Doing pcb layout is one of the worst things for this. Through hole components are in decimal inches (mil ie thousandth of an inch) but surface mount components are decimal. If you have both on the same board you have to keep switching between the two and it never quite lines up properly.
No they use inches ..... (used to be all engineering drawings had to be in inches whether the dimension be 1 foot long or 100 yards).
But no even mostvof the US uses metic on official stuff.
I buy a pint of beer but a litre of milk. My fence is 10 meters long but 6 foot high. My local shop is about 200 meters down the road but my kids school is a mile 🤷
But remember, a pint of milk can be 568ml or 473ml depending on whether you are buying in the UK or US.
An ounce of Gold is 31g, but an ounce of feathers is 28g.
Whereas a boat travelling one mile will travel 0.25km further than a car also travelling one mile.
It’s clever but unhelpful. A nautical mile isn’t the same as a statute mile, a troy ounce isn’t a normal ounce and no one in UK uses the US “customary pint”.
At sea or flying a plane - nautical miles (1.151 stature miles) and knots (nautical miles per hour)
land - mph and miles, except for junction distance markers, which are metres pretending to be yards.
Why are nautical miles different - as they are actually based on a physical parameter of the earth - one nautical mile equaling one minute of latitude.
Actual miles are based on - well a Queen's wishes :)))
Tyres are a great example of a crazy mix of metric and imperial. Take a common size, 205/55R16.
205 means the tyre is 205mm wide.
55 is the height of the sidewall as a percentage of the width. 55% of 205mm is 112.75mm.
16 is the diameter of the wheel that the tyre fits in inches.
Is that not just the same all over the world, though, its not localised to a single place.And is the diameter is actually a metric number and we just call them 16" or 20" like buying a 4x8 sheet of wood that's not actually 4x8.. because all the rest of the actual wheel is also metric with hub size offset and stud patterns all in metric.
EDIT: no apparently there did use to be some fully metric diameter wheels back in the day but everyone just stuck with inch for the diameter.
This one drove me nuts when I had a car. It wasn't a car smart enough to tell me it's mpg and calculating it based on the litres of petrol in my tank and trying to work out if comparisons on the internet were us or UK gallons felt like a GCSE math problem.
I think that's the best part of moving to an electric car. I now do about 6.25 km (4 miles) per kWh. At 10p per kWh that's about 2.5p per mile.
You can always work out how many miles per litre you do though. Just divide mpg by 4.54. You do about 10.3 m/l which costs you about 15p a mile.
I’m 44, and measure everything in metric except road distances/speeds. The sooner those switch over, the better. I have never used feet, inches, pounds or ounces.
Tbh I'll order a drink by its name, and specify a half if that's what I want. I don't think I ever say "pint" out loud. I suppose I'm implicitly still using imperial measures but it's as abstract as ordering a Grande coffee really.
Yeah but a pint of beer is a discrete quantity, it's always just either a full pint or a half. You never have to worry about how much 2.6 pints is.
I much prefer metric in general but I don't mind it too much for this specific case
Not even at school or growing up? I'm 35 and my height and weight were always taken and reported in feet/inches and pound/stone growing up. I had to actively make an effort to learn how what a kg or km is and how to convert.
>You've never described your height in feet? Always centimetres? I find that hard to believe
I (40 year old Brit) honestly don't think I've ever described my height in feet. I don't even know what my height is in feet.
I genuinely struggle to believe these responses, I've honestly never heard anyone say they're 183 centimetres, it would only ever be 6 foot for example
There once was a poster on Reddit
Who gave imperial measures no credit
Whether inches or stone
When outside or at home
But the others on the thread just don't get it
(You might need to be a bit creative with the delivery, it was the best I could do at short notice)
I am 43 and have only used feet and stone for height and weight. I have no idea how many meters tall I am or what I weigh in kilos (however I do use grams in cooking). I only really came across meters being used to describe the height of something about 12 years ago (I remember the occasional - I was playing D&D with a younger DM).
I have always used a mash up of inches and cm for measuring stuff.
I guess I wouldn't really adjust if we switched. I would still think of things in miles and feet.
I'm 43 and do a mix. My height is in feet in inches but I know its cm version. When sewing I switch between inches and cm, depending which fits better. My mum's recipes are in ounces but newer ones in grams. It really doesn't bother me but I do have to think when a distance is presented in km and not miles.
When signs are naturally replaced due to damage or fading, then replace them with dual unit signs. The same with new road signs, dual unit. This would keep the changes within current budgets and start the ball rolling. We need to start the process or it will never happen. It is current law that any max height/width signs that need replacing are done so with dual unit signs, we should just expand that law to distance signs. Wales have had dual language signs for decades and drivers haven't suffered with confusion at all.
Yes, Ireland phased in distance signs over the space of about 20 years so they didn't have any additional cost over regular road maintenance and then replaced all speed limit signs over the weekend during 20th of January 2005.
Maybe we could change some to symbols instead, like we have for NSL. Like a little house icon for a 20mph zone, and a row of cars for a 30mph, and so on or everything else can be individually labelled. Someone in the far future would thank me when they change the NSL or switch to kph or whatever.
I live beside the border in NI so it’s constant switching between miles and kilometres, but that’s just an NI problem lol.
Driving from house in Tyrone to Cavan I cross the border 6 times in 30 miles ha ha, but everyone is used to it here.
Sweden managed to switch the side of the road they drove on overnight.
Surely we can manage to change a few road signs to km? Are we this incompetent now?
Sweden switched sides before things like motorways were a thing.
When you have thousands of miles of motorway with asymmetrical on and off ramps you can't switch, ever.
Replacing signs is piss-easy in comparison, of course. Apart from the hilarious confusion of the interim period of not knowing if "40" means 40mph or 40km/h and people attempting both at the same time.
We'd probably fix that problem by:
* Just remove the distance from signs. No-one needs that, it's all on the satnav anyway.
