Why are English units so confusing?

In summary, 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...
  • #1
camdenreslink
13
0
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...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units" [Broken]
 
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  • #2
That's why the entire world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system" [Broken] Burma, Liberia and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric. :smile:
 
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  • #3
How is a quarter pound with cheese called in Europe?
 
  • #4
Royaleeeeeee with Cheese

royale1.jpg
 
  • #5
camdenreslink said:
Royaleeeeeee with Cheese

:rofl::rofl:

Pulp Fiction
 
  • #6
camdenreslink said:
I'm not even going to get into the mess that is the definitions for weight...
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?
 
  • #7
500px-English_mass_units_graph.svg.png


You wouldn't say that's a mess?
 
  • #8
Well, dang, you beat me to it. I was going to show that exact same crystal-clear diagram.
 
  • #9
BTW, the diagram omits the distinction between a long ton and a short ton.
 
  • #10
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.
 
  • #11
Mech_Engineer said:
Still, even in the US many companies do their work in SI exclusively
Except for the adult entertainment market !
 
  • #12
7 "Avoirdupois" is equal to one "clove, nail" and 2 "clove, nail" is equal to one "Avoirdupois"?
 
  • #13
mgb_phys said:
Except for the adult entertainment market !

And whomever worked on that Mars lander around 11 years ago...
 
  • #15
cesiumfrog said:
That's why the entire world("[URL [Broken] and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric. :smile:

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/laws/metric-act.html
 
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  • #16
D H said:
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.
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
 
  • #17
cesiumfrog said:
That's why the entire world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system" [Broken] Burma, Liberia and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric. :smile:

Canada hasn't switched to metric.
 
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  • #19
George Jones said:
Canada hasn't switched to metric.
Except for speed limits, road signs, shopping and food and drink.

Screen sizes and dangly bits are still quoted in inches however
 
  • #20
Metric units are goofy; base 10. How goofy is that? And what's with the dozen metric wrenches to replace 7 American Standard wrenches? Don't know? American standard is based upon the reasonable binary system, 1/8, 3/4, etc, rather than the courser decimal system.
 
  • #21
Phrak said:
Metric units are goofy; base 10. How goofy is that? And what's with the dozen metric wrenches to replace 7 American Standard wrenches? Don't know? American standard is based upon the reasonable binary system, 1/8, 3/4, etc, rather than the courser decimal system.

12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet in a mile... binary?
 
  • #22
Jack21222 said:
12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet in a mile... binary?

12 has several useful divisors: 2,3,4,6. With base 10 you have factors of 2 and 5. They may nearly as well have used base 7.

5280=2*2*2*2*2*3*5*11

5040 would have been better.


If you were to define the number of degrees in a circle, what count would you choose?
 
  • #23
Phrak said:
12 has several useful divisors: 2,3,4,6. With base 10 you have factors of 2 and 5. They may nearly as well have used base 7.

5280=2*2*2*2*2*3*5*11

5040 would have been better.If you were to define the number of degrees in a circle, what count would you choose?

If I were defining it from scratch? 100.
 
  • #24
Jack21222 said:
If I were defining it from scratch? 100.

Then you have something in common with the French Academy of Sciences. The most useful angles: 30, 45 and 60 degrees would become 8.333... , 12.5 and 16.66... in your decimal improved system. 1/5th of a circle would become 20 degrees. You hit that one, I'll give you that.
 
  • #25
Phrak said:
Then you have something in common with the French Academy of Sciences. The most useful angles: 30, 45 and 60 degrees would become 8.333... , 12.5 and 16.66... in your decimal improved system. 1/5th of a circle would become 20 degrees. You hit that one, I'll give you that.

They defined a right angle as 100, so 45deg is ok but 30/60 are a bit inconvenient, they still use it especially for surveying.

Of course if you let physicists choose they would define it as 6.28318531...
 
  • #26
If you really want something divisible, just have the full circle be 1 circle (the units are circle). Then if you have a quarter circle, you have [tex]\frac{1}{4}[/tex] of a circle. If you have a 12th of a circle, you have [tex] \frac{1}{12}[/tex] of a circle. That was easy
 
  • #27
I wonder why American banks still post temperatures in both C and F. When will they realize we don't care about the Celsius value?
 
