Imperial v US liquid measurement

[Dinesh]

. A woman on the radio a few weeks ago announced that we were going to get 2-4 cm of snow, about "2 and a half inches!". That just makes it worse! (2.5 inches is 6.35 cm, not at all what was predicted.)

Don't forget to add 1 for the "rouge"

 

[Terrence Brennan]

Since when is it illegal to talk about the Imperial system?

It's illegal to sell products in the Imperial system measures exclusively. Metric measurements must be provided.

You're free to talk about Imperial measures all you want, with or without the use of metric.

One sidebar (that isn't really related to this discussion all that directly)... it highly annoys me when people convert badly. A woman on the radio a few weeks ago announced that we were going to get 2-4 cm of snow, about "2 and a half inches!". That just makes it worse! (2.5 inches is 6.35 cm, not at all what was predicted.)

Jim, for a while, it was illegal to even post the Imperial equivalent prices; that "rule" got shot down when the Courts refused to prosecute the four MPs who owned the gas station.

Yeah, bad conversions bug me, too. It's maybe just as well that nobody is trying to convert the current price of gasoline into Imperial; across the river from Ottawa, in Gatineau, Quebec, today's price is $1.164/litre...$5.29/gallon--yow!! I told a young woman (maybe 19 years old) this morning at our local coffee shop, that when she was the same age as myself and my wife, gas was the equivalent of about $0.10/litre!

 

[MattKing]

I find metric steel reels easier to load than imperial plastic ones - at least for 35mm film

Matt

P.S. IMHO there is nothing wrong with the government mandating that all commercial measurements be expressed using a single system, as long as they don't prohibit additional information as well (e.g. require kilograms, but permit ounces as well)

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

Also, I've never seen anyone routinely use repeating decimal fractions in the common measurements in Imperial that use fractions. Quarters, eights, sixteenths, and thirty-seconds (and so on, ad infinitum) all cleanly resolve into decimals. People do not generally measure to the third or ninth of an inch.

Wrong. Shoe sizes in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Austalasia, and some of the other colonies go up a full size for every 1 bcn., a third of an inch.

Yards are commonly used, three feet. Hands are commonly used for measuring horses, 4 in. - 1/3 of a foot. Howabout teaspoons?

Jesus, I know the Canadian Dollar is still worth slightly less than the U.S. Dollar (although at the rate this country is going. . .), but $5 a gallon?

It's bad enough at 3.29^9 USD here.

Looking at your post again, I see that you're proabably using Imp. Gallons. That'd be "only" about $4.40 a U.S. gallon, or $4.31/US Gal with the exchange rate factored in. Of course, it'd probably be sold at $4.29^9, yet another "backward American custom".

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

I find metric steel reels easier to load than imperial plastic ones - at least for 35mm film

Matt

P.S. IMHO there is nothing wrong with the government mandating that all commercial measurements be expressed using a single system, as long as they don't prohibit additional information as well (e.g. require kilograms, but permit ounces as well)

Well, just FYI, the metric system IS mandated by the U.S. government for dietary information and I'd say that it is required at the very least strongly recommended on all packaged products here in the States. The U.S. does a very good job at converting one unit to another, whereas some of the products that come from the E.U. round a U.S. fl. oz. to 30mL, which is a significant problem on an 8-10 fl. oz. container of something.

For those of you that don't believe that the governments of many countries are way out of line, google "The Metric Martyrs". Seriously, stealing a guy's imperial scales and fining him the same thing for assaulting a police officer for selling a POUND OF BANANAS?!?!?!?

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

A chain is 66 feet. There are 20 chains in a furlong, 80 chains in a mile. 10 chains to the furlong (1/8th of a mile). 200 metres to the furlong, making five furlongs pretty close to a kilometre.
A chain is close enough to 20 metres, A rod is 16 1/2 feet, close enough to 5 metres.

There is no practical conversion for a league, since it is the distance and average man can walk in an hour (3.5 miles or 5.5 kilometres - which shows up another advantage of metric being that you can walk a lot faster post metric) .

My point being that these metric distances are easily transferable to the "useful" everyday category

Imperial units are an anachronism and obsolescent. Except on golf, as I may have mentioned.

A league is an even 3 miles, nautical or statute, making it 15,840 ft. or ~18,228 ft.

