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  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Flyboy View Post
    Mike and Pleater,
    Thank you so much for your input. Pleater I take that by micrometer you are talking about a calliper device to measure instead of using a tape measure or ruler and if so that is a brilliant idea! I just looked on Amazon and they had ones with a digital readout and all. I might have to get me one of those, I think.
    Cheers
    I gave in recently and got one with a nice big digital readout - though I do take a quick look at the actual ruler part just to double check that it is properly zeroed. My eyesight is getting to the stage where I need to take off the glasses and be careful not to get a pin in my nose when checking the line of a pleat.

    My tape measures and rulers are metric one side inches the other. The rulers have the zero at the opposite ends though, which is a nuisance, I'd like a transparent ruler with the two scales one above the other.

    I tend to work in Centigrade for temperature, grams or Kg for weight having worked in laboratories, but miles and mph is the only thing I can make sense of for distance or the speed of a vehicle.

    My sister, 3 years younger than me, went into a maths exam and watched the teacher turn pale when he looked at the paper, then stagger out. She had been taught fractions, yds, ft and ins etc, and the exam paper used decimals and metric units. All but one failed the exam.

    Anne the Pleater
    I presume to dictate to no man what he shall eat or drink or wherewithal he shall be clothed."
    -- The Hon. Stuart Ruaidri Erskine, The Kilt & How to Wear It, 1901.

  2. #12
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    21st May 08
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    I work in leather and metal and in both I use both Metric and Imperial. In wood I use Imperial, although often the woods I use are measured only in Metric .

    My wife and I travel (except for this year ) between Scotland, Canada and Switzerland on a sort of quarterly basis. My wife (a Swiss-born-educated architect) and I are captured in two measurement worlds and seem to have adjusted pretty well to both. (The US, Myanmar and Liberia are, I believe, the only three countries in the world that have not yet accepted the Metric System as an international standard.) Canada, as FB and others have said, is in the 'between' stage of conversion. So is Scotland. For Switzerland the transference in all over with!

    For Ruth and me:

    Weights are in Imperial and Stones and then Metric for me and in Metric and then Imperial for Ruth.
    Distances travelled are in both miles and kilometers. For both of us.
    Speed is in kmph. For both.
    Land measurement (for me) is in inches/feet/yards; (for Ruth) in both, Metric and Imperial.
    Volume is in Metric for both of us, but we understand and speak Imperial and cook equally in the latter (my cooking) and the former (her cooking).
    Temperatures are in Celsius and Fahrenheit for both of us, but increasingly Celsius.

    We both know that US volume measurement is different than Imperial and Metric but we are not familiar with the standard.

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  4. #13
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    24th January 20
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    I'm at an age where, during my schooling, Metric was "the way of the future" and very strongly pushed for both math and science education. But outside of the textbook, there were so many things that were still in Imperial (or, as ThistleDown mentioned, US customary units - there is a difference) that you ended up doing schoolwork in Metric and everything else in your life in Imperial. I still do to this day:

    • Body measurements (height, weight, clothing) are measured in Imperial.
    • Anything large or related to building is Imperial (dimensional lumber, pipe sizes, wire gauge, vehicle wheelbase and often engine displacement, etc.).
    • Distances and speeds are measured in Imperial. This means that when I want to run a "5K" on a treadmill, I know I need to run for 3.11mi and set the machine accordingly. Running at 6.7MPH gets me to a 5km in under 30 minutes with a few minutes for cooldown.
    • Printing and paper are all in Imperial - 8.5"x11" is standard "letter" size, and resolution is measured in DPI (dots per inch).
    • Food items are a combination of both systems - nutrients in grams for food quantities measured in ounces. Volumes are usually in US customary units except when they're not - a cup of sugar, a 5lb bag of sugar, a gallon of milk, but a 2-liter bottle of soda pop.
    • Temperatures are pretty much always in Fahrenheit, except for in a scientific or manufacturing realm (3D printing is always Metric, materials are generally characterized in Metric, temperature limits for sensors are usually given in both systems but always at least in Metric).
    • When 3D printing parts, I nearly always work in Metric except if I'm trying to match something else that was originally designed in Imperial. When designing parts, it strongly depends on the application.
    • When woodworking, I nearly always use inches because (a) it's easy to divide into known fractions, (b) most dimensional lumber comes measured in nominal inches, and (c) you're likely not going to get everything terribly precise anyway. A foot can be easily divided into 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6 without fractions or if you want to use simple fractional inches there are many more very simple multiples and fractions you can choose from.
    • When machining, I usually use 1/1,000 or 1/10,000 of an inch ("thou" or "tenths"), because that's what my machining tools use (40's era lathe, 60's era mill, etc.) and is very traditional and ingrained in all kinds of handed-down knowledge from expert old-timers. But sometimes I will measure in Metric when working with other Metric things and do conversions only as needed.


    I think a lot of it just comes down to the amount of investment the USA has in older standards and equipment. The cost to change everything to Metric overnight is just too great, so it's been done gradually for decades, and that leaves us somewhere in the middle. You just become used to using both systems situationally and converting as needed.

