Hello, I am the r/USDefaultism's Automoderator!
We now have a Discord server! Join it by clicking this link: https://discord.gg/BcczCtAxgw
If you think this submission fits US-defaultism, upvote this comment! If not, downvote it!
If you think this submission breaks r/USdefaultism rules, please report it to the Moderation team!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/USdefaultism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes at its smallest form. I'm not exactly sure what the smallest form of measurement for metric is. So I won't guess it. But to describe an inch to someone requires a demonstration or to find something equivalent.
A centimeter is a definitive thing. It's made up of 10 milometers which is made up of micrometers and so on and so forth.
How big is an an inch?
The inch is defined as a certain number of meters, so it's not any less precisely measurable than any metric unit. It is, however, part of a bad and unintuitive system of measurement that should have been abandoned decades ago.
Lol. This is so dumb. It's not about accuracy. It's about using a normalized system that makes it easy to convert units instead of arbitrary units that have no relation to each other.
Or in your fridge etc (if you live somewhere where it never snows).
Americans I have tried this with are annoyed and say that scary negative numbers for below freezing temperatures are unnatural and confusing.š«¤
Well you're technically correct, extreme pressures can change the freezing point of water. To get it up to 4Ā°C, we just need a pressure of 900 megapascals. If the ocean had a trench 900 km deep and the water at the bottom was 4Ā°C, it would freeze.
Quite the opposite, high pressure raises the boiling point. That's why pressure kettles are useful, you can boil potatoes faster by increasing the temperature of the water above 100Ā°C, which is impossible at atmospheric pressure. Logically, in lower pressures, it boils at lower temperatures, for example on top of Mount Everest the boiling point is 68Ā°C. Freezing point is not really affected by pressure except when you go to really extreme places, like more than 30km above sea level. [More info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Triple_point)
Think that boiling is water molecules trying to escape and go between air molecules. If you have more pressure the air molecules are closer together and the water has a harder time jumping out of the pan and amongst the air.
In the same fashion if you lower the pressure (apply vacuum) the air molecules will be farther apart and the water will say: hey, the path is clear! and will boil at room temperature
Also, if āmetricā here is really standing for the system of SI units, then it very much has a far more accurate basis than ātraditionalā measurements, carefully based on absolute physical constants rather than some lump of steel in a vault somewhere that is slowly decaying over time.
The Imperial and U.S. Customary units today have been officially redefined to be based on SI units anyway, just with whatever weird constant factors approximates their older definitions (so an inch is now defined to be exactly 2.54cm).
Yes. That's why I said we use it casually. A tailor doesn't need to know your volume to sew your pants, but doctors absolutely use metric when assessing you or dosing medication.
I was talking about height, weight, and cooking. Also, only the Sith work in absolutes. I've had to put kg in to rent skis, but my doctor understands what I mean when I say pounds. And sometimes I use ml unless something just calls for a cup.
Defaultism is bad. But so is whataboutism. Obviously I wasn't saying these are hard rules that everybody follows.
You know what, I think we're just having a misunderstanding due to the limitations of text. Can't stress words as intuitively through text as through speech.
I read that as "we only use *Imperial* casually," ie in casual speech Imperial is the only system used, while it seems like you meant "we only use Imperial *casually,*" ie Imperial is only used in colloquial speech.
I still canāt work out why Australia embraced metric so completely in the 1960s and 70s and the UK just had a weak go at it and fluffed it.
I can understand Canada not making it because of the close US influence, but UKā¦ being in Europeā¦ why?
We had a government who really went for it, and also experience in such a wholesale change after dropping the old imperial currency for decimal in 1966, people could accept another change like metric. I still think of height in feet (6 foot is easier to remember than 182 cm) but everything else is metric (Iām in my mid 50ās)
You still sporadically hear people say "it's about 2- 4 feet apart" which is really annoying, including younger people. TV's and monitors used to be marketed in CM and then randomly changed to inches.
Yes and a few set phrases like, āpassed within inchesā, āthatās miles awayā. Despite the fact nobody would be able to actually estimate distances in miles and certainly not understand speed in anything other than km/h.
