How are people’s height typically described in Metric? Is someone 1.81 meters tall? Or would they properly say 181 cm? Which is 5’ 11" in my world. Will I get weird looks if I say I’m 1.82 meters tall?
does metric use punctuation symbols like single quote for feet and double quote inches. Or do you have to always use cm or M?
One of my problems with Metric is the lack of a separate word. 5’ 11" means something instantly. 71 inches not so much. I have to waste a minute dividing it out in my head. 181 cm is similar. cm is such a tiny degree of measurement. It’s hard to visualize a 181 of them just like its hard to visualize 71 inches.
I used metric a lot in Physics and Chemistry classes. I’m comfortable with it in the lab. Real world it just seems a bit awkward to me.
no punctuation; 1’82" would look like time if anything. cm or m (M would be miles).
But you think of peoples’ weight in pounds, don’t you? Whereas in England and Australia we used stones and pounds (14lb to a stone) which is more like feet and inches. IOW you are used to what you grew up with. I was in my 20s when we switched to metric, consequently I think of people’s height in feet and inches but their weight in kilograms. I think that’s primarily because 5 feet and 6 feet are handy mental markers of shortness and tallness.
I’m English so we still use feet and inches, but my girlfriend is a continental type and she gives her height in metres and centimetres when speaking, but cm when writing. E.g. 1m 60cm or 1.6m respectively.
It’s merely what you think is a problem because it’s all you know, but it isn’t. First, metres and centimetres are actually different units, and second if that’s how you want to think, if height is just given in cm it’s trivially easy to mentally move the decimal point.
The analogous situation about pounds and stone stands: because I think in stone, I have to divide someone’s lbs weight by fourteen, then multiply the remainder by fourteen, in order to get a ‘sense’ of what they weigh - but you manage to understand human weight in lbs without having to do this. Same would apply with height - it’s just what you’re used to, nothing more.
Not every metric country commonly uses it to describe human height. In Canada it is more common to use feet and inches, even among young people who use metric for virtually every other measurement.
When doing home improvement I usually measure in cm, but it’s so simple to convert between minor and major units I find that it’s rather fluid. Here’s some timber cuts from Britain’s biggest DIY store. It’s shown in mm there, so when I’m buying it I’d just move the decimal.
In Dutch I would usually say “one meter seventy-three” (ie leaving out the word “centimeters” as it’s implied). In English it depends because it’s used less. I certainly think in “meters, then centimeters”, not just all the centimeters added up.
I don’t understand: there is a separate word. Meters & centimeters. And consider this: in the Netherlands people commonly use the 24hr clock. Growing up that way, you don’t calculate what time it is by subtracting 12, 14:00* just is* 14:00.
A foot is very close to 30.5 cm, which can be rounded to 30 without much loss of accuracy. So a 5-foot kid (or very short adult) is about 150 cm; a 6-foot man is 180 cm. It’s not precise but makes for a good first approximation – you aren’t really interested in whether he’s 182.78 cm, just that he’s a touch over six feet tall, right?
Hard for you, maybe. People who think in cm know what 180 cm is - you’d call it six feet. So, if someone’s described as 180 cm tall, I know how tall they are. If someone’s described as 175 cm tall, I know what 5 cm is - you’d call it two inches - so I know how tall they are. Two metres is six foot four. Easy peasy, once you’ve grasped it, and particularly if you were brought up with it.
I should add that even though the official measurements at B&Q are things like 2000mm and 3000mm, you’d ask the guy in the store for 2 metre or 3 metre lengths.
Some old guys still talk about “eight by ten” and the like but they use the closest size to the old sizes in metric units anyway.
In Korea, I’ve always heard height given in centimeters, never in meters and centimeters. The pronunciation is usually abbreviated to “센티” (sen-tee). Weight, of course, is given in kilograms. Oddly enough, that is not abbreviated as “kilo” is the verbal abbreviation for kilometer here.
I’m sure you know this from your lab work, but I just want to point out for argument’s sake that one of the awesome things about the metric system is the prefix-suffix system. Instead of going from:
Fractional 16ths of an inch to an inch
12 inches to a foot
3 feet to a yard
1760 yards (wtf) to a mile
etc.
You just have one unit of length, the meter, and a simple prefix that moves the decimal around. How many 7/16ths of an inch are in 3.76 miles? Who knows? How many meters are in 3.76 kilometers? 3760. Bam.
Adopting the SI prefixes gives you more or less equal “punctuation” for any measurement you want to do, whether it’s meter, gram, watts, amps, volts, hertz, blah blah. A prefix system that’s limited to two symbols isn’t very useful, not to mention it’s all too easy to lose or gain a ’ through mistakes, transcription errors, or random xerox artifacts.
Describing heights and such may be equally easy depending on which system you grew up with, but once you start doing real work with the units, I think metric is indisputably and self-evidently simpler than any system that relies on random conversions within even the same dimension of measure. There’s a simple elegance in being able to use the meter for everything from the width of a cell to the volume of the sun.
Exactly what we say here in Mexico, although we sometimes omit the “meter” in it.
The context usually is clear enough to know what you are talking about.
Exactly what I think, I despise mechanic problems in school that use inches and foot, especially when they get all “1/8, 1/6”.
I always fear I’ll get the units wrong, especially if they get pounds too.
I can visualize a meter because its easy for me to think of an old fashioned yard stick. It’s not exact, but at least I have something in my mind that roughly equates to a meter.
In Spain it’s also in meters, with a precision of two decimal figures and the understanding that the exact measurement obtained may vary depending on time of day and other factors. I’d say mido metro sesenta y dos, literally “I measure meter sixty-two”. For the metrically challenged, that comes to 1.62m
As for the difficulty visualizing, it’s about what you’re used to. When I first started having to give heights in feet and inches and being given them in feet and inches, I had to translate all the time; now I don’t.
In Singapore, it’s “He’s about one point eight meters tall”, or even “I’m about one point seven, she’s one point six five” (the meters and height being implied).
If I had to write it down, I’d write 171cm, or if the unit was provided in meters then I’d write 1.71.
