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Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 11:31 am
by HansR
mcrossley wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 11:18 am
It's just a regressive populist move for his voters over the age of 60-70.
Nobody under the age of 50 has really used imperial units much at all. I'd say most people under 40 don't have clue what most imperial units are - exceptions being things like miles for drivers which never went away.
In reality I don't see this affecting much at all, manufacturers and main retailers are not going to use imperial again, it will be a handful of market traders and corner shops trying to make a point. For me it's just a vote grab brexit publicity stunt.
Glad to hear sounds like this too.
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 11:46 am
by Mapantz
HansR wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 7:05 am
@Mapantz: Maybe informally the UK does, but The Times and Johnson are not gong to announce such thing if it were totally irrelevant. Would they?
If it was such a big thing, it would have been all over the news here, but it hasn't, and rightly so. It was on the inside pages of a few newspapers, that is not headline stuff.
As I said previously, we already use metric AND imperial. It won't change anything in day-to-day life. Not sure why this is even being discussed on a weather forum tbh?
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 12:59 pm
by sutne
HansR wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 10:56 am
Sure, I am not stirring up anything, I am just in favour of the SI system and against subversive actions against it.
If we return to weather related discussion, I would say the SI-system is not as standarized as we would want.
Most of you who use metric use km/h for wind speed. For some unknown reason we in Scandinavia use m/s.
Both are metric.
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 1:16 pm
by zoomx
RayProudfoot wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 8:29 am
Every speed warning sign and distance sign in the UK is in imperial. It will probably remain so for decades. The cost of replacing them would run into many millions of pounds.
During Concorde’s development French engineers measured in metric; the British used imperial. That didn’t work out too bad did it?
On Mars Climate Orbiter project the conversion failed.
Mars Probe Lost Due to Simple Math Error
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm ... story.html
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 1:49 pm
by RayProudfoot
Not able to read without disabling Adblocker. Human error presumably.
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Fri 17 Sep 2021 2:00 pm
by HansR
sutne wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 12:59 pm
... I would say the SI-system is not as standarized as we would want.
The system is standardised alright. But it's use is not everywhere equally embedded though.
sutne wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 12:59 pm
Most of you who use metric use km/h for wind speed. For some unknown reason we in Scandinavia use m/s.
Both are metric.
true. In that sense 'we' in NL are the same as 'they' in the UK. We all convert. And many equations in meteorology (e.g. the ones I use in pwsFWI) are metric but the use of km/h makes it non standard SI... *sigh* life is hard, but at least we're not imperial (non metric, non SI).
It maybe also has to do with the nr of digits you have to display for meters iso kilometers?
Nice. Searching Google for '
imperial metric conversion disasters' gives some other (not so) nice examples
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Sat 18 Sep 2021 9:07 am
by zoomx
RayProudfoot wrote: ↑Fri 17 Sep 2021 1:49 pm
Not able to read without disabling Adblocker. Human error presumably.
That was a newspaper news published short after the disaster. But there is wikipedia also. I was able to read it with UblockOrigin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Clim ... of_failure
Re: UK back to imperial system
Posted: Sat 18 Sep 2021 11:10 pm
by Phil23
The influential Grandfather I mentioned above also spent a lot of time educating me on the Imperial Measure System.
He loved to explain the term beyond the basics of inches, feet & yards etc.
Link's, Chains & Furlongs were mentioned, Along with how acres were defined.
Weights included Bushels & Hundred Weights at one end of the scale,
and Grains, Carats, Drams & Ounces at the other.
To this day I still know there's 7000 Grains in a Pound.
Grains is actually the one Imperial unit measure I still use to this date.
There has never been much of a move to Metric in the World of Firearms.
Sure there's Rifle Calibres that are named as 6, 7 & 9mm, but when it comes to the ammunition loads. with powder & projectile weights still standardized in Grains.
He did also talk a lot about the weather from his days as a flight trainer, & refered to 33' water columns & their equivalent to a column of Mercury.
[/Dribble]
Phil.