American Customary (a.k.a Freedom) Units vs Imperial vs Metric

[Mr. Coffee]

My feeling is converting between units is kind of a pointless activity. What is more important is having a tactile sense of what those units are at scales we care about.

• A dime weighs about a gram. As does a good-sized insect.
• A hiker's water bottle full of water weighs a bit over a kilogram.
• You can walk a kilometer at a leisurely pace in about fifteen minutes. At a brisker pace it will take about ten minutes.
• Two normal steps are about a meter, depending on the length of your legs. Unless you are very tall and have very long legs a meter is an uncomfortably long step.
• Highway speeds are typically about 100km/h. Which makes estimating time easy: a 650 km drive will take something more than six and a half hours.
• A cyclist riding long distances tends to average between 18 and 20 km/hour.
• A strong hiker over non-insane terrain walks about 5 km/hour.
• 1 KWh is the equivalent of about 3 to 4 sticks of dynamite.
• Pi seconds is a billionth of a century.

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

My feeling is converting between units is kind of a pointless activity.

Not entirely. On EBR, I like to convert km to miles and kg to pounds in my head so our metric users can't trick me into thinking that they ride farther or faster or have lighter bikes than I do.
;^}

 

[Chargeride]

I hear Canadians measure distance in time.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

I hear Canadians measure distance in time.

No it is the American