'Pokémon Go' Is Forcing Americans to Learn the Metric System
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[b]'Pokémon Go' Is Forcing Americans to Learn the Metric System[/b]
Via [url=http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/82975/pokemon-go-forcing-americans-learn-metric-system]Mental_Floss[/url] / [url=http://gizmodo.com/pokemon-go-is-secretly-teaching-americans-the-metric-sy-1783459191]Gizmodo[/url]
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[quote][img]http://i.imgur.com/2WMdtDV.png[/img]
In the few days the app has been available to download, Pokémon Go has already launched a global phenomenon. The goal, of course, is to catch them all, but the game has had a few unintended consequences as well. It’s helped players find dates, get some accidental exercise, and now, Gizmodo reports, it’s teaching Americans the metric system.
At least 7.5 million of the users who’ve downloaded the app so far are in the U.S., a country where it's generally not necessary to know how long it takes to walk one kilometer. Pokémon Go is changing that. Instead of measuring distance in miles, the game follows the metric system—just like the majority of the world.
Walking is a big part of the game; to find new Pokémon, players need to go to new places until they appear. One component even forces players to walk a certain distance to accomplish the goal. To hatch a common Pokémon egg, users must walk two kilometers, and to hatch a rare one, they need to walk five kilometers. A lot of players in the U.S. apparently have no concept of how far that is: According to Google Trends, searches for the phrases “how far is 2 km” and “how far is 5 km” spiked after July 6.
If you haven’t gotten around to Googling it yet, there’s .62 miles in a kilometer, making two kilometers equivalent to 1.2 miles and five kilometers to 3.1 miles. There’s no way to switch units from metric in the app, so Pokémon Go players may want to commit those numbers to memory.[/quote]
GOOD. Time to get on with the times, 'muricans.
Yes please. As a home diy-er/mechanic, I'd much prefer if standard would fuck off already. Talk about the most convoluted system of measurement.
this fucking game is changing the very fabric of our society
why are muricans still using imperial anyway? it's a retarded system
Good. It'd be kinda dumb to complicate the game in order to support both standards just to cater to a group which should have been taught metric to begin with.
As an American I'm honestly surprised when someone doesn't know both imperial and metric honestly
[quote]If you haven’t gotten around to Googling it yet, there’s .62 miles in a kilometer, making two kilometers equivalent to 1.2 miles and five kilometers to 3.1 miles. There’s no way to switch units from metric in the app, so Pokémon Go players may want to commit those numbers to memory.[/quote]
If you memorize this, you'll just make it worse.
Just *learn* the damn thing already! :v:
[QUOTE=For No Reason;50708019]As an American I'm honestly surprised when someone doesn't know both imperial and metric honestly[/QUOTE]
Don't they teach that in schools, kinda like, Roman numbers?
I cannot for the life of me visualize distances, so to me this is just using one arbitrary number of steps compared to a different, slightly longer number of arbitrary steps
[QUOTE=Conro101;50708034]I cannot for the life of me visualize distances, so to me this is just using one arbitrary number of steps compared to a different, slightly longer number of arbitrary steps[/QUOTE]
Try learning this, for starters: 100 steps are 100 meters!
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708030]relevant
[IMG]http://kaero.wz.cz/jokes/imperial-vs-si.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I'm still disappointed that the metric system uses tonnes rather than Megagrams
The metric system makes so much sense, I swear I'll never bother learning how to weigh things in pounds/stone or drinks in gallons :v:
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708030]relevant
[IMG]http://kaero.wz.cz/jokes/imperial-vs-si.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story
[QUOTE=redBadger;50708049]Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story[/QUOTE]
i mean i don't mind it, i use both interchangibly
[QUOTE=For No Reason;50708019]As an American I'm honestly surprised when someone doesn't know both imperial and metric honestly[/QUOTE]
at least for me, throughout high school we always had a tendency to use inches over meters. it must be ingrained in our minds at an early age or something. need to measure something? use inches.
at least in science classes and college we use metric most of the time
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708050]water freezing at 0 and boiling at 100 is arbitrary?
oh yeah because using the freezing point of brine makes so much more sense[/QUOTE]
I think you completely missed the point of the post. It said nothing about temperature. It was talking about visualizing distances. They have trouble visualizing distances anyways so it using metric or imperial makes no difference. To them the numbers are effectively arbitrary.
:snip:
yea sorry i fucked up dont mind me
[QUOTE=redBadger;50708049]Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story[/QUOTE]
Knowing the day before the month just doesn't make sense.
--
its the 14th
only 11 days till christmas!
no it's july
oh you should've said that first
Those darn commies
[QUOTE=redBadger;50708049]Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story[/QUOTE]
i always use month-day-year. i mean when you think about it day-month-year makes more sense but i've done month-day-year my entire life and i'm comfortable with it so who cares.
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708040]Try learning this, for starters: 100 steps are 100 meters![/QUOTE]
Actually, 100 meters is equal to about 60 double steps(where both feet have completed 1 cycle)
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708010]why are muricans still using imperial anyway? it's a retarded system[/QUOTE]
There was a time in the 80's or 90's where the government put up signs with both miles and kilometers on it in order to start switching, but people that don't want to change or elderly people that actually could not remember kind of fucked that up for us.
For us, it's the other way around. Why would you put the month before the day? It's literally the international ISO notation, just backwards.
DD-MM-YYYY.
Super simple and makes a ton of sense, IMO.
[QUOTE=ZachPL;50708070]Knowing the day before the month just doesn't make sense.
--
its the 14th
only 11 days till christmas!
no it's july
oh you should've said that first[/QUOTE]
usually when someone asks for the date you give them both the month and day. of course it's not going to make sense if you only provide one of them.
[QUOTE=Octopod;50708076]i always use month-day-year. i mean when you think about it day-month-year makes more sense but i've done month-day-year my entire life and i'm comfortable with it so who cares.[/QUOTE]
Day-month-year is actually backwards from how it should be logically anyways. Our number system puts the smallest units furthest to the right. So Japan (and I think other nations) using year-month-day actually makes the most sense out of the two.
[QUOTE=redBadger;50708049]Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story[/QUOTE]
I wish we could accept the best of both worlds and use year/month/day everywhere. That format doesn't lead to any guesswork.
[QUOTE=Blade Rx69;50708092]I wish we could accept the best of both worlds and use year/month/day everywhere. That format doesn't lead to any guesswork.[/QUOTE]
We use that, only backwards.
Today it's 14/7/2016. Deal with it :v:
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708027] Don't they teach that in schools, kinda like, Roman numbers?[/QUOTE]
None of the schools I went to never taught metric. It was all lbs, Fahrenheit and other stuff.
could be worse, we could have year/day/month
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