Litres and Gallons

[lankeela]

Why is it when petrol has been sold in litres for years now we still refer to how many miles a car can do to the gallon?

And why when the weather forecast is on and they give the temperature in centigrade, do they follow it up with it in fahrenheit?

[shammydodger]

Have you ever noticed that, with the weather, if it is cold we tend to refer to the temperature in Celsius (e.g. "it's minus 2 this morning) but when it's hot we tend to use fahrenheit (e.g. "crikey, it must be 90 today)?

[Quizmonster]

Because so many British people are of a generation which was virtually never taught the metric system. At 68, I confess it means practically nothing to me, for example. If, during a medical examination, I am weighed, I invariably say to the nurse, "What's that in real weight?" She'll tut disapprovingly, but it's not just oldsters...when a baby is born, I don't believe I have ever heard its weight given in kilos/grams, but ivariably in pounds/ounces.
And what are we going to do with our language once the metric system really does catch on? Will we ever say threateningly to someone, "Pull your socks up or I'll come down on you like 1,016 kilograms of bricks"?

[maxi29]

I'm glad someone else has noticed that baby anomaly, that's baffled me too. The hospital would have weighed the mother in kilos and then the baby in imperial; it's very weird.

[jno]

ask an Australian, Quizmonster - they (and other countries) went metric in the 1960s and 70s and manage perfectly well with the language, saving such proverbial sayings as they find useful and dumping the others in the waste bin of history with rods and ells. They don't think 100 is a wonderful temperature, they think 40 is (Australia on the whole being a bit warmer than Britain). In particular, a tonne is so close to a ton as makes no difference in common parlance.

Personally, I think the only drawback of metrics is that there's no equivalent of a foot; the gap between a metre and a centimetre is a big one.

[Loosehead]

Its all part of the imperial resistance movement, it just winds up the anal metric mafia. We will fight them on the beaches, in the fields and in the hedgrows, we will NEVER buy our bananas by the Kilo, NEVER!

[Quizmonster]

Nah, J! I can't ever see us saying, "Give him a centimetre and he'll take a kilometre"...or... "I'll whip you to within 2.54 centimetres of your life"...or..."I'll have 0.56831 litres of Guinness, please"...or a veritable host of such sayings.
Nor can I imagine we'll vary them to some vague metric equivalence such as "I'll whip you to within three centimetres of your life" either.
And nor should we!

[jno]

Quizmonster, I'm by no means sure of this, but I believe there was once a saying 'Give him an inch and he'll take an ell'. My guess would be that we now hear 'mile' more often because ells just fell out of use. (Though a dim memory tells me it may have been a Scottish variant rather than the ancestor of the current phrase.) This does suggest that 'Give him a centimetre and he'll take a metre' could perfectly well become an accepted saying if people felt the need.

As for whether it should happen... I for one regret the wasted years learning complex and now pointless 'money sums'. I wish we'd had decimal coinage generations ago. Do any of these retro activists really want to go back to ha'pennies and groats?

[Quizmonster]

Quite, J, but how long do you think it will be before 'mile' falls out of use? We've had metric money for a generation, but nobody I know talks of his car's fuel-consumption in "kilometres per litre" or its top speed in "kilometres per hour", just as Lankeela says in the question.
Bear in mind that America still uses miles, despite having had metric money for...well, I suppose, centuries.
If you ask someone's height, he'll almost invariably tell you in feet and inches. And so it goes on. I think I can guarantee that - only when nobody is left alive who can remember "the old days" - will any of the predicted changes really take effect...and by then I'll be long gone!

[Snowy Owl]

America still uses Fahrenheit too......

[jno]

that's just because nobody in Britain quite has the courage to change, Quizmonster, including the government of course; and that I think is the answer to lankeela's question (sorry it took me so long, lankeela). But I can assure you antipodeans and I think Canadians quite happily talk of kilometres (or simply 'K's) per hour.