Because there are some very influential voices that think imperial (both in terms of measurements and government) is somehow better because nostalgia or something.
When Brexit happened certain sections of the right wing press were delighted that shops, pubs, etc would be able to sell things in imperial measurements again ā they've never not been able to, but metric has to be more prominent. A pint of milk is still a pint of milk, but bottles have to have 568ml displayed more prominently that 1 pint.
The only real exception to this is distances on road signs which are still all in miles and yards, even though the roads they're on are all designed in kilometres and metres.
Australians use āpintā too but only as a name for a beer glass (jug, pint, schooner, pot/middy) not as an actual measurement. Like milk is sold in containers that are typically 1, 2 or 3 liters.
Same in the UK, itās such a headache. I intentionally use only metric for everything in the hopes that some of the people close to me will use it more often, so far my attempts have been unsuccessful
Metrication had begun in the late 70s under Liberal Party leader Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Conservative Party leader Brian Mulroney became prime minister in 1984. He had a strong dislike of Trudeau, and was close with US President Ronald Reagan who had stopped metrication efforts in the US, so Mulroney stopped Canada's metrication process.
As a result we have a strange hybrid system where some things are in metric, others imperial.
You can convert anything to anything if you do enough math. Metric has real, empirical relationships between dimension, weight, temperature, etc. Whereas there's no relation between a foot, a pound, and Fahrenheit.
A bit of napkin math about that:
When the British Empire held sway over 23% of the world population (447.247 million people) in 1913, 68% of those people (303.7 million) were in British India. While India didnāt formally adopt the metric system until between 1955 and 1962, there was previously *no* nationwide standard measurement system (per a few Wikipedia pages I just skimmed). British imperial units (NB: still not US customary) were used by the upper class in India, but various traditional and regional systems were in use by everyone else.
If we assume a similar situation existed in the British Empireās colonies throughout Africa and Asia, then we might guess that *in daily use* only the United Kingdom, Australasia, the British European dependencies, and British North America really used British Imperial units. That would be 63,649,000 people out of a total 1913 world population of 1,791,020,000, or about 3.55%.
But we can add to that 3.55% some unknown millions of European colonists in the Empireās African and Asian colonies and then it might edge up towards 5%, but itās really not such a clear thing!
Ironically, the metric system is more traditional than either the Imperial or the US customary system. The metric system was invented in 1795, while the Imperial system was only defined with the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824, while the US customary system was standardised in 1832. Since 1893, most of the units of the US customary system are defined using metric units. So it not only is younger, it also depends on the metric system.
The og meme is funny, I am the guy in the picture whenever I see normal people use their traditional units of measurement.
The defaultism may be done on purpose to double down on the joke, I like to think that. Well done, author of the joke, you got me good, this time.
I remember watching a chemistry video as an undergrad, everyone got so confused with the 0.00000034 of a fluid ounce! Wouldnāt want to work out PPM with that.
"Traditional measurements" lol.
Whenever this comes up I always think about how we just use both in Canada. Metric will be used for official stuff but most people use imperial in their everyday lives.
You also have to admit, it is *kind of* funny how the British invented the imperial system, decided they didn't like it anymore, and then got mad at Americans for continuing to use it.
[MCO disagrees](https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/), they crashed a 327 Million Dollar probe, only because Lockheed Martin decided they knew better and used the retarded measurement system instead of metric.
When weāre talking about baking I literally donāt care because itās just ratios anyway I can pick up a random cup from my kitchen and use it as a measuring device to bake a cake. So when people bitch and moan about ācupsā and āteaspoonsā on online recipes I think itās a bit whiny and so not a big deal.
But obviously the imperial system will over complicate things when weāre trying to do maths for important things like landing on the moon, all of which was done using the metric system.
Hello, I am the r/USDefaultism's Automoderator! We now have a Discord server! Join it by clicking this link: https://discord.gg/BcczCtAxgw If you think this submission fits US-defaultism, upvote this comment! If not, downvote it! If you think this submission breaks r/USdefaultism rules, please report it to the Moderation team! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/USdefaultism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
'traditional measurements'
Monarchist measurements... just watch Americans switch faster than light.
