Darren New wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> Like what? mm, cm, m and km pretty much cover most things in terms of 
>> distance.
> 
> A cm is about right. You need something about a foot, tho. Otherwise you 
> get things like "he was 197 cm tall". 

Yesss? your point being? FYI I do say that and find 6 feet 2 a 
completely ridiculous way of measuring. There is a difference between 
convenience and convention, I guess.

> Note that people really rarely use 
> "yards" as a measure here. It's feet and miles, unless you're measuring 
> something that's particularly sold by the yard, like cloth.
> 
> Kilograms are too heavy and grams are too light. 
Indeed and why have a basic unit and define 1000 times that as a standard?

> Liters are too big and 
> centiliters are too small. Basically, the factor of 1000 in common units 
> is the problem. :-)
> 
>> And having numbers that often go over 100 for everyday temperatures 
>> doesn't seem too convenient.
never had that, thank goodness.
> 
> Having numbers that go below zero for everyday temperatures seems less 
> convenient.
Also because it feels very different, i.e. cold.

> 
>>> and because 10 isn't really divisible by many numbers.
>> But everyone knows how to divide by 10, which I think is more useful.
> 
> Not if you're constructing something. Then you want to be able to take a 
> third of it, for example. Using a duodecimal number system probably 
> would have been a better idea.
> 
> And powers of 10 work almost as poorly as powers of 12 for computers. ;-)
> 
>> It also makes physics equations easier, with no ugly scale factors.  
> 
> No question it works better in science than everyday life. 
Theoretical physics being even better with c=1 and epsilon and mu also.

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