What is a kil'ometer?

[Bugbear]

Consider the cat and buttered toast problem:

Go ask Michio Kaku... Or Pleater because I'm bailing on this thread.

[Jerry]

Since I worked as a Instrument Tech for about 30 years, I am used to calling it a kilometer, although I worked mostly with mm and cm. If they ever went to metric for fuel at the pumps and metric speed limits, I'd be in trouble. I'd never be able to plan trips or know how fast I was going.

[Adam Pound]

Maybe we're all abit lazy up here, but I hear a lot of folks just saying K's instead. When it's this cold, you don't open your mouth more than you need to, LOL.

[SteveB]

Adam,
There are colder sections of Ontario than Ottawa, after all there is plenty of hot air in Ottawa when Parliament is in session.
BTW and the fun loving rabble. Keep your eyes peeled for SOKS nights.

[Adam Pound]

Adam,
There are colder sections of Ontario than Ottawa, after all there is plenty of hot air in Ottawa when Parliament is in session.
BTW and the fun loving rabble. Keep your eyes peeled for SOKS nights.

LMAO!
If we ever get the coalition that's threatened, we'll have outright tropical storms up here!

[meinfs]

Sorry, but the physics student has to barge in with technicalities.


9.8 m/s/s, not 10. We have to use 9.8 in class, so I always use it everywhere else too. We usually use the SI units too, which all (mostly) happen to be metric. However, in all my maths classes, we use imperial units. I happen to be decent in both, though I use conversions like 2km = 1 mi, 2.5 cm = 1 in, etc. I'm not good with pounds to kg, but I am working on it.
[...]

Oh Isantop ---
1.6 km = 1 mi , not 2 km.
2.54 cm = 1 in.

2.2 lbs = 1 kg

[Standard]

As a surveyor here in the U.S. I daily get to use: chains (Surveyor's chain = 66.0 US Feet, Engineer's chain = 100.0 US Feet), 1/2 chains (rarely), Rods (16.5 US Feet), Links (1/10 of a chain or 7.92 inches). I also get to use the engineering chain which is broke up into feet and tenths of a foot, and the tenths of a foot further broken up into hundreths of a foot. Of course this all goes out the window when working with survey grade GPS which measures in metric, but kindly will give us measurements in either US feet or International Feet!

Add to that our state of Illinois DOT (Dept. of Transportation) which occasionally decides that we ought to be building our roads to the metric system ( /rant on: we after all import all sorts of crushed aggregate, asphalt, and pvc piping from overseas /rant off). Whenever we have to stake a job in the metric system all the contractors pull out there english rulers and flip them around to see what the metric equivalent is

I still like to buy my Black and Tans by the pint though. int:

[davedove]

Whenever we have to stake a job in the metric system all the contractors pull out there english rulers and flip them around to see what the metric equivalent is

And that, I think, is the main problem - having to convert between the two. I can do one or the other, but going back and forth requires some mental gymnastics.

I will say though, that one tends to think in the system that's most familiar. I can talk in metric, but I have to do a mental conversion to visualize that in the real world.

[sathor]

As a surveyor here in the U.S. I daily get to use: chains (Surveyor's chain = 66.0 US Feet, Engineer's chain = 100.0 US Feet), 1/2 chains (rarely), Rods (16.5 US Feet), Links (1/10 of a chain or 7.92 inches). I also get to use the engineering chain

I'm sure you wold appreciate this story. (true btw)

I was in college, and over spring break (Only about a month and a half into the quarter) my mapping teacher up and died. (a mere 2 months from retirement) One thing he required was the engineering ruler, with the tenths side on it. He died before we got into how to use it, and he took the password for his computer with grades and what he had taught with him) So, the first week with a new teacher, we have a test where we need to find out the distance of a building on a topo from another object. I had almost a full page of base60 and base ten conversions to get the answer. I was the only one that showed such work. Everyone else guessed. The teacher looks at the class and said, 'you just flip the ruler to the :60 side and it tells you exactly. That's why you have these rulers. didn't he go over that with you?' to which he found out that all we were taught was that the Asians didn't use north for the top of the map, and we needed legends and such. Soon after, we learned that a mile isn't always a mile, and there are two different measures for it, but not to worry about them, because it all works out in the end.

Of course, the replacement teacher was the department head, who was a little twisted, he demanded that topo lines never touch when we make a map, which is fine and all, but then gave us an assignment where he knew it wouldn't be possible with the scale he gave us to use, just to teach us that you can't always use the scale you want, because you can't make the lines fine enough by hand. (I was out of town due to my dad getting sick again, so I did my map by hand, scanned, printed/enlarged, drew the next lines, repeated, and emailed it to him. and it was still dang hard, using a .3 lead. (I miss using .3 pencils)

[vmac3205]

Ah, but an American cwt is still 100lb, rather than 112lb. So, although there are always 20 cwt in a ton, an American ton is only 2,000lb and an Imperial ton is 2,240lb. Sometimes these are referred to as a short ton and a long ton, if you want to confuse the issue further. Then there's a metric tonne, which is 1,000kg, or about 2,205lb.

So now we know which weighs more, a ton of feathers, or a ton of gold...