i was born with everything being metric - other than road signs. mm, m km makes sense to me. yards, groats and furlongs is nonsense.
Imperial = dark ages nonsense.
That said, I cannot understand a bike weight in Kg.
OS Maps is why.
And miles/lbs/stones/furlongs etc is just old skool.
Apart from Knots, as they are cool.
Why are imperial measures nonsense, its simple everything i halved !
If halving things is nonsense how do you justify dividing or multiplying by ten as sensical ?
i used to work for a builders merchant. everyone would ask for timber/plasterboard/sheet materials in feet/inches but the computer system only listed them in their metric sizes. took me a while to be able to immediately convert between the two.
i tend to use miles for most things. mainly because its the unit of distance that is used on road signs and my car. its also what most people i know use.
It used to almost invariably be bike weight in pounds, fork travel in mm, rear suspension travel in inches along with distance in miles and height gain in metres.
It's slowly getting more consistent, but tbh I don't have any bother understanding the mix. I'm ok with pounds, shillings and pence too but that is rarely a help with anything!
With the exception of some of the more arcane imperial stuff, I can (and do) work quite happily in both. Bikes in particular are a weird and crazy mix of both.
My Mum works almost exclusively in imperial.
just poured my self a 568.261485 millilitre cheers
Amtico is made in imperial but sold in metric
I use metric but then I live in Spain. The only imperial measure I have any affection for is the pint. Which is perfection itself.
Why are imperial measures nonsense, its simple everything i halved !
Eh?
1 mile
= 8 furlongs
= 320 rods
= 1760 yards
= 5280 feet
= 63360 inches
Where's the halving there?
KMs are easy to look at on an OS map. Miles are a pain in the arse.
I like to be fluent in both, but I grew up exclusively with kilometres, so tend to think in them.
If you say that something is 3kms away, I can picture exactly how far that is. If, however, you say that something is 3 miles away, I have to exert mental effort which I prefer to keep in reserve for other tasks.
Eh?1 mile
= 8 furlongs
= 320 rods
= 1760 yards
= 5280 feet
= 63360 inchesWhere's the halving there?
1mile
= 2 x 1/2 mile
= 4 x 1/4 mile
Anything less than 1/4 mile is not worth worrying about !
Fact !!
It really annoys me when I see the date in month-day-year format. Not sure why!
miles are just crap and illogical
It really annoys me when I see the date in month-day-year format. Not sure why!
Well of course the correct format is year-month-day, so in theory the septics are halfway there.
How much does a gallon of water weigh in pounds? I know instantly that five litres weigh five kilograms and will fit into a container larger than 50cm x 10cm x 10cm. Can anybody instantly tell me the minimum size of a container I would need for a gallon?
Double post
Why are imperial measures nonsense, its simple everything i halved !
Eh?1 mile
= 8 furlongs
= 320 rods
= 1760 yards
= 5280 feet
= 63360 inchesWhere's the halving there?
Well the furlongs and rods ones are obvious in terms of being divisions, as is the relation between feet and inches. Miles, rods and furlongs are all part of the same measurements and units for measuring travel and landscape. Imperial units can have different sources though, so the lumpy maths dividing miles into feet or inches is because they're two different systems - one for measuring journeys and another for dimensions of objects. "Miles" and "Feet" have different sources - a mile is a roman measurement definded a is a thousand paces and a pace was 5 roman feet so a mile would be 5000ft, but the 'foot' measurement used in roman times wasn't the same size as our modern 'foot' and the modern foot/yard/inch system is for measuring on a smaller scale so the mismatch doesn't matter. Its mathematically neat that mm add up neatly to km but for most purposed mm don't matter in describing journeys and we don't need to think about suspension travel in terms of fractions of km
How much does a gallon of water weigh in pounds? I know instantly that five litres weigh five kilograms and will fit into a container larger than 50cm x 10cm x 10cm. Can anybody instantly tell me the minimum size of a container I would need for a gallon?
But why is water important? What size metric container will I need for a decagram of custard?
a mile is a roman measurement definded a is a thousand paces
That's the kind of thing that makes STW totally amazing!
Its mathematically neat that mm add up neatly to km but for most purposed mm don't matter in describing journeys and we don't need to think about suspension travel in terms of fractions of km
Ah but you don't, because metric is neater than that.
Lengths are magnitudes of metres and weights magnitudes of grams - the [url= http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix ]prefix[/url] tells you what magnitude to use.
You never have to remember how many units make up a larger unit (12, 14, 1760) because (as long as you know your milli from your kilo) it's obvious.
Hence if I see a sign that says "Visitor Centre 500yards" then I don't really know what that is in miles off the top of my head, but a sign saying "Visitor Centre 500metres" is easy.
a mile is a roman measurement definded a is a thousand paces
Early metric?
But why is water important? What size metric container will I need for a decagram of custard?
Is it any easier to work that out in fluid ounces?
Anyway day to day I tend to use more water than custard 😀
I use a mix of both
Miles on the road bike same as if I drive anywhere
Bike weights lb
Small parts gram
My weight lb
Off road walking or mtb km to match os grid
Frame sizes
Road in cm
Mtb inches
And cycle tyres well that's a whole other world
My weight in stones and pounds
Bike size in inches
Imperial is far more fun than metric. Of course it makes no logical sense, but neither does life much of the time. Metric is dull.
This is the absolute bane of my life at work (oil industry). Some things are measured in feet, some in metres, some in both. You have to be constantly on the lookout for stuff being off by a factor of 3-ish.
I measure mountain bike rides in miles but road rides in kilometres. Rule 24. Same reason I drink from water bottles on the mountain bike and bidons on the road bike.
Took the ferry to Ireland a few years ago and drove from Belfast to Dublin. As we crossed the border the first road sign suggested Dublin was actually getting further away. Took a moment to realise the distances were listed in km. Speed limit signs on the same road were still in mph though. Mental.
