I’m looking forward to the reintroduction of burning witches.

If that goes well, the burning of traitor Remainers will probably be televised.

Careful Poops, johnson sees himself as a cyclist so could be a lurker on here.
If your comment turns into gov policy, I’m blaming you.

“see myself as a cyclist?!”

You can still buy/sell weed with imperial weights/measures, 1/8th oz, 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz

Since the advent of cheap accurate digital scales less so, its just easier to do it all in grams nowadays
I reckon the main reason for the slow demise of copper coins is no-one needs them for the scales any more

Poops, the stuff of nightmares – johnson in lycra; think of a condom stuffed full of walnuts…

Does this mean I am too young to have been taught imperial (56) and too old to have the mental agility, time or inclination to learn it?

What is the volume of a gallon of water in cubic feet? Asking for a friend.

I’m 52 – taught metric but used imperial at home.

It really confuses my kids!

I’m 60 and was taught both – imperial in primary and metric in secondary. I even did my times tables up to 12 times

I am pretty much bilingual inmeasurements and can covert one to the other easily – but I think in imperial for some things – peoples height and weight – and metric in others – small measurements etc.

Imperial has poetry but metric is so much easier to use – but imperial measurements are easy to estimate as they are mainly based on things you can see and the single units are a more useful size.

inch = thumb length. 12 thumbs make a foot ( obvious) 3 feet make a yard ( fingertip to nose) 22 yards make a chain, 10 chains make a furlong, etc etc

An acre is a furlong by a chain and is the amount of land one peasant with one ox can plough in a day

I do get a bit confused with a rod a pole and a perch – I think they are the same but are something odd like 10 1/2 feet

And of course a mile is 63360 inches which is a really nice number. all handy and easy to remember and calculate. None of your divisible by 10 nonsense!

I’m 56 and was taught metric from day 1 at school. I have a faint memory of spending thrupenny and six penny bits in shops as a small child and latterly finding that half-crowns were no longer legal tender. Work wise I worked in engineering and working with US companies made for some cock-ups with people mixing up units. One company making artificial limbs had a technical drawing archive going back pre-war and we occasionally had to make new parts for some 90 year old war veteran – because of paper rationing they were often drawn on tiny pieces of paper and near illegible imperial dimensions – fun times!

If any engineering types on here want a laugh – I have some imperial micrometers. 64ths anyone?

could be fun for confusing apprentices

inch = thumb length. 12 thumbs make a foot ( obvious) 3 feet make a yard ( fingertip to nose)

That’s unimportant, you can do the same for metric. A cm is about the width of a little finger, a metre is opposite shoulder to fingertip. And the rest – meh. The reason imperial is like it is is because you can divide 12 into halves, quarters and thirds without splitting. But it’s not consistent like that, see chains, furlongs, hundredweight etc. Bonkers. You have to remember each one. And then when you get down to 5/32″ for fasteners it gets daft, along with ‘thou’. A total mixed bag.

The rest of the world manages fine with metric, the ‘more natural’ argument is complete cobbblers.

Where does “gnats baw hair” fit into metric eh? Can’t have a metric “baw hair” although you can have a metric shitload ( its 10% more than a shitload)

If any engineering types on here want a laugh – I have some imperial micrometers. 64ths anyone?

could be fun for confusing apprentices

Feeler guages for setting up guitars are all like that lol! Some of them are so thin they are like slices of tin foil, lol!

Imperial units – not gonna happen for the reasons described here…

@BorisJohnson Hello Boris. Weights and Measures Inspector here. Sorry to dispel your latest bit of kite flying.

1. The UK transferring to metric measures had bugger all to do with our EU membership. (1)

— Pippa Musgrave (@PippaMusgrave1) September 16, 2021

56 and I think in both, I think of imperial as an estimate and metric as a quote. I think they are both quite useful but if I only had to use one it would certainly be metric.

Its still a dead cat

I even did my times tables up to 12 times

MIND. BLOWN. We got taught up to the 12 times table slso, never occurred to me why.

Moved to Canada for a couple of years, doing AutoCAD in inches was really weird, as was sizing boilers and chillers in BTU!

inch = thumb length.

your thumbs are an inch long?

Moved to Canada for a couple of years, doing AutoCAD in inches was really weird

the weirdest thing about that is that canada is a metric country.