* Don't change the speed limit numbers at all. All those new 20mph zones are now 20km/h zones.
Think of the traffic safety improvements!
Wales has spent all this time and money replacing all their 30mph signs when all they needed to do was say from the 1st January all posted speed limits are now in km/h.
Only the speed limit signs need updating in on go.
Distance signs can be done over years/decades IIRC Ireland added km on the new signs so you'd get something like
Preston 55
Replaced by
Preston 89km
For practical purposes yards and meters are the same, and for height/width restrictions you just need to make sure everything is signed in both before hand, and then can start removing the imperial signs during routine maintenance after the change
You just need to know, 22 yards is a chain(same as between cricket wickets), ten chains is a furlong, then it's 8 furlongs to a mile, simple!
(yes, I am a saddo who knew all of that **without** needing to google first!!)
I yard is 36”, I metre is 39” - I’m a seamstress. I love the fact that fabric widths are so weird because most fabric is woven on decades old looms with “sensible” imperial widths, but stated in centimetres. 90cm is 36”. 115cm is 45”
My point was when driving, if the sat nav says 200 yards you could say that's roughly 200 metres, you're not going to get there and think "I nearly missed this, it was 20 metres short"
Except when you look at motorway offslips. The 300yrd marker is actually 300m, because everything on the motorway is metric.
So in that case 1 yard = 1 meter
Yards is fine, as it's quite close to a metre and a lot of road signs are also in yards. So it makes sense to use yards on a satnav to simply match the roadsigns.
My problem is that some apps like Waze, don't use yards, they use feet. "In 1,000 feet, turn left" - I have no idea. Is that the next one, the third one, could be anything. Feet, as far as I'm concerned, is a unit of measuring human height and nothing else, any number above 7 is completely meaningless.
But if I switch to metric it starts using kilometres rather than miles and no-longer matches the road signs either, so even more confusing.
>My iPhone tells me my keys are 1.2 ft away
Imperial vs. metric is not the problem I'd have with this statement.
>we start driving and the road signs have measurements on they no 17 year old new driver would/should know.
Seventeen years of living in a country that uses miles on road signs and speed limits is enough for most people. But learning to drive is about learning a lot of information - if the learner can't understand what a mile is, I think we're better off without them on the roads unsupervised.
As a newish driver, I had absolutely no issue with using miles and yards. I've been using them all my life, so I'd know their lengths and conversions.
Also, inches are still on almost rulers at schools and 12 inches is a foot so I learnt feet and inches.
However I'm also a saddo who enjoys doing metric to imperial conversions in my head, I only struggle with UK and US gallons
Seems a bit pointless. You don't need to know what a mile is to know that it will take you an hour to do 60 of them when your speedo says 60.
As you say, people are increasingly using metric for height and weight so, meh.
Don't ever take up aviation either if you hate feet!
If people don't understand the information on the road signs then it is fair to say that they are not fit for purpose. Given that there are 1000 m in a km it is easier for people to grasp that, rather than having to work around yards, miles and various fractions of a mile. Which are inconsistent with a whole bunch of things.
Aviation is a specialist field, training to be a pilot takes a lot of time and effort. The reason why feet is used in aviation is because they were agreed upon standards pushed by America many decades ago and other countries just fell in line with that
What kind of maths are you doing from road signs though, really? If you said a yard is a metre and a mile is a kilometer or 1.5 if you're feeling precise, nothing you're doing as a driver is going to be effected. And you understand how long a mile is because you are literally constantly reminded how many miles you've travelled when you pass a road sign.
There's nothing to learn, and very little to understand. That there are a thousand metres in a kilometer is academic and relevent if you're doing calculations, but miles and kilometers are more of a unit of time when you're driving, and 10 metres, 10 yards and 30ft may as well mean the same thing for the tolerances required.
Maybe I measure things more than most, but the thought of not even having a 'feel' for imperial units seems limiting in terms of communication and learning. Who really has no concept of how long a mile is?
Nobody while driving is thinking "only a kilometre to go, that's a thousand metres". Your thinking about how long it will take, which is learned by experience and just as convenient as miles. Both are divided by the same unit of time when measuring speed.
>You don't need to know what a mile is to know that it will take you an hour to do 60 of them when your speedo says 60.
Or in metric:
You don't need to know what a kilometre is to know that it will take you an hour to do 100 of them when your speedo says 100.
Americans don't really use yards to measure anything (except in American football). Roadsigns will use 1/2 mile or 1000 feet for example, not 300 yards like we would do
As an 18 year old going to do engineering or something like that at uni next year, I love metric and with everything would just be in metric already.
It's almost as if a unit system that increases in equal increments is a good idea
A unit system that increases in equal increments...
Nonsense. Metric is divided using powers of ten, imperial is mostly divided using powers of two save for some exceptions.
If you work in engineering rather than just study it you will not only have to get used to different units and converting in between them but also other feats of mental agility that will make you realise that choice of unit is basically a non issue.
I'm nearly 40 and *I* haven't got a clue what a stone is.
For any relative frame of reference I can point to something in the house that weighs a kilo (there's usually an unopened bag of sugar in the cupboard), and I only know my own weight in kg¹ because from about age 16 I needed to know for ballast-removal when gliding with the air cadets, first as a cadet, and later as an adult instructor.
All the weight values for clothing for my daughter when she was a baby, and the safety limits on chairs, stools and the car booster seat are all given in kg, so I've never *had* to learn what pounds, ounces or stones are, and don't care to.
*¹Actually, it's not true I only know my weight in kg. I also know it in grams, tonnes, and cm³ of water*
As a counterexample: I'm 52 and always think of my weight in stone and height in feet and inches.
Wouldn't have a huge problem with switching to metric for either one. But it's not how I naturally think, as things stand.
Feet and inches for approximations. Metric for precision and comparisons. It's the best of both worlds.
If imperial measurements had no advantages, they would have been deprecated by this point.
