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.
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
[ 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 ]
Even in the US we use metric tire sizing apart from a select few offload tires, which is annoying because its not even actual dimensions but more of a ratio or percentage of the overall width of the tire (in addition to the wheel size being in inches as you mentioned).
This diagram would also be spot on for me, except for a number of places - grams for baking which carried into most food prep, metric for measuring most things, actual distances rather than time - where the ease and efficiency went up demonstrably, and I couldn't justify going back. Except when searching online for recipes: then I swear a lot.
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.
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.
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.
I love trying new recipes, and I absolutely hate when it's a US recipe, and it'll include such wonderful measurements as "1 cup, 2 spoons" or "1.5 packed cups".
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.
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 in preserve 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.
Agriculture is even worse, you get to mix in archaic units like bushels. We also use two different gallons (imperial and american, they're not equal) and liters.
Oh, and which bushel do you mean? The Winchester or Imperial? And are you measuring oats or wheat? Because oats are 32lbs/bu in the US and 34 in Canada. But fuck you if you bring in a 34lb bushel, that's way too light for oats even though that's the standard measure. Of course, a bushel of rye is 56 lbs and a bushel of wheat is 60.
I sell truckloads in bushels for oats and barley, and tonnes for canola and peas.
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.
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.
Feet for altitude, nautical miles for distance traveled, knots for speed, statute miles for visibility, centigrade for temperature and dewpoint, pounds of weight and gallons or quarts for volume.
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.
I oversaw some construction and renos at work. Drawings were all in metric. Strange seeing some of the materials called out in mm when it's the typical North American building materials like dimensional lumber and sheet goods.
i feel your pain. this feels like my arguments my wife and i have about whether to measure something by weight or volume when we're cooking (i always say weight, she always says volume. it's gotten to be a running joke where i will get the scale out for water just to tease her if we're in a good mood)
"Time" haha, no no no! You mean "Conventional Sexagesimal Time".
Everyone loves the metric system until you bring up metric time, go ahead, go find your biggest metric fanboy/girl and ask them how they measure the passage of time, I'll wait.
74 replies
European variant:
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.
I always buy screws in millimeters in europe. Pipes are occasionally in inches, depending what kind of pipe.
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.
FTFY
both for car and light truck tires. inches for wheel diameter, millimeters for tread width,
Even in the US we use metric tire sizing apart from a select few offload tires, which is annoying because its not even actual dimensions but more of a ratio or percentage of the overall width of the tire (in addition to the wheel size being in inches as you mentioned).
Also, floppy disks.
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"
Tires are in inches, screws really aren't. Who wants 3/8 key?
JFC I though America had it fucked up sideways
you just see here the remnants of murican influence
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 diagram would also be spot on for me, except for a number of places - grams for baking which carried into most food prep, metric for measuring most things, actual distances rather than time - where the ease and efficiency went up demonstrably, and I couldn't justify going back. Except when searching online for recipes: then I swear a lot.
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.
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.
This is somehow worse than Americans using just imperial. Congrats Canada that's no small feat.
No no, they use United States customary units.
They're similar and some units are the same. But not all. Some only have the same name.
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.
I love trying new recipes, and I absolutely hate when it's a US recipe, and it'll include such wonderful measurements as "1 cup, 2 spoons" or "1.5 packed cups".
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.
I've yet to encounter humans weighed in kg. My scale is lbs, and so is the one at my doctor's office.
Of course I know him; he’s me!
how to measure things, like a canadian.
In that case, Imperial, if the chart is to be believed.
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.
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.
I have found a weird way to memorise the numbers.
Working week with half Friday and hour lunch break 9 to 5 is 32 hours per week.
Add and then subtract an indefinite amount is what gets me
The brain calculation could be simplified to C° * 2 (1 - 10%) + 32. It's easier to double and remove 10%.
25C - > 50 - > 45 - > 77F
100 is body temp so you can use that one to convert the highs. No idea what freezing would be in F
Iron freezes somewhere around 2800F, at 5 PSI.
F
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?
Is it for agriculture?
Imperial. Sorta.
I literally use units like mL per acre for something like boron application with fertilizer.
Agriculture is even worse, you get to mix in archaic units like bushels. We also use two different gallons (imperial and american, they're not equal) and liters.
Oh, and which bushel do you mean? The Winchester or Imperial? And are you measuring oats or wheat? Because oats are 32lbs/bu in the US and 34 in Canada. But fuck you if you bring in a 34lb bushel, that's way too light for oats even though that's the standard measure. Of course, a bushel of rye is 56 lbs and a bushel of wheat is 60.
I sell truckloads in bushels for oats and barley, and tonnes for canola and peas.
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:
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....
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.
Is a stone 14 nautical or statute pounds?
Never knew there were different kinds tbh. Weighing scales pounds.
Canadians may not be bicontinental, but they are a little euro-curious.
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.
Feet for altitude, nautical miles for distance traveled, knots for speed, statute miles for visibility, centigrade for temperature and dewpoint, pounds of weight and gallons or quarts for volume.
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.
also,
construction drawings: mostly imperial Office paper: imperial (8.5x11, etc)
I oversaw some construction and renos at work. Drawings were all in metric. Strange seeing some of the materials called out in mm when it's the typical North American building materials like dimensional lumber and sheet goods.
I wonder if this will change thanks to the current and likely long-term antagonism between the USA & Canada.
i feel your pain. this feels like my arguments my wife and i have about whether to measure something by weight or volume when we're cooking (i always say weight, she always says volume. it's gotten to be a running joke where i will get the scale out for water just to tease her if we're in a good mood)
I guess the Canadian being so measured must be that 4th route, Mass. 😜
"Time" haha, no no no! You mean "Conventional Sexagesimal Time".
Everyone loves the metric system until you bring up metric time, go ahead, go find your biggest metric fanboy/girl and ask them how they measure the passage of time, I'll wait.
Seconds are SI. Makes perfect sense to use kiloseconds, milliseconds. Hours are not SI but they are convenient.
Not sure what point you're tryna make.
more like cagaydians
You bring up an excellent point! It's not present on the chart, but we are also one of the most accepting of LGBTQIA2S+
Be excellent to each other!
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
being excellent to someone does not mean removing their comment