Metric vs. Imperial brain

[shootingstar]

As you might know, Canada's official measurement system is metric. I was part of the generation that got caught between learning imperial and metric system when I was a kid and when Canada decided to switch from imperial to metric.

And to this very day, my brain naturally leans on the following measurement preferences:

long distance on road: metric (I have to anyway, it's by law with our road signage in Canada.)
less than 1 metre: I prefer envisioning and estimating in inches.... ie. doing fine artwork,crafts, where I have to cut and measure paper, fabric, etc.
cooking: imperial, but dear god, not ounces, more like cups, tblsp. tsp., etc.
room/home layout: imperial
weight: imperial

This of course drives my dearie nuts, who is more metric dedicated/converted. But then he knows some the alternate engineering measurements from centuries gone by, chains, rods, etc., given his engineering background. I know it's just my lazy brain.

[TsPoet]

I'm a scientist, I know what you are saying. I can never keep it straight. Miles is easy for me because of driving, but I can also do km, because of cycling .
Weights are what throw me - since my work is so very much into units/kg or g/ml (1 ml~ 1 g if density ~1).
But, I wasted an entire hour at work a few weeks ago because of metric/imperial stupidity - My computer model of fetal growth was predicting a normal human fetus would be born at 3.4 - I kept thinking the model was wrong, a 3.4 lb baby just wasn't right. stupid stupid stupid - 3.5 kg baby is a little small, but fine. All of my friends having 9 lb babies just threw me off

[shootingstar]

Can imagine in your line of work the mistake ..could be serious.

Wonder if the bushel of apples has changed these days. It's been ages since I've seen bushels of apples sold.. It's all by weight these days, same for what was pints of blueberries and other berries.

I just realized when I buy liquids in the store, I do think/imagine metric, ie. 1 litre of milk vs. 2 litres of milk.
But if I use a recipe, I don't feel like getting into millitres. Henc, it's imperial.

Wonder if people who do alot of cycling, running/sprinting sports...makes the imperial folks living in imperial countries, more aware of metric as daily/everyday measurement in metric countries.

Or results in wierd mixed-up brains like mine. Really it works for me. I already mix together English and broken Chinese brainlessly and thoughtlessly, so I do it with systems of measurements.

[uforgot]

I teach a physics class, so I'm using both every day. I tell my students that when I was their age I seem to remember a push to make the US completely metric in a certain time span. I don't remember what the time span was, but it was back in the 70s when the movement started. Now it's 2009 and we've got 2 liter bottles of coke! Maybe in another 40 years we will have kilometers instead of miles. We are a stubborn group of people.

I have foreign exchange students who really don't understand why we are using such complicated measurements. Imperial to metric....easy! Metric to Imperial system...nightmare!

[pinkbikes]

I hear you on the difficulties caused by the USA living in an Imperial world! The Mars Climate Probe!!! Damn!

I come from a dedicatedly metric country (the land of Oz) and we went metric when I was in Grade 1, so my entire measuring life has been decidedly metric.

And yet, I am 5'3.5" tall! I weigh myself in kg. I buy fabric in metres and talk about things being 6 inches long, or two feet away! I buy diet coke by the litre and cook using cups of milk and tablespoons of butter! My baby was 8lb 12.5oz when she was born. But her length was measured in centimetres!

I am an engineer and design and build things in millimetres but there are still plans around my workplace which have chains and links to measure distance and use kips!! I have some feel for the size of a quarter acre block but measure things in hectares.

I think the 40 year frontier being suggested for adaptation is probably about right! because I'm not there yet!!!

[uforgot]

I hear you on the difficulties caused by the USA living in an Imperial world! The Mars Climate Probe!!! Damn!

Oh, I forgot about that one! I had an article about it pinned to my board for a long time. How embarrassing and EXPENSIVE!

[bmccasland]

Then can someone explain to me the engineer's use of 1/10 of a foot in the US? I can deal with metric, and I can deal with feet and inches, but the combination??

So when I worked as a research field grunt for fish or wildlife projects - all our measurements were in metric. Now I work as a biologist around engineers, and they use feet and tenths of feet. I just don't get it.

[Thorn]

As a product of my times, I'm rather ambidextrous with units. Of course, as an American who did a lot of scientific work at small scale, internally I measure large distances in miles, but small things in mm or cm.

