this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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This is, in fact, exactly what metric users do in their daily lives... We don't do math in our heads every time we measure something. We know from experience how large all the units are and pick the one that's appropriate for a given situation, just like you do.
When you measure something using inches, you don't then say "it's this many 1/36ths of a yard" unless you specifically need to convert it into yards for some reason.
Similarly, when we measure something using millimeters, we don't say "it's this many 1/1000ths of a meter". It's just a millimeter. Don't get hung up on the prefix, just ignore it and treat it as a unit of a particular size.
I figured that’s what people born to metric do. It’s different when you’re learning it as an outsider, as an adult consciously absorbing the system.
As a Canadian with a living memory of when we made the switch here, I feel your pain. Though to be fair, I was a child at the time and so probably had an easier time of it? But in some ways, I'm still transitioning to this day!
Take temperature, for example. When Canada went metric, all the weather reports switched to Celsius but our indoor thermometers and thermostat were still in Fahrenheit. So I wound up in a situation in which outdoor extreme temperatures became more relatable in C, while typical indoor temperature ranges sounded better in F. I particularly liked winter temperatures in C. It was so intuitive that < 0 means snow and > 0 means rain.
Today, I am more comfortable with C for indoors as well, but not for cooking. I guess that's because a lot of recipes still say set the oven to 350 or check the meat on the grill is at least 160?