For instance, a foot...is basically a foot length. So there's this foot-measuring waddle some people do walking literally heel-to-toe to get a general sense of the space. An inch is kinda a finger width, etc (they're all not perfect by any sense).
I've decided to just take the plunge and basically re-learn all my measurement systems because I'm seeing less and less of those being used. I started with just memorizing all the conversions but that's literally just adding another step. Everything I own basically has settings to switch or show both measurements (like tape measures) so I'm just going to stop using Fahrenheit and the United states "Customary System" all together.
Any tips or things you're taught or pick up on? There's a funny primary school poem for conversion of customary liquid measurements,
Land of Gallon
Introducing capacity measurement to learners can be challenging. To make this topic more accessible and memorable, we can integrate creative and interactive activities into our teaching approach. Using storytelling, we can transform the sometimes daunting task of learning measurement conversions into a whimsical tale.
- In the Land of Gallon, there were four giant Queens.
- Each Queen had a Prince and a Princess.
- Each Prince and Princess had two children.
- The two children were twins, and they were eight years old.
Once students are familiar with the story be sure they see the connection between the story characters and the customary units of capacity measurement. If necessary, label the story pieces with their corresponding units of measure: queen = quart, prince/princess = pint, children = cups, 8 years old = 8 fluid ounces. You can reduce the number of customary units in the story based on student readiness. link
tl;dr looking for anything to remember the hierarchy and memorizing the metric and Celsius measurement system, sometimes explained in schooling or local sayings. (if I had an example for those systems I would give one lol).
I mean centimeters is probably the most common in households and centiliters at least in cocktail recipes. But yes, you don't really need deka, hecto or deci in your daily life and you can grow up not knowing they exist at all. It would also make things like tape measures too complicated to look at.
I'm curious, where are you from? In the US, I'd say we think of centimeters as a pseudo-inch, so I think I understand why people would gravitate to centimeters here.
But do other countries use centimeters as much? I'm especially curious about really metric countries like Japan or (who else?) France? Germany? I wouldn't be surprised if Canada or UK use centimeters.
Related: centimetres or millimetres
Most countries in the world are "really metric countries". And yes we do use the cm a lot for measurements inside the 1-100cm range.
I’m from Germany and we use cm a lot. I can’t imagine not having anything between mm and m, the gap is huge. Those are probably the most used ones in daily life and km for distances farther than 999 m.
Here’s a common German tape measure next to a book, which is 20.6 cm (206 mm, 0.206 m) long:
Cool! Thanks for sharing!
Now that I think about it, I think I own a carpenter's measuring tape. Maybe that's why they don't call out cm.
Also just to be clear, my measuring tape is definitely not a standard tape you can buy at a local hardware store. It took some effort for me to find a metric-only measuring tape.
I know some people in the building profession who habitually call out everything in mm, as oppose to most people where I am using cm for most household measurements. So I'm not surprised to see measuring tape (esp a carpenting one) ignoring the redundant cm
Interesting, I’ve never seen a tape measure like this. In the end it’s the same thing, just remove a zero and you have cm. That’s the magic of it.
But i understand now how you came to the conclusion that centi is not used that much.
I really hope the US will at some point adopt the objectively better metric system!
Me too. I'm trying! 🤝