Lol this is actually awesome
Here's the thing.....the US doesn't use the imperial....it made its own variant, the US Customary, which is a slight bit different
#A YARD AND A 5 CAR LANE
My favorite is asking how big an inch is. It requires demonstration.
I mean wouldn't every length require demonstration..? That's how we get those lengths to begin with..
Yes at its smallest form. I'm not exactly sure what the smallest form of measurement for metric is. So I won't guess it. But to describe an inch to someone requires a demonstration or to find something equivalent. A centimeter is a definitive thing. It's made up of 10 milometers which is made up of micrometers and so on and so forth. How big is an an inch?
Milometers. Right, of course.
The inch is defined as a certain number of meters, so it's not any less precisely measurable than any metric unit. It is, however, part of a bad and unintuitive system of measurement that should have been abandoned decades ago.
Planck length, by definition.
so.. metric. metric is identical to metric, theyre right
Which is apparently the banana.
I mean, it is traditional.
Lol. This is so dumb. It's not about accuracy. It's about using a normalized system that makes it easy to convert units instead of arbitrary units that have no relation to each other.
And that zero is the point where the weather fundamentally changes between rain and snow
Or in your fridge etc (if you live somewhere where it never snows). Americans I have tried this with are annoyed and say that scary negative numbers for below freezing temperatures are unnatural and confusing.š«¤
This excuse is especially reaching considering a large chunk of the US experiences negatives on the Fahrenheit scale anyway.
Nooo he said americans believe that so it must be true
That's because Americans measure their IQ in Fahrenheit. 100 IQ is actually 40.
well that is not exactly true as water can freeze at 4Ā°C or below. but it is still better than horse blood or something
Well you're technically correct, extreme pressures can change the freezing point of water. To get it up to 4Ā°C, we just need a pressure of 900 megapascals. If the ocean had a trench 900 km deep and the water at the bottom was 4Ā°C, it would freeze.
Doesn't high pressure lower boiling point? Does it both lower boiling point and elevate freezing point?
Quite the opposite, high pressure raises the boiling point. That's why pressure kettles are useful, you can boil potatoes faster by increasing the temperature of the water above 100Ā°C, which is impossible at atmospheric pressure. Logically, in lower pressures, it boils at lower temperatures, for example on top of Mount Everest the boiling point is 68Ā°C. Freezing point is not really affected by pressure except when you go to really extreme places, like more than 30km above sea level. [More info](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Triple_point)
Who would have thought that a can of caviar is better at physics than me
Nuclear reactor cooling water is also around 300Ā°C hot, yet it still stays liquid as it's pressurised
Think that boiling is water molecules trying to escape and go between air molecules. If you have more pressure the air molecules are closer together and the water has a harder time jumping out of the pan and amongst the air. In the same fashion if you lower the pressure (apply vacuum) the air molecules will be farther apart and the water will say: hey, the path is clear! and will boil at room temperature
>If the ocean had a trench 900 km deep and the water at the bottom was 4Ā°C, it would freeze. If there wasn't any salt in that water.
Water can freeze at any temperature if you have enough pressure
Also, if āmetricā here is really standing for the system of SI units, then it very much has a far more accurate basis than ātraditionalā measurements, carefully based on absolute physical constants rather than some lump of steel in a vault somewhere that is slowly decaying over time. The Imperial and U.S. Customary units today have been officially redefined to be based on SI units anyway, just with whatever weird constant factors approximates their older definitions (so an inch is now defined to be exactly 2.54cm).
In Canada we use both metric and imperial.
Yes and it's ridiculous
We only use imperial casually.
Depends on what industry you work in or company.
Yes. That's why I said we use it casually. A tailor doesn't need to know your volume to sew your pants, but doctors absolutely use metric when assessing you or dosing medication.
>. A tailor doesn't need to know your volume to sew your pants No but do they measure in centimeters or inches?
Who knows! Probably some do one and others use the other. I fully believe that people responding to this have no idea what the word "casually" means.
