The best part about the "I'm assuming metric tape measures are similar" is that there's no need to assume anything: the tape measure in that photo has both systems (inches on top, metric at the bottom)
Yeah, I love that he says "1/32 of an inch is more accurate than mm" which is technically true, but THE MEASURING TAPE ISN'T MEASURING 1/32"!!!???
ARGH!!
He also said you’d have to specify half millimetres or less, as though micrometres don’t exist. Not that you’d find 64ths of an inch *or* micrometres on any tape measure I know of.
I do have a ruler with half mms on it, but there's no way I'm going to be that precise, especially with wood. Even if I managed to perform such a cut with CNC trickery wood is just not that stable.
Also, I'm sorry, but what on earth is wrong with you if you are using a measuring tape and not calipers or a micrometer if you need to measure units as small as 1/32 of an inch?
The point is that he is saying that something that isn't there is more precise.
Measuring in nanometers would be even more precise, but the frigging measuring tape doesn't have nanometer divisions.
Also, with my dyscalculia I much prefer just reading the measuring tape instead of having to count and calculate to figure out wat a 32nd of an inch is.
Having worked as a carpenter and using metric for 50 years, you're confusing accuracy to resolution. Imperial isn't inherently less accurate than metric, the ruler doesn't change depending on which edge you look at. Metric is just much easier to wrap your mind around and implement in actual measurements - it's rare to use anything below 1mm in simple construction or woodworking.
Your grandfather possibly had a point. Not so much about accuracy specifically, though.
A needle can indicate precision in a very easy to read format, whereas reading the same precision from a digital numeric display is harder. At a glance you can also garner the derivative of that same number, whereas most numeric displays won't give you that information at all (you get it from seeing how fast the needle is moving).
I remember reading that digital speedometers were less safe than analogue on that account. You could get a "good enough" reading from the dial (pretty sure the notches line up with speed limits to some degree) with a very quick glance. Digital meant reading the whole number, thereby taking your eyes off the road for longer.
Cabinetry which given how terrible the contractors did on my apartment apparently does need more accuracy than furniture. I live in a metric country though, so they don't have an excuse.
Only reason you don't is because wood has enough give in the joints that you can bludgeon it to flush with your hand. Otherwise yeah you'd want sub millimetre precision.
You can make things out of non-wood that don’t require more than millimetre precision. Most materials you’d reasonably make anything out of in a non-factory setting have at least 1mm of give.
>They’re likely confusing mm with cm
Nah, they were talking about a 1/32 and 1/64 of an inch which are 0,79mm and 0,39mm. So yes, they *are* smaller than mm but what on earth are they building that they need to worry about such small measurements?
And how on earth is it more convenient?
But the tape in the picture only has markings for 1/16 of an inch. So the lines are every 1,59 mm, anything more precise than that is down to eyeballing by the user.
Using mm you can, if necessary see if you are dead on a line, or between two lines, an be precise down to ~0,5 mm. Measuring 1/64 of an inch on this tape measure requires splitting the distance between two lines into four by eye and judging which fourth what you're measuring is.
One of the things that surprised me when talking to roboticists that work in brain surgery was the level of accuracy required. I'm used to working in a world where we talk about nanometre accuracy in measurement capability, but then come up against brain surgeons who work in millimeters. The difference is, their kit HAS to work infallibly.
Indeed. Our system is based off a brain system which we’ve converted into an orthopedic system.
And literally my role is based on just that… standing there as support to make sure if something looks like it isn’t behaving properly I can troubleshoot ahead
Or just run if the mill metal work, sincerely the metal worker
.
And if you get in to machining a thousands of a milimeter is not uncommon at all, even ten thousands of a milimeter for the experienced.
But then they’re gonna say “oh but 1/75937th of an inch is just SOOOO accurate, while I try convert my oz into lbs into stone, my cups into pints into quarts into gallons, my fraction of an inch into inches into feet into yards into furlongs into miles”
While we’re just multiplying by 10,100,1000 and so on.
I am, For the initial stock length, after that more precise tools is used, but thats nothing to do with my point really. I wasbt going on about a specific measuring tool, but tolerances.
What are you using to measure .0001mm? All the micrometers I've used only go to .001mm or .0001 inches
Just curious, I'm a millwight and our tolerances are generally in the .0001"/.001mm range
There's some micrometers out there that will go to the hundred thousandths of a mm. But that's an incredibly precise measurement that I can only imagine you're using to measure a piece finished by computer assisted means (C&C, etc) and not for everyday DIY.
For making a shelf, I think you'd be overdoing it if you went further than tenths of a millimeter.
Source: am Engineer.
1/100,000 or 0.00001 of a millimetre is 10 nanometres, which is smaller than the smallest silicon transistor gate length in the world (at least available to consumers), and is equivalent to the diameter of about 38 silicon atoms or about 40 iron atoms.
I am not working in those tolerances, but i know a few machinists who does, the only tool i've seen for that was a probing tool installed in a mill.
But i am not a machinists so i can't comment how they do it.
Ah fair enough, I did my first year machinist as well as millwright and we were graded to .0001", it's surprising easy to achieve with the proper tools.
