I'm 10 stone, 5 foot 9 and l live 25 miles away. My baby is 7 lb 8 oz

Dave Morrison

people are different and this must be accepted. not really fighting with it.

GreeBo

Wibbs wrote: »

I grew up as a child in the 70's during the changeover and so still use both to some degree, and odd to myself... I think in metres and millimetres on the one hand, but revert to inches and feet either side of that. One thing just in my humble mind that's missing from metric is the foot. It's a handy human sized measurement that's been around in some form for millennia(the cubit varied but was usually just over a foot, or the length of a forearm) and there's a gap in metric at that size level IMHO. A third of a metre(mixing again there ) doesn't cut it. I could drop inches for centimetres handily enough though. I would usually think in litres and rarely enough in fractions and the imperial nonsense at the sub inch scale of eleventy thousands of an inch I could not be dealing with. Centigrade goes without saying really. Height and weight in people I'd still be imperial all the way. I have zero idea what I weigh in kgs, though in fairness I've zero idea what I weigh in stones either so...

I tend to still think in miles as many people do and I reckon that's down to the fact that the kilometre on signs and speedos officially came to Ireland quite recently. 2006 IIRC? So for most unless driving an imported Japanese car say, they'd be thinking in miles and miles per gallon up to fifteen years ago. l/100km and KPH is quite "new". Hell I've been driving Jap imports since the 90's and still do the translation in my head to some degree. Certainly with MPG. I've only recently even worked out what my jalopy does in metric and that was only because of a phone app that talks to my car's ECU with GPS in the mix. Than again I'm a middle aged fart, so there's that.

We have one, its the 30cm ruler that we all know and love.

Hamsterchops

I'm 11st 10lbs, 5 foot 10"
= Imperial always.

l live 25 kilometres away
= Metric (nowadays).

My baby is 7 lbs 6 oz
= Imperial always.

Our dining table is 5' 3" long, by 3' 6" wide.

...and I'll have a pint of beer please

bigar

Spook_ie wrote: »

For all those metric heads on here, how come you're not looking for 100 seconds in a minute? 100 minutes in an hour?

Short answer is because 60 is easier to use with 30 days and 12 months, measurements based on movements of celestial bodies that we cannot influence.

A "second" is metric (e.g. millisecond) and we of course have decades (10), centuries (100) and millennia (1000).

bigar

You need a plank three times the size of 6ft7in by 1ft6in. What size do you need?
You need a plank three times the size of 2 by 0.5 meter. What size do you need?

Which one of these calculations is the easiest?

cdeb

I think first off, it's "metre", not "meter", it's "Is the easier", not "Is the easiest", and you don't define what you mean by "three times the size" - length, width or area?

So it's not a great question to start off with!

But they're both quite easy. 3 x 1"6' is obviously 4"6', because it's 3 x 1.5, which is easy. 3 x 6"7' is three inches more than 3 x 6.5, which is 3 inches more than 19½ feet, which is 19"9'.

You might think that's convoluted, but it's actually how mental arithmetic works (and how it used to be taught I think). Find shortcuts to make the calculations easier. It's an observable fact that mathematical skills aren't what they used to be. Maybe metric panders more to stupid people in that regard.

But then, of course, say you want a plank three times the length of 623mm by 154mm. What size do you need? Metric maths can be awkward too.

Hotblack Desiato

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Rulers still have inches on one side and centimetres on the other side...

A few years back I got fed up with measuring tapes with one side useless, looked for metric only tapes, not a single one to be found in this country. No problem ordering them from the UK though, go figure...

UK plumbing fittings are metric, ours are still imperial, but not compatible with the old UK imperial ones either! B&Q etc will happily sell you UK metric fittings that don't fit pipes here.

UK building trades have been fully metric for over 40 years now.

Then there was the time we were getting some tiling done, tiler was an older guy, he measured up very carefully in feet and inches, then got the calculator out, very laboriously worked out square yards, and then converted it to square metres for us ordering the tiles.

Went to various tile shops looking around. All prices in square yards to make them look cheaper. Illegal, or should be. So we told them we want X square metres, they got the calculator out, converted to sq yards, gave us a price, we said OK.

Then they converted it back to square metres again to figure out how many boxes to give us, because each box is a multiple of a square metre...

You couldn't make this crap up. :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

Hamsterchops wrote: »

...and I'll have a pint of beer please

A proper imperial pint.

Not one of those Mickey Mouse 473ml pints

Capt'n Midnight

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

UK plumbing fittings are metric, ours are still imperial, but not compatible with the old UK imperial ones either! B&Q etc will happily sell you UK metric fittings that don't fit pipes here

Gotta love that a 1/2" (12.7mm) pipe is also a 15mm pipe and once you understand that then there's Instantor to figure out.


The thing is you need the right olives.

stopthevoting

dxhound2005 wrote: »

Aviation and Air Traffic Control are great fun. In weather reports and forecasts temperature is given in Celsius, but the height of clouds is in feet. Wind speed is given in knots (nautical miles) per hour.

Airspeed is in a decimal of Mach (the speed of sound), altitude is in thousands of feet. Separation between planes at the same altitude is in knots. Fuel on board is measured in metric tonnes.

A knot is a measure of speed, not distance.
Wind speed is given in knots (nautical miles per hour).
Separation between planes would be in nautical miles, not knots.

radiata

Asking the barman for a pint in Canada. He asks do I want a 16oz pint or 20oz pint.
Just give me a fcukin pint!