I would rather just have a singular name like “squajibbles” for milimeters and memorize an intuitive sense of what that is. I realize I can do that with the word “milimeters” too but my brain sometimes gets stuck on unpacking the math.

This is, in fact, exactly what metric users do in their daily lives... We don't do math in our heads every time we measure something. We know from experience how large all the units are and pick the one that's appropriate for a given situation, just like you do.

When you measure something using inches, you don't then say "it's this many 1/36ths of a yard" unless you specifically need to convert it into yards for some reason.

Similarly, when we measure something using millimeters, we don't say "it's this many 1/1000ths of a meter". It's just a millimeter. Don't get hung up on the prefix, just ignore it and treat it as a unit of a particular size.

The point isn't to have an intuitive sense of what a millimeter is just by knowing what a meter is. You have to learn both units individually to have intuition about them. The point is to know that a measurement of 500mm is 0.5m without having to do any math in your head beyond moving a decimal point.

Coming from the UK generation that grew up during the decimalisation process, and therefore being equally comfortable with both systems, imperial measures are far less intuitive than metric. Don’t mistake simply being being used to something as it being intuitive.

We use a base 10 numeric system because that’s how many fingers & thumbs we have. Having a system of weights and measures based on that decimal system, is far more intuitive than a system that scales up through orders of distance using different scaling factors at ever order, is so unintuitive as to be absurd.

if you actually use the metric system, millimeter would become that "singular name" you memorize for a certain length. but you could also tell from the name alone what's it about roughly, squajibbles on the other hand...

Intuitiveness comes with usage. When I think of a kilometre, I don't think of a lot of metres, I just think of it as a single unit. A centimetre doesn't send me dividing metres, I just think of a length about the width of a fingernail.

That is fascinating! I had heard of the "metric mile" as being 1500m: the closest you can get to running a statute mile at international competitions.

But I like this 10km mile idea! We could use something like that here in Canada. Sometimes we say "klick" here to mean km, so I have tossed around terms like "decaklick" and "hectoklick" but people look at me funny.

I get the joke. But it does not actually work. The unit is meter (to some power) but it is not the same meter. One is for a specific liquid, the other for a driving distance. That information was just omitted to begin with, since everyone knows what is meant with the regular units/expression. But when you would want to do that, you need to put that information back at the end.

The Andromeda galaxy is ~23.6 Zm away. The metric system reaches far.

one mole ?

They didn’t mimic existing units, an imperial ton is close to a metric ton, and the spelling tonne is just an alternative spelling of ton. In some parts ton means imperial ton, and tonne means metric ton, but it’s not standardized. In German, where the word originally comes from, it’s Tonne (btw the e is not silent, it’s [ɛ] as in let. Or in Porsche (no, it’s not pronounced porsh…).)

1 hundredweight = (1 qt * 32) + 100.7, of course. It’s very intuitive.

I'll call the king!

Ummm... I seem to have misplaced the number.

Yes I require 10 Megafucks of gravel to finish with the landscaping