The trouble with Americans is that they teach us to convert, so students grow up thinking it's all about math, when really it's just about understanding a different measuring system.
If I were to teach metric to Americans, I'd start by teaching how tall people are in meters, how long a car is, how big a phone is... so on. I would not start with the conversions, which is where pretty much every American school curriculum starts.
@realtegan The thing that got me off the "Ugh, everyone needs to be on Celsius" was the question:
"What if I want to know the 0-100 scale temperature in "How hot does a Human Feel" and not in "How hot does Water Feel?"
I'll always be better with a 0-100 for "this is the range of survivable temperature where you probably won't have to worry about it and will have stuff on hand at your local stores to deal with it and won't need specialty equipment to survive indoors"
Flying to a foreign nation and having everyone freak out because "it's 39 degrees outside!" causes that "everyone's upset and I don't know why" adrenaline dump that makes figuring out why everyone's upset and how to help or at least not be in the way all the much harder. If they went "It's 102!" I understand MUCH quicker that 'oh, very hot, have water, don't try to take temp sensitive beings outside of air conditioning, close curtains, don't do stuff that heats the house up"
It is the best thing about the internet. Makes those of us speaking to one another in different measurements able to converse without scratching our heads. Much anyway 😀
Besides missing the point of my post entirely, people who insist on giving me conversion information: Why is it more important to you to convert the numbers than to understand them?
@realtegan Thank You! I’ve been arguing this for years! No American thinks twice about 2-liter soda bottles and never converts them in their head… they just use them.
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