[frenchfriar]

Well, as an American, I happily retain use of Imperial measure... which I suppose, ought to be renamed American measure, as we are SO reluctant to go metric here, lol. but to answer jno's statement, there IS a decimeter between a centimeter, and a meter.. and our metric rulers ARE marked with them. I would say the tendency to retain "mpg" is an American influence, and I would imagine the weatherfolk are giving both, as an aid to transition.
I imagine our sayings will just shift, slightly, or drop out of usage. Or, remain the same, we still say, "I love you a bushel and a peck", and I have no concept of how much either actually holds, lol!
miles per gallon works out to a higher figure than kilometers per hour (I think?) so, that makes it sound better, just like $2.99 sounds better than three dollars.
However, all the people I know who use kilometers, call them "clicks", whether it be clicks per liter, clicks per hour, or just so many clicks distant. ...continued....

[frenchfriar]

...continued...
so, though i can't see somebody saying kilometers, instead of mile, I can see someone saying saying "clicks".
"give em a millimeter, and they'll take a click" has a nice ring to me... you have alliteration in millimeter, and click is nice and short.
or, how about "within a hair's breadth of your life", instead of an inch?
I doubt you will rename the pound note, as a kilogram note, lol!
However, the convcersion will be to a close equivalent measure. not a pint of guines, but a liter! sound good?

[waimarie]

Hi lankeela, I once had a quote for refurbishing a ceiling. This (in all seriousness) was written down as so much per running foot for the coving and so much per square metre for the ceiling. The tradesman seemed quite happy with this mish mash. Personally I have been working in metrics for the past twenty years and find it extremely simple. The only reason this country (UK) has not converted to metrics is because no government has had the ba*ls to make the decision.

I still shudder at the old maths problems we had to deal with at primary school : question, If potatoes cost one and sevenpence a pound, how much would a stone of potatoes cost? How much would hundredweight cost?

Give me metrics every time.

[shammydodger]

I'm with the metric brigade on this one. One of the few things that does get slightly on my wick is the tendency to use "kilos" to refer exclusively to weight. As us metricians (?) know all too smugly, "kilo" is a prefix meaning "thousand" and, on its own, is no more exclusive to weight than to, say, distance. But it's become the norm to use it in reference to weight alone.

[lankeela]

Well that woke you all up didn't it? LOL

While we're talking about learning at school, what the hell were logarithms all about????? Has anyone ever needed to use one since then?

[Narolines]

Why, frenchfriar, when everything in America has to be bigger and better, are your pints and gallons smaller than ours? Just wondering..........

[Quizmonster]

A good secondary point, Lankeela. I was invariably on the wrong page in my logbook - I think that's what we called it. In other words, when everybody else was on the 'tangents' page, I was invariably on the 'secants' one! As a result, I could never find the correct answer.
And, no...I have never felt the need to know a log, tan or sec ever since, which is hardly surprising since I never knew what any of them ever meant anyway! (I have got these strange words right, I suppose? It's an awfully long time ago in my case.)

[Dolly1308]

Quizmonster is right about Australia ,I've been here since 1966 (May) and Metric came in in Feb.1966 . At first I used to revert everything back to Imperial but now so used to it we never think about it .Kilos or pounds it doesn't matter ,our temp. today was 25 C (and it is the middle of Winter !) beautiful day . Bananas $12 a kilo (noone's buying at the moment) that's 2.2 lbs.so you see metric is easier and I did learn Imperial at school .

[reinganum]

I am only a few years younger than quizmonster but throughout my secondary school career was taught entirely in metric units (albeit the old cgs system which was shortly afterwards superseded by the SI units we use today). I have tried ever since to use metric units exclusively but I find it annoying when nurses, etc. "translate" weights into stones and pounds (which I find a tiny bit patronizing. Even when my new(ish) granddaughter arrived last year (a huge baby at 5.1 kilos)). Those nurses use metric in their notes and records, so why shouldn't we? (My son has a photo he took in the delivery room when his daughter was born. She's on the scales, which were clearly marked in metric units only.)
Guide for those still confused: less than 3 kg = small baby, 4 kg = about average, or a little above, and 5kg = whopper (and extra cups of tea for the tired mum!)
Of course, quizmonster might not have done science courses, which might account for his/her difficulty.

The preferred car consumption measure, I believe (petrolheads please confirm) is "litres per 100 km" but the mental leap we have to make is that here, low numbers are good.

And, lankeela, we use logarithms all the time here in this office!

I won't even try to explain that, really, we ought to express our weight in Newtons....

[frenchfriar]

Narolines, here's an explanation for the difference between us and uk gallons: http://www.miketodd.net/encyc/measures1.htm
it strikes me how recently that standard measurements were finally agreed upon!