Post #2551643

@aumalatj@mementomori.social @mrundkvist@archaeo.social Being trained as a scientist but raised as an American generally leaves one with a strange relationship to units. I would always do calculations in SI, almost all the physical constants I know are in SI, and I wouldn't even know some of the unit conversions in US customary units or, in some cases, even how the units are defined for some quantities (e.g., what's the equivalent of a tesla in E&M?). But all my formative experiences were in US customary units; I have a sense of how a certain temperature in Fahrenheit feels. I have an intuitive sense of how long a mile is or how big an acre is. So I would always compute things in SI and preferentially use it for any precision task, but if I want an intuitive sense of a quantity*, it can be useful to convert it to US customary units. * of course this only applies to quantities that fall within the regime of direct human experience. Since the two areas I spent the most time doing research in were quantum physics and astrophysics, this didn't come up all that much. 😁