S.I. or British M.U.?

Is that really the exact measurement now? For a long time, it wasn't.

Reply to
Chris Bacon
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Sensible individuals spell it entirely.

Reply to
Mary Fisher

500 ml containers.

What, you've never been in Tesco, Asda, Waitrose, etc?

Reply to
Chris Bacon

Yes quite sure 2litres, I wondered if it was 4pints, so had to check before posting, I wish they did 1litre of the stuff ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

As others have said we are offically metric and effectively hybrid.

As with all quantities the actual numbers are, per se, meaningless. In order to use one set of measures you have to know what it means in the context of what you are doing. Each and every activity tends to use it's own set of measures. When I measure something at the sort of +/- 2mm precision for, say, hanging something on a wall I might measure it and use either the inch or the mm length depending on which one came out as a round measure - or which side of the ruler I was using. If I'm looking to measure something to -/+ 0.1mm then it'll be in metric because my verniers are metric. If I wanted to work out an approx volume I would measure or estimate in dm because the answer will be in litres. If I want to know how long a journey is I'll use miles.

If I'm putting air in the van tyres it'll be in PSI but if I'm measuring a gas burner pressure it'll be in mBar.

Reply to
Ed Sirett

I drive a LHD car with sppedo in km only, so I'm quite good at instant conversions. (helps I suppose that 10m=16km, and too much time working with computers makes calculating in hex almost natural). Every so often I mix up the conversion and wonder why the journey is taking so long?

Reply to
DJC

Yes. I buy them in six-packs from Tescos. They last much longer than ordinary milk, even when opened, which, as my only use for milk at home is for one cup of coffee in the morning, is important. However, the plastic bottles of milk we use at work are also metric.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

A lot of buildings pre-date the metric era, so a lot of building materials are still in imperial units, even if they are sometimes expressed in metric form. In pipework, there is also an important difference; a size given in imperial refers to the bore, while one given in millimetres refers to the OD.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

I once tried to make a complex device from drawings produced on that principle. It wouldn't work until I managed to get hold of the original, unconverted, imperial drawings that the workshop making them actually used.

Working always in base 10 is, of course, much more difficult than using the complex mix of bases required to think in imperial measure.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
nightjar

a great summary

- and if anyone uses imperial and metric, they get prosecuted for it.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

Unfortunately we have a government that for some bizarre reason thinks its 'wrong' to use imperial - except in a wide range of cases - and is wiling to prosecute people for so doing. You couldnt make it up. Now everything has to be quoted in thousands of mm, eg 2400mm x 1200mm, a fairly daft measurement for 8x4.

Schools offically brainwash kids into thinking we're metric too, even though we're not and never have been. Its a weird world.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

500 ml containers.

Of course, but I don't think it's so much the name of the store but who the local supplier is. All the shops round here seem to get their milk from "Dairy Farmers of Britain" and all the plastic containers are metric.

Reply to
Bob Martin

"nightjar .uk.com>"

Some folk do crosswords and soduko (sp?) to keep their brains honed.

Some of us don't need to :-)

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Oh! What a sensible summary.

I mean it.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

A good way to express fuel consumption is as an area: real-world values are a fraction os a square millimetre. This is intuitively quite good: it's just the size of trough needed if the car were to scoop up its fuel as it moved along, steam engine water-trough style.

Cheers,

Simon.

Reply to
Simon Kelley

Not quite true these days. Not since the eastern European influx. My builders work largely in metric, as do I. I have to search for my metric only tape measures far and wide. I usually buy a couple when I'm in France. I can't stand mixed unit measures, particularly as they put the obsolete units at the top.

Christian.

Reply to
Christian McArdle

So that's a half-a-dozen pack of metric containers ...

.. presumably in outers of a gross of containers. ;-)

Reply to
John Cartmell

Yes - 20 quires to the ream.

Reply to
Frank Erskine

Not surprised you can't remember ...

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Now you're really getting onto the subject of dangerous substances.

Reply to
Mike Halmarack

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