Metric vs. Imperial in your country?
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We are metric in Ireland but tend to be bi-metrical as TIG says.
Although still use imperial to describe distances.
Thanks the EU we have this silly mixture of imperial and metric. Oh and straight bananas.
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And straight cucumbers !
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So on the job site is it a little wordy when you can't say 2x4 and 4x8 any more? I suppose you can still say (in the UK) a door is 2868? There are a lot of established shorthand standards in imperial, e.g. concrete mix 5 sacks/cubic yard, 8x16 conc. blocks. 4x8 sheets of plywood, #4 rebar. And nails or screws: 10d and #8, all somehow based on imperial standards.
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A little fun fact that you might get surprised: US is officially on metric system!
Take a look at below video for an authorized person at the National Institute for Standarts and Technology (NIST) comment on this:
@unknownuser said:
All the units that we commonly use like feet and gallons and so on are actually defined in terms of metric units so it's just a little translation that we do here but our country is actually on the metric system.
I suggest watching whole video but espcially for the quote watch between 0:31 - 1:25
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
France was creating metric system in 1799 from a Burattini research (1675) so... only metric of course!
Last reform was Francs / Euros for nasty money business ! (1999)
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In France you can still go to the market and ask for a 'pound of carrots' [une livre de carottes...], and expect to get about half a kilo.
Since a quantity of carrots is unlikely to weigh an exact amount being overly accurate is pointless
I expect most youngsters will think and ask in kilos/gms ?
In the UK us elders ask for a 'pound' never half a kilo !
As an aside it reminds me of a joke...
Wife sends husband to the market with a shopping list.
He returns with a sack of carrots.
She says, "Why did you buy so many carrots?"
He says, "Your list said you wanted 116 carrots!"
She says, "That's '1lb carrots' !! Doh !!!" -
We prefere say "500 grammes" and if need more precise "450 grammes"
"Livre" is for old generation! -
I am the 'old generation' !
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Long live the pint!
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When the UK went decimal for currency there was an immediate rise in prices that did not seem to be noticed. The price of a box of matches went from one penny to between two and three new pence. Just an example. The suggested equivalency at the time was that one new penny equaled two pennies. I know it does not make sense.
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I was introduced to the metric system in the late 70s, in elementary school science class - it was the billed as the wave of the future. I'm guessing that wave kinda dissipated by the time it reached U.S. shores. Some metric units have creeped in, such as 2 liter soda bottles, nutritional value units, and computer capacity measurements, I'm guessing its because either those measurements didn't exist previously or no one paid attention to them. They tried selling milk by the liter, but that never caught on. We remain very much "imperial." And, personally, I hope they don't change in my lifetime, as feet, inches, and fractions thereof are second nature to me. Architectural specifications sometimes have both units, but I stopped including metric when typing them up myself.
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