Miles or Kilometers?

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 8×4; 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.

Mine (Edge 820) does, in fact if I use a Connect IQ app it displays elevation gain in Feet and Metres.

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.

Erm, serfs!

In the Aviation world , so we have height / altitude in feet ( except for Russia who use metres), Km for visibility and wind is quoted in Knots and usually the distances are Nautical Miles. Temps are in Celsius

….and pressure is in hectopascals !

the yanks use inches mercury ( and also statue miles for the viz )

How many of the chippies etc. didn’t describe those as 8×4? If they were really metric then they’d be 2.5×1.5 rather than a metric conversion of an imperial size.

Which reminds me of one thing which really bugs me in the metric/imperial debate – the need for some media outlets to quote measurements in imperial when the measurement they were supplied with was clearly metric.

How many of the chippies etc. didn’t describe those as 8×4? If they were really metric then they’d be 2.5×1.5 rather than a metric conversion of an imperial size.

Not really, size and measurement are different things, historically sheets are that size so it continues.
According to google 8ft is 2438.4mm with 4ft being 1219.2 so if you want 8×4 you really want 2438.4×1219.2mm boards.

The real benefit comes when somebody asks you to get the ply for boarding a 30ft wall with 1/4″ gaps between the sheets…

Cake ingredients in grams. Pounds and ounces for cheese and drugs.

Mine (Edge 820) does, in fact if I use a Connect IQ app it displays elevation gain in Feet and Metres.

I didn’t say the Garmin (800) can’t do it.

Just I can’t.

😉

Anyway, I’m used to KM now and wouldn’t want to switch.