It seems like a weird point to bring up. How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing. If I’m measuring something, I either do it in inches, or feet, rarely yards. I’ve never once had to convert feet into miles, and I can’t imagine I’m unique in this. When I have needed to, it’s usually converting down (I.e. 1/3 of a foot), which imperial does handle better in more cases.
Like. I don’t care if we switch, I do mostly use metric personally, it just seems like a weird point to be the most common pro-metric argument when it’s also the one I’m least convinced by due to how metric is based off of base 10 numbering, which has so many problems with it.
Edit: After reading/responding a lot in the comments, it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries. I can’t quite put my finger on how, but it seems the difference is bigger than 1 mile = 1.6km
Imperial came about as a system of units by measuring “everyday” things, and it remains pretty good for that. When you step outside the everyday, then it absolutely sucks - science deals with a lot of things that are too small, and engineering deals with a lot of things that are too large.
When I used to work in the water industry, working out how much chlorine is required to dose a hundred million litres of water per day at 0.5 mg/l, and therefore when I’d have to place an order to refill our fifty tonne storage tank, is easy enough to do in my head. If we were working in imperial, I’d have converted it to metric first and then estimated it.
On the other hand, metric calculations for pressure suck. If I weight 160 lbs and my bike tires are at 80 psi, then I have about two square inches in contact with the ground. If my car weighs 2500 lbs and its tires are at 30 psi, then each tire has about 20 square inches in contact with the ground. If I wanted scientific accuracy, then sure, I’d do it in metric, but I’d check the end result in imperial.
There’s near enough five thousand feet in a mile - if you need more accuracy than what you can do in your head, do it in metric with a calculator.
Tbh I have never had to think about the pressure of my tires that way. I pump the bike tires until I feel they are hard enough, and cars come with stickers in it that display the recommended tire pressure for them. 0 calculations needed.
But if I had to calculate pressures:
The lb<->psi conversion only works on 1G environments.
Yes, most pressure calculations occur on 1G environments, but in that case 1kg=9.8N. which is basically 10N.
If my car has 3000kg of mass, it weighs 30kN. Now the math is just as easy as lb<->psi. With the bonus addition that I can easily differentiate “kg of mass” from “N of force” instead of “pounds of mass” from “pounds of force”.