Please don't scare them!
Please don't scare them!
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Where are the metric units? All I see is prefixes explained
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My sibling in Satan, that's the backbone of the metric system. Nobody said anything about units.
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Gotcha, so we're talking kilotons and microinches then?
Or is it actually the units that make the metric system scary to Americans?
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Woodworkers use the "metric system" all the time it seems. "Thousandths of an inch" is a common unit.
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Yep, I hear them referred to as "mils". Although for more casual usage it's far more common to use 1/x^2 measurements like 1/8" or 13/64". Thankfully my job has only really needed up to the 32ndth.
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To further add to this, a unit would be something basic like litre, metre, or a gram. So 1000 litres is a kilolitre. 1000 metres is a kilometre. 1000 grams is a kilogram. You may be familiar with the computer byte. A kilobyte is 1000 bytes. A megabyte is 1000 of those. Everything is divisible by 10, and everything makes sense.
Interestingly, even though a calorie isnāt a metric unit (the joule is), the energy to raise 1 millilitre of water by 1 degree Celsius is 1 calorie.
Also, 1 gram of water is 1 millilitre. And if you measure that in size, thatās 1 cubic centimetre. So if you go buy a litre of water, you know itāll be 1000 cubic centimetres, and itāll weight 1kg.
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86 comments