[pepsi_junkie]

I'm an engineer. All of my education is in SI units, A.K.A. metric. At the same time all of my real world experience is in imperial units. It leads me to always be doing conversions in my head now whenever I have to use metric in the real world. Like "So it's 1500 km, that's about 4,500 feet and 5,280 ft/mile so it's a little over 3/4 mile." Because even after all these years I have no real world frame of reference that lets me just "think" in metric, I have to translate it except when just doing math.

But don't worry, I'm an electrical engineer so my disability with metric isn't dangerous! Volts and amps are the same in both!

[pepsi_junkie]

And to illustrate, I just said in my example that 1,500 km is a little over 3/4 mile. I meant METERS, not km. Duh. But it proves the point, I can’t think in metric naturally, I need to concentrate on it.

[Olog-hai]

I’m sure you meant meters, because 1,500 kilometers is a little over 932 miles.

[IndispensableDestiny]

I'm an engineer. All of my education is in SI units, A.K.A. metric.

My degree is in chemical engineering; 1982. We used English units, SI, CGS, and MKS. Made one understand that units are arbitrary.

[jonascord]

For me, that worked in smaller units, 2.54cm equals 1 inch. 30.5 centimeters equals 1 foot.

The M1078 military truck was originally a Steyr of Germany design. Stewart and Stevenson of Texas bought the license to build it in the US, for TACOM. Ever try to find tons of 10mm steel plate, metric switches and non-aircraft metric hydraulics in the US? The Cat engine's mounting holes were Imperial... The whole truck had to be redesigned in Imperial units, much to the royalty in Houston's bafflement.. What was supposed to be a 6 month conversion turned into a 3 year rebuild.

[Edward Teach]

I’d be happy if everyone learned to pronounce kilometers correctly. It’s kilo-meters, NOT kil-O-meters. Meter, centimeter, millimeter, kilogram, kil-O-meter...wait what? How do you get that?

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

It leads me to always be doing conversions in my head now whenever I have to use metric in the real world. Like "So it's 1500 km, that's about 4,500 feet and 5,280 ft/mile so it's a little over 3/4 mile."

Better start using a calculator. 1500 kilometers is nowhere near 4500 feet..you are off by a factor of 1000 from mixing meters with kilometers. This is an error one would not make with yards and miles.