this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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The one thing that bothers me about the metric system is how much of it is never actually used. No one says "1 megameter", for example. They say "1,000 kilometers". When you think about it, most metric prefixes are never used with most metric units.
I think I never saw using Deca- and deci- in real life
Deciliters are used in cooking
We use decimetres in chemistry a fair bit. 1 mole of any gas will occupy 24 dm³ at rtp
thats just liters
Lo be unto the metric users, that the units of length and volume conveniently sync up!
How many cubic inches is a gallon btw?
decigrams are quite common in cooking/trading food
"deci" is very popular. Just not in the "correct" form "decimeter".
In Spanish it's normal to say "8 décimas", which means 8 tenths. It is context dependent though. For example if speaking in a context where millimeters are used, it will be 8 tenths of a milimiter. That is, 0,8mm.
But yeah, it is very uncommon to use deci and deca. Because they're just not very useful. We are used to 2 digit numbers, or numbers with 2 decimal places. So 87m is not harder to use than 8,7dam.
It's probably also the reason there is no prefix between kilo and mega, or milli and micro. (They are x1000 increments instead of x10).
For the same reason, when in a context of millimeters, it's preferred to say "87mm" instead of "8,7cm".
Similarly, how the kilogram is the SI unit for weight, not the gram.
I've thought that was weird too. Decimeter's seems like a good unit for measuring a person's height, for instance.
Idk I prefer 174 cm over 17.4 dm. 17 dm is not nearly precise enough, either.
Yeah, I hear you. There's really no practical difference between saying 174cm and 17.4dm I think from the American perspective where 6ft is a sort of benchmark for adult male height, so psychologically that 6 looms large. CMs obviously work fine, but I'm trained to see the bigger 17 as a sort of benchmark/goal. None of that is healthy or rational, though.
Maybe it's easier to say "Oh, they're 17dm" or "15dm" and get a general sense for the height of a person. When you need to get precise, it's not useful.
It's because metric sucks at anything on a human scale and most people deal with things on a human scale. Imperial was developed over hundreds of years to be extremely narrow and scope in a specific two things at a human scale.
It's a big reason why imperial makes far more sense. If you actually need to talk about anything on a human scale, everything no matter how nonsensical makes sense the moment, it's explained because it's all extremely intuitive.
While metric is basically a tiny fraction of a technically Superior system that basically makes no f****** sense in 99% of cases for a day-to-day life.
Try metric is the measurement of science, engineering and other fields of study because they actually do with things outside of day-to-day human scope
As the saying goes, use the right tool for the right job and only a dumb f*** uses the wrong tool for the wrong job
Could you give an example of a situation where metric makes less sense than imperial? I will then explain to you that it only appears to you like that, because those are the units you've lived your whole life using. Without that baggage, the adaptability and easy conversions make SI-units objectively superior in every situation.
Hell naw…what do you mean human scale, my foot is probably smaller than yours
Don’t get me started with thumbs…
I have no idea what you're talking about... humans are around 1-2m tall, weigh about 40-80kg, have a body temperature of about 37 C, and need to drink a couple litres of water per day. How are these units not the proper order of magnitude for measuring things "on a human scale"?
Found the US-American. Go vote Trump or whatever it is y'all do over there lol.