Do you think in metric or imperial?

[wildcat45]

Age 44 and both.

I travel 100 miles but if I go along the road the church is 100 meters away.

I have flown at 30,000 feet yet the last ship I sailed in had a 7 metre draught and was 210 metres long. She produced 100,000 Shaft Horse Power.

The wheels on my car are 18 inch, and I put 30 litres of fuel in it yesterday.

It weighs 1.8 tonnes, but I weigh 14 stone. A pound is money a kilo is weight.

I buy beer in pints, but drink milk in litres. If I measure liquid for cooking it's millilitres

Something can be an inch long, but anyting less s a centimetre or millimetre.

I don't know what a hundredweight is. I don't know what a hectare is. I have no clue how many ounces there are in a pound or pounds in a ton. A thousand metres in a kilometre but I couldn't tell you how many feet there are in a mile.

[littlegreenfairy]

Both. Cooking is mostly metric apart from a sponge cake as that has to be imperial, but chocolate cake is metric. KM's on a long drive as the numbers decrease quicker but miles on short distances. Height and weight is imperial except for measuring gain/loss when it is kg.

[madbadger]

Both for ne too.

At 38 I was taught in metric, but often tend towards imperial now, but it really depends how convinient the unit is.

A foot or an inch is good, but I'd tap M16 thread with a 14mm drill rather than go rooting around for a 35/64ths.

[Shaoxter]

The mpg figure is ridiculous when you consider petrol stations measure in litres.

[G600]

Both, 25 so metric comes from school, but working on Boeing aircraft so imperial from that, I don't do fahrenheit at all though.

[CrutyRammers]

Both, depending on what I'm doing. Tends to be mm for accurate measurements, feet and inches for rough ones - except for machining, where I use thou as my lathe is old and imperial. Pints and miles obviously, pounds or kg interchangeably. Never really "got" ounces though.

[P-Jay]

NBTBRV8 said:

Being Australian, metric. I can't get my head around why the UK uses both. Just go with one or the other.

Because 'half-arsed' is what we do best.

Imperial Measurements are a real bugbear of mine - the last people to leave school who were taught Imperial in the main are 55 now, but we still creak on, year after year, with this half-arsed bit-of-both system.

Anyway, mini rant over.

I think almost entirely in metric, but some things are just easier in imperial because of our refusal to change - it's pointless trying to work in KMs when you're driving, all the signage is in miles, the speedo is largely in miles, range, odo etc. When I'm buying milk, I just buy six pints because well I can't buy 3 litres, I'd have to ask for 2.83 litres and, well it makes you sound a bit odd.

[ManFromDelmonte]

I guess like almost anyone my age (31) it's a combination.

It's not even consistent between types of measurement.

Mass of a car, KG. Mass of a person, stone.
Length of a building, metres. Length of a person feet and inches. Length of a road, miles. Length of a run, KM. Length of a golf shot, yards.
Volume of beer or milk, pints. Volume of almost anything else, litres.

I guess the only thing I am consistent with is temperature, for me it's always Celsius.

Not that I use them but it always amuses me that it depends on the type of drug you are buying as to what it is measured in: weed etc. always in ounces, cocaine and mdma etc. in grams.

[ManFromDelmonte]

P-Jay said:

I just buy six pints because well I can't buy 3 litres, I'd have to ask for 2.83 litres

Or 3.41 litres (approx) if you did actually want 6 pints. 2.83 would only be 5 pints.

PH, milk volume matters.

[gazza285]

Brought up in an old engineering shop to use imperial, taught metric in school, now use whatever is nearest to remember. Not unusual for me to have something to cut/make that has one dimension in metric and the other in imperial. Drives the lads at work nuts...

[Bill]

ManFromDelmonte said:

Not that I use them but it always amuses me that it depends on the type of drug you are buying as to what it is measured in: weed etc. always in ounces, cocaine and mdma etc. in grams.

