Unlike with longer distances and temperature, Americans don’t strictly use imperial for shorter distances (m, cm, mm). It’s on all of the signs and stuff, but we learn metric in school as well as how to convert to and from. In university-level physics classes, they almost solely use metric. So as an American myself, I didn’t bat an eye at him using meters. But if they said that it was 30C outside…
It helps that meters and yards are very similar in size. Of course they drift as the distances get larger but in my mind 300m is a pretty reasonable thing to visualize. Just a tad larger than 300yd—about 3 football fields (Inb4 stereotype)
Km though? I still struggle to compare it to a mile. When someone says “50km” my mind has a hard time imperializing it. What’s that, like 35 miles?
Maybe memorizing how the km lines up with the mi on my car speedometer would help.
I guess as long as it works it works. I don’t have to do much of those conversions though. Here in Norway we are metric in almost all of our measurements. Except for some specialist measures like a carton of eggs is a dozen. We often say things happened a fortnight or so ago, etc.
Claims to be in the American wilderness
uses Metric
Some Americans do see sense.
South Americans.
Every red white and blue blooded American uses the foot!
Well you gotta use both feet if you’re going hiking
JUST ONE FOOT YOU COMMIE
Perhaps lost some.
Unlike with longer distances and temperature, Americans don’t strictly use imperial for shorter distances (m, cm, mm). It’s on all of the signs and stuff, but we learn metric in school as well as how to convert to and from. In university-level physics classes, they almost solely use metric. So as an American myself, I didn’t bat an eye at him using meters. But if they said that it was 30C outside…
It helps that meters and yards are very similar in size. Of course they drift as the distances get larger but in my mind 300m is a pretty reasonable thing to visualize. Just a tad larger than 300yd—about 3 football fields (Inb4 stereotype)
Km though? I still struggle to compare it to a mile. When someone says “50km” my mind has a hard time imperializing it. What’s that, like 35 miles?
Maybe memorizing how the km lines up with the mi on my car speedometer would help.
50km is about 30 miles. An easy way to remember if you’re into fast cars is 0-60mph =~ 0-100kph
think fibonacci sequence and you’re in good shape
34 comes before 55, then 3 comes before 5, so 50 km is (55-5) km = (34-3) mi = 31. It works shockingly well
This is so incredibly much complicated to me than just multiplying or dividing by 1.6.
And also 55 km is 34 miles, not 31. I had to run it through a converter tool just to be sure.
Edit: I reread your comment. The goal was 50 kilometers. Then the math checks out. Sorry!
just multiplying or dividing by 1.6 is about as accurate as my strategy in the other direction - the real value is almost exactly between them.
I guess as long as it works it works. I don’t have to do much of those conversions though. Here in Norway we are metric in almost all of our measurements. Except for some specialist measures like a carton of eggs is a dozen. We often say things happened a fortnight or so ago, etc.
31 miles.
Personally know several metric nuts who insist on using metric in their day-to-day life.
Well, a metric nut would be screwed trying to go imperial…
“Metric nut” sounds like there’s a measurement to their insanity in the metric system
A 12mm nut.
For the Americans: that’s 0.00005965 furlongs.
also called M12-nut
I find metric nuts and bolts are much easier to acquire cheaply
On holiday?
Ever heard of a vacation?
How many inches is that?
A big chunk (a majority?) of the North American wilderness is in countries that use metric.
No Canadian would go into the wilderness and say they went into the American wilderness…
Maybe they went to Detroit?
They can use the word “American” when they join us.
This is Lemmy in a nutshell.