Metric system dumbs us down.

[Lapincherry]

Originally Posted by bvander

Find it funny, US kicked BritS out in 1700s and yet still today use the imperial system of wieghs and measures, a system based on the size of a kings appendages.

They would give you 225 grams

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by StuM

Firlot was a new one to me. I love this:

"contained 21 pints and a mutchkin of the water of Leith:

Do the 21 pints have to be "of the water of Leith" or just the mutchkin?
Enquiring minds want to know!

reading the wiki entry - it is 21 pints and a mutchkin of the water of leith - meaning all the water has to be from the river leith

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by deblen

EU uses a decimal based measure(metric) & decimal money (Euros).
But they use commas for decimal points---really!!

Actually it's you who uses points for decimal commas...

Also yo seem to have forgotten how much a "billion" and a "trillion" really is...

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by K_V_B

Actually it's you who uses points for decimal commas...

Also yo seem to have forgotten how much a "billion" and a "trillion" really is...

The billion vs trillion issue is regional, I believe. In the USA, a billion is 10^9 and a trillion is 10^12 , and in some parts of the world a trillion is 10^15... if my questionable memory is correct.

Jim

[StuM]

Being educated originally in the UK, a billion for me used to be a million million (10^12) but the US usage has definitely won the battle, so now I accept that people are talking about a thousand million (10^9). (Apparently the UK officially changed to the US usage for official statistics in 1974)

Same with the trillion. The "imperial" million,million million (10^18) has lost out to the US 10^12,

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by StuM

Being educated originally in the UK, a billion for me used to be a million million (10^12) but the US usage has definitely won the battle, so now I accept that people are talking about a thousand million (1^9). (Apparently the UK officially changed to the US usage for official statistics in 1974)

Same with the trillion. The "imperial" milliion,million million (10^24) has lost out to the US 10^15,

Err... try 10^12 as in -tera-

[buzzstar]

Originally Posted by StuM

Being educated originally in the UK, a billion for me used to be a million million (10^12) but the US usage has definitely won the battle, so now I accept that people are talking about a thousand million (10^9). (Apparently the UK officially changed to the US usage for official statistics in 1974)

Same with the trillion. The "imperial" million,million million (10^18) has lost out to the US 10^12,

It may be that that Briton has lost the battle, but will win the war. It may be that the USA is looking into the British system as a way of reducing its national debt. It would quickly reduce it from the trillions to the billions.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Err... try 10^12 as in -tera-

Yep, I spotted that just after posting and corrected it.

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by StuM

Being educated originally in the UK, a billion for me used to be a million million (10^12) but the US usage has definitely won the battle, so now I accept that people are talking about a thousand million (10^9). (Apparently the UK officially changed to the US usage for official statistics in 1974)

Same with the trillion. The "imperial" million,million million (10^18) has lost out to the US 10^12,

Yes, but Stu,

It's still an unimagineably huge number. Try it with grasshoppers, say. How long before you are content to go back to ancient thought: one, two, many, too many!"?

Just sayin'.

Cheers, Mate,

Ann

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

Yes, but Stu,

It's still an unimagineably huge number. Try it with grasshoppers, say. How long before you are content to go back to ancient thought: one, two, many, too many!"?

Just sayin'.

Cheers, Mate,

Ann

It is imaginable, even with grasshoppers.

According to that font of all knowledge: Wikipedia

"No taxonomic distinction is made between locust and grasshopper species; the basis for the definition is whether a species forms swarms under intermittently suitable conditions.
...
A large swarm can consist of billions of locusts spread out over an area of thousands of square kilometres, with a population of up to 80 million individuals per square kilometre".

Also, there are about a trillion grains of sand in a cubic meter.
(That's an estimate, it would take about 32,000 years to actually count them at 1 per second).

And when you look up at the Milky Way, you are looking at 100s of billions of stars just in our Galaxy.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by StuM

And when you look up at the Milky Way, you are looking at 100s of billions of stars just in our Galaxy.

coming across the atlantic - I counted them one night on my dog watch - but alas I lost count at 249,071,623 stars and had to start over again. Then the watch ended and I forgot how far I'd gotten

[double u]

...what the "american system" in the end leads to the result of last presidential elections in the US of A showed...

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by carstenb

True, but whenever a brit says he is going to travel to the continent, he (or she just to be non-sexist) invariably says he/she is going to europe (not the continent).

By the way, rmember the old tongue twister?

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?

so does anyone now (no fair cheating by googling or wiki) know how big a peck is?

Yeah, it's a basket size. If you grew up around farms, they were a common size for selling fresh vegies.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Ozifrog

A4 paper IS metric.
Now how's that for normal people.
Its the ratio of length to width which makes it so cool.
Every time you cut it in two equal halves you get the same ratio of length to width.
Check out these links.
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

ISO Paper sizes | A brief overview

But oddly, it has no simple relationship to other metric units.

You could easily have made the standard letter size that uses a nice round number and then calculated to make the other paper sizes. There is nothing magical about the starting point.

[K_V_B]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

But oddly, it has no simple relationship to other metric units.



You could easily have made the standard letter size that uses a nice round number and then calculated to make the other paper sizes. There is nothing magical about the starting point.

They did start out with a nice round number. The surface area of an A0 is exactly 1m2.