HeWhoPostsStuff wrote:To the best of my knowledge the UK uses the metric system, though I might be wrong.
In the UK, it largely comes down to what you are measuring. The schools have been fully metric for decades, but imperial measurements are still in use all over the place. For long distances, miles are nigh on universially used over kilometres, while for
short distances, whether you think in cm or inches basically comes down to how old you are. Cloth sizes (like waist/chest measurements, and of course bra sizes
) are still in inches, and if you ask someone their height, you will almost always get an answer in feet/inches, and similarly with weight, it will be in stones/pounds (which is also the
only circumstance in which you will ever here references to stones
). food and other domestic commodities are largely in metric, although pounds linger on for fruit & veg, and of course drinks in pubs come in pints (and as referenced below,
proper pints not the short changed American version
).
HeWhoPostsStuff wrote:Almost everyplace except the US does: why stick with an easier-to-use system based on the nice round number ten when you can pull a random set of something out of your backside that greatly overcomplicates things and cuts us off from everyone else even more than we are already?
Heh, not to mention that the US fluid measurements (pint, galleon) are smaller then the Imperial pint & galleon used elsewhere
.
(For reference, the US pint is 16 fluid ounces, while the Imperial pint is 20 fluid ounces, 25% bigger).
Originally posted on: 08-Jul-2005, 17:01 GMT