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People complain about the usual issues: multiple definitions of a mile, the odd ratios between inches, feet, yards, etc. It gets even more fun in agriculture,
by danielbarla 14y ago
People complain about the usual issues: multiple definitions of a mile, the odd ratios between inches, feet, yards, etc. It gets even more fun in agriculture, where the bushel is a frequently used unit. Now, the bushel is a unit of volume, whereas much of the world prefer to measure their crops by weight. To convert between the two, you essentially need to use conversion ratio (or table) for the crop type, along with an estimate of the moisture content of your product. To be fair, this is more to do with a difference in measuring methodology, rather than a failure of the imperial system, but it still highlights the kind of issues that come up between the systems.
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushel
- Tichy 14y agoWhy not use metric volumes instead of bushel? You'd have the same conversion issues converting bushel to imperial weights.
- danielbarla 14y agoWell, at some point, that part of the world decided that they'd use weight to measure produce, as opposed to volume. So now, if you read a scientific paper from Europe, you will get numbers in KG, likely with no indication of moisture content (since they don't particularly care). So, you're left with an inaccurate conversion to bushels, or more likely, you simply don't use the paper. The same goes for the other way around; there's probably a whole lot of rework that happens due to this incompatibility.
- Tichy 14y agoI get the problem, my point was just that it is unrelated to the issue of imperial vs metric system.
- rmccue 14y agoThis is fairly similar to fuel mileage, where some places use miles per gallon (distance per volume) while others use litres per 100km (volume per distance). Changing systems is fairly irrelevant though, since you can still measure your mileage in kilometres per litre if you want.
- aidos 14y agoNo, it's different. distance / volume vs volume / distance are just inverses. Weight vs Volume are completely different measures and can only be compared by knowing the specific properties of the contents. Some recipe books have conversion tables for using depending on _what_ you're measuring.
- rmccue 14y agoMy point is that changing the units doesn't have to change how you measure it. You can measure in kg or L just as easily, it's literally a number conversion. Whether or not you change how you measure it is a much more localised form of standardisation.