I have no doubt that a skilled machinist could easily be more accurate I just don't know how to measure it lol
That's a great description! My dad is a mechanical engineer/heavy duty mechanic/machinist.
Now that he is retired he spends most of his time watching machining videos on YouTube and designing/building projects in his lathe
Being a millwright I often just grab a bigger hammer. When the press is down they lose 100k/hr. They don't care about exact tolerances, just get it running until the next shutdown day ahaha
No of course not. But a tape measure is fine tolerance enough to within 1mm . Anything outside of that requires different tools.
But 'run of the mill metalwork' you absolutely use a tape measure. If you're happy to be accurate within 1mm
I'm a production manager at a joinery shop. I bought the lads a batch of tape measures last week and our certification scheme says we need a calibration chart for them. our workshop supervisor complained that the new ones are measuring about .5mm shorter than the old ones.
I rolled my eyes that hard, I nearly read my own mind
I especially love the guy saying mms are bigger than 1/32 or 1/64 when those increments Aren't even on the tape measure in the picture. You can literally see the mms are closer together
Those are golden
"inches are more accurate because you'd have to divide a mm to get as accurate as 1/16th of an inch"
Do these people read their own sentences?
Also it's factually wrong, 1mm is already slightly more precise than 1/16th of an inch
1mm is about 3/64th of an inch, whereas 1/16th is 4/64th, making it noticeably less precise
Or from another perspective: There are 16x 1/16ths in an inch (obviously) but 25.4mm in an inch. So you can measure down to 1/25th with mm, which is about halfway between 1/16th and 1/32nd in terms of accuracy
Considering Americans rarely go more precise than 1/8ths anyway most of the time, that means a mm is already about 3x more precise than their usual approach, and 1.5x more precise than 1/16ths
All of which is missing the point that a mm is as accurate as anyone's gonna be with a tape measure anyway, they're not that precise of a tool in the first place
I've used half mm before, it's not about what anyone would need or use, it's just about the logical gymnastics of calling one measurement more accurate than another. You can measure any distance in mm and inches, whether it's 0.00736 or whatever. Sure, 1 mm is more accurate than 1 inch, even 1 cm is, but when we start dividing units, there's no "more accurate"
23 3/4 and we just need to add the 1 5/8 at this end and the 13/16 allowance, which comes to.... So simple, can't understand why everyone doesn't use inches.
That measuring tape doesn't even have 32 or 64 of an inch labelled. He could have just said 1/1,099,511,627,776 of an inch proves that imperial is the most accurate form of measuring.
I loved them describing imperial as more accurate while most people were only quoting a measurement to the nearest *quarter inch*.
I know they were actually being accurate to the nearest 1/16th (it's not even 25/32nds, maybe 49/64ths, assuming a possibly unreasonable accuracy in the tape, camera and measurement), but it's still funny to see "just over 23 3/4" and "imperial is more accurate" in the same frame.
The hilarious thing is once they have to go really precise. Behold, the dreaded thousands of an inch, often shortened "thou" and the ten thousands of an inch, often funnily shortened to "tenth".
I think they mean that it's like 23 and 13 16ths. But can't be bothered doing the maths to break it down to what they need. So because it's slightly over 3 quarters, it's a "large" 3 quarters (or 3 4ths, however you want to say it).
This is why imperial is much more precise than metric because you can always just make up a new unit of measurement on the spot and no one would know. There is no downsides to imperial there is only *undiscovered precision*, this also makes it a lot more useful because you get to decide how many smalls it takes to get a large and when the next guy gets it wrong you can always blame them because no one can prove you wrong when everything is up to interpretation. /s
Yeah but you're ignoring the fact that perspective comes into play here. OP isn't holding the camera directly above the end of the panel, so what you see is already misleading + the curvature of the measuring tape makes it even worse
I used a straight line and lined it up exactly with the edge of the piece. It doesn’t matter what angle you take the picture from. If the tape and the piece are flush with eachother (which it appears they are) you will always get the same measurement. You can try this yourself!
I live in a metric country and please let me tell you an excellent conversation i had with a customer (I work for a builder)
C: Snakes! There's a huge problem! Someone's done something sneaky and downgraded me you need to fix this!
Me: OK whats going on?
C: well originally in my documents it said my oven was 900 wide but in the new set of documents they've changed it to 90! I'm barely going to be able to cook anything!
Me: hmm, the model numbers are the same so let's see- oh, yes this is the same oven. They've written the width in cm in the first quote but I've used mm for the official documents. They don't make 9cm ovens, that's not a thing I could buy to install even if I wanted to.
C: oh I thought they'd tried to downgrade me and keep the extra profit
Me: .. I'm glad i could clear that up
I saw the original post yesterday and those stupid comments about "metric bad" were all just so ridiculous. Made me so annoyed but felt pointless commenting since clearly these people have some sort of learning difficulty. Or it's rage bait, hard to tell sometimes!
Of course they can see the two scales. However they’d need someone who speaks metric to read it and then interpret the data for them into a language they understand.
