• guyrocket@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    I’ve read that it is more easily divisible than metric.

    Divide a meter by 3 or 4 and get ugly numbers but a foot or yard divide by 3 or 4 quite cleanly. And so on.

    Depending on your application this can be very helpful.

    • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
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      7 months ago

      Divide a metre by 4 and you get 0.25 meters or 25cm

      Dived a foot by 4 you get 3 inches.

      Dived a yard by 4 you get 9inches

      Metric here wins in my opinion.

      Now let’s go by 3

      1m by 3 is yes 33.3r not great but 1m is 100cm and that’s how it is.

      1ft by 3 is 4 inches. Sure looks great now.

      Except size resolution is far greater in metric in simple forms

      Every inch is 2.54 cm obviously they dont round up nicely.

      Once we have to go smaller than an inch we need 15/16s of a inch, smaller then a cm we drop down to mm.

      10mm makes a cm.

      In super practical terms i need a spanner, 16mm is to big, i get the 15 next.

      5/8 is to big what do i get next?

      (I know the answer)

      Also another argument is well whats if you need half a mm etc we just use 0.5m or 0.7mm etc

      Very small sizes for most everyone day to day.

      Sure it’s not great breaking it too 0.whatever, but metric does it so much smaller as imperial made that jump to incorporate a size smaller then an inch.

      1/4 inch is just 0.25 inches

        • guyrocket@kbin.social
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          7 months ago

          I think this is it. The 5 factors instead of 3.

          I also think there was something to do with fractions of an inch too. Like that divisibility was also an advantage of imperial.

    • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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      7 months ago

      Division no is the problem in one unit, inch, feet, etc, because use fraccions instead of decimls, but the problem is the conversion from inch, feet to others (yards, miles), which is the source of a lot of errors, like those from the Mars probes or some catastrophigs breaks of bridges in the past, apart of some problems in physics, because using for weught and mass the same unit. No, imperial are not human measures, never has been since humans count with 10 fingers.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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        7 months ago

        Nothing against metric, but base-10 is a complete train wreck of a numbering system. Mathematics in general, and geometry in particular, are gorgeous and elegant in base 12.

        • Midnitte@beehaw.org
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          7 months ago

          Are you even a mathematician if you don’t calculate using the sexagesimal system?

        • Zerush@lemmy.mlOP
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          7 months ago

          Maybe, but imperial not even this, using absolute random units.

            • Jesus_666@feddit.de
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              7 months ago

              And also ells, rods, cubits, paces, furlongs, oxgangs, lots, batmans… all with subtly different regional definitions (with regions sometimes as small as one village).

              People used loosely defined measurements based on things like their own body parts or how much land they guessed their ox could plow on an average day. Things like mathematical convenience or precision were not all that important; being able to measure (or estimate) without tools was.