For example,
60 seconds = 1 minute
60 minutes = 1 hour
24 hours = 1 day
7 day = 1 week
29-31 days = Month (approx.)
365/366 days = year
It’s like for the imperial measurement of distance, where 1 mile = 5280 feet…
Edit: just to clarify, I’m more or less keen towards any consistent, decimal-based measurement systems like base-10 or base-12.
Base ten is trash and a glorious socialist utopia wouldn’t use ivory tower measurements that aren’t actually useful for performing labor.
A base 12 or 60 system is much more flexible for “small” human scale measurements, with base 10 being a bit more useful for “far distances,” for orders of magnitude estimation because of our base10 numbering system, but then going back to a large divisor system for galactic distances. For example a parsec is 648000/pi astronomical units, which isn’t metric in anyway shape or form, but is extremely useful for astronomical calculations.
We have a similar system to that today in America. Skilled Tradesmen will use imperial/base 12 systems for manual work. i.e. Construction, carpentry, etc. as the ability to use thirds and quarters of a unit without relying on fractions and having clearly defined lines on a measuring stick that have those thirds/quarters, is more useful then an arbitrary base 10 measurement that only has 2 divisors. The reason america still uses the “standard” system is that it is useful, not because of “boomers” or whatever.
It’s a discussion I have with a friend sometime… in actuality in the metric system scale of 10 works fine. 12 scale is only necessary for imperial measurements because there’s nothing smaller than an inch, having 3.2 inches literally cannot be represented on a ruler. So you start working with like half inches, quarter inches, even 1/8th of an inch which sounds like a headache. Note that inches are on a scale of 12 but not base 12.
Since in metric you can “create” units as needed (they already exist we just don’t use them most of the time), you can quickly and safely measure 3.2cm. You can also still do division, it just won’t need to be represented by fractions. If you have a 10cm long board and want to cut it in four, each cut will be 2.5cm long, not a quarter of a unit long.
With that level of detail you can get to very minute decimals like 4.52cm, although for most daily uses you don’t need to count anything smaller than mm. The amount of times I’ve had to use um (micrometers) in my life was… 2?
So with this for example
With simple divisions and multiplications I have the ability to achieve any measure I need. I assure you our tradesmen are not any slower or worse than those in the US haha
It also allows a pretty cool conversion since by standard 1l of water weighs 1kg.
I figure you’re probably joking but I don’t think any lab worker does their measurements in fluid ounces and cups 😬
I am joking, but beer is drunk by the pint and brewed by the barrel as Marx intended, though Germany had lost it’s way and started using centiliters, bleh.
That said I am absolutely perfectly adept at the metric system and used it exclusive when I studied chemistry, however for home improvement’s and craftswork, I still use inches/feet.
30cm has more divisors than 12 inches. And we don’t use base 12 numbers. And last I checked, most imperial conversions weren’t base 12 anyway.
30cm? What significance does 30cm have in the metric system? 30cm doesn’t go evenly into 100cm/1M, so why would I ever use 30cm for anything?
For base 12, that’s the number of inches in a foot, and the number of feet in a mile is also divisible by 12, additionally 12 is a divisor of 60 which is used for time and surveying degrees etc etc.
12 also evenly goes into quarts per barrel and things like that if you are ever needing to divide up large volumes of wine or beer or water etc.
Divisors and the relationship between between different units is what makes a measurement system useful. Not just numerology.
30cm is about 12 inches.
When you say oz, is it fluid or weight? I know that there’s 20oz in a pint, aren’t there like 2 pints in a quart or something like that? It’s all insane.
Metric units are all related (mostly by water). It’s easy to see how they relate and visualise them based on that. Imperial units are just a Hodge podge of different kingly measurements
Well no. They were developed because it was useful to sub divide a quart into something smaller. So you have 4 quarts to a gallon, 2 pints in a quart, and 2 cups to a pint. It’s about flexibility of the end result of the measurement, not the novelty of 10 millimeters being in a centimeter or whatever.
Though I admit that 10milimeters to a centimeter is a bad example since for casual measurements a millimeter is actually as small as you would go and having half a centimeter = 5 millimeters is plenty useful. That said 1/32" was used for exactly that purpose, but it also has the advantage that you could create visually distinct graduations on a ruler so that even an untrained eye could see the difference between 1/32", 3/16" and 1/4" for example.
There is only one unit of length in metric. The meter. Everything else is a multiple, which are typically base 10, and have standard prefixes. This applies to EVERY metric unit, including time. If you want to be weird and divide the meter into different bases, there’s nothing stopping you.
Fun fact actually, your SAE units are defined in metric. Why? Because metric units are precisely defined instead of being based on the king’s foot.
The foot hasn’t been based on “The Kings foot” in over a thousand years. The meter is precisely defined via natural phenomenon, but there is nothing stopping the foot from being defined similarly. The inch however is precisely defined, same with the mile, the fathom, the yard, the acre, etc.
They’re trying to say that US Imperial units are legally defined in metric: the yard is 0.9144 meters, etc.
Imperial units had to be standardized by international agreements, such as the aforementioned international yard standardized in 1959, because different countries might be using different definitions.
True. But even within those differing imperial measurements, 12inches defined a foot, 3feet to a yard etc. But I agree there wasn’t a standard imperial unit of length until recently. Anyway, Metric is fine, but I dislike when people criticize other units of measurement just because they have units divisions that aren’t base 10 as if its weird or “shit” that people want to divide things in ways that aren’t halves or fifths.