The mnemonic for remembering a newton is actually one of my favorites. It’s the force required to move 1kg by 1m. A kg being roughly the mass of an apple makes Newton a natural and somewhat clever fit for the concept.
Pounds are a unit of money. lbf (poundforce) is a misnomer, it’s actually the pressure required to stamp the King’s portrait into a £1 coin. Slightly changes with each monarch – or by a lot whenever they switch to cheaper materials because of devaluation. The frequent redefining of poundforce is now a major consequence of Brexit. /s
Mercifully, g=9.8 everywhere on Earth’s surface, so we use weight interchangeably with mass, but yes, we should weigh ourselves in Newton: “I need to lose 10kg, so I can reach my ideal weigh of 700N” :P
Everything experiences different gravity (and “apparent gravity”) in space. We should pass a treaty of using metric only there, if only to avoid losing more spacecraft.
We already have a permanently inhabited base outside Earth (ISS) with effectively zero gravity and there might be one on the Moon or Mars in 100 years. We should pass treaties to only use metric in space – a probe has been lost to unit confusion already.
Sure. How much does water in a 1ft × 2ft × 3ft aquarium weigh?
In metric, an equivalent calculation is 30 cm × 60 cm × 90 cm = 3 × 6 × 9 dm^3 = 162 𝑙 ≡ 162 kg of water, and if you’re pedantic, the weight is around 1620 N or closer to 1590 N for 𝑔 = 9.8 m·s-2. All calculated in my head.
A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, close enough to 7.5. 1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs ≈ 25/3.
6 * 7.5 = 45 gallons
45 * 25/3 = 375 lbs – easy mental math. Sure, the “accurate” answer is 373.87 lbs, but the aquarium probably isn’t filled with distilled water, perfectly dimensionally accurate, or filled to that exact capacity.
Oh just wait until you see imperial hex screws. In metric you get them in screwdriver size relating to mm. US hex screws are like 16/64 of an inch or 5/16 of an apple. And of course they don’t relate to metric at all and you can’t use the same tools.
Or fucking AWG. Higher number means smaller diameter wire, and Americans are afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large diameters are 00, 000 etc. The formula is batshit insane
so people just use a lookup table.
Gauge is historically number of passes through gauging machine. With the machine and material in question being different for every single one. We took that and put it to a standard, so it’s super messy and makes no sense.
It’s only arbitrarily easy since water has a density of 1 kg/l in metric, as it was designed to do so. If you happened to know the density of water is 62.2 lb/ft^3 then the equation is roughly 123*60 which is 360 lb. 372 if you can actually paid attention to what common core was trying to teach. If the material was anything other then water the math would be just as difficult to do in imperial or metric.
Metric is still far superior as the harmonized units make density in particular much easier to convert between. About the only thing imperial is better at is thread pitch of screws. I will also maintain that when describing human temperatures for weather Fahrenheit is a superior scale, but that’s just more personal preference and experience then any rational basis.
It’s only arbitrarily easy since water has a density of 1 kg/l in metric, as it was designed to do so.
it was designed to do so
That’s also what we mean
I will also maintain that when describing human temperatures for weather Fahrenheit is a superior scale
That’s one where I’d say it’s almost entirely personal preference. Water freezing being at zero is handy because it’s nice to know when there’s ice/snow outside, but that’s also something you could just learn to remember in Fahrenheit too. Doesn’t really matter with that system. Kelvin and Celsius being bros is nice but it’s extremely rare that I use that so eh.
I wonder how many people know these numbers. With the level of US education, probably 10%. Not to mention, most quantities will not be exact feet, more like 2’5". Good luck multiplying that, at least 74 cm is easy to type into a calculator.
Anyway, if you ask a European how much a liter of water weighs, 95% will say “a kilo” without much hesitation.
As someone who’s all about science and all the things that use metric as it’s standard, I understand why us Americans argue for imperial measurements.
We know them.
I can general look at something and relatively tell how big it is based on my experience with the imperial system.
I’m not saying metric isn’t better but there’s also different languages with some of them being able to express certain emotions or features better than others. Yet you don’t see people demanding we all adapt a singular language.
People who grow up almost anywhere else on earth can also tell how big something is based on their experience with metric. That’s not something inherently based on the imperial system. The same way you go “oh that’s about 3 feet”, we go “oh that’s about 2 meters”.
And of course, switching systems overnight is insane, people are used to imperial, you’re right. But at the very least do what Britain did, and have both systems in parallel at the same time, everywhere. And in time, people would get used to metric too.
What I’ve noticed is that for those using other measurements, intuitively knowing about how long a meter is seems like witchcraft. But for use who are used to metric, it’s just “about this much 🫲🫱” or “about this much 🚶”.
