On Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:18:51 -0700 (PDT), in alt.home.repair, harry k
wrote:

On Apr 27, 9:57=A0am, Metspitzer wrote:
It is intuitive to cut things in half but......

How many times have you asked yourself in your life........how many
pints/quarts are in a gallon?

repeatedly and I have to dig into the tables in the dictionary to be
sure. Comes up a lot when trying to scale down commercial herbicide
amounts to a 2 1/2 gal back pack sprayer (that is the biggest sprayer
use).

If you have an herbicide that calls for (say) 1:36 dilution, is it easier to
have a 10 quart sprayer, or a 10 liter sprayer?

If anything, I'd wish for a 60-based system of measurements. With sixty of
something, it's easy to divide it evenly into halves, thirds, quarters,
fifths, sixths, tenths, twelfths, fifteenths, twentieths, and thirtieths.

I think it's slightly easier to fractionate feet and gallons, although it's
harder to change units; metric makes unit changes easy, but if you want a
fraction other than a half or a tenth, too bad.