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. 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.)
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.)
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.
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)
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.
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.
Now how about paper sizes. Reams, A4, legal etc and when are they going to go metric
Don't forget to add 1 for the "rouge"
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.
A league is an even 3 miles, nautical or statute, making it 15,840 ft. or ~18,228 ft.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So when are you americans going to learn proper English then
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