alt Hacker News>Everything packed into this tight range.
AS someone that grew up with metric that feels fairly natural and not tight at all?
>Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction.
I used ruler tapes with both metric and imperial on either side and i always wondered how one could use the inches since they're so big and didn't always have the same minute subdivisions. Also doing my math in decimals seemed easier than calculating with quarter or 1/8th inches or smaller.
>For science, sure, I'll use metric.
Surely it would feel more natural to use the same for everything and all measurements.
I want to know how much rainwater my IBC roughly holds. I take out my measuring tape real quick. I'm not even sure how I'd get started in imperial without some strong intuition build up over years?
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I mean it's mathematically a tighter range. I think part of this comes down to the more mild and less variable European climate. There is just less emphasis on air temperature so you don't see the drawbacks.
Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? Sounds like a bad tape measure (or really just one where US Customary was an afterthought).
As for science, well, most people don't do it. Those that do can use different things in different contexts, it's not that hard.
> (...) grew up with (...) feels fairly natural (...)
Really all there is to that discussion.