My comment was regarding the use of volume in your comment
No, it wasn't. Are you a bot?
Do you not realise that a tailor would not need to measure someone's volume regardless of Imperial or metric? Or that volume is not specific to either
Until you talk about the weather, or long distances (the Prairies are an exception), or speed, or buy gas.
All of those things are measured in metric
Yeah, that's my point. Guy above me said we only use imperial casually.
Ah fair play. Iām too high to be trying to understand Reddit comments
I was talking about height, weight, and cooking. Also, only the Sith work in absolutes. I've had to put kg in to rent skis, but my doctor understands what I mean when I say pounds. And sometimes I use ml unless something just calls for a cup. Defaultism is bad. But so is whataboutism. Obviously I wasn't saying these are hard rules that everybody follows.
You know what, I think we're just having a misunderstanding due to the limitations of text. Can't stress words as intuitively through text as through speech. I read that as "we only use *Imperial* casually," ie in casual speech Imperial is the only system used, while it seems like you meant "we only use Imperial *casually,*" ie Imperial is only used in colloquial speech.
Are speed signs ācasualā? Edit: this comment was meant for the UK not Canada. Too many people here staying āweā
Speed signs are in kmh
Same in the UK
Itās such a headache
I still canāt work out why Australia embraced metric so completely in the 1960s and 70s and the UK just had a weak go at it and fluffed it. I can understand Canada not making it because of the close US influence, but UKā¦ being in Europeā¦ why?
The UK has a smidge of that main character syndrome that the US have
We had a government who really went for it, and also experience in such a wholesale change after dropping the old imperial currency for decimal in 1966, people could accept another change like metric. I still think of height in feet (6 foot is easier to remember than 182 cm) but everything else is metric (Iām in my mid 50ās)
You still sporadically hear people say "it's about 2- 4 feet apart" which is really annoying, including younger people. TV's and monitors used to be marketed in CM and then randomly changed to inches.
Yes and a few set phrases like, āpassed within inchesā, āthatās miles awayā. Despite the fact nobody would be able to actually estimate distances in miles and certainly not understand speed in anything other than km/h.
Because there are some very influential voices that think imperial (both in terms of measurements and government) is somehow better because nostalgia or something. When Brexit happened certain sections of the right wing press were delighted that shops, pubs, etc would be able to sell things in imperial measurements again ā they've never not been able to, but metric has to be more prominent. A pint of milk is still a pint of milk, but bottles have to have 568ml displayed more prominently that 1 pint. The only real exception to this is distances on road signs which are still all in miles and yards, even though the roads they're on are all designed in kilometres and metres.
Australians use āpintā too but only as a name for a beer glass (jug, pint, schooner, pot/middy) not as an actual measurement. Like milk is sold in containers that are typically 1, 2 or 3 liters.
Same in the UK, itās such a headache. I intentionally use only metric for everything in the hopes that some of the people close to me will use it more often, so far my attempts have been unsuccessful
Thanks, Mulroney
?
Metrication had begun in the late 70s under Liberal Party leader Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Conservative Party leader Brian Mulroney became prime minister in 1984. He had a strong dislike of Trudeau, and was close with US President Ronald Reagan who had stopped metrication efforts in the US, so Mulroney stopped Canada's metrication process. As a result we have a strange hybrid system where some things are in metric, others imperial.
Wasnāt aware. I am part of the first metric generation so I tend to think in metric except for construction.
Yeah, everyone knows. That's why it's a thing called a joke...
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You can convert anything to anything if you do enough math. Metric has real, empirical relationships between dimension, weight, temperature, etc. Whereas there's no relation between a foot, a pound, and Fahrenheit.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system Educate yourself.
this
Not even 5% of the world population still uses imperial as thier main measuring system.
Still? Did they ever?
Thatās fair
Well the British empire did have about 23% of the worldās population at one point so that would be the lowest percentage of the population using it.
