I didn’t know this about the MiG-29

Because 128 ounces to 1 gallon... 12 inches to 1 foot... 5,280 ft to 1 mile.. 0.3333333333333333333333333... yards in a foot.. all makes perfectly clean sense

Only reason people struggle with metric is you don't have an innate sense of scale for it. But imagine if you knew a meter as intuitively as you know a foot.. and a kilogram as intuitively as you knew a pound.. actually you do! One gram is basically a paperclip(ish) in weight. Less common things would have so much more meaning and conceptual scale. Which, btw, even the meter makes sense as it's not an arbitrary unit, it is a fraction of the distance from the equator to the north pole.. something like 1 ten millionth

It's not even a 'Murica thing.. we inherited imperial from those pesky British redcoats with distances based on arbitrary things.. "bloody good Podrick! Splendid!"

PS - I don't actually care.. and have sworn many a time when trying to convert newton meters to inch pounds, etc.

I'm comfortable and proficient in the use of the metric system and converting those measurements to Imperial or SAE equivalents in my head.

There are 8.8057 inch pounds in a N-m, I just use 9. With 25.4 mm to an inch, I round it to 25. A meter is 3.37 feet, I use 3.3. There are 453.592 grams in a pound, a kilogram is 2.205 pounds. Using 454 and 2.2 is easier.

These mental conversions are close enough to give an idea of the metric measurements, and if I'm doing something that requires more precision, I use an online conversion widget.

It's not that hard to remember the main SI equivalents.
 
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