Metric V Imperial?

[Brovion]

Great thread! Bring back the sixpence that's what I say. And the thru'penny bit. Proper coins you could jangle. Twelve pennys in a shilling, twenty one shillings in a guinea, 112 pounds in a hundredweight, 36 flints in a brummage, marvelous stuff.

(OK, I made the last one up).

 

[Rich Suvner]

Which do you prefer?

Anyone who thinks Metric is more Rational should tell me how OLD they are in Metric, a day and a year being Imperial measurements.

i'm no expert but why can we not refer to years in metric? what then are decades, centuries, millenia?

my 26th birthday is 3rd August so i make myself 25.59 years old!!!!

 

[Hungry Joe.]

Great thread! Bring back the sixpence that's what I say. And the thru'penny bit. Proper coins you could jangle. Twelve pennys in a shilling, twenty one shillings in a guinea, 112 pounds in a hundredweight, 36 flints in a brummage, marvelous stuff.

(OK, I made the last one up).

I'm all for seeing more thu'penny bits.........guvnor.

 

[Artois]

 

[zefarelly]

the metric system ? my car does 40 rods to the hogshead and thats the way I likes it

I work for a group thats half US. . .and in engineering we've always used both so both is good for me

 

[beorhthelm]

isnt US imperial different to British, just to confuse matters more?

 

[DTES]

Re: Re: Metric V Imperial?

i'm no expert but why can we not refer to years in metric? what then are decades, centuries, millenia?

You can. And the second is the SI unit for time, and is metric.

Lesson for the day - don't dismiss anything just because looney does.

 

[zefarelly]

Americans have different gallons but feet inches and thou are the same

although they wont say three thousand five hundred . . . .its therty faave hundred

1 English gallon = 4.54 litres (same as grammes to the pound in weight)

a US gallon is 3.785 litres . . .I guess thats so they can say their 'gas' tanks are bigger in ther stupid truck/car things

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Trouble is ... we haven't properly worked out how to handle metric weights. Kilos and grams? Do me a favour. No-one ever eats a kilo of anything. Nor a gram.

The Italians work in a basic unit called the "etto". It's a hectogram, or 100 grams. And it's roughly equal to a portion.

Buying meat for a stew for five people? Buy five ettos (or etti as they say in Italy). If you want to be generous with your portions, buy six or seven etti, but THINK ETTO. It works.

Incidentally, it was the Italians who gave us pounds, shillings and pence. Back in the fifteenth century, they invented banking (and, therefore, accountancy). They worked in Lire, Soldi and Denari (lsd) and quickly outwitted the Germanic north Europeans who fancied a metric system based on the Pound and Florin. The English warmed to the Pound, but let their Italian bankers have their way with the small change.

Incidentally, there IS one commodity that comes in gram size bites. It's the Smartie. There are 28 Smarties in the average tube. A tube of Smarties contains one ounce. There are 28 grams in an ounce.

My particular gripe is shoe sizes. My feet are comfortable in European size 44s. English sizes 8 or 9 never deliver a comfortable fit. And, for some reason, English shoe manufacturers can't even agree how to translate 44 into an English measurement.

 

[bhaexpress]

isnt US imperial different to British, just to confuse matters more?

Yes, it is. Their gallons are smallen for a start and I think their tons are too.

Just to confuse you futher. Venture North to Canada and EVERYTHING is metric. Road distances and speedos are in Kilometres. I have no idea why that is but I bet Juan will know.

 

[bhaexpress]

a US gallon is 3.785 litres . . .I guess thats so they can say their 'gas' tanks are bigger in ther stupid truck/car things

Zef, you're not a fan of the US are you ? Be careful, Mrs BHA is over here from tomorrow and she's been doing the weights again. Miss BHA might also run up yer trouser leg and headbutt yer knees too

 

[Simster]

Just to confuse you futher. Venture North to Canada and EVERYTHING is metric. Road distances and speedos are in Kilometres. I have no idea why that is but I bet Juan will know.

It's because Canada is BETTER than the usa, that's why.

 

[bhaexpress]

Agreed, no arguement here, pity Mrs BHA wasn't born a bit further North.

 

[looney]

An imperial measurement is one that has or had a reference point


ie a Foot for a foot a yard for a pace etc.

Time is imperical as a day is referenced by sun up to sun up.
A year is one revolution of the sun.

