Why YSK: If you’re an American (or Liberian/Myanma), simply knowing that 1m~=3.28ft is… not that helpful. Understanding a unit requires lived experience, after all

Well, if you play Minecraft: good news! Blocks in Minecraft are exactly 1m3. If you can close your eyes and visualize a Minecraft grid, you’re probably already surprisingly good at measuring things in meters.

Let’s give it a shot:

  • How tall is the average person? A little bit less than 2 blocks 2 meters
  • How wide is the average person? About 1/2 a block 1/2 a meter
  • What’s the furthest a young person can fall before it starts getting painful? Just over 3 blocks 3 meters
  • How big is the average room? About 6x6 blocks 6x6 meters

Some players might even be familiar with kilometers if they use waypoint mods, such as Xaero’s Minimap. If a map marker says it’s 1000 blocks away, that’s 1km. How long does it take a healthy person to walk 1000 blocks 1 kilometer? About 10 minutes!

  • guillermo_del_taco@lemdro.idEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Another useful tip: because the conversion rate of 1.609 miles to kilometers is so close to the golden ratio (1.618), you can use the Fibonacci sequence to estimate a conversion.

    1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

    5 miles is about 8km, 8 miles is about 13km, etc

  • Willer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Honestly these are the sort of shortcuts a teacher should embrace. Personally i just had the idea of flooding public schools with metric rulers but this is even better

    • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.orgOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Man, I’m 27 years old. Minecraft came out while I was in middleschool. I appreciate being called young… but I’m dealing with very adult feeling things at this stage in my life, like a balding scalp and dead parents.

  • zkikiz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    01·
    1 year ago

    Approximations in imperial units helps me a lot. A meter is a yard, a centimeter is about 3/8" (2.5 per inch), a millimeter is about 1/32" (half a 16th). Everyone knows how big two liters is from soda bottles. A kilogram is about two pounds. Room temperature is 20°C while 0 is freezing and 100 is boiling. 50°C is about 120°F.

    If we need precision we can break out the measures, we just need to have a gut sense of this stuff.