Fraction calculator

[RogerP]

.....why don't we just use centemetres and metres like we were taught in school?

... I and many others of a similar advanced years weren't taught metric at school.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Anyone using centimetres should be hung, drawn and quartered.

 

[Rich.ca]

I dont understand why we have to use mm when cm and a decimal point is far easier to read/take in. You don't say I drive 5000 metres to work each day, you'd say its 5km because its easier to understand

 

[beech1948]

Rich,

Its like this. NASA recently blew millions of dollars and 4 yrs of effort when the measurements on thier drawings did not agree...part were imperial and part were metric.......whoops. Nothing would fit together.

millimeters and meters work very well. Its either 347mm if short of a meter or say 1.347m if longer than a meter. Same applies to meter to kilometer. Upto 999 m its meters and over 1000m its kilometers.

The centimeter has no place in this at all. Frequently people write down a cm measurement and others come look at it and assume its mm....nothing fits. Centimeters are a waste of time and space. After all up to a meter its easy to just say 522mm. Its actually mentally more difficult to say 52.2cm and have to convert that back to use a ruler.

Say no to centimeters

 

[Droogs]

beech1948,
that was my missus' cousin, she was telling me about it last week. She was pretty miffed at wasting all that time on a bolt, wasn't impressed when I suggested checking out Screwfixes latest offers. :roll:

 

[woodenstx]

I'm 34, so was dragged up on Metric but Imperial was still a large fact of life, especially with my mother doing her sewing stuff. this means I can happily cope with both types. when working on stuff that needs measuring (unless pre designed) I will use the number that is the easiest to remember or perform the maths on :lol:

I agree that CM is a completely wrong unit of measurement. If you are under 18 then sure its ok.
A friend of mine showed me a design he did for some shelves etc... 240CM long.... His design went back in m/mm :lol: he does live in Wales though so you could almost let him off.

 

[lurker]

Rich,

Its like this. NASA recently blew millions of dollars and 4 yrs of effort when the measurements on thier drawings did not agree...part were imperial and part were metric.......whoops. Nothing would fit together.

millimeters and meters work very well. Its either 347mm if short of a meter or say 1.347m if longer than a meter. Same applies to meter to kilometer. Upto 999 m its meters and over 1000m its kilometers.

The centimeter has no place in this at all. Frequently people write down a cm measurement and others come look at it and assume its mm....nothing fits. Centimeters are a waste of time and space. After all up to a meter its easy to just say 522mm. Its actually mentally more difficult to say 52.2cm and have to convert that back to use a ruler.

Say no to centimeters

I was going to mention NASA. When you mix systems you get space shuttles blowing up.

 

[DiscoStu]

In a previous company our marketing girl ordered some big brushed aluminium sheets for a stand at a show. We hired a man with a van to go and collect them and he phoned to check what he had was correct. "10 sheets of brushed aluminium is what you should have", said our boss. "That's what I've got" said the driver. "All good then" said our boss. The driver then questioned why he'd been sent to collect them. "What do you mean?" said our boss. "Well I've got the sheets but I'm holding them in the palm of my hand?"

Our marketing girl had confessed with CM and MM.

She didn't last long.

 

[MCB]

Can anybody explain why wood is sold by 30cm lengths rather than by the metre, please?

I needed some 2m lengths during the summer but had to buy 2.1m lengths

I could only just fit it in my car!

MC

 

[Phil Pascoe]

IT's not. Try buying 2.2 metres or 3.7 metres.

 

[Jacob]

Can anybody explain why wood is sold by 30cm lengths rather than by the metre, please?

I needed some 2m lengths during the summer but had to buy 2.1m lengths

I could only just fit it in my car!

MC

30cm is a metric nearly one imperial foot. Timber is sold in feet.

The thing about imperial is that it's the geometers and makers system whereas metric is for counters.
Makers often want to divide things by 2, 3, 4.., so base 12 works best and leads up to 360º or down to 1/64" (beyond which 1/1000"s become more useful)
Dividers (the instrument) would have been well used well before any standard measurements were set up. Simplest useful divider is a length of string - easily folded into 2, 3, etc and if it's long enough can even divide large areas of ground - geometry being the first maths.
Counters use their fingers - giving base 5 or 10, and also use there toes so base twenty is common all over the place - we still have it as the "score".
So it's between makers and counters.

 

[DennisCA]

Centimeters are just fine and the preferred unit of use in the nordic countries, and since switching either to m or mm takes no mental effort whatsoever, there's nothing to complain about. So all three are used here and it's no problem going back and forth.

 

[MCB]

IT's not. Try buying 2.2 metres or 3.7 metres.

That would NOT have been possible, unfortunately, at the builders merchant where I bought it.

And it's rather too far to drive to Cornwall to buy