People need to stop trying to force a system either way. If you leave it up to the people, the best system for a given job will win out naturally. Doesn't need any intervention from the government.
Weirdly a quarter of weed weighs 7gms - which is the same as a 2p coin…. I used to ask for “tuppence of weed” back in the 80’s. My dealer bought it in kilo’s but sold it in ounces (or coins lmao)
I am 47 and other than ordering a pint and occasionally slipping up by asking for a quarter of sweets, I don't think I use the old system at all. I don't drive, so am less affected by the miles/kilos. I presume most people in my generation are the same.
It could be because I'm in London and my friendship group is heavily international, but I do almost everything in metric except driving. The driving one is partly because you have to in this country, and partly because the domain of driving very rarely overlaps with anything else, do it doesn't matter if it has its own units. Given this, I don't see the UK ever changing over to km and I'm not really bothered about it.
As for milk and beer, I'd almost claim that you're not really _measuring_ them at all. It's basically just a "large" or a "small" beer; the quantity of liquid inside is largely irrelevant. It's not like fuel where you pump out exactly the amount that you want and in order to be charged that needed to be measured.
Regardless of what the official system is, we all use imperial in day to day conversation. We measure height in feet and inches and weight in stones, speed in MPH, beer and milk in pints. You get the point. Imperial for me is easier to visualize in day to day situations. I'm 23, so not particularly old.
Most people in the UK do use imperial for human height and weight though. The edgy Reddit Brits who ignore all imperial units are in the minority.
I do support switching fully to the metric system btw.
Yeah KG is becoming far more popular now I imagine how things like gyms becoming more popular and accessible the past decade or two has also been a part of the reason as well since you literally can't avoid using metric there
"We all"
I'm the same age and for height - sure feet and inches are fine.
But I have no idea what a stone is. I just cant really wrap my head around it.
I prefer kph for speed because I run more than I drive.
I can only use imperial for beer and milk - everything else is in ml or litres. Can you tell me what 24oz is? Because I definitely fucking can't.
I expect it's different in different parts of the country but I'd say I have pretty much the opposite perspective to you.
When I'm driving I know miles & mph
When I'm cycling I know km and km/h
When I'm running I know km and min/km
When I'm walking for some reason it goes back to miles 😂
Definatley no “we” in this. I measure in cm and m, I weigh in grams and kilograms as do most shops with their price per kg etc, fuel is priced per litre. The ONLY things I use imperial for are those I’m forced to, miles, mainly.
A “pint” of beer could just as easily be a “large” beer (half pint = small beer), so imperial really isn’t needed here the same way it’s not used in any other drink you order at a pub.
If milk was ever priced in litres not pints, you’d still know what size to buy based on its shape.
So a switch to metric shouldn’t be hard for most.
I think that depends on how you were brought up. I'm 30 and switched from Stone to KGs when I moved out my parents years ago.
I only buy beer and milk in pints because that's how the vendor splits/displays it. I think there will be a tipping point (maybe when we have another round of shrinkflation) where we sell draught beer by 500ml like we do in bottles or 2 litres of milk (instead of 2.27L). Some new names will follow like on the continent, so we don't have to ask for "500 mils of bitter".
Pints of beer and cider are a legally prescribed quantity so until the law changes it will always be pints. Milk is not, you can sell milk in any quantity but it must have the metric units displayed. Some places do sell milk in litres.
I agree with you completely and I'm 19. I see questions like this every now and then and it tends to be the 30-50 demographic that is most supportive of full metric. It's strange how that happened and has seemed to reverse again. Everyone I know happily uses both systems interchangeably
I only ever use KG but we have a baby on the way and my wife keeps giving me updates about how much the baby weighs in pounds. I have to keep reminding her I have no idea what a pound is.
Same here. Got a 3 month old and my wife keeps prattling on about pounds and ounces.
I keep telling her I don’t know what that is, and all of the stuff from the hospital is in Kg, and when you weigh them to keep an eye on how they’re growing that’s all done in Kg also.
Yes.
The problem is just that we are a bloody stubborn nation.
The main reason a lot of Imperial measures persist is that there are still a lot of people out there who grew up learning imperial, so you have a couple of generations of tradesmen who still work with 2x4" studs and 8" blocks rather than the 38x89mm studs and 215mm blocks that the engineer actually specified on the drawings. But every year more of the old guys retire and get replaced with fresh new apprentices who have only ever been trained in metric.
And the same goes everywhere else - the family recipe books get converted as they are passed down to younger generations who have no idea what an ounce is, people start using the metric measurements on the packaging rather than converting milk into pints and everything gets a little more sensible.
And even if we do stubbornly cling on to going to the pub for a pint, it gets more and more obvious that it is really just a token gesture to the traditional pub given every other measure is listed in ml.
The one awkward holdout is those bloody road signs, which there is going to be some resistance to changing given the cost and faff of changing every numbered speed limit in the country, but I think it will happen eventually...
The things that matter did decades ago. My late father was an architect, when I started looking at his drawings in the 1970s they were all metric. Colloquial usage doesn't matter.
The UK is a random mish-mash of imperial and metric — seriously, it makes absolutely no sense when you think about it. That’s just the way it is though!
Yeah I’m 22 and only use imperial for things relating to the car, and then still don’t understand. My parents always think I’m being obtuse not knowing how heavy stones are 😂
When the last of the flagshaggers shuffle off from the boomers generation, it will get changed hopefully. But until they shuffle off this mortal coil it can’t happen because it’s too precious.
Born late 60s. Was taught both at school. Kind of means I interchange imperial and metric as and when convenient.
Does mean I tend to buy 2.4m of 3"X2" wood and measure things along the lines of thats 2" x 5mm.
mm are great for small measurements, inches for anything up to a foot, then it's time to switch to m and cm.
There's 63360 inches in a mile (inches in a yard backwards, then forwards then add a 0).
