EU to ban imperial measurements

Arrrgh. I used to get that all the time in the workshop. Older guys coming in and asking for those sort of lengths of steel. I'd supply what they wanted and charge them something like 10 dollars, 7 shillings and sixpence.

Reply to
EMB
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Should be metres per second, ms-1. And what has temperature got to do with it?

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

But if it was SI, you could work it rather that rely on memory ;-)

Richard

Reply to
BeamEnds

On or around Sat, 21 Apr 2007 22:42:59 +0100 (BST), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:

That's the problem with SI, inconsistent... yer not supposed to use hecto and deci and so forth. then they come along with Pascals as a unit of pressure, but it's a silly size, so we use HPa. and then there's Bels as units of sound, which are a silly size, so everyone uses decibels.

The more fundamental problem is that by restricting the prefixes thusly, you get units that are less useful. In measuring a room, say 15ft 7½in by 11ft

3in, the foot is a good size. For most purposes, knowing that the room is 15ft by 11ft would be good enough, which are nice, easy-sized units. for a bit more precision, knowing that the room is closer to 15½ by 11¼ ft is still fairly easy.

in SI, you can measure in metres, which will give you 6.151m by 4.429m and while you can say it's roughly 6.1m by 4.4m I've not got an easy mental picture of how big .1m or .4m are. If you go with millimetres, you get 6151 by 4429, which is nice and accurate (more so than you probably need). The unit that would be most useful for room-sized things would be the decimetre, (just under 4 in) which makes our room about 61 by 44, which are OK. but dm are frowned on.

Why are dm better than m? it's down to decimals. I for one like to have whole numbers, for such uses, and in imperial measuerments there are more units: when the inches get a bit big, you go over to using feet, then to yards. If you use all the prefixes, the decimal system has plenty of units, but except in a few specialised cases, that's deprecated.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

"six and an eighth" (an eighth is 0.125)

"Four and a half"

An average bloke is just under 2 metres tall, one metre is about from the centre of your chest to the tip of your fingers, and half a metre is about from the tip of your fingers to your elbow joint. 10cm is the width of a normal palm of your hand. Easy peasy. It's also much easier for me at least to split a thing into fifths or tenths than sixths or twelfths.

The real joy of metric comes when trying to do maths with the figures, doing maths with imperial is more complicated and easy to start missing out bits here and there by accident, or to not bother doing the maths and to just estimate.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

LOL, you've just used imperial units (fractions) to make it comprehendible! Half/quarter/eighth etc is much easier to understand than a string of numbers after a decimal dot.

I think the imperialists have it..

Julian.

Reply to
Julian

No, imperial units aren't fractions, they're measures of something. Decimals and fractions are just different representations of the same numbers. If someone is comfortable with halves and quarters but not with 0.5 and 0.25 then fine. You can have half a metre, half an apple, half a foot etc.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Pretty close, as in close enough!

Reply to
GbH

You mean 3 half crowns, no?

Reply to
GbH

It IS a lot bigger! CBAd to work it out rite now!

7.01366339 or a smidge over 7 litres

Reply to
GbH

You can, but can you have 2/3rds or 3/8ths of a metre? Yes, but what are they - .666666r or 0.375 metre. As soon as you get a little bit more involved then a fraction (as commonly used when using imperial units) is a much better way to understand things (as you demonstrated by your brain thought process in your previous post) than a row of figures after a decimal dot.

Julian.

Reply to
Julian

European "directives" have to be implemented in national law, and that's where things can get screwed up, big time. The UK government has done some silly things to implement EU directives--ask any farmer--and that's where the big danger is.

Looking at this, it doesn't imply anything which affects existing standards, even Whitworth, which are based on Imperial measure. You'd be in trouble if you decided to build and sell a new machine which used Whitworth thread fasteners to hold it together, but all it needs is a "manufacturer's original specification" clause applying to dimensions.

If it isn't in UK law yet, send a letter to your MP. And if it is, send him a letter asking why he was such a pillock.

Reply to
David G. Bell

Factor of 1,000 out for cu to cc, at least according to

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428 cubic inches is 7013.663 421 645 cubic centimeters but as you say that is a smidge over 7 litres.
Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Not an issue unless you need to be really precise, but that's nothing to do with measurement systems, you can get the same issue whether you are measuring in feet, metres or finger-widths.

Yep, but nothing to do with imperial or metric.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

1828mm = 6 feet. I don't see an *average* people ~6'6" tall

No, its more like 900 mm for me. That's a 10% error.

Steve

Reply to
Steve Taylor

We were talking about visualising distances, not precise measurement by a long stretch.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

I dunno about that I just stuffed it into Google.

Reply to
GbH

Yes it is, when a kid of yours has just helped himself to 1/3 of the cake that was desert for 4 people do you say 'You greedy bsugger you've just taken .33 of the cake?' I doubt it somehow.

Nothing to do with metric - do fractions like 1/16 or 3/8th etc feature in little Hans's maths lessons in Munich? Fractions and how to deal with them are a process to divide the unit up in imperial. Your brain thinks in an imperial way because it works better in your OP on the subject.

Julian.

Reply to
Julian

I expect they do. It's maths.

No they're not! Fractions are maths, are you seriously suggesting that fractions are soley there for the use of imperial measurements??

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

All the prefixes are on the official SI website:

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SI does not limit the use of prefixes. Some other organisations do.

Organisations such as the CAA choose hPa because it is numerically identical to the legacy mbar value. I am sure that kPa would have been chosen if transition was not an issue. The kPa is fairly common, even for air pressure.

Reply to
pat.norton

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