Do you think in Metric or Imperial ?

[Rumcajs]

The Fahrenheit system makes perfect sense when you realize he based it on the fact that 100 degrees is the point at which it's way too hot to do anything. Likewise 0 degrees means it's way too cold and you should knock off outdoor activity. Mac

Perfect sense??
100°F is around 38°C and yes it is bit too hot, for me anyway. I do have to disagree with you saying that 0°F is to cold. It is only -18°C and that is pretty normal winter temperature where I come from. If I was to believe that this is too cold to do anything I would have to hibernate for winter.

 

[Jakata]

I use either. I used metric at school and Imperial at home.

 

[ScotchDave]

The Fahrenheit system makes perfect sense when you realize he based it on the fact that 100 degrees is the point at which it's way too hot to do anything. Likewise 0 degrees means it's way too cold and you should knock off outdoor activity. Mac

Never move to California, I went to visit the gf there and can't remember a single day it was below 100 Fahrenheit, I was there a month.

 

[Madpuppy]

Never move to California, I went to visit the gf there and can't remember a single day it was below 100 Fahrenheit, I was there a month.

Then you wouldn't care for Nebraska either Dave, we hit 110F in the summer and we just had -33F below last week.

 

[Pict]

Perfect sense??
100°F is around 38°C and yes it is bit too hot, for me anyway. I do have to disagree with you saying that 0°F is to cold. It is only -18°C and that is pretty normal winter temperature where I come from. If I was to believe that this is too cold to do anything I would have to hibernate for winter.

12 years in Central Brazil has me spoiled. The average temp here is 73 F(23 C). Sub-zero weather is a non-starter for me anymore. Mac

 

[Toddy]

I like the simplicity of Centigrade

0degC water freezes,
100degC water boils.
About 37degC is fairly average human. (depends where it's taken)
40degC a human needs help, fast, similarly for a 35degC or lower core temperature.
21degC is very comfortable central heating setting for main rooms.
22degC outside and it's Summer
400 to 600degC is a general range for a campfire burning well.
-273.15degC is absolute zero.

Farenheit always seems so illogical, maybe that's just because we don't use it It's just a footer.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Roy North]

I'm of the generation that grew up with Imperial, and so I think in imperial measures.
Too old now to change.

 

[Pict]

I like the simplicity of Centigrade

0degC water freezes,
100degC water boils.
About 37degC is fairly average human. (depends where it's taken)
40degC a human needs help, fast, similarly for a 35degC or lower core temperature.
21degC is very comfortable central heating setting for main rooms.
22degC outside and it's Summer
400 to 600degC is a general range for a campfire burning well.
-273.15degC is absolute zero.

Farenheit always seems so illogical, maybe that's just because we don't use it It's just a footer.

cheers,
Toddy

0 degrees my car won't start
100 degrees my air conditioner breaks
98.6 degrees normal human body temp
104 degrees I'm delerious and my wife is fed up with me
75 degrees and my heating bill will be too high
45 degrees sweater weather
95 degrees speedo weather
212 degrees turn it down and let it simmer a while
1425 degrees and you quench it in oil

You seriously can't see the ironclad logic in the Fahrenheit system? I can't make it any clearer. Next you'll be telling me the tax codes are confusing.

Mac

 

[Bravo4]

All of the above. I can't vote but someone did

Bicycles are an example of mixed measurement systems that work. Mars Climate Orbiter is not, ergo, bike mechanics are for the most part intellectually superior to rocket scientists.

I first read this article, "The Metric System, Pidgin Measurement", and it sort of shocked me out of my metric-ness a little.
http://www.briontoss.com/education/archive/miscjuly00.htm

He makes a good point that the Powers of Ten are nothing new and that there are very practical reasons for why these old systems evolved as they did.

For example; a "chain'' measures 66feet. 80 chains equal 1 statute mile. An acre equals 10 chains by 10 chains.

That to me is a more practical way to measure distance than one based upon say, the distance unimpeded light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a unit of time based on the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

UTM is great and relatively simple to use, but it is "inorganic", if you will. It does not relate to time and space as Longitude does.