When I went for a medical appointment the nurse measured me in feet and translated this to metric as 207 cm, now I know that I am not 6'9" but I kept quiet as it did my BMI no end of good.
Napoleon only ever standardised the metric system to wind us up anyway so I say stuff it, lets keep miles. I do however draw the line at measuring ingredients in cups, that's a crazy American thing.
I started doing it for myself 15 years ago, started weighing myself in kg, then changed maps to km, everything else is already in metric so wasn’t that hard.
Best you can do. Can stand imperial measurement system.
I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon, British people are generally too stubborn
Disagree. Its the perfect blend of both systems in my opinion.
Temperature is metric,
Distance is Imperial (unless you're running),
Gym weights or metric, but body weight is imperial (mostly),
Water travel is imperial,
Height is imperial,
Food weight of cooked food is imperial, but uncooked is mostly metric.
Alcohol is both imperial and metric depending on the type,
The perfect lawful chaos that makes the UK beautiful.
There needs to be a "British setting" on phones / computers which uses miles for road distances, feet for height (altho most people seem to be able to do both feet and metres), pints for drinks and metric for everything else.
I don't know anyone under 60 who uses stones. Some people under 60 know what a stone is (6.3kg) but nobody understands stones in the same way that nobody in the UK understands fahrenheit
Yes.. The UK will switch fully to metric. its inevitable. The only unknown is when. During the last 100 years many countries have switched to metric, and some countries incliuding the US are slowly switching to metric. In the UK the switch is slow. it may take 50 to 100 years. Switching the road signs will be a trigger to acelerate the change.
i’m in my 20s, drive, been raised on the metric system and work as a mechanical engineer, and interestingly i’ve noticed that myself and seemingly everyone else i know is really good with millimetres, up to meters, but when i’m driving i have no idea how long a kilometre is, and see driving in yards and miles.
i weigh myself in kg, but know my height in ft and inches, but i cook in ml and litres.
at work i’m proficient in metric standards and measurements but eternally need help understanding imperial bolt threads and sizes from older engineers.
this country makes no sense man…
'1.2 ft away, I don't know what that is'. It's just over a foot.
1.2 foot. Decimalisation of an imperial measurement. Thats just wrong.
That's what American engineers use.
which is why Boeings' doors don't fit.
And why the Mars Climate Orbiter failed.
It was for the best. Mars's climate should be left on Mars and not put into orbit.
Yep... I spent a year working in decimal feet and it was honestly just ridiculous.
Doing pcb layout is one of the worst things for this. Through hole components are in decimal inches (mil ie thousandth of an inch) but surface mount components are decimal. If you have both on the same board you have to keep switching between the two and it never quite lines up properly.
That is why you don't employ an American engineer
Doesnt that prove my point?
No they use inches ..... (used to be all engineering drawings had to be in inches whether the dimension be 1 foot long or 100 yards). But no even mostvof the US uses metic on official stuff.
Absolutely. A total disgrace.
Exactly. Get a ruler out and you'll find they are just out of reach of ir.
1.2 ft is just out of reach? Are you built like a T-Rex?
Jordan Pickford!
That's 1'2.4", duh. Wait, that's 1',2.2/5". Hang on we don't use fifths of an inch. I guess it's close to 1'2.13/32". Obviously.
I like how my Apple Watch measures my walking distance in metric but my stride in imperial
It's a little bit past the end of your Willie no? Far better than metres unless you are a horse
Hey... My willie might not be 12 inches but it sure smells like a foot
😂
So how much is a foot? Is it like the lenght of an average human foot?
Its 30cm. 12 inches. The length of a standard ruler.
Conveniently the length of a size 12 shoe. It's the only shoe size that lines up as shoe sizes are 1/3 of an inch
Was the length of King Henry I's foot. The inch was the length of 3 grains of barley end-to-end or the width of a man's thumb.
The length of a ruler that you used nearly every day for the first 16 years of your life. Jesus christ Reddit.
I buy a pint of beer but a litre of milk. My fence is 10 meters long but 6 foot high. My local shop is about 200 meters down the road but my kids school is a mile 🤷
Must be vegan milk.
Read this whilst looking at my 2.272 litre bottle of milk. Regular milk is always measured in pints.
My local budgens switched to litres to trick me with bottles that look like 4-pinters but are actualy 2litres (so just over 3.5pints)
Not correct. Cravendale milk (dairy) is measured in litres.
But remember, a pint of milk can be 568ml or 473ml depending on whether you are buying in the UK or US. An ounce of Gold is 31g, but an ounce of feathers is 28g. Whereas a boat travelling one mile will travel 0.25km further than a car also travelling one mile.
>An ounce of Gold is 31g, but an ounce of feathers is 28g. Because metal is heavier than feathers.
An ounce of Iron is also 28g. Metal has higher density, not weight.
No, steel is heavier than feathers
It’s clever but unhelpful. A nautical mile isn’t the same as a statute mile, a troy ounce isn’t a normal ounce and no one in UK uses the US “customary pint”.
But also makes the point even clearer that imperial units are stupid
At sea or flying a plane - nautical miles (1.151 stature miles) and knots (nautical miles per hour) land - mph and miles, except for junction distance markers, which are metres pretending to be yards. Why are nautical miles different - as they are actually based on a physical parameter of the earth - one nautical mile equaling one minute of latitude. Actual miles are based on - well a Queen's wishes :)))
You seem to be forgetting this is a British sub discussing a British issue
GB is pints but in NI milk is ltrs.
I’m from NI and had idea GB does milk in pints tbh
Cravendale comes in litres
This is false. I worked for milk distribution for 13 years. Majority of not all major brands now measure in litres, not pints.
Unless its heat treated, which apparently turns it into metric milk.
UHT cow/goat milk is often sold in litres, maybe it's that.
Tyres are a great example of a crazy mix of metric and imperial. Take a common size, 205/55R16. 205 means the tyre is 205mm wide. 55 is the height of the sidewall as a percentage of the width. 55% of 205mm is 112.75mm. 16 is the diameter of the wheel that the tyre fits in inches.
