Vanisle_BC
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Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:02 pm
Location: Port Alberni, B.C. Canada, Zone 7 (+?)

Metric/imperial hybridisation

This is a rant or ramble, mostly about different systems of measurement used in different countries. It is disjointed & maybe confusing, which is appropriate to the subject.

In another thread, Akhnaten in Sweden (in Sweden ??) said "... 80cm x 20 cm (sorry this is Europe, metricland) ..." - which had me thinking over my experiences changing among varying UK, American and European systems of measurement.

I guess most Europeans have been consistently "metric" for hundreds of years (how many?) although I can fuzzily recall a distinction between 'Metric' and the more modern S.I. (Système International). But in Britain and here in Canada there has been some switching back & forth as well as adoption of bastardised systems for everyday use.

I'm a really old guy now. In my everyday life - grocery, bulk goods & hardware purchases - there have been ounces, pounds, stones and hundredweights (of 112 pounds - ???) plus Imperial vs American gallons, pints, cups, (fluid)ounces as well as grams & kilograms, cc's (milliliters) and their multiples.

I find that when you've grown to adulthood in familiarity with a single system, it's very difficult to "think in" any other. Even after much shifting between systems, I often have to do some mental conversion to 'imperial' before I can visualise the look or weight-feel of metric quantities.

I love to tell the story of asking, at a British plumbing supply store, for 18mm copper fittings. This was at a transition time from imperial to not-yet-fully-implemented metric. 18mm and 3/4" diameters were both available and almost interchangeable. The (new?) store clerk was very puzzled, didn't understand what I wanted and called to someone else for assistance. "Oh" explained this helper, "what he needs is the new threee-quarter inch."

Most of the public where I live in Canada still thinks in pounds & ounces, feet & inches, pints & quarts. Grocery prices are generally displayed in $ per lb. but there's a strategy stores have adopted to disguise the cost of higher-priced items, like premium fish or cheese. If the price per pound would look a bit too shocking, what's advertised is the lower-looking price per (less-familar) 100g. Then my mental approximate conversion formula kicks in; "Let's see; this fish is $8 per 100g. That's $80 for a kilogram which is about 2.2 pounds. Holy Mackerel! (sorry, halibut?) - that's close to $40/lb! When did fish get to be so expensive?"

In Canada lumber & building-supply wood products are sold by the board foot (12"x12"x1") or lineal foot although the country is allegedly metric (Just like it's allegedly bilingual!) Firewood is by the cord: 8x8x4 feet of stacked logs.

I do confess I find Centigrade (is it still called that?) easier to visualise than Fahrenheit; especially when we're below freezing. It's easier to imagine 2 below zero Centigrade than the Fahrenheit equivalent (what's 32 minus 2 times 5/8 - or is it 8/5?). I kind of liked it when the place I used to live got to -40 and it was the same in both systems; but it's a chilly kind of satisfaction.

Akhnaten - how cool is Göteborg? I've been close to -50C (not personally, biologically!). "You have to be dressed for it."

In my working life (mostly engineering) I've had to deal with changing several times among several systems. In mass/weight/force there have been pounds (pounds force), kilograms, newtons & kilonewtons, tons, short tons, long tons, tonnes and kips. When to include or omit the constant 'g' in formulas has sometimes needed careful consideration - and has even led to heated discussion with recent graduates educated in the latest, but not yet fully adopted, system.

Now we have automobile and other engines rated in joules - or is it kilowatts; not that horsepower was always that meaningful or easy to understand (What about the Citroën 2CV? Two French horses must have been almost as strong as the original VW's fifteen, and even some cars claiming hundreds didn't seem that much more powerful.)

OK I'm out of steam (100/212 deg. C-F) but I've had fun with this; anybody else?

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Akhnaten
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Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:17 am
Location: Göteborg, Sweden

Vanisle_BC wrote:This is a rant or ramble, mostly about different systems of measurement used in different countries. It is disjointed & maybe confusing, which is appropriate to the subject.

In another thread, Akhnaten in Sweden (in Sweden ??) said "... 80cm x 20 cm (sorry this is Europe, metricland) ..." - which had me thinking over my experiences changing among varying UK, American and European systems of measurement.
Yes, I am in Sweden, but I am not Swedish by any stretch of the imagination (citizenship, birth location, ancestry). I'm actually a Canadian like you.
I guess most Europeans have been consistently "metric" for hundreds of years (how many?) although I can fuzzily recall a distinction between 'Metric' and the more modern S.I. (Système International). But in Britain and here in Canada there has been some switching back & forth as well as adoption of bastardised systems for everyday use.

I'm a really old guy now. In my everyday life - grocery, bulk goods & hardware purchases - there have been ounces, pounds, stones and hundredweights (of 112 pounds - ???) plus Imperial vs American gallons, pints, cups, (fluid)ounces as well as grams & kilograms, cc's (milliliters) and their multiples.

I find that when you've grown to adulthood in familiarity with a single system, it's very difficult to "think in" any other. Even after much shifting between systems, I often have to do some mental conversion to 'imperial' before I can visualise the look or weight-feel of metric quantities.
I'm a bit younger than you I think :) but I too lived with switching between imperial and SI/metric measures, Canadian-style. Distances and speeds for me are metric, weight is instinctively in pounds, temperature is Celsius. In Europe I have become more metricized, naturally.
I love to tell the story of asking, at a British plumbing supply store, for 18mm copper fittings. This was at a transition time from imperial to not-yet-fully-implemented metric. 18mm and 3/4" diameters were both available and almost interchangeable. The (new?) store clerk was very puzzled, didn't understand what I wanted and called to someone else for assistance. "Oh" explained this helper, "what he needs is the new threee-quarter inch."

Most of the public where I live in Canada still thinks in pounds & ounces, feet & inches, pints & quarts. Grocery prices are generally displayed in $ per lb. but there's a strategy stores have adopted to disguise the cost of higher-priced items, like premium fish or cheese. If the price per pound would look a bit too shocking, what's advertised is the lower-looking price per (less-familar) 100g. Then my mental approximate conversion formula kicks in; "Let's see; this fish is $8 per 100g. That's $80 for a kilogram which is about 2.2 pounds. Holy Mackerel! (sorry, halibut?) - that's close to $40/lb! When did fish get to be so expensive?"
I am on to them, I buy cheese in 100g units in Europe so I know exactly how to compare in my head :)
In Canada lumber & building-supply wood products are sold by the board foot (12"x12"x1") or lineal foot although the country is allegedly metric (Just like it's allegedly bilingual!) Firewood is by the cord: 8x8x4 feet of stacked logs.

I do confess I find Centigrade (is it still called that?) easier to visualise than Fahrenheit; especially when we're below freezing. It's easier to imagine 2 below zero Centigrade than the Fahrenheit equivalent (what's 32 minus 2 times 5/8 - or is it 8/5?). I kind of liked it when the place I used to live got to -40 and it was the same in both systems; but it's a chilly kind of satisfaction.
Celsius/Centigrade wins hands-down. 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling. Very clear points of reference.
Akhnaten - how cool is Göteborg? I've been close to -50C (not personally, biologically!). "You have to be dressed for it."
Gothenburg is not quite in the 6-month-night range, but it is pretty north. However, it is in the overlap zone between central and northern Europe facing the warm air that comes from the Atlantic. So it very rarely goes below -10C, winter hovers between -5 and +5 (the freezing rain can be a doozy here), I have seen it go down to -15C once so far. I have been to -50C places in Canada, or close to it. Yes, you have to be dressed for it.



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