• Classy
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    It helps that meters and yards are very similar in size. Of course they drift as the distances get larger but in my mind 300m is a pretty reasonable thing to visualize. Just a tad larger than 300yd—about 3 football fields (Inb4 stereotype)

    Km though? I still struggle to compare it to a mile. When someone says “50km” my mind has a hard time imperializing it. What’s that, like 35 miles?

    Maybe memorizing how the km lines up with the mi on my car speedometer would help.

    • Venat0r@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      50km is about 30 miles. An easy way to remember if you’re into fast cars is 0-60mph =~ 0-100kph

    • azulavoir
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      think fibonacci sequence and you’re in good shape

      34 comes before 55, then 3 comes before 5, so 50 km is (55-5) km = (34-3) mi = 31. It works shockingly well

      • virku@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        This is so incredibly much complicated to me than just multiplying or dividing by 1.6.

        And also 55 km is 34 miles, not 31. I had to run it through a converter tool just to be sure.

        Edit: I reread your comment. The goal was 50 kilometers. Then the math checks out. Sorry!

        • azulavoir
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          just multiplying or dividing by 1.6 is about as accurate as my strategy in the other direction - the real value is almost exactly between them.

          • virku@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I guess as long as it works it works. I don’t have to do much of those conversions though. Here in Norway we are metric in almost all of our measurements. Except for some specialist measures like a carton of eggs is a dozen. We often say things happened a fortnight or so ago, etc.