Measurement - Imperial v Metric

Imperial v metric As an accountant, I spent my whole working life dealing with £sd and then £p - which was an easy conversion as the base number, £1, remained the same I've never had cause to use weights and measures, so am only conversant with what I was taught at school and grew up with, ie imperial When we enrolled with a new doctor in 2014, the nurse checked my height and weight, and for the first time I was ?cm tall and ?kg in weight - the numbers meant absolutely zilch to me, and I had to convert them to imperial when I got home, to find out the results Temperature is another conundrum for me - I can imagine what a Fahrenheit temperature feels like, but now that our weather forecasters use the centigrade scale, I have little or no idea exactly what they mean What is apparent to me is the ridiculous situation where imperial measurements remain in some instances but have changed to metric in others - surely if there had to be a change it should have been 100% That reminds me of the comment made when it was decided that there would be a "gradual" changeover to decimal currency around the time that Sweden changed from driving on the left to driving on the right - it was suggested that the UK might introduce a gradual changeover to driving on the right

MR. I know that roadside signposts still measure distances by miles instead of kilometres because of the cost of replacing every signpost in the UK. Like you I buy beer by the pint and bananas by the kilo. My tyre inflator tells me that my tyre pressure is 30 lbs per square inch, I have to buy petrol by the litre but I know that my car does 30 miles per gallon. I recently hired top and tails to attend a snobbish wedding (yes I did look a right idiot). The young assistant asked my chest measurement. I said 48 inch. Long blank look. What's that in real measurement, he asked. I told him to use his metric tape.

I have a similar problem, I've spent all my working career using the metric system with no problems but away from work as soon as I hear a measurement of any kind using metric units I convert to the imperial system before I can picture it. It's now become completely automatic to change systems be it weight, length, volume or whatever at home but not at work. There was joke about the imperial system that because there were so many different units (with splendid names) available for any measure the one used always expressed things in the most inconvenient way possible, so for instance speed would be expressed in furlongs per fortnight

Yeh, well they were going to change the race tracks from furlongs to kilometres, but there was no way they could get the horses to figure it out. lol.

One thing that surprised me when I moved here to Hungary was that threaded pipe and fittings are all in imperial sizes! They still use a lot of iron pipes and things like valves and washing machine taps can only be obtained with these pipe threads as they don't have compression fittings. My car only has the speedo marked in kph so I was glad of the satnav on my last trip to UK as that can be set to mph. I'm the same when it comes to weights of people, anything other than stones is meaningless. It gets further confused by USA having slightly different imperial units to UK, at least metric measurements are the same everywhere.

Hi all Horses for courses. I still calculate boilers by their BTU value, as the formula for calculating heat loss replacement is based on so many BTUs a cubic ft. Currently the standard for halls is 3 BTU a cubic ft. Yet, nowadays new boilers, no matter whether gas, electric or whatever are advertised in kWh. That is kilowatts. 1 kWh = 3412 BTUs. Please can you get your homework handed in before Christmas. Whatever happened to "therms"?

Do you know, Philip, I've never calculated a boiler And I haven't heard from therms for years - I hope he's ok What was the question?

Oh, I assumed at King Henry VIII school there'd have been Winter therm, Spring therm, and Summer therm - but did they teach the computer language LISP? Edited by member, 7th Jan 2016 10:13 pm

I am getting a teeny weeny bit worried about you lads. Right - back to school everyone !

Quite a few years ago (35 at least) My wife reversing Morris Oxford estate into parking lot, requests information from elder daughter. Wife "How far from that wall at the back?" Daughter " One and a half metres Mummy" Wife " For god`s sake give it me in feet and inches"

A section of the canal is called a 'pound' so you can walk a 'pound' or sail a 'pound' but there is no exact start or finish. I have no idea if it can be measured in feet or metres.

True story. In the early 80's we briefly lived in a council house. The house was fine except it needed a new back door although it was perfectly secure. After a couple of weeks two men arrived with a new door but it wouldn't fit and as it was too long in one direction and too short in the other so it couldn't be made to fit. A week or so later they returned with another door, same problem and a third time the following week. At this stage I offered to buy and fit the door myself, so the following day they sent the foreman round, he took one look at it, spotted the problem immediately and said, as if it was our fault, "the problem is, you've got an imperial door frame and we only stock metric doors, I'll have to order one for you." It arrived two days later and was fitted immediately. I wonder if I'd not threatened to do it myself we'd have ever got a new door. We moved out as soon as we could and bought out first house

I was in the building industry during the changeover from imperial to metric. There were a fair number of mistakes (still are) But one that could cause the most trouble was the changeover in height of hills - feet to metres. The previous measurement unit was ONE foot, now it became ONE metre, there`s no relevance between 1ft and 3ft 3inches, except they are the same unit. It`s the same with fahrenheit and celsius - freezing 32 degrees now became 0 degrees So if you previously knew it was 70 degrees outside, how could you reconcile that with some bloke who insists that it is approx. 19, there`s no relevance and you feel you are being conned, (just like the change over to metric money) I still turn 45p into nine shillings when I am buying something