It's a cooking ingredient.

[GAjon]

Fancy a 0.568ltr?

I'll have 0.28413ltr.

[Bill]

GAjon said:

Fancy a 0.568ltr?

I'll have 0.28413ltr.

In France a demi (ie a half) is 0.25l.

[Fishtigua]

In nautical navigation, miles are used but depths can be in fathoms or meters. Some countries do their charts all in metric but the Brits offer a choice.

You really do have to check your charts or plotter very, very carefully.

[Type R Tom]

I’m 32 and an engineer, I use a mix like others.

I’m xft x in tall
I weigh x stone x pounds
I live 1 mile from the pub but the road is 6m wide
I’ll buy half a pound of chedder and a pint of beer (always feel short changed on holiday 59ml is a good gulp).

It has always come down to work though opposed to anything I’ve been taught, for example, worked on the deli as a student so people would ask for the ham in imperial but the scales were metric. Worked as a draughtsman speaking to builders at one moment in imperial (multiplying everything by 25.4) and then engineers with metric.

[Hugo a Gogo]

P-Jay said:

When I'm buying milk, I just buy six pints because well I can't buy 3 litres, I'd have to ask for 2.83 litres and, well it makes you sound a bit odd.

Sad, I know, but I noticed last time I was in the UK, some milk is in litre/2 litre containers, some in pint/2 pint/4 pint even in the same shop

[GAjon]

Bill said:

In France a demi (ie a half) is 0.25l.

If I have a shed full of them will it make me a demijohn?

[PanzerCommander]

Depends largely on the situation. At school it was all metric as most (if not all?) SI units are metric. When I started as an apprentice (aviation industry) we were tought in inches (the usual, 1" 1/2" 3/8" etc.), decimal inches and m/cm/mm.

Now as a software engineer (mostly testing rather than actually coding) I just use whatever units are thrown at me.

Day to day is a mix and match of all sorts, Volume is generally in metric (even if its converted, for instance my engine takes 6 quarts (US) or 5.7L of oil, obviously fuel is bought in litres. However, because I have an American car fuel economy is in mpg (US) which you multiply by 1.2 to get UK mpg figures.

Speed and distance is MPH and Miles. Weight I generally use metric or lbs (rarely stones and ounces unless a recipe is in imperial and requires oz for example).

The only distance measure I use that isn't in yards is my air rifle which is zeroed in yards, and its pellet weight is in grains not g or oz.

It is silly that we don't have one unified system and I really don't see why people have a problem with metric measures "I don't understand it" is a line often trotted out - well read a book/go online and learn then. Its not that hard.

[irocfan]

wildcat45 said:

Age 44 and both.

I travel 100 miles but if I go along the road the church is 100 meters away.

I have flown at 30,000 feet yet the last ship I sailed in had a 7 metre draught and was 210 metres long. She produced 100,000 Shaft Horse Power.

The wheels on my car are 18 inch, and I put 30 litres of fuel in it yesterday.

It weighs 1.8 tonnes, but I weigh 14 stone. A pound is money a kilo is weight.

I buy beer in pints, but drink milk in litres. If I measure liquid for cooking it's millilitres

I'm 49 and the above sums me up. Drives me to distraction seeing player stats in metric 2 metres and 114kgs means nothing to me 6'6" and 18 stone on the other hands places it perfectly (but then 252lbs means nothing to me either). I'm BHP rather than PS and lb/ft rather than Kw

Bradgate said:

In winter, when it's cold, metric eg -5c.

In summer when it's hot, imperial eg 82f.

especially this ^^^!!!

[Hooli]

37 here & Imperial all the way. I refuse to talk french I'm English, live in England & use English measurements. We're restoring a cottage at the moment & enjoying pissing off window suppliers etc by saying we want stuff 32" rather about the same in MM. It's an English cottage & it'll be rebuilt in English just like it started off in 1640ish.