Chinas largest to smallest unit makes sense to me since it's the same as Arabic numbers, largest to smallest, and so sorting order would also be same.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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One is for eating tea and other for table.
The imperial system (of length at least) has a very human basis. An inch is the first joint of your thumb, the foot is your foot, the yard is one step, a stride is two (step left, step right), a mile is 1000 strides. Normal walking speed is about 100 steps a minute, so a mile is about 20 mins of walking
The problem is when they generalized these distances, they apparently used the biggest guy they could find... It still makes sense for rough measurements, but I already use metric for anything small or precise. Or fast - I don't even know what gravity is in imperial units. Kmph isn't natural for me, but I think I could get there...I like 60mph being a mile a minute, it helps me estimate, but i could get over it
Weight and volume? I already use metric for everything but my own weight, because screw that nonsense.
Temperature? I'd like something more human scaled for daily use, I've tried getting used to it but metric just doesn't click the same way. I like how Fahrenheit is roughly the livable range - below 0 is intense even with proper attire, and above 100 is dangerous even if you're adapted to it. It's not perfect, but maybe something like Celsius*2 for easy translation?
Anything not coming into contact with you, like cooking or cpu temp, would be better in Celsius though - things change around 100C
At the end of the day, I think it just makes sense to have more than one unit of measurement for certain things - one for human scale that is easy to grasp based on our bodies, and one for measurement.
It would be nice to say "I need like 10 feet of hose" and they give you 3.5 meters because it's understood it's an estimate, or you say "I need these boards cut to 2.75m" and they know it's a measurement and give it to you exactly that.
And I would not miss it if volume and weights were metric only - i can't tell you how many times I've converted teaspoons to ml or ounces to grams, maybe it's because I learned chemistry before cooking but holy crap is that so much more helpful