Hi, I think in metric units, so almost everything is some form of a power of 10, like a kilogram is a 1000 grams, etc.
Sometimes I will think of an hour and half as 150 minutes before remembering that it is 90 minutes.
Does something similar happen to imperial units users? Because as far as I understand you don’t have obvious patterns that would cause you to make these mistakes, right?
Your last sentence is correct. We don’t have obvious patterns that would cause us any confusion (beyond the confusion we already have with this measurement system that makes no sense), so we simply memorize it.
I can’t believe after all these decades, the USA still sticks with the imperial system. It’s nonsense. But I grew up with the imperial system so that’s what feels natural to me and I can “feel” what a mile feels like, I can “feel” what an inch feels like, but if you speak to me in metric, since we in the USA are not as exposed to it over here, I need to pull out my calculator to make the conversions to understand how a meter relates to a foot and a yard, yes I hate it, I would rather be able to think and feel in metric because it’s more logical.
I’m with you on going metric. It’s insane that we still use imperial units.
Congress passed a bill in 1975 that was supposed to transition us to metric, but it obviously didn’t take.
I end up using metric units quite regularly for various reasons. My intuitive understanding of imperial units is still better, which irritates me.
There’s some things imperial is just better at. Like temperature. 100 f is hot, but literally not even half as hot as 100 c. We as people can perceive imperial temperatures a lot better than metric.
On “we as people can perceive imperial temperatures a lot better than metric,” I’d agree to disagree here - Celsius is pretty straight-forward. Temperate is temperature, it’s just about what numbers you’re assigning to which temperatures.
0°C is when water freezes, and 100°C is when water boils. A 10°C day is cold, a 20°C day is mild, a 30°C day is hot, and a 40°C day is when you melt.
Whatever you grew up with is probably what is going to be easiest for you to comprehend, but Celsius is no more difficult or less perceptible, just a different value range.