Fahrenheit's just wrong, I mean who bases a temperature scale on their armpit? And I would support a move to make Britain totally metric. I can work with either system and as the US uses imperial it's going to stick around, but I prefer metric by far and frankly having a mix of both is just shoddy.
Just put both measurements on the road signs - then in years to come when everyone is used to metric switch entirely.
It's not sad at all. There's no need to know all the backward units. If I ever need to convert pound-force-feet into newton-metres, I can use my phone or google. In terms of day to day units, I know what all the metric units mean and represent and I know that a pint is 0.568 litres for milk and beer. I know that a mile is 1.6km for when I'm driving in Europe. A foot is 30cm when you're talking about peoples' height. There's nothing else that needs to be known, because it doesn't come up. I can read/speak french, plus read a fair amount of spanish, german and latin, so I'm by no means ignorant. Imperial units are simply not useful.
For me in school I was always taught with metric but with something it as always been in imperial such as height. Weight I just know in both. Other things such as coking I can use either metric or imperial with not much problems. Yes I can admit I am crap at remembering conversions but I can always find them and not have problems. With how people are saying to change road signs to metric there is a bit of a problem there as currently they are nice round number that are used so it would either have to change to metric and have random numbers or change the limits - its true that it would make much difference. For these speeds what would you do? 20MPH=32KM/H 30MPH = 48KM/H 50MPH =80KM/H 60MPH =97KM/H 70MPH =113KM/H All speeds rounded up from their exact values. Another point is that in most UK cars on the speedometer the scale that is usually on the outside and therefore larger and easier to see is MPH. This would then make it a bit more awkward but I know wouldn't be the end of the world. I say just leave it as it is. Chris
At some point in your life having (usually after a few drinks) come up with a more rational replacement time system and been convinced it is a brilliant idea is a good judge of character in my experience
I was raised metric (in Holland), but even I know how long an inch, a foot, a yard and a mile are. I can do Imperial weights as well. Struggle a bit with Farenheit, but that's why my iPhone has a converter, right? It's like speaking more than one language. If you have an IQ of more than 100, you should be able to manage it. Or should we blame the government and education system again?
fahrenheit is easy if you remeber -35, divide by 2 But no, we shouldn't change until at least 90% of the population is metric as most people who still think in imperial units are over 35 anyway which means they are less capable of learning new things; one thing you don't want is people having to concetrate on something else while driving (and I know this sounds a bit ageist and yes there is the couterargument that concentrating on driving is a good thing). That said the imperial system is fairly redundant and I'm for a metric changeover provding road speeds are kept (even I think in mph) and synonymous measures such as "a pint" (as in beer) are kept.
And anyone with an IQ of over 100 would know when to let sleeping dogs lie. I personally can use either system and it's no big hardship using either. I can visualise lengths in inches and feet just as easily as in millimetres, centimetres and metres. It wouldn't bother me if we used both, as we do now, but I would hate to see the imperial system disappear totally.
US imperial or UK imperial? TBH neither's going anywhere fast, as long as the US shuns metric imperial will always be common.
Personally, I like the half-backwards way we measure things over here. Thought of another common imperial: area - we use Acres a lot, rather than Hectares.
I can work with most units. Never had to work with imperial weights beyond people so can't really visualise a oz which was a real bugger when i was trying to design and build my rc plane since most of the info came from US sites. Though hectare and acres both totally stump me again i can't visualise how big either of these are.
Damned be the French, this time they got you craving for their friggin metric system, bah! you are British!! so no metric system for you, stick to Imperial please. yesh
I think eventually the metric system will kill off most imperial measurements, simply because they are easier to work with and new generations will be less attached to old measurements. However, I don't think this change should be forced by any sort of government intervention, barring maybe showing a preference for teaching metric at school (which happens already). I think the two systems can coexist reasonably happily for now.
