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smithsp86 t1_j63rhix wrote

Reply to comment by gravi-tea in TIL to decide what measurement system America should use, John Quincy Adams took 3 1/2 years to produce a 268 page Report on Weights and Measures that ultimately concluded changing to the French metric system would be too difficult for the young nation. Congress took no action on the report. by iamveryDerp

A furlong is 1/8th of a mile and a chain is 66 feet. So it's just a matter of doing a bit of multiplication. Chain is a super useful measure because most surveying measures are whole multiples of a chain.

The biggest hangup most metric people have with imperial units is conversion factors but once you learn those it's not difficult to use them. My favorite example is tea spoons in a gallon. Yeah it's not immediately intuitive but it's not difficult to figure out if you actually needed to know for some reason. Four quarts to the gallon, four cups to the quart, sixteen tablespoons to the cup, three teaspoons to the tablespoon. Just do a bit of simple multiplication and you're done.

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gravi-tea t1_j63sjxr wrote

Interesting. Yeah totally. I recall having to do such calculations when fermenting stuff like hot sauce and kombucha.

Like you said it's not bad once you are familiar with the converssions. And some math would also have to be done if one was cooking in metric - but those calculations would likely just be a little simpler and quicker.

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