Do you think in Metric or Imperial ?

[Toddy]

Recent posts have me converting from cms to inches

Do you think in Metric or Imperial? and can you change between the two easily enough for it not to be a bother ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Tadpole]

Recent posts have me converting from cms to inches

Do you think in Metric or Imperial? and can you change between the two easily enough for it not to be a bother ?

cheers,
Toddy

Imperial and no I have to really think hard about converting between the two

 

[Womble_Lancs]

I think in imperial for measurements of distance, weight and volume, but in metric for temperature, because that's what all the weather reports are in these days.

If you tell me a weight in grams or KG, I have to use the converter on google or on my phone to get it to make sense to me. It's not as bad with volume and short distances.

 

[maddave]

Imperial I'm afraid... I can "visualise" feet and inches but if someone says "It's 45cms" I have to get a measure out to see how big that actually is

 

[John Fenna]

Distance - imperial.
Weights - Metric
Drinks - imperial
Clothing - imperial
Shoes - continental

I cannot easily convert from one to the other though!
Mixed up result of being a child at the time of conversion, but living in Belgium and attending an American school for a while.....

 

[Graham_S]

I can think in both and convert easily between them.
I grew up with metric, but I had to use Imperial at work for years.

 

[Steve27752]

Imperial of course!

 

[Wallenstein]

Metric for me, all the way.

I have my sat nav calibrated in metres and kilometres. Although I can cope with miles, I have no conception of what 350yrds or 35in looks like, but 400m and 40cm I can understand.

I also found that the most comfortable motorway speed of my first car was 120kph, which meant 2km/min, making it dead easy to work out when exactly when you'll arrive!

I lived in Germany for a while and had no problem ordering beer in 500ml or 1l steins, but will drink a pint if needed.

 

[gregorach]

It depends... For most purposes, I'm an SI (metric) guy. For brewing, I find myself using a horrible mixture of metric and Imperial units of both weight and volume, as a result of which I've become pretty good at converting between the two. I'm slowly converting all my recipes and calculations to metric, before I end up having a "NASA moment".

The one that kills me is temperature - Fahrenheit means nothing to me, but many brewing texts use it exclusively. And it's a bugger to convert...

 

[SimonM]

Brought up metric, then served an apprenticeship under an imperial useing electrician.

Imagine the look on my face when he told me cut a length of trunking 4foot 6 and five eighths long! I thought he was speaking a different language!

Bizarely tho, the trunking was sold as 3 x 3 inches in 6m lengths! Crazy mixed up world.

The one I do change between is distance:
Distance when walking in km, but driving in miles.
Simon

 

[Toddy]

I'm of the generation that grew up Imperial but changed towards the end of Primary school.
I understand Imperial, but think Metric. Inches are converted in 8" = 20cms sort of fashion.
Pounds, as the Americans use them, get converted to stones which is just shy of 6.5 kg
9 oz is quarter a kilo. 7gms is quarter of an ounce.

I change back and forwards easily enough apart from temperature.........what is it with fahrenheit ??? 0o C = freezing, how easy is that ? and it goes up and down indefinitely from there.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[durulz]

I use a combination of the two.
I tend to use Metric for small measurements, but Imperial for the big ones. Metric is a much better system for small units. But that's not why I use it. I can get my head around 1mm, but 16ths of an inch are meaningless. I suppose it's better to use a whole unit (that is, ONE milimetre) than a fraction of one.
Anyway. I use a mixture. Lucky I'm not an engineer or something like that or I'd be a right nightmare.

 

[ganstey]

I use a combination of the two.
I tend to use Metric for small measurements, but Imperial for the big ones. Metric is a much better system for small units. But that's not why I use it. I can get my head around 1mm, but 16ths of an inch are meaningless. I suppose it's better to use a whole unit (that is, ONE milimetre) than a fraction of one.
Anyway. I use a mixture. Lucky I'm not an engineer or something like that or I'd be a right nightmare.

Pretty much the same here - it depends what I'm measuring. When I was at school I did Physics (using SI units) and Woodwork (still Imperial at that stage) both to 'O' level. So I needed to be able to think in both. Nowadays I tend to think in Imperial units as they seem a better fit, and I can measure most things to a good enough accuracy using parts of my body When having to measure things precisely I use a dual-system measure, and select the one that's the best fit.

G

 

[John Fenna]

Interestly enough - when I think knife blades it is inches for the length but mils for the thickness of steel!

 

[scanker]

I had metric at school but tend to think in imperial for some reason. I find it easy to switch between both tbh.

 

[sparksfly]

I fill my car with 80 litres of petrol and then calculate my fuel consumption in miles per gallon. I cook in kg and ml but drink pints and feed my baby fluid ounces of milk. I am happy to think in mm, cm, inches, feet (up to about 30), meters. For bigger distances I walk in km and drive in miles.

I use imperial to describe days when it is hot and metric to describe days when it's cold.

 

[EdS]

both.

Tend to measure in feet and cm or inches and mm!

Imperial for rough guessing and metric for actual measurements. Although I'm a big fan of the GBHF and ATL.

 

[BigShot]

There's an option missing that I'd need.

When it comes to people I think in feet and inches for height and stones for weight (I even struggle with pounds in weight) - metric confuses me there.

When it's distances along the ground I think in meters for a while then miles when it gets longer.
I can picture an Acre quite easilly by a Hectare might as well be a number of grains of rice to me. It's ANYONE'S guess how big one of those things is. I suspect noone knows what a hectare is and that it's only used to make big things seem smaller.

Weights of ingredients are always in grams and kilograms.

Volumes are all metric except for fuel (miles per gallon) and milk or beer which are both always pints or halves - even when I'm in Europe.

Temperature is in Celsius.

I work in milimeters and meters (drawings for loft conversions and beam calculations respectively)


Changing between them doesn't come easilly to me.
I know it's roughly km/8x5=miles and miles/5x8=km. And I know it's 25.4mm to an inch. I need to figure it out for each one though.

 

[hedgepig]

As a science graduate I'm ingrained in the metric system, but growing up aI was exposed to the imperial system ... so I use both. However, I maintain consistency in calculations - anyone remember the problem with the Hubble telescope mis-focusing? It was because the whole project was done in metric (absolute standard in science and engineering), however, one engineer was working in imperial and converting to metric - he got one of his conversions wrong and the mirror was subsequently very slightly the wrong shape ... ooops!

 

[gregorach]

Aren't you thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter? The Hubble focussing problem was caused by the misalignment of a test instrument.