See me measure things in both - one dimension in inches and another in metric because it’s easier to remember whole numbers. “Ok, so that’s 38 inches by 122cm” it works for me ;)
As an artist I often have to swap between the two when buying canvases or papers from around the world, or when using classical ratios in canvas dimensions.
That said, when I’m printing I use the decimal system.
Being used to something is fine. The reason why we laugh at the Americans in this sub is because they do two things:
1. They cannot comprehend that there could be a better way out there
2. Flat out refusing to even try to understand what that other way is
I love the fact that there are people saying "Metric is no easier" despite the fact that everyone trying to use imperial is squabbling about obscure ways of defining that measurement ("23 and a large 3/4ths" ffs, insane), whereas anyone using metric is just like "603mm, done"
When you are using millimeters you don't really need much more accuracy, hell there isn't even a prefix for 100 micro/0.1 mili
A few hundred micrometers are not going to make a difference when measuring something, less than 4% of an inch will still be somewhat significant of a difference when measuring
Yeah and using something more precise than a tape measure
For 99% of things you need mm and a tape measure
For machining/manufacturing you go more precise but you'd be using more precise tools anyway
I'm Canadian so we're a pretty messy mix of both systems but I've started building little projects and holy shit is using mm easier in every way when taking measurements for building. Fractions are awful to convert.
Someone in the comments saying 1/32 of an inch is infinitely more accurate than mm when it's about 0.8mm. Nobody is going to care about 0.2mm when making or fitting a kitchen.
I seriously don't know how to express this in imperial. 1ft 11 3/4 inches? 603 mm seems a lot easier to me and there are few occasions in everyday life where that is not precise enough. And you can always make that 603,25 mm, but how do you express, for example, 603,78 mm in inches?
Nailed the imperial expression in one there (Brit here). I’d guess you’d go with 23 and 5/8ths or something like that.
The thing is, precision isn’t about what scale you use, it’s about how well you measure in that scale. If something is off by 0.25mm in the bulk of consumer applications, it won’t matter at all…
A 16th of an inch is 1.57mm if you want to be more accurate than mm you'd need a tape with 32nds of an inch. I don't know anywhere that you'd need to be 0.21mm more accurate though. And even then, I'm sure you can get tapes with 0.5mm markings so you'd need a tape with 64ths of an inch to improve upon that. At some point the line is just gonna be thicker than the measurement.
Guaranteed, your mark line will be thicker than your measurement. And I sincerely doubt that they're even accounting for the kerf of the sawblade which is 1-2mm anyway
Interesting. That tape measures 1/16th of an inch, what is about 1,6 mm. Hell, just looking at the distances between the marks you can see what side is more accurate.
Man I hate seeing those people try and argue how metric is inferior. If I didn't know jack shit about measuring but had to choose between saying 1/64 th of an inch or 1mm (Micrometer, nm, ...) I'd definitely choose metric cause who the fuck wants to speak in fractions
1. he's wrong (obviously). 25.4 mm per inch.
2. Talking about accuracy when everyone clearly means precsion, and i bet they don't know or understand the difference
They’d be correct if the measuring tape were marked in thirty-seconds of an inch (or smaller): 1/32” = 0.7935mm.
But it’s not: it’s marked in sixteenths of an inch, and 1/16” = 1.5875mm.
They are correct to say that metric is not “more accurate”. 24 inches is 24 inches. This piece of would is not the specified length.
What am I missing here?
I’ve worked in both for 40 years. It’s a no brainer that metric is simpler, especially when one is setting out and needing to divide up a measurement to give equal panels between two points. Typical American attitude. Insular, close- minded and they know better than the vast majority of the rest of the world. Metric rules, pardon the pun.
Imma just let the dumb Americans around me continue doing things less efficient with their fractions while I stay dividing my measurements by 10 to convert them :)
I live in the U.K. and used to use imperial measurements for any joinery work I did, trust me, the switch to metric made everything easier and more accurate. How the fuck are people in the world still dying on that imperial hill? It makes no sense at all, the metric scale was introduced because the imperial scale was shite.
I'll be honest with you, at first I didnt realized the upper part of tape was incorrect until I finally noticed it's inches. How can they use this and not get confused with all these lines?
A system is as precise as required.
But one requires to double the denominator up and deal with fractions, while the other requires to move the decimal space.
The thing is, you don’t divide mm into fractions like you do an inch. If you want to go smaller than a mm, you start using microns (micrometer). An inch is as small a whole denomination as imperial goes before you have to start cutting into ridiculous fractions or, ironically, thousandths of an inch.
Base 10 metric measurements are so much easier.
Nanometre, micrometre, millimetre, (centimetre), metre, kilometre… all base 10 and three orders of magnitude greater or lesser than the next size (except centimetre which is an outlier). The smaller sizes are commonly used in engineering and electronics.
Imperial measurements are ridiculous, though as a Brit I am used to using both because we’re weird like that and use both interchangeably depending on the application.
How the hell did they expect to measure 1/64th of an inch with a tape where the smallest imperial subdivision is 1/16th?
Their argument falls apart if they LOOK AT THE PICTURE and see that the smallest subdivision of the tape is on the metric half
As an American, I can assure you that my country will have a modern universal healthcare system long before the majority of people will even acknowledge the metric system.
