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cdspk1-Visitor
1-Visitor
September 21, 2010
Question

Units

  • September 21, 2010
  • 34 replies
  • 5619 views

I'm used to seeing feet, inches and pounds usedin this forum but had kind of assumed it was a legacy thing, I was quite surprised to learn that (as one of the last three countries with Burma and Liberia) the US still has imperial units as its official measurement system.

From a professional point of view it would be useful to know whether US college engineering students are taughtat all inSI units aswe're starting to see a lot more US graduates here in the UK,

Cheers, Sean

    34 replies

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    M
    merrill.rosenow1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    September 23, 2010

    The irony with how "we all use the metric system" is that the European Unions attempt to have all their products sold only with metric measurements did not come to pass.... in Europe of all places!

    J
    JWayman1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    September 23, 2010
    Bizarrely, shopkeepers have been prosecuted in England for marking and
    selling potatoes by the pound instead of the kg, even only a couple of years
    ago. See



    for details.

    I still ask for a quarter of cheese, not 100g, mentally convert the price of
    a litre of petrol into the price for a (UK) gallon and have no real idea of
    how fast 100km/hr is. I suppose it's just habit.

    John
    S
    23-Emerald III
    StephenW23-Emerald III
    23-Emerald III
    September 23, 2010
    John said the magic word...HABIT...I habitually do the conversion in my head for mm to inches or kg to lbs (mass or force, oh I'm so confused, stupid imperial measurement system).
    P
    ptc-5936191-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    September 23, 2010
    That's great but I have yet to get my head around the "dyne" and the
    "erg"..... let alone the "weber" - which I thought was a grill, the
    "Henry" - the eighth I presume and the "pascal" which sounds like a
    French skunk - and don't get me started on that "Kelvin" guy just when I
    have got over Celsius changing from Centigrade.
    oh I'm so confused, stupid metric measurement system.
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