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David Cameron Says Brits Should Be Taught Imperial Measures

Posted by Soulskill on from the cripple-their-minds-while-they're-young dept.

00_NOP writes: Children in the U.K. have been taught in metric measures in school since (at least) 1972, but yesterday British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that they should actually be taught in Imperial measures (which are still in use officially to measure road distances and speeds, but not really anywhere else). Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?

16 of 942 comments (clear)

  1. FP? by dosius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's time for national units to finally be put out to pasture. Both US units and UK units.

    -uso.

    --
    What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
    1. Re:FP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Avery other nation has already made the trade, they switched to metric because imperial units were completely unusable when dealing internationally.
      Just recently it was found out that the Vasa ship was built asymmetrically because the workers were a combination of Swedish and Dutch and there was 11 inches on a Dutch (Amsterdam specifically) foot and 12 inches on a Swedish foot, so while the difference between the feet isn't that big the difference in the inch sizes are pretty significant.
      Staying with national specific units is just retarded.

    2. Re:FP? by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've forgotten about changing all the speedometers...

      Oh, you mean the speedometers that have both measurements on them already? All US cars do. Why the ignorance?

      ..and re-educating people to think of fuel consumption in litres/100 km instead of miles per gallon.

      Yes, because apparently the "E" and the "F" next to the new MPG fuel gauge means can't EFfing remember what this means anymore.

      Then you'll need to start on the railway system.

      The people who use them every single day will suddenly be lost? Forget how far it is to get home? Have you thought about the toilets yet, because they're gonna start flushing in the opposite direction. I hope people will remember how to use them.

      That will still leave the international airways system that refers to altitudes as 'Flight Level' which is height in units of 100 feet !

      Unless you're the pilot, you care about ONE altitude level when flying. Then one on the ground when you land safely.

      Yes, I mock this because Americans are forced to convert to the rest of the world all the time when traveling, and it is humanly possible. Even if the US changed every single speed limit sign tomorrow to from MPH to KPH, how hard is it to match a number on a guage in front of you to the sign posted on the road?

      I have a feeling any "conversion" would be about as difficult to handle as your cable company changing the channel lineup around. Perhaps a few weeks of grumbling, but eventually you get used to it.

    3. Re:FP? by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bullshit!

      Vasa was built asymmetrically because it was a Swedish engineering project. All Swedish engineering projects by definition must start big, go way over-budget, become completely unusable and reach market so late that they're no longer interesting. The project then burns to ashes, rises from the ashes reborn as something amazing and get sold to someone else. As an example look at "ericsson pipe rider cable modem" on Google and you'll see a proper Swedish engineering project that went so completely shitty that it would have killed the company and ended up rising from the ashes as a patent pool on the 10,000 things they created while failing at this.

      This is why I refer to all products resulting from failed Swedish projects as Vasa Projects.

    4. Re:FP? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Australia made the transition back in 1974.

      You'll survive.

    5. Re:FP? by goarilla · · Score: 5, Informative

      A tall person is over 6 foot. that has a nice ring to it. 1.8 metres is not human friendly. A foot is about the size of an adult foot, it makes sense.

      1.8 Metres is just as user friendly as foot when you're brought up in it.

      Also, our language, literature and petry is full of imperial words. We would lose a vital link with the past if we abandoned their use.

      And when was the last time you read ancient English scrolls ?
      By that logic we would still be writing glyphs and doing arithmetic without the 0.

    6. Re:FP? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I have a feeling any "conversion" would be about as difficult to handle as your cable company changing the channel lineup around. Perhaps a few weeks of grumbling, but eventually you get used to it.

      I for one am more impressed that a country who's citizens believe they are in the greatest and best country in the world, able to put men on the moon and build up an economy and military might that rules the world, somehow figure themselves incapable to achieve what 42 other countries around the world have done in the past 300 years.

    7. Re:FP? by Maddog+Batty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Go and ask any timber merchant for a bit of 2 by 4 and they will know what you are talking about but then ask them for what the actual size is. They will give you two answers, one for sawn timber and one for plained timber. The answers they give will be in millimetres and neither will be anything close to 50.8mm x 101.6mm. The length will also be given in metres.

