Metric vs. Imperial brain

[Cataboo]

My british relatives that tell me how many stones they weigh confuse me.

Why would you want to multiply by 14 to get how many lbs?

[OakLeaf]

I don't get how my Garmins report position as "X degrees, Y.YYY minutes."

Why not either "degrees, minutes, seconds" or "X.XXXX degrees"?

[TsPoet]

My british relatives that tell me how many stones they weigh confuse me.

Why would you want to multiply by 14 to get how many lbs?

well, I know why you'd want to divide by 14 to get stones. I like my weight in stones just fine.

[GLC1968]

I'm an EE, and an RF one at that, so I live in two worlds. At work, everything is not only in metric, but it's tiny, tiny metric (pico, nano, etc) or super large metric (giga, tera, etc). At home, I deal with predominantly Imperial (being a stubborn American).

In my world, a meter is a VERY real measurement.

Add to this my obsession with my weight - and I learned quickly to convert food scale weight into cups, tablespoons, etc. Then throw in the need to scale down most 'herd' recipes for our goats (we only have two)...so I need to be able to scale down from gallons and cups into tablespoons and teaspoons without error...and then back into ml and cc for the administering of the dosage.

Honestly, onlineconversion.com is my friend.

[Softie]

My brain does the same thing, and I always measured in metric in school! But I actually have no idea of my weight in kgs or height in cms, as most of my life I've heard those things in lbs and feet/inches, despite being in Canada. I also don't know my cooking measurements in ml (might be because everything I use from cook books is in tsp tbsp cups).

Google has a great function for this. Just open a google search window, type in the amount you have, and it comes up with the equivalent in the most likely form. Ex. if I typed in "84 inches" it gives me an "84 inches = 2.1336 meters". Click the more about calculator and it shows you how to do other conversion options too.

[shootingstar]

My british relatives that tell me how many stones they weigh confuse me.

Why would you want to multiply by 14 to get how many lbs?

So I understand there was previous older stone measurement, where 1 stone used to be 16 lbs.

[Cataboo]

Oh, well I'd much prefer to multiply by 16.

[PscyclePath]

I don't get how my Garmins report position as "X degrees, Y.YYY minutes."

Why not either "degrees, minutes, seconds" or "X.XXXX degrees"?

That's why I leave my "Varmint" set to UTM grids. At least then it measures in meters, which are a constant length, rather than a degree (which gets bigger as you get closer to the equator).

When I lived in Germany several years ago, I got used to doing everything in meters, liters, and kilograms, but it was still nice to be able to stroll into the little local grocery store and ask for "ein halb Pfunde" of something, and the lady behind the counter still knew just what I was talking about. ;-)

Tom

[PscyclePath]

So I understand there was previous older stone measurement, where 1 stone used to be 16 lbs.

I think that was up in the north end of the Old Country, where the rocks were a lot bigger... ;-)

[shootingstar]

When I lived in Germany several years ago, I got used to doing everything in meters, liters, and kilograms, but it was still nice to be able to stroll into the little local grocery store and ask for "ein halb Pfunde" of something, and the lady behind the counter still knew just what I was talking about. ;-)

funde = 500 grams. A unique German measure which is not quite the imperial lb. Supposedly an older German measure.

So you asked for 250 grams. Must have been chocolates or smoked salmon you asked for.

[PscyclePath]

funde = 500 grams. A unique German measure which is not quite the imperial lb. Supposedly an older German measure.

So you asked for 250 grams. Must have been chocolates or smoked salmon you asked for.

Half a kilo, and since a kilo is roughly 2.24 pounds, it's close enough for me, at least ;-)

And it was cold cuts, usually... or Wurst. Chocolates, I usually got the Lindt bars down at the train station. or the little chocolate covered jellies, typically bananas, oranges, or lemons. "twas good stuff, back then.

Tom

[gnat23]

Another science nerd here. I find that my brain handles kilograms and celcius just fine at work. The instant I walk out the door, it flips back to lbs and F.

The boyfriend is Canadian; he flips between km and miles like it's nothing, whereas I have difficulty with kilometers father than I can bike. When he told me something was 300k away, I squinted for a second and admitted "ok, one more time in real numbers...?"

I still think of everything pressure in PSI, though. 3 bar doesn't sound like a lot, but eeeesh.

-- gnat!

[crazycanuck]

The Quinoa recipe I just cooked made me chuckle & wonder...I thought it was funny, odd & strange...

Why is it that an American recipe would state you require a quart of liquid & then a cup of a non liquid item? Would it not make sense to use one measurement(ie: a cup) for both liquid & non liquid materials??



Interesting....

[OakLeaf]

The Quinoa recipe I just cooked made me chuckle & wonder...I thought it was funny, odd & strange...

Why is it that an American recipe would state you require a quart of liquid & then a cup of a non liquid item? Would it not make sense to use one measurement(ie: a cup) for both liquid & non liquid materials??



Interesting....

Those aren't different systems, just different increments in the same system of volume measurement - a quart is four cups, a pint is two cups, a gallon is four quarts, a tablespoon is three teaspoons, four tablespoons is 1/4 cup.

Where it DOES get confusing is in "ounces," which is both a unit of weight (1/16 pound) and of volume (1/8 cup or two tablespoons). So you have to specify "fluid ounces" or "ounces avoirdupois."

[DebW]

The one I can't understand is that several years ago the scientific journals I publish in insisted that we no long use millibars as a unit of atmospheric pressure, but hectopascals (ie. 100 pascals), which are exactly the same thing. Now you find people who read "850 hPa" as "850 millibars", as if millibars just has a new abbreviation. Very odd that hecto-anything is considered a standard unit.

I can generally deal with both English and metric units, but I absolutely cannot abide the Rankin scale.