Inches or Centimetres?

Goldilox

How do I edit this?
I much prefer metric. Apart from the fact that it's what I was taught at school, it follows much more logical sense on all sorts of ways (1000mm to the m, 1000m to the km, 1000cubic cm of water=1 litre, which weighs a kg). I do drive in miles, because that's what my car & the road signs work in, but if I'm walking up a hill I tend to think in km, and obviously gentleman's trousers are still sized in inches.

I'm very much of the opinion that an opportunity was missed in only half-way swapping the country over instead of just going the whole hog and making people learn the new system in 1965, as they did when they changed the currency over.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I find it quite telling that a lot of 'Imperial' people are able to tell you how heavy a cubic metre of water is in kilograms - but very few could tell you how heavy a cubic yard of water is.

Oh, and I make it 1,687.5 lbs - from the numbers that I still have stored away at the back of my mind, i.e. 62.5 x 27..
 

Jonah

Spouting nonsense since the day I learned to talk
I'm very much of the opinion that an opportunity was missed in only half-way swapping the country over instead of just going the whole hog and making people learn the new system in 1965, as they did when they changed the currency over.

Exactly. As usual this country does everything half-arsed.
 

age'd parent

50,000th poster!
I was taught the mnemonic at school,
"a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter"

God knows why, I've never used it but it's still stuck in my head!
Mind you, I've just worked out that a gallon of water weighs 10 lbs...
no still no use !
 

Vespa-NL

Well-Known Forumite
I was taught the mnemonic at school,
"a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter"

Those teachers never know to how interest their pupils.
It would be more useful to know "a pint of CIDER weighs a pound and a quarter"
That's something you want to know in later years...for a pub quiz.
 

henryscat

Well-Known Forumite
I was thrown on yesterday when I went to check tyre pressures on my new automobile contraption and found them presented in bar and no psi :o I've never contemplated pressure in bar before, so it was all a bit meaningless, especially when one's gauge is in psi. But still I now know that 1 bar is 14 and a half of your imperial pounds per square inch.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I was thrown on yesterday when I went to check tyre pressures on my new automobile contraption and found them presented in bar and no psi :o I've never contemplated pressure in bar before, so it was all a bit meaningless, especially when one's gauge is in psi. But still I now know that 1 bar is 14 and a half of your imperial pounds per square inch.
By pure co-incidence 1 bar is near enough atmospheric pressure at sea level, which is quite handy at times. Bar is a non-standard unit and we should really be using pascals, but we've a long way to go here before we do that..
 

henryscat

Well-Known Forumite
I'm quite partial to inches of mercury for pressure, though admittedly probably only because it features in vacuum brakes on the railway.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
I'm quite partial to inches of mercury for pressure, though admittedly probably only because it features in vacuum brakes on the railway.

Even here the shipping forecast uses millibars - in Ireland they use hectopascals now. Millimetres of mercury seems to have faded from use now fairly completely.
 

age'd parent

50,000th poster!
It's not just me that gets confused my paint shop pro thinks that 4 x 6 inches
is larger than 10 x 15 cm and prints over the edges, forcing me to work in decimal!
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
For "big" measurements I always work in Imperial: distances, fuel capacity, height, weight (especially mine).
I only use Metric for fiddly little things.
And for computer imagery type things, even though they are fiddly, DPI is better that DPTPFFCM.
Oh, and of course: "How long will my taxi be?" "Oh about 13 foot"
 

Toble

Well-Known Forumite
Also, it annoys me that the Merkin hosts of Mythbusters talk in American Imperial (Ok, their Gallon is different I think), but the British narrator always convert the figures into Metric.
I can't 1.8288 metres why.
I'm confused, but probably I won't be 201.168 metres.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Mind you, I've just worked out that a gallon of water weighs 10 lbs...
no still no use !
The gallon was actually redefined by Parliament in the 1820s to be the volume of ten pounds of water and, thus, the pint, being one-eighth of a gallon, is the volume of one and a quarter pounds of water - not long after that, in the 1840s, a further attempt at 'decimalisation' occurred with the introduction of the two-shilling piece, that being one-tenth of a pound. It all stalled a bit then, until the 1960s - still, mustn't rush....

And I've never really understood why a US fluid ounce is different to an Imperial one..

I do remember a New Year spoof in Cyprus which claimed that decimal time would be introduced world-wide on the same day as the 'new money' back in England. People were to be supplied with sheets of various-sized transparent 'faces' to stick over the watches and clocks to tide them over the transition period. It caused great consternation amongst those that didn't work out that the existing timepieces would still have twelve-to-one gearing when ten-to-one would have been necessary for the new system...
 

Kickstart

Well-Known Forumite
Hi

I stared school in the first half of the 1970s. We were taught both pretty much simultaneously. Result is that whichever you get out of me tends to be random, or down to which is nearest. So you are quite likely to get something described and being between 2cm and an inch long.

I prefer binary

There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't

Of course OO Gauge is often referred to as 4mm /ft, which is just deranged.

Just as O gauge is 7mm / ft, N is 2mm / ft, HO (half O) is 3.5mm / ft, etc. Really mad is that OO is a 4mm / ft model running on 3.5mm / ft track.

All the best

Keith
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Really mad is that OO is a 4mm / ft model running on 3.5mm / ft track.
It's even worse if you're trying to do Iarnrod Éireann, where it's 5'3" and should really be 21mm gauge.

All right, so it's not 5'3", it's 1,800mm, just like it's not 4'8½" any more, it's 1,435mm..
 

Kickstart

Well-Known Forumite
Hi

NIR use the same gauge.

The old story was that Ireland was building from 2 ends of the country in standard gauge and broad gauge. Realising they would meet they decided to standardise, and decided to split the difference:yay:

All the best

Keith
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
NIR use the same gauge.
They rather have to, or the Belfast Enterprise would get quite exciting. The joke is to show people a picture of the interlaced track on the Boyne viaduct and persuade them that that's where the trains change over to the British rails...
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