Eorzean Units of Measurement

[Myranda]

As an American scientist, I can confirm this. The American scientific community uses the metric system in their work. The commercial and normal citizen use mile/foot/inch sometimes centimeter if we're feeling gutsy.

We (scientists) also use Celcius and Kelvin as well. But yes, most Americans use Fahrenheit. We're very stubborn =D

I use metric units for actual scientific calculations, but I've honestly still never gotten an intuitive feel for them. If someone says it's 10°C, I still have to put in some small but extra mental exercise in to think "ok, so that would be a little above freezing then..." but it would take me a bit of time to pin it down to 40s or 50s in °F. But if given that same temp as it's equivalent 50°F, I'll have an understanding of what to expect in under a second. It's even worse for me with speeds: I can work with m/s on paper but if I really want to get a feel for it, I've got to have my mph.

That's really the big hurdle to it's adoption in the US, compounded by the fact that our average citizen is very stubborn and resistant to such change. Or the "wasted" costs to develop both new and transitional signage for things like speed limits or grocery weights.

Don't forget beer by the pint, soft drinks by the liter, our own weight in stone and pounds, but the weight of sugar in kilos, ahh gotta love us Brits.

I'll give you the stone, but for liquid volume Americans can't hate much there... our cans and small bottles are in fl oz but we also have 2 litre bottles... and then there's the little difference like American pint vs. Imperial pint...

[ArkhamNative]

I use metric units for actual scientific calculations, but I've honestly still never gotten an intuitive feel for them.

I was the same way before having lived in both places. Intuition comes from seeing a # and mentally remembering a temperature. It's 9ºC? Grab a light coat. What's that in ºF? I haven't a clue, even though I grew up in Fahrenheit. Likewise I know -40ºC on paper is -40ºF, but have no intuitive concept of that amount of cold.

As a child, the US school system wanted us to learn conversions, which I now think is completely wrong. That requires more smarts than the rest of the world, which, on average, is impossible. Just put the SI/metric in bigger numbers and have the weathermen say the ºC temps first, for 5-10 years, then exclusively after that. It's like new scientific theories. Some old theory scientists convert, but mostly the new theories become mainstream by, um, ... "attrition".

...and then there's the little difference like American pint vs. Imperial pint...

I wish there were only 1 kind of pint. To pay a larger number of $ (than £) to get a smaller amount of liquid is like a double whammy of despair.

[REDace0]

We went over the ones you know long ago, but it's worth putting them in the lore forum. ...blah blah blah, Anonymoose being entertaining to read and whatnot...

1 Onze (Oz) = 28.35 grams
1 Ponze (Pz) = 16 Onzs = 453.6 grams
1 Tonze (Tz) = 2,000 Ponzs = 907.2 kilograms

etc...

I'm sorry. It was bothering me. >.>

[Anonymoose]

Oh, man. That's what I get for copypasta...

[Yrusama]

Hey, in the US we're very proud of our ignorance! We also enjoy lower life expectancy and lower quality of health care despite paying almost twice per capita of any other industrialized country. Woo! World leaders! USA! USA!


P.S. Thx for the lore info.

I wouldn't say we haven't converted at all. A lot of things use metric, but culturally it's been too hard to switch over. I remember learning metric in like... fourth grade at the latest. We just have very stubborn old people. >:P

I remember seeing the distance measurement terms in XI, particularly Malm and Yalm. I'm not sure if they started to see use AFTER XIV's development (which took them 5 years, didn't it?) but I do know that I've seen them in XI for a looong time.