It only seems ridiculous because you forgot some intermediates: 5.5 yards = 1 rod, 4 rods = 1 chain, 10 chain = 1 furlong, and 8 furlong = 1 mile. So just gotta remember 12, 3, 5.5, 4, 10, 8. Super simple.
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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I've said it on this platform before: I will build furniture in inches until my hands can't hold a chisel anymore. The inch system arose around the needs of carpentry and woodworking, it works in base 12, which is outright superior to base 10, especially when you divide by 3 and 4 more often than by 5.
Also, the closest tape measure I have to hand is my 5m metric tape. I build things in metric, just...not furniture.
I'm a carpenter as well, and I hear what you're saying, but also my coworkers and I were just talking yesterday about how much better metric is 😅 Every base-12 advantage is weakened by the fact that I'm constantly expected to do fractions. Everything in metric is a whole number and it's so hot. Love it when I get an actual number to build something to, instead of a math problem.
If you've ever ordered lumber from a Canadian company, you know how much easier it is to calculate and order in metric units vs. board-feet. I feel bad for their sales reps who have to deal with us Yankeestanis.
Also, all the really nice chisels and hand tools from Japan and Europe are already in metric.
Wow, base 12, I never thought of thas! You halve it, quarter it, and third it, and still end up with clean integers.
Yeah; you'll often find boards in America milled to 3/4" or 1 1/2". Those are 1/16th or 1/8th of a foot. A lot of boards used in furniture are 3/4" thick. Half of 3/4 is 3/8, a third of 3/4 is 1/4. It solves the problems we need to solve, and the metric woodworkers start sounding how teaspoon/cup/quart cooks do.
A dozenal metric system would work as well as the decimal metric system, as long as everything else was base-12:
| in base 12 | in base 10 |
|---|---|
| 1m'm = 10⁻³m = 0.001m | 1m'm = 12⁻³m = 1/1728m |
| 1c'm = 10⁻²m = 0.01m | 1c'm = 12⁻²m = 1/144m |
| 1m = 1m | 1m = 1m |
| 1k'm = 10³m = 1000m | 1k'm = 12³m = 1728m |
Since we're at this might as well say the day has 10₁₂k's = 20736₁₀s. Each k's is exactly two of our current hours, and each "new second" is roughly ~~two~~ four of our current seconds. Enough of this Sumerian mixed base already!
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Do americans actually do math with imperial system at school? That must be a nightmare and have conversion errors between units.
This is a common misconception. Americans can't do math and don't learn anything at school
and don't learn anything at school
That's not true! They learn how to hide under desks
You didn't learn active shooter drills? How did you avoid getting shot?
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one thing i enjoy way more than i should is use units that are technically correct, but no one uses them like ever.
like megagrams instead of metric tonnes.
or 1 dekameter instead of 10 meters.
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Uh, no.
10 feet = 1 decafoot
100 centiyards = 1 yard
1x10^18 attoacres = 1 acre
I’m gonna start estimating distances in millimiles.
1 millimile ~ 5 feet, 3 and 23/64 inches.
makes perfect sense.
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It's obvious that there's 1760 yards in a mile.
There's 22 yards in a chain, which we can all remember because of the 22 yard line in rugby.
There are 10 chains in a furlong, which fans of metric can't complain about.
There are 8 furlongs in a mile, just like there are 8 pints in a gallon.
And 22x10x8 = 11x10x16 and 11 is easy to multiply by in your head, so it's really very simple to get to 1760.
/s
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As a Canadian, I'm deeply frustrated that we are taught the metric system but everything related to construction uses the feet/inch system, because USA.
It's more than that
Heights are almost expressed in feet and inches when it comes to people, and oven temperatures in Farenheight
But then outdoor temps are in Celsius, and measurements are often in CM / M oh and boy temp is Farenheight too cause of course lol
Yep. You can add to that the weight of people and other random things expressed in lb, while we are taught kg in school.
My contrarian brain:
- 1 inch = 1 cm
- 1 yard = 1 meter
- 1 mile = 1 km
And yet the cowards refuse to use megagrams. If SI prefixes are so great use them consistently rather than stealing other unit names and giving them another definition.
Also metric byte sizes deserve the fires of hell. Powers of 2 or get out.
Ah yes, I need a hard drive containing 4 times 2 to the power of 40 bytes
- statements dreamt up by the utterly deranged
We don't use mega grams because kilo is the SI unit. And there's no such thing as metric byte. That's the sales department finding out that 104 MB is a larger number than 100 MiB.
In SI units a megagram would be equal to 1000 kilograms, because that's how SI unit prefixes work. Except we call it a tonne instead, which I believe is what the original commenter is referencing.
Thank you for this pedantry, I will now remove the word "tonne" from my vocabulary and insist I have only ever heard of megagrams. Bless you
The one thing metric screws up is file size.
A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes or 1,000,000 kilobytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes.
A gibibyte is 1024 mebibyte or 1,048,576 kibibyte or 1,073,741,824 bytes, because it needs to go by increments of a power of 2.
This would be fine except gigabyte also means gibibyte. So if a file claims to be N GBs, I don't know if it actually means metric GBs or GiBs.
That is not exactly metric 's fault though. It's whoever made the decision to portray stuff as such in operating systems
Imperial thinking people most likely
I got a question about hard drive sizes on a math test 15 years ago. Was super frustrating, since I didn't know wether or not the person who wrote the test, knew the difference.
At least the US temperature scale is safe from ridicule, as Lord Fahrenheit was German/Polish.
Edit: /s, obviously.
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The ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius is now 10
I remember discussing with a huge group of European students what imperial had become mainly used for in UK and Ireland. It's for height and pizza size. I was in a group with many girls so us guys stopped short of mentioning about dick size being one of the few things imperial is only used for in UK and Ireland.
You've been hit by...
You've been struck by...
A smooth metric system
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