There are TEN chains in a furlong. A furlong is 1/8 mile, 660 feet. That's why the number of feet in a mile isn't an even 5,000 as the mile was in ancient times, 1000 five-foot paces.

Now I'm not advocating that everyone know what a chain, a barleycorn, a hand, a cubit, a link are, but it is actually quite easy to convert fractional numbers or multiple miles to feet in your head why you just remember that an eighth of a mile is 660 feet.

So 1 3/4 mi. is 14 furlongs. 6 x 14 = 84, so 9280 feet in 1 3/4 mile.

You also said earlier somewhere that a mile per hour conversion to feet per second is not important. On the contrary, it is when you see a sign that says "Lane ends, 1000 feet ahead." and you need to know how many seconds before you need to be in the next lane over going 60 MPH. You have a little over 11 seconds.

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

I find metric steel reels easier to load than imperial plastic ones - at least for 35mm film

Matt

It's interesting you bring 35mm film up. If you actually measure the width, if you can even find a ruler in inches in your country anymore, it's exactly 1 3/8 in., not 35mm. There are exactly 8 sprockets to an 1 1/2 in. (taking into account that the spacing is on the outside of the first and eighth sprockets, so the distance halfway between sprockets "0" and "1" and "8" and "9" is exactly 1 1/2 in.

 

[RobC]

Well things would be a lot easier if the US stopped converting what the rest of the world uses into it's own hybrid units. Like short gallons and ounces.

Now how about paper sizes. Reams, A4, legal etc and when are they going to go metric

Give me Groats and Pieces of Eight anytime. Just watch out for 9 bob notes.

 

[MattKing]

It's interesting you bring 35mm film up. If you actually measure the width, if you can even find a ruler in inches in your country anymore, it's exactly 1 3/8 in., not 35mm. There are exactly 8 sprockets to an 1 1/2 in. (taking into account that the spacing is on the outside of the first and eighth sprockets, so the distance halfway between sprockets "0" and "1" and "8" and "9" is exactly 1 1/2 in.

The reference to 135 film as "35mm" comes from its history as motion picture film, and relates to the size of the film stock, not the image area. The 35mm dimension is across the width of the film, and IIRC originated when 70mm motion picture stock was slit lengthwise down the middle.

Almost all the rulers and tape measures I see in Canada have both metric and inch scales.

Matt

 

[Nick Zentena]

What kind of sprocket holes? B&H? Kodak? Hey not all film even comes with holes.

 

[Ole]

Now how about paper sizes. Reams, A4, legal etc and when are they going to go metric

A4 is metric! An A0 sheet is exactly 1 square meter, with the sides being in the ratio of 1 to the square root of 2.

The reason for that is that by cutting the sheet in two, you get two A1 sheets, with exactly the same proportions. Halve it again for A3, and again for A4, and so on.

 

[Mike Té]

My favorite system is smidgenish, a smidgen being a division of a whack.

Don't speak to me about pinches.

 

[PhotoJim]

Don't forget to add 1 for the "rouge"

There is a word for you, sir, that would be inappropriate in this forum, but let's use a phrase that rhymes: you are a snit disturber.

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

Right, 35mm, which is actually 1 3/8" film, is 1/2 the width of 70mm, which is actually 2 3/4" roll film which was a popular amateur roll film size at the time that motion pictures were first developed.

As for "metricized" customary units in the U.S., they're already here. A U.S. ton is exactly 2,000 lbs instead of 2,240 for a British tonne. A "kip" is a thousand pounds, commonly used in U.S. industry, a kilopound if you will. Pounds are basically decimal, 7,000 grains. Mils/thous (thousandths of an inch) and microinches are also commonly used for industry here instead of the earlier "lines" which were 12ths of an inch IIRC.

I think that these units are useful for industry, but again are less practical for day-to-day units of measurement.

As for liquid and dry measure, honestly cubic inches would be easier and better for scientific measure.

Ideally, either foot-pound-Rankine or inch-grain-Rankine systems would be just as viable as metrics for scientific work, with metricized prefixes instead of the customary conversion factors to other units.

But leave miles, yards, and furlongs on our highways, please!

 

[johnnywalker]

A league is an even 3 miles, nautical or statute, making it 15,840 ft. or ~18,228 ft.

There are TEN chains in a furlong. A furlong is 1/8 mile, 660 feet. That's why the number of feet in a mile isn't an even 5,000 as the mile was in ancient times, 1000 five-foot paces.

