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I use metric far more than this chart indicates. While I might say something in a recipe calls for a cup, if I need to be specific, it’s 250ml. Even height and weight I ususally know them in both metric and imperial. I was starting elementary school when the metric changeover began which made shopping confusing but eventually retail mostly caught up. I do agree with the travel distances though. Time is a much more common measurement: it will take 10min or 1/2 hour or 15 hours is more likely measurement than x km because it is specific to mode of travel: walk, bike, car, transit, plane.
JFC I though America had it fucked up sideways
I never understand why Imperial shows up so much in these posts.
Does… the chart help at all??
While I set my oven to 180 and measure out how many grams of flour to use, I pause to see my pool temperature is 28. On my way back I stepped on a bathroom scale that read 80kg and I thought back to secondary school weigh ins where I was in the under 60 bracket.
No, the chart doesn’t help. As I said, I don’t understand how Imperial shows up so much on them.
Using Imperial for construction is true because we buy/sell to the US. But that’s really it, maybe one day we’ll weigh things in stone and cook using gas mark.
Thank you, I’m tired of people saying only the US still uses imperial units.
UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, … and more still use them.
And the whole aviation industry is using feet for altitude and the whole world is using inches for screen sizes.
The U.S. has been on the metric standard since the late 1800s like every other western country (including Canada). It’s populace uses the adjusted imperial units because the U.S. government didn’t historically have the power to campaign for a change.
This is somehow worse than Americans using just imperial. Congrats Canada that’s no small feat.
European variant:
[ is it displays? ] -yes-> [ inches ] ↓ no [ is it screws? ] -yes-> [ inches ] ↓ no [ metric ]Never seen screws in inches in europe (though I’m sure they exist, just don’t see them being common), but you’re missing wheels, pipes, hoses and fittings, socket wrench drivers, screwdriver bits, clothes (sometimes) and perhaps more
No? We use metric for all of these?
You use metric for displays?
I’m in France, and my TV is 55’ and my monitor is 27’. I wouldn’t be able to tell you the equivalent is centimeters off the top of my head.
[ is it displays? ] -yes-> [ inches ] ↓ no [ is it screws? ] -yes-> [ inches ] ↓ no [ is it tires? ] -yes-> [ inches ] ↓ no [is if flight altitude? ] -yes-> [ feet ] ↓ no [ metric ]FTFY
[ is it tires? ] -yes-> [ inches ]
both for car and light truck tires. inches for wheel diameter, millimeters for tread width,
Road bike tires? Metric. Mtb tires? Imperial. Car tire inner diameter? Imperial. Car tire width? Metric.
Car tire height? Neither. Fun fact.
I agree on the tires, but at least in Germany, we measure flight altitude in meters.
And if you don’t know for sure you can always default to a “Saarlands”
Well, screws are more complicated. We mostly use M sizes which are metric. But when it comes to plumbing and compressed air thread sizes you get into imperial terretory fast.
Tires are in inches, screws really aren’t. Who wants 3/8 key?
We’d need several versions of this in the UK with a decision tree required to select the relevant decision tree. It would need to take age and where you were brought up into account.
I think that the most complicated is distance. For me it is imperial for a person’s height, metric for short distances that I measure, imperial for short distances that I estimate (that one’s weird), miles for ground travel distances and time for air travel distances.
Also with a secret third option for measuring temperatures when cooking. Your cookies will be baked for 12 minutes at Gas Mark 4 and you will like it.
It would need to take age and where you were brought up into account.
And which sports you’ve been involved with, and how nationalistic your parents were when you grew up, and whether you’ve had chronic health issues, and whether your oven runs on natural gas, and whether you visit mainland Europe often.
It’s a bit out of date, and definitely varies by individual, but broadly, yes.
Like I’ll weigh myself in kg and give height in cm but most people won’t understand it outside a medical context.
And most cooking is in grams or Celsius, except my oven, which is F.
You must be younger, because this diagram is spot on for me
Late 40s. My parents never really got comfortable with Celsius or distance in km for any context.
This is not funny, it’s a fucking problem. I’m a metric purist and have an unreasonable negative emotional response when others are not.