I am getting a little tired of hearing "point-o". If something has the value of 4, it is or used to be understood that meant four. oh well, if you can't beat 'em....

Bravo4.0

 

[Toddy]

When I started school we had Imperial measurements.
L s d, pounds shillings and pence. We had whole weeks devoted to teaching us to count just in money.
Think on it,
We had pounds........of 20 shillings, or eight half crowns or ten florins, 240 pennies, 40 sixpences, or 80 thrupenny bits, 480 ha'pennies or 960 farthings. Thankfully we'd gotten rid of the groat by then, there were 60 of them to the pound. Oh and a guinea was 21/-..............that's 21 shillings.

Then we had feet and inches, and yards, and rods and chains and acres and miles. 16ths, 10ths, 32nds an 64ths were common.

Pints and gallons and quarts and gills and hogsheads and tunnes.

Drams and ounces and pounds and stones and hundredweights and tons.

and they *all* had different measuring systems, different values.

Then in 1970 in came Metric and everything was done in tens
Suddenly there was time in the school curriculum for other things.........right enough the nations mental arithmatic went right out the window too

cheers,
Toddy

 

[AJB]

I started school in 1970; if you’re 42 you’re screwed!

My family were using imperial, my teachers metric, those who could be bothered. As a result I estimate length in feet and inches but measure in centimetres, I buy my cooked meat in Tesco in quarter and half pounds but weigh things in grams, and anything less than a pint and I’ll just have a coke!

 

[gregs656]

I think probably both. I am not very good with imperial weights, but I think I'm ok with most other things. I don't think being stuck in the middle like we are now is a particularly great idea.

 

[Chinkapin]

It is my sorrowful duty to inform all of you beer drinkers that here in the U.S. we have traditionally had the 6-pack, the 12-pack, and the case. The case being 24. However, and here comes the good news for me/bad news for you -- We now have the "suitcase," which is about the size of a real suitcase, and contains 30 cans!"

On a more serious note; when I was a kid all (or most) of the gas cans were marked with the U.S. gal. and also with the imperial gallon markings. I never understood why, but surmised that this was to enable the sale of these cans in Canada.

When hunting I generally think in terms of 100 yards. There is a very good reason for this, as all football fields are 100 yards long. After having stood around them for years, it is fairly easy to look out across a field and say to yourself: 1 football field, 2 football fields.... and have a fairly good idea the target in question is 200 yards away. If I am using a gun that has metric iron sights, I know to knock off about 10 yards per football field. So now I'm shooting 180 meters. (in reality not enough distance to even matter. Of course at long distances where bullet drop is at a steep angle, the difference would matter quite a bit. 6 football fields would be 600 yards, but about 550 meters, so sight adjustments would be called for.

Toddy; I'm thinking that the area of human measurements would be a good place for a mixed system: instead of 36 - 24 - 36, how about 94 -24-36? Just a thought.

 

[Nat]

I have to admit to mixing both up whether i'm baking or measuring

 

[Alexlebrit]

I use both like a lot of people here, I'll often work in whichever measurement suits the job better.

Since I now live in France you'd think it'd all be metric, but strawberries and other soft fruits are sold at the market in "livres" or pounds.

And of course there's building materials, sold over here in strange numbers of millimetres which when converted turn out to be round numbers in imperial. Buy a sheet of plasterboard for instance and it's 2440mm x 1220mm - or 8'x4' in old money. Same with most plumbing fittings.

The worst bit of conversion I have to do for myself is fuel consumption. I buy my petrol in litres, and my distance travelled is shown in kilometres (because it's a French car). But I still think of fuel consumption in miles per gallon, not litres per one hundred kilometres. So that takes a bit of working out.

I guess it's because in a lot of these cases it was Britain's industrial revolution that set the standards.

Oh and for temperatures, I prefer Kelvin

 

[poddle]

I hate it when discovery channel tells me a that shark is 2200 Kilo's or that a Cheetah can run at 98 kph, means sod all to me,
neither does someone telling me that the next junction is 800 metres away.

The imperial system was better.

