me, I only see using imperial units as an advantage. As Americans, the metric system is already hammered into our heads in grammar school anyways. Some might see it as Americans being uninformed or accustomed to antiquated methods, but I see it as Americans being able to speak two languages (at least the Americans I'm most familiar with).

[opminion]

I only see using imperial units as an advantage

Out of genuine curiosity, what's the advantage from your point of view, other than being able to communicate to other people who use the same system, at the cost of not being understood by everyone else?

(What I heard in the UK during the supermarket transition to metric a decade ago: imperial uses fractions, which is a useful to grasp for learning children, etc. But I'm surely misquoting so don't worry about this argument)

I am asking because I only come across the imperial system when watching Mythbusters or reading a book about the Space Shuttle, or someone tells me their weight in stones, which always leaves me rather puzzled.

This is just out of curiosity, I'm not trying to work anyone up.

[cal2]

> Out of genuine curiosity, what's the advantage from your point of view, other than being able to communicate to other people who use the same system, at the cost of not being understood by everyone else?

What other advantage, you ask? Well, I'd say that there is none. I was merely trying to convey that being fluent in both imperial and metric is better than being fluent in only metric. As long as it doesn't hurt me (which imperial doesn't) the more skill-sets I have, the better!

I hope you better see where I'm coming from now. You didn't work me up though, and I also didn't mean to work anyone up either. :)

[laureny]

> Out of genuine curiosity, what's the advantage from your point of view, other than being able to communicate to other people who use the same system, at the cost of not being understood by everyone else?

The metric system is 10 based, which makes it trivial to measure and convert: 1000mm = 100cm = 1m. This becomes even more important when you are talking about volume or any ^3 dimension.

I have lived in the US for 15 years and even today, I'm unable to convert fl oz. to any kind of mass measure without getting a headache along the way.

[exDM69]

Since we're talking about astronomy, both imperial and metric units are "wrong" and domain specific units should be used instead.

Unit of length should be astronomical units (abbrev. au, formerly AU), the mean distance between earth and the sun. If talking about distances in stellar scale, it should be parsec ("parallax second"), the distance from which an 1 au object can be seen at 1 arc second apparent size (and sin x = x is assumed because x is small).

Unit of mass is usually solar masses. In some special cases earth masses or jupiter masses.

Unit of density is either number of atoms in m^3 or other big volume when talking about interstellar medium or kg/m^3 when talking about planets or stars.

Unit of time is usually measured in years.

When you use solar masses, years and astronomical units, Kepler's 3rd law is reduced to: (m1+m2)period^2 = semi-major-axis^3 and the gravitational constant G = 4 * pi^2 (and thus it's cancelled out from G(m1+m2) * P^2 = 4 * pi^2 * a^3).

I definitely would have liked to see the distance in astronomical units and a verbal description of the distance ie. (5 million kilometers, not 5000000 km). Humans are really bad at understanding big numbers, any means of helping to understand that would be useful.

[rmc]

"Imperial" in USA is actually not the same as "imperial" in the UK. There are slight differences between all units, but a significant difference with volume. A US gallon and a UK gallon are different by about 25%.

The US "imperial" vs UK "imerial" is why during WW2 the Allies (USA, UK, France etc.) used metric. Cause there's only one cenimeter. (Very important when you're making bullets)./

[friendzis]

I think that most common infantry bullets in allied side were .30in (7.62mm) and .45in (11.43mm) and to some degree 9mm. So yes, to some extent you are right, but note that caliber is inch based

[Renaud]

There is at least one reason for me that metric is vastly superior as a way to describe the world than the UK or US version of Imperial: the relationship between mass, volume and length is trivially easy to understand.

A small cube of 1cm represents 1cm³, which is also 1mL which is also 1g of water.

So a cube just 10cm across contains 1000cm³, or exactly 1 Litre and weighs exactly 1kg (of water).

It's easy to grasps and visually/physically see the relationship between these fundamental units.

Relationships to other fundamental units is also greatly simplified: the Newton is the mount of force needed to accelerate 1kg to 1m/s²; the Joule is the amount of energy needed to move 1kg by 1m or moving 1A through 1Ω, ...

Not all units are so cleanly expressed in terms of other units, but, at least for the everyday ones, the kg, Litre and metre, the relationship is easy to understand.

To me, Imperial measurements are confusing. It's even worse considering how food recipes are described in terms of cups (a unit of volume) rather than weight.

Getting a cup of dry pasta is not going to give me the same amount of pasta depending on the shape of the pasta I'm trying to cook. Try getting a cup of spaghetti.

[kps]

  > the relationship between mass, volume and length is trivially easy to understand.

Imperial units also have a simple relationship between mass and volume. In the US, a pint's a pound the world around, and in the world around the US, a pint of water is a pound and a quarter, and in some of those places that rhymes.

(One fluid ounce — either kind — of water weights approximately one ounce.)

[com2kid]

> In the US, a pint's a pound the world around

Having been born and raised in the US, I have never heard this before.

Presumably you are referring to a pint of water?

(Then again we never learned pints anyway, so meh)

[rquantz]

a pint's a pound the world around

I always wondered if butter was the basis for standard units. There's something rather wonderful about that idea to me.

[brc]

The sole advantages of imperial units over metric units is that they are easier and faster to say.

50 miles is a ton less syllables than 50 'kilometers' an inch is much easier to say than '2 centimetres'

What would immensely improve the metric system would be recognised, single-syllable slang words for every measurement unit. A lot of native-metric-english speakers try, they say 'mil' for millilitres, they say 'kays' for kilometres, but you're still left with either awkward decimal points or excessive syllables.

I am 'one point eight three metres' tall, or 'one hundred and eighty three centimetres'. Or I am 'six feet'. Guess which gets used most?

The curse of the metric is the endless tongue-twisters.

[lmm]

Compare equivalent accuracy. "one hundred and eighty three centimetres" is not noticeably more complex than "five feet seven and a half inches". And you have the option of "eighteen decimeters" if that's the level of accuracy you want - try inventing an intermediate unit on the fly with imperial.

[brc]

But you wouldn't go down to a half-inch, and there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'. I'm not referring to accurate measurements, but the sort of day-to-day, rounded off measurements that pepper our daily speech.

If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

[lmm]

> there is a shortcut - '5 foot 7'

You can say "1 meter 83", and people do.

> If I said a decimeter to any of my friends, they would have no idea what I was talking about.

Well, mine would - and any who didn't could easily figure it out. If you're willing to memorize all the random names the imperial units have, you can afford to remember "deci".

[ygra]

Perhaps they sort-of knew that both l (lower-case L) and L were acceptable for litres and thought case-insensitivity applies to all metric units.