I thought I was trying to be unbiased since we use both metric and imperial systems inter-changeably.

However, most people are conditioned to one system or the other, just ask a woman how long is 6"....

Steve.

 

Funny thing is, if you go to France and buy meat in the charcuterie, you will hear people buying, literally, a half, three-quarters, one-quarter or an eight kilo of meat. All in the epicenter of SI units.

I think our minds are just better at estimating in base 2 for volume and mass.

 

I go in to get my pizza ,E-nur-sha is the server ,you need a server and the owner to

to spin my pizza. I watch with e- motion and he spins my pizza in the air. I see the

atoms crashing as the pizza spins. The name of the place is the House Of Cards ,

what a name that serves drinks by the liter. Shake ,Rattle,and Roll is playing.

The sound coming from a spinning c.d. player ,E- nur-sha is getting all excited.

I decide to take 1/2 pizza to go ,I offer E-nur-sha a 1/4 slice of pie ,she says

no time for pizza ,zero time to stall between beats........waiting for pie.

 

I like the foot it's faster.

My foot is approximately 11.5" Heal>Toe, x 6 = 5ft 7" wearing boot it's 6ft

 

Personally I was glad to see spans and cubits go.
Max.

I was quite relieved when I found I didn't have to survey a farm in rods and furlongs.

 

I was quite relieved when I found I didn't have to survey a farm in rods and furlongs.

But you may find yourself using Chains still?
Max.

 

Chains are so messy, trying to calculate changes in length due to temperature when the chain passes through areas of sunlight and shadow! We just smack a mule on the backside and measure the time between when I see the man smack the mule and when I hear the mule bray.

 

I've certainly used my share of whimsical units. My favorite one has got to be measuring the area of a silicon chip in picoacres, and then doing the floor planning with picoacre budgets.

 

When I was at college, an old land surveyor, who was charged with teaching us 'surveying', made us measure a park with chains, ranging rods and steel tapes.

In fact I still have that survey, after I'd plotted it with a pencil on paper. He did however allow us to level it with optical instruments, but they were old Hilger and Watts mining levels and hence inverted ( the floor levels of a mine change with use, but the soffits don't!).

Bl**dy hell, I remember how cold it was that January..... My fingers turned blue. Since then I've invariably used EDM total stations and PC's for plotting results, much easier!

Steve.

A chain is the length of a cricket pitch, stumps to stumps....

 

To me, the metric system is like a foreign language that i have studied, and can speak and understand somewhat. I can work with it, but it takes too much effort. Today, I was looking at imported carpets, the dimensions of which were labeled in meters. To really understand their size, I mentally converted meters to inches and then divided by 12 to get feet and inches. I can do the math in my head, but I can't think in metric terms.

 

Isn't a metre a yard and 3 inches, a bit like three guineas in old money.

Come to think of it your monetary system is decimal, why can't you just think dollars!

Steve.

 

I fully agree that it's easier to do math in metric than in English; it's just visualizing that's easier in English for me. I know how much space an ounce of water is going to take in my mouth, but have no idea how a milliliter will feel.

Call it "muscle memory" if you like, but I will never be able to think in metric terms.

 

Canada's problem when I came here was it had two systems, Imperial and US!
I would buy my gas in Imperial gallon, but a gallon of cooking oil was US, and many other examples.
There is still many Canadians that are not sure what a pint is here.
Now we have gone Metric, we have three systems!
Max.

 

There is still many Canadians that are not sure what a pint is here.

I tend to believe Newfie's think a pint is just a sip of liquor. But then again, St Johns is a great liberty port.

 

Unit analysis is one of the most useful analytical techniques in engineering. It says that if the units ain't right the equation ain't either. So we had to express the speed of light in -- you guessed it -- furlongs per fortnight. This was to gain a deep understanding of converting from one set of units to another.

 

So you disagree that it's easier to measure 8mm than .31496 inches? I don't know about you, but I've never been able to measure less than 1/100th of an inch

In my job, when still working, I measured parts to .0001 inches everyday. Most people though think in fractions of an inch when measuring, like a ruler or tape measure. But precise measurement is a totally different thing, micrometers, gage blocks and dial indicators.

 

I've always liked the jiffy as a unit of time. It is also a regional unit based on the power line frequency.

60 jiffies in 1 second in the US
In Europe, sadly, only 50 jiffies in 1 second.

 

My reference for a perfect circle is a round tuit.

 

Been there, well it will happen when I get, round tuit

 

Yup, metric is much easier. Lets see, DIP pins are 2.54 mm apart and a Quad NAND chip has 14 pins so the outside pins are 15.24 mm apart on the long side and rows are 7.62 mm apart.