Comment by Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world on Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches

…being in nursing school is giving me a strong hatred for the imperial system.

The doctor ordered 35mg/kg Watdafuqenol IV QID. Available is a 2’ by 15" section of torn out carpet soaked in spilled Watdafuqenol; when wrung out into the patient’s left shoe, you get 97 chipmunk-mouthfuls diluted to a concentration of 24 Watdafuqenol to 1 toe jam. How many shot glasses full do you administer?

You’ll never see dosage questions like that on the NCLEX. If you do it’ll be like one. I breezed through it when I took it, but basic knowledge questions are minimal (as long as you don’t get them wrong).

I love how much nursing advice I’m getting in a thread about melting Russian invaders. ^_^

You might’ve already seen this, but try using the method of dimensional analysis where you work backwards on a single line and you’ll never get one of those problems wrong again.

The key is just working backwards by units using the equations you have available. I know somebody that only got one of the questions on his MCAT correct bc he used this method lol.

Even dimensional analysis works best with metric because sometimes you need to convert units and almost all conversion in metric are base 10, so something like 1kg/km is 1000g/1000m is 1 gram per meter. But in imperial 1 pound/mile is 16 ounces / 5280 feet is who the fuck knows how many ounces per feet.

I use dimensional analysis, but it’s over two lines… and not sure what you mean by working backwards, since the order doesn’t really matter so long as every value is in the correct line.

Since typing it out would be ugly as sin, example image stolen from google:

…they like to give us things like pt weight in lbs and oz, and ask for final product of tablespoons or some shit cuz they enjoy wasting our time, lol.

That the type you mean?

I know there are a few different ways to crunch the numbers, but DA is my favorite so far cuz it’s so consistent.

*edit, example pic changed, first one put mcg twice in the same line, which is a weird move. /shrug

Hopefully you can read my chicken scratch lol

Gotcha! Yeah same page - some of the other students don’t like that method cuz it can take a bit longer, but building the equation kinda idiot proofs itself against calculating for the wrong unit, and it’s super consistent! Definitely my favorite so far.

So USAnian drugs are in metric units? I hope in actual work nurses get to use a phone app or something because this asks for mistakes

It works fine when everything around you is in those numbers. The scale for medications might be set to mg, or injections in mL. The bottles for both are labeled the same way. Everything works together, and you don’t really have to think about it.

Part of the problem with converting everything to metric is it really needs to be everything. You can try talking about driving distances in km, and your gas tank in L/100km, and your speed in km/hr. However, the interstate highway signs will still be in miles, you buy gas in gallons, and the speed limit signs are in mph. This isn’t a case where you can just choose to use the metric system as an individual, because the whole system works against you.

That is understandable, I was surprised that metric is actually used somewhere. Use in pharmacy also explains why in Hollywood stoner comedies they used grams, which always confused me.

It’s used all over the place in the US. It’s usually a weird, thoughtless mixture. Milk is sold in gallons, soda is sold in liters.

In fact, you’ll find exceptions in most countries once you start looking for them. Just a matter of how prevalent the metric system is; nobody is 100%. Most common exception is car tires because of how industry standards work.

Even in the US, science is mostly metric. But most US people are not exactly the scientific kind…

Until you start looking at old stuff and have you figure out if they were working with the “millions scheme” or “thousands scheme,” and if “1 billion” is equal to 10¹² or 10⁹

https://www.affixes.org/numberwords.html

That’s why you have methods of writing like 10^x.

Modern science is, but there’s plenty of old journals from the 80s and earlier that use degrees Rankine and gallons.

Fucking BTUs and shit.

PSI is another one that seems to be used over the metric/SI alternative in some science-adjacent applications.

99% of it is metric. I think the biggest outlier is home care, where you go visit some grandma who’s actively offended by metric, so if you tell her to take 7.5mL of something she’ll just do the deer in the headlights thing, then shove the bottle up her ass.

Tell her instead that she needs to take 3 Mountain Dew caps full and suddenly she can follow instructions enough to not kill herself.

Then she shoves the Mountain Dew bottle up her ass.

Yeah but that’s for pleasure.

I thought everything is bigger across the ocean but your Mountain Dew caps are tiny over there! ;)

Just googled it and apparently they’re about 5mL each. Apparently I’m not great at eyeballing volume.

Add it to the pile of conversion failures between metric and imperial.

That’s a trick question. How many pound-feet of torque did you apply to the carpet?

1.15 pallets of spent 12-gauge casings over over the course of 2.3 standard breakfasts.

Don’t forget to round to the nearest liquor store!

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Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches(arstechnica.com)

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