Now I'm not advocating that everyone know what a chain, a barleycorn, a hand, a cubit, a link are, but it is actually quite easy to convert fractional numbers or multiple miles to feet in your head why you just remember that an eighth of a mile is 660 feet.

So 1 3/4 mi. is 14 furlongs. 6 x 14 = 84, so 9280 feet in 1 3/4 mile.

You also said earlier somewhere that a mile per hour conversion to feet per second is not important. On the contrary, it is when you see a sign that says "Lane ends, 1000 feet ahead." and you need to know how many seconds before you need to be in the next lane over going 60 MPH. You have a little over 11 seconds.

You're right, 10 chains to the furlong (I said 20 and 10, don't know where the 20 came from).

If the sign says "Lane ends 300 metres ahead" and your speedometer is in kilometres per hour, you can do the same mental calculation.

The point is, why keep all these strange numbers in your head when the metric system is all done in multiples of 10? It just makes no sense.

 

[johnnywalker]

A league is an even 3 miles, nautical or statute, making it 15,840 ft. or ~18,228 ft.

Those are the most common usages for the past couple of centuries, but the English language recognizes other definitions, not to put too fine a point on it.

 

[RobC]

A4 is metric! An A0 sheet is exactly 1 square meter, with the sides being in the ratio of 1 to the square root of 2.

The reason for that is that by cutting the sheet in two, you get two A1 sheets, with exactly the same proportions. Halve it again for A3, and again for A4, and so on.

I've learnt something.

 

[Andy K]

Maybe I am overly-attached to an archaic system of measurment, and maybe metric is easier for some things (I used to be a proponent when I was younger), but then I heard about people in the U.K. being prosecuted for the use of pounds and ounces when selling bananas, and that the fine for using such units was as great as that for assaulting a police officer.

Fortunately, the United States has not adopted such a totalitarian, we-know better-than-the-average-citizen-so-we-will-make-broad-sweeping-decisions-for-them attitude.

Further, in the United States, most people are familiar with both systems of measurement, which puts them at an advantage in that they aren't totally clueless when someone expresses a distance in meters, as most non-U.S. citizens now are when given a distance in miles, or feet, or degrees Fahrenheit. Now, maybe people aren't familiar with Celsius so much here, but practically all other metric units don't give your average American any trouble.

To be fair, the only fault that can be laid at the feet of the British government in this matter, is that they permitted it to happen. The real blame lies with the EU who imposed the 'you will use metric or be prosecuted' dictat.

Although they have now caved in because it made the EU so unpopular in Britain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm



.

 

[Steve Smith]

Mils/thous (thousandths of an inch) and microinches are also commonly used for industry here instead of the earlier "lines" which were 12ths of an inch IIRC.

I work for a UK company which was bought by an American company (which was susequently bought by a Chinese company).

We use the term mil (or mill) refering to a millimetre which is significantly different to the US mil 1/1000" which can cause confusion in UK/US discussions.


Steve.

 

[Andy K]

I work for a UK company which was bought by an American company (which was susequently bought by a Chinese company).

We use the term mil (or mill) refering to a millimetre which is significantly different to the US mil 1/1000" which can cause confusion in UK/US discussions.


Steve.

Steve, I refer to 1/1000" as a thou.

 

[FilmIs4Ever]

I agree that the name "mil" is a bad one. Thou is probably better.

From the article, I still get this vibe that there are people that feel they know better than the common person which system MUST be mandated. I do not understand this ideology. Someone who gets a rush from convicting a man for selling a pound of bananas, or outlawing the selling of a pound of bananas strikes me as someone who is desperate for recognition.

 

[PhotoJim]

From the article, I still get this vibe that there are people that feel they know better than the common person which system MUST be mandated. I do not understand this ideology. Someone who gets a rush from convicting a man for selling a pound of bananas, or outlawing the selling of a pound of bananas strikes me as someone who is desperate for recognition.

You can take it that way if you want, but my motivation is purely consistency and convenience. If everyone uses the same system, life is a lot easier.

 

[RobC]

You can take it that way if you want, but my motivation is purely consistency and convenience. If everyone uses the same system, life is a lot easier.

So when are you americans going to learn proper English then

 

[PhotoJim]

So when are you americans going to learn proper English then

Who said I was an American?

 

[RobC]

North Amearica, South America, its all the same continent inhabited by Americans.