 

[ickyan]

this is of the point but in bushcraft its good to use you own body measurements:
Arm, forearm, hand, finger width etc.

Thats what the Egyptians did, and it works well with walking staffs (I usually go for chin hight)

 

[poddle]

The Problem with Fractions
# According to the British Weights and Measures Association, the metric system is based on multiples of the number 10. The BWMA states that the downside of this type of system is the number 10 can only be divided by one, two, five and 10 without resulting in a decimal or fraction. Half of 10 is five, half of five is 2.5, half of 2.5 is 1.25 and so on. Because the human brain can manage whole numbers better than fractions or long decimals, this can be difficult in every day use. The 12-month year, the 24-hour day and the 60-minute hour divide more flexibly than base 10 does.
No Natural Use
# The rigidity of the metric system makes it less convenient for designing units. For example, drinking a pint or buying a two-liter bottle of soda seems natural. However, saying you would like a 400 milliliter bottle of coke does not. Similarly, a convenient unit of one foot is known around the world and makes sense to most people in terms of measuring.
Weights and Measures
# According to the BWMA, weights and measures evolved out of practical experience. The imperial system was originally based on 'human' quantities, such as an inch measuring the lenght of a thumb, a foot equaling the length of one human foot and one cup of water equaling the amount of water that can be held in cupped hands. The metric system, however, was devised during the French Revolution, when the academics calculated the distance between the North Pole and the equator. They then divided this number by 10 million to get the meter. According to the BWMA, basing all units on the number 10 has made for an inflexible system. For example, with the standard system, the 12-inch foot can be easily divided in a variety of ways, whereas it is hard to divide millimeters or meters efficiently without resulting in decimals.
Measurements
# In engineering, drawings using the metric system would have to be in millimeters, which would result in huge, user-unfriendly numbers. For example, if you were measuring a typical sheet of plywood that was 4 feet by 8 feet in the standard system, the metric system would measure it as 1219.2 millimeters by 2438.4 millimeters. Even if these measurements were rounded up, the large numbers would still be difficult for the average human brain to visualize. Carpenters would have to work with numbers so large it would be hard to manipulate or visualize. For example, people can remember 6 feet 2 inches, or 2 pounds 4 ounces better than the metric conversions of 198 centimeters or 1,002 grams, respectively.

 

[armie]

The Problem with Fractions

Whole numbers better than fractions? Well, if a length is 1.25 meter, it's 1250 millimeter. Hey presto, fraction gone.

No Natural Use

I don't understand, why would the word "pint" be more natural than "ml"? It's the same coke, conceived in the same factory, using the same "natural" (or not) ingredients.

Weights and Measures

It's easy to divide them without those pesky decimals, as I have described above.
And what could be more natural than our own Mother Earth?
Measuring the altitude of aircraft in feet (often 10 000 feet) does not look natural to me, nor can I imagine how high it is.
Your cupped hands are not the same as someone else's, so this standardized cup would be very unnatural for you to use, yours being 1.02300001 standard cup.

Measurements

This is just silly. I can say the same from a metric position: I measure 1.90 meter, which is far more easy to remember than 6.2335958 ft, or 6 ft 2.8031496 in; a typical sheet of plywood that was 1200 by 2400 mm would measure 3 ft 11.24409 in by 7 ft 10.488 in, etcetera.
The huge numbers stop being "user-unfriendly" after a bit of basic school education, and/or the use of scientific notation.

The metric system, however, was devised during the French Revolution, when the academics calculated the distance between the North Pole and the equator.

Ah, here we have the culprits: "French" and "academics". Booooo!

BTW, nowadays all those inches, stones and pints are formally defined in terms of metric units.

 

[poddle]

Whole numbers better than fractions? Well, if a length is 1.25 meter, it's 1250 millimeter. Hey presto, fraction gone.

I don't think you are quite getting the point Armie, The fraction is not gone for very long, start to divide your 1250 mm, even just once, and then see what a mess of numbers you are left with, divide it a few more times and look again.

Whole numbers are easier to work with that fraction, and as soon as you divide the number you have just mentioned you end up with a silly half number.