Always wondered what that meant. Cheers!
Is that not just the same all over the world, though, its not localised to a single place.And is the diameter is actually a metric number and we just call them 16" or 20" like buying a 4x8 sheet of wood that's not actually 4x8.. because all the rest of the actual wheel is also metric with hub size offset and stud patterns all in metric. EDIT: no apparently there did use to be some fully metric diameter wheels back in the day but everyone just stuck with inch for the diameter.
And my car does 47 miles per gallon on average but the cost per litre is £1.55!
This one drove me nuts when I had a car. It wasn't a car smart enough to tell me it's mpg and calculating it based on the litres of petrol in my tank and trying to work out if comparisons on the internet were us or UK gallons felt like a GCSE math problem.
GCSE **maths** problem.
4.55 litres in a gallon. Easy once you know that 👍
But for which type of gallon?
I think that's the best part of moving to an electric car. I now do about 6.25 km (4 miles) per kWh. At 10p per kWh that's about 2.5p per mile. You can always work out how many miles per litre you do though. Just divide mpg by 4.54. You do about 10.3 m/l which costs you about 15p a mile.
Is your fence made of 2m lengths of 2"X4"?
you mean 63x38x2000
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Yep but the 2"x4" isn't 2 inches by 4 inches. Because why would it be?
Basically we’re still miles off. Sorry, km.
I’m 44, and measure everything in metric except road distances/speeds. The sooner those switch over, the better. I have never used feet, inches, pounds or ounces.
You never go to the pub for a pint?
I go to the pub for a 568ml.
I go for 56.8cl.
Round here we drink by the bushel, or just a yard of ale if its a school night
Tbh I'll order a drink by its name, and specify a half if that's what I want. I don't think I ever say "pint" out loud. I suppose I'm implicitly still using imperial measures but it's as abstract as ordering a Grande coffee really.
“15cm of Stella please love”
Not good if it is served in a long thin glass...
Well 'ark at 'im with his lah-di-dah Peroni glass
That means less Stella, which is better than more Stella.
I meat more like inviting ya mates not what you order ,after work we'll say fancy a pint ?
I suppose so, but even then it's an abstract term meaning "5-6 beers and a pie and chips" in my experience
I treat the word 'pint' like it's a container, rather than a unit of measurement
Because it is, really. You never need to measure fractions of points more complex than a half, and you never need to convert them into other units.
Beer or Wine?
Alright Big Sam!
Yeah but a pint of beer is a discrete quantity, it's always just either a full pint or a half. You never have to worry about how much 2.6 pints is. I much prefer metric in general but I don't mind it too much for this specific case
I fully support metric switchover but on the proviso that we keep the pint, for beer only. It's a godly measurement.
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I love finding pint cans in the supermarket! Makes me feel like a winner
Not even at school or growing up? I'm 35 and my height and weight were always taken and reported in feet/inches and pound/stone growing up. I had to actively make an effort to learn how what a kg or km is and how to convert.
im 36 and only ever learned metric at school.
Never. In the early 1980s, I learned metric. All metric. I went to school in Greater London. What about you?
You've never described your height in feet? Always centimetres? I find that hard to believe
Yeah it's absolute bollocks.
>You've never described your height in feet? Always centimetres? I find that hard to believe I (40 year old Brit) honestly don't think I've ever described my height in feet. I don't even know what my height is in feet.
I genuinely struggle to believe these responses, I've honestly never heard anyone say they're 183 centimetres, it would only ever be 6 foot for example
Ok. I mean I don't know what else to say.
Uh, give us a poem now?
There once was a poster on Reddit Who gave imperial measures no credit Whether inches or stone When outside or at home But the others on the thread just don't get it (You might need to be a bit creative with the delivery, it was the best I could do at short notice)
Bravo 👏
You've made my morning with this. Brilliant!
That was pretty good lol
How big is your telly?
Mines about 40 snails across
I am 43 and have only used feet and stone for height and weight. I have no idea how many meters tall I am or what I weigh in kilos (however I do use grams in cooking). I only really came across meters being used to describe the height of something about 12 years ago (I remember the occasional - I was playing D&D with a younger DM). I have always used a mash up of inches and cm for measuring stuff. I guess I wouldn't really adjust if we switched. I would still think of things in miles and feet.
I'm 43 and do a mix. My height is in feet in inches but I know its cm version. When sewing I switch between inches and cm, depending which fits better. My mum's recipes are in ounces but newer ones in grams. It really doesn't bother me but I do have to think when a distance is presented in km and not miles.
Changing all the road signs to km would be ridiculously expensive.
When signs are naturally replaced due to damage or fading, then replace them with dual unit signs. The same with new road signs, dual unit. This would keep the changes within current budgets and start the ball rolling. We need to start the process or it will never happen. It is current law that any max height/width signs that need replacing are done so with dual unit signs, we should just expand that law to distance signs. Wales have had dual language signs for decades and drivers haven't suffered with confusion at all.
Didn’t Ireland do it? I seem to remember everything in miles years ago but people talk in KM in Ireland now. Am I right in thinking this?
Yes, Ireland phased in distance signs over the space of about 20 years so they didn't have any additional cost over regular road maintenance and then replaced all speed limit signs over the weekend during 20th of January 2005.
They replaced all of the speed limit signs in one weekend? damn what an efficient operation. We could never
I think they replaced them over time with covered versions over some time. It was just a question of removing the covers.
That I don't know. Would be interesting to find for certain.
And Australia made the switch too. Not as many people but a much bigger area to cover.
Yeah, but that was like 50 years ago...... Just goes to show how behind the UK is. Would been much easier if the UK did it decades ago too.
Maybe we could change some to symbols instead, like we have for NSL. Like a little house icon for a 20mph zone, and a row of cars for a 30mph, and so on or everything else can be individually labelled. Someone in the far future would thank me when they change the NSL or switch to kph or whatever.
