Canadians*
In utah, I can average 80 mph on a road trip, in the houston texas area I can go maybe 20 mph average, so time is a lot more useful of a measure.
We moved to Colorado and 10 miles takes me about 15 minutes to cross the city we’re in, 30 in traffic. Where we grew up 10 miles around the city was 1-2 hours regardless of time of day (except maybe 2am). The country is just way too diverse for distance to be nearly as meaningful at transit time.
Yeah I’m a tad confused at why it’s weird to measure by time. If I’m trying to get somewhere deep in the city vs on highway traffic the whole time vs something in between the two, the same distance will give you radically different times to traverse it.
It’s also useful to give other people time estimates. Isn’t it more useful to tell your boss that you’ll be 15 minutes late versus the distance away in miles or kilometers? How about when you’re a guest arriving at someone’s house? Isn’t it more logical to tell them you’re 30 minutes from arrival as opposed to giving them the exact distance away in km or mi, especially when they might not know whether you’re arriving from a high traffic area or not?
There is a lot you can criticize the US for and it would be totally valid. This one is bizarre and unwarranted.
I didn’t mean to criticize anything, only to illustrate the difference c:
Btw Europeans also use minutes for most of the situations you mentioned. The difference is only really obvious for fixed distances like “I live X minutes from my family” vs “I live X km from my family”
That’s… what Americans do. I live about 1500 miles from my parents, and only use time as a measurement if I’m planning to drive that far, mainly in days.
Ah sorry, man. I guess not a specific jab at you, but it’s weird because I’ve heard people make fun of this a lot and it’s just a bit odd to me.
Is that instrument cluster from a jeep zj?
how are you so smart https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeep_Odometer.jpg
Would you describe someone who has likely driven a Jeep as smart?
sorry for giving a compliment, i’ll think about my actions next time
Thanks for making me feel good
Same as physicist measuring interval in special relativity. And I am talking about the bottom picture.
"The British think 100 miles is a long way.
The Americans think 100 years is a long time."
The Americans also tend to think that the mile is not a silly unit.
How is 100 miles a long way? It’s like an hour and a half.
100 years is like 20,000 cannonball runs, of course it’s a long time!
100 miles means I will likely never visit you
You wouldn’t spend an hour and a half to visit me? That seems like you don’t like me very much.
I have some family I visit for a weekend 2-3 times a year, a bit over 400 miles away. It’s a 5.5 hour trip I can knock out in a morning or after work.
I mean… Yea.
I ve got (close) family 140 miles away. I saw them 2nd time in my life (21) this year, and not because our families dont like each other, just mostly the distance.
It’s three hours round turn, that means I stay over night and that means it’s something that takes all weekend. There is a very limited number of people that I am willing to spend that much time for
hahaha a three hour round trip is an overnight stay hahaha ha that is goddamn adorable.
I measure in Freedom Eagles per Hamburger
Can confirm. I pedest, and it’s more useful for me to know how long it will take to get somewhere than how far away that somewhere is. One effects my time of departure, the other is just a fun fact.
45 minutes by car.
28 hours on foot.
Unless you’re trying to get across San Francisco, New York, Austin, or LA in mid day traffic. Then it’s 45 min by foot, and 28 hours by car.
IDK about NYC, man. I was there once and my initial impression was media lied about the traffic. There was no cars anywhere; but the sidewalks were crowded as fuck. 🤣
And every time I thought “screw all these people, I’m taking a cab” I’d tell them where I wanted to go and they were like “I’m not gonna take your money to go 2 blocks.”
I guess it depends on the part of Manhattan. I’ve absolutely been stuck in traffic that takes eons to move 3 blocks.
We relate distances in drive times around here
Europeans
MPH
we clearly haven’t brexited hard enough yet
metres per hour
Sounds shockingly accurate for most European domestic cars
I fairly often drive 50,000m/h, except on the autobahn. There I usually go about 120,000,000mm/h.
And if I stack 1000 1cm³ blocks of water, the resulting 10m high column exerts 100kPa of pressure on its base. And to heat it by 1°C requires 1kcal, while 1N would accelerate it by 1m/s every second.
What I want to say is: Your point is stupid and your units are too.
And this is all broken up into decihour days, no? With each hour being made up of 100 centiminutes?
Can you spot why years, months, days, hours and minutes are not SI units?
This is an honest question. The SI units were chosen very carefully with regard to their human usability and scientific universality.
To be clear, most science/advanced education in the US is conducted in SI units.
Also, a year is about pi*10^7 seconds, which can be useful for back-of-the-envelopes.
Man can literally stack blocks of water and is excited about units being easy to convert. Wild.
and is excited about units being easy to convert
anyone who doesn’t is already dead inside
Must be a small pic, it loaded in less than 0.1% of a football game.
In the Midwest, we sometimes measure distance in number of songs.
My daughter is always asking how long until whatever and I usually say 3 SpongeBobs or however many SpongeBobs or takes
I do this with Titanic for long trips / flights.
