One, where have you seen a foot-long shoe? That would be, what, 48 or 49 European size? This naming was always curious for me, feet are just… noticeably longer than feet. Two, metric system has the main advantage of easy scalability. Switching from liter to deciliter to centiliter to millimeter is far easier than jumping between gallons, pints and whatever even is there. That’s the main point, not any constant to multiply it on (i.e. a system with inch, dekainch, and so on would be about as good). Three, I really see no problem in saying things like “36 centimeters” to describe an object’s length. I know that my hand is ~17 centimeters, and I use it as a measurement tool in emergencies, but I always convert back to do any kind of reasonable thinking, I never actually count in “two hands and a phalanx”.
One, where have you seen a foot-long shoe? That would be, what, 48 or 49 European size? This naming was always curious for me, feet are just… noticeably longer than feet.
Two, metric system has the main advantage of easy scalability. Switching from liter to deciliter to centiliter to millimeter is far easier than jumping between gallons, pints and whatever even is there. That’s the main point, not any constant to multiply it on (i.e. a system with inch, dekainch, and so on would be about as good).
Three, I really see no problem in saying things like “36 centimeters” to describe an object’s length. I know that my hand is ~17 centimeters, and I use it as a measurement tool in emergencies, but I always convert back to do any kind of reasonable thinking, I never actually count in “two hands and a phalanx”.