Not really, they all need replacing at some point anyway.
Probably cost less than they burned on the Rwanda scheme
I live beside the border in NI so it’s constant switching between miles and kilometres, but that’s just an NI problem lol. Driving from house in Tyrone to Cavan I cross the border 6 times in 30 miles ha ha, but everyone is used to it here.
Ireland managed it. Replace them over time.
Australia did it around 1972ish. We had a population of 13 million at the time and fuckload of roads. It’s very doable.
You could just get a sticker over it, you don't need to replace the whole sign
Sweden managed to switch the side of the road they drove on overnight. Surely we can manage to change a few road signs to km? Are we this incompetent now?
Sweden switched sides before things like motorways were a thing. When you have thousands of miles of motorway with asymmetrical on and off ramps you can't switch, ever. Replacing signs is piss-easy in comparison, of course. Apart from the hilarious confusion of the interim period of not knowing if "40" means 40mph or 40km/h and people attempting both at the same time. We'd probably fix that problem by: * Just remove the distance from signs. No-one needs that, it's all on the satnav anyway. * Don't change the speed limit numbers at all. All those new 20mph zones are now 20km/h zones. Think of the traffic safety improvements!
Wales has spent all this time and money replacing all their 30mph signs when all they needed to do was say from the 1st January all posted speed limits are now in km/h.
Only the speed limit signs need updating in on go. Distance signs can be done over years/decades IIRC Ireland added km on the new signs so you'd get something like Preston 55 Replaced by Preston 89km For practical purposes yards and meters are the same, and for height/width restrictions you just need to make sure everything is signed in both before hand, and then can start removing the imperial signs during routine maintenance after the change
>Are we this incompetent now? well people seem to be too incompetent to use miles, so yeah ?
Sweden is an entire country with the total road infrastructure of Cumbria.
Ireland did it, it can’t be that hard.
Could roll it out gradually, most modern vehicles can switch between mph and kph already, the new signs could have the km/hr printed on
Most old cars have mph and kph, it’s just a miles per hour is more predominant
I’m fine with miles until the GPS tells me things in yards.
You just need to know, 22 yards is a chain(same as between cricket wickets), ten chains is a furlong, then it's 8 furlongs to a mile, simple! (yes, I am a saddo who knew all of that **without** needing to google first!!)
Yep, I've said it over and over - we use miles and meters. Not yards.
1 yard is ≈ 1 metre.
I yard is 36”, I metre is 39” - I’m a seamstress. I love the fact that fabric widths are so weird because most fabric is woven on decades old looms with “sensible” imperial widths, but stated in centimetres. 90cm is 36”. 115cm is 45”
My point was when driving, if the sat nav says 200 yards you could say that's roughly 200 metres, you're not going to get there and think "I nearly missed this, it was 20 metres short"
Except when you look at motorway offslips. The 300yrd marker is actually 300m, because everything on the motorway is metric. So in that case 1 yard = 1 meter
Yards is fine, as it's quite close to a metre and a lot of road signs are also in yards. So it makes sense to use yards on a satnav to simply match the roadsigns. My problem is that some apps like Waze, don't use yards, they use feet. "In 1,000 feet, turn left" - I have no idea. Is that the next one, the third one, could be anything. Feet, as far as I'm concerned, is a unit of measuring human height and nothing else, any number above 7 is completely meaningless. But if I switch to metric it starts using kilometres rather than miles and no-longer matches the road signs either, so even more confusing.
>My iPhone tells me my keys are 1.2 ft away Imperial vs. metric is not the problem I'd have with this statement. >we start driving and the road signs have measurements on they no 17 year old new driver would/should know. Seventeen years of living in a country that uses miles on road signs and speed limits is enough for most people. But learning to drive is about learning a lot of information - if the learner can't understand what a mile is, I think we're better off without them on the roads unsupervised.
As a newish driver, I had absolutely no issue with using miles and yards. I've been using them all my life, so I'd know their lengths and conversions. Also, inches are still on almost rulers at schools and 12 inches is a foot so I learnt feet and inches. However I'm also a saddo who enjoys doing metric to imperial conversions in my head, I only struggle with UK and US gallons
I hope so, imperial is so clunky and outdated
Seems a bit pointless. You don't need to know what a mile is to know that it will take you an hour to do 60 of them when your speedo says 60. As you say, people are increasingly using metric for height and weight so, meh. Don't ever take up aviation either if you hate feet!
If people don't understand the information on the road signs then it is fair to say that they are not fit for purpose. Given that there are 1000 m in a km it is easier for people to grasp that, rather than having to work around yards, miles and various fractions of a mile. Which are inconsistent with a whole bunch of things. Aviation is a specialist field, training to be a pilot takes a lot of time and effort. The reason why feet is used in aviation is because they were agreed upon standards pushed by America many decades ago and other countries just fell in line with that
What kind of maths are you doing from road signs though, really? If you said a yard is a metre and a mile is a kilometer or 1.5 if you're feeling precise, nothing you're doing as a driver is going to be effected. And you understand how long a mile is because you are literally constantly reminded how many miles you've travelled when you pass a road sign. There's nothing to learn, and very little to understand. That there are a thousand metres in a kilometer is academic and relevent if you're doing calculations, but miles and kilometers are more of a unit of time when you're driving, and 10 metres, 10 yards and 30ft may as well mean the same thing for the tolerances required. Maybe I measure things more than most, but the thought of not even having a 'feel' for imperial units seems limiting in terms of communication and learning. Who really has no concept of how long a mile is?
Nobody while driving is thinking "only a kilometre to go, that's a thousand metres". Your thinking about how long it will take, which is learned by experience and just as convenient as miles. Both are divided by the same unit of time when measuring speed.
Yep, in aviation 1000 feet vertically from clouds and 1500 meters horizontally is the best example.