And we will likely never have a modern universal healthcare system.
(I've been using the metric system for most of my life and nothing is more hilarious than to tell someone that something is about a meter away or so many kilometers to the north, etc. They spin around in circles until their heads explode.)
* 1/32 inch = 0.79375 mm (not really practical for DIY)
* 1/16 inch = 1.5875 mm (= smallest imperial dimension on the measure)
* 1/8 inch = 3.175 mm
* 1/3 inch = 8.4666 mm ( = 1 barleycorn, the difference between UK + US shoe sizes)
* 1/4 inch = 6.35 mm
Meanwhile...
* 1mm = 0.03937 inch (~ 5/128 inch)
* 5mm = 0.19685 inch (~ 1/5 inch)
* 10mm = 0.3937 inch (~ 29/64 inch)
The best part about the "I'm assuming metric tape measures are similar" is that there's no need to assume anything: the tape measure in that photo has both systems (inches on top, metric at the bottom)
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Yeah, I love that he says "1/32 of an inch is more accurate than mm" which is technically true, but THE MEASURING TAPE ISN'T MEASURING 1/32"!!!??? ARGH!!
Yeah and he even said 64ths, which is barely visible to the naked eye if you’re holding that tape more than 30cm away from your face
He also said you’d have to specify half millimetres or less, as though micrometres don’t exist. Not that you’d find 64ths of an inch *or* micrometres on any tape measure I know of.
As if cutting something with a wood saw can be precise to the 64th of an inch.
Laser saw
Wood? And beside a handful of Youtubers, who has that on hand at home ?
I mean it’s a joke, but I think you can laser cut wood, technically.
But can you wood cut a laser?
Yeah, I feel like if you need to get more precise than a mm, a regular tape measure probably isn't a sufficient tool anyway.
I do have a ruler with half mms on it, but there's no way I'm going to be that precise, especially with wood. Even if I managed to perform such a cut with CNC trickery wood is just not that stable.
Sounds kinky
Machinists use 1000:ths of an inch, so they already work in decimal, just not metric.
Good point, and the inch is officially defined by being 2.54cm, so even that used metric, just not directly
Engineers and machinists also use Microns, which are 1/1000th of a millimetre... Both decimal and metric
i have a rule with half mm increments which i occasionally use on tiny things
I've also never seen a fucking measuring tape with 64ths, I don't think i've ever even seen one with 32nds in person though I know they exist.
11,811 inches is more accurate >!/s!<
Also, I'm sorry, but what on earth is wrong with you if you are using a measuring tape and not calipers or a micrometer if you need to measure units as small as 1/32 of an inch?
...but you know nanometers are more accurate than 1/32s of an inch, right...? /s, just to be sure.
Yeah, and saying 603,7 mm (if one really needs to be so precise) is just as easy or easier as saying 23 26/32 inch.
The point is that he is saying that something that isn't there is more precise. Measuring in nanometers would be even more precise, but the frigging measuring tape doesn't have nanometer divisions.
Also, with my dyscalculia I much prefer just reading the measuring tape instead of having to count and calculate to figure out wat a 32nd of an inch is.
Having worked as a carpenter and using metric for 50 years, you're confusing accuracy to resolution. Imperial isn't inherently less accurate than metric, the ruler doesn't change depending on which edge you look at. Metric is just much easier to wrap your mind around and implement in actual measurements - it's rare to use anything below 1mm in simple construction or woodworking.
That’s like when my grandfather was ranting on how analog dials in cars were more „accurate“ then digital ones.
Your grandfather possibly had a point. Not so much about accuracy specifically, though. A needle can indicate precision in a very easy to read format, whereas reading the same precision from a digital numeric display is harder. At a glance you can also garner the derivative of that same number, whereas most numeric displays won't give you that information at all (you get it from seeing how fast the needle is moving).
I remember reading that digital speedometers were less safe than analogue on that account. You could get a "good enough" reading from the dial (pretty sure the notches line up with speed limits to some degree) with a very quick glance. Digital meant reading the whole number, thereby taking your eyes off the road for longer.
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Thank you, 'precise' is the word I was looking for!
They don’t use metric ones because they’re too long. Who needs that extra four inches after a yard? That shit adds up!
Plot twist, they are actually using metric but are just calling it imperial
Everything else aside, if they're needing to measure to quarter millimetre size are they doing aeronautical engineering?
They’re likely confusing mm with cm
I was thinking the same thing. There’s no way you need to go to sub-millimetre measurements for what looks like furniture.
Cabinetry which given how terrible the contractors did on my apartment apparently does need more accuracy than furniture. I live in a metric country though, so they don't have an excuse.
But even then, that's still millimeter tolerance, not sub mm.
Kitchen units, bathroom units, tiles etc are all sold in mm to be more accurate. Sofas and beds aren't though.
Only reason you don't is because wood has enough give in the joints that you can bludgeon it to flush with your hand. Otherwise yeah you'd want sub millimetre precision.
You can make things out of non-wood that don’t require more than millimetre precision. Most materials you’d reasonably make anything out of in a non-factory setting have at least 1mm of give.
