Do you say "Turn right in 5,604 feet?"

[NeilBlanchard]

1" = 25.4mm is exact, as I understand it.

1 / 25.4 = 0.0393700787401575

1 / 0.0393700787401575 = 25.39999999999999

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

That was when we created the dollar. How many cents?

Right. One hundred.

That explains why we have nickels and quarters, does it? And $5, $20, and $50 bills. (Not to mention half dollars and $2 bills, even if they're not common these days.) Because powers of 10 are so useful in everyday life :-)

[redpoint5]

I don't find working with imperial units to be convenient at all. I have a board that is 7 foot 2 and 7/16ths inch long. I need to cut 1 foot 3 and 3/4ths inches off. What is my overall board length? I could do the math in my head, but if I'm not extremely careful I'll come up with the wrong answer, and it isn't so easy to perform those mental calculations unless you do them all the time.

Working with decimal is way easier.

[RedDevil]

Cent means 'a hundred' in Latin and French.
The cent is derived from the French word 'centime': one hundredth.
That it is in fact 1/100 of a dollar makes perfect cents.

Paying with coins that are only powers of 10 is impractical. You'd need 18 coins to pay for something that costs 99 cents. So adding coins that are double or half the value of a power of 10 is handy as it vastly reduces the number of coins needed.

Then there's the effect of the market tailoring prices to the available coins.
When we still used the guilder in Holland, we had nickels, dimes and quarters just like the US. Shops often tranched the prices at quarter level. One of the biggest shopping firms, the HEMA, had all prices rounded to the quarter. You simply did not need dimes and nickels there.
Now we have the Euro and all coins step up in 1-2-5 sequences. The system changed, the shops adapted. No more quarters, no more pricing bias at quarter level.

[jakobnev]

Do you know what a cubic foot is?

No but I think you need to see a doctor.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I don't find working with imperial units to be convenient at all. I have a board that is 7 foot 2 and 7/16ths inch long. I need to cut 1 foot 3 and 3/4ths inches off. What is my overall board length?

219.55125 centimeters, but wait, how many pancakes wide is the saw blade?!

[Fat Charlie]

Pancakes just aren't accurate enough. I measure kerf in crepes.

[Angel And The Wolf]

Originally Posted by euromodder

A gallon comes in every shape you pour it in ...

Yes, but a gallon is 3 dimensional, and therefor, the measurement is "Cubic", not "Square", unless you live in Flat Land.

[Angel And The Wolf]

Personally, my car says neither. I killed to voice. However, sometimes after my car is serviced at the dealership, I find myself driving at 100, until I return the speedometer readout to "MPH".

[Angel And The Wolf]

The practicality of the Metric System is that it is Digital. multiplying by 10, 100, 1000, etc is far easier than multiplying by 9 (square feet in a yard,) 27 (Cubic Feet in a Square Yard,) and don't even get me started on Rods, Acres, and the other archaic units of land measure.

Furlongs, anyone?