GCSE Maths, Q1, 2022

A Prime Minister is 5’9″ and can be assumed to be of circular cross-section with average diameter 2’6″.

Assuming he or she is composed of 90% water and 10% hot air, calculate his or her mass.

Calculate his weight:

(a) On the surface of the Earth
(b) On the surface of the moon assuming the Moon’s gravity is 1/5th that of the Earth’s.

Use the official Brexit Value of 3 for Pi.

the weirdest thing about that is that canada is a metric country

Yeah, I never got used to the metric speed limits either!

check it out – a medium sized bloke from the end of your thumb to the first joint when its bent is an inch. Originally it was one of the kings of englands thumb

Use the official Brexit Value of 3 for Pi.

Lolz

Pi should be 3. It really annoys me that its such a silly number. something is wrong!

Pi should be 3. It really annoys me that its such a silly number. something is wrong!

No, the universe has no respect for your silly integer based counting system.

I’m trying to devise a system where pi is a rational number. I’ll let you know when I’ve worked it out.

would counting in base pi rather than base 10 work? You can probaly tell I have done no maths since O grades

I thought of that but in general integer counting systems each column counts up in integers to the value of the base -1, that’s how it works. So the units column in base ten is zero to nine. If your base is t an integer, this can’t really work. You’d have to use multiples of pi e.g. each column from zero to n.pi. but the you really just have base n, and you e just multiplied all integers by pi which doesn’t help at all. The ratio of diameter to circumference would be pi squared. Which would be just pi. Which would be 1. Which would make the diameter the same as the circumference.

Like I said, I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out 🙂

check it out – a medium sized bloke from the end of your thumb to the first joint when its bent is an inch.

I though I was a medium sized man (5′ 10″, 11 stone) yet end of thumb to first joint is 1 1/4″ so by that measure I have long thumbs?
What can I do with this gift?

What can I do with this gift?

Measure stuff wrong

What can I do with this gift?

swing from trees?

Measure stuff wrong

I seem to have a different gift for that which doesn’t include using my thumbs

What can I do with this gift?

Hitch hike like Uma Thurman?

Poopscoop

I’m looking forward to the reintroduction of burning witches

Is this a reference to Priti Patel?

I’ve been sent AutoCAD drawings where the architect has worked in mm, but the units are set to inches. It took a while to work out why everyting was out by a factor of 25.4.

Does Jacob Rees-Mogg send instructions in inches to a tailor who works in metric?

swamp_boy
Full Member

I’ve been sent AutoCAD drawings where the architect has worked in mm, but the units are set to inches. It took a while to work out why everyting was out by a factor of 25.4.

I’ve had this sometimes with 3d models which for whatever reason were done in inches but now render for me in metric so they’re 2.54 times smaller than they should be. It’s pretty obvious when you see it, or it is to me but some people just can’t figure it and end up guessing a correction amount or assuming it’s 2.5

Did one of the mars missions not fail because it was a transatlantic project and the european side did not realise the US worked in imperial still?

Nothing to do with us Europeans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Blooming ‘eck – so the americans just confused themselves?

I have run a shop for around 6yrs, we used to sell sweets out of the jar, quite often the elderly customers would ask for a quarter pound of mint imperials etc…. I just switch the scales to imperial and gave them the amount they wanted – never realised it was ‘illegal’. We all know the whole thing is pointless, a political pr stunt to distract.

We stopped selling sweets by weight a couple of years ago, it was uneconomical. All my fruit and veg is quite happily metric 😁

Nothing to do with us Europeans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

From the link:

The discrepancy between calculated and measured position, resulting in the discrepancy between desired and actual orbit insertion altitude, had been noticed earlier by at least two navigators, whose concerns were dismissed because they “did not follow the rules about filling out [the] form to document their concerns”. A meeting of trajectory software engineers, trajectory software operators (navigators), propulsion engineers, and managers was convened to consider the possibility of executing Trajectory Correction Maneuver-5, which was in the schedule. Attendees of the meeting recall an agreement to conduct TCM-5, but it was ultimately not done.[

Is there an engineer anywhere who doesn’t find themselves in this exact scenario at least once a month?

Blooming ‘eck – so the americans just confused themselves?

Scientists all over the world use metric, but engineers in the US use imperial. I’d read somewhere that the problem was caused by an mistake such as an inaccurate conversion not a lack of understanding as such.

I can still get Cadburys chocolate in my nearest Carrefour 🙂