this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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For instance, a foot...is basically a foot length. So there's this foot-measuring waddle some people do walking literally heel-to-toe to get a general sense of the space. An inch is kinda a finger width, etc (they're all not perfect by any sense).

I've decided to just take the plunge and basically re-learn all my measurement systems because I'm seeing less and less of those being used. I started with just memorizing all the conversions but that's literally just adding another step. Everything I own basically has settings to switch or show both measurements (like tape measures) so I'm just going to stop using Fahrenheit and the United states "Customary System" all together.

Any tips or things you're taught or pick up on? There's a funny primary school poem for conversion of customary liquid measurements,

Land of Gallon

Introducing capacity measurement to learners can be challenging. To make this topic more accessible and memorable, we can integrate creative and interactive activities into our teaching approach. Using storytelling, we can transform the sometimes daunting task of learning measurement conversions into a whimsical tale.

  • In the Land of Gallon, there were four giant Queens.
  • Each Queen had a Prince and a Princess.
  • Each Prince and Princess had two children.
  • The two children were twins, and they were eight years old.

Once students are familiar with the story be sure they see the connection between the story characters and the customary units of capacity measurement. If necessary, label the story pieces with their corresponding units of measure: queen = quart, prince/princess = pint, children = cups, 8 years old = 8 fluid ounces. You can reduce the number of customary units in the story based on student readiness. link

tl;dr looking for anything to remember the hierarchy and memorizing the metric and Celsius measurement system, sometimes explained in schooling or local sayings. (if I had an example for those systems I would give one lol).

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[โ€“] RichardDegenne@lemm.ee 3 points 2 weeks ago

Spreading my hand out, the distance between the tip of my thumb and the tip of my pinky is almost exactly 20 cm.

When I need to measure something like a piece of furniture, I "crab walk" my hand along its side, counting 20 cm for every step.

[โ€“] kurikai@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Get ruler. Hold your arm out 90degrees, Measure from the tip of your finger 1 metreacross your body, and rember where that Metre ends on your body. Then you always have a reference for 1metre

[โ€“] d00ery@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I was taught this to measure electrical cable. For me it's from my left shoulder bone to my right finger tips (or the right shoulder to left finger tips)

My 2 cents to some of the really good comments already mentioned. 1kg is 2 US lbs +10%. Learn what 10cm is, use that as base for small stuff Learn a stride that's 1m. 1m is approx 3ft Get a good scale in grams Celcius is linear, Fahrenheit is not. Hence 0 freezing, 100 boiling, 50 is exactly half that amount of energy.

Now if you're into engineering I'd recommend you grab yourself a caliper and measure some of the common products you can buy. You'll notice that anything in 16th, 32th or even 64th is a most likely an approximation to a perfect size in mm.

It's important to realize that the US is the only real producing country in the world using US customary. Relatively speaking there's very little actual manufacturing being done in true US customary.

[โ€“] hinterlufer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

For length, for an average male one meter is about one large step with extended legs (useful for distances), or the distance between e.g. the left side of your torso to the end of the extended right hand (useful for estimating the length of rope or smth).

For weight, it might be useful that 1 liter (that's 1 dm3 but noone uses that except sometimes in scientific literature) is almost exactly 1 kg, and a typical cup fits 0.25 liter. A shot of alcohol is either 20 or 40 milliliters (0.02 or 0.04 liter) depending on where you are and what you order.

For conversions you just need to remember the base unit (e.g. meter and grams/kilograms) and the decimal prefixes. But you really only need milli (1/1000), centi (1/100) and kilo (1000) in day to day life. Then you simply shift the decimal.

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[โ€“] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I'm in Canada, and learning French in school actually helped me with fractional measurements since French is based on Latin.

Cent is 100 in French, so 1/100 meters is a centimeter

Mille is 1000 in French, so 1/1000 meters is a millimeter

Dix is 10 in French, so 1/10 meters is a decimeter (this is last because it's not super helpful since you never see deci- units in the wild outside of niche applications)

And for the powers of 10, we only really talked about kilo (1000) in school, but I was interested in computers since I was a child so I figured out mega, giga, terra, etc fairly early on.

[โ€“] Gastel@lemm.ee 2 points 2 weeks ago

A person who buys some material, Thinks to themselves managerial, I could use grams or litres, Maybe even amps or square meters, At least it isn't Imperial.

[โ€“] nixcamic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Man you got some giant feet and sausage fingers lol

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