You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
Fascinating. Quite the rabbit hole to disappear down, foot to yard,meter mile, US or GB equivalency. why its that, who, why and whatever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit)#Survey_foot
Units of measurement are always fascinating, and to an extent controversial; some people can get rather het up over others using units contrary to what they feel should only be used. If that makes sense? I know what I mean, anyway!
How come we have the decimal system but nobody anywhere ever measures in decimetres?
I'm old enough to remember learning imperial measurements in primary school. I had a red exercise book with tables of them (and times tables too) printed on the back cover. Periodically nowadays I tell my classes in school about 63360 etc. The whole system is bonkers.
5s. of silver currency = 1oz. btw.
How come we have the decimal system but nobody anywhere ever measures in decimetres?
I do.
I wrote about this stuff a little while ago, incidentally.
https://twitter.com/UKCougar/status/1563524116975874049
or
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1563524116975874049.html
I upset some Americas on my YouTube because I use mm, CM and metres to measure stuff and then referenced them as foot fetishists.
In reality I tend to use what ever line is closest on the tape measure so might measure a piece of wood as 350mm by 8 Inches.
The only stuff I struggle with is adding and subtracting in imperial.
10 + 10 = 20. No it equals 1 foot 78 inches, two groats and a donkey you idiot!
Me three...
And me
Aren't we legally obligated now to post this:
That Wikipedia link is great
In reality I tend to use what ever line is closest on the tape measure so might measure a piece of wood as 350mm by 8 Inches.
Cor. You’re the only person I’ve ever come across other than me who does this.
Every builders merchants in the Country sell it. 8’x4’ sheets, with the thickness in mm.
If you look on Wikipedia a pint is defined as everything from 250ml to over 1.5 litres depending on which country defines it.
Some countries have two definitions.
But for amusement the definitions are all given in millilitres.
Is someone going to tell JRM?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint
PS - I’m now trying to remember if I’ve posted that previously
I regularly use imperial; fractions, decimal and metric when measuring as there is no point using a measurement that isn't actually what the thing your measuring was made to. If it's going in to CAD later it automatically converted it to the designs measurement system.
If it's my own design from scratch I always try to use metric parts and measurements if possible.
An announce is things like sheets of 8’x4’ or 2.4m x 1.2m being interchanged and presumed to be the same but trying to be sold as the other.
If you want even more confusing and historical, "acre" is a great place to start.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
Basically land size was defined by how much of it you could plough in a day/week/harvest year.
Furlong (a contraction of "one furrow long" ) was the distance a team of ox could plough before needing a rest (at which point you'd turn them round). As far as I know, the only thing using furlongs now is horse racing...
Metric if communicating*.
No exceptions**.
One thing that i do find funny is how many engineering grads talk in cm. There are no centimetres in UK engineering****
*Except when just "a thing that is called". Like plywood is NOT sold as 8x4 its listed as 2440mm x 1220mm*** but we all know what we are talking about although i have only ever actually asked or talked about "a sheet of XXmm ply" a 2x4 is largely irrelevant as it doesn't describe either of the dimension so it just a name at this point.
**Unless i am talking to @jamiemcf about where he needs to go. Then i will be talking in chains and yards.
Unless its a true full sheet then its 2500x 1250
*Unless of course you are describing structural properties of structural members then you get fun things like cm⁴
“A pint’s a pound, the world around”. American saying.
"A pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter". British saying
I'd always wondered about the random paper options when printing stuff from a computer
The wonderful Professor Fry has educated me
Ahhhhhhhhhh the Prof. *inserts heart pounding emoji here*
I always wondered why we had chains as a unit of measurement, then a walk round the museum of rural life I saw a land chain for easily measuring fields. Then it all made sense.
The railway uses terms measured in feet that may not actually be that.
The 6ft or 10ft could be much larger.
Chains and fathoms are used at sea.
How come we have the decimal system but nobody anywhere ever measures in decimetres?
Even the French? They love DNs.
Decinetres?
Chains and fathoms are used at sea
And knots.
You generally have to pay extra for that sort of thing.
SWMBO sent me a measurement for some furniture when she was shopping so i (being at home) could check if it would fit in a particular space inthe house.
Well it didn't fit, and after some robust 'discussion' it turns out she'd taken a tape measure from a cheap sewing kit in the man drawer, and the inches were Chinese inches!
They're close enough to imperial inches that you wouldnt necessarily notice if you don't do a lot of measuring, but a big enough difference that the bureau she bought was rather significantly too large for the space!
Different units is fine as long as you know what your are starting and finishing in.
the US date system can just **** right off.
Always wondered why plywood is still 2440 x 1220 but plasterboard is 2400 x 1200.
Our huge local builder's merchant planes their own wood, so it handily comes in massive random lengths up to about 5-6m and is sold by the metre (so you can cut your own oddball lengths provided you don't leave little bits). But the listed dimensions are before planing (so 25mm is actually about 21mm).
I've come across decimetres in engineering before - usually from French customers or certain automotive type approval regs.
And then the Americans using the decimal imperial mashup "kips".
The one thing imperial has going for it is its poetic.
Inch, foot, yard, fathom, pole perch or rod, chain, furlong mile. All lovely numbers as well not dull multiples of ten.
An acre is a chain by a furlong. What's not to like?
Gill, pint, quart, gallon, firkin hogshead
Lovely
Similar to multi21 I have a DBH tape (diameter at breast height for measuring tree volume) in my van that I take to work.
You wrap it round a tree to work out the diameterits had the maths done you you don't have to, it has Proper metric on one side, diameter metric on the other. Despite being wildly different noone seems to notice when they first use it.
There is alot to be said for fractions in imperial aswell.
Much easir to deal with than decimal mentally.
Or atleast they are if we hadn't all forgotten ?
Always wondered why plywood is still 2440 x 1220 but plasterboard is 2400 x 1200.
I've never known why this is - OSB, like Aces, is wild and can be either 2440x1220 or 2400x1200 depending on the thickness
Gill, pint, quart, gallon, firkin hogshead
Lovely
UK shoe sizes are measured in barleycorns.
a tape measure from a cheap sewing kit in the man drawer, and the inches were Chinese inches!
I guy I work with sometimes had a tape measure that had a typo on it. He'd measure stuff out on site, his pal would cut everything. But when they'd go to fit it half of what he cut would be an inch too short. It turned out the tape measure, on the inch scale went 93, 94, 95, 95, 96, 97. So any measurement he'd take over 8ft would be an inch short, but that was only a problem if someone else made the cuts (or if he cut something from someone else's measurements)
As we all know, steel bike frames are full of it. 27.2 mm seatposts are to suit the finished bore size of an 1⅛” (28.9mm) OD tube. Similarly typical top and down tubes of 32-35-38mm are all stepping up in nominal ⅛" increments.
The engineering norm of sticking to mm or m is mostly to try and prevent mistakes. You could possibly use the same machine or process to make something 2mm, 2cm or 2dm. Unlikely you'd confuse 2mm vs 2m.
Amused my son on Friday where we were using his granddad's lathe to make a thing for uni. We were converting his metric drawing to suit the slides in thou, but drilling a blind hole using the tailstock in fractions.
the US date system can just **** right off.
The US date system of MM/DD is correct, it's just that the year is in the wrong place. We measure nothing else little-endian, you wouldn't say the time in seconds-minutes-hours so why should the date be any different.