14
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org to c/youshouldknow@lemmy.world

Why YSK: If you're an American (or Liberian/Myanma), simply knowing that 1m~=3.28ft is... not that helpful. Understanding a unit requires lived experience, after all

Well, if you play Minecraft: good news! Blocks in Minecraft are exactly 1m^3^. If you can close your eyes and visualize a Minecraft grid, you're probably already surprisingly good at measuring things in meters.

Let's give it a shot:

  • How tall is the average person? A little bit less than ~~2 blocks~~ 2 meters
  • How wide is the average person? About ~~1/2 a block~~ 1/2 a meter
  • What's the furthest a young person can fall before it starts getting painful? Just over ~~3 blocks~~ 3 meters
  • How big is the average room? About ~~6x6 blocks~~ 6x6 meters

Some players might even be familiar with kilometers if they use waypoint mods, such as Xaero's Minimap. If a map marker says it's 1000 blocks away, that's 1km. How long does it take a healthy person to walk ~~1000 blocks~~ 1 kilometer? About 10 minutes!

top 24 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] sarsaparilyptus@lemmy.fmhy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

How wide is the average person? About 1/2 a block 1/2 a meter

This advice doesn't apply to Americans

[-] Seven@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

An average american is 26 big macs tall

[-] s0phia@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Is there a TheyDidTheMath on lemmy already? I need to know if this is accurante.

[-] blueskiesoc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I love when they're called freedom units.

What's that in freedom units?

Sounds ridiculous in a good way.

[-] PeterPoopshit@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

1 meter is roughly 17 football field bud lights per ar-15.

[-] CAVOK@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” ― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing

[-] T156@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Wasn't that just part of the Cold War/Terror War fervour? Where everything was freedom something or other.

Freedom fries, Freedom Units, Freedom bangstick, Freedom Vroom Vroom, etc

[-] blueskiesoc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah. All because republicans were pissed that France didn't want to invade Iraq with us.

Here's a link for those that don't know.

[-] Willer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Honestly these are the sort of shortcuts a teacher should embrace. Personally i just had the idea of flooding public schools with metric rulers but this is even better

[-] guillermo_del_taco@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago

Another useful tip: because the conversion rate of 1.609 miles to kilometers is so close to the golden ratio (1.618), you can use the Fibonacci sequence to estimate a conversion.

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...

5 miles is about 8km, 8 miles is about 13km, etc

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Welp....I'm just glad a younger audience is on lemmy.

[-] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

Man, I'm 27 years old. Minecraft came out while I was in middleschool. I appreciate being called young... but I'm dealing with very adult feeling things at this stage in my life, like a balding scalp and dead parents.

[-] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Sorry for your loss, mate 😞 Hope things start leveling out for you.

[-] chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

It's OK. I was never really that attached to my hair in the first place

[-] okamiueru@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Comedy gold. A twist and a pun. At the same time.

[-] mustbe3to20signs@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Are there non-metric meters?

[-] fart@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

i feel like this falls apart pretty quickly lol

[-] Seven@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

"Whot to heck, how is this YSK?.... Oh it is a freedom thing"

[-] zkikiz@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

Approximations in imperial units helps me a lot. A meter is a yard, a centimeter is about 3/8" (2.5 per inch), a millimeter is about 1/32" (half a 16th). Everyone knows how big two liters is from soda bottles. A kilogram is about two pounds. Room temperature is 20°C while 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. 50°C is about 120°F.

If we need precision we can break out the measures, we just need to have a gut sense of this stuff.

this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
14 points (76.9% liked)

You Should Know

33035 readers
93 users here now

YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.

All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.



Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:

**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities:

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

Credits

Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS