From John Bazell “In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
So you have it boil water by specifying the number of Joules to use? Or kilocalories?
What even is this line of reasoning? Outside of a lab, I don’t need to know the amount of energy used to boil water. That’s the point. It’s boiling when it boils.
And 100°C isn’t even the boiling point of water at altitude. It’s a totally arbitrary scale, not very useful in day-to-day situations.
If you’re going camping with a solar battery and an electric kettle, you absolutely need to know a ballpark of how much energy it takes to boil a cup (250ml) of water, or you won’t get your morning coffee.
It’s also important information if you’re living off grid, running a desalination plant, sending a mission to Mars, operating a nuclear reactor, building a jacuzzi, or studying the mantis shrimp.
You’ve got to almost admire the “well I don’t do anything that requires precision or collaborating with others, so eyeballing my own body parts should be fine for everyone” attitude there…
‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’
This is a question I’ve never once heard asked outside of a chemistry lab. Which is where metric units are useful.
These supposed facts are also not true except with distilled water, at sea level, etc. etc. Water doesn’t freeze at 0°C, it requires activation energy. And any impurity will lower its freezing point. Plenty of ocean water at well below 0°C, as well as fresh water at very high pressures.
A bottle of wine is 750ml (or 75cl) and a pint (i.e. a normal glass) is 0.4731765L. Very intuitive.
What’s the efficiency of an ICE motor in metric? L/100 km? Great that it can be converted into other units, but it’s existence an admission that it’s not a useful human-centric measurement. Just like air temperature. When I switch my car to metric, the thermostat has to add a digit and increment in half degrees to give you what Fahrenheit gives you without a third digit. The external air temperature requires a sign in metric.
Also, which US state did Dr. Fahrenheit hail from? I’ll give you one guess.
But hey, decimalization is great, right? So why don’t you use metric time? Come on, throw away a lifetime of knowledge and compatibility with others because it can be converted easier in your head.
Do you not understand? Or do you not want to understand?
If you really want to understand, I will explain everything and show you how deeply wrong you are. However I will not spend time explaining, if you will then still continue with this “I am used to this system so everyone else must be wrong.” approach.
But if you like being wrong I recommend you at least not publicly announcing it.
Fractions use a numerator and denominator (e.g., (3/4)). Decimals use a decimal point with place values based on powers of 10 (e.g., 0.75.)
So to answer which cookbooks use fractions; it’s American ones.
Take 1/4th cup this 2 cups that 2&7/8ths of a fl oz this and 1/2 quart of water.
So yeah. American cookbooks use factions.
“the conversion isn’t useful”
There no conversion going on. You can say 200g of flour or 0.2kg of flour. Both equally understandable to anyone who grew up with the metric system. Hell my grandpa even uses hecto- and deca- in everyday conversations.
I mean, it is consistent, compared to itself. If I have a framed artwork held on the wall by two nails and want to raise it roughly an inch, my thumb is right there to measure with. No need to get a ruler.
The fact that there’s no easy conversion between my thumb and the speed of light in a vacuum just isn’t a problem I deal with on a daily basis.
So what if someone is standing back trying to communicate with you how much to raise it so it looks good?
“Raise it by the length of the last segment of your thumb!” You’ve just re-invented the inch. Congrats.
“Raise it by 2.54cm!” Wow, great units that are easy to eyeball without a ruler. Based on a subdivision of the great circle of the earth going through Paris (of all places). Definitiely not arbitrary and very useful in everyday situations.
You’re going “hmm, this is about and inch and I don’t need to be precise.” You know what the metric equivalent is? Going “hmm this is about 2.5cm and I don’t need to be precise”.
You can do the same with cm… but lets say you’ve got something a yard wide and need it in quarters, have fun. But hey if its a meter that’s 25cm. In fifths? 20cm. In tenths? 10cm. And decimals are super easy to deal with as well. It’s so much easier to deal with Metric for day to day calculations.
And yes, I’m American. There is absolutely no sane reason to keep Imperial measurements besides aversion to change. None.
Do you really need to know the number of inches from Los Angeles to Portland outside of a lab? Seems unlikely.
That’s the point. In a lab, where conversions and formulas are frequently used, metric makes sense. I use it all the time. Even the US military uses metric for their specifications.
Unless you give me a reason for converting miles to inches outside of a lab, you haven’t shown what you say you’ve shown.
I can demand you do a bunch of time conversions in your head and pretend your inability to do so means we should switch to metric time. But that would be silly.
I took an astronomy course in college (in America). Want to guess what system we used? It wasn’t inches.
Though even astronomy uses AU, which isn’t an even base-10 multiple of meters but a useful human-scale (or solar system-scale) measurement.
The inch is defined using metric units. 1 in is defined to be exactly 25.4mm. So per definition inch is based on the speed of light.
Nice that you have body parts which are roughly the size of an inch thoug
Nor obvious, but based on physical principals and highly reproducible. BTW, what’s the official definition of an inch?
Roughly the length of the last segment of my thumb. Which is roughly 1/12th the length of my foot. Which is roughly 1/3 of my stride.
Things I don’t need a vacuum and instruments that can measure the speed of light to reproduce.
A mole is a very useful unit of measurement in chemistry, but much less so in baking.
From John Bazell “In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
You guys must boil water differently than I do. I put water in a kettle on the stove on high and take it off when it boils.
Well yeah, stove kettles are a century out of date, for a start.
I presume you use an electric kettle, then?
So you have it boil water by specifying the number of Joules to use? Or kilocalories?
What even is this line of reasoning? Outside of a lab, I don’t need to know the amount of energy used to boil water. That’s the point. It’s boiling when it boils.
