Why do they use CM?
Precision. “17dm” can be anything between 16.5dm or 17.5dm.
You could of course say “I’m 17.5dm tall”, but at this point “I’m 175cm tall” is shorter (no dot).
That said I’ve seen plenty people measuring height in metres and then centimetres. Usually something like “I’m one [metre] and 75 [centimetres] tall”.
A dozenal metric system would work as well as the decimal metric system, as long as everything else was base-12:
| in base 12 | in base 10 |
|---|---|
| 1m’m = 10⁻³m = 0.001m | 1m’m = 12⁻³m = 1/1728m |
| 1c’m = 10⁻²m = 0.01m | 1c’m = 12⁻²m = 1/144m |
| 1m = 1m | 1m = 1m |
| 1k’m = 10³m = 1000m | 1k’m = 12³m = 1728m |
Since we’re at this might as well say the day has 10₁₂k’s = 20736₁₀s. Each k’s is exactly two of our current hours, and each “new second” is roughly two four of our current seconds. Enough of this Sumerian mixed base already!
Except a professor from my grad times. In classroom. His examples were always “consider a sphere with a circumference of 40.0 Mm” and stuff like this.
Yeah, we’d need to change the names and abbreviations of the units too, to show that “km” isn’t 10³ m but rather 16³m = 0x10³m.
Prefixes are more succinct, while still being as unambiguous as scientific notation. (Plus it’s trivial to convert from one to another.)
In hex:
10 mm = 1cm
100cm = 1m
1000m = 1km
1km - 1m = FFFm = 0.FFFkm
Still works fine.
Key supporters of each party are often different parts of the same elite. Both want to enslave you, difference is where.
Yes, it’s mildly infuriating that they’re wasting food with suicidal butchers.
You probably could do it if you grew up measuring things in centimetres and metres, instead of inches, elbows and feet.
In fact I’m often eyeballing ~10cm = 1/10m and ~20cm = 1/5m based on my hand*. If you asked me however “how many feet is this” I’d need to mentally convert “3ft = 1 m” to get any sensible answer.
You’re confusing “it’s more intuitive because I grew up with it” with “it’s intrinsically more intuitive”.
*10cm: from the tip of my middle finger to the knuckle. 20cm: between the tips of my thumb and pinkie, when the fingers are spread out the max.