Feet and inches

[altus]

It gets worse when to get to small measurements What the hell is 25 64ths of an inch??? or something along those lines. I know there are 1000 microns in a millimetre and the numbers go up, 1 micron is a thousand times smaller than a millimetre and 500 is half a mil 999 is very nearly a millimetre etc.

Some fields do use thousandths of an inch for small measurements (so they at least see the advantage of powers of 10 based measurements). Converting the common 1/<power of 2> divisions of an inch doesn't work too well with it though - you can't accurately represent anything smaller than 1/8 inch as thousandths.

[Anna B]

I got the most marvellous tape measure off ebay, made in China.

 

It has centimetres on one side and inches on the other, but according to this, 1inch = 3.5cm, and the centimetres are 2mm short, and in three places the number 8 is missing and goes from 7 to 9. But best of all, it's made of a stretchy material. I love it!

[Mikes10]

Interesting YouTube video, America and the Metric System

 

[Ontarian1981]

Funny how the US don't use metric in the general scheme of things, but all their domestically produced vehicles have metric nuts and bolts.

[altus]

Funny how the US don't use metric in the general scheme of things, but all their domestically produced vehicles have metric nuts and bolts.

Probably buy them from China.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

I'm half an half with the whole thing.

Surely "half and 0.5"?

[Ontarian1981]

Probably buy them from China.

 

Yes indeed, it is a right pain in the arse if you have imperial spanners and allen keys for your work, but need a metric set of both to work on your car.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

1 imperial gallon of water ..... 10 pounds

Or, as I was taught, "A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter".

[ricgem2002]

The metric system is just pure commom sense. One litre of water weighs a Kilo. If you can show me on the imperial system how that equates l may accept that the imperial system of weight and measures has some validity. For nostalga reasons a pint of beer and milk is ok but as a serious system of measuring it's ridiculous. Liquid, length or weight none of it fits together....

i guess to some the imperial way was common sense too way before the metric way came along

[dutch]

The one system looks like it's developed by confused drunks lost in space at a stag party.

The other uses clear logic connections with a normal decimal number system and looks like it's developed at a science conference.

I have used both, cutting your inch in sixteenths or eights needing twelve to round up to a feet is nowhere near as use full as a simple decimal system that is also more connected with other scientific uses.

 

---------- Post added 11-12-2017 at 19:57 ----------

 

Imperial system looks like it's made on roulette table with a deck of cards flipping coins.

Edited December 11, 2017 by dutch