EU gives up trying to confuse British children.

[Darth Wong]

I work in aerospace engineering, where both systems are adopted to useful effect.

The simplicity of the metric system is often used as a virtue for promoting it, but to be honest if you can't handle the simple mathematics of using imperial units in your head then you probably shouldn't be trusted with measuring anything anyway.

Besides, the true international system of measurment is based around S.I. units. Imperial and metric are just local systems employed by regions. To insist on the use of either is akin forcing everyone to speak the same language.

I had no idea, until now, that Liberals were so intolerant of other peoples' way of life.

Tiger Tiger, England, United Kingdom

Anyone want to tell me why I doubt he's an aerospace engineer or at least am now worried about UK aeroplanes now?

I'd like to know why the use of Imperial units is a "way of life" for him.

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics. While most people can learn to work with Imperial units if they need to, anybody in the science and engineering field knows it would be easier if everything were metric.

[Adrian Laguna]

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics.

No it doesn't. Force is measured in pounds, mass is measured in stones.

[Darth Wong]

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics.

No it doesn't. Force is measured in pounds, mass is measured in stones.

Are you being facetious, or do you honestly not know that pounds are also used as a unit of mass?

[Hawkwings]

I don't know what you guys are all griping about imperial for. It's not like it's that hard to remember. Oh noez! 5280 is a big number! 3 feet to a yard, wat?. Yes, I did grow up in the US. Can I use metric? Yes! Can I use Imperial? Yes! Can I convert between the two? Honestly, the only conversions I ever need to do are length, and 1 liter ~= 1 quart.

Metric for science and engineering, Imperial for whatever's convenient.

[Stark]

I have no problems using metric and imperial. However, I imagine this only goes one way: 2.2pounds to the kilo is one thing, but 31/78ths of a shim sham to the newton not so much. As someone mentioned, AU uses oz and mls for standard drive sizes, drugs are sold by the ounce, etc. I find imperial easy to use until you get into technical units, where they make much less sense to me than SI units.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Pounds is used to measure weight, which is mass + the planets gravitational force... (A stone is something like 20 pounds... it's not mass, it's pound's foot.)

As such, it is also used for impact force... Sad but true. Although mostly, I've only ever heard the rate used to describe impacts. (IE, the truck hit the car at 55mph.) Rather than anything else...



Imperial sucks. Yeah, Inches, Feet, and yards are no problem. Decent steps up in measurement, but then the next one up is a four digit count of either prior units. It screams that there should be one more in between yards and miles... but if there was ever, I've never heard of it.

The liquid sizes at least generally make sense. The ones I can remember are all 2 of the prior equals one of the next. But, I forgot most of the actual names because who uses them?

Weight is weird but manageable too. 16 to one, then 2000 to 1, iirc.



I just don't see what's so hard about metric that some are so against it. It's a simple base 10 system. Yeah, it's got alot of prefixes to go with them, but the only really actively used ones are Kilo, Centi, and milli... Never actually seen deca or deci used anywhere, and beyond the 1000s I would think that anywhere they'd come up, people who would deal with them would know what they mean.

But, that makes sense... and we can't have that.

[Stark]

I've never understood the conservative imperial movement. Oh no, a system that's simple and accurate! Can't have that!

The ironic part is that most 'no metric' people can't understand that you can use both. Imperial measurements are used in discussion all the time: they're just not used when maths or science are involved. It's not like people ban ounces or whatever.

[FSTargetDrone]

I don't know what you guys are all griping about imperial for. It's not like it's that hard to remember. Oh noez! 5280 is a big number! 3 feet to a yard, wat?. Yes, I did grow up in the US. Can I use metric? Yes! Can I use Imperial? Yes! Can I convert between the two? Honestly, the only conversions I ever need to do are length, and 1 liter ~= 1 quart.

Metric for science and engineering, Imperial for whatever's convenient.

