Kitchen Garden Forum

It is interesting to see that from time to time somebody on the Forum makes a sideswipe at the metric system. Having spent 11 years in Spain, Portugal and France, I must confessed to being equally confident/confused about both imperial and metric. However, some things work better in metric and some in imperial. For example, I am currently building raised beds four feet wide and three metres long...
Nevertheless, while I prefer the slightly longer metre to the yard, I do miss the foot in the metric system, because I can visualise a foot and not however many centimetres it is! (I have no idea...). Similarly, the centimetre is just too small to be of any practical use as an individual unit. I have to think of the span on my hand as being 10cm in order to get any use out of centimetres! And while a six-inch ruler, logically, shouldn't be any easier to envisage than a 15cm ruler, it most certainly is! While 30cm doesn't mean that much to me, but 12inches is very clear -but shouldn't really be!
Again, I don't want to invite anti-metric attacks, because they accomplish nothing, but do any other contributors find odd parts of each system more practical in the garden than others?
Who prefers the metre to the yard and why?

i was at school when the metric came in so had a few years inperial and then went metric and it depends who i'm speaking to and what it's about and also if i'm talking exact or rough like my beds are 12' * 4' when they are in metric 3.6m * 1.2m there may be a couple of centimeters or inches each way but who cares life is to short

I am starting to learn more about metric.
Now I am having to renew some posts etc. on the plot thinking in Imperial is not an option when faced with supplies on the shelf in metric.

4ft post - now what would that be? Always carry my tape measure with me now.

Beryl.

At work, all the plants are measured in metric units for height and spread, so I can easily visualise say 10cm up to about 10 metres. I get asked by customers of a certain age what the labels mean in feet and inches. The same question also comes from a surprising number of younger customers. Anyone under about 40 should have been taught metric measures in school, so not sure why.

Kilometres throw me totally though - it's a real oddity that we still have miles for distances and metric for everything else.

Sue

I struggle with metric measurements with the exception of exhibition space 'cos I had to work with it for years. I can visualise a 4000m2 hall, a 3mx3m stand space, or indeed any multiple of this, with no problem. I can manage a 50m swimming pool but other than that I'm very much an imperial measurement person.

Tim can only tell me how tall he is in metres and how heavy he is in kilos as he lived in Italy for years. It means nothing to me. Give me yards any day of the week.

I am afraid that I am one of those who still use old measurements on a daily basis....I agree with Barry ... I also can relate to a foot or a yard whereas centimetres mean nothing to me.

So I guess the old adage about 'old dog and new tricks' is applicable here ...anyway who wants to go along with the rest of the herd?

I'm sure i must know, but why is the weight in pounds shortened to lbs.

I found this, it's a bit scrambles but it abswers your question.
description>The Latin word libra describes a Roman unit of weight similar to a pound, and the abbreviations “lb” or “℔” for the unit of weight and the signs £ and ₤ (crossed-out Ls) for the currency derived from this. The word “pound” comes from the Latin pendere, “to weigh”; Latin libra means “scales, balances.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_%28mass%29</description>

Thanks for that Allan, maybe i didn't know it after all.
Theres so many things we use on a regular basis, then all of a sudden, you think what does that stand for or mean.

I like the logic of metric (it's quite easy to multiply things by 10) but like the instinctive sizes of imperial. I'm equally at home with individual inches, feet, pints and miles; just don't ask me how many of each are in the other...

This seems easy though... try asking the guys in Comet or Curry's why my '1Gb' computer only reports that it has 0.9Gb of memory! (I know the answer, but none of the sales staff do!)

There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and those that don't...

Hello Mr Potato Head
Accepting Gb=Giga bit and GB=Giga Byte
Do you assume a Gb = 10 to the power of 9 or in actual binary storage 2 to the power of 30?

(10 to the power of 9 = 1000000000 whilst 2 to the power of 30 =1073741824)
If you divide the decimal value by the binary value,
a 1000000000 (1GB) disc would have 0.931GiB (gibibytes) capacity (I think!!).

Barney

I too was educated in the metric system, so cannot even start calculating in imperial. I do everything in metres, unfortunately polytunnel companies don't, which made putting the blemmings things up a bit frustrating ( not least as I never mastered the 12X table in the first place). Buying and setting up irrigation was interesting as well!

I'm definitely in the miles yards, feet and inches team. Pounds and ounces. Pints, gallons and firkins.

Husband is a great metric fan, even if he is 5 years older than me. Funny how he orders wood by the square metre, or by metre length, even though it's 2 by 1, 4 by 2 or any other combination of inches

Hit the nail on the head Barney...

Hi OH. For what it's worth, pound comes from the Latin pondus, which means simply "weight". Libra [French livre] was the Latin term for a specific weight of about 12 ounces, hence our pound, and a pound sterling was the value of silver of that weight. I don't know at what point it became 16 oz; maybe the oz got devalued? Libra also meant a pair of scales, as in the constellation.

mike