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[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 101 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Lb-Ft

FFS, just adopt the metric system already. And "lb" is not a force unit. Also don't capitalize unit abbreviations unless named after scientists.

[-] _stranger_@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

"pound foot" is the most intuitive name for a unit of force imaginable!

How much force? One pound of the foot. Easy!

[-] mdurell@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Red Foreman agrees... "one pound of my foot in your ass"

[-] ReadyUser31@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It's one pound per foot you moron!

/s

Not just any old foot, a square one

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[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It's a derived unit of torque. Pound is already a measure of force.

[-] _stranger_@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Of this, you and I, are quite aware.

The Joke, however, is in the air.

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[-] nooneescapesthelaw@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Actually pounds are a unit of force

Pounds~newtons

Slugs~ kilograms

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pounds are a unit of money. lbf (poundforce) is a misnomer, it’s actually the pressure required to stamp the King’s portrait into a £1 coin. Slightly changes with each monarch – or by a lot whenever they switch to cheaper materials because of devaluation. The frequent redefining of poundforce is now a major consequence of Brexit. /s

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

Fairly sure there isn't any money with the king's face on yet. So we're still on the Elizabeth standard for now.

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[-] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

As someone who's all about science and all the things that use metric as it's standard, I understand why us Americans argue for imperial measurements.

We know them.

I can general look at something and relatively tell how big it is based on my experience with the imperial system.

I'm not saying metric isn't better but there's also different languages with some of them being able to express certain emotions or features better than others. Yet you don't see people demanding we all adapt a singular language.

[-] SamirCasino@lemm.ee 32 points 1 year ago

People who grow up almost anywhere else on earth can also tell how big something is based on their experience with metric. That's not something inherently based on the imperial system. The same way you go "oh that's about 3 feet", we go "oh that's about 2 meters".

And of course, switching systems overnight is insane, people are used to imperial, you're right. But at the very least do what Britain did, and have both systems in parallel at the same time, everywhere. And in time, people would get used to metric too.

[-] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

What I've noticed is that for those using other measurements, intuitively knowing about how long a meter is seems like witchcraft. But for use who are used to metric, it's just "about this much 🫲🫱" or "about this much 🚶".

[-] Rodeo@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 year ago

We know them.

And you can't learn new things?

[-] alienzx@feddit.nl 9 points 1 year ago

They already said they're American lol

[-] frezik@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago

We have to exist in a context that resists it. The weatherman will tell you the temperature in Fahrenheit. The road speed limit is listed in mph. You buy milk and gas in gallons.

If anything, Americans who force themselves to use metric in everyday use are working much harder at it than any European.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You should start by adopting metric in anything remotely scientific. Like

  • voltage ✔️
  • current ✔️
  • power ❗ - horses are no longer really relevant, not to mention this - at least appliances use watts
  • pressure ❌ - we got lucky that 10⁵ pascals is around 1 atmosphere so use Pa or bar, not mmHg or PSI
    • BTW, PSI is a dumpster fire of an abbreviation, the correct one is lbf/in²
  • force ❌ - the lb/lbf confusion is not worth it when we have newtons
  • energy ❗ - joules and watt-hours are both fine, calories, electronvolts and TNT-tons less so, but don't use BTU which nobody can really comprehend, or gasoline-gallon-equivalents that nobody knows how to translate to anything else
  • gun caliber ✔️
  • engine volume ☑ (it's cm³ or ml, not cc FFS)
    • strange that motorcycle and gun enthusiasts are the few users of metric length & volume measurement in the US - too bad that these two measurements are never really used in calculations or conversion
  • torque ❌ - this post says Lb-Ft which is wrong on so many levels
  • data ✔️ - OK but data rates should be abbreviated MB/s or kb/s, not kbps, Kb/s, kbit/s or Mbit
  • wire diameter ❌❌ - holy shit, AWG is such a mess - larger wire is smaller number and the formula is so insane that people use lookup tables, also you're afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large wires are 00, 000 etc.

Can you imagine having different units across the world for voltage or data? Like a 2¾-lemon battery or a 2 million floppy hard drive. That would be absolutely insane.