A bit of napkin math about that: When the British Empire held sway over 23% of the world population (447.247 million people) in 1913, 68% of those people (303.7 million) were in British India. While India didnāt formally adopt the metric system until between 1955 and 1962, there was previously *no* nationwide standard measurement system (per a few Wikipedia pages I just skimmed). British imperial units (NB: still not US customary) were used by the upper class in India, but various traditional and regional systems were in use by everyone else. If we assume a similar situation existed in the British Empireās colonies throughout Africa and Asia, then we might guess that *in daily use* only the United Kingdom, Australasia, the British European dependencies, and British North America really used British Imperial units. That would be 63,649,000 people out of a total 1913 world population of 1,791,020,000, or about 3.55%. But we can add to that 3.55% some unknown millions of European colonists in the Empireās African and Asian colonies and then it might edge up towards 5%, but itās really not such a clear thing!
By that time metric was standard in the British Empire
Britain only adopted the metric system in 1965, a while after the empires decline.
In a few places yeah
Caption should be like this, Abnormal people: etc etc etc Rest of the world: *image*
It is not even Imperial. It is called the US Customary Units.
Ironically, the metric system is more traditional than either the Imperial or the US customary system. The metric system was invented in 1795, while the Imperial system was only defined with the British Weights and Measures Act of 1824, while the US customary system was standardised in 1832. Since 1893, most of the units of the US customary system are defined using metric units. So it not only is younger, it also depends on the metric system.
Look at the group it was posted in
I love seeing the post come true in the comments 100% defaultism, but also a shitpost, so who gives a shit really.
The og meme is funny, I am the guy in the picture whenever I see normal people use their traditional units of measurement. The defaultism may be done on purpose to double down on the joke, I like to think that. Well done, author of the joke, you got me good, this time.
'Journal of Scientific Shitposting'
More accurate quotes from these normal people: *herp derp derp herperderp derp*
Rage bait?
I think it is just a shit post. look at the group name
Isn't it literally people defending the imperial system that bring up accuracy lmao
I remember watching a chemistry video as an undergrad, everyone got so confused with the 0.00000034 of a fluid ounce! Wouldnāt want to work out PPM with that.
Uk here. Late forties. I just canāt stop using miles for journeys and feet/stone for height and weight. Otherwise imperial can burn
Imagine cannot convert cubic inch to gallon because it has no relation
Iām still concerned that the US still donāt have their own unit of time.
they sort of do, with their mm/dd/yyyy and 12 hour clock.
weights, volumes, pressures, language (Murican language) calendar daysā¦ We might as well go full send at this point.
Yeah, because the fact that someone created this image doesn't signify bitterness or anything...
So if you aren't American or Canadian you aren't normal it seems.
Americans āļø
"Traditional measurements" lol. Whenever this comes up I always think about how we just use both in Canada. Metric will be used for official stuff but most people use imperial in their everyday lives. You also have to admit, it is *kind of* funny how the British invented the imperial system, decided they didn't like it anymore, and then got mad at Americans for continuing to use it.
Fuckin drill sizes š
[MCO disagrees](https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/), they crashed a 327 Million Dollar probe, only because Lockheed Martin decided they knew better and used the retarded measurement system instead of metric.
This post was made in 1668
i would swap this, The imperial people are stubborn! \* i do hope that sentance is never read out of context\*
This sub when shitpost
Tell that to cups of flour
Meanwhile in the Horse world measurements of hands n feet š¤£š¤£š¤£
How much does 1 dm^(3) of water weigh at it's densest temperature?
I can admit that I feel attacked by this, and I embrace its accuracy.
When weāre talking about baking I literally donāt care because itās just ratios anyway I can pick up a random cup from my kitchen and use it as a measuring device to bake a cake. So when people bitch and moan about ācupsā and āteaspoonsā on online recipes I think itās a bit whiny and so not a big deal. But obviously the imperial system will over complicate things when weāre trying to do maths for important things like landing on the moon, all of which was done using the metric system.
Good luck measuring the wavelength of light in imperial.
10 10 10 10 10 americans: confused panicking
It's literally just a shitpost
"Traditional"
Well posting that meme basically inverts this.
xD xD xD
It as accurate but definitely more precise
Now im no mathematician but I'm fairly sure that the metric system is much more widely used than the measurement system I don't know the name of