Some units just stick. I hate every inch (pun intended) of the imperial system, but for some reason my height and weight get stored in my head as ft/in and lbs. Our proximity to 'merica just makes things worse, as all building materials and random other bits need to be imperial because we trade so much. Ask me to find 5/32" on a tape measure and I die a bit inside.
Is that an imperial Inch, or a scottish one? (and please state these lenghts in flemish ells too, though personally I prefer the Dendermondse ell, as that one even varies between wholesale/retail) Naaah, can't see a reason why having a universal metric would benefit us. it's all just Brussels-Eurocrate-gobbeldygook
Anybody notice the tendency we have in the UK to refer to positive temperatures in Fahrenheit and negative temperature in Celsius? For example, "Phew, must be in the high seventies today" or "Brrr, its minus two outside". As for metric and imperial, as an engineer and a physicist I can use both but I have a colleague who changes every metric size into imperial when making something in the workshop. This is despite the fact that virtually every non-American optical component we buy is metric and he is such a Luddite he refuses to use any of the CNC machines and does everything manually. Its not that he can use the excuse of being old school, we're about the same age.
I have just noticed this why are bin liners, pedal bins, waste paper bucket liners sold in litres sizes? I noticed recently this also applies to soil and cat litter both of which I bought recently.
Because litre is the unit for volume. Edit: To clarify, if you know what area needs to be covered in soil and how deep it is needs to be, its pretty straight forward to determine how many litres you need. If soil was sold by the tonne then you would have to flute about with its density/specific gravity to calculate how much you need. I'd imagine the density of soil changes based on a number of factors. Or you would have to estimate hoe much soil you need, either way it's not very precise
I only wanted a small bag for some catnip plants. And I do not see how cat litter being sold by this measure is helpful as I was caught out ordering a large but I thought manageable bag and nearly broke my back getting it home.lol.
To get an intuitive sense of volume think of an equivalent number of litre cartons of milk or 1/2 litre cans of cider.
Or bottles of coke (e.g. 2L). Volume is a much better measure of bulk products than weight, since you don't have to worry about density for the varying materials.
It surprisingly is, in a pinch; weighed a turkey using tape-measure last year (too heavy for the kitchen scales, packaging got tossed without checking the weight). Plus a broom as a lever, a chairback as a fulcrum, and bottles of water as a known counterbalance. - 2L of water is 2kg. - Balance turkey and water. - Measure distance to fulcrum of each. - Dt is the distance between the turkey and fulcrum, Dw for the water and fulcrum. - 2kg * Dw = Dt * weight of the turkey. Gotta get the mileage out of that MEng, right?
Indeed! You could also have approximated it with the Archimedes principle, even easier if you've got two bowls of sufficient size.
Sadly, Coca Cola now maxes out at 1.75L bottles. You need to drink Pepsi to get 2L bottles these days. Also, this linky seems relevant to this discussion.
Don't forget two things - 1. Most of the world is covered in sea so in context it does make some sense. 2. Journalists like to seem like they know what they're talking about so won't miss a jargon opportunity!
Huh, over here, soil is indeed sold in litres, but cat-litter is sold in kg's. As for binbags, they're also sold in litres, but I never know which one I need when in the shop. I know I have knee- and shin-height bins, but this information never is on the packaging
