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

No, you definitely say "Turn right in 1,000 meters!"

One of my friends is fun and sweet--until you contradict her. Then she is a condescending know-it-all. She shared a video on Facebook about everything wrong with American drivers and the guy in the video said "You don't say `Turn right in 5,604 feet,' you say `Turn right in 1,000 meters!'"

I have spent far more time in the U.S. than Germany, but I have never heard either. How about you guys?

This is not an Imperial versus Metric debate. I do not understand why people even think there is a debate:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1541488465

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1541488877

Unless you need to convert anything. Fractions of an inch, 12 inches per foot, three feet per yard, 1,760 yards per mile, and how many miles per parsec?
Fractions of an ounce, 16 ounces per pound, unless you mean the other ounces. Then there are fourteen.
Why fourteen?!
2,000 pounds per ton. Ounces, pounds, and ton? Are those the only common units of weight?
Fractions of teaspoon, three teaspoons per tablespoon, two tablespoons per ounce--no, fluid ounces--eight ounces per cup, two cups per pint. It comes in pints! Two pints per quart, four quarts per gallon, and the gallon is the largest unit of volume.

Miles per gallon makes the most sense because we do not really use larger units of either type?

640 acres per square mile, 231 square inches per gallon.

It's a mad world.

People who insist the English system is better must not ever convert, but I have known many people who refused to do math.

Anyway, do you say "Turn right in 5,604 feet" or "Turn right in 1,000 meters?"

Have a great night! :)

https://www.zmescience.com/other/map...metric-system/
https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-conten...m-1024x450.png

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-America...everybody-else

http://metricviews.org.uk/2018/02/me...mar-an-update/

If the US would adopt the metric system it would end all system conversions.

I say, "Turn right.... THERE!"

Hey, what about the peck and the bushel?

5,600 feet is closer to a mile, and 1000M is exactly 1KM, so they aren't even close to similar distances. I'd say turn in a mile if that's how far the turn was, and I'd say turn in half a mile if that's how far the turn was.

Imperial is a PITA to work with. I'd happily abandon it.

I had a girlfriend once who gave me directions to her new place, saying I would need to turn right 100 ft past the stoplight. Turned out her estimation of 100ft was actually 1.8 miles. She's artistic, not engineering inclined.

Only for flat gallons.

Would you say that you have never said "Turn in 5,604 feet?"
Have you ever said "Turn in 1,000 meters?"

Someone laughed at the guy for not have the number of feet per mile wrong and the friend claimed that it did not make a difference. I pointed out that they chose these numbers because they were easily divided different ways, although I always wonder why 11 is a factor, but you can do many things with 11 x 480.

You can do fewer things with 5,604, which is 12 x 467. 467 is a prime.

My friend was a condescending know-it-all in her response.

I read a story where a significant other said "Make the next right", the guy made the next right, the SO asked "Why did you turn here?"
"You said to make the next right."
This argument escalated and, as I recall, he slept on the couch that night.

There are round gallons?!

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

I think its natural to use any unit conveniently large. I would not say 1000 meters. I would say kilometer, also, I would not say 5604 feet, but I would use mile instead.
I dont know why (sort of usus maybe?) but distances smaller than km are given in meters, above in kilometers. At least my GPS seems to follow this pattern.

I have never uttered either of those phrases. As I said, I give directions in miles, or quarters of miles, or simply tell someone the next turn, or the turn after this. People are so bad at estimating distance that giving directions in some small unit like meters or feet is unhelpful.

You made a comparison of volume to area. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it's entertaining.

"How many kids do you have?"
"Four-fourths."
"What is wrong with you?!"

My point is that if something is a mile away, you say a mile. If it is a kilometer away, you say a kilometer. If something is a meter long, why would you call it 10 decimeters or 0.1 decameters? (Or 100 cm or 0.001 km?)

Years ago a beautiful young lady told me that I was funny when I was not trying to be.

I lie awake at night hoping that she is happy.

Multiply your velocity by https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/me...474fb5dd10bd6a in 32404 attoparsecs.

'YOU SHOULD HAVE TURNED RIGHT THERE'

But surely the truly perverse navigator would translate everything into paces.

Furlongs.

The fun thing about being navigator with me is that I still make those turns, tires howling.

And there you have a good example of the practical utility of most imperial units, versus the absolute impracticality of metric. A mile is a thousand (standard Roman) paces, so if you want to go a mile (or reasonable fraction thereof), you just count paces. If you want to go a kilometer, you have to start by somehow measuring the distance from the pole to the equator - and along the Paris meridian, too.

Any Soldier that has done land navigation can tell you that everyone's pace is different. If you had everyone marching in formation it would be different.

My eighth-grade chemistry teacher said that he did not know how long a yard was, but he held up a meter stick, and said that he knew how long a meter was.

After class I asked how that argument made sense. He laughed and said it didn't.

Metric units are not derived from practical everyday household measures - for a reason, because everyone's logic is different.

If miles feel natural it is because you are used to them. Growing up using the metric system, I can attest that feels natural and logical to me and any other measure is weird and complex. It is just what you are used to.

When the French devised the meter, they did not use some pedantic local unit or the distance from Paris to whatever. They took the one thing that unites us all - the planet we live on.
And the planet accepted the standard almost completely, just 3 countries did not.

Proving once again that peer pressure works on the weak-minded! :D

The practicality of metric system lies, I believe, in the fact it is a system. Maybe not as intuitive for everyday life, but ideally suited for science. There are no funny constants to incorporate when you do unit conversion. How many BTU is equivalent to rise a concrete block to some height? You need to convert fathoms and pounds and whatever else to get answer that is simple in metric system.
No wonder science textbooks are in SI, even in the USA.

