How Stuff should be measured

[dynasty99]

Everything should be measured by its longest length.

so you could have a glass of 6 inches of water, a 1 foot of wood.

thus everyhing would be easier

[Dopefish]

But glass A. varies to glass B. Glass A (round) may be shorter and squatter than Glass B, but glass B (tall, thin, and straight) still holds the exact same amount of liquid. Therefore, the "5 inches" of water in Glass A is still equivalent to the "7 inches" of water in Glass B.

And we already measure wood like that. Least, in this non-metric country. Though normally it comes in the yard, last I checked, which is three feet per unit.

Oh, then there's always volume. Which, hey, I know how it's determined already, but you can't say "This cube of depleted uranium's density is 10 inches!". That'd just be a disaster.

Now, I agree, maybe you could simplify things. Like, the metric system's pretty good at that, seeing as how there's not specific, almost non-related names for all the variables of a measure.

[Demoneyes14]

Stuff shouldn't be measured. You can see which is bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, etc with your eyes. ^^

[Dopefish]

Actually, looks can be quite decieving. Look back to the fat glass/thin glass argument.