  • #28
It helps them project a cosmopolitan image
 
  • #29
Office_Shredder said:
If you really want something divisible, just have the full circle be 1 circle (the units are circle). Then if you have a quarter circle, you have [tex]\frac{1}{4}[/tex] of a circle. If you have a 12th of a circle, you have [tex] \frac{1}{12}[/tex] of a circle. That was easy

That's not a bad idea. We could mark up a protractor in 12ths and it would also accommodate one quarters. The resolution would be horrible, so we could divide each 12th into 100 parts for 120 marks. If we wanted anything finer we could further divide by, say 3, and call the fine divisions degrees.
 
  • #30
Phrak said:
Metric units are goofy; base 10. How goofy is that? And what's with the dozen metric wrenches to replace 7 American Standard wrenches? Don't know? American standard is based upon the reasonable binary system, 1/8, 3/4, etc, rather than the courser decimal system.

yes, 2 cups in pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon... that's really the way to go. and it's a natural system. if society got blasted into the stone age tomorrow, the first thing some enterprising trader would do is build a set of weigh scales and find two stones to balance it. then he'd put both stones on one side, and find a 3rd weight that was 2 stone. then, 4 stone, 8 stone, etc.

heck, while we're at it, we might as well ditch decimal numbers, too. we should all take the plunge and accept hexadecimal as the new international standard. maybe even adopt some arabic-style character replacements for A thru F, too.
 
  • #31
Redbelly98 said:
I wonder why American banks still post temperatures in both C and F. When will they realize we don't care about the Celsius value?

*Chokes on tea when reading bolded part*
 
  • #32
Yes. All tongue-in-cheek aside, there's good reason for the sorts of units established for their utilitarian value. A great deal of thought to the user should go into such an idea. Base 12 may be superior to base 16.

Twenty four hours in a day is an example. The size of a basic unit, as well, evolves for its utilitarian value.

I cannot see attempting to define the basic unit of length as 1/10,000 the distance from equator to pole as anything but the result of arrogant disregard. (Uncle Marx would have been proud.) Beware of that trap.
 
  • #33
"I love you 44.04884 liters. 44.04884 liters - and a hug around the neck." Hmmm...needs work.

Actually the US has been officially metric since 1893. And 1975. And 1988. What it has not done is outlawed the conventional units.

When yardsticks are outlawed only outlaws will have yardsticks.
 
  • #34
Vanadium 50 said:
When yardsticks are outlawed only outlaws will have yardsticks.

:rofl:
 
  • #35
When are you yanks going to stop calling them 'English' units? We stopped using imperial measures ages ago, don't blame us!
 
<h2>1. Why are there different units of measurement in English?</h2><p>The English system of measurement has evolved over time and has been influenced by various cultures and civilizations. This has resulted in a mix of units from different sources, making it confusing to use.</p><h2>2. How do I convert between different English units?</h2><p>Converting between English units can be tricky because there are often multiple units for the same measurement. The best way to convert is to use conversion factors or online conversion calculators.</p><h2>3. Why do some English units have the same name but different values?</h2><p>This is because some units were derived from different sources and were standardized at different times. For example, the gallon used for measuring liquids is different from the gallon used for measuring dry goods.</p><h2>4. What are the advantages of using the English system of measurement?</h2><p>One advantage is that it is deeply ingrained in the culture and everyday life of English-speaking countries. It is also often easier to visualize and understand smaller units, such as inches and feet, compared to metric units.</p><h2>5. Is there a push to switch to the metric system in English-speaking countries?</h2><p>There have been efforts to switch to the metric system in the past, but it has not been widely adopted. However, many industries, such as science and medicine, use the metric system exclusively, and there is a growing trend towards using metric units in everyday life as well.</p>

1. Why are there different units of measurement in English?

The English system of measurement has evolved over time and has been influenced by various cultures and civilizations. This has resulted in a mix of units from different sources, making it confusing to use.

2. How do I convert between different English units?

Converting between English units can be tricky because there are often multiple units for the same measurement. The best way to convert is to use conversion factors or online conversion calculators.

3. Why do some English units have the same name but different values?

This is because some units were derived from different sources and were standardized at different times. For example, the gallon used for measuring liquids is different from the gallon used for measuring dry goods.

4. What are the advantages of using the English system of measurement?

One advantage is that it is deeply ingrained in the culture and everyday life of English-speaking countries. It is also often easier to visualize and understand smaller units, such as inches and feet, compared to metric units.

5. Is there a push to switch to the metric system in English-speaking countries?

There have been efforts to switch to the metric system in the past, but it has not been widely adopted. However, many industries, such as science and medicine, use the metric system exclusively, and there is a growing trend towards using metric units in everyday life as well.

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