Metrickery

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S

screenman

Squire
raleighnut said:
America is still mainly Imperial measurements, but they mainly quote a persons weight in pounds and their mile is shorter than the British mile and I'm pretty sure that their gallon is a bit less and as for engine capacity in cubic inches which I'm pretty sure never was used in Britain (We've always quoted in cc or litres)
its all rather confusing really to quote Spike Milligan.
I remember in my local when they said beer would soon be sold in half litres I commented that we had been served half litres for years and was ridiculed so next time I went in I had a 500ml bottle of beer with me, made sure I had an audience at the bar and asked for a pint glass into which I poured the bottle. Lo and behold a pint with a head.:becool: It led to some muttering and people asking the landlord to "Top that pint up" for quite a while.:giggle:
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Are you sure about the mile bit? The gallon for sure.
 
S.Giles

S.Giles

Guest
I believe that US and UK miles are the same, but don't forget the 'nautical mile', which is 1.15 statute miles.

Check the Wiki page for a veritable cornucopia of 'miles'!
 
classic33

classic33

Leg End Member
S.Giles said:
I believe that US and UK miles are the same, but don't forget the 'nautical mile', which is 1.15 statute miles.

Check the Wiki page for a veritable cornucopia of 'miles'!
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Taken from the above
The U.S. survey mile is 5280 survey feet, or about 1609.347 218 694 metres.[80] In the U.S., statute mile formally refers to the survey mile,[3] but for most purposes, the difference between the survey mile and the international mile is insignificant—one international mile is exactly 0.999 998 of a U.S survey mile—so statute mile can be used for either. But in some cases, such as in the U.S. State Plane Coordinate Systems (SPCSs), which can stretch over hundreds of miles,[81] the accumulated difference can be significant, so it is important to note that the reference is to the U.S. survey mile.
 
swansonj

swansonj

Guru
I once heard tell of a unit for measuring heat transfer through walls of buildings. It was, if I recall, the BTHU per square foot per degree Fahrenheit times thickness in mm. Or maybe it was the area that was metric and the thickness imperial. But it was certainly touted as the most mixed up unit yet invented.
 
swansonj

swansonj

Guru
Dogtrousers said:
Incidentally, this leads me on to a pet beef of mine about the cycle industry - why don't they quote the high and low gear ratios for a bike. We often have people on here who've bought a bike with gears that are too "racy" and are struggling on hills. I put this down to there not being consistent publication of gear ranges.
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Abso-flipping-lutely. Bikes are sold almost entirely by the number of gears, but, other than large numbers of gears being a bad idea because they wear the components out more quickly, I've yet to find any functional (as opposed to status) reason to want lots of gears per se. The things that might matter, functionally, about gears are how low the lowest/high the highest is; what the range is; and what the interval between adjacent gears is. The number of gears is a function of the last two but is not a helpful parameter in its own right.

Has any casual or beginner cyclist ever bought a bike and thought "I wish the top gear was even higher"? Has anyone ever bought a bike and not wished the bottom gear was lower?

What we need is competition to sell bikes on the parameters of direct relevance. "This bike has a 30" bottom gear but this one goes down to 20"." "The chain on this bike costs half as much to replace and lasts twice as long as this one."
 
Dogtrousers

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
swansonj said:
I once heard tell of a unit for measuring heat transfer through walls of buildings. It was, if I recall, the BTHU per square foot per degree Fahrenheit times thickness in mm. Or maybe it was the area that was metric and the thickness imperial. But it was certainly touted as the most mixed up unit yet invented.
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In the 60s my dad worked on time & motion/ efficiency studies and he introduced me to the word Therblig. I remember knowing that "my daddy does Therbligs". I've just looked it up and it's not really a unit, but it's a great word: Therbligs are 18 kinds of elemental motions used in the study of motion economy in the workplace. My dad used to say, of his work "it's all ergs and therbligs".
 
byegad

byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
It's all Thatcher's fault! She got into power in 1979 and promptly shut down a raft of QuANGOs, including the Metrication Board. Australia made the change to metric in a very short time and seems to have survived, so why can't we?

They'll say it will confuse the old people. They have been saying it since I was young, and I get my Old Age Pension next year (Hopefully!). So don't hesitate on my account, I'm numerate and well able to manage a change like this, after all I was an adult when we changed from £sd to Decimal coinage so do away with all Imperial measures tomorrow.

Hang on, that would imply sensible government. I take it all back, we may well eventually be totally metric, but we'll never have a sensible government.
 
classic33

classic33

Leg End Member
swansonj said:
I once heard tell of a unit for measuring heat transfer through walls of buildings. It was, if I recall, the BTHU per square foot per degree Fahrenheit times thickness in mm. Or maybe it was the area that was metric and the thickness imperial. But it was certainly touted as the most mixed up unit yet invented.
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"Thermal transmittance Known as the U-factor, the rate of flow, measured in thermal resistance, through several different layers of materials taken together as a whole. It is measured in Btuh per square foot per degree Fahrenheit (Btuh/ft2 /°F)."
From https://www.aspe.org/sites/default/files/webfm/ContinuingEd/PSD_CEU_196Feb13.pdf page 2.
 
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