There is an awful lot of inconsistency in the imperial system too, like pound being abbreviated lb, P (in PSI) or even £, or miles being mi or M in MPH

[-] applebusch@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You acknowledge what they really mean is ft lbf right? Usually pronounced foot pounds. It's a common unit of torque in the imperial system. I feel like people are just jumping on the bandwagon. This is coming from a diehard Nm preferrer, we need to choose our battles. How bout we die on the hill of bite force being measured with units of pressure? Like really? Fucking pressure? Utterly meaningless as a unit of comparison between bite strength of animals, since all you need to get a bigger number is SHARPER FUCKING TEETH.

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[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Recommended units for data have been mibibytes (MiB), gibibytes (GiB), etc. for a few years now

They're more accurate because they use powers of two (actually 1024 instead of 1000)

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Accurate" is probably not the correct word anymore. It was when technical limitations dictated power-of-two capacities. Commodore 64 came out with 64 kiB = 2^16^ B of memory, and FAT32 cannot handle file sizes ≥4 GiB (2^32^ B). However, RAM/ROM/Flash chips manufacturers no longer make exclusively powers-of-two capacities, instead opting for (decinal) GB to save 7 % of the cost (and other fake capacity shenanigans). I prefer binary too but the two unit systems can coexist, people just need to label them correctly.

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[-] Schmuppes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

About torque though: If my memory doesn't betray me, one Newtonmeter is 100 grams hooked to a one meter long lever. Is that really different from one pound hanging off a one foot lever? I might be wrong, since I was born metric and have no clue in general.

[-] blujan@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

It's 1 Newton at 1 meter.

As simple as 1 pound at 1 feet to be fair, the bad part is that pound is used as a measure of force as well as of mass. It works on the surface of the earth but not anywhere else.

[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Pounds are a measure of force, not mass. The imperial unit for mass is Slugs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_(unit)

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

I wonder what you’ll get when you ask for 0.02 slugs of ham at a butcher's. Probably nothing but a horrified look.

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[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"we know them"

quick, how many barleycorns in a gunthers chain?

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[-] agoseris@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's confusing, since "pound" is used for both force and mass.

1 lbm is roughly 0.45 kg

1 lbf is the force required to accelerate a 1 slug (32.2 lbm) mass 1 ft/s^2.

[-] Guntrigger@feddit.ch 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I know slugs are just snails without shells, but they don't need to go faster

[-] Spedwell@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I don't know what the imperial system standards committee was up to, but I've never met a slug that was 32.2 lbm

You wouldn't know her, she goes to a different school.

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[-] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

It's understandable that you don't understand a measurement system you're not familiar with, but us imperials understand it just fine.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago

Sure. How much does water in a 1ft × 2ft × 3ft aquarium weigh?

In metric, an equivalent calculation is 30 cm × 60 cm × 90 cm = 3 × 6 × 9 dm^3 = 162 𝑙 ≡ 162 kg of water, and if you're pedantic, the weight is around 1620 N or closer to 1590 N for 𝑔 = 9.8 m·s^-2^. All calculated in my head.

[-] oatscoop@midwest.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, close enough to 7.5. 1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs ≈ 25/3.

6 * 7.5 = 45 gallons

45 * 25/3 = 375 lbs -- easy mental math. Sure, the "accurate" answer is 373.87 lbs, but the aquarium probably isn't filled with distilled water, perfectly dimensionally accurate, or filled to that exact capacity.

[-] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago

A cubic foot is 7.48 gallons, close enough to 7.5

1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs ≈ 25/3.

25/3

Oh god this is what we mean

[-] kurap1ka@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oh just wait until you see imperial hex screws. In metric you get them in screwdriver size relating to mm. US hex screws are like 16/64 of an inch or 5/16 of an apple. And of course they don't relate to metric at all and you can't use the same tools.

[-] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Or fucking AWG. Higher number means smaller diameter wire, and Americans are afraid of decimal or negative numbers so large diameters are 00, 000 etc. The formula is batshit insane
𝑑~𝑛~ = 0.005 in × 92^(36 – 𝑛)/39^
so people just use a lookup table.

[-] ultracritical@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Gauge is historically number of passes through gauging machine. With the machine and material in question being different for every single one. We took that and put it to a standard, so it's super messy and makes no sense.

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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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