On 3/13/2016 4:02 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 22:48:41 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 2:44 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 21:33:57 -0000, Don Y wrote:

On 3/13/2016 1:52 PM, Mr Macaw wrote:
On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 20:33:58 -0000, Dean Hoffman
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 13:22:28 -0500, Mr Macaw wrote:

What do Americans call this sign? #

72# = 72 pounds.
#72 = number 72.
My dad used to refer to some distances as 40 or 80 rods.
We still use gallons, pints, quarts, fluid ounces etc.

Dash, pinch, tsp, tbsp, jigger, gill, etc.

Miles, yards, feets and inches.

That must make school hell.

Why? 2T = 1oz 2oz = "double" 2 doubles = gill 2 gills = cup
2 cups = pint, 2 pints = halfG, 2 halfG = G, etc.

Way too complicated. Metric is made that way for a reason. You seem to have
chosen things that have 2 of something else in them. That is hardly ever the
case. Yards in a mile? Pounds in a stone?

Do you really think people *care* how many yards are in a mile?
We buy *fabric* by the yard. We drive our cars *miles*.
The fact that they are related is a consequence of the fact that
they are both used to measure distances.

If you build a picket fence, are the slats 0.1 meters apart?
Are each of them 1.0 meters tall?

Why do you have all those pesky other integers between 1 and 10?
And, 10 and 100? Why not just label your "rulers" with a logarithmic
scale: it's either 1mm, 10mm, 100mm or 1m. Anything else must
make school HELL!

How big is an acre? Try to imagine it in terms of square yards. Not easy.

We don't imagine acres in terms of square yards. I doubt many people want
to cover their lawns with FABRIC!

How many liters in a swimming pool? How many liters does your BATHTUB hold?
(presumably most homes HAVE bathtubs -- wouldn't their owners want/need to
know how much water they can contain??)

Why are water heaters 40G, 50G, 80G, etc. Why not 150liters?
(Ooops! Make that 100 liters cuz 150 is such an "odd" number!)

But, most folks don't care. They buy things in a "familiar
size" and think of that thing *in* that familiar size.

E.g., flour comes in 5 lb sacks; sugar (recently) in 4 lb.
OJ comes in (nominally) 56 oz containers.

Easier when everything is in the same measure, either litres or kg.

Why? If I tell someone I bought a "half gallon" of OJ, they
know exactly what I mean! They can visualize the size, shape
and weight of the container in their mind. The fact that it
*isn't* a "half gallon" isn't even important to them!

It's when you're comparing a large size with a small size it gets difficult.
For example how many pints of milk can you get from a 7 gallon drum?

I don't know anyone who buys milk in 7 gallon drums.
But, there are 8 pints in a gallon, so I'd guess 56.

How many thumbtacks in a kg of thumbtacks? How many sheets
of paper in a kg of paper? How many sheets would you need to cover
your back yard with paper??

They buy a "sack of flour". Probably know that it is 5 pounds.
But, that's beside the point. Esp as flour tends to be consumed in
quantities of *cups*!

There's the problem again, you buy a sack of flour. How many cups can you get
out of it?

We don't care. How many servings of french fries can you salt with
a kg of salt? How many hotdogs can you dress with a liter of mustard?

How many nails in a pound of 6d nails? Or, do you buy nails "per each"?
Ditto screws? Other hardware?

Do you think people know how many cups
of flour are in a 5 pound sack? Do you think they care?
"I need to buy flour" or "I've got enough flour for this recipe"
That;s all it takes. We don't weigh the remaining flour and check to
see if it's enough for the next Rx we intend to make.

You need to know how much of your recipe you can make with each sack.

I have *one* recipe that uses 5 pounds (plus 2C) of flour.
Every other recipe uses some handful of cups (typ 3).

I guess our brains are capable of more complex assessments than
expecting everything to "end in zero"...

Our numerical system is base 10, it makes sense to do calculations based on 10.

Yes. 3 * 7 = 21 radix 10.
What's so hard about that?

Do you buy your ketchup by the liter? (I suspect ketchup,
here, is sold in a dozen or more different "sizes")
What about your horseradish? And, are your spices sold
in 1g, 10g and 100g units? Never "3g" or "7g"?

All sorts of sizes, but we know what a gram is. The UNIT is always the same.

We also don't need to drag out a *scale* to bake things
as we KNOW that chemistries tend to require common rations
(e.g., 2:1, 4:1, etc.) and can use volumetric measures
(instead of laddling ingredients onto a scale).

We can do that if we like. But a scale is easier to get that 4:1 ratio correct
instead of guessing by how big the pile is.

How big is an "egg"? Do you have metric dozens of eggs?
Do you have 100 minutes in your hours? 100 days in your years?

It would be easier.

Metric chickens?

Obviously everything can't be made metric.

Do you even *know* that there is "no such thing" as a "large egg"?

WTF€½ Of course there is. There will be measurement for it to qualify as such.

No, there isn't. There is a large *dozen* but not a large *egg*.

How do you grade your fruit? Measure the circumference and
sort based on the nearest decimeter? Or, are "large oranges"
no more precious than "tiny oranges"??

You buy them by the kg.

And, you don't sort "large" (premium) from "small"?

"That must make school HELL!" -- having to remember TWO different
schemes of measurement, one that deals with radix 10 and others
that deal with 12's, 24's, 60's, 365's, etc.

At least we made some of it easier.

And, when you have a third person show up for dinner, do you scale the
recipe (that "feeds two") up by a factor of *10*?

I guess we have learned to use *all* the numbers, on this side of
the pond. Not just the "easy ones"!

We use the same numbers, but we don't have to remember how many of each thing
goes into each other thing.

Bye, troll!