We have to exist in a context that resists it. The weatherman will tell you the temperature in Fahrenheit. The road speed limit is listed in mph. You buy milk and gas in gallons.
If anything, Americans who force themselves to use metric in everyday use are working much harder at it than any European.
You should start by adopting metric in anything remotely scientific. Like
voltage ✔️
current ✔️
power ❗ - horses are no longer really relevant, not to mention this - at least appliances use watts
pressure ❌ - we got lucky that 10⁵ pascals is around 1 atmosphere so usePaorbar, notmmHgorPSI
BTW, PSI is a dumpster fire of an abbreviation, the correct one is lbf/in²
force ❌ - the lb/lbf confusion is not worth it when we have newtons
energy ❗ - joules and watt-hours are both fine, calories, electronvolts and TNT-tons less so, but don’t use BTU which nobody can really comprehend, or gasoline-gallon-equivalents that nobody knows how to translate to anything else
strange that motorcycle and gun enthusiasts are the few users of metric length & volume measurement in the US - too bad that these two measurements are never really used in calculations or conversion
torque ❌ - this post says Lb-Ft which is wrong on so many levels
data ✔️ - OK but data rates should be abbreviated MB/s or kb/s, not kbps, Kb/s, kbit/s or Mbit
wire diameter ❌❌ - holy shit, AWG is such a mess - larger wire is smaller number and the formula is so insane that people use lookup tables, also you’re afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large wires are 00, 000 etc.
Can you imagine having different units across the world for voltage or data? Like a 2¾-lemon battery or a 2 million floppy hard drive. That would be absolutely insane.
There is an awful lot of inconsistency in the imperial system too, like pound being abbreviated lb, P (in PSI) or even £, or miles being mi or M in MPH
“Accurate” is probably not the correct word anymore. It was when technical limitations dictated power-of-two capacities. Commodore 64 came out with 64 kiB = 216 B of memory, and FAT32 cannot handle file sizes ≥4 GiB (232 B). However, RAM/ROM/Flash chips manufacturers no longer make exclusively powers-of-two capacities, instead opting for (decinal) GB to save 7 % of the cost (and other fake capacity shenanigans). I prefer binary too but the two unit systems can coexist, people just need to label them correctly.
You acknowledge what they really mean is ft lbf right? Usually pronounced foot pounds. It’s a common unit of torque in the imperial system. I feel like people are just jumping on the bandwagon. This is coming from a diehard Nm preferrer, we need to choose our battles. How bout we die on the hill of bite force being measured with units of pressure? Like really? Fucking pressure? Utterly meaningless as a unit of comparison between bite strength of animals, since all you need to get a bigger number is SHARPER FUCKING TEETH.
About torque though: If my memory doesn’t betray me, one Newtonmeter is 100 grams hooked to a one meter long lever. Is that really different from one pound hanging off a one foot lever? I might be wrong, since I was born metric and have no clue in general.
As simple as 1 pound at 1 feet to be fair, the bad part is that pound is used as a measure of force as well as of mass. It works on the surface of the earth but not anywhere else.
Gasoline gallon equivalents should die in a fire. It’s an invented statistic that’s meant to give you an idea of how much you’ll be spending to run an EV compared to an ICE car, but there’s so much slop in the numbers, and they can change over time.
Also, can we kill off hp for cars? Your EV’s battery will be rated in kwh. Your motor can be rated kw. These numbers work together and is exactly what the metric system is best at.
FFS, just adopt the metric system already. And “lb” is not a force unit. Also don’t capitalize unit abbreviations unless named after scientists.
“pound foot” is the most intuitive name for a unit of force imaginable!
How much force? One pound of the foot. Easy!
Red Foreman agrees… “one pound of my foot in your ass”
It’s one pound per foot you moron!
/s
Not just any old foot, a square one
What do I do with my old foot then?
It’s a derived unit of torque. Pound is already a measure of force.
Of this, you and I, are quite aware.
The Joke, however, is in the air.
Better than “newton-meters” , yeesh. What the hell is a “newton”?
Actually, what the hell is a “meter”?
The mnemonic for remembering a newton is actually one of my favorites. It’s the force required to move 1kg by 1m. A kg being roughly the mass of an apple makes Newton a natural and somewhat clever fit for the concept.
What kind of monster apples are you eating??
Actually pounds are a unit of force
Pounds~newtons
Slugs~ kilograms
Pounds are a unit of money.
lbf(poundforce) is a misnomer, it’s actually the pressure required to stamp the King’s portrait into a £1 coin. Slightly changes with each monarch – or by a lot whenever they switch to cheaper materials because of devaluation. The frequent redefining of poundforce is now a major consequence of Brexit. /sFairly sure there isn’t any money with the king’s face on yet. So we’re still on the Elizabeth standard for now.
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It’s confusing, since “pound” is used for both force and mass.
