Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Earthquake Damage]

the US customary system is based on English systems of the 1700s, while the Imperial system was defined in 1824 not the same.
note that all your pints are smaller than uk ones so Rumors that the U.S. cant hold it drink speard from the differences.

Really?  News to me.  Huh.  Well if Wikipedia says so it must be true. 

But seriously, I always thought they were the same.

[Heron TSG]

I've recently been giving lengths in my natural language (customary units) as well as in meters, even for really small distances. I'd use the centimeter and such, but I can only really visualize meters, due to sports. (for example, the 'metric mile' is a standard in Track, at 1600 meters, although it's actually 1628. 5000 meters (a 5k) is therefore close to 3.125 miles.)

[Aqizzar]

Little late to the party, but here I go.

Just look at the clusterfuck a couple years back with the Analogue TV to Digital TV switch that had been planned years in advance, had several announcements, TV PSA Campaigns, Radio PSA campaigns, the works, and yet millions of people failed to listen and adapt before the change.

I think a lot of that was just that people didn't want to buy new TVs because of some electronics crap they didn't understand.  The last time I went to Best Buy the only TV's they had for sale were the $700 48" flatscreens.

This is why you run both systems in parallel for a while. We (uk) still have both pints and litres on lots of liquids and probably will for years yet as well as miles and kilometres on road markings and speedometers. But eventually the change will be complete and everyone using the old system will be dead and so not confused.

All food containers, measuring devices, speedometers, and maps have both imperial and metric measurements.  Roadsigns don't, but that's a lot of money to spend on cross-compatibility all as once.  All tool sets include tools in both imperial and metric units (which means two sets of tools), because you want whole numbers and junk of both scales is still in use.

Metric measurements are making significant inroads among young people though, for a surprisingly obvious reason.  Drugs.

[MrWiggles]

Little late to the party, but here I go.

Just look at the clusterfuck a couple years back with the Analogue TV to Digital TV switch that had been planned years in advance, had several announcements, TV PSA Campaigns, Radio PSA campaigns, the works, and yet millions of people failed to listen and adapt before the change.

I think a lot of that was just that people didn't want to buy new TVs because of some electronics crap they didn't understand.  The last time I went to Best Buy the only TV's they had for sale were the $700 48" flatscreens.

This is why you run both systems in parallel for a while. We (uk) still have both pints and litres on lots of liquids and probably will for years yet as well as miles and kilometres on road markings and speedometers. But eventually the change will be complete and everyone using the old system will be dead and so not confused.

All food containers, measuring devices, speedometers, and maps have both imperial and metric measurements.  Roadsigns don't, but that's a lot of money to spend on cross-compatibility all as once.  All tool sets include tools in both imperial and metric units (which means two sets of tools), because you want whole numbers and junk of both scales is still in use.

Metric measurements are making significant inroads among young people though, for a surprisingly obvious reason.  Drugs.

Hey now, drug use is down in the united states, for teen mid twenty ages.

[BradB]

In Australia we seem to use PSI more than than kPa.  Strange really.

[MrWiggles]

In Australia we seem to use PSI more than than kPa.  Strange really.

Tires are odd in the US. We use millimeters for the demisions of the site, inches for the rim, and PSI for pressure, for heavy duty off roading tires use foot and inches.

[sonerohi]

I heard we are switching to a new system. Using the prefixes from metric, but base units will be in liberties, freedoms, and justices. Prepare to buy a two justice bottle of soda, or use a kilofreedom to measure your coke.

[Shades]

kilofreedom to measure your coke.

There is no way you could use a kilofreedom of coke...

[JoshuaFH]

kilofreedom to measure your coke.

There is no way you could use a kilofreedom of coke...

Assuming that freedom equals litres, then yes. A kilolitre is enough to fill a swimming pool IIRC.

[Zai]

Just look at the clusterfuck a couple years back with the Analogue TV to Digital TV switch that had been planned years in advance, had several announcements, TV PSA Campaigns, Radio PSA campaigns, the works, and yet millions of people failed to listen and adapt before the change.

I think a lot of that was just that people didn't want to buy new TVs because of some electronics crap they didn't understand.  The last time I went to Best Buy the only TV's they had for sale were the $700 48" flatscreens.

You didn't even have to buy a new TV, though. You just had to get one of those converter box things that they advertised to hell and back and even provided coupons for. Something like $25 after the coupon amount is deducted.

[MrWiggles]

Just look at the clusterfuck a couple years back with the Analogue TV to Digital TV switch that had been planned years in advance, had several announcements, TV PSA Campaigns, Radio PSA campaigns, the works, and yet millions of people failed to listen and adapt before the change.

I think a lot of that was just that people didn't want to buy new TVs because of some electronics crap they didn't understand.  The last time I went to Best Buy the only TV's they had for sale were the $700 48" flatscreens.

You didn't even have to buy a new TV, though. You just had to get one of those converter box things that they advertised to hell and back and even provided coupons for. Something like $25 after the coupon amount is deducted.

Or use satellite.

[zchris13]

@ the OP: It's because the American and the British system use FRACTIONS.  1/12, 1/3, and so on.  Easy, round fractions.  None of that decimal crap.  Nobody understands that.

[MrWiggles]

@ the OP: It's because the American and the British system use FRACTIONS.  1/12, 1/3, and so on.  Easy, round fractions.  None of that decimal crap.  Nobody understands that.

I'm sensing sarcasm.

[zchris13]

You might want to have that sensor recalibrated.

[LegoLord]

You know it was saracasm.  You can stop toying with us.

What bothers me is that engineering classes are completely ignoring the switch we're supposed to be going through.  They taught us in inches.  Inches.  As if figuring out the dimension of an item isn't bad enough, we had to deal with awful unit conversions based on some craptastically arbitrary ratio.  What the hell, home country, what the hell.