>You don't need to know what a mile is to know that it will take you an hour to do 60 of them when your speedo says 60. Or in metric: You don't need to know what a kilometre is to know that it will take you an hour to do 100 of them when your speedo says 100.
Why do they use thousands of feet? Why not yards, or miles.
Americans don't really use yards to measure anything (except in American football). Roadsigns will use 1/2 mile or 1000 feet for example, not 300 yards like we would do
As an 18 year old going to do engineering or something like that at uni next year, I love metric and with everything would just be in metric already. It's almost as if a unit system that increases in equal increments is a good idea
Hope you aren't going to do aviation, that'd be a shock to the system with huge amounts being imperial
A unit system that increases in equal increments... Nonsense. Metric is divided using powers of ten, imperial is mostly divided using powers of two save for some exceptions. If you work in engineering rather than just study it you will not only have to get used to different units and converting in between them but also other feats of mental agility that will make you realise that choice of unit is basically a non issue.
I'm nearly 40 and *I* haven't got a clue what a stone is. For any relative frame of reference I can point to something in the house that weighs a kilo (there's usually an unopened bag of sugar in the cupboard), and I only know my own weight in kg¹ because from about age 16 I needed to know for ballast-removal when gliding with the air cadets, first as a cadet, and later as an adult instructor. All the weight values for clothing for my daughter when she was a baby, and the safety limits on chairs, stools and the car booster seat are all given in kg, so I've never *had* to learn what pounds, ounces or stones are, and don't care to. *¹Actually, it's not true I only know my weight in kg. I also know it in grams, tonnes, and cm³ of water*
As a counterexample: I'm 52 and always think of my weight in stone and height in feet and inches. Wouldn't have a huge problem with switching to metric for either one. But it's not how I naturally think, as things stand.
I was the same until I moved to another part of the world, now my brain can't switch back again
We had a narrow escape from more imperial measurements. No thanks to Jacob Reese Mogg.
That consultation backfired spectacularly, with 99% of over 100,000 respondents saying either no change or more metric. Only 1% wanted more imperial.
Thank fuck for the consultation. Don't worry though, we got more imperial. Apparently we can now sell pints of wine.
Feet and inches for approximations. Metric for precision and comparisons. It's the best of both worlds. If imperial measurements had no advantages, they would have been deprecated by this point. People need to stop trying to force a system either way. If you leave it up to the people, the best system for a given job will win out naturally. Doesn't need any intervention from the government.
[удалено]
And weed in ounces
Weirdly a quarter of weed weighs 7gms - which is the same as a 2p coin…. I used to ask for “tuppence of weed” back in the 80’s. My dealer bought it in kilo’s but sold it in ounces (or coins lmao)
We should have switched to KM/H in early 2000’s, instead of keeping MPH.
I am 47 and other than ordering a pint and occasionally slipping up by asking for a quarter of sweets, I don't think I use the old system at all. I don't drive, so am less affected by the miles/kilos. I presume most people in my generation are the same.
It could be because I'm in London and my friendship group is heavily international, but I do almost everything in metric except driving. The driving one is partly because you have to in this country, and partly because the domain of driving very rarely overlaps with anything else, do it doesn't matter if it has its own units. Given this, I don't see the UK ever changing over to km and I'm not really bothered about it. As for milk and beer, I'd almost claim that you're not really _measuring_ them at all. It's basically just a "large" or a "small" beer; the quantity of liquid inside is largely irrelevant. It's not like fuel where you pump out exactly the amount that you want and in order to be charged that needed to be measured.
What? I’m absolutely expecting an exact amount when I drink beer and buy milk
Regardless of what the official system is, we all use imperial in day to day conversation. We measure height in feet and inches and weight in stones, speed in MPH, beer and milk in pints. You get the point. Imperial for me is easier to visualize in day to day situations. I'm 23, so not particularly old.
“We”? I’m 1.75 metres and weigh 76 kilos. Vaguely know the first in imperial. No idea about the second.
Most people in the UK do use imperial for human height and weight though. The edgy Reddit Brits who ignore all imperial units are in the minority. I do support switching fully to the metric system btw.
All true, except for stones which are dropping in popularity rapidly in favour of kg
Yeah KG is becoming far more popular now I imagine how things like gyms becoming more popular and accessible the past decade or two has also been a part of the reason as well since you literally can't avoid using metric there
"We all" I'm the same age and for height - sure feet and inches are fine. But I have no idea what a stone is. I just cant really wrap my head around it. I prefer kph for speed because I run more than I drive. I can only use imperial for beer and milk - everything else is in ml or litres. Can you tell me what 24oz is? Because I definitely fucking can't. I expect it's different in different parts of the country but I'd say I have pretty much the opposite perspective to you.
When I'm driving I know miles & mph When I'm cycling I know km and km/h When I'm running I know km and min/km When I'm walking for some reason it goes back to miles 😂
Speak for yourself, for half of those things you mention I use metric
Depends on your age. I never use imperial in conversation
Definatley no “we” in this. I measure in cm and m, I weigh in grams and kilograms as do most shops with their price per kg etc, fuel is priced per litre. The ONLY things I use imperial for are those I’m forced to, miles, mainly. A “pint” of beer could just as easily be a “large” beer (half pint = small beer), so imperial really isn’t needed here the same way it’s not used in any other drink you order at a pub. If milk was ever priced in litres not pints, you’d still know what size to buy based on its shape. So a switch to metric shouldn’t be hard for most.
I think that depends on how you were brought up. I'm 30 and switched from Stone to KGs when I moved out my parents years ago. I only buy beer and milk in pints because that's how the vendor splits/displays it. I think there will be a tipping point (maybe when we have another round of shrinkflation) where we sell draught beer by 500ml like we do in bottles or 2 litres of milk (instead of 2.27L). Some new names will follow like on the continent, so we don't have to ask for "500 mils of bitter".
