alt Hacker NewsSure but don't they have a mental image for 80 feet for example? Why articles will almost always include something like "that like 50 chairs put next to each other" when length is mentioned.
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If you were to say 100 yards, we could. That’s a football field (American football played with your… hands).
Because people in the south don’t even know the imperial system… it’s bad. They say things like “Take the road there yonder and when you see the white church, turn right, go a ways until you get to the dirt road…”
Anything outside of what they have with them, they don’t have a clue or can’t imagine it accurately. Small dog reference, there’s millions of Americans with a small dog so most just looked to their pooch when this came up. Same as if you were to say something like 50 cars. They would look outside to their Toyota Corolla and imagine 50 of them. It’s like talking to grown toddlers sometimes but that have full grown emotional states not under control. Not everyone is like this but a good 50-60% of Americans are. Just look for the Lululemon.
I would say most American's sense of feet gets fuzzy after about 30, there are very few things that are standardized that size or bigger or that they have ever personally measured out. Yards might be more useful up to maybe 200 or 300 because they have all seen football fields though. After that for most people they go to miles or minutes of travel.
Some farmers might throw in a reference to an acre length that is referencing the 660 foot length of a standard acre (660 feet x 66 feet, or 1 furlong x 1 chain), which is just another way to say 1/8th of a mile.