      --
      wot no sig
  2. Reminiscing much? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're not an empire anymore, and going back to imperial measures won't make you one.

  3. Simple answer by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?

    Both.

    Mostly though because so many conservatives have a "we have always done it that way" attitude. Many of them don't have a clue that imperial measures are very different from US customary ones (we have 20 fluid ounces to a pint, and the US has 16). Many also don't know their pecks from their bushels, or their furlongs from their rod, poll, or perch, but think the system must be good "because its traditional".

    1. Re:Simple answer by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred.

      What could be simpler?

    2. Re:Simple answer by jbssm · · Score: 5, Insightful

      0 is a cold winter day, and 100 is a hot summer day.

      0 C is a freezing winter day, 8 C is a cold winter day, at 35 C it's a hot summer day and at 100 C I'm getting severely burned.

      So what is the difference exactly, except that you learned a set of numbers in Fahrenheit trough your experience, and we learned another set in Celsius trough ours?

  4. The best quote from the article by Required+Snark · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then again I could just recall that John Stuart Mill was moved to remark to the House of Commons: “What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.” (My emphasis).

    Note that this has been true from the time of Mills, 1806 - 1873, so it's not a recent phenomenon.

    I would hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between conservatism and stupidity; the more extreme the conservatism, the stupider the person.

    --
    Why is Snark Required?
  5. Re:Feet and inches by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Informative

    try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances

    What's wrong with thousands of a mm? Here in Europe, engineers, machinists and the like have happily worked with metric for ages.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  6. 'Muricans by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    America knows it isn't special.

    I live in the US and a good portion of the US population does think it is special. They are wrong but they do honestly and earnestly believe it. "Greatest country in the world" and all that nonsense.

    America is lazy and hates change.

    America is anything but lazy though you are correct that many of them do hate change. Americans work more hours than almost anyone else in the world on average so lazy isn't a label that really fits. But people in general do not like change.

    Metric is taught in most schools, especially those in science.

    Foreign languages are taught in most schools too and yet only a minority of native born americans are bi-lingual. Doesn't matter what is taught in schools if it isn't used in the real world.

    By the end of the century America will be Metric too.

    I do not share your optimism on that though I wish it would happen. Officially we do use metric but I don't see the US switching to metric for daily use in my lifetime and I'd honestly be surprised if it happened in the next 100 years. Maybe it will but I'm dubious.

  7. Re:Idiot by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 5, Informative

    1 cup of flour is trivially measured by volume: Just grab the "1 cup" cup from your set of measuring cups, scoop up flour from your storage container, level. You're done.

    This is indeed easyâ"but very inaccurate: it can lead to the measurement being out by as much as 30%.

    MOD PARENT UP.

    Professional bakers actually don't use volumes or weights when they state a recipe -- they use something called "baker's percentage," where 100% = the weight of the flour. Not the volume; the weight. All other ingredients are stated in proportions relative to the weight of the flour, making it easy to scale a recipe up or down. This is because bakers actually realize that weighing is so important because of the compressibility of flour.

    If you're making bread, for example, an error of 30% in measurement of flour is the difference roughly between the stickiest wettest possible dough you could work with (producing a very crusty bread with large holes, like pizza or ciabatta dough) and a dry dough that is so tough that it's barely kneadable by hand (like bagel dough). Almost all of the varieties of bread fall in that range of about 30% error in flour measurement.

    Baking requires somewhat more precision than other cooking, because once you throw the batter/dough in the oven, you can't make modifications. It's not like making soup where you can just taste it while cooking and say, "oops! I forgot the salt!" and just add some and everything will turn out okay.

    If you're baking bread or a cake and say "1 cup of flour," you might as well just say "Add enough flour to get the 'right' consistency... whatever that is... you just have to know." Because with volume measurements of flour, it's REALLY hard to get consistent results unless you're skilled in recognizing what the final batter/dough is supposed to be like already.