this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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That's for feet only, how about the other measurements? Each person feet also different with each other, it's kinda weird to just assume children length of their feet is the same with adult's.
IIRC 1 metre originally is a length choosen so that Earth circumference is 40000km, the later definition is more stable standardization, because turn out you can't get precise lengths doing that.
What's important here is that the standard measurements evolved naturally from people doing and making things. The common lengths were so chosen because they were easy to "eyeball" for craftspeople, and they were lengths that were useful to make things in - not some arbitrary designation based on phenomenon far outside the human experience.
Maybe so for feet, how about other measurements and its conversion. Where's inch coming from and why it's 12 inch to be 1 feet, and for yards, miles etc. It's kinda arbitrary, not natural, and confusing
For a person's foot to measure exactly 12 inches long, they would wear a US size 14 men's shoe. Size 47 for the Europeans. So "spproximately the size of a foot" is pretty far off anyway. Most people don't wear size 14 shoes. In fact, people who wear size 14 shoes often have a lot of trouble buying shoes.