Comment by lproven

That's not the point.

The point is that it is easy to interconvert units in the metric system: they're all interrelated and all of them can be expressed in terms of other units.

A litre is the volume of a cube that is 10x10x10cm. A cubic cm of water weighs a gram. Therefore, 10 cubic cm of water weighs 1kg. In other words, a kilo is the weight of a litre of water.

It takes 1 calorie of energy to heat 1g of water by 1ºC. So to heat a litre by one degree takes 1000 calories, or 1 kilocalorie. To boil it, you need to raise its temperature to 100 degrees, because that's the boiling point of water. From room temperature of say 20º that means

100-20 = 80 80 x 1000 = 80,000 80 kcal

This is useful. You can work out how much energy you need, using a pencil and paper.

This makes it easy to convert. Units that are easier to convert are more useful.

Whereas, as Josh Bazell put 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. »

That's stupid. They can easily be related, but the people who devised this batshit set of scaled random numbers a few centuries ago didn't think of it.

It's not "what you're used to is better".

It's "one system is easier to work with than the other, and lets you do things the other system does not permit you to do."

Metric is objectively, demonstrably better than imperial.

And the common response of "oh but my system is what people feel" is also total bullshit, because that is 100% what you're used to.

A warmish day is feels like 20º to me. A hot day feels like 30º. A burning can't think straight day is 40º. Below freezing is below zero: it's simple and intuitive.

coldpie 3 months ago

In what scenarios would I need to know the answers to those questions?

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lproven 3 months ago

That's not the point.
The point is that it is easy to interconvert units in the metric system: they're all interrelated and all of them can be expressed in terms of other units.
A litre is the volume of a cube that is 10x10x10cm. A cubic cm of water weighs a gram. Therefore, 10 cubic cm of water weighs 1kg. In other words, a kilo is the weight of a litre of water.
It takes 1 calorie of energy to heat 1g of water by 1ºC. So to heat a litre by one degree takes 1000 calories, or 1 kilocalorie. To boil it, you need to raise its temperature to 100 degrees, because that's the boiling point of water. From room temperature of say 20º that means
100-20 = 80 80 x 1000 = 80,000 80 kcal
This is useful. You can work out how much energy you need, using a pencil and paper.
This makes it easy to convert. Units that are easier to convert are more useful.
Whereas, as Josh Bazell put 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. »
That's stupid. They can easily be related, but the people who devised this batshit set of scaled random numbers a few centuries ago didn't think of it.
It's not "what you're used to is better".
It's "one system is easier to work with than the other, and lets you do things the other system does not permit you to do."
Metric is objectively, demonstrably better than imperial.
And the common response of "oh but my system is what people feel" is also total bullshit, because that is 100% what you're used to.
A warmish day is feels like 20º to me. A hot day feels like 30º. A burning can't think straight day is 40º. Below freezing is below zero: it's simple and intuitive.

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