this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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My sibling in Satan, that's the backbone of the metric system. Nobody said anything about units.
Gotcha, so we're talking kilotons and microinches then?
Or is it actually the units that make the metric system scary to Americans?
Woodworkers use the "metric system" all the time it seems. "Thousandths of an inch" is a common unit.
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.
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 isn’t 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, that’s 1 cubic centimetre. So if you go buy a litre of water, you know it’ll be 1000 cubic centimetres, and it’ll weight 1kg.