sports commentators and feet and inches

[BrisbaneRhino]

Having been in Aus for 15 years I can now (just about) get kilos, but I still firstly think in stones and pounds for weight.

I'm also now used to kilometres, but it took a while - not so much distance as speed in kph rather than mph. Shorter distances I'll use either, but for heights I still think feet and inches - I have no feeling for 160 cm etc (why not say 1.6 metres by the way?). Hardly anyone uses any of the more obscure imperial measures like chains.

Temperature is a weird one. Like most poms I tend to use Fahrenheit for high temperatures (80 degrees 'sounds' hotter than 27) and Centigrade for lower (zero sounding lower than 32).

I work in the energy sector, where imperial measures - barrels, btu etc are used almost everywhere outside of Australia, which uses the metric versions (GJ etc), so we use conversions quite often.

In the end the metric system is better in all practical respects. Its base 10, which makes calaculations much easier, and also because the scaling has some meaningful basis rather than the idiosyncracies of trades hundreds of years ago.

 

[Lambretta]

As someone else said, I and most others have no idea when it comes to converting stone.
The larger numbers kilos or pounds make sense because they are more accurate.
Stone is just crazy.

I don't get that at all - Stones are just a larger weight than a pound

I use metres until I get a lot of them and then I start using kilometres
You don't say England is 1,698,300 metres away. You say it's 16 or 17 thousand kilometres away.

You don't understand stones as you've never used them or you don't know how to divide by 14. That's all.

 

[Lambretta]

I'm also now used to kilometres, but it took a while - not so much distance as speed in kph rather than mph. Shorter distances I'll use either, but for heights I still think feet and inches - I have no feeling for 160 cm etc (why not say 1.6 metres by the way?). Hardly anyone uses any of the more obscure imperial measures like chains.

By eck lad - how could you not use Rods, poles and Perch's? How do you cope?


Furlongs and chains only survive because of horse racing. In all other areas they are utterly extinct.

A furlong is an eighth of a mile - 220 yards. A chain is one tenth of a furlong or 22 yards

 

[The Charlatan]

By eck lad - how could you not use Rods, poles and Perch's? How do you cope?


Furlongs and chains only survive because of horse racing. In all other areas they are utterly extinct.

A furlong is an eighth of a mile - 220 yards. A chain is one tenth of a furlong or 22 yards

A chain is a cricket pitch peg to peg isn't it?

 

[Twizzle]

yep

 

[Lambretta]

A chain is a cricket pitch peg to peg isn't it?

As you're Australian you're supposed to say its 2,011.68 centimetres

 

[veggiepatch1959]

As you're Australian you're supposed to say its 2,011.68 centimetres

Can you please convert that to Angstrom units? :shock:

 

[deluded pom?]

Decimal time is the way forward. Divide the day into two ten hour spells. Each hour consists of a hundred minutes made up of one hundred seconds.