Metric time? Well that may be necessary when we live in different solar system, or ours, a Martian day is not 365 days.
where is the decimalisation in

60 seconds per minute
60 minutes per hour
24 hours
7 days(per week)
52 weeks
365 days

Shouldn't these be multiples of ten? Like kilo's kilometeres?

The point? Imperial is the more rational system of measurement.

Its rather arrogant to shit on old people who have trouble learning new ways.

Political bit...............................
Funny how the lefties like putting signs up in multipal languages in libraries for example, but wont allow a dual system to allow the old folks to work things out. But I suppose as Jack Straw would say their just British Mongrels and dont matter. Double standards?

 

[alan partridge]

An imperial measurement is one that has or had a reference point


ie a Foot for a foot a yard for a pace etc.

Time is imperical as a day is referenced by sun up to sun up.
A year is one revolution of the sun.

Metric time? Well that may be necessary when we live in different solar system, or ours, a Martian day is not 365 days.
where is the decimalisation in

60 seconds per minute
60 minutes per hour
24 hours
7 days(per week)
52 weeks
365 days

Shouldn't these be multiples of ten? Like kilo's kilometeres?

The point? Imperial is the more rational system of measurement.

Its rather arrogant to shit on old people who have trouble learning new ways.

Political bit...............................
Funny how the lefties like putting signs up in multipal languages in libraries for example, but wont allow a dual system to allow the old folks to work things out. But I suppose as Jack Straw would say their just British Mongrels and dont matter. Double standards?

i imagine you'd find a problem with one of these

 

[chips and gravy]

I think we should permit both.

As someone who was in the first couple of year groups to learn metric I think it's high time that we used it as a system for everything (I'm 36 and everyone younger than me learned metric at school). I understand that older people don't like the new system as they didn't learn it at school but why should us young uns have to learn their archaic system because they cannot bear to part with it? If we had both we could all be happy.

Incidentally I did a year in a US university studying science. Before going I felt ok about this because I thought that at least I would use SI units all the time. However, they still wanted me to convert some of the units to 'everyday measurements'. These included such ones as British Thermal Units, which I had never even heard of!

 

[Mr C]

Did you know one day lasts 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds?

 

[beorhthelm]

Did you know one day lasts 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds?

really? 4 minutes out? that sounds like quite a discrepency. We'd be an hour out every 15 days, and a whole day out over a year.

 

[DTES]

Political bit...............................
Funny how the lefties like putting signs up in multipal languages in libraries for example, but wont allow a dual system to allow the old folks to work things out. But I suppose as Jack Straw would say their just British Mongrels and dont matter. Double standards?

Yes. Good comparison. Equally difficult these two - converting to a consistent measurement system (always base 10), and learning an entire new language. Well done looney, you've completely forgotten the scale of things again.

Oh, and by the way, I think you'll find the correct spelling is multiple. Also, there's an apostrophe in the word don't.

 

[Gwylan]

As someone who was in the first couple of year groups to learn metric I think it's high time that we used it as a system for everything (I'm 36 and everyone younger than me learned metric at school). I understand that older people don't like the new system as they didn't learn it at school but why should us young uns have to learn their archaic system because they cannot bear to part with it? If we had both we could all be happy.

But it's not just the young uns. I'm 47 and I learned in metric at school (as did the years just above me). After 50 years, isn't it time that we got used to it.

It's madness that we use a different system to the rest of the world (bar the US). It can only cause confusion. In 1999, a NASA Mars probe crashed because some the calculations were done in metric, the only problem was, some of the measurements had been carried out in imperial and then converted to metric, the margin of error introduced was enough to crash the probe and waste millions of dollars.

As for the so-called metric martyr (who died last month, by the way). This was a particularly nasty individual funded by some dubious right-wing groups for anti-European reasons. No-one is trying to prevent shopkeepers weighing and selling items in imperial units, the law states that shopkeepers should display prices in metric or in both, but not in imperial and should have scales capable of weighing in both systems. All this bollocks about poor confused pensioners baffled because they have been forced to ask for 450g of apples in codswallop. And pounds can still exist even within metric systems - the French are happy to ask for a livre.

And to go back to looney's original question. After the French revolution, the new government did indeed try to introduce a decimal clock to coincide with the ten month year but it failed completely because, as other posters have pointed out, the clock reflects the natural orbit of the earth and can't be forced into other, man-made units.

I'm willing to bet that even when we are dragged kicking and screaming to metrication, we will still be drinking pints.