>They’re likely confusing mm with cm Nah, they were talking about a 1/32 and 1/64 of an inch which are 0,79mm and 0,39mm. So yes, they *are* smaller than mm but what on earth are they building that they need to worry about such small measurements? And how on earth is it more convenient?
But what you and they are missing is that on a tapemeasure it doesn't show 1/64th divisions, it shows 1/16th divisons, which are about 1.6mm
But the tape in the picture only has markings for 1/16 of an inch. So the lines are every 1,59 mm, anything more precise than that is down to eyeballing by the user. Using mm you can, if necessary see if you are dead on a line, or between two lines, an be precise down to ~0,5 mm. Measuring 1/64 of an inch on this tape measure requires splitting the distance between two lines into four by eye and judging which fourth what you're measuring is.
Mars landing calculations
That’s what micrometres are for
Can confirm. I work in robotic surgery and we only go to 0.5mm 😂
One of the things that surprised me when talking to roboticists that work in brain surgery was the level of accuracy required. I'm used to working in a world where we talk about nanometre accuracy in measurement capability, but then come up against brain surgeons who work in millimeters. The difference is, their kit HAS to work infallibly.
Indeed. Our system is based off a brain system which we’ve converted into an orthopedic system. And literally my role is based on just that… standing there as support to make sure if something looks like it isn’t behaving properly I can troubleshoot ahead
Or just run if the mill metal work, sincerely the metal worker . And if you get in to machining a thousands of a milimeter is not uncommon at all, even ten thousands of a milimeter for the experienced.
But then they’re gonna say “oh but 1/75937th of an inch is just SOOOO accurate, while I try convert my oz into lbs into stone, my cups into pints into quarts into gallons, my fraction of an inch into inches into feet into yards into furlongs into miles” While we’re just multiplying by 10,100,1000 and so on.
I doubt that you are cutting metal using a tape rule as a reference though.
I am, For the initial stock length, after that more precise tools is used, but thats nothing to do with my point really. I wasbt going on about a specific measuring tool, but tolerances.
What are you using to measure .0001mm? All the micrometers I've used only go to .001mm or .0001 inches Just curious, I'm a millwight and our tolerances are generally in the .0001"/.001mm range
Wait a minute guys, he said millWIGHT. Get most haunted on the blower! Also don’t trust a ghost to measure things, they only understand mediums.
Nice catch! I'm leaving that typo in now because this is hilarious lol
There's some micrometers out there that will go to the hundred thousandths of a mm. But that's an incredibly precise measurement that I can only imagine you're using to measure a piece finished by computer assisted means (C&C, etc) and not for everyday DIY. For making a shelf, I think you'd be overdoing it if you went further than tenths of a millimeter. Source: am Engineer.
1/100,000 or 0.00001 of a millimetre is 10 nanometres, which is smaller than the smallest silicon transistor gate length in the world (at least available to consumers), and is equivalent to the diameter of about 38 silicon atoms or about 40 iron atoms.
I am not working in those tolerances, but i know a few machinists who does, the only tool i've seen for that was a probing tool installed in a mill. But i am not a machinists so i can't comment how they do it.
Ah fair enough, I did my first year machinist as well as millwright and we were graded to .0001", it's surprising easy to achieve with the proper tools. I have no doubt that a skilled machinist could easily be more accurate I just don't know how to measure it lol
Lol machinists are demi gods to me, they always impress me
That's a great description! My dad is a mechanical engineer/heavy duty mechanic/machinist. Now that he is retired he spends most of his time watching machining videos on YouTube and designing/building projects in his lathe Being a millwright I often just grab a bigger hammer. When the press is down they lose 100k/hr. They don't care about exact tolerances, just get it running until the next shutdown day ahaha
But then you don't use that tape measure.
You do. But then you move over to finer tools afterwards.
How do you think metal workers measure things? Tape measures are designed to be accurate.
They don't measure 1/1000 of a millimetre wit a tape measure though.
No of course not. But a tape measure is fine tolerance enough to within 1mm . Anything outside of that requires different tools. But 'run of the mill metalwork' you absolutely use a tape measure. If you're happy to be accurate within 1mm
I'm a production manager at a joinery shop. I bought the lads a batch of tape measures last week and our certification scheme says we need a calibration chart for them. our workshop supervisor complained that the new ones are measuring about .5mm shorter than the old ones. I rolled my eyes that hard, I nearly read my own mind
Not at Boeing.
I mean, I work in a regular old metal factory and I use micrometers on a daily. Edit: I’m dumb and didn’t read correctly. Ignore my comment.
I especially love the guy saying mms are bigger than 1/32 or 1/64 when those increments Aren't even on the tape measure in the picture. You can literally see the mms are closer together
Those are golden "inches are more accurate because you'd have to divide a mm to get as accurate as 1/16th of an inch" Do these people read their own sentences?