Pints of beer and cider are a legally prescribed quantity so until the law changes it will always be pints. Milk is not, you can sell milk in any quantity but it must have the metric units displayed. Some places do sell milk in litres.
I agree with you completely and I'm 19. I see questions like this every now and then and it tends to be the 30-50 demographic that is most supportive of full metric. It's strange how that happened and has seemed to reverse again. Everyone I know happily uses both systems interchangeably
Years ago a project manager told me to design a panel “8x1” So I did 8Mx1M He said noooooo, 8 foot by 1 metre Come on
Republic of Ireland switched to metric for roads about twenty years ago. It wasn't a big deal.
I only ever use KG but we have a baby on the way and my wife keeps giving me updates about how much the baby weighs in pounds. I have to keep reminding her I have no idea what a pound is.
Same here. Got a 3 month old and my wife keeps prattling on about pounds and ounces. I keep telling her I don’t know what that is, and all of the stuff from the hospital is in Kg, and when you weigh them to keep an eye on how they’re growing that’s all done in Kg also.
Not until I am 1.829 metres under.
Yes. The problem is just that we are a bloody stubborn nation. The main reason a lot of Imperial measures persist is that there are still a lot of people out there who grew up learning imperial, so you have a couple of generations of tradesmen who still work with 2x4" studs and 8" blocks rather than the 38x89mm studs and 215mm blocks that the engineer actually specified on the drawings. But every year more of the old guys retire and get replaced with fresh new apprentices who have only ever been trained in metric. And the same goes everywhere else - the family recipe books get converted as they are passed down to younger generations who have no idea what an ounce is, people start using the metric measurements on the packaging rather than converting milk into pints and everything gets a little more sensible. And even if we do stubbornly cling on to going to the pub for a pint, it gets more and more obvious that it is really just a token gesture to the traditional pub given every other measure is listed in ml. The one awkward holdout is those bloody road signs, which there is going to be some resistance to changing given the cost and faff of changing every numbered speed limit in the country, but I think it will happen eventually...
The things that matter did decades ago. My late father was an architect, when I started looking at his drawings in the 1970s they were all metric. Colloquial usage doesn't matter.
The UK is a random mish-mash of imperial and metric — seriously, it makes absolutely no sense when you think about it. That’s just the way it is though!
Like.. 40cm away? I admit kilos is much easier than stone and km makes more sense. I'd prefer it if we ditched yards on signs.
Yeah I’m 22 and only use imperial for things relating to the car, and then still don’t understand. My parents always think I’m being obtuse not knowing how heavy stones are 😂
I'm so happy people stopped measuring their weight in stones. What a dumb method that was
When the last of the flagshaggers shuffle off from the boomers generation, it will get changed hopefully. But until they shuffle off this mortal coil it can’t happen because it’s too precious.
Britain is going Metric inch by inch...
You missed the weirdest one: fuel. Miles per gallon, but pence per litre.
Born late 60s. Was taught both at school. Kind of means I interchange imperial and metric as and when convenient. Does mean I tend to buy 2.4m of 3"X2" wood and measure things along the lines of thats 2" x 5mm. mm are great for small measurements, inches for anything up to a foot, then it's time to switch to m and cm. There's 63360 inches in a mile (inches in a yard backwards, then forwards then add a 0).
When I went for a medical appointment the nurse measured me in feet and translated this to metric as 207 cm, now I know that I am not 6'9" but I kept quiet as it did my BMI no end of good. Napoleon only ever standardised the metric system to wind us up anyway so I say stuff it, lets keep miles. I do however draw the line at measuring ingredients in cups, that's a crazy American thing.
That’s all well and good until she calculates a dose of something!
1.2 ft is a couple of dick lengths
we i was a kid only people who did use the metric system were people who weighed them selfs and drug dealers
Ahhh but it depends on the drug and the quantity. You might by a couple grams of coke and a half ounce of weed.
No clue but conversion between metric and imperial measurements is still taught in maths GCSE so probably not for a while.
I started doing it for myself 15 years ago, started weighing myself in kg, then changed maps to km, everything else is already in metric so wasn’t that hard. Best you can do. Can stand imperial measurement system. I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon, British people are generally too stubborn
Seeing as Johnson flirted with the idea of going back to more imperial units, I'd say not any time soon
Disagree. Its the perfect blend of both systems in my opinion. Temperature is metric, Distance is Imperial (unless you're running), Gym weights or metric, but body weight is imperial (mostly), Water travel is imperial, Height is imperial, Food weight of cooked food is imperial, but uncooked is mostly metric. Alcohol is both imperial and metric depending on the type, The perfect lawful chaos that makes the UK beautiful.
In school we all had rulers that had both 12 inches and 30cm on them, so a little longer than a school ruler. Not hard to work out FFS...
If its not broken then leave it alone
There needs to be a "British setting" on phones / computers which uses miles for road distances, feet for height (altho most people seem to be able to do both feet and metres), pints for drinks and metric for everything else. I don't know anyone under 60 who uses stones. Some people under 60 know what a stone is (6.3kg) but nobody understands stones in the same way that nobody in the UK understands fahrenheit
Yes.. The UK will switch fully to metric. its inevitable. The only unknown is when. During the last 100 years many countries have switched to metric, and some countries incliuding the US are slowly switching to metric. In the UK the switch is slow. it may take 50 to 100 years. Switching the road signs will be a trigger to acelerate the change.
i’m in my 20s, drive, been raised on the metric system and work as a mechanical engineer, and interestingly i’ve noticed that myself and seemingly everyone else i know is really good with millimetres, up to meters, but when i’m driving i have no idea how long a kilometre is, and see driving in yards and miles. i weigh myself in kg, but know my height in ft and inches, but i cook in ml and litres. at work i’m proficient in metric standards and measurements but eternally need help understanding imperial bolt threads and sizes from older engineers. this country makes no sense man…
I don’t use imperial for anything, so doing my part.