1 lbm is roughly 0.45 kg
1 lbf is the force required to accelerate a 1 slug (32.2 lbm) mass 1 ft/s^2.
I know slugs are just snails without shells, but they don’t need to go faster
I don’t know what the imperial system standards committee was up to, but I’ve never met a slug that was 32.2 lbm
You wouldn’t know her, she goes to a different school.
What a brainfart of a unit is that?
Lb is force. Mass is Slug in imperial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(unit)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass) vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force)
Mercifully, g=9.8 everywhere on Earth’s surface, so we use weight interchangeably with mass, but yes, we should weigh ourselves in Newton: “I need to lose 10kg, so I can reach my ideal weigh of 700N” :P
Big nope. It depends not only on height, but also on density of stuff under ground.
I’d say it’s more of a “small yes” than a “big nope.”
While gravity does vary, it goes from about 9.76 to about 9.83.
All of which does, in fact, round to 9.8
On ISS it’s 8.722, but it’s constantly falling.
Everything experiences different gravity (and “apparent gravity”) in space. We should pass a treaty of using metric only there, if only to avoid losing more spacecraft.
The pedantry in this post is so dense you would need a torch to cut through it
What’s the variation? Does it ever get to 9.9 or 9.7? It’s a negligible “nope” for people weighing themselves :D
We are talking about engieneering use. Though good scales can be callibrated.
You can look up gravity survey maps but it’s not a huge variation in the habitable altitudes
We already have a permanently inhabited base outside Earth (ISS) with effectively zero gravity and there might be one on the Moon or Mars in 100 years. We should pass treaties to only use metric in space – a probe has been lost to unit confusion already.
This is dated 2007. Apparently NASA is already using metric:
NASA Finally Goes Metric
I know, it has always used metric but the SW was by Lockheed Martin. Still, we need to convince potential extraterrestrial civilians.
We will convince them by force if necessary. They will adopt the Metric or get barred from entering the space bar
On ISS it’s ≈.89g, but agreed
I said “effectively zero gravity” for a reason – the term is “zero gravity” but I know it’s a misnomer.
It’s understandable that you don’t understand a measurement system you’re not familiar with, but us imperials understand it just fine.
Sure. How much does water in a 1ft × 2ft × 3ft aquarium weigh?
In metric, an equivalent calculation is 30 cm × 60 cm × 90 cm = 3 × 6 × 9 dm^3 = 162 𝑙 ≡ 162 kg of water, and if you’re pedantic, the weight is around 1620 N or closer to 1590 N for 𝑔 = 9.8 m·s-2. All calculated in my head.
A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, close enough to 7.5. 1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs ≈ 25/3.
6 * 7.5 = 45 gallons
45 * 25/3 = 375 lbs – easy mental math. Sure, the “accurate” answer is 373.87 lbs, but the aquarium probably isn’t filled with distilled water, perfectly dimensionally accurate, or filled to that exact capacity.
Oh god this is what we mean
Oh just wait until you see imperial hex screws. In metric you get them in screwdriver size relating to mm. US hex screws are like 16/64 of an inch or 5/16 of an apple. And of course they don’t relate to metric at all and you can’t use the same tools.
Or fucking AWG. Higher number means smaller diameter wire, and Americans are afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large diameters are 00, 000 etc. The formula is batshit insane
so people just use a lookup table.
Gauge is historically number of passes through gauging machine. With the machine and material in question being different for every single one. We took that and put it to a standard, so it’s super messy and makes no sense.
Well, I wonder what kind of gauging machine can do -3 passes for 0000 wire… /s
Too bad AWG is so ubiquitous it’s starting to creep into Europe.
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It’s only arbitrarily easy since water has a density of 1 kg/l in metric, as it was designed to do so. If you happened to know the density of water is 62.2 lb/ft^3 then the equation is roughly 123*60 which is 360 lb. 372 if you can actually paid attention to what common core was trying to teach. If the material was anything other then water the math would be just as difficult to do in imperial or metric.
Metric is still far superior as the harmonized units make density in particular much easier to convert between. About the only thing imperial is better at is thread pitch of screws. I will also maintain that when describing human temperatures for weather Fahrenheit is a superior scale, but that’s just more personal preference and experience then any rational basis.
That’s also what we mean
That’s one where I’d say it’s almost entirely personal preference. Water freezing being at zero is handy because it’s nice to know when there’s ice/snow outside, but that’s also something you could just learn to remember in Fahrenheit too. Doesn’t really matter with that system. Kelvin and Celsius being bros is nice but it’s extremely rare that I use that so eh.
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I wonder how many people know these numbers. With the level of US education, probably 10%. Not to mention, most quantities will not be exact feet, more like 2’5". Good luck multiplying that, at least 74 cm is easy to type into a calculator.
