Ask Lemmy

no

only time is with some like a microwave where you type in multiple units for the same input
ie 90 is equivalent to 130

I have a rather wide technical background and ended up pretty comfortable in both systems. I do have to do conversions in my head from km/h to mph because I've rarely used km/h (I've spent more of my time reading vehicle speed in knots).

Speaking of which, American aviation gives altitude in feet, runway lengths in feet, distance to travel in nautical miles, aircraft speed in knots, wind speeds in knots, visibility in statute miles, and temperature and dewpoint in Celsius. One of my favorite mixed unit expressions is the standard adiabatic lapse rate given as 2°C per 1000 feet.

When you're as concerned about freezing and icing conditions as pilots are, Celsius makes sense. I prefer Fahrenheit for "what the ambient air feels like." The scale from 0 to 100 degrees lines up pretty well with the range of temperatures found in most places people live, better than Celsius does anyway.

I learned chemistry and physics in metric. I can make technical drawings in either system, I have an intuitive grasp on what liters, meters and grams are as much as I have an intuitive grasp on what quarts, yards and ounces are.

I do carpentry and woodworking in inches though, mostly because the stock, tools and supplies available to me are designed in inches. On the peg at Lowe's or Home Depot you might find a measuring tape with both units, most will just be inches. I do own a purely metric tape measure. So I can cut you a board 50cm long if you really want me to. It's going to be a bigger pain in the ass to mill that stock to 20mm thick on my thickness planer, but trivial to mill to 3/4". My dado set is in fractional inches. I've never seen a metric router bit in person, and I've never seen a router collet that wasn't 1/4" or 1/2". No I really can't put a 6mm roundover on a board, you're getting a quarter inch. Metric drill bits aren't difficult to find but they're usually for metal, so I can pretty much drill an 8mm hole in a board (split-point metal bits tend to drill holes that are a little out of round in wood). Metric brad-point bits are a little bit more specialty items, and for forstner bits, 35mm fortsner bits are specifically easy to find for installing cup hinges, otherwise they're usually in inches.

If you were to put me in a wood shop full of metric tools and stock, it might take me awhile to get used to conventions. I'm used to thinking in terms of stock that's 3/4" or 1 1/2" thick, for example. I'm used to talking to a sawyer in standard; what's the metric equivalent of ordering "four-quarter" boards?

Not really. I would be curious if other people immersed in SI only have similar issues to yours. Minutes and hours are based off of multiples of 12, and with feet and inches that's already one we deal with regularly.

The thing about time is that any likely division of an hour that you'd like, there's an easy and even division. /2 = 30, /3 = 20, /4 = 15, /5 = 12, /6 =10, /10 = 6 and vice versa.

It's pretty easy to get in the mind state of thinking a half hour is 30 minutes, or more specifically you can think 1.5 hours * 60 minutes / hour. The hours cancel out and you get 90 minutes.

I think ounces to lbs is the one that gets me, because we regularly talk about half and quarter pounds so 16 to 1 is just weird. Also fl oz to cups is 8 to 1 so...

Frankly I just avoid ounces if at all possible. It's a shitty unit. Run into it in cooking a lot though. Personally, when I record most of my recipes in my recipe app, I use metric. It makes math a lot easier.

I never have, personally speaking.