American, can you quantity your negative emotions in a 4 point precision float of 9/11s so I can follow along?
I’m an American, I’m comfortable working in metric and normal.
Shhh, don’t let them know that we use it for food packaging and drugs.
Why limit youreelf to only 1 or 2 ways of measuring things?
12 miles away? 12 kilometers away? Boring.
126,720 hot dogs away is much more whimsical and fun.
but are those normal, bun-length, or ‘foot long’ hot dogs?
Canadians may not be bicontinental, but they are a little euro-curious.
As a Canadian-American living in Japan.
Height/Distance: metric
Cooking: metric (ml for volume, but I normally translate all recipes into weights and just throw things into a bowl on the scale) for both amounts and temperatures
Weight: metric
Speed: metric (m/s for wind, kph for basically anything else not science-y enough for other units)
Certain products: bicycle tires (maybe frames?), screen sizes, and more I’m forgetting.: inches but not called inches and almost always with the size in mm/cm written next to it. I have never met a Japanese person who knows what an inch actually represents unless they lived in the US or work closely with the US in certain industries (e-commerce is one for unit conversions)
Property sizes: In my own usages, metric (square metres). Dealing with Japanese real estate, home centers, etc: 帖 (jou the counter for tatami mats) and 坪 (tsubo the counter for area).
Consuming:
- soda, milk, water and whatnot: metric
- 日本酒 (nihonshu, what most people would call “sake” in the west): x合瓶 (x goubin; where x = 1 -> 180ml, 2 -> 300ml, 4 -> 720ml or so); masu (a box being around 8 shaku -> 144ml); ｘお猪口 (x ochoku) for x sake cups.
- other alcohol: I still sometimes will refer to a 750ml liquor bottle as a fifth if I’m not thinking about it
This is ignoring all of the counters Japanese has (一枚 one flat object like a sheet of paper, 一本 one cylnindrical object like a pencil/cigarette/whatever, and dozens more). Bonus: they’re not all the same between Japanese and Chinese which feels weird. I don’t know about Korean on that part since I think the counters are mostly written in hanguel anyway.
Can’t believe Canadians use fahrenheit for cooking. Must be because of American cookers.
Any Mexicans here? Is it the same there for cooking?
Ireland: everything is metric except…
- human height, very slowly changing
- pints in the pub
- human weight for older people who still use “stones” (this is quickly declining towards zero). A stone is 14 pounds.
- I think some plumbing stuff as a hangover
- edit: oh yeah, TV’s as someone else pointed out
I think mexico is weird because officially it uses metric and a lot of people know that, but as you go north closer to US you get people who say millas, libras etc. This is my experience as a non-mexican who spent a few months over there and drove all throughout it.
Canadians are surprisingly confusing with their measurements when they’re so easy to understand about most other things.
Doubly colonized. Very porous border with supplies all engineered in ‘freedum units’.
Some industries have been extra slow to convert, usually due to supply chain dependencies. Also generations have to die before giving up key habits drilled into them as kids. I distinctly remember grandparents talking about mass in stones, yet canadian-born.
Settler states can sometimes
be stuck inpreserve old ways while imperial centers move on. Metis fiddlers sent a delegation to Scotland (? or thereabouts) to reteach them forgotten reels from a few hundred years ago.This is also a question for our friends in the UK: if I weigh 13 stone, would those be large stones or just medium ones? Would those stones be granite or some other type? I’d prefer pumice, if I can have that.
Speed I’m bilingual in, I’m old enough to remember when we changed from miles to km and watching the road signs gradually get replaced. Manitoba also runs a grid pattern on roads throughout a lot of the southern province, having at least a gravel/dirt road nearly every mile, so you kinda grow up with that burned into your brain.
Temp wise, C all the way. Fahrenheit totally screws me up. I know 70 is around room temp but beyond that I need to convert it for my simple brain to understand.
It is easier for me to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit. The actual equation is (9/5)C+32. I usually just double the Celsius, add 32, then subtract a few. Gets it close enough.
Add and then subtract an indefinite amount is what gets me
100 is body temp so you can use that one to convert the highs. No idea what freezing would be in F
F
