• shrugs@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Nice read. I find it really interesting that due to the unwillingness of many to learn something new, America is almost the only country that still uses these silly measurements.

    5280 ft in a mile my ass. You don’t even use 0.x numbers but fractions like 7/8th instead. And still some people believe that 1/4 pounder is bigger then a 1/3 pounder. That’s crazy

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I’m on the record as genuinely preferring fractional inches to decimal units in the wood shop because it’s inherently a fractional task. 12 inches in a foot; keep dividing that by two and you get 6", 3", 1 1/2", 3/4", 3/8" and so on. 3/4" is the basic unit of woodworking. I have to divide by two and three quite a lot in the wood shop, so dividing 3/4" by three is 1/4" Easy.

      Did this today: I had a 1 1/2" thick board, and had to cut a 1/2" groove down the center of that board. 1 1/2 divided by three is 1/2" so I chucked a 1/2" spiral bit in my router, set the fence 1/2" from the bit and the grooves are perfectly centered. Easy.

      I’m not against the metric system, I learned chemistry and physics in metric, I own a set of metric wrenches. My measuring cups are graduated in fractional cups and milliliters, my kitchen scale measures in ounces, pounds and grams. But I build furniture in fractional inches and I learned to fly a plane in feet, pounds, gallons and nautical miles, and I’m damn good at both.