Is UK Stuck In Decimal Denial Time Warp

Having lived in the UK for years I had to learn how to convert on the fly...

I'd say - untill the speed moves from mph to kmh the country will always have an excuse not to complete the transition

Mind you - when I talked to my plubmers during the recent renovation of our home in Warsaw - pipes are only measured in fractions of an inch e.g. 1/2 inch etc etc. 

The imperial system is deeply embeded....

..............  is that the same as transcoding on the fly ??  ...........  

I'm from the refrigeration industry & worked in Kelvin, Joules & EN standards,  but copper pipe is still locked in inches. 

Mike-B posted:

..............  is that the same as transcoding on the fly ??  ...........  

Unfortunately more prone to errors on the econder's side 

Mike-B posted:

..............  is that the same as transcoding on the fly ??  ...........  

I'm from the refrigeration industry & worked in Kelvin, Joules & EN standards,  but copper pipe is still locked in inches. 

Judging by Synology (an American company), transcoding on the fly is as reliable as converting on the fly.
(And what specie of fly do you use anyway? Does it matter?).

There's also another thing in the refrigeration industry: The early low MW halon gases were quite logical, it's easy enough to work out what R11, R12 and R22 are, but R134a?

Even the metric system isn't without dual standards, there's MKS and CGS, but at least the conversions are standard powers of 10.  Speaking of standard, Americans don't use the 'Imperial system', they use the 'Standard system' (it's the same, they just don't like the word Imperial!).

In my early career I worked in science and then scientific instrument engineering so all was MKS; later I moved into pure computing, and the physical size of the box you're designing for is pretty well irrelevant!

Now doing things for myself I use MKS wherever I can (this confuses builders who mix metres and centimetres, but usually don't use millimeters).

Huge posted:

.............    halon gases were quite logical, it's easy enough to work out what R11, R12 and R22 are, but R134a?

 

Thread Subject Drift Warning          134a - easy - C2H2F4 811-97-2   .............   134a is OK for A/C,  & although we used it for medium temp it was far from ideal,  oil entrainment at low evaporating temps was a problem, & in mideast conditions it was as good as useless with >52'C condensing temps;      but with no alternative other than the 1st generation low temp gases & condensing pressure issues, fait accompli.     As I was retiring, new & better gases were becoming the norm & now (at last) a full range med/low temp gas A-452a with sensible pressures & temps has arrived & it complies with the new standards coming in 2020 

Back on thread   .........  an old work colleague in Ireland was having his old stone wall reconstructed,  it was not going well & the office was treated to one side of a frustrated phone conversation with his builder,  "............  its 6 metres long, 5 foot 8 inches high & the gate pillar needs to be 2 foot square & 1.2 metres higher than the wall"  ............  & this guy was German  !!!!

I tend to calculate mentally as and when necessary. Living in a country which refuses to abandon its imperial past, it is something that I don’t really have any choice than to adapt to and calculate “on the fly”. I don’t really think about it. Most money still gets mentally converted to shillings and pence, not because I need to but because it’s habit. I have let go of feet and inches more readily but not yards and miles, because that’s still how we drive. Doesn’t do you any harm to use your brain.

From tomorrow I will be in Cyprus for the rest of the month. It’s much more straightforward (for me) when everything is metric. Although they do drive on the wrong side of the road, same as us. Last time over there I had a really knackered old nail of a hire car which couldn’t wheeze up to 100. Drove the width of the Island before I noticed it had an MPH speedometer. Very funny in retrospect (and licence thankfully unaffected) but even allowing for tired granddad factor, it is something that really shouldn’t happen. I expect there can be some American/Canadian cross border speed measurement confusion?

Huge posted:

............    Synology (an American company)

Synology Inc.  HQ is Taiwan,    Subsidiaries in USA,  China,  France, Germany & UK

I'm pretty much with Harry - but don't convert to shillings and pence (£sd).

