Kilometres and kg

Graetzbridge said:
Yes, cool it was........:)
One of the icebreakers was in dry dock. By the end of the it was -20C. That's Canada and the great lakes for you.
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When the local ecosystem is setup for those extremes it probably doesn't hinder things too much. Never experienced Canadian winters though I did go to a dry dock in Sweden in winter which is probably comparable!
 
Freefaller said:
When the local ecosystem is setup for those extremes it probably doesn't hinder things too much. Never experienced Canadian winters though I did go to a dry dock in Sweden in winter which is probably comparable!
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Yes, extremes. I also had a trip to the Sarah Desert. As one might have expected, it was extreme hot but the dry climate was less uncomfortable than some places in the far east where the humidity was unbearable.
 
Freefaller said:
In the engineering space I work and a lot of the engineering council standards are often metric or SI unit based. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. To be fair to become a chartered engineer you just have to show competence and technical knowledge - if that means using imperial measures because of some old equipment or non-standard stuff then of course there's no issue. However, the hundreds of engineering teams I've worked with across multiple projects (civil / infrastructure / systems) all use metric in all the diagrams, designs, calcs etc... It's just a far more common use these days.
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Oh yes, we certainly talk about 1270s, 150s, 300s and other millimetre-based measurements in the technical documents, in case some finger-counting pleb neds to understand something... But they'll still be called a 50", 6", 12" by everyone. Partly because those are still the actual measurements of the finished asset, even in countries that are supposedly 100% metric for everything.

Freefaller said:
Imagine a world where a skilled workforce could work worldwide without having to worry about conforming to a different standard? The airline industry does it well - don't see why it can't work for more things.
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The question then arises - Whose standards do you adopt and why are they the best option?

Graetzbridge said:
That's certainly not my experience.
I'm an electrical engineer. Have been for fifty years. We didn't use imperial. We had CGS and MKS since my school years in science classes. Then it was SI about the time I qualified. And that's has been ever since. My travels have been far and wide and it was all metric except USA and Myanmar. No, I haven't been to Liberia.
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I'm in civils if that makes any difference, but even our latest graduates still seem to think in imperial. /shrug

Chuk_Chuk said:
I think it is is setup like this, so that riders can give hand signals without removing their hands from the primary control, which would suit driving on the right.
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About the only time such signalling really matters is when you overtake the **** in front, in which case that would need you to be on their right so they can see your left hand, meaning they'd be driving on the left.
 
I still prefer distance and speed in miles but other things like weight and liquid volume i massively prefer in grams / KG and ml / litres.
 
ttaskmaster said:
Oh yes, we certainly talk about 1270s, 150s, 300s and other millimetre-based measurements in the technical documents, in case some finger-counting pleb neds to understand something... But they'll still be called a 50", 6", 12" by everyone. Partly because those are still the actual measurements of the finished asset, even in countries that are supposedly 100% metric for everything.
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Well I work in the civils space too and clearly I won't see eye to eye as I'm a pleb but I guess a knuckle dragger would think that. :D
 
ttaskmaster said:
The question then arises - Whose standards do you adopt and why are they the best option?
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Because they really are the simplest.
My dog is 5 stones and 7 lbs. It's simpler to call it 35 kg. That's what the vet uses. That's what my doctor uses for me for 70 kg, not stones. The steak in our fridge is in kg, not pounds and ounces. The electrical control enclosures we made are metric. My front door is metric at 700 mm, not feet and inches. And so on.............
 
In civils you can easily be working on a Bazalgette pumping station or a hanger built in the early days of cold war, any number of bridges on Dorman Long or earlier steels (or wrought iron), imperial tunnel segments.
You need to be 'au fait' with all sorts of systems. Your working drawings may be 80 years old copied onto microfilm.
 
teaboy5 said:
Anyone else getting sick of everyone bloody using km to measure distance and kg for weight within the UK? For example, I ran 10k today or I weigh 80kg. No you ran 6.2 miles and weigh 12 stone.
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Imperial is for scrubs and dirty americans. Metric is for chads
 
Hagar said:
In civils you can easily be working on a Bazalgette pumping station or a hanger built in the early days of cold war, any number of bridges on Dorman Long or earlier steels (or wrought iron), imperial tunnel segments.
You need to be 'au fait' with all sorts of systems. Your working drawings may be 80 years old copied onto microfilm.
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Valid points.
 
Growing up in the 70s imperial was still used a lot. Now it seems like a terrible system compared to metric. I'm guessing its just the cost that has stopped us adopting km over mph, that and the Billy Britain nonsense that would kick off if any government attempted it.
 
Graetzbridge said:
Because they really are the simplest.
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Whose are?
My question is whose system do you adopt and why... following an assertion that what the majority uses isn't always the best or even the simplest.

Graetzbridge said:
My dog is 5 stones and 7 lbs. It's simpler to call it 35 kg. That's what the vet uses. That's what my doctor uses for me for 70 kg, not stones. The steak in our fridge is in kg, not pounds and ounces. The electrical control enclosures we made are metric. My front door is metric at 700 mm, not feet and inches. And so on.............
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And how much of your world is not in nice, round, easily memorised numbers like that?
The steak my wife ordered from the restaurant the other day was in ounces, the door is about 724.5mm, the laptop I'm on right now has a screen spec given in inches, and so on......................................

Hagar said:
In civils you can easily be working on a Bazalgette pumping station or a hanger built in the early days of cold war, any number of bridges on Dorman Long or earlier steels (or wrought iron), imperial tunnel segments.
You need to be 'au fait' with all sorts of systems. Your working drawings may be 80 years old copied onto microfilm.
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Exactly what I mean when I liken it to being bilingual.
Most of the railway stuff I work on is in imperial, so feet, yards, chains, PSI, and all that. So long as you can relate to any given measure, it's easy - I can visualise both a pint and a 500ml Coke bottle no problem. It only gets "difficult" if you have to convert decimals from one to another, and in this modern age we have smartphones, converter apps, online calculators and the like, so it's really not difficult at all.
 
Hagar said:
In civils you can easily be working on a Bazalgette pumping station or a hanger built in the early days of cold war, any number of bridges on Dorman Long or earlier steels (or wrought iron), imperial tunnel segments.
You need to be 'au fait' with all sorts of systems. Your working drawings may be 80 years old copied onto microfilm.
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Exception to the rule. All new infrastructure is delivered using metric.

The new engineers are all being taught metric. The lectures I give at unis are metric too. Imperial in engineering is a dieing thing. Time to get over it and move on and modernise.
 
Grew up getting taught only metric, had some knowledge of imperial units.

Went to university (UK), still only metric.

Work(ed) as an engineer in the aerospace and automotive industries.

Automotive I've dealt with UK, Japanese and Chinese based car companies, everyone used metric.

Aerospace use both, depending if it's a Boeing (imperial) or Airbus (metric) aircraft I'm working on.

I mostly prefer metric; much easier to work with, but have primarily used imperial due to 5 years of Boeing projects.
 
Freefaller said:
Exception to the rule. All new infrastructure is delivered using metric.

The new engineers are all being taught metric. The lectures I give at unis are metric too. Imperial in engineering is a dieing thing. Time to get over it and move on and modernise.
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I don't think it is not just dying - it has been and dusted for decades. Except those with a stone age mentality.
 
Graetzbridge said:
I have already explained it for - you several rimes.
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No, you haven't, actually. Not once.
You have stated which system you have encountered most frequently in your particular experiences, and that you believe in your particular experience that system is simple... but that does nothing to objectively demonstrate why it is the best.
If that, even objectively, were the criteria for what makes something the best, we'd not be speaking English.
 
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