We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.
It’s not that it’s hard to learn, it’s that we don’t have a strong intuition. It’s not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn’t be able to pick up an object and say, “that weighs about a pound” or look at an object and say “that’s about 3 feet long” but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.
We do such a shit job at teaching our own actual measuring system that nobody has an intuition what a pound feels like, what an inch and a foot look like and how to scale those up. So we resort to objects and comparisons instead of actual measurements.
I don’t blame anyone for failing to teach imperial. It’s surreal.
I grew up with both (gen x Australian), and when I lived through the transition, metric is a godsend.
Feet. Pound. Stone. All I see are objects. But they are easily objective to the imagination.
There are now only 2 countries left I believe, dragging their heels, and officially using Imperial
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It’s not that it’s hard to learn, it’s that we don’t have a strong intuition. It’s not that difficult to know there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard or that metric is entirely based around factos of 10. But its the intuition of what an inch looks like, what a pound feels like to hold in you hand. Most people wouldn’t be able to pick up an object and say, “that weighs about a pound” or look at an object and say “that’s about 3 feet long” but a lot of people do have an intuition what an energy drink can looks and feels like and can imagine getting hit by one, a lot of people have picked up a pineapple at the grocery story, people have the intuition of how big a football field is or how big a city bus is.
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Our measuring system is so shit I rather use hamburgers as a distance than miles.