And 100°C isn’t even the boiling point of water at altitude. It’s a totally arbitrary scale, not very useful in day-to-day situations.
If you’re going camping with a solar battery and an electric kettle, you absolutely need to know a ballpark of how much energy it takes to boil a cup (250ml) of water, or you won’t get your morning coffee.
It’s also important information if you’re living off grid, running a desalination plant, sending a mission to Mars, operating a nuclear reactor, building a jacuzzi, or studying the mantis shrimp.
You’ve got to almost admire the “well I don’t do anything that requires precision or collaborating with others, so eyeballing my own body parts should be fine for everyone” attitude there…
Read again. Slowly.
This is a question I’ve never once heard asked outside of a chemistry lab. Which is where metric units are useful.
These supposed facts are also not true except with distilled water, at sea level, etc. etc. Water doesn’t freeze at 0°C, it requires activation energy. And any impurity will lower its freezing point. Plenty of ocean water at well below 0°C, as well as fresh water at very high pressures.
A bottle of wine is 750ml (or 75cl) and a pint (i.e. a normal glass) is 0.4731765L. Very intuitive.
What’s the efficiency of an ICE motor in metric? L/100 km? Great that it can be converted into other units, but it’s existence an admission that it’s not a useful human-centric measurement. Just like air temperature. When I switch my car to metric, the thermostat has to add a digit and increment in half degrees to give you what Fahrenheit gives you without a third digit. The external air temperature requires a sign in metric.
Also, which US state did Dr. Fahrenheit hail from? I’ll give you one guess.
But hey, decimalization is great, right? So why don’t you use metric time? Come on, throw away a lifetime of knowledge and compatibility with others because it can be converted easier in your head.
This is stunningly arrogant and ridiculously incorrect at the same time.
Do you not understand? Or do you not want to understand?
If you really want to understand, I will explain everything and show you how deeply wrong you are. However I will not spend time explaining, if you will then still continue with this “I am used to this system so everyone else must be wrong.” approach.
But if you like being wrong I recommend you at least not publicly announcing it.
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Hey whats a space shuttle or two between friends
I conceded, in the post you responded to, that metric is better for science. It’s the last sentence in my post.
Do you struggle with reading comprehension?
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How many moles of flour are you putting into your bread dough?
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Feet aren’t a measure of volume or weight.
But feel free to stick your feet in flour and let me know how it goes.
Also, what cookbook specifies fractions of kilograms of flour? Unless you’re running a bakery, the conversion isn’t useful.
deleted by creator
Fractions?
Fractions use a numerator and denominator (e.g., (3/4)). Decimals use a decimal point with place values based on powers of 10 (e.g., 0.75.)
So to answer which cookbooks use fractions; it’s American ones.
Take 1/4th cup this 2 cups that 2&7/8ths of a fl oz this and 1/2 quart of water.
So yeah. American cookbooks use factions.
“the conversion isn’t useful”
There no conversion going on. You can say 200g of flour or 0.2kg of flour. Both equally understandable to anyone who grew up with the metric system. Hell my grandpa even uses hecto- and deca- in everyday conversations.
Real consistent there, Cletus
I mean, it is consistent, compared to itself. If I have a framed artwork held on the wall by two nails and want to raise it roughly an inch, my thumb is right there to measure with. No need to get a ruler.
The fact that there’s no easy conversion between my thumb and the speed of light in a vacuum just isn’t a problem I deal with on a daily basis.
deleted by creator
So what if someone is standing back trying to communicate with you how much to raise it so it looks good?
“Raise it by the length of the last segment of your thumb!” You’ve just re-invented the inch. Congrats.
“Raise it by 2.54cm!” Wow, great units that are easy to eyeball without a ruler. Based on a subdivision of the great circle of the earth going through Paris (of all places). Definitiely not arbitrary and very useful in everyday situations.
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This a really stupid argument.
You’re going “hmm, this is about and inch and I don’t need to be precise.” You know what the metric equivalent is? Going “hmm this is about 2.5cm and I don’t need to be precise”.
Be better.
It is WHAT? 🤣🤣🤣
You can do the same with cm… but lets say you’ve got something a yard wide and need it in quarters, have fun. But hey if its a meter that’s 25cm. In fifths? 20cm. In tenths? 10cm. And decimals are super easy to deal with as well. It’s so much easier to deal with Metric for day to day calculations.
And yes, I’m American. There is absolutely no sane reason to keep Imperial measurements besides aversion to change. None.
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Do you really need to know the number of inches from Los Angeles to Portland outside of a lab? Seems unlikely.
That’s the point. In a lab, where conversions and formulas are frequently used, metric makes sense. I use it all the time. Even the US military uses metric for their specifications.
Outside the lab, it makes little sense.
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Unless you give me a reason for converting miles to inches outside of a lab, you haven’t shown what you say you’ve shown.
I can demand you do a bunch of time conversions in your head and pretend your inability to do so means we should switch to metric time. But that would be silly.
I took an astronomy course in college (in America). Want to guess what system we used? It wasn’t inches.
Though even astronomy uses AU, which isn’t an even base-10 multiple of meters but a useful human-scale (or solar system-scale) measurement.
deleted by creator
I’ll do the same if you can convert 2.34 days into seconds in your head. Now!
You use non-base 10 units all the time. You’re weirdly quiet on that point.
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The inch is defined using metric units. 1 in is defined to be exactly 25.4mm. So per definition inch is based on the speed of light. Nice that you have body parts which are roughly the size of an inch thoug
It’s defined as 1/12 of a foot and your wife said my inch was the best she’d ever had.