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beckerdo | 4 years ago

It is interesting to me how many engineers hop from English ("3 inches to go on the rubber band") to the metric system ("400 meters per second"). Andy Weir touches on this in his book "Hail Mary".

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elliottkember|4 years ago

I am from NZ and find myself doing this. The difference is whether something is estimated or measured. If it’s a rough estimate, and the value doesn’t matter at all, I use inches. So “six inches” is more of a way of describing “about this much”. It’s deliberately imprecise.

durnygbur|4 years ago

Still missing the "football fields" unit of measurement.

mlindner|4 years ago

Except this person isn't American, as he lives on Manitoulin Island, which is in Canada.