Using two different systems of measure is nonsense. And unnecessary. Frankly, it's more "convenient," to me, to use a system that is easy to remember, far more consistent and not composed of varying units. In the US we buy soda in liters, milk in gallons. Yet drugs are measured by grams. Why the inconsistency? Why not just use one, easy-to-remember system, across the board?

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Grandfather syndrome. The reason a lot of stupid ideas persist.

Sums up:
-Tradition
-Intellectual and fiscal laziness. (IE "It's hard to learn!" & "It'll cost too much to change it now!")

[Simplicius]

A nitpick: there is a proper Imperial unit for mass. One slug is the mass accelerated 1 foot/sec. by a force of one pound. It was mostly used by - unsurprisingly - scientists and engineers, until the scientific community went metric.

The use of the pound to measure both force and mass come from really olden days when people only knew to measure weight. The lbf and lbm are two different units which happen to share a name.

[Netko]

Never actually seen deca or deci used anywhere, ...

The only place I have ever seen deca used as a prefix to grams and then only in the rather unique instance of ordering pre-sliced various meat products like salami, ham, prosciutto intended for use in sandwiches (and in that use, instead of saying decagrams, its usually shortened to "deka"), 15-20 being a usual number for a strong sandwich, 30-50 for taking it home for later.

[Durandal]

I was just talking about this with one of my co-workers, and he brought up an interesting point. Imperial units are based on multiples of 2 and 3, mostly. There's a very good reason for this. When you don't have digital instruments and have to eyeball most things (as the British Navy did back in the day), it's much easier for humans to judge 1/3 or 1/2 of a distance than 1/10.

For example, there are 12 inches in a foot. You can cut a foot in half pretty easily without using any sort of measuring equipment. Then you can divide each side of that half into thirds. Then divide those thirds into halves again, and you've got a fairly decent approximation of a 1-foot ruler. It's much more difficult to do this kind of eye-balling with 1/10 intervals.

Granted, today that's irrelevant because we have measuring instruments so much more accurate than we could ever hope to be, but it makes sense for people who don't have those things, and it gives you an idea as to what they were thinking when they came up with those units. Also, many intermediary units between, say, the yard and the mile have long since been retired. So it makes the intervals seem a lot more arbitrary than they actually are.

[eyl]

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics.

No it doesn't. Force is measured in pounds, mass is measured in stones.

Are you being facetious, or do you honestly not know that pounds are also used as a unit of mass?

Are they properly used as measures of both mass and force, or is it like the situation with kilograms (which are commonly used - in non-scientific contexts - as a unit of weight, even though the actual unit is the kilogram-force?

[Adrian Laguna]

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics.

No it doesn't. Force is measured in pounds, mass is measured in stones.

Are you being facetious, or do you honestly not know that pounds are also used as a unit of mass?

First off, I made a mistake, as Simplicius points out the unit for mass is the slug. A stone is 14 pounds.

Anyway, far as I know anyone who uses pounds to express mass is using the unit incorrectly. I don't recall ever seeing such incorrect usage.

[Stuart Mackey]

Damn British stubbornness

I bet Napoleon thought that and some guy called Hitler.

snip. It's the 21st century now (and before that it was the 20th), Britain needs to shape up.

"How dare you cling to your centuries old way of life" said the Eurocrat 'metric is the way of the future' they cried!

And the nation, shorn of its once mighty fleets, battered and bruised by the storms of fortune remembered its past ..

Who do you think you are kidding Mr EuroCrat, if you think old Englands done, we are the boys who will stop your little game, we are the boys who will make you think again...

We will fight them on the trading floors, and in the Currie house's, we shall fight them in the car factories and in the pubs...
In this England
We shall never Surrender!

[Master Arachnos]

I think I'll stick with my Imperial measures thank you...

To me a 15inch gunned battleship sounds so much cooler than a 384mm gunned one..

Ditto for .303 inch & .5 inch machine guns, much more preferable to 7.7 & 12.7mm

[Hillary]

Grief - there's even a website for the anti metric mob

http://www.metricmartyrs.co.uk/

Surely, surely they have something better to do with their time.

