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Why the heck does America still use outdated measurement and date units?
- Thread starter garirry
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I could care very less and manage both imperial & metric unit's with ease. "When in Rome" drive in the US, MPH, drive here KPH. Only concern I see is with complex multinational projects where all numbers must be aligned which does present a window for confusion.
Q-6
Q-6
My fountain pens drink ink in mls and write in fractions of a mm.
As does mine!
I once had to remove the big ends from an Johnson 40 hp outboard engine. They were secured by 1/4" 12 (yes twelve) sided bolts. The whole city had two spanners that fitted, a Sidchrome and a Hazet. I bought the Sidchrome and promptly broke it. I bought the Hazet and it did the job perfectly.
Or 232.7778 degrees C.Paper starts to burn at 451º F.
All you need to remember.
Yeah, but "Centrigrade 232.7778" doesn't really cut it...
.... and Californians have a freezing point of 59° F.
They should move to Phoenix (where I live). They will never freeze again…
…oh wait, they already are moving here!
My wife and I moved from Southern California to Phoenix in 2000, we're being followed!!!!!!
So do you convert one or the other in your head, or do you just know that 75F or 24C are going to be nice days no matter which one is given?
Wait, didn't you just get snow a couple of years ago? LOL.
What's funny about this is where I am from, WV, we hated Ohio drivers. No matter where you went, there was a Buckeye doing something annoying on the highway. Usually camping out in the left lane a couple miles under the limit.
So we move to AZ and the locals all say the same thing about CA. We were at the new house and had a rental car that just happened to have CA plates. As did our daughter's car. The neighbor came over and was timid about asking if we were from CA. Everything was better when we assured him we weren't. LOL.
But the offspring does live there until she can find a job back in the humid southeast.
I enjoyed (still enjoy) converting them, but - like multiplication tables, - I also learned them (taught myself them, committed them to memory) so that I know what each equals.
Numerical recall came/comes pretty easily to me - I recalled dates effortlessly (very valuable as an historian), and it took me quite some time as a kid to realise that this is not the case for everyone.
Years ago, when I was a kid, my father - who worked for the government in the ministry of posts & telegraphs - had told me that there were 30 telegraph poles per mile (on - or, alongside - a railway line track, - actually, there were 60 yards between each of the telegraph poles - it is an old 19th century measurement); with this in mind, if books and the countryside no longer captured my interest, I used to enjoy - using the second hand of my watch - timing the speed of the train, and then converting that to km....
For some reason I love the unit fortnight. Was so disappointed when Fortnite came out and had nothing to do with two weeksYes, although most American's wouldn't see it that way. The French influence of the time period I believe.
Now, what does my head in is pence and quid and fortnights and stuff like that.
Southern California = 70 degrees... let's not kid ourselves. I am reaching for the beanie and parka when it hits the low 70's!
I'm fairly fluent in metric, imperial and SAE, having lived in a few countries. Oh, and number base systems used in IT. It doesn't bother me, I have learned to work happily with all of them. Viva la différence is what I say.
I once put in my resume that I'm fluent in several languages, including Klingon. Never got the job interview.
Southern California = 70 degrees... let's not kid ourselves. I am reaching for the beanie and parka when it hits the low 70's!
I was born in Long Beach, although I departed with my parents when I was six months old and did not return until I was 9. Lived in SoCal from 1980 to 2000.
One of the reasons I left in 2000 was because Phoenix is much warmer. Where I used to live (Banning/Beaumont/Cherry Valley area), it starts getting cold in late September. With central A/C and heat that's not any sort of an issue - but my father had us living in an early 1960s built house where the A/C was a whole house attic fan and the heat a single gas heater in the front room. Any insulation in the walls gave out in the 1970s so it was sweating in summer and freezing in the winter. Living with fans and space heaters depending on the time of year was my reality.
So moving here was great. Discovering that you could wear shorts in the middle of December was fantastic.
Now I'm 52 and weigh more than my 30 year old self did and I'm not liking it so much anymore.
Well, I guess I’m one of the rare breed of Tough Californians. The beanies and puffy down vests only come out when it’s 67 or below.Southern California = 70 degrees... let's not kid ourselves. I am reaching for the beanie and parka when it hits the low 70's!
It's not uncommon during December/January in Phoenix to see residents wearing jackets, shorts and flip flops.
Uh…yeah. Guilty.
Laughs in Canadian now living in Switzerland. Seriously though while I was raised in Vancouver I also spent time in Nova Scotia (for my Bachelor's degree) and Ottawa (for my Masters) and now live in Geneva. I am used to both KM and miles for speed and distance, more used to Celcius for temperature though so I have to calculate when I talk to my sister who lives in the States.
I mean I still have the shorts going... but have to keep the upper body and head warm! LOL
Unpopular opinion: Although I was born in Germany and still live there, I wish we too used Fahrenheit for outdoor temperatures.
Imperial units for lengths and weights don't make sense, I don't want to disagree with that at all, but Fahrenheit is a really nice unit when I want to know if I need warm clothes tomorrow or not. I am not a bucket of water.
Celsius may be wonderful if you want to boil water, but I can see if the kettle is boiling even without a thermometer. The fact that it is a supposedly metric unit is not an added value per se - I rarely want to convert thirty degrees Celsius into another unit or divide it by 100. Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is great because you can think of it roughly as "percent heat": 0 °F (0% heat) = cold / coat weather, 50 °F (50% heat) = warm / t-shirt weather, 100 °F (100% heat) = better stay inside. Naked.
My weather app on the iPhone is set to Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, I can't set it per unit, so I also have to see the rainfall in inches. In case there's a weather app developer reading along here: Please give me an option for "Fahrenheit only, but also millimeters". Thanks!
Imperial units for lengths and weights don't make sense, I don't want to disagree with that at all, but Fahrenheit is a really nice unit when I want to know if I need warm clothes tomorrow or not. I am not a bucket of water.
Celsius may be wonderful if you want to boil water, but I can see if the kettle is boiling even without a thermometer. The fact that it is a supposedly metric unit is not an added value per se - I rarely want to convert thirty degrees Celsius into another unit or divide it by 100. Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is great because you can think of it roughly as "percent heat": 0 °F (0% heat) = cold / coat weather, 50 °F (50% heat) = warm / t-shirt weather, 100 °F (100% heat) = better stay inside. Naked.
My weather app on the iPhone is set to Fahrenheit. Unfortunately, I can't set it per unit, so I also have to see the rainfall in inches. In case there's a weather app developer reading along here: Please give me an option for "Fahrenheit only, but also millimeters". Thanks!
US Pint or UK Pint? That's an important distinction, because of good beer I'd rather have a UK pint, whereas of British beer I'd rather have a US pint...
If I did drink beer, it would be
and in mls.
But I don't.
But, see all the gold medals on the bottom of the label? We were let in to a secret by one of the brewers.
The beer that wins the medals is hand-crafted into a special cask and submitted to the competition in Germany.
It has nothing to do with what's in the bottles or cans.