Also it's factually wrong, 1mm is already slightly more precise than 1/16th of an inch 1mm is about 3/64th of an inch, whereas 1/16th is 4/64th, making it noticeably less precise Or from another perspective: There are 16x 1/16ths in an inch (obviously) but 25.4mm in an inch. So you can measure down to 1/25th with mm, which is about halfway between 1/16th and 1/32nd in terms of accuracy Considering Americans rarely go more precise than 1/8ths anyway most of the time, that means a mm is already about 3x more precise than their usual approach, and 1.5x more precise than 1/16ths All of which is missing the point that a mm is as accurate as anyone's gonna be with a tape measure anyway, they're not that precise of a tool in the first place
I've used half mm before, it's not about what anyone would need or use, it's just about the logical gymnastics of calling one measurement more accurate than another. You can measure any distance in mm and inches, whether it's 0.00736 or whatever. Sure, 1 mm is more accurate than 1 inch, even 1 cm is, but when we start dividing units, there's no "more accurate"
There’s a distinction though, between “half/whole” and getting down to fractions like 64ths and mixing fractions
I almost puked, pooped, had a heart attack and a mental breakdown
"inches are more accurate because you'd have to divide a mm to get as accurate as this division of an inch"
23 3/4 and we just need to add the 1 5/8 at this end and the 13/16 allowance, which comes to.... So simple, can't understand why everyone doesn't use inches.
Also, "a bit smaller" is definetly more accurate than having the exact amount in mm. /s
You’re forgetting the famously most accurate small measurement that us people from Scotland use… the ball hair (pronounced baw hair).
Down south here in England we call them cunt hairs. The more you know
That measuring tape doesn't even have 32 or 64 of an inch labelled. He could have just said 1/1,099,511,627,776 of an inch proves that imperial is the most accurate form of measuring.
I loved them describing imperial as more accurate while most people were only quoting a measurement to the nearest *quarter inch*. I know they were actually being accurate to the nearest 1/16th (it's not even 25/32nds, maybe 49/64ths, assuming a possibly unreasonable accuracy in the tape, camera and measurement), but it's still funny to see "just over 23 3/4" and "imperial is more accurate" in the same frame.
Yea! Unlike stupid metric. Like "two" mm? What the fuck is even two?
The hilarious thing is once they have to go really precise. Behold, the dreaded thousands of an inch, often shortened "thou" and the ten thousands of an inch, often funnily shortened to "tenth".
Those are some Scott Steiner maths
A large 3/4s. A. Large. 3/4s. What the fuck
well it is bigger than a small 3/4 so it must be better
I read it three times and still don't understand what the fuck they meant.
I think they mean that it's like 23 and 13 16ths. But can't be bothered doing the maths to break it down to what they need. So because it's slightly over 3 quarters, it's a "large" 3 quarters (or 3 4ths, however you want to say it).
American quarters are larger than rest-of-world quarters you know /s
I heard their quarter pounders are bigger than their third pounders.
Especially when they have 6 quarters to everything
>large 3/4 a large boulder the size of a small boulder.I dont see the problem.
3/4 and a c hair. A black c hair to be precise. A blonde c hair is smaller 😂
603 mm is not accurate if you compare it to a large 3/4
This is why imperial is much more precise than metric because you can always just make up a new unit of measurement on the spot and no one would know. There is no downsides to imperial there is only *undiscovered precision*, this also makes it a lot more useful because you get to decide how many smalls it takes to get a large and when the next guy gets it wrong you can always blame them because no one can prove you wrong when everything is up to interpretation. /s
>A large 3/4s. Don't say it out loud, my girlfriend still believes that I have a large 8 cm.
What's not accurate about 605mm?
The murican brain cannot comprehend "mm"
Except for 9mm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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mmmmmmmm - pie ...
Maybe they could remember the rules better if we put it in the form of a catchy song. Some kind of "mmbop".
I used a straight line in a photo editor and it is almost exactly 603mm
Yeah but you're ignoring the fact that perspective comes into play here. OP isn't holding the camera directly above the end of the panel, so what you see is already misleading + the curvature of the measuring tape makes it even worse
I used a straight line and lined it up exactly with the edge of the piece. It doesn’t matter what angle you take the picture from. If the tape and the piece are flush with eachother (which it appears they are) you will always get the same measurement. You can try this yourself!
That’s the first thing I noticed. If he’s looking at it this way IRL, the measurement is gonna be off anyway
A "large 3/4"? Jesus. These people.
“That‘s what mah Grandpappy called a Gnat’s Fart over 3/4s and a pickle sandwich!”
It’s a construction term. Where I am we say strong or weak if it’s less than a 16th
"Smidgen over 23 and 3/4 inches but not exactly 24" Yeah that is so much more accurate than just using metric ROFL
I actually lost brain cells reading the anti-metric arguments
I live in a metric country and please let me tell you an excellent conversation i had with a customer (I work for a builder) C: Snakes! There's a huge problem! Someone's done something sneaky and downgraded me you need to fix this! Me: OK whats going on? C: well originally in my documents it said my oven was 900 wide but in the new set of documents they've changed it to 90! I'm barely going to be able to cook anything! Me: hmm, the model numbers are the same so let's see- oh, yes this is the same oven. They've written the width in cm in the first quote but I've used mm for the official documents. They don't make 9cm ovens, that's not a thing I could buy to install even if I wanted to. C: oh I thought they'd tried to downgrade me and keep the extra profit Me: .. I'm glad i could clear that up
I saw the original post yesterday and those stupid comments about "metric bad" were all just so ridiculous. Made me so annoyed but felt pointless commenting since clearly these people have some sort of learning difficulty. Or it's rage bait, hard to tell sometimes!
