🇳🇱
Interesting fact of the day, about 78% of the worlds GDP is produced in countries using the metric system. 22% of the worlds GDP is produced by the imperial system (the system the USA and UK and a few other countries use).
@freemo , the USA has a weird hybrid system, where officially everything has to be done metric, but then translated to imperial for public consumption.
>"the USA has a weird hybrid system, where officially everything has to be done metric, but then translated to imperial for public consumption."
What "offical" requires that? DOT does stuff in miles, NOAA does stuff in Fahrenheit...
@Pat NASA. Auto makers use metric. Pharmacies use metric. Science is all metric.
My car speedometer uses mph. I've heard NASA refer to "Nautical miles". I don't think "everything" has be done metric. Science and medicine use metric anyway. I think beverage sellers are required to have liters on their products, and all food products need to have nutritional stuff on the package which is in metric, but I don't know which dept. requires that (maybe the dept of agriculture).
@Pat , your car speedo is made with parts that use the metric system. 10mm nuts, not 3/8ths. Your brakes are held on by a 17mm bolt. The legislation that defines how the car has to perform in a crash is written in metric tons of force.
@Pat there are literally government regulations on this. Often so we don't crash another hundred million dollar probe onto Mars. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-01-mn-17288-story.html
...or make a big space telescope that's out of focus. 😂
@Pat , slightly different story with Hubble, that was a part of the surface grinder that was put in upside down... but ya. Mistakes like that are compounded by having to convert units.
@JonKramer perhaps you mean thr UK? In thr usa we rarly use metric even internally.
@freemo I guess it depends on what field you are in. But no, I mean the USA.
In manufacturing, the UK has been completely metricated for donkey's years; the construction industry, likewise.
Aside from the use of miles on road signs (judged to be far too expensive to change), the use of MPG for fuel consumption (but not compatible with US MPG as the US gallon is much smaller than the UK gallon), the use of pint measures in pubs (but millilitres for spirit measures) and the continuing use of square feet and acres by estate agents, just about everything in the UK is fully metricated. However, in the personal field, I think most people still talk of their weight in stones and lbs but doctors use Kilos. Likewise with height, the public tend to use ft & inches but medicine uses centimetres.
Talking of metrication - when were you last prescribed a medicine in grains, scruples or fractions of an ounce? Even in prehistoric America, the pharmaceutical industry has been metricated for a very, very long time!
@Paulos_the_fog And milk, food, peoples weights... Sounds like you guys are still on imperial outside of engineering or technical pursuits more or less. When I was in UK last virtual everything Im exposed to day to day was imperial.
Not food - you are obliged by law to price and sell that in metric units in the UK - for milk likewise it may be a UK pint, but the the labelling has to be in millilitres. To me what the US does is utter insanity but thankfully it doesn't really impact me!
One of Britain's largest industries is the construction industry and that is 100% metricated (I would know - it's the industry I used to work in before I retrained as a software engineer).
@Paulos_the_fog I'd argue using two separate systems interchangeably is **far** more an insanity than having a purely imperial or metric system.
There is no such thing as a purely 'imperial' system
All the countries that use customary measures like the US, also use metric measures. All pharmaceutical doses are metric and most other medicine is likewise conducted in metric units.
Electricity and electronics have pretty much always been metric.
So far as the UK is concerned, professionals tend to use the metric system - the ordinary man in the street is the user of the old units!
1) Yes there is an imperial system just as much as there is a metric system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units)
2) Yes most countries that Officially and/or primarily uses the imperial system will also sometimes use units outside the imperial system, sometimes that will be metric
3) While I wouldnt say "professionals" in the UK exclusively use metric I think its fair to say scientists and engineers do at least. However describing what system or units a country uses is not limited to what their scientists use, and the fact is, as a country, they use a horrid mess of imperial, metric, and in some cases nonsense that is neither (stones instead of lbs). Far worse than the mess int he USA, at least they are consistent and use one clearly defined system.
Some years back, when I lived in France, after a well-watered dinner with friends, I had a party piece that never failed to have my audience practically crying with laughter.
All I had to do to induce these paroxysms of hysterical laughter was simply explain to them the intricacies of the imperial system of weights and measures.
You have to bear in mind that our dinner guests were invariably of French nationality and had been brought up in France. Obviously complete nonsense like the imperial system of weights and measures is not taught in French schools so they have no knowledge whatsoever of that criminally deranged system!
