Do British people think it absurd Americans still use miles, inches, feet, yards?
It's ridiculous. I was a motorcycle shop owner for 8 years and it would get on my last nerve to work on an American bike with standard tools. I like the Metric system much better. I know both very well, but the Metric system is just so much easier to use when you are doing calculations. I'm in the sign business now and I hate having to split fractions all the time. 7 feet, 9 and 7/16 inches. Find the centerpoint to mount the sign properly. Absurd!! I remember when I was in high school how the teachers used to tell us to learn the metric system because the whole world would be using it by Y2K...what a crock. However, American built cars do use metric bolts very liberally. And most Americans still don't know how to use the Metric system, much less Metric tools. Pass the 14mm...what the heck size is that? I love it. And Metric makes so much more sense.
Do scientists in the United States use metric or imperial units?
Any scientist, if you ask him, will say he uses metric units. No scientist will be caught saying otherwise, just as you will not catch him saying he is a Republican or he doesn't believe in climate change. But do they use Metric units all the time?Let us discuss the units of astronomers. Astronomers use light years, parsecs, and Astronomical Units. Light years, parsecs and AUs are not metric units. I am not saying they are imperial units, either. But they are units that appeal to the imagination. Light year is of course the distance traveled by light in a year and an AU - used by planetary scientists - is the distance between between earth and sun. If somebody as cold as an astronomer (astronomers are people who discuss the billions and trillions of space-time without fainting or without having a mystical experience), needs a unit that appeal to their imagination, why stamp out units of measure that appeal to imagination from common people ? Why tell people that they should not measure screen size in inches or measure fever in Fahrenheit, when each conjures a picture in the minds of people?
Why did the British use "pound" as the unit of both currency and weight?
The British originally used the pound as a unit of weight. They began to use it as a unit of currency in Anglo-Saxon times, over a thousand years ago, because 240 silver pennies weighed roughly one pound. So instead of saying "a pound of silver pennies", people would just say "a pound" for short. See Wikipedia's article on the Anglo-Saxon pound for more.The pound consisted of 240 pennies right up until 1971 when it was decimalised. By then pennies were made of bronze instead of silver. But they were heavier than the old Saxon silver penny. So 240 of the 1971 bronze pennies were worth a pound sterling but would have weighed almost five pounds.
When did the UK abandon the imperial system of measurements?
When did the UK abandon the imperial system of measurements?It hasn’t. Except for the times that it has.Measurements in the UK are extremely complex. We use the metric and the imperial system, depending on context and age.I’m 53 and grew up using decimal currency, and a mixture of both systems.Like everyone here I measure long distances in miles. Speeds are miles per hour and all the road signs are in miles. If I buy beer it’s in pints. If I buy milk it’s in litres, unless I live in an area that still delivers in pints. I buy petrol in litres, but many measure their car’s efficiency in miles to the gallon. If I measure my height it’s in feet and inches, but if I measure my kitchen it’s in millimetres. Sometimes if I estimate short distances I sometimes say yards, sometimes metres; these are interchangeable.I measure hot temperatures in Fahrenheit. I measure cold temperatures in Celsius.I measure my weight in stone and pounds. I cook in grams.Drug dealers sell cocaine in grams. They sell cannabis in fractions of ounces.I measure pressure in pounds per square inch, but it’s often shown in bar. (I have no idea what either of these means.)Sometimes people complain that the British have a strange sense of humour. The above is partly why.
Early measurements of length were based on?
The American measuring system was based upon the British system, which was based upon the length of the Queen's arm. I would say B.
What systems of measurements do Canadians use?
Officially we are using the metric system. This means that schools and government institutions use metric measurements. Practically we use both. The older generations generally use more imperial measurements; it makes sense to them because that's what they grew up using. The younger generation tends to use a mix of both. Height - Feet and inches. Nobody gives their height in metric.Body weight- Pounds. I've never heard anyone in Canada tell me that their weight in kilograms. Most people would just try to mentally convert it back to pounds anyways. Weight of very heavy objects - TonsVolume - Litres and millilitres.Short distances - Almost always inches. Centimetres are too small. It's much easier to say something is 10 inches long than 24.5 centimetres. But for anything smaller than an inch, we tend to use centimetres and millimetres. Confusing, I know.Medium distances- Feet, but meters are used as well.Long distances - KilometersSpeed - Km/h. Some people use Mph, but again, people will hear 60mph and mentally convert it to 100 Km/h, so you may as well get used to using the metric system for speed. Temperature - It's a good policy to use celsius. The imperial and metric temperature scales become very similar as you go into the negative temperatures, which poses a problem. It becomes very confusing when people don't use metric for temperature. There is no golden rule. You just have to learn by experience which system applies in certain circumstances. It's obviously confusing to foreigners, but it makes sense to us.