[Closed] Miles or Kilometers?

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Then it matters how big your cup is in proportion to the tsp, so just give me a bloody weight! Far easier to just have a set of digital scales...

Cups are all good and well using dry stuff, but a pain in the hole for other things, golden syrup and treacle have to be the worst.
With digital scales, nothings easier than resetting them to zero before adding the next ingredient and then simply pouring it in.

Grammes, metres and Celsius because I don't have 12 fingers. 🙂

Metric all the way !

Time we sorted out road signs too

Cups are fine for flour but butter I struggle with, golden syrup you just have to put extra spoonful in .
I've gone metric for running too since I've gotten slower.

Just can't fathom imperial distance measurements.

Well done.

Cups are fine for flour but butter I struggle with, golden syrup you just have to put extra spoonful in .

Cups are rubbish for flour, as the actual amount varies depending on how packed down it is. Digital scales are much more accurate and no harder to use.

And after 20 years in Spain I use metric for everything. Including celcius.

Cups are rubbish for flour, as the actual amount varies depending on how packed down it is. Digital scales are much more accurate and no harder to use.

Butter has markings on the pack anyway 😉

Kilometres (correct spelling), I'm 57 and live in the 21st century not the 19th

Kilometres have been around since the 18th century.

Who's ever stood at the top of a hill on a clear day and said I can see for km?

Still doesn't make it a good unit.

Syrup and treacle are really awkward no matter what - I weigh the whole thing on balance scales, tin and all, then remove weights equivalent to what I want, then start spooning out the syrup until the scales balance again. If I'm within 10g or so then I'm happy.

I'm even weirder..

Road bike miles are done in KMs
MTB miles are done in Miles.

You are all doing temperature wrong. Real men use Kelvin

Was 270K this morning - had to scrape the car windscreen - brrr

Still doesn't make it a good unit

A mile is eight furlongs. A furlong is 220 yards and is supposed to be the length an ox team could plough before they needed a rest. A yard is supposed to have originally been the distance between some Anglo-Saxon Kings nose and has outstretched fingers. It all makes perfect sense.

The best non-metric measure is grains. A grain was actually based on the weight of a grain of wheat, or barely or something.

Ah so consistent....

At school science and maths were metric, metalwork unapologetically imperial. I still use both but distances tend to be miles. As a civil engineer 150mm and 300mm pipes were still 6" and 12". In a short spell with an American consultant I was introduced to such delights as the "kip-ft".

The Imperial measurement and Miles was conjured up by a small "elite" to teach the "surfs" a lesson, that lesson is such that the "elite" are edumakated, the surfs not. Think of it as a secluded sect, for thats what it is.

Bonkers.

But then Humans are Bonkers.

I suppose if we're doing measurements for other things, then I'd still call a 50mmx100mm bit of timber a 2x4 - despite having done engineering training where even the old school instructors had happily converted to mm and m (though they did still refer to very small measurements in thous). I used to be resistant to the change, but would now be happy to convert all our measurements to metric and get rid of miles for speed and distance - and even quite happy to drink beer by the half litre.

Don't forget your chains,a chain measures 66 feet, or 22 yards. There are 10 chains in a furlong, and 80 chains in one statute mile. An acre is the area of 10 square chains (that is, an area of one chain by one furlong).

Railway bridges in these parts are still marked with their distance to London in miles and chains. 🙄

I don't run and am not european, so miles, feet, inches, pounds and stone thanks very much.

Miles are harder.
Kms feel like cheating. 😉

A great explanation of how sensible imperial measurements are.

Why wouldn't you call something a Shatments?

[quote=natrix ]Don't forget your chains,a chain measures 66 feet, or 22 yards.

My chains measure between 52" and 55" 😉

This is Britain - we use miles. For proof, see road signs 😀

End of argument.

Miles.

It's easier to read the big numbers on the speedo which oddly seem to correspond with the road signs.

And it's a water bottle, not a bidon.

I wonder what the distance on this one is measured in?

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A furlong is 220 yards ...

…and 22 yards is the length of a cricket pitch, or a chain, so 10 chains to a furling and 100 links to a chain. Even our glorious Imperial system had elements of decimalisation!

Now, go fathom that one ...2 yards or six feet, or 1.8 metres!

Railway bridges in these parts are still marked with their distance to London in miles and chains

Miles for br brexiters
Km for remainers

Nope.
🙂

KM 'cos I need altitude gain in metres and can't make my Garmin mix & match.

