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Please don't scare them! (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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[–] 30 points 3 years ago (2 children)

My sibling in Satan, that's the backbone of the metric system. Nobody said anything about units.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    Gotcha, so we're talking kilotons and microinches then?

    Or is it actually the units that make the metric system scary to Americans?

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Woodworkers use the "metric system" all the time it seems. "Thousandths of an inch" is a common unit.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    Yep, I hear them referred to as "mils". Although for more casual usage it's far more common to use 1/x^2 measurements like 1/8" or 13/64". Thankfully my job has only really needed up to the 32ndth.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    To further add to this, a unit would be something basic like litre, metre, or a gram. So 1000 litres is a kilolitre. 1000 metres is a kilometre. 1000 grams is a kilogram. You may be familiar with the computer byte. A kilobyte is 1000 bytes. A megabyte is 1000 of those. Everything is divisible by 10, and everything makes sense.

    Interestingly, even though a calorie isn’t a metric unit (the joule is), the energy to raise 1 millilitre of water by 1 degree Celsius is 1 calorie.

    Also, 1 gram of water is 1 millilitre. And if you measure that in size, that’s 1 cubic centimetre. So if you go buy a litre of water, you know it’ll be 1000 cubic centimetres, and it’ll weight 1kg.

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