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The rebirth of imperial measures 
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I think we were taught largely in metric. Height and distance were spoken about in both imperial and metric, with all else in metric.

I remember buying a book on numbers from a school book fayre and learnt more about numbers and conversions.

I'm terrible at distances though. Anythin between 10 metres and one mile, I won't have a clue. Difficult when thinking about stopling distances!

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Mon Jun 06, 2011 10:45 pm
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I mix and match.
I measure things in both scales, apart from temperature and distance (above about 100 metres anyway) where I'll use °C and miles. For measurements where accuracy matters, I'd rather do it mm than fractional inches.
To me, °F makes no sense.
I do weight in a mix of lbs and kgs. I tend to do volume in metric, unless it's an American engine where cubic inches are the norm.

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Mon Jun 06, 2011 11:12 pm
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Amnesia10 wrote:
Yes but the Brits also measure the cold in Centigrade and the heat in Fahrenheit.

An out of date steriotype IMO. Most of my generation use C for everything.

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Tue Jun 07, 2011 7:01 am
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Like many hre I use a mis-mash

For day to day
Length is Feet & Inches and Miles
Liquids is Pints / gallons (although petrol is litres) but my car does mpg!
Weight is Oz, Lbs and stones
Temp is Centegrade
Pressure psi

however for some things I use Metric
Diving: all in Meters & Bar
DIY - mm

I am also reasonably OK in converting form one to the other in my head (good enough for rough calulations)

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Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:16 am
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hifidelity2 wrote:
my car does mpg!

That's a good one. Apart from Big D, is there anyone here that drives a car in litres per hundred kilometre like those pesky garlic eating foreigners?

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Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:41 pm
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Linux_User wrote:
Who buys their petrol in gallons then? What's that, no-one? :roll:


Who buys there petrol in anything other than pounds these days?

As in "I'm putting a tenners worth of petrol in today" as opposed to ten pounds weight...

I suspect you already knew that... ;)

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Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:40 am
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Fogmeister wrote:
I've often wondered how Americans (I've met some who literally have no idea what 1kg or 1km is) can do physics and mechanical equations using newtons laws? Do they have to have crazy conversions to make them all work?

I presume they use exactly the same crazy conversions that we had to do before we started using metric in the education system. Or that academics just work in metric, and industry/general life uses imperial.

Amnesia10 wrote:
Yes and one reason they lost a satellite recently because of problems converting imperial to metric.

It was 11 years ago (8-p) And not a problem to do with converting imperial to metric; they just provided a metric system with imperial values. Definite case of them needing to RTFM.


forquare1 wrote:
...not know exactly how far 300 feet would be to the next traffic light...

It'd be exactly 100 yards, by my reckoning. (8-D)


Amnesia10 wrote:
Yes but the Brits also measure the cold in Centigrade and the heat in Fahrenheit.

The only time I can think of that happening is when the air temperature approaches 100F, and then it's only by older generations who seem to actually discuss the actual temperature in C. I still have no real clue what that is, but in my head I picture it as mid-30s C.

Personally, I use metric for most things; it's just easier to combine units. Exceptions for me are the following:
  • Miles for driving and walking distances (> 5 miles) - I don't think I'd mind transitioning to km, if fuel, roadsigns and cars changed.
  • Pints for drinking (but I think of a smaller glass as ~250ml, and shots of coffee/alcofrol in ml rather than fl. oz. (Now that is a stupid unit!))
  • Imperial for guesstimated distances < 3m (I prefer the slightly bigger inch/foot compared to getting into big numbers of cm. (I measure in cm, and this is only for guesses, so "feet or inches", not "feet and inches" is my norm).

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Wed Jun 08, 2011 2:37 pm
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