When does the world go metric...

[victor]

In metric, do you guys generally use N or kN for weights?

Or do you just run with mass (e.g. is that 2lbm of bananas)?

If memory serves, I've heard people say so-and-so is 10 stones, but I've never been quite sure what a stone is.

We are supposed to use Kilograms, however many, including youngsters, will order food in Lbs (pounds).

Imperial Measurements with the help of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_unit
Weight
The pound is the standard measurement
A pound is 16 ozs
A stone is 14 pounds,
a hundredweight is 8 stones or 112 lps,
a ton is 20 hundredweights, 2240 lps.

Distance
12 inches = 1 foot,
3 feet = 1 yard
22 yards = 1 chain (length of a cricket pitch)
10 chains = 1 furlong (essential for horse racing)
8 furlongs = 1 mile.

Liquids Especially scotch and beer
1/5 gill = 1 old scotch measure (very small always order a double, make mine a malt please)
1 pint = 4 gills (the right size for a real beer) :beer:
2 pints = 1 quart
8 pints = 1 gallon
9 gallons = 1 firkin
2 firkins = 1 kilderkin
2 kilderkin = 1 barrel (36 gallons of real ale from Hook Norton please) :beer:

Now don't get me started about wine, lovely stuff, but what is a Jeroboam?

 

[300bar]

Ok I only asked to compare cft to Lt.witch was very well answerd thank you.
Plaese don't kill eachother over my question

Ill just sit back and read the rest

 

[scuba.ie]

'The world' has already gone metric. It's the pesky USA that refuses to fall in line. :shakehead

Brian

There's actually a few countries that are partially converted. Ireland went metric a long while back, but only converted the road signs and speed limits this year to KMs. We have been using the metric weights and measures for years, but not exclusively. england on the other hand has been a bit slow to convert from miles to KMs and is one of the last European countries still using miles.
I often get confused when I see posts referring to cubic feet of PSI...we use litres and bar.

 

[beejw]

to answer the OP, the capacity of a tank, is how measured by its volume at 1ata, multiplied by the pressure youre going to cram into it.

for exmaple, if i have a tank that will hold 80 liters^3 of air at 1ata, and i then force 200 ata of pressure on it, you multiple 80x200 giving you a total capacity of 1600 liters of air.

i think.
i could be totally wrong.
someone confirm this for me. im just going with what my chemistry teacher told me when we did gas theory.

 

[Rick Murchison]

80 liters^3

From the department of redundancy department, eh?
Rick

 

[Rick Murchison]

I always thought the original meter was the length of a 2 second period pendulum.

Nope. 1/10,000,000 the distance from the pole to the equator was the one and only original spec. It has been defined much more precisely now, as, like a nautical mile, using the earth - not a perfect sphere - as a standard has inherent variability. Things like pendulum periods and atmospheres of sea water that happen to be close to easy-to-use whole numbers are... "happy coincidences."
Rick

 

[Blackwood]

Nope. 1/10,000,000 the distance from the pole to the equator was the one and only original spec. It has been defined much more precisely now, as, like a nautical mile, using the earth - not a perfect sphere - as a standard has inherent variability. Things like pendulum periods and atmospheres of sea water that happen to be close to easy-to-use whole numbers are... "happy coincidences."
Rick

Interesting. I seem to have that pendulum tidbit stored in the trivia banks in the back of my mind. Must have picked it up somewhere. Time to overwrite.

 

[beejw]

From the department of redundancy department, eh?
Rick

I think i may have gotten a little carried away there haha

for the standard meter, i remember something about it being based on the wavelength of orange light...

see the origins of the meter here: http://www.surveyhistory.org/the_standard_meter1.htm

Beej.

 

[asaara]

Interestingly enough, for pressure / temperature / volume, I like metric a lot better. deg. C makes plenty more logical sense to me, and when you look at a pressure gauge in bar, its so much easier to me: 100 Bar=1/2 tank 50 bar=1/4 tank, rather than having to do the psi math in uneven numbers. I have my SPG in Bar, my depth in feet.

Is this just me? does anyone else think length / dimensions in standard units and other measurements liike volume and temp in metric? Maybe this is from the same part of my brain that prefers to read stuff in the key of C# rather than in Db.

My brain works like that as well, but I'm Canadian, so that accounts for most of it. Long distances in metric, short distances in feet, hot temperatures in F, cold in C - the latter probably because it sounds better when you exaggerate. Distances I'd measure in feet on land I measure in metric underwater, though, just to make everything consistent down there. Then I'll translate if I'm talking to Americans. ;-)

 

[victor]

Nope. 1/10,000,000 the distance from the pole to the equator was the one and only original spec. It has been defined much more precisely now, as, like a nautical mile, using the earth - not a perfect sphere - as a standard has inherent variability. Things like pendulum periods and atmospheres of sea water that happen to be close to easy-to-use whole numbers are... "happy coincidences."
Rick

I always thought the original meter was the length of a 2 second period pendulum.

You are both right. There were confilicting standards for the metre
1790 on May 8th The French National Assembly decides that the length of the new metre would be equal to the length of a pendulum with a half-period of one second.
1791 on March 30 The French National Assembly accepts the proposal by the French Academy of Sciences that the new definition for the metre be equal to one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant through Paris, that is the distance from the equator to the north pole.
1793 They found out that they had got it wrong and the metre bar as about 1/5mm short due to some miscalculations about how flat the earth is.