What the actual fook. Pls u last 3 countries of the world, just change to the metric system. It's make so much more sense than this gibberish

My brain is broken now.

Change your avatar, it's mine

Ended up writing a wall of text.... [spoiler]I think in a couple of cases you've made things overly complicated, and you have to remember that imperial measurements are the result of ancient measuring systems undergoing standardisation to be used reliably in a time before mass production and bulk purchasing. Every country had its own stupid systems of weights and measures, imperial units are just the most well known because of England's huge empire. The foot and inch have been used to measure distance for at least 5000 years and were originally the length of your foot (conveniently also the length of your lower arm) and the length of your thumb from tip to the first knuckle. The yard being 3 feet makes sense when you consider the scales being used at the time. Even the pyramids and coliseum are built in chunks a few feet long at most. Other defunct measurements are the stride (originally however long your stride was, standardised to 5ft), span (thumb tip to pinky tip stretched out) and digit (the length of your index finger). A mile was originally 1000 strides. Similarly, measurements of weight and volume sprung up independent to each other to regulate different industries. Bushels and pecks were only used to trade grain originally, with the difference between a bushel of weight compared to a bushel of volume coming about through standardisation. Measures of volume used in the British brewing industry make sense within themselves: Pin=4.5iG Firkin=9iG Kilderkin=18iG Barrel=36iG One pound of weight was originally the weight of 1 pound worth of 1 penny coins, but like all the rest they were revised over the years. Your average 20th century Brit would only really have used ounces, pounds, stone and tonnes for weight, inches, feet, yards and miles for distance, and drams, cups, pints and gallons for volume. Yes it seems ridiculous now, and maths is far easier using base 10 than the various counting systems of imperial measures, but that's why we don't use it anymore. [/spoiler]

I still don't understand how people can measure things in bizarre fractions. Like, fractions of an inch was a pretty regular measurement for things, but nobody these days would measure something as '3/4 of a metre' or '3/12ths of a centimetre'. Like, why would you make it that complicated for yourself?

I use it without shame.

[b][/b]

Hi

It's too late for you guys to change too.

I still measure in feet and inches and still order in yards.

[quote]When I first did some research on the Imperial system of measurement I found it hilarious. I was trying to look up a, "Grain." It turns out a grain is a unit of mass equal to approximately 65mg. It comes from, "The weight of a grain seed from the middle of an ear of barley." The weight of a wheat kernel was considered 45/64 of a grain of barley. As well as being the fundamental unit of mass it's also a third of an inch - an unrelated unit of length. Let's talk about some other units of Imperial measure, but first let me highlight some terms. The system we know as Imperial is comprised of at least three historical systems of mass, and I'll break them down. They're called the Avoirdupois System, the Apothecary's System, and the Troy System. In the Avoirdupois system there are 7,000 grains to the pound, 16 ounces to the pound, 16 drams to the ounce, which makes the dram, the next smallest unit to the grain, a convenient 27 and 11/32 of a grain. In the other direction there is also the hundredweight (100 pounds), and the short-ton (20 hundredweights). In the Apothecary's system, things progress slightly more simply from the grain. There are 20 grains in a scruple, 3 scruples in a dram, 8 drams in an ounce, and 12 ounces in a pound. Of course, they're not even similar weights to the Avoirdupois system. There is, for example, exactly 175/384 of an Avoirdupois pound in each Apothecary's pound. The Troy system has a pennyweight, which is 24 grains, there are 20 pennyweights to the ounce and 12 ounces to the pound. All that's left is a stick, which is a cooking weight equal to 4 ounces. In terms of length, it all starts at the inch, which is three barleycorns long. 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, and 5280 feet to the mile, unless, of course, you're a surveyor, in which case you also have the link, which is 33/50 of a foot, a survey foot which is defined as 1200/3937th of a meter, 25 links in a rod, 100 links in a chain, and 80 chains in a mile. The mile and foot work out pretty similar to their archaic counterparts. Then there is the hand, which isn't defined in terms of any other unit. Then there's area! You've got all the standard measures of length squared plus the acre, which is ten square chains. Volume is where it gets fun. Apart from the cubic versions of the above, volume seems to be based on the space taken up by a particular mass of liquid, and so you have a fluid ounce, which is almost, but not quite, the volume that one ounce of water takes up. Then you have the fluid dram, which is 1/8th of that like in the Apothecary's system of weight. The disused minim is 1/60th of a fluid ounce. In the other direction, a gill is 4 fluid ounces, a cup 2 gills, a pint 2 cups, a quart 2 pints, a gallon 4 quarts, a beer barrel 31 gallons, an oil barrel 42 gallons and a hog's head 63 gallons. For liquids. For solids the measure is still based on the volume a certain mass takes up, and so a pint of rice occupies more space than a pint of water. The relationships between the units seem to be the same as in the liquid case, just that the actual volume is slightly different. There are also two additional units, the peck, which is 2 dry gallons, and the bushel, which is 4 peck. Because it is difficult to measure the volume of things like wheat, a bushel is generally defined in terms of weight, and so a bushel of maize is the volume taken up by 56 pounds, and a bushel of wheat 60 pounds. This leaves the bushel in the strange situation of being a measure of weight as well as volume defined in terms of the volume of a weight of a liquid that's not quite water. The real fun is in derived units, and so you can merrily consider density in bushels per bushel. (Mass of bushel per volume of bushel = density). Fahrenheit was constructed so that 0F is the temperature of a solution of ice brine, 32F is the melting point of water, and 96F is body temperature, so that there are 64 intervals between those two unrelated concepts... and the reason Daniel Fahrenheit chose a power of two was so that he could construct the scales on his thermometer by bisecting the lines on his scale 6 times. This made labeling the thing easier. Later on, people came along and said, "That's not useful," and redefined the upper end in terms of the boiling point of water, as 212F. As a result it's even more arbitrary. 0F is now somewhere near but not quite the temperature of that solution of ice brine, 32F is exactly the freezing point of water, 100F is pretty close to but not quite body temperature, and 212F is exactly the boiling point of water. And if you're wondering why body temperature isn't 96F, it's because body thermometers still use the old unmodified Fahrenheit... What.[/quote] Is this original to you wheelz?

Well this is a lame thread.

>Expected Star Wars joke post >is disappointed