v for frequency?

[rbowman]

You should have went to New Hampshire. Easier to spell.

The interstates tend to be 'right lane ends in 1/2 mile'. Where it switches to feet is arbitrary. I don't think I've ever seen yards used in a traffic context. Fabric measurements and American football are the prime uses of yards. I shoot so I have a fairly good grasp of yards and would be more likely to say '50 yards away' rather than feet.

For reasons I can't even remember if I writing a check or something I'd usually write 25 Mar 23. It seems the first thing doctors or pharmacists want is your birthday so I use mm/dd/yyyy.

When programming I use ISO-8601 conventions although there are several flavors. yyyy-mm-dd.

[upsidedown]

It seems that the US industry likes the imperial system and especially the huge number of standards based on imperial units.

Smells like protectionism !

When a foreign company wants to sell something on the US market, it has to adapt to these standards. Not a big deal if you intend to sell millions of units on the US market, design a product variation for the US market. It is however problematic if you try to sell only a few (expensive) units on the US market, causing much extra cost due to the paperwork and adapters.

Thus,due to the extra cost some foreign companies may stay away from the US market and that is what the US industry wants.

Of course, the different standards are also a problem for the US industry, but once they have made a metric version, it can be sold in the rest of the world.

[Thomas Prufer]

Hmmmh... fired up "units"*. Omitting the price of an ounce of gold etc., I get:

You have: search ounce apounce troyounce brfluidounce 1|20 brpint fineounce troyounce fluidounce usfluidounce mercounce 1|15 mercpound metricounce 25 g mounce metricounce ounce 1|16 pound ouncedal oz ft / s^2 romanounce uncia sailmakersounce oz / sailmakersyard 36 inch shoeounce 1|64 inch timeounce 1|8 timeostent towerounce 1|12 towerpound tronounce 1|20 tronpound troyounce 1|12 troypound usfluidounce 1|16 uspint

Thomas Prufer

• a tool which allows conversion (and calculation) between different units/systems of measurement. Installed in unix flavors by default (ISTR), also available for windows.

[Cindy Hamilton]

I think you'd be surprised. 1/2" plywood is actually 0.451 inch or close to 12.5 mm. A lot of container sizes are integer numbers in the metric system and oddball rational numbers in the "traditional" system. Nutrition labeling is in grams. Every time you measure a volt or an ampere, you're using the metric system.

[Max Demian]

Scots use the word in the US sense.

[Max Demian]

Swedes, Japs and computers like that format.

[Max Demian]

Sorry, I was thinking about "presently", which, in England means in "a while" and in Scotland means "going on at the moment".

[Ian Jackson]

In England (and I suspect also in Scotland), it's actually used in both senses, eg "I'm presently in the pub, so tell my wife I'll be home presently". However, the duration of the second one can sometimes be rather flexible!

[rbowman]

Both my Toyota car and Suzuki bikes are fully metric. Quite a few other products use metric fasteners. My Harley and F150 sneak a few in here and there. afaik all autos use the ISO 7736 DIN (50mm x 180mm) system for audio components.

That's not to say US standards don't keep some products out but it's usually safety or EPA standards. afaik no French car manufacturer has bothered to comply with the US safety standards in decades.

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 26.03.23 um 18:48 schrieb Ian Jackson:

But HP was filmed in Scotland, so that would be ok :-) I saw the HarryPotterExpress in & near Mallaig; the engine man and his assistant would have been fit for filming just as they were.

< >

The length of a minute depends strongly upon on which side of the toilet door you happen to be.

Cheers, Gerhard

[NY]

"Ouncedal" reminds me of the slightly more widely known "poundal" which IIRC is a unit of force which accelerates a mass of one pound by 1 ft/s^2, the imperial equivalent of the newton which is the force to accelerate 1 kg by 1 m/s^2. Then there's the "slug" which is 32.17 [etc] lb, where gravitation acceleration is 32.18 ft/s^2 (aka 9.81 m/s^2). Is there a metric equivalent of value 9.81 kg?

Then you've got all the pre-metric cgs (centimetre, gramme, second) units like ergs, where 1 erg is 100 nJ.

KISS: adopt the metric system, like the rest of the world.

[NY]

I hadn't realised that "presently" (but perhaps not "momentarily") was used differently in Scotland. I suppose it's akin to "messages" which in England are written notes carried by messenger or sent by radio etc, whereas in Scotland the word can also be used to mean "errands" or "shopping". I think even in England it's one of those ambiguous words, rather like "cleave" which can mean "cut in two" (as in a meat cleaver) or "stick together" - one of those words which is its own opposite ;-)

At first, when you said that it was "momentarily" that was used differently, I thought perhaps the writer had been very clever, because McGonnagall is Scottish (though the actress Maggie Smith is not). But I think it was just an American screenwriter and a lack of anyone saying "hang on, that's not what it means in the UK". A wise writer would have avoided the word "momentarily" altogether and conveyed the "soon" meaning using other unambiguous words such as "soon" or "in a few minutes".

And the scene was shot at Alnwick Castle, I believe; certainly a lot of the other Hogwarts interior scenes and the learning-to-fly-a-broomstick scenes were for HP and the The Philosopher's (US: Sorcerer's) Stone.

[SteveW]

In England it can mean either.

"I will be going for a walk presently."

"Presently I am walking."

[Vir Campestris]

I'm the other way around. Over here (UK) areas of land are _always_ quoted in acres, and I have no good feel of how big that is.

A hectare, on the other hand, is a 100m square, and we all know how long the 100m track is.

So I halve the acres, and work out how big from that. An acre is actually only about 40% of a hectare, not half, but that's good enough.

Andy

[Vir Campestris]

Half an inch is 12.7mm.

12.5mm is 0.49 inches. 0.451 inches is only 11.5mm.

I don't know where you buy your plywood...

(My local UK shop has 3.6, 5, 8, 9,m 12 and 19mm :headbang:)

Andy

[Cindy Hamilton]

I got those figure from some web site and didn't check them. Mea culpa. If you like, once I'm dressed I'll go out to the workshop and apply calipers to various sheets of plywood.

In the U.S. It's typically manufactured in Canada.

Averaged over millions of sheets of plywood, that fraction of a millimeter adds up.

[rbowman]

Most people don't. It's roughly 208 x 208 feet, not exactly as big as Texas. It's smaller than an average football pitch.

[Ralph Mowery]

In the area I live many homes were built out of town are on lots of about 1/2 acre. I think that may have been a requirement due to the septic tanks. Later when areas got city water and sewer the lots were lowered to 1/3 of an acre. The home I used to live on was about 100 feet wide and 200 feet deep, just about 1/2 acre. There was about a dozen homes built in that area thare on lots about the same size.

That makes it easy to visualise how big an acre is.

[Chris Green]

It's 220yds x 22yds isn't it? Sort of possible to feel the size of that but not very easy.

[John Larkin]

British film is OK but never did good Westerns.

Cowchaps?