• Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    In most cases, the American spelling of English words compared to the rest-of-the-world spelling is pretty much a wash. A matter of personal preference.

    But “metre” is a hill I will die on. “Metre” and “meter” mean different things, and by spelling them both “meter”, as the Americans do, you’re just making communication worse.

  • idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It’s really easy to learn the size of your body. My span is around than 20 cm. 5 of them is 1 meter. the width of my pinky is 1 cm. You can learn how to step 1m distance, for me it’s a bit longer than a normal step. I can measure with my body between 1cm and several meters. So it’s really easy to overcome this small limitation of the metric system.

    • Programmer Belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      It’s as easy as getting comfortable with the usual measures of your body. I also know how much is a kilogram because I can lift a big water bottle which also is a liter. Really, the way all of the units are built more or less around water can give you a pretty accurate instinct.

  • mayonaise_met@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    In what county do meters still look like that though? I see them here in the US, but back in my metric home country they certainly don’t look like iron age torture devices anymore.

  • Shurimal@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    My feet are certainly not a feet long. More like 25 cm or so. But as another commenter already said, I can measure ~175 cm using my arm’s reach easily, matchboxes are standardised as 5 cm long, the width of my palm is about 8 cm, distance from my fingertips to my elbow is around 50 cm and the distance from ground to approx. my navel is 1 meter.

    Plenty of ways to get an approximate metric measurements without a ruler or measuring tape.

    And it’s much easier to convert from cm or mm to m (or vice versa) than to convert between ft and inch or ft and 1/8 of an inch or whatever weird measuring standards the US-ians use.