    Getting pedantic, neither system is "more accurate", considering there are fixed conversion factors between them with a fixed number of significant digits. You could precisely and accurately measure in football fields, smoots, or attoparsecs. SI units are certainly more logical, but they're still just two different ways of measuring the exact same thing, and you can be as precise or as sloppy with either system. Centimeters and millimeters are certainly smaller delineations than inches, but thou are smaller than millimeters, and microns are smaller still. From an American perspective, it comes off like if someone said that the Spanish language is better than French because the pronunciation rules are more concrete and consistent - the same thing can be represented in either, and it's a little unfair to both. When you're raised on both, conversions just end up becoming second nature. My calipers for machining measure in Imperial decimal, Imperial fractional, and Metric and can be toggled back and forth for the same measurement, and that's kind of how I tend to think of measurements - a number based on an arbitrary unit that only exists because some people agreed to use it. The meter was originally based on the size of the planet and isn't anymore, the inch was probably based on human thumbs and certainly isn't anymore. Both systems are so old that it just comes down to which group of arguing dead people you happen to agree with.
    Last edited by MichiganKyle; 9th August 20 at 07:32 AM. Reason: Clarifying engine displacement, grammatical error

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  6. #14
    Join Date
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    Well those who say they measure in Imperial measurements only, are wrong...

    Why?


    It's because in 1958 the Imperial inch was redefined as 25.4mm. (it took effect 1959) So every one measures in metric measurements..
    Back then the inch got smaller, the difference being roughly 1/8th of an inch in a mile. Or to put it in a metric decimal approximation, 2 parts in a million.

    Anyone using land survey maps has to be careful, as they, if issued in Imperial measurements are to the old pre 1959 measurements,. So If you drive across the USA your electronic navigator will be different to the paper map by 10.7 yards at the other side.

    Working in fractions is quite possible in metric, a quarter metre added to an eighth of a metre is still 3/8 of a metre. Or if you wish to work in decimals 250mm + 125mm = 375mm
    Metric is not decimals and imperial is not fractions.
    "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give"
    Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

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  8. #15
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    Thinking about it, though - my hand is 4 inches or 10 cm across the palm, 3 inches across the knuckles, from the tip of my thumb to shoulder point is a yard, elbow to middle fingertip is 1/2 a yard - fingertip to shoulder point is a metre. I do tend to use them when checking fabric lengths.

    Anne the Pleater
    Last edited by Pleater; 11th August 20 at 10:31 PM.
    I presume to dictate to no man what he shall eat or drink or wherewithal he shall be clothed."
    -- The Hon. Stuart Ruaidri Erskine, The Kilt & How to Wear It, 1901.

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  10. #16
    Join Date
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    I'm a child of the 1960s and at that time, here in California, we were taught metric from the start.

    We were told that the old system would soon be phased out, and our generation would be the first all-metric generation in the US.

    I was dismayed when the metric fervor abated and eventually was forgot.

    And we always had metric tools about the house, due to my dad doing his own maintenance and repairs to his French car.

    Yes it's odd that while the British military measure clothing using metric British civilians measure kilts and jackets in inches...but hats in the metric. BTW metric shoe sizes always seem to be more accurate than either the American or British sizing systems. Since shoe labels often have all three, I've learned to ignore the UK and US size and go by the Euro size.

    Bagpipe specs have long been done in inches, but no fractions! Inches and fractions don't necessarily go together, and pipe makers generally speak in terms of .472 inch and so forth. That's the system I'm used to. I hate fractions.
    Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte

  11. #17
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    A propos of our current conversation, this popped up this morning in my 'feed'. Hope it's legible.

    Rev'd Father Bill White: Retired Parish Priest & Elementary Headmaster. Lover of God, dogs, most people, joy, tradition, humour & clarity. Legion Padre, theologian, teacher, philosopher, linguist, encourager of hearts & souls & a firm believer in dignity, decency, & duty. A proud Canadian Sinclair.

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  13. #18
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    13th March 05
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    Quote Originally Posted by Father Bill View Post
    A propos of our current conversation, this popped up this morning in my 'feed'. Hope it's legible.
    So true, Bill! I had to laugh at the pool temperature! It's the only thing I think of in fahrenheit. I revert pretty quickly when I visit the United States, though.
    "Touch not the cat bot a glove."

  14. #19
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    They could have put under "mass"

    mass > weight > rugby player's weight > stone
    Proud Mountaineer from the Highlands of West Virginia; son of the Revolution and Civil War; first Europeans on the Guyandotte

  15. #20
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    I'm a scientist, and I think in metric for everything in my life as a professional geologist.

    For kiltmaking, I use inches and fractions, partly because I'm tickled by a tradition that didn't require apprentices to be able to do any kind of math at all. Even though I use math in everything I do professionally, I think it's pretty neat that kiltmaking can be done without some one being able to do any math at all. And, in fact, when I describe the traditional way of figuring out pleat size to people at Kilt Kamp as being simply a strategy of successive approximations using the associative property of multiplication (i.e., (20 x 1/2) + (20 x 1/4 ) = 20 (1/2 + 1/4), they look at me like I have two heads.

    Totally doesn't matter whether you use mm or fractions of an inch as long as you have a measuring implement that will let you measure precisely enough.
    Kiltmaker, piper, and geologist (one of the few, the proud, with brains for rocks....
    Member, Scottish Tartans Authority
    Geology stuff (mostly) at http://people.hamilton.edu/btewksbu
    The Art of Kiltmaking at http://theartofkiltmaking.com

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