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It's not convenient! It's a volumetric measurement that doesn't fit neatly with other measurement styles! At least ounces convert neatly into grammes and pints neatly into millilitres, but cups?

For some reason, cups get converted into mass instead of volume!

Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

All hail the mighty metric system although it would kinda make sense to use the imperial system since it is part of the imperium

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nah- I'm 27 and I still use Imperial for most everything except buying cloth, which is sold by the metre, and cooking, and that's only because I keep pulling recipes from all over (and by the gods, America, what is with the fricken cup measures?!)

It is a measurement that usefully underlines the seemingly arbitrary of pre SI units and the reason they existed. Prior to usable standards approximate measurements would be used. As long as one person was consistent and your tolerances were wide enough you were fine.

A foot was, literally, the length of your foot. Want to know how long something was? Walk along it. You then have a vaguely right number when you need to make rope or cut down a tree for wood. A yard is about one pace, so you want to know how far somewhere is? Walk it. An inch is about one thumb length. Then taxes and commerce came in to it, and a tall person and a short person would have very different ideas of how much 10 feet of cloth was, so these measurements were standardized to arbitrary amounts (often things like the length of the kings foot, or in the case of a mile, hundreds of different systems).

The cup is a sensible measurement for baking and cooking in the says before scales were widely in use. If you lived in the old west and your had a recipe that said "12 oz of X and 2lbs of y" it would be a pain without scales. If, however, it said "Two table spoons of X, one teaspoon of Y and 2 cups of Z" you would be able to do that with no scales, no maths and just a couple of spoons and a cup of approximately the right size. Brilliant if you want to make bread or a stew. Very annoying when you want to make a complex recipe that relies on exact measurements.

Which leads me to why I think the IOM would use some form of SI unit. STCs would all be in a standard set of units, and tech as complex as the IOMs must have very tight tolerances. You would therefor need to have standards. STCs mean there MUST be standards, and a set of measurements that can be derived from universal constants is vital. If there is not standards trade would grind to a halt and it would mean that people would be tied to one forge world for everything, or stuff would just not work together. This is not just items like Bolt Guns or Land Raiders, but simple things like batteries, screws and bolts. Almost all tech in the IOM is based on STCs after all. Including, presumably, measuring devices.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

Cooking is applied chemistry.

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

Cooking is applied chemistry.

Yes, but you still don't need to use grams and mililiters. Those are pretty useless measurements for cooking.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

Cooking is applied chemistry.

Yes, but you still don't need to use grams and mililiters. Those are pretty useless measurements for cooking.

You're joking, right? 500g strong white flour, 300ml blood-temperature water, 1tbs olive oil and 7oz dried yeast. I can't eyeball those measurements and if you get them wrong, you end up with a mess instead of bread.

I couldn't eye ball those either. I can eyeball tablespoons, teaspoons, cups, and liters though.

Blood temperature? WTF is that?

It doesn't feel hot or cold if you stick your finger in it.

Thats what we call Room Temperature.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

Cooking is applied chemistry.

Yes, but you still don't need to use grams and mililiters. Those are pretty useless measurements for cooking.

No way, they are indispensible. Cups and tablespoons are horrible to use. How large is the cup? How much do you put on the spoon? Standardisation is extremely important.

And people who use imperial measurements so live in the Middle Ages. Get with the times people, you are lagging behind 150-200 years.

The Imperium of Man almost certainly uses a different system than any current one. Look how many different systems humans have gone through in the past 1000 years. Now imagine 40.000 years of that. And given that the IoM has a feudal theme, there is probably no common standardisation.

Well, apart from the STC stuff which would have all used standardised measurement units for every piece of tech it could make.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Steve steveson wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Why would I need to convert a cup into grams or mililiters? I'm making dinner, not some chemicals for my chemistry exam.

Cooking is applied chemistry.

Yes, but you still don't need to use grams and mililiters. Those are pretty useless measurements for cooking.

No way, they are indispensible. Cups and tablespoons are horrible to use. How large is the cup? How much do you put on the spoon? Standardisation is extremely important.

And people who use imperial measurements so live in the Middle Ages. Get with the times people, you are lagging behind 150-200 years.

The Imperium of Man almost certainly uses a different system than any current one. Look how many different systems humans have gone through in the past 1000 years. Now imagine 40.000 years of that. And given that the IoM has a feudal theme, there is probably no common standardisation.

You do realize that Cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, etc... are standardized right? They make measuring instruments which are calibrated to those measurements. You don't literally take a teaspoon or tablespoon and pile stuff on it. A cup isn't a cup you would drink out of.