this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 100 points 8 months ago (21 children)

I have this theory that Americans suck at math because they insist on sticking with the imperial measurement system and so nothing makes mathematical sense - Americans intuitively just think in every day units qualitatively. Whereas the rest of the world uses metric, so base 10 math just comes naturally.

Source: I am a US STEM professor. Our students suck at math.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 months ago (8 children)

When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner's chemistry.

For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.

Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says "the decimal system just makes no sense" and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. "Well it just makes no sense." It's just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it's not different from inches to feet. "No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot", continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.

I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren't familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren't too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It's the simplest, most logic based system there is!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (8 children)

IMO metric also allows you to reason about things in your head more easily because doing base-10 calculations in your head is doable.

For example, "Each 1m section of a pipeline contains 20L of oil. The goal is to empty a 200 km section of pipe into trucks. If each truck can handle 20 tonnes of oil, how many trucks would be needed?" In metric that calculation is 20 * 1000 * 200 = 4 million L. 20 tonnes is approx 20,000 L since 1L of water is 1kg, so it's going to be at least within an order of magnitude of that for oil. 4M / 20k = 200.

With US customary units it would be "Each 1 foot section of a pipeline contains 1.5 gallons of oil. The goal is to empty a 100 mile section of pipe into trucks. If each can handle 20 tons of oil, how many trucks will be needed? To handle that calculation you'll have to convert feet to miles. Gallons to pounds, pounds to tons, etc. You can do it on paper, but all those weird conversions add massively to the difficulty.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago

There's a reason why the American science community has long converted to metric. You just can't do calculations like this quickly enough.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fuck me we did those conversions in primary school in Italy in the eighties. Can't remember what year exactly but we were prolly 7yo?

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago

It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

I am a US STEM professor.

Prove it! What is the speed of light in anacondas/average Snapchat duration?

Edit: around 10^11 anacondas per average daily snapchat usage among US teens

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I have a theory that Americans are great at math because they regularly work with base-12 systems.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Three scientists arguing over the definition of zero

Celsius says “zero is the freezing point of water”

Fahrenheit says “no, zero is the freezing point of ammonium chloride”

Kelvin says “hold my beer”

[–] [email protected] 50 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Kelvin: Zero is the freezing point of the universe

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

Kelvin: Zero is the freezing point.
Scientists: Of what?
Kelvin: Yes.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Is that true about fahrenheit? I've never heard that before.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly, it's not the freezing point. Fahrenheit used a brine that included ammonium chloride to set 0 on his scale since it was the closest thing he could make in his lab that was a consistent temperature. The other end was body temperature, which he set at 96 if I'm remembering right since it's more easily divisible than 100. He was a little off on his body temperature measurements so it's considered a little higher than that now.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (6 children)

It's more chaotic than that.

He started with the Romer scale (brine freezes at zero, water 7.5, boils at 60, body temperature 22.5), which he tweaked to not need fractions for plain water freezing and body temperature by fudging some numbers and multiplying by four.

This made water freeze at 30 and human body temperature 90. He recalibrated it so that it was 32 and 96 so that there were 64 degrees between them, so he could draw the markings by dividing the interval between them in half six times.

He then saw that water boiled at about 212 on this scale, so he tweaked it again so that water froze at 32 and boiled at 212, since they're 180 degrees apart, which is desirable because it puts them on opposite sides of a temperature gauge.

Because of these tweaks, the original brine temperature is now about 4F, and body temperature is 98.6.

The tweaks make sense if you know that Fahrenheit was making and selling temperature gauges, so taking the Romer scale and marking every quarter degree gets you the first Fahrenheit scale.
Then he tweaked it to make it easier to produce, and then again to fit in the dial better.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

100C° is not death, it is Finnish sauna temp. Really, Sauna competitions start with 110C°. Famously in 2010 one Russian competitor died, and the Finn who won had to be sent to ER.

Edit: didn't know that they actually haven't held any competitions after that.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sauna competitions

I appreciate how you just dropped this casually like of course everyone knows about Sauna competitions.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Haha, sure, but there isn't much to know.

Sauna competition is that they go inside hot sauna and last one who comes out wins. They increase the temperature and throw water to the sauna stones. That humidity makes the temperature feel quite a lot harder (air is quite good insulator, which is why you don't boil).

In the competition quite often people got first degree burn injuries, which is quite crazy.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think it means dead as in trying to live in a 100° environment. Kind of like the survival rule of 3s, where you can survive 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, 3 hours in an extreme environment, and 3 minutes without air.

I guess it could say "unsustainable" instead of dead, but that's less snappy.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

I really like your attention to detail here. Fahrenheit and Celsius both have degree symbols, but Kelvin doesn't -- just as it should be.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Jokes on you I’m a tardigrade

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The Kelvin timeline is the worst

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Zero is freezing

10 is not

20 is pleasing

30 is hot

40 frying

50 dying

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Yall just jealous that a mile is longer than a kilometer.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It's the opposite. I've lived in both modern, and backward countries.

When you're driving somewhere and you see "50" to your destination, it's infinitely preferable for that to be Km rather than miles. Makes every journey shorter

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What's so special about 0 - 100? 40° of civilized units sucks, but is still perfectly survivable and is becoming more and more common in some parts of the world. That's 104° of fucked up units.

Negatives up to -30° are also common around the world and I frequently went out in shorts and t-shirt in -10° for a short time to grab mail or take out trash.

The only sort of reasonable justification for F units I've ever heard was that there's less of a change between whole degrees, but decimals are not exactly hard to figure out imnho.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Americans are out here needing 100 degrees of magnitude between "it's really cold outside" and "it's really hot outside" while ignoring the scientific uses of anything outside of those values and you expect them to understand decimals?

How many "it's really hot outside" until iron melts, or water boils, or meat cooks? Fuck knows. But I'll be damned if I use punctuation in my maths, this country was founded on addition and subtraction and that's all the founding fathers ever needed, now gtfo with your letters and periods and symbols in my mathematics.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Oh for FCK's sake...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Really cold water, really hot water 😎

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Someone posted here once something like

Farienhiet is how humans feel. Celsius is how water feels. Kelvin is how atoms feel.

I kinda like that.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (9 children)

It only makes sense if you grow up with Fahrenheit. Otherwise Fahrenheit isn't how humans feels since most of us have no concept what these number mean.

If I would just go with 0 - cold 100 - hot I would assume 50 - perfect. But 50 is still chilly. 70-80 feels like it should be getting hot but that's the most comfortable temperature.

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