I say that Metric is like color vision. You can see things in whole new and easier ways. People in USC can’t understand what others see and insist things are just fine the way they are. Thus the “no one ever does that”, “why would you need to know that”, “who cares”, etc.
It is true that no one ever does that though. That doesn’t mean its not a problem, but I’ve never seen anyone do it. If you need to do something like that and you have a brain, you use metric. Just because its flawed doesn’t mean imperial should be completely abolished though. What needs to stop is people thinking imperial is better than metric somehow. Aside from that, its just a weird flawed measurement system.
I’ll tell you something I do as a woodworker a lot that metric isn’t great for: divide by powers of two, three or four. I’ve got some boards milled up 3/4" thick. I’m going to join them with a bridle joint, that means cutting the middle third out of one and the outer two thirds from the other. So each of the remaining “tongues” are each 1/4" thick.
3/4" is approximately 20mm. That’s a nice metric number, a multiple of 10. Let’s cut that same bridle joint in 20mm stock. What’s a third of 20mm? Can you come point to 6.6666mm on my metric tape measure here?
Don’t pretend base ten doesn’t do stupid things too.
I say that Metric is like color vision. You can see things in whole new and easier ways. People in USC can’t understand what others see and insist things are just fine the way they are. Thus the “no one ever does that”, “why would you need to know that”, “who cares”, etc.
It is true that no one ever does that though. That doesn’t mean its not a problem, but I’ve never seen anyone do it. If you need to do something like that and you have a brain, you use metric. Just because its flawed doesn’t mean imperial should be completely abolished though. What needs to stop is people thinking imperial is better than metric somehow. Aside from that, its just a weird flawed measurement system.
I’ll tell you something I do as a woodworker a lot that metric isn’t great for: divide by powers of two, three or four. I’ve got some boards milled up 3/4" thick. I’m going to join them with a bridle joint, that means cutting the middle third out of one and the outer two thirds from the other. So each of the remaining “tongues” are each 1/4" thick. 3/4" is approximately 20mm. That’s a nice metric number, a multiple of 10. Let’s cut that same bridle joint in 20mm stock. What’s a third of 20mm? Can you come point to 6.6666mm on my metric tape measure here?
Don’t pretend base ten doesn’t do stupid things too.
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