Miles when driving though.

Now, go fathom that one ...2 yards or six feet, or 1.8 metres!

Fathom = the distance between a man's outstretched arms. i.e two yards - we're back to that Anglo-Saxon Kings nose again.

Imperial measurements have poetry and soul - and in general the units are the right size and easy to use.

Kilometres are for those funny Europeans and people who can't add up

Recently changed from using stones to kg for on the weighing scales. Was surprisingly painless (other than annoying mrs blobby who now needs to change the scales back to stones whenever she gets on them 🙂 )

I'd switch the Garmin over to km but race 10 and 25 mile distances so all my speed / distance calculations on the bike tend to be in miles 😕

and in general the units are the right size and easy to use.

That's because there are so many of the bloody things!

Metric all the way. I can cope with miles and pints if I have to. Fahrenheit? God knows.

Even Metric sailors still measure speed in knots.

Knot were placed on a rope at 8 fathom intervals and the number run out over 30 seconds counted. 1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour which = 1 minute of arc. Or something like that.

I do think this is largely an age thing. I was at school in the 70s and 80s so was largely taught metric, but my folks were obviously more well versed in Imperial so I'm mostly comfortable with both. The kids today generally have little comprehension of Imperial measurements, whereas people like those gimmers going round replacing road signs still haven't bothered to learn the Metric system despite having had nearly fifty years to do so.

I know my height and (roughly) weight in Imperial but not Metric, and I never did get the hang of Fahrenheit (because I'm not American or insane).

They key here is consistency if the distance is in miles then ascend in metres, if the distance in km then ascent in feet. Window openings are 4ftwide by 1200mm etc

I'm quite happy with that, but then I'd be happy measuring it as 4 foot 10 mm.

I hate trying to figure out recipes in cups

There are many things the Americans do well, but this isn't one of them. It's impossible to accurately measure dry ingredients by volume, and wet / sticky ingredients get the cups, well, wet and sticky.

There's an additional minor irritant here in that most of our "cups" are metricised, so are 240ml rather than whatever half a US pint is (slightly less IIRC).

What confused me was that my parents used imperial for everything, recipes all in ounces and Lbs, but my grandmother did everything in kilos.
But then my grandparents mostly lived in continental Europe while my mother was sent to boarding school in UK.
Don't have an issue with cups, so long as it's all in cups. I was taught to make apple crumble using 8 huge spoons of flour (etc.), and then re-tought in school to get scales out and measure it to the gram, and got told off for measuring 8 huge spoons straight in to the bowl. The problem comes if you mix cups and metric (either ml for liquid or grams for solid), and it becomes a pain working out the effective density of everything. A cup is a cup. If it's slightly larger than an official US cup, you get a slightly larger dessert 🙂

Now oddly sized pints and gallons is an issue.

I grew up on a farm and much of UK agriculture has been metric since the 1970s. There are a couple of areas where knowing both imperial & metric was handy: a cow that weighs 300Kg when slaughtered will give 300Lbs of meat (very roughly). Even though we had to report field sizes in hectares we always used acres: mowing the two acre field was a bit easier to say than mowing the 0.8 hectare field or whatever the conversion is.

Once away from the farm I worked in construction which is also metric (dunno when they switched but it was certainly before the early 1980s). Sheets of plywood, plasterboard and the like are 2400x1200mm not 8x4; joists are spaced at 400mm centres. Material is measured in Kg & tonnes and not short or long tons (2000lbs or 2240lbs).

Temperature: a scale that is based on the freezing point of a brine mixture is just wrong or weird or both!

Bike races are measured in km so I use km when riding.

If I think about it I prefer metric conceptually, but as I grew up in the 70s/80s I tend to switch pretty seamlessly between metric and imperial in day to day life.

Riding though, is always in km and m. My Garmin has a weird habit of randomly switching back to imperial units every so often though, which is REALLY annoying in an OCD-but-not-really way if I only notice it mid-ride.

Now oddly sized pints and gallons is an issue.

It's that a dry or liquid gallon?

Bike races are measured in km so I use km when riding.

Not if you're an UK tester.

can't make my Garmin mix & match.

The Imperial measurement and Miles was conjured up by a small "elite" to teach the "surfs" a lesson, that lesson is such that the "elite" are edumakated, the surfs not.