Anyway, if you ask a European how much a liter of water weighs, 95% will say “a kilo” without much hesitation.
Yeah but what about Cc-Bn?
(…coconuts-bananas you smucks!) /s
Cope, seethe, mald.
I’m guessing those are some Imperial units too
As someone who’s all about science and all the things that use metric as it’s standard, I understand why us Americans argue for imperial measurements.
We know them.
I can general look at something and relatively tell how big it is based on my experience with the imperial system.
I’m not saying metric isn’t better but there’s also different languages with some of them being able to express certain emotions or features better than others. Yet you don’t see people demanding we all adapt a singular language.
People who grow up almost anywhere else on earth can also tell how big something is based on their experience with metric. That’s not something inherently based on the imperial system. The same way you go “oh that’s about 3 feet”, we go “oh that’s about 2 meters”.
And of course, switching systems overnight is insane, people are used to imperial, you’re right. But at the very least do what Britain did, and have both systems in parallel at the same time, everywhere. And in time, people would get used to metric too.
What I’ve noticed is that for those using other measurements, intuitively knowing about how long a meter is seems like witchcraft. But for use who are used to metric, it’s just “about this much 🫲🫱” or “about this much 🚶”.
And you can’t learn new things?
They already said they’re American lol
We have to exist in a context that resists it. The weatherman will tell you the temperature in Fahrenheit. The road speed limit is listed in mph. You buy milk and gas in gallons.
If anything, Americans who force themselves to use metric in everyday use are working much harder at it than any European.
quick, how many barleycorns in a gunthers chain?
2367 I reckon.
What?
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You should start by adopting metric in anything remotely scientific. Like
Paorbar, notmmHgorPSIPSIis a dumpster fire of an abbreviation, the correct one islbf/in²lb/lbfconfusion is not worth it when we have newtonsBTUwhich nobody can really comprehend, or gasoline-gallon-equivalents that nobody knows how to translate to anything elsecm³orml, notccFFS)Lb-Ftwhich is wrong on so many levelsMB/sorkb/s, notkbps,Kb/s,kbit/sorMbitCan you imagine having different units across the world for voltage or data? Like a 2¾-lemon battery or a 2 million floppy hard drive. That would be absolutely insane.
There is an awful lot of inconsistency in the imperial system too, like pound being abbreviated
lb,P(inPSI) or even£, or miles beingmiorMinMPHRecommended units for data have been mibibytes (MiB), gibibytes (GiB), etc. for a few years now
They’re more accurate because they use powers of two (actually 1024 instead of 1000)
“Accurate” is probably not the correct word anymore. It was when technical limitations dictated power-of-two capacities. Commodore 64 came out with 64 kiB = 216 B of memory, and FAT32 cannot handle file sizes ≥4 GiB (232 B). However, RAM/ROM/Flash chips manufacturers no longer make exclusively powers-of-two capacities, instead opting for (decinal) GB to save 7 % of the cost (and other fake capacity shenanigans). I prefer binary too but the two unit systems can coexist, people just need to label them correctly.
Ah I didn’t know that
You acknowledge what they really mean is ft lbf right? Usually pronounced foot pounds. It’s a common unit of torque in the imperial system. I feel like people are just jumping on the bandwagon. This is coming from a diehard Nm preferrer, we need to choose our battles. How bout we die on the hill of bite force being measured with units of pressure? Like really? Fucking pressure? Utterly meaningless as a unit of comparison between bite strength of animals, since all you need to get a bigger number is SHARPER FUCKING TEETH.
Yeah, you can make really great pressures easily with sharp things, making an atomically sharp point is surprisingly easy.
But my favorite hill is this.
About torque though: If my memory doesn’t betray me, one Newtonmeter is 100 grams hooked to a one meter long lever. Is that really different from one pound hanging off a one foot lever? I might be wrong, since I was born metric and have no clue in general.
It’s 1 Newton at 1 meter.
As simple as 1 pound at 1 feet to be fair, the bad part is that pound is used as a measure of force as well as of mass. It works on the surface of the earth but not anywhere else.
Pounds are a measure of force, not mass. The imperial unit for mass is Slugs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(unit)
I wonder what you’ll get when you ask for 0.02 slugs of ham at a butcher’s. Probably nothing but a horrified look.
Yes, but I mean everyone uses it as a measure of mass.
To be fair there exists a mass unit called pound mass, as opposed to pound force.
Gasoline gallon equivalents should die in a fire. It’s an invented statistic that’s meant to give you an idea of how much you’ll be spending to run an EV compared to an ICE car, but there’s so much slop in the numbers, and they can change over time.
Also, can we kill off hp for cars? Your EV’s battery will be rated in kwh. Your motor can be rated kw. These numbers work together and is exactly what the metric system is best at.