ineke.co.uk

So yesterday I was discussing with someone what system the country uses. The Americans see us as a pretty Metric place, and the Europeans see us as Imperial in comparison with themselves, so I thought I’d think through what I use more!

• 1D Space
  On a long journey I’d give my distance in miles, but the length of a pencil I’d give in cm. I give my height in feet and inches, and the length of a cable in metres.
• 2D Space
  I’d guess in square metres for a room, people tend to use acres for large things like land, and I’d go with square cm for a bit of paper (or A3, A4 etc, not sure what that system is!).
• 3D Space
  I’d say mainly metric here. Most things in ml and litres, but then milk is always pints!
• Velocity
  Speed limits in this country are all mph, but speed records tend to be metres per second for more sciency things. I do think we’re more imperial in general here… unless anyone has a good counter example?
• Acceleration
  The standard car way of measuring this is “0-60 in x seconds” so this is actually imperial… again sciency things in metres per second squared… neither hugely common.
• Mass
  I’d give my weight (if I was sharing it!) in stone, pasta & rice in grams, and cake measurements in ounces. Baby weight in pounds, and big iron weights in cartoons in tons!
• Time!
  Time I would say is just it’s own scheme… I’d love a metric time system, but don’t see it EVER happening! …Or, as someone at work said a while ago, we should start using a base 12 number system for everything, this would make time metric, and we could put everything into this system!

Any other forms of measurement I’ve missed?