Miles or Km

[snorri]

It's interesting in a weird sort of way that this topic is still being discussed some 40 years after the UK Metrication Board was wound down*.

Quoting Wikipedia...
The following year the Metrication Board was wound up*, one of the 457 Quangos that were wound up in the "Quango bonfire" of 1979–81.[12]

*Wound up/wound down? A topic for another thread

 

[anothersam]

That's the Cleveland in Ohio, which became the first US state to post distance signs in metric in 1973. Haven't checked lately, but I don't believe they've gone too far since then.

(Some graffiti artist added the furlongs...)

 

[Ajax Bay]

I guess the convention is to write abbreviated measurements in lower case.... m2, cm2, lb/ft, km, 21c, 21f, etc.

As far as metric/SI units are concerned, m, s, kg are all correctly lower case, and of course m (1/1000th), c (1/100th) and k (1000 times) are in common use, though (in common use for information and power generation metrics) M and G are the first of several '10 to the power of' prefixes and all these from 6 onwards are capitals . In addition abbreviated measurements of many derived units are capitals eg: A current, V voltage, W power, Hz frequency, N force, J energy.
I'd advocate the BBC style which holds that "There is no acceptable abbreviation for 'miles'". "mi" is just useless and "m" is already taken as a distance measure abbreviation, but for clarity/brevity some UK road signs do use "m".

 

[CXRAndy]

The Americans still use cubic inches, especially for the larger V8s.

My F150, has a badge saying 6.2litre

I only use metric for short distance measurement

Everything else is imperial

 

[avecReynolds531]

I don't mind both but somehow (no idea why) find it easier to relate distance & effort in km.

I love the kilometre markers I found on French climbs - showing the altitude, distance to summit and next kilometre average gradient (not great when you see 11%). Maybe that's the reason after all...

 

[Ming the Merciless]

If all the UK road signs were in km we’d not be having this conversation. We just use what is convenient to the country’s setup. I don’t travel through Europe converting everything to miles, I just go with the local unit of distance.

 

[Baldy]

I guess the convention is to write abbreviated measurements in lower case.... m2, cm2, lb/ft, km, 21c, 21f, etc.

Isn't an upper case K Kelvin, lower case is kilo. Not sure what an upper case M is, mass maybe as in E= MC squared. When using scientific abbreviations upper/lower case does matter.

 

[C R]

Isn't an upper case K Kelvin, lower case is kilo. Not sure what an upper case M is, mass maybe as in E= MC squared. When using scientific abbreviations upper/lower case does matter.

Upper case M is mega, mass is usually lower case m, usually context tells you if m stands for mass or metres in a particular case.

 

[Ajax Bay]

Isn't an upper case K Kelvin, lower case is kilo. Not sure what an upper case M is, mass maybe as in E= MC squared. When using scientific abbreviations upper/lower case does matter.

Yesbut (and early credit to @C R ). 'K' is for degrees Kelvin (one of the 7 SI units, as opposed to derived ones) and 'k' is widely used and understood: not much chance of confusion even with no context as 'k' is a prefix and must be followed by the unit (eg 'g' or 'm'). M (capital and = 10^6) is only a prefix; and the dimension symbol (not unit) for 'mass'. @Baldy maybe you were thinking of Mariah Carey's E=MC^2 album.

 

[rogerzilla]

The c in E=mc^2 should be italic, too, because it's a physical constant rather than a variable.

 

[figbat]

And now we're mixing notations for constants, variables and units. Also, as a science pedant, may I point out that the Kelvin scale is absolute, so it isn't "degrees" Kelvin, it's just Kelvin.

 

[Globalti]

Tsk, people are just showing off now. Have they nothng better to do?

 

[CXRAndy]

Tsk, people are just showing off now. Have they nothng better to do?

 

[figbat]

Just a thought, what if I want to describe 1,000s of miles? Would that be km?

 

[Gravity Aided]

View attachment 512053

That's the Cleveland in Ohio, which became the first US state to post distance signs in metric in 1973. Haven't checked lately, but I don't believe they've gone too far since then.

(Some graffiti artist added the furlongs...)

Most American cyclists seem to have the metric system quite well figured out.


We are working at bringing the rest up to speed.