Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
My wife is 30.6 centimeter smaller than I am. Guess what that does for pace length.
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So if you're short, you add a bit more*. Still easy to figure out when you've walked about a mile, with no extra gear required. Similarly for many of the other irrationalities of the metric system. In everyday life, just as in elementary Euclidian geometry, it's much easier to divide something into two equal parts, than into 10, or even 5.
On the same subject, I've sometimes wondered why, if the metric system is such a great thing, the world never adopted the metric timekeeping system, but still uses 60 second minutes, 60 second hours, 24 hour days, &c. (I suppose celestial mechanics has stuck us with a year of 365 and a fraction days...)
(*Interesting observation: my horse and I have exactly the same pace length, so we can "march" in step quite easily. But my dog's legs are maybe 1/3 as long as mine, and he walks along with me quite comfortably - at least when he's not off chasing rabbits & bears :-))