Actual poster from 1917 that made me laugh. A lot.

Also, those motherfuckers are measuring the weight of those balls in kilograms, aren’t they?

  • CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    One mile is 5280 feet, one foot is 12 inches. One square foot is 144 square inches, one cubic foot is 1728 cubic inches.

    1 gallon of water is 8.34 pounds, and 1 cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, so a cubic foot of water weighs 62.38 pounds. If sand is 2.3 times heavier than water, a cubic foot of sand weighs 143.5 pounds.

    I am 5 feet 10 inches tall, or 5.83 feet, or 70 inches. I weigh about 220 pounds, or 3520 ounces. If I’m 65% water, I carry about 143 pounds of water, or a little over 16 gallons.

    Guh

    • Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I had to check the math because 1 m2 being 2300 kg while 1 cu ft at 143 lbs seemed crazy, but with the volume difference it’s all correct.

      Thank you for putting in the effort 🙃

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        To illustrate, 1m³ = (100cm)³ = 1,000,000cm³ = (1000mm)³ = 1,000,000,000mm³

        You go from the single dimensional conversion between m and cm being a factor of 100 and 1000 for m and mm, to the 3 dimensional conversion being a factor of 1 million for m and cm or 1 billion for m and mm. It scales up fast.

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      3 months ago

      Cool.

      Also great way to miss the point. And great use of your calculator. The entire thing is that the metric system is not just “arbitrary amounts”, it’s all designed to fit together easily.

      Now, no calculator. How many feet is 0.683 miles?

      I know that 0.683 kilometers is 683 meters.