IEEE Spectrum (the trade magazine of electrical engineers--not super technical, kind of like a geekier Scientific American) decided several years back to remove all Imperial measurements from the magazine. Only one measurement bothered me....they wouldn't use miles/gallon when discussing hybrid automobiles (I don't even know what the measurement is--l/km?). I noticed this year that they list both metric and imperial for vehicle fuel consumption. Apparently I'm not the only one who couldn't make that leap.

[crazycanuck]

I don't get measuring in yards...Metres i understand but yards? It seems so ancient.

Driving in miles/hr confused the sheepies out of me when we drove from Calgary to Seattle last year (longer route through Montana/Idaho). It required great concentration on our TomTom which made driving more frightening!!! Other side of road, miles, Miles/gallon, Good thing Ian is the smart cookie

I often have to sit with the online conversion chart when reading some of the threads on TE...

[roadie gal]

I have to switch back and forth at work all of the time. Medicines are administered in milligrams, but babies are weighed in pounds and then translated to kg.

[shootingstar]

I don't feel so bad when there are engineers and scientists here who prefer metric vs. imperial for certain types of measurements. For work purposes, I have done design layout and physical planning for several libraries. I went imperial because I really didn't want to make an error because it would be costly and later time-consuming, to the organization..and all standard bookshelves in libraries are normally are 3 feet long/36 inches. Never had any facility coordinator that I worked with, come back to me and demand metric.

Bmmcosland-I asked my partner about 1/10 imperial length measurement. He is not certain but he thinks it might originate from the scale of sizes that engineers (civil) worked with ages ago.


What dearie has noticed in the some U.S. city engineering drawings is that some are in metric now for an American audience. He does look at them, in his line of business right now for cycling facility design purposes.

Thorn- would be xxxliters / 100 kms. in discussing fuel efficiencies? But then, we don't look at car advertising or pay much attention since we are car-free.

As for car fuel in Canada, it should be in liters advertised anywhere. My partner managed national computerization for his employer, an oil company, for fuel distribution at gas terminals, in his career. He had to know this.

[Cataboo]

Another confused american here.

I really don't see the difference between a yard & a meter - they're both an arbitrary length of measurement even if a meter is the distance traveled by a ray of electromagnetic (EM) energy through a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 (3.33564095 x 10-9) of a second. 'cause seriously... how fast EM energy travels through a vacuum has no bearing in my life and it means nothing to me.

A yard might be an old term, but it's fairly easy to remember that it's the distance if you put your arms between them. A foot is about the length of a foot, and an inch is about what it is between your thumb knuckle & the first joint.

Now I will grant you that doing things on a base 10 scale as opposed to 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, is a lot easier to remember.

But I can approximate distances in yards, feet, inches fairly easily given those handy body part approximations.

Another scientist - so in the lab I'm completely used to nanoliters, microliters, etc. etc. and I'm definitely glad I never have to do that in nanoounces or something. And I probably couldn't if I tried - however, at home in the kitchen cooking, it's handy knowing, add a tablespoon of sugar and even if I don't have an actual measuring set, I can go grab a tablespoon or tea spoon or tea cup and get close enough to what the recipe is asking for. If a recipe asked for 300 mls of solution - other than with a pipette or graduated cylinder, I have no idea how much 300 mls is. Okay, a soda can is 355 ml, so I might be able to grab one of those and use it to measure.

[Thorn]

Thorn- would be xxxliters / 100 kms. in discussing fuel efficiencies? But then, we don't look at car advertising or pay much attention since we are car-free.

Yeah, that was it. In a sense, though, it makes more sense--you need x liters to go y distance. Much easier in-the-head arithmetic than miles/gallon.

Of course, if you don't have a car...that would be grams of carbs / 100 km?

[shootingstar]

Of course, if you don't have a car...that would be grams of carbs / 100 km?

If we started doing that, it would be another weight loss obsession in precise measure.

Then we have to calculate the cadence...cycling's unique measurement.

Roadiegal- You know it just occurred to me, most proud mothers of their newborns, at least for those who I personally have known over the years, including younger Canadian moms, talk about their newborn's weight in lbs.! Maybe it's to help mother talk with other mothers of all generations.

I have a harder time visualizing what a person might look like when it's expressed to me in kilograms.

[Biciclista]

when we got our first bike computer, my husband enlisted the help of an engineer to help him set it up. There was a metric measurement in there, and no matter what they did, they couldn't figure out why it wasn't coming out right.
My 14 year old son came up and said, "those are centimeters, not millimeters, that bike tire would be gigantic with the numbers you're using"

He was able to visualize it, we were not.