Road Signs: Time to change to Metric?

[Whippy]

They also had ten days to the week! Confused? Moi? Mais non citizen!

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Whippy

They also had ten days to the week! Confused? Moi? Mais non citizen!

... and ten weeks per month, as well as ten months per year... but that meant it took nearly 3 years for the Earth to go round the Sun.

Ho hum.

:-)

[Whippy]

Originally Posted by Othen

... and ten weeks per month, as well as ten months per year... but that meant it took nearly 3 years for the Earth to go round the Sun.

Ho hum.

:-)

Did they, did they. 🤔

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Whippy

Did they, did they. 🤔

... it didn't catch on :-)

[DaveNP]

Originally Posted by Othen

...The world (not just the USA) will continue to use bits of the imperial system here and there, tyre diameters will continue to be mostly in inches,...

Alan

I'd forgotten that bit of wonderfulness, diameter in inches (well diameter of the rim it goes on), width in millimetres (but that won't necessarily be the same as the rim width which is in inches) and height of the tyre as a percentage, but we seem to manage and as you say with all of the computerisation if one is in any doubt there are several websites just a few clicks away which will do the sums for you.

[Othen]

Originally Posted by DaveNP

I'd forgotten that bit of wonderfulness, diameter in inches (well diameter of the rim it goes on), width in millimetres (but that won't necessarily be the same as the rim width which is in inches) and height of the tyre as a percentage, but we seem to manage and as you say with all of the computerisation if one is in any doubt there are several websites just a few clicks away which will do the sums for you.

Indeed yes - the imperial wheel size piece also extends to motorcycles and many (but not all) pushbikes - no one ever states what units the wheel size is in, it is just down to context. With pushbike tyres '27' means a 27" rim, but a 700C means a 622mm rim (if I recall correctly the 700 refers to 700mm being the diameter of a rim plus an inflated tyre) - such is the intrinsic logic of the metric system :-)

Even when governments try to standardise weights and measures people don't always follow suit. Here in the UK we (almost) universally measure car fuel consumption in MPG, but petrol has not been sold in gallons for decades. Fuel pumps no longer display the volume sold in imperial gallons, so we divide by 4.5 to convert the litres then divide that into the mileage on the odometer. On modern cars the manufacturer almost always provides an onboard computer that will display the instantaneous and average fuel consumption in MPG - specially (and I think exclusively) for the UK market.

It is all wonderfulness and causes no confusion whatsoever in our everyday lives.

Alan

[Dippydog]

Can't recall the last time I put gallons or even litres of fuel in I always put £10[or other £ amount]in.Have you bought a litre or even 5 litres of fuel and got change given that most fuel is sold at whatever.9p per litre?

[Baxlin]

Originally Posted by Dippydog

Can't recall the last time I put gallons or even litres of fuel in I always put £10[or other £ amount]in.Have you bought a litre or even 5 litres of fuel and got change given that most fuel is sold at whatever.9p per litre?

The pedant in me says you do put gallons, litres, pints, (or some other measurement of volume) of fuel in, because that’s how it’s measured. You may pay in round amounts of shillings for the units of volume you buy, but you are nevertheless still buying volume.

Incidentally, how do you manage to stop the pump at exactly £10? That’s something I always fail at........

[Othen]

Originally Posted by Baxlin

Incidentally, how do you manage to stop the pump at exactly £10? That’s something I always fail at........

... just press the button that says £10 (Tesco and Morrisons - maybe others).

:-)

[Othen]

A reflection in an idle moment after taking Bob (the dog) for his first walk and enjoying a nice cuppa:

My son (16 years old with his GCSEs coming up next summer) and I talked about this over dinner yesterday eve. I was curious to know what his generation thought about the old system. I was a little bit surprised to find that they are not confused at all, even though the school system has at no point during the past 11 years attempted to teach them about imperial units. It transpires that still we use plenty of imperial units in our everyday lives to justify him and his mates finding out about it themselves (which they do via the internet of course).

We still use miles and yards on the roads of course, so they are comfortable with that. Cricket is still in yards, feet and inches for the pitch, bat and ball dimensions, we use MPG (they are all interested in cars and bikes) as well as PSI, so they have also found out about those things. My son had even worked out that there must be a difference between US pints/quarts/gallons and imperial ones via the MPG figures for cars (I did have to explain the 16 fl oz/20 fl oz factor, then it became instantly clear). He had asked me about Fahrenheit and Celsius years ago when we lived in Virginia so that was no mystery. Common liquids such as milk and beer are still sold in pints (even though there may be some daft irregular measurement in ml on the packaging as well), so volumes are also obvious.

I was very pleasantly surprised and have concluded that having a mixture of weights and measures is of no detriment whatsoever to our nation - in fact it is an advantage in that it makes us more flexible (and particularly in the Brexit era that will be vital to our national wellbeing). Mrs Thatcher was right all those years ago and we should go back to teaching both metric and imperial measurement systems in schools, our young people can cope with it perfectly well (with the help of Mr Google and their smart cell phones of course!).

So, just like with tyre sizes, there is nothing that detracts from our everyday lives in mixing metric and imperial units, indeed I'd say it is healthy and breeds flexible and adaptable minds.

Good fortune,

Alan