We’re taught both metric and US customary units in school. I prefer metric for most things, to the point I have a metric-only tape measure among other things.

However, I’ll die on the hill that Fahrenheit is superior for ambient air temperature. 0 degrees to 100 degrees neatly encompasses the range of average surface temperatures seen throughout the year in the contiguous US.

  • Mister Neon@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    Metric in logic, but standard measurements are ingrained into my brain so it’s more practical. I think that sucks.

    • Heydo@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Agreed. If I am making it building something then I prefer metric. If I am thinking about how tall something is or how long it is I think in standard. I just feel that one foot is a good size to measure something rather than meters or centimeters. It’s much easier for me to imagine a 6 foot tall object than a 1.83 meters or 183 centimeters. It’s just easier to break something up into 6 parts than it is to break something into 1.83 parts or 183 parts.

      I know you could use a unit that equals 25 centimeters and that would be similar to a foot, but no one uses that for some reason.

  • smeg@infosec.pub
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    15 days ago

    I always preferred metric and Celsius. When I lived in South Korea, I was able to adapt immediately. Now I live in Europe and it makes all of the conversions easier.

    Americans resistant to metric, in my opinion, are not very smart.

    • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
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      14 days ago

      Murican’ here. The only place I prefer Fahrenheit is in weather mainly for how ironically base 10 it scales for human related comfortability for outdoor activity.

      100°+ dangerous heat

      90s very hot, drink lots of water

      80s shorts weather

      70s comfortable

      60s long sleeves

      50s jacket weather

      40s bring a coat

      30s coat and hat (water freezing is here at 32°)

      20s layers

      10s insulated layers

      0s very cold, protect exposed skin

      -0s dangerous cold

      Everywhere else I’m fine for C°

          • schnapsman@feddit.org
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            14 days ago

            Base 10 is nice for crossing regimes of scales, orders of magnitude. But we don’t really engage with temperature that way. The problem I have with F-heit on its own, is that it’s much too precise. The difference of a degree is meaningless, especially when considering weather. Fahrenheit weather maps are cluttered, dials and buttons on thermostats and in cars are slow, thermometer readings change too frequently, etc. USian shoe sizes have the opposite problem. If you need to use half sizes all the time then FFS just multiply the scale by 2.

          • Orygin@sh.itjust.works
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            14 days ago

            That’s incidental:

            he adjusted the scale so that the melting point of ice would be 32 degrees, and body temperature 96 degrees, so that 64 intervals would separate the two, allowing him to mark degree lines on his instruments by simply bisecting the interval 6 times (since 64 = 2⁶).

  • titanicx@lemmy.zip
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    13 days ago

    I normally don’t talk about this in public.

    But I’m Bimeasurable. I go both ways. Sometimes at the same time. That 7 inch 5mm I got packing is exciting.

  • Fourth@mander.xyz
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    13 days ago

    Metric 100% when I’m working with mechanical stuff my mind works in metric but my brain has been poisoned to use imperial in other things and I actually really dislike it.

  • Zetta@mander.xyz
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    14 days ago

    I use metric when working on personal projects and cad, I would vote yes if a miracle happened and switching all of the us to metric was on the ballot.

  • bassgirl09@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Metric - so much easier to understand and work with. I personally hate the imperial system, but I know it because of where I grew up. I would shed no tears if the U.S. switched to metric tomorrow.

  • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    13 days ago

    For F and C, C is better for things like cooking, where what water is doing is useful. F is better for what we feel. Low numbers feel cold, hot temperatures (approaching 100) feel hot. I know people get used to C, if you’re using it every day, but I still think F is the better system for it. That doesn’t mean we should use it though. I think we should just switch to C and deal with it.

  • jtrek@startrek.website
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    14 days ago

    Imperial system (or whatever the US system is called ) should go away. Let’s all just one standard.

    Unfortunately, since I’m from the US, I only really know this one, and it’s hard to switch when nothing else has switched. I’d put up with the pain of switching though.

    • gramie@lemmy.ca
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      13 days ago

      Sadly, the US system is not the same as imperial. As far as I know the main difference is the gallon.

      1 gal. Imp. = 1.201 gal. U.S.

      I also hate having lb.f. and lb.m (pounds force and pounds mass), which have different units and at sea level are different by a factor of about 32).

    • Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca
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      14 days ago

      You get used to what you use. When people tell me F I have no idea what they are talking about. I hate when my car or home reset to F after a power outage because they display gibberish. Is 68 a good inside temp? I know exactly what to expect for C.

      • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        This is true, but Fahrenheit is directly based on climate norms (though thanks to global warming there’s an argument to be made for recalibration). For F, 0 is as cold as it typically gets most places, 100 is as hot as it typically gets most places. By that metric it’s a useful measure for climate temperatures. For that purpose, measured temperature norms make more sense than the freezing and boiling points of water.

        • MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          From what I’ve read, that’s only a story that it was based on climate temperatures in his hometown. According to the story phycist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit defined the 0 and 100 degree points of his scale as the highest and lowest temperatures regularly observed in his hometown of Danzig, now Gdańsk, Poland, then later when he needed to recreate the 0 point of his scale he came up with a brine that stabilizes at a specific temperature.

          What we do know for certain is that the brine existed, was made of water, ice, and ammonium chloride, it did indeed stabilize at 0°F, and according to a letter he wrote the scale was based on the Rømer scale, but adjusted in magnitude so he could make 32 divisions between the brine stable temperature and the freezing point of a regular water solution, then 64 divisions between that point and what he observed to be the normal human temperature. The reason for 32 and 64 divisions was that since those numbers were factors of 2, they would be easier to divide linearly between their respective upper and lower bounds.

          Fahrenheit observed that using this scale water boiled at roughly 212°F then after the popularity of the Celsius scale some 50 years later redefined his scale so that it kept the original freezing point of 32, but now had 180 divisions between Fahrenheit’s boiling point. This kept his existing scales fairly accurate to the new definition (the upper bound which was 96°F was now measured to be 98.6°F and the lower bound of the brine was 0°F now measured at 4°F) and used the new convention of defining the scale by water while keeping some nice number of divisions between their points, although they are a little more arbitrary now than they were before.

  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
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    14 days ago

    Raised in imperial land but studied science in college, so I prefer metric for almost everything other than talking about large distances.