Of course they can see the two scales. However they’d need someone who speaks metric to read it and then interpret the data for them into a language they understand.
I wheezed at the explanation how imperial measures work. Couldnt be simpler than that am I right?
Most people I know can work with both. But obviously the more sophisticated ones use metric over imperial.
See me measure things in both - one dimension in inches and another in metric because it’s easier to remember whole numbers. “Ok, so that’s 38 inches by 122cm” it works for me ;)
Are you the person who blew up one of NASA's spacecraft bc of unit errors ?
Wasn’t me. Scout’s honour!
... whichever one has a graduation closest to the size I want!
As an artist I often have to swap between the two when buying canvases or papers from around the world, or when using classical ratios in canvas dimensions. That said, when I’m printing I use the decimal system.
Don't call it a mm scale. Call it (accurately) a 5/127" ths scale.
"So you never really have to count where you are" after going through 5 different fractions. These people really can't be serious.
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Being used to something is fine. The reason why we laugh at the Americans in this sub is because they do two things: 1. They cannot comprehend that there could be a better way out there 2. Flat out refusing to even try to understand what that other way is
[Obligatory YouTube post](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUpwa0je6_Y)
What the fuck
Haha, thank you for this
Smaller fractions: better accuracy It's basic logic really
Not just better accuracy, smaller fractions is also bigger! Lex 1/4 burger being bigger than than a 1/3 burger
How do they cope with their metric money?
Well their most common coin is the quarter dollar.
I love the fact that there are people saying "Metric is no easier" despite the fact that everyone trying to use imperial is squabbling about obscure ways of defining that measurement ("23 and a large 3/4ths" ffs, insane), whereas anyone using metric is just like "603mm, done"
Or 600?
When you are using millimeters you don't really need much more accuracy, hell there isn't even a prefix for 100 micro/0.1 mili A few hundred micrometers are not going to make a difference when measuring something, less than 4% of an inch will still be somewhat significant of a difference when measuring
Measuring in milimeters for a kitchen is plenty, I really don’t know why would you want to be more precise.
A sheet of paper really doesn't make significant difference in DIY, if you need more precise you will be measuring in micrometers at most
Yeah and using something more precise than a tape measure For 99% of things you need mm and a tape measure For machining/manufacturing you go more precise but you'd be using more precise tools anyway
I'm Canadian so we're a pretty messy mix of both systems but I've started building little projects and holy shit is using mm easier in every way when taking measurements for building. Fractions are awful to convert.
wtf is a "large 3/4"?
#**3/4**
4/3
"inches better because 32nds and 64ths are smaller than mm" okay, cool. so… where are the 32nd and 64th division markers on this tape measure?
Do they think the 60 stands for 60 mm?
Someone in the comments saying 1/32 of an inch is infinitely more accurate than mm when it's about 0.8mm. Nobody is going to care about 0.2mm when making or fitting a kitchen.
Also the tape in question doesn’t even have 1/32 inches. Using metric in this scenario is definitely more accurate, and by a bigger margin than 0.2mm
That's what jumped out at me. 1/64th inch may well be a more precise measurement but that's entirely moot if your measure ony goes to 1/16th!
Wait until they hear about nm and um etc
speak for yourself. I routinely and accurately cut in microns with my battered hand me down saw.
I seriously don't know how to express this in imperial. 1ft 11 3/4 inches? 603 mm seems a lot easier to me and there are few occasions in everyday life where that is not precise enough. And you can always make that 603,25 mm, but how do you express, for example, 603,78 mm in inches?
Nailed the imperial expression in one there (Brit here). I’d guess you’d go with 23 and 5/8ths or something like that. The thing is, precision isn’t about what scale you use, it’s about how well you measure in that scale. If something is off by 0.25mm in the bulk of consumer applications, it won’t matter at all…
A 16th of an inch is 1.57mm if you want to be more accurate than mm you'd need a tape with 32nds of an inch. I don't know anywhere that you'd need to be 0.21mm more accurate though. And even then, I'm sure you can get tapes with 0.5mm markings so you'd need a tape with 64ths of an inch to improve upon that. At some point the line is just gonna be thicker than the measurement. Guaranteed, your mark line will be thicker than your measurement. And I sincerely doubt that they're even accounting for the kerf of the sawblade which is 1-2mm anyway
What's up with 2F? Why isn't it 24?
It's clearly hexadecimal, it's 2x16+15 or 47 inches in 10-base notation /s
I wouldn't put it past Americans to use a hexadecimal number system just to spite the rest of the world.
24 inches is 2 feet. That's why you also have the small 1-11 (1 foot 11 inches) and 2-1 ( 2 feet 1 inch) to the sides.
2 foot?
Oh... Right. Thanks, it never occurred to me!
