Why YSK: If you’re an American (or Liberian/Myanma), simply knowing that 1m~=3.28ft is… not that helpful. Understanding a unit requires lived experience, after all

Well, if you play Minecraft: good news! Blocks in Minecraft are exactly 1m3. If you can close your eyes and visualize a Minecraft grid, you’re probably already surprisingly good at measuring things in meters.

Let’s give it a shot:

  • How tall is the average person? A little bit less than 2 blocks 2 meters
  • How wide is the average person? About 1/2 a block 1/2 a meter
  • What’s the furthest a young person can fall before it starts getting painful? Just over 3 blocks 3 meters
  • How big is the average room? About 6x6 blocks 6x6 meters

Some players might even be familiar with kilometers if they use waypoint mods, such as Xaero’s Minimap. If a map marker says it’s 1000 blocks away, that’s 1km. How long does it take a healthy person to walk 1000 blocks 1 kilometer? About 10 minutes!

    • blueskiesoc@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I love when they’re called freedom units.

      What’s that in freedom units?

      Sounds ridiculous in a good way.

      • CAVOK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        “In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” ― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing

      • sophs@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Is there a TheyDidTheMath on lemmy already? I need to know if this is accurante.

    • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Man, I’m 27 years old. Minecraft came out while I was in middleschool. I appreciate being called young… but I’m dealing with very adult feeling things at this stage in my life, like a balding scalp and dead parents.

  • Willer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Honestly these are the sort of shortcuts a teacher should embrace. Personally i just had the idea of flooding public schools with metric rulers but this is even better

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      “More Meter sticks!”

      “But sir! We’re already at capacity! The school can’t possibly take anymore!”

      “I said more! If we don’t get those meter sticks in that school, we could put the world in jeopardy. Nobody would know how long to run for charities, science would fail, entire populations would be trampled by feet!”

      “My god… They’re… Sir!”

      “What is it?”

      “They’re… they’re American.”

      “Good help us all.”

  • guillermo_del_taco@lemdro.idEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Another useful tip: because the conversion rate of 1.609 miles to kilometers is so close to the golden ratio (1.618), you can use the Fibonacci sequence to estimate a conversion.

    1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

    5 miles is about 8km, 8 miles is about 13km, etc

  • zkikiz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 years ago

    Approximations in imperial units helps me a lot. A meter is a yard, a centimeter is about 3/8" (2.5 per inch), a millimeter is about 1/32" (half a 16th). Everyone knows how big two liters is from soda bottles. A kilogram is about two pounds. Room temperature is 20°C while 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. 50°C is about 120°F.

    If we need precision we can break out the measures, we just need to have a gut sense of this stuff.