Why are English units so confusing?

[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...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units"

 

[cesiumfrog]

That's why the entire world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system" 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]

Royaleeeeeee with Cheese

Pulp Fiction

 

[D H]

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?

 

[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]

Still, even in the US many companies do their work in SI exclusively

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]

Except for the adult entertainment market !

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

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Tell me about it. From my MG Midget

http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/8936/speedometer1.jpg

 

[SW VandeCarr]

That's why the entire world("[URL and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric.

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

 

[Chi Meson]

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

 

[George Jones]

That's why the entire world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system" Burma, Liberia and one other odd backward country) has switched to metric.

Canada hasn't switched to metric.

 

[mgb_phys]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/

 

[mgb_phys]

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

 

[Phrak]

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.

 

[Jack21222]

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?

 

[Phrak]

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?

 

[Jack21222]

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.

 

[Phrak]

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.

 

[mgb_phys]

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...

 

[Office_Shredder]

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 $$\frac{1}{4}$$ of a circle. If you have a 12th of a circle, you have $$\frac{1}{12}$$ of a circle. That was easy

 

[Redbelly98]

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?

 

[Office_Shredder]

It helps them project a cosmopolitan image

 

[Phrak]

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 $$\frac{1}{4}$$ of a circle. If you have a 12th of a circle, you have $$\frac{1}{12}$$ 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.

 

[Proton Soup]

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.