4 ms·
You know, that in the civilized world we use meters and kilograms? ;)
by krzrak 12y ago
You know, that in the civilized world we use meters and kilograms? ;)
- hoektoe 12y agoThank You
- edent 12y agoActually, we prefer "metre" :-) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/metre http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/metre
- nailer 12y agoAnd civilised.
- onion2k 12y agoAt least the US is consistent. In the UK we use a weird mix of different things - short distances are metric (centimetres, metres), long distances are imperial (miles). Temperatures are in both depending largely on the age of the person talking. Vehicle speed is entirely in imperial (mph). Area is in metric for small things (wallpaper is meters^2), imperial for big things (fields are in acres). And so on.
- quarterto 12y agoI've never heard anyone use Fahrenheit in the UK.
- rythie 12y agoYou need to talk to more people over 55 years old then (the metric system was taught in schools from 1974 onwards).
- callum85 12y agoUK tabloid front pages about heatwaves are almost always in Fahrenheit.
- timclark 12y agoThe Daily Express routinely uses Fahrenheit when reporting heatwaves or blizzards on the front page - most of the other UK tabloids rarely have a weather focused front page.
- callum85 12y agoFaranheit only for heatwaves. For blizzards they always use centigrade. Without fail.
- tormeh 12y agoWhy? So the temperatures seem more extreme?
- scottmcf 12y agoPrecisely. A really hot day sounds more impressive when you say 82 Fahrenheit, rather than 28 Celsius. Similarly, you get down into the negative numbers way sooner with Celsius (since freezing is 0, rather than 32). Just makes for better headlines, although almost everyone uses C now.
- ulfw 12y agoAt least the UK converted to the world standard. Of course these things take time. Of course older people (who have been used to the imperial standard for decades) will have a harder time converting. That's normal. But the UK did it/tries. The US doesn't even bother. Their attempt back in the 70s/80s was half-hearted at best. And then they just gave up.
- pjc50 12y agoThe UK conversion was only really done because it's an EU requirement, some people are still unhappy with it, and the vernacular is still using the Imperial measurements. Fortunately the scientific community gave up on the foot-pound-second system and has switched. But we're still using plenty of connectors based on 0.1inch spacing, and PCBs designed in "mils" (thousandths of an inch). (In Orwell's 1984, he makes a point of having a bystander in a pub complaining about beer being served in liters. Just another symbol of dystopia. Some people still think like that.)
- rprospero 12y agoYou forgot measuring weight in stone. I always mess up that conversion.
- kosinus 12y agoThe UK is only a small part of said civilized world. ;)
- tzs 12y ago> Temperatures are in both depending largely on the age of the person talking The biggest argument for metric for length and mass is the uniform way of making larger and smaller units. If you need to cover 1875 square centimeters with something that is priced by the square meter, the conversion is going to be a multiplication or division by a power of 10. Figuring out how many square yards you need to buy to cover 1875 square inches is much more annoying. There is no such argument for temperature. For both C and F, we use a decimal system to get units smaller or larger than a degree. The only advantage C has is that a difference of 1 degree C = 1 Kelvin, so converting between C and K just requires addition or subtraction of an ugly number (273.15). Converting between F and either C or K requires both a multiplication or division (by 1.8) and an addition or subtraction. F, on the other hand, has the advantage of a smaller degree (1 degree C = 1.8 degree F), giving us a finer scale when we are sticking to integers. The F scale and choice of reference points aligns it very nicely with the weather. 0 F to 100 F is pretty much the range that a world traveller will encounter as they visit various major cities. In C, that's -18 C to 38 C. The most sensible system would be to use metric for length and mass, F for temperature when you don't need your 0 point set to absolute 0, and a Kelvin like scale where 1 K = 1 degree F instead of 1 degree C when you do need the 0 point to be absolute 0.
- tptacek 12y agoF is more convenient for measuring the weather, but C is more convenient for cooking (0-100 freezing-boiling), and cooking is arguably a more important application than measuring the weather.
- shin_lao 12y agoI came here to say the same thing. It might sound like nitpicking, but the site is unusable as is for us, civilized people. :-)
- jalanb 12y agoExcept for the civilized ones with search engines https://duckduckgo.com/?q=77+kg+in+pounds https://duckduckgo.com/?q=77+kg+in+pounds :-)
- shin_lao 12y agoWith that kind of reasoning I could post in Russian and if you complain that you don't understand I would retort that you just need to translate my comments...
- jalanb 12y agoНу, как цивилизованный человек, я бы всегда использовать доступные инструменты, прежде чем просить занятой человек
- nsetu 12y agotrue that.. :)