Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Anything about use of this forum : NOT about cycling
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Mick F
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Mick F »

I would say that we DON'T buy petrol/diesel in litres, and haven't done for years.
We buy it by the Quid, or fill the tank maybe.

I suggest that fuel prices should be Litres per Quid ................ and not Quids per Litre.
Mick F. Cornwall
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al_yrpal
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by al_yrpal »

Pint of shrimps? Pint of winkles? Plate of cockles? Pair of kippers .. Kippers are always bought in pairs. Showing my cockney credentials. :D

Al
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Mick F
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Mick F »

Ice cream is sold by the volume, and not by the weight.

Therefore the manufacturers mix air into it to increase the volume without increasing the weight.
Buy cheap supermarket ice cream?
Feel the weight, don't look at the volume! :D
Mick F. Cornwall
profpointy
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by profpointy »

certain things are specied in quite odd units
Car Tyres - diameter in inches, width in mm
Hubble's constant (expanding universe speed against distance) is traditionally quoted in km per second per Mega Parsec. What kind of bodge unit is that. Two alternative sets of metric electrical units - one set based on cm, grams, secs, and the other based on kg, metre, sec - and yet have to multiply by pi to convert. Masses of subatomic particles measure in electron volts (a unit of energy).


And even for mundane things it would be plain silly to call a 1/2 bolt or spanner a 12.7mm
sjs
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by sjs »

axel_knutt wrote:
Psamathe wrote:I always loved the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight (illustrated what a useless measurement it was) but can never remember what the value actually is (maybe because I never use it). 1.8 terafurlongs per fortnight (just looked it up).

Ian


The earth rotates at 11.5 microhertz, and orbits the sun at 31.7 nanohertz. I'm 2.09x10^-16 light years tall.

I rather like that the speed of light is one foot per nanosecond
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gaz
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by gaz »

irc wrote:Though I'm not fussy about what others use. Easy enough for a rough mental conversion. ... L - pints x 1.8

"A litre of water's a pint and three quarters", is the rough and ready conversion formula that's stuck in my mind.
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661-Pete
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by 661-Pete »

This debate reminds me of a little snippet of memory from my schooldays (strange how one remembers brief episodes from so long ago, yet forgets so much :( ).

Bear in mind that back in the early 1960s the BBC weather forecast used Fahrenheit throughout, Celsius (or Centigrade as we called it then) was unheard-of.

Scene: geography lesson at school. The geography master, a lovable but curmudgeonly old soul, bless him!, was teaching us about climate patterns or something, and the question of whether we should be using F or C cropped up. He was adamant that he wanted no truck with this new-fangled Centigrade and the like, it was Fahrenheit for him and for evermore. I must have piped up "I always use Centigrade, sir". He rounded on me, "All right then, tell us what you think the temperature is in the classroom today, in Centigrade". I must have hesitated a bit, because he pounced. "Aha! You're thinking in Fahrenheit, and trying to do the calculation to convert to Centigrade, aren't you?" It was useless my protesting otherwise...

Ironically, that little incident more or less convinced me that, for the rest of my life, I would be determined to think in metric units throughout. And so, I think, has it turned out. Apart from road distances, for which I stick to miles (like the odometer on the bike - and in the car - and British road signs) I'm metric throughout. Certainly when weighing myself, which I'm still doing regularly. It would throw me to ask me what my weight is in stones.
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axel_knutt
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by axel_knutt »

Mick F wrote:I would say that we DON'T buy petrol/diesel in litres, and haven't done for years.
We buy it by the Quid, or fill the tank maybe.

I suggest that fuel prices should be Litres per Quid ................ and not Quids per Litre.


The fuel consumption of my car used to be about 80 nm^2.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
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661-Pete
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by 661-Pete »

axel_knutt wrote:
Mick F wrote:I would say that we DON'T buy petrol/diesel in litres, and haven't done for years.
We buy it by the Quid, or fill the tank maybe.

I suggest that fuel prices should be Litres per Quid ................ and not Quids per Litre.


The fuel consumption of my car used to be about 80 nm^2.

Very ingenious. I could go one better (dimly recalling my nuclear physics days) and call it about 5 x 10^17 barns - i.e. 500,000,000,000,000,000 barns. That's a lot of barns.... Must use the car less :? .
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity.
Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...
--- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
sjs
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by sjs »

axel_knutt wrote:The fuel consumption of my car used to be about 80 nm^2.


I may be wrong, but aren't you out by a factor of 10^9?
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Bicycler »

""E could 'a drawed me off a pint," grumbled the old man as he settled down behind a glass. "A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my bladder running"
- George Orwell, 1984
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Bicycler »

profpointy wrote:And even for mundane things it would be plain silly to call a 1/2 bolt or spanner a 12.7mm

We have tonnes (metric) of these in bicycle land 31.8mm, 25.4mm, 22.2mm. What silliness!
PhilWhitehurst
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by PhilWhitehurst »

Nah weights should be quoted in units of hamsters
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Psamathe wrote:Just discussed/mentioned on a different thread was how the forum software scans posts and modifies them to remove certain words it does not like. Words like <i>[derogatory word removed]</i> or <i>[derogatory word removed]</i> (ooops). On some forums you even have to write "k i t c h e n". So can is also scan for <number>lbs or <number>Km, etc. and do a modification to "<number>lbs (<different number>Kg)". Can't be difficult from a software perspective.

Ian

In what world is kitchen a derogatory term?
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Re: Pounds or kilogrammes on the forum?

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Back to weights and measures: personally I'm happiest in metric units because they're what I've become most used to, but I don't think it's fair to demand everyone use one system or even give conversions.
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