Metric, or Imperial - or even something else?

[whole diary]

[inspector_blakey]

Edit Note: The following posts were originally in a topic on 'Remove First Class?', but as they became an amusing discussion in their own right (and were, to be fair, not related to the original topic!), I've moved them here.

Chris. 



I can't believe you went to all the trouble of converting the kg weights to lbs. Actually, no, hang on, I can, metric is an evil EU^» (European Union - about) conspiracy to subdue the British into using simple logical units of measurement whilst progressively eroding our national identity

[inspector_blakey]

*Anyone with a kilogram of common sense...

*They're trying to fit a litre into a millilitre pot....

PS: I've never used Fahrenheit. I use Celsius, although we should technically use Kelvin...

No no no, you've got it all wrong. It's "anyone with 28 grams of common sense" and "trying to fit 1136 ml into a 568 ml pot*". Those make much more sense.

But why Kelvin, unless you're measuring absolute temperature? For most day to day purposes, a zero-point at which water freezes is much more meaningful and useful than the point at which all atomic vibration ceases!

*assuming you're dealing with a British, 20oz pint. The American one is, to my extreme frustration as a beer drinker, 20% smaller at 16oz.

Unless you want produce when they make waitrose and M&S look cheap. A small piece of non plastic cheese is like ^5 - a non plastic loaf is about ^3 and dont even look at fresh vegetables - corn and soya is however cheap

Too right, although I have found a shop that sells decent (i.e. English!) cheese at a not-too-extortionate price.

[JayMac]

No no no, you've got it all wrong. It's "anyone with 28 grams of common sense" and "trying to fit 1136 ml into a 568 ml pot*". Those make much more sense.

*assuming you're dealing with a British, 20oz pint. The American one is, to my extreme frustration as a beer drinker, 20% smaller at 16oz.

  I dunno.....you give someone 25.4 millimetres and they take 1609.344 metres

[devonian]

Is there no-one else out there that doesn't understand imperial? 

I get miles obviously for road signs but when running, have to convert into km. As for pounds and ounces - I have no idea. I would have to convert them into kg. I do know my hieight in imperial but it is merely a conversion of my metric height. Same for weight. When people give their height and weight in imperial, I have to do a rough caulculation into metric to fully understand.

Am I really alone?

[TerminalJunkie]

The truly sheddy will, of course, be comfortable with the firkin/furlong/fortnight system.

Official shed units are undecided - and probably undecidable - but Niall suggests there is the "opened out fag packet" representing a thickness of about  0.025" or 4 stroke petrol engine plug gap (CB ignition); fold in two for 2 stroke or CD^▸ (Capital Delivery) ignition, and that favorite of TV^▸ (Thames Valley, or TeleVision, depending on context) science programs; the  "one bar electric fire" or 1kW.                                         

The furlong/firkin/fortnight system isn't bad: it has the microfortnight (about 1.2sec) and the millifortnight (about 20min).

The mass unit is a firkin of water, which I think works out to 90 lbs.  In this system the speed of light is 1.79*10^12furlongs/fortnight, and the national speed limit (A roads) is 161280f/f

For angles, Mr Passingham Indeed suggests that the shed unit of rotation should be the ajar, defined as: the angle between a door and its frame when there's a slight draught coming through: subsequent discussion indicates that the chord of this angle will be the width of a British Standard Cat.

Atomic physics has a unit called the "barn", equal to 10^-28m^2, and a Hubble is 10^9 light years, so a Hubble-barn is about 1 and 2/3 pints,or just less than one of those new-fangled litre thingies, which means that drinking a couple of brown ales is like emptying a bottle the length of the universe with the cross-sectional area of a medium-sized nucleus.  And you thought it was a long way to the Gents. 

Boonie calculates the Hubble-radius barn is about 13 liters. This is the volume of a straw that has the cross-sectional area of a barn and a length equal to the radius of the universe (given by H^{-1}c). If you use the old value of H, 55 km/s/Mpc, you get 17 liters.  The extreme value of H near 100 reduces this by half.  The current value is 40 < H < 100 so a median value would give about 13 liters.

The fact that a gallon milk jug has the same volume as a straw with the area of a medium sized nucleus such as Silicon that reaches to the end of the universe is one way to visualize just how small and how big those two numbers really are.                                                 

[...]

A microcentury is about 52.5 minutes;                                   
one nanocentury is about pi seconds;                                   
The micro-Fortnight is approximately a second;                         
The speed of light (c) is 1.80 tera furlongs per fortnight (or 1.80 furlongs per pico-fortnight);                                           
One teaspoon is 1.6 barn mega-parsecs;                                 

[Btline]

Is there no-one else out there that doesn't understand imperial? 

I get miles obviously for road signs but when running, have to convert into km. As for pounds and ounces - I have no idea. I would have to convert them into kg. I do know my hieight in imperial but it is merely a conversion of my metric height. Same for weight. When people give their height and weight in imperial, I have to do a rough caulculation into metric to fully understand.

Am I really alone?

I understand (and CAN use) both. But when people tell me a metric value, I have to convert it to Imperial to judge the distance. Also its more practical 5 ft 8 in and 10 stone is easier for me to remember than 173 cm and 63.5 kg.

[TerminalJunkie]

5 ft 8 in

0.00858585859 furlongs, 204 barleycorns, 1.51111111 English Ells, or the height of a dartboard bullseye.

10 stone

1.55555555555 firkins (or 448 noggins) of water at 62^ F. Also 1.25 hundredweight.

[Btline]

  Even easier to remember!

[paul7575]

Imperial measurement only made sense to me once it was explained that an acre is a cricket pitch by a furlong...   

Paul