[Molyneux]

No it doesn't. Force is measured in pounds, mass is measured in stones.

Are you being facetious, or do you honestly not know that pounds are also used as a unit of mass?

Are they properly used as measures of both mass and force, or is it like the situation with kilograms (which are commonly used - in non-scientific contexts - as a unit of weight, even though the actual unit is the kilogram-force?

Isn't the actual unit the Newton?

[Darth Wong]

Anyway, far as I know anyone who uses pounds to express mass is using the unit incorrectly. I don't recall ever seeing such incorrect usage.

Try opening a physics textbook where they differentiate between lbm and lbf.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Imperial sucks. Yeah, Inches, Feet, and yards are no problem. Decent steps up in measurement, but then the next one up is a four digit count of either prior units. It screams that there should be one more in between yards and miles... but if there was ever, I've never heard of it.

There's the furlong (660 feet). Thats pretty much used only in horse racing, hence the term 'the final furlong'.

Also, the chain (66 feet), rod (16.5 feet), and probably a whole bunch of others that I don't know about. Obviously, these are never used.

[eyl]

Are they properly used as measures of both mass and force, or is it like the situation with kilograms (which are commonly used - in non-scientific contexts - as a unit of weight, even though the actual unit is the kilogram-force?

Isn't the actual unit the Newton?

The newton is the SI unit of force; the kilogram-force is a unit who's magnitude is equal to the force exerted by 1 kilogram of mass in 1g gravity (~9.8 newton, IOW).

As for the pound, at least according to Wikipedia (a source which I'm aware is problematical, but is usually more-or-less reliable for basic technical stuff), since 1893 the pound is a unit of mass, while the unit of force (and thus weight) is properly the pound-force - IOW, much the same situation as with the kilogram.[/url]

[Zac Naloen]

I'm pretty sure the fuss from the people who actually got involved in the proper protest about this was that they were trying to make Imperial illegal and actually tried to JAIL someone for using it. Which is just stupid.

Metric for the most part has been used in this country and taught in schools for years.

I understand metric just fine, I also understand that Maidstone is roughly 83 miles away from Reading and that I'm 6ft tall and weigh 13st.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'd like to know why the use of Imperial units is a "way of life" for him.

The fact is that the Imperial unit system is literally scientifically ignorant. It uses the same units for force and mass: two different concepts in physics. While most people can learn to work with Imperial units if they need to, anybody in the science and engineering field knows it would be easier if everything were metric.

If you can stomach the rest of the Europhobic drivel from supposed Daily Mail readers, you'll see comments like that abound, along with "Metric isn't progress because we're already using Imperial just fine", "Britain was great in the steam age when no metric was being forced on us" and "Being a raving, jingoistic wanker gives me a boner". Maybe not that last one, but the sentiment is there.

I was going to post a second comment on there, along the lines of "If we should view tradition and not ease of use as the underlying deciding factor for a system, then why don't you all use the command line interface for your PC? I bet you all use Windows or Macs with brightly coloured sprites letting you do everything you want without thinking about what the command entails". I wonder how many would suddenly back the simpler, less patriotic (since neither Windows, Mac OS or Linux are British in origin) system. Hypocrites.

It's a way of life to the sad individuals who are obviously upset over losing Rover (a shitty BRITISH car company), a true blue water RN (because we really need to police the world now, yes?) and so on. So now they attack the EU for being the new red menace-cum-Oceania entity that dares steal their pints and miles. If you're that passionate over a retarded system of total illogic because it's all you that makes your national identity, you deserve my pity.

[Rye]

If their sense of identity relies on not only imaginary lines in the sand but how many hands and paces they can measure things in, they deserve to feel oppressed. On the other hand, I wouldn't care if someone bought a pound of bananas or a kilogram. I think that so long as the consumer can see how much they're paying for, there's no use interfering any more than that.

[Pollux]

You know what? Non-S.I. units suck.

Quick, someone sig this!

Done.