English Units Are Goofy

camdenreslink

A Jigger is three mouthfuls.

A hogshead is two barrels.

A furlong is "The distance a plow team could be driven without rest."

A mile is eight furlongs.

A league is "intended to be an hour's walk."

I'm not even going to get into the mess that is the definitions for weight....

English Units

cesiumfrog

That's why the entire world (except for Burma, Liberia and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric.

waht

How is a quarter pound with cheese called in Europe?

camdenreslink

Royaleeeeeee with Cheese

waht

Pulp Fiction

D H

What's wrong with weight? Legally and colloquially weight a measure of mass. Yes, things do get confusing when physicists try to get picky and claim that weight is a unit of force. And yes, the word 'pound' is a bit overloaded. A pound force makes a pound (mass) accelerate at one foot per second squared. At one point in time a (tower) pound of silver was worth one pound sterling (money). No problem. The mass of one pound of silver is obviously less than the mass of a pound of feathers. Avoirdupois pounds, troy pounds, tower pounds, merchant pounds, London pounds, pounds force, pound sterling, Manx pound, Jersey pound, ...; sure there are a lot of different pounds with different units, but aren't they are all rather obvious? Where exactly is this mess about with you are complaining?

camdenreslink

You wouldn't say that's a mess?

D H

Well, dang, you beat me to it. I was going to show that exact same crystal-clear diagram.

D H

BTW, the diagram omits the distinction between a long ton and a short ton.

Mech_Engineer

I definitely prefer to make all of my engineering calculations in SI due to the ease of unit handling and unambiguous nature. Be that as it may, I still can't help but "think" in inches, feet, pounds, and Fahrenheit.

... my company's engineering drawings are basically all in English (inches, feet, pounds) save for a small select few, and I can imagine what a nightmare it would be to try and "convert" all of those drawings to SI. I'm convinced the main reason the US hasn't "officially" converted to SI is because of the sheer number of companies (engineering, fabrication, assembly, etc.) that are dependent on a large database of English data/calculations/drawings.

Still, even in the US many companies do their work in SI exclusively, mainly driven by customer requirements. My opinion is that companies should strive to meet customer demands, not government regulation. If a company's customers require SI drawings and calcs, they will provide them. Simple as that.

mgb_phys

Except for the adult entertainment market !

leroyjenkens

7 "Avoirdupois" is equal to one "clove, nail" and 2 "clove, nail" is equal to one "Avoirdupois"?

Jack21222

And whomever worked on that Mars lander around 11 years ago...

Ivan Seeking

Tell me about it. From my MG Midget

SW VandeCarr

If you mean the USA, the USA officially adopted metric units in 1866. However, being the USA, the government can't force people to use them.

http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/...etric-act.html

Chi Meson

Not quite, Slick. One pound of force will make a pound of mass accelerate at 32.2 feet per second per second.

One needs to exert one poundal of force to accelerate one pound of mass at 1 foot per second per second.

And, of course, one poundal will accelerate one slug at 32 ft/s/s

George Jones

Canada hasn't switched to metric.