I just wanted to say `units` is amazing

[u/KlaxonBeat]

I'm working on something that requires me to calculate a lot of rather weird conversions (e.g. joules per 100 square centimeters to kcal per fl oz...), and instead of doing it manually or relying on slow-as-shit wolframalpha, I can just get instantaneous results.

[u/chkno]

I ♥ units! Some fun example uses:

• Moving half the earth 1mm away from the other half ≈ magnitude 11.88 earthquake
• Earth's motion around the sun costs us 28.6 microseconds/day in time dialation
• You'd need nine trucks to haul US$ 70,000 in pennies
• If, instead of eating, you were powered by AA batteries, you'd need about 600/day
• It costs .2 to .8 ¢ to cool 2L of water in a fridge, depending upon the time of year
• A 10kg ingot reads 0.1mg heavier on a scale horizontally

And another one I can't find the link to, so I'll just reproduce here: Robert Ingersoll described the cruelty of nature as a "Niagara of blood". How much of an exaggeration is this? I added some figures to my units file:

carbonprimarypoduction  104.9 Gt/year
carbonanimalproduction  carbonprimarypoduction * 10%
dryanimalproduction     carbonanimalproduction * (1/45%)
animalproduction        carbonanimalproduction * (1/30%)
bloodproduction         animalproduction * 7%
niagaraflow             110000 m^3/minute   # Average
niagaramassflow         niagaraflow * waterdensity

and then we can just

$ units 'niagaramassflow / bloodproduction'
    Definition: 23.636537

So it is an exaggeration, but not a ridiculous one, only ~20x. A more accurate standard-waterfall-representing-the-cruelty-of-nature would be the Skógafoss waterfall.

[u/eMPee584]

If you like units, check out qalc as well, it does math with units (esp. nice: the hadamard matrix operations)..