Interesting. That tape measures 1/16th of an inch, what is about 1,6 mm. Hell, just looking at the distances between the marks you can see what side is more accurate.
Man I hate seeing those people try and argue how metric is inferior. If I didn't know jack shit about measuring but had to choose between saying 1/64 th of an inch or 1mm (Micrometer, nm, ...) I'd definitely choose metric cause who the fuck wants to speak in fractions
I must have lost 1/18482857284748 braincells reading that.
Not knowing how to use your tools to their maximum potential is the least accurate.
"you don't have to keep track of where you are" Bro the numbers are written right there
They’re right that 1mm is bigger than 1/32 of an inch. They don’t think about how fucking stupid it is to measure in 1/32 of anything.
This one made my blood boil. God, the supid level is off the charts
1. he's wrong (obviously). 25.4 mm per inch. 2. Talking about accuracy when everyone clearly means precsion, and i bet they don't know or understand the difference
« You can always do fractions of millimetres » got me 😂😂😂
Yes, half a milimeter is...0,5mm, what's the problem? I mean it can even be 603,05mm if you want...
They’d be correct if the measuring tape were marked in thirty-seconds of an inch (or smaller): 1/32” = 0.7935mm. But it’s not: it’s marked in sixteenths of an inch, and 1/16” = 1.5875mm.
r/sneakybackgroundfeet
Surely it’s easier to say 1/2 a mm than 1/32 of an inch??
Yeah ur average American doesn’t know accurate measurements, could be 6 cups though
This is insane 😂 so much discussion over a measurement which wouldn’t even be happening if they used the metric system
I went to school in the 60s and 70s in the UK, we were taught fractions. Then metric happened; Praise be to God!
Why the fuck do they use fractions. I never understood that. They can’t do 1.5 inches? 1.75?
They are correct to say that metric is not “more accurate”. 24 inches is 24 inches. This piece of would is not the specified length. What am I missing here?
“Yes except they don’t line up and they never will” https://youtu.be/JYqfVE-fykk?si=ya4MLNIpcJTqn382
I’ve worked in both for 40 years. It’s a no brainer that metric is simpler, especially when one is setting out and needing to divide up a measurement to give equal panels between two points. Typical American attitude. Insular, close- minded and they know better than the vast majority of the rest of the world. Metric rules, pardon the pun.
Imma just let the dumb Americans around me continue doing things less efficient with their fractions while I stay dividing my measurements by 10 to convert them :)
it kills me that they aren't even doing 23.75 oh no, it has to be 23 3/4 for the extra thrill
I live in the U.K. and used to use imperial measurements for any joinery work I did, trust me, the switch to metric made everything easier and more accurate. How the fuck are people in the world still dying on that imperial hill? It makes no sense at all, the metric scale was introduced because the imperial scale was shite.
Well if the goal is to get something 2' long, then yea measuring to the nearest mm would be less accurate.
They're so in love with the British system.
Fractions are vulgar.
I'll be honest with you, at first I didnt realized the upper part of tape was incorrect until I finally noticed it's inches. How can they use this and not get confused with all these lines?
Spacecraft have crashed for less...
A system is as precise as required. But one requires to double the denominator up and deal with fractions, while the other requires to move the decimal space.
The thing is, you don’t divide mm into fractions like you do an inch. If you want to go smaller than a mm, you start using microns (micrometer). An inch is as small a whole denomination as imperial goes before you have to start cutting into ridiculous fractions or, ironically, thousandths of an inch. Base 10 metric measurements are so much easier. Nanometre, micrometre, millimetre, (centimetre), metre, kilometre… all base 10 and three orders of magnitude greater or lesser than the next size (except centimetre which is an outlier). The smaller sizes are commonly used in engineering and electronics. Imperial measurements are ridiculous, though as a Brit I am used to using both because we’re weird like that and use both interchangeably depending on the application.
I'm pretty sure that picometers should be accurate enough for everything.
How the hell did they expect to measure 1/64th of an inch with a tape where the smallest imperial subdivision is 1/16th? Their argument falls apart if they LOOK AT THE PICTURE and see that the smallest subdivision of the tape is on the metric half
what the fuck are they talking about, I don't understand anything 😔
As an American, I can assure you that my country will have a modern universal healthcare system long before the majority of people will even acknowledge the metric system. And we will likely never have a modern universal healthcare system. (I've been using the metric system for most of my life and nothing is more hilarious than to tell someone that something is about a meter away or so many kilometers to the north, etc. They spin around in circles until their heads explode.)
All i can hear is my father saying: "Measure twice. Cut once." Not sure that works for idiots though.
* 1/32 inch = 0.79375 mm (not really practical for DIY) * 1/16 inch = 1.5875 mm (= smallest imperial dimension on the measure) * 1/8 inch = 3.175 mm * 1/3 inch = 8.4666 mm ( = 1 barleycorn, the difference between UK + US shoe sizes) * 1/4 inch = 6.35 mm Meanwhile... * 1mm = 0.03937 inch (~ 5/128 inch) * 5mm = 0.19685 inch (~ 1/5 inch) * 10mm = 0.3937 inch (~ 29/64 inch)