I tend to give my height in centimetres (as I know it) but could not cope with giving my weight in kg as it fluctuates  

I also use psi for tyres because gauges can fluctuate and the smaller the unit of measurement the better.

I can't wait for the 10 hour day, 10 days to a week, and 10 weeks to the month, far easier to understand  

Debs

I don't understand why three divided by one third equals nine !!  Can anyone help me to get my head around that - and how it makes a difference to the real world ?

TOBYJUG posted:

I don't understand why three divided by one third equals nine !!  Can anyone help me to get my head around that - and how it makes a difference to the real world ?

Because if you had three cakes and needed to divide each one between three people it would produce nine slices 

MDS posted:

TOBYJUG posted:

I don't understand why three divided by one third equals nine !!  Can anyone help me to get my head around that - and how it makes a difference to the real world ?

Because if you had three cakes and needed to divide each one between three people it would produce nine slices 

The three people would still be having a cake each ! No matter how it's sliced 

I loaned my then Volvo to my cousin from the UK when she was travelling in Ireland shortly after the conversion of road speeds to km/hr.

When she gave me back the car she said "wow you really have high speed limits here", as she presumed the car was reading the same as the signs, effectively giving a motorway speed of 120 mph!

Feared a ticket, but thankfully never got one.

SJB

I like the UK situation. Beer and milk in pints and a choice of metric and imperial dimensions. As a scientist all my units at work are SI units. It is not a problem.

Some things have always been in metric. I'm thinking of engine capacity (e.g. 350cc, 1.4L, 3L). Never ever heard anyone in the UK talk of their engine capacity in cubin inches. And the olympics are all in metric.

Harry posted:

I also use psi for tyres because gauges can fluctuate and the smaller the unit of measurement the better.

Then use millibars. 1 millibar = 0.0145 psi.

naim_nymph posted:

I can't wait for the 10 hour day, 10 days to a week, and 10 weeks to the month, far easier to understand  

Debs

And with 10 weeks to the year, you'll have to wait a long time for your pension.
Also planing anything in the natural environment will get a bit more tricky with an average of 2.74 summers and winters in each year!  

I work in aviation, and regularly swap from one to the other. Most of us, even dimwits like me, don't even flinch. On the Apache chollywopters I'm on at the mo, the airframe and all components are imperial, the engines are metric. 

Tony Lockhart posted:

I work in aviation, and regularly swap from one to the other. Most of us, even dimwits like me, don't even flinch. On the Apache chollywopters I'm on at the mo, the airframe and all components are imperial, the engines are metric. 

Gimli Glider

Didn't necessarily work out so well for these guys.....

It's been a fascinating experience for me, as having grown up in the UK but leaving in for the US 1983, I was never exposed to the true decimalization phenomena other than the conversion of the currency .. I have no idea of temps in Centigrade or weights in grams etc .. which makes talking to relative back home (North Wales) confusing at times.

That is about to change though as I'm currently in Nova Scotia negotiating the purchase of a summer home .. the rental is an Audi A4 which is getting phenomenal mileage .. over 600 somethings, liters I think,  on one tank of gas .. and talking of gas it's very competitively priced at just over a dollar a liter .. if only I knew what a liter was .. and how many of them there are in a gallon .. American gallon or Imperial gallon .. 

Correction:  the 600 somethings are kilometers .. 5/8 of a mile .. fractions and decimals .. 

For those interested in curiosities about units and systems of units:

https://sizes.com/units/index.htm

Regards.  Erich

I grew up with pounds and ounces and now I have to get use to metric system.  I think one of the reasons for metric system is that everything is in 10-100-1000 measurements (as far as I know} and thus in theory suppose to be much simpler in practical use, such as calculations. However when somebody says he is 5 metres, 8cm high, I have no clue how high the person is and the same is with metric weights, its all so alien..!   

Romi posted:

However when somebody says he is 5 metres, 8cm high, I have no clue how high the person is.....

I certainly wouldn't be disagreeing with him though!