(once I needed a liter in volume having no bottle. I took cardboard, cut squares 10x10 cm and built a cube, put microtene bag in, having exactly one liter of water. I have no idea what would I do should I provide a gallon.

I hate the impire, but I LOLed.

You simply form a cube exactly 6.1357924396619589761115289875159 inches on a side (how decimal translates into sixteenths of an inch, I don't know), or weigh out exactly 8.345404487293294 lbs of water. Easy!

That's just one way. Put a jar on the scales, reset it, pour water in until it shows 1 kilogram - done, one liter.

Want a gallon instead? Do the same with a bigger jar and pour until you hit 3.78541178 kilogram. Or 4.54609188 if you want an Imperial serving.

Yes and all that you need to measure a meter is travel to the north pole,
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1541711343

Set course for Paris, travel in exactly a straight line with some kind of amphibious craft or something because, you know, land, ocean, and ice. Good luck!

Travel straight through Paris straight to the equator. There is a nice marker there, right?

Then divide by a million.

No problem!

I already told you!

Most people needing to measure a gallon would purchase a bottle of water.

6.1357924396619589761115289875159 inches is:
6 2.1726790345913436177844638002544/16ths! Easy! :)

Actually, it is easy. What resolution is your printer? If it is 600 DPI then you create a square 3,681 pixels each side.

Is 1/600th of an inch accurate enough? That is probably more precise than I can cut.

You know, I have watched videos and read articles about computers and electronics made by people belonging to the Monarchy, presumably intended for other subjects of The Queen.

I have never heard the metric equivalent of DPI, but I have heard them randomly throw out feet, pounds, and miles.

Modern "Star Trek' shows are supposed to use metric, but I remember in "Phantasms," Season seven, episode six of NextGen, Doctor Crusher says:

I honestly do not think that I have watched this since it first aired twenty-five years ago.

How in the world did I remember this specific reference from a quarter of a century ago?! How come I did not remember to make up a session with a fun client on Tuesday or the Tuesday before that?!

It is not that impressive. I thought it was the other female lead character, Counselor Troi, and I thought she said you would collapse into a pile a foot high, not into a few pounds of chemicals.

Plot hole? Why wouldn't your puddle weigh the same amount?

You don't need to go to the north pole all the way. Just far enough to measure by how much the position of the stars shifts. The French knew that too, obviously.

They had to assume the earth isn't flat though. And that the stars are indeed so far away that it does not influence the measurement. But then they let scientists do the hard work.

How much water weighs a pound, incidently. A pint?, a quarter?

Eh. He lost me when he said "My last car was a little on the dark side."

It seemed like he said "Ship" every other time.

I had not realized they replaced Peter Mayhew with a mere mortal.

"A pint's a pound, the world around."

Yeah, but no imperial entanglements.

A pint is 1.04375 pounds the world around. Imperial sucks.

I was always under the impression that there is 5280 feet in a mile, google confirms my suspicion. Am I missing something here?

Metric units are scalable to appropriate sub- or supersizes.

A millimeter is still a useful unit. A millipede is vermin :)

The random German did not seem to care how many stupid feet were in a stupid mile, it was stupid! My German friend acted like a condescending know-it-all when her friend pointed out the guy's mistake.

My dad used to think that after megabyte and gigabyte the next unit would be trilobyte and he thought that would be cool.

I have had people insist that there were twelve ounces in a pound. Technically, yes, but there are not only twelve ounces, there are another four!

And people say we're not exceptional?

Sad, but factually true.

Yes, that was part of the point, I do not know that anyone says "Turn right in 5,280 feet," even if someone somehow knew that the turn was 5,604 feet away, why would they be so pedantically precise?

I wonder how Data determines to what level of precision to describe for people? Last night I watched the episode where a senior officer wanted to disassemble him for research purposes. I think I missed that one growing up. Would have been awesome if they worked in "no dis-a-ssem-ble" somewhere in there.

Right 1,000 meters is 3,280 feet 10 1/16th inches, to be more precise.

There are 5,280 feet in a mile, and that is 1,609.344 meters.

5,604 feet is 1 mile and 324 feet.

I work in feet and inches all the time, so I am used to it - but with a little practice, I could easily adapt to metric.

My very first drafting job was to covert a bunch of machine drawings from metric to imperial - and I remember the conversion factor to this day, some 40 years later: 0.03937

Ideally suited for science, yes, where nobody objects if you write numbers in scientific notation, rather than having to remember which stupid prefix to meter means what.

You also have to figure that, outside of science, measuring things in powers of ten is often awkward. Halves, quarters, and eights come more naturally. 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which makes packaging much neater. Imagine trying to put 5-packs of drinks on a shelf :-)


Not quite as simple as all that. Quite aside from the fact that few people have precision astronomical gear, you have to figure that the Earth is not a perfect sphere, and Paris is not at sea level. Whereas almost everyone has many people have a pair of legs, and can count :-)

Curious. I am not sure when I last had enough sleep, but I usually use more precision than 2.54 cm per inch, although it took me a while to find anything more precise than that. Then I found 2.5400051 cm.

2.54 cm is adequate for me. 1 / 0.03937 = 25.400051.

Converting different English units is a pain, but from Imperial to Metric can cause your orbiter to crash.

Anyway, I need to figure out how to replace the alternator tensioner bolt on my Accord. Parts stores do not carry it. Either I drive seven hours for $15 or less in parts or I wait a week for shipping.

In theory I could fix my Civic sooner.

I would not bet money on it, though.

I prefer Roman-British "rate-of-change" Furlongs-per-Fortnite.

Furlongs per fortnite is actually a measurement of how far I can throw my fourth grader's game controller.

Acceleration is measured in furlongs per fortnight per annum.