Compared to the elegantly simple metric system where, for example, 1cc of water equals one 1ml of water and weighs 1g, the imperial system of weights and measures along with the customary system used in the United States is phenomenally complex (the imperial measures used in the UK and the customary US units are not the same in all cases).
I always prefaced my explanation with “Every word I am about say is the truth – I’m not making this up”. They wondered and asked incredulously if I was kidding, at the rationale behind 1 yard = 3 feet, and 1 foot = 12 inches. They were even more astonished when I mentioned that there are 22 yards in a chain and that there are 5½ yards in a rod, perch or pole (the choice of term is yours). There are 40 rods (or perches or poles) to the furlong and 8 furlongs to the mile! By this time, their credulity was stretched to the absolute limit and they often began suggesting that I should see a shrink for what was clearly, to them, psychotic ideation! Having once again sworn I was telling them the truth; most people were moved to remark:
“No country could be so utterly, completely stupid as to use a shit system like that by choice, surely?”
I could but agree!
Then I’d start on the system of volume measurements where they would learn that there are 20 minims to the fluid scruple, 3 fluid scruples to the fluid drachm, 8 fluid drachms to the fluid ounce, 5 fluid ounces to the gill, 4 gills to the pint, 2 pints to the quart and 4 quarts to the gallon. (I know, I know American measures in this case are not the same as UK ones). Moving on to larger quantities. There are 4 gallons to the peck and 4 pecks to the bushel. There are 8 bushels to the quarter and we’ll leave measures of volume there but there is more!
Finally, to weights:
There 16 drams (or drachms) to the ounce, 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone (I don’t care whether Americans use stones – in the UK we do!), 2 stones to the quarter, 4 quarters to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to the (long) ton (the US ton is different).
Finally, I would mention that the system of standard weights used in the UK is known as the ‘system avoirdupois” which is old French for and pronounced exactly as “Avoir du poids” or in English “to have weight”. By this time, everyone was laughing so much at the overwhelming stupidity of the Americans and the British, that they were practically wetting themselves!
I was brought up in the UK but I have spent much of my adult life in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
When I was 13 (so in 1963) we were told by our physics master that we would be the last intake of students that would have to study Imperial weights and measures alongside the metric system. In future, he said, only metric units would be included in the course material. Bearing in mind that this was before electronic calculators, it was a real pain in the arse to convert between the two; something we wasted an awful lot of time doing back then!
I no longer have a use for British weights and measures as I have lived in metricated Europe full time since 1999. No one over here would understand a reference to any non-metric quantity and it seems like my brain has abandoned them too. I can no longer relate to my weight or anyone else's other than in kilos. Lengths have to be in centimetres, metres or kilometres for me to be able to visualize them. Fuel consumption has to be expressed in litres/100 Km otherwise it means nothing to me.
However, in all professional contexts (except perhaps estate agents) Britain is completely metricated but for a few minor exceptions. (the use of inch sized galvanised steel barrel with its associated inch thread sizes is one). Oddly enough, even here in Luxembourg where I have lived since 2004, although absolutely everything in life is metric and has been for centuries, they still sell galvanised steel barrel in UK inch sizes with its associated inch sized 'British Standard Pipe' threads!
@freemo just the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar still use it officially.
Officially maybe, but if your in thr uk you will be using it for damn near everything.
@freemo The UK is predominately metric now. Imperial is used for road signs & by the older community but for little else.
@Perrywong That has not at all been my experience when traveling to or interacting with people fromt he UK.. Just yesterday my friend from the UK (about 25) told me her weight and it was in stones.
@freemo Yes, I still measure my weight in stones & we still measure milk in pints, although the bottles display the volume in litres, 2.272 litres for a four pinter, if memory serves. We also still serve beers in pubs as pints but spirits & wine, in those same pubs, are in millilitres. Almost everything else i can think of is in metric but, again, there is a legacy from measuring in imperial. For instance, sausages are bought in packs of 454g which is basically a pound of sausages.
@Perrywong Yea thats kinda my point... a mixed system of units seems crazy.. I'd say thats much worse than the USA where at least the choice of units are consistent.
@freemo How we do temperature is truly bonkers. Officially it's in celsius but day to day living we've used Celsius in winter & Fahrenheit in summer. Almost as if to exaggerate the increase in temperature that summer brings . I've now personally managed to totally convert to Celsius but it has been a weird challenge.
@Perrywong I vote for kelvin in summer :)
@freemo Seconded.
Actually a correction, in that measurement the UK was counted as metric.. which is only partly true.. So the number for imperial system is a bit higher in reality.