imperial and metric....

[Jai]

dunno about any of you, but do you find yourself switching between the 2 without thinking?

ie, i fill my car in litres, but consume in miles per gallon

i buy food items in kilos, but weigh myself in stones and pounds

milk and lager in pints, juice in litres
ad infinitum,

 

[The Negotiator]

Every day for me is unit conversion after unit conversion,

my favourite is:

MMSCFD

So firstly we say "scuffs" i think for that, which is weird.
Second, MM = well M typically stands for million? Nope, roman use is M = 1000 hence MM is 1,000,000, not million million.
S=? Square? Nah, standard, let's add in standard conditions...
C= cubic, thank god.
F = foot, fine
D = per day

Ahhhh, I prefer m3/hr but oh well.

So of course MMSCFD has to be converted into everything from barrels (42 US (US!!) gallons) or m3 or sq yds or...you get the idea!

 

[vtec]

One thing that gets on my nerves is those american ratchet sockets with all this 8ths and 16ths cr*p etc?.,. Metric is so much easier in this case ,.,.

 

[jug]

its the hangover from the evolution of measurements, and a lack of global standardisaiton, which will probably never happen. i'd never even used imperial until i moved to the uk (until then i thought it was from the 1500s and no longer in use ), and i think you'll find few places on earth are even aware of imperial apart from the US. metrics make more sense imo because they all follow the same rule of 10. imperial is weird, how many ounces in a pound? how many pounds in a stone? and what use is imperial inches if i dont want a fraction of an inch, what if want a decimal damn it! i dont want to have crazy fractions like 113/781"

thankfully the uk is moving with the times and finally embracing the metric system. i doubt the US will for some time partly becasue they are stubbon, partly becasue they like to be different, partly becasue they dont like to be forced to do anything by the rest of the world, but mostly because the average american would stuggle for the rest of their life trying to work it out.

 

[custard]

One thing that gets on my nerves is those american ratchet sockets with all this 8ths and 16ths cr*p etc?.,. Metric is so much easier in this case ,.,.

shut it half pint!

 

[vtec]

partly becasue they dont like to be forced to do anything by the rest of the world,

jug you missed " partly because they are too stupid".,.,.

 

[jug]

no i didnt

mostly because the average american would stuggle for the rest of their life trying to work it out.

 

[Hellcat]

Pounds and Stone are easy.

You count in base 2,8, 16, and 1024 in IT.. so base 14 and base 16 aren't too much harder

0
1
10
11
100
101
110
111 etc

 

[J333EVO]

Yeah do it every day for those sort of things, and in my job.

The height of planes or clouds is measured in feet, yet distance for visibility is measured in meters up to 5000 then kilometres, and speed and distance travelled in nautical miles, or MACH number if above the local areas MACH point as this varies, but with no Concorde anymore don't need to think of that in civilian world

Points on the globe for navigation degrees, minutes and seconds

Temp in degrees C, yet pressure in millibars or if your French Hecto Pascal’s (spelling?) which is same blooming scale but the French like to acknowledge the Frenchman that set the scale or something :bang: then the Americans measure pressure in inches of mercury or something bizarre so different scale again!

 

[vtec]

Dont they use PSI? (pounds per square Inch).,.I saw it in mythbusters once.,

 

[The Negotiator]

No, American weather and aviation use it; inHg. It's outdated and stupid, as is torr (mmHg) which is still used for certain things in the UK - atmospheric being 760 torr. I think American planes use it because it was always used as the actual method on earlier and low tech planes. Psi is for more general things, bar and KPa (or Pa) being two metric units (1 bar = 1E5 Pa) but you also have atmospheres (1 bar ~ 1 atm ~ 10,000 Pa ~ 10 KPa) and so on

Then temperature you have deg C, Kelvin (absolute scale of C), fahrenheit and Rankine (absolute scale of F) then ones I have never used; Delisle, Newton and probably others!

etc. etc. etc.
Units =

 

[Helz]

I work quite happily between the two and convert regularly. ANY system is easy as long as you're familiar with it and use it often enough not to have to think about it

 

[The Negotiator]

It makes my brain hurt though when people with 30 years experience covert things in their head when I haven't even heard of the units, let alone where to start the conversions, end up going back to dimensional analysis and looking dumb