• Bye@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    And in the sciences and drug dealing and the military, we use metric exclusively.

    But for some idiotic reason, construction engineers often use imperial units and I have no idea why. Like buildings are built in pounds and feet and stuff, with half inch bolts and 2x4 (ish) lumber and half inch plywood. It’s idiotic.

    • randomwords@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t generally defend imperial, but feet and inches are actually really useful in construction. Base 12 is easily divisible by 2, 4, and 3. You often need to divide architectural elements in thirds.

      • GrumbleGrim@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        As a former structural engineer who lived on a Jobber 5 all day, that’s still pretty niche overall. Easier because it’s what your used to maybe, but outweighed by situations where it’s not. Try doing trig with fractions and then tell me imperial is better.

        • bleistift2@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Does it matter whether you punch 3/8 or .375 into a calculator? Don’t tell me you calculate stuff by hand…

        • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Trig is literally the math where you start dividing a circle in fractions and doing the math in base 360.

          What the hell are you talking about?

          • GrumbleGrim@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I’m talking about trig using feet and inches. You know, rise, run, slope… Have you ever used trig outside of school? I don’t understand what you’re confused about.

            • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              right now i use it for waves and reflections. that’s all fractions and degrees. before it was machining and tbh for me that was faster to go to the book for the answers than calculate everything out.

              truly trigonometry is a land of contrasts.

      • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        That might be somewhat useful if it was consistently applied, which it is not.

        And it’s maybe useful for fractions, but how many feet are in a mile again? 5280? A square yard is what now… 1296 square inches?! Who the fuck is supposed to memorize all that?

        What’s a 1/4 square yard in square inches?

        That’s not easy, that’s putting the mental into mental arithmetic.

        • randomwords@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Again people making me defend imperial, I think metric is better.

          I see this argument all the time, converting between these units is hard cause the numbers are weird. You have to stop thinking about imperial as a system, it’s not. No one should convert miles to feet, they are not intended to measure on the same scale.

          None of the conversions are easy because imperial is just a random collection of units that were being used to measure different things.

          • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, no one should be able to make a quick sanity check for things that span multiple powers.

            • “Hey Bob, we have 5000 of those 78 ft rails, that enough for the 100 mile railroad?”

            • “What do I look like, a fucking calculator?”

            vs

            • “Hallo Heinz, how mäny hecto-liter do ve kneed für 1000 0.5l bottles of Bier?”

            • “20, boss.”

            The amount of people going completely out of their way to die on their little cubic ft hill actually defending they’re incapable of easily and consistenly calculating units is just utterly ridiculous. “Nobody should be doing this!!!1!”

            No, wait, the people in here telling people that “dozenal” is superior, but not realizing they’re not using a “dozenal” system at all, they’re just counting to twelve in decimal. Those are also making me question whether humans actually went to the moon…

            • randomwords@midwest.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Keep putting those words in my mouth. I’m not dieing on any hill, just trying to provide some context about why imperial is so weird. I still think metric is better.

              You seem really upset about something that really doesn’t matter that much, are you okay?

              • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Did I mention you specifically when I said „the amount of people…“? See.

                And if it doesn’t matter much to you, why do you keep commenting? Nobody’s „making“ you defend anything. Are you okay?

                • randomwords@midwest.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  You were replying to me…

                  I’m just replying to people who respond. I had seen your argument about imperial measurements a lot and since that’s really not an intended use case, if anything about imperial can really be called intended, I responded.

                  I’m doing fine thanks for asking. If my responses are agitating you I can stop. I hope you have a great life!

                  • yA3xAKQMbq@lemm.ee
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Yeah, I’m just replying to people who respond. Look, I’m not the one having issues here, you are the one who keeps responding to me. Just stay out of my inbox if I’m agitating you.