ChaosEngine, do you read The Register?

Away with your crazy metric and imperial units!

Area is measured in Football Fields (not sure about the code though)
Volume is measured in Olympic Swimming Pools
Height is measured in Stories or for big things any Large Well Known Building (LWKB) or for really big things Everests
Length is Buses or alternatively LWKB On Its Side
Energy is measured in Hiroshimas.

Large areas are also measured in Large Well Known States/Provinces.

Large volumes are also measured in Large Well Known Planets/Stars.

Fame is measured in paparazis per hour.

It gets more complicated than just metric or imperial. There are also things like "metric feet".

A metric foot is 300mm long. It's ~5mm short of an actual foot. Wood, annoyingly, in the UK comes in metric feet lengths. Yes, that's right. You can't buy an 8 foot spar. You can buy a 2400mm spar. The problem arises when you actually need 8 feet of wood because 2400mm is nearly, but not quite 8 foot.

Mutter.


The reason there are different conversion factors is that the units all arose for different things. A foot is about a foot length. A yard is about an arm length. An inch is the last part of a thumb. That sort of thing. A furlong is the distance a couple of oxen can pull a plough in one go before they have to rest. A chain is the width of a bit of land of an acre in area and a furlong long. An acre is the area you can plough with one plough team in a day -- and hence varied depending on what you consider to be "a day", "can" and "team" and hence on things like what the soil there is like.

All of these were then sort of standardised over several centuries, but the measurements needed to be close to what they'd always been, so they ended up with "funny" conversion factors between the units.


If you're doing engineering in imperial (my Dad used to) then yes, you get used to doing conversions and using things like the "poundal" and the "thou". I grew up in the metric era, but I grew up in a household which measured things in imperial. In a discussion in the office a little while ago, I described something as "about 10 thou" and one of the guys here said to the other (younger) team members "See!!! I told you it wasn't a made up unit..."

I measure my own height in feet and inches, yet for most, if not all, other measuring I use mm/cm/m

I will tell you the distance between two places in miles and speeds in mph, yet a judge my running on Km and Kph.

I drink 500ml cans from 1 pint glasses.

Milk comes in pints, I measure it out in ml.

Last time I weighted myself it was done in stone, I then converted it to Kg so I could put it into the machine at the gym.

Welcome to the UK where we use both for various things just so we can confuse everyone

For a non-american:
cm are a very common measurement for height -- e.g. 6' is 182cm. Visualising 200cm would be easy, but visualising 6'6" quite complex.
[font="Lucida Console"]m[/font] and [font="Lucida Console"]m[sup]2[/sup][/font] are very common for regular lengths and areas -- e.g. visualising the size of a 100m[sup]2[/sup] flat would be instant for many.

It's only complex because you've never used it. If you grow up your whole life listening to people talk about their heights, it isn't complex at all. I'm 6'5", so when someone tells me they are 6'2" I know right away how tall they are. Likewise, if someone told me they are 175 cm, I would have a dumbfounded look on my face...or like I was pooping my pants while I converted cm to inches in my head.

Temperatures work the same way. Yeah water boils at 100 celsius and freezes at 0, but how hot is 30 degrees? <pooping his pants look>

It's only complex when you aren't used to it. I'm sure if everyone in the US started using metric units, it would be normal after a month or so, and the same if you were used to metric units and had to come here.

I also know that my foot with shoes on is exactly 12" and my finger segment on my index finger is almost precisely 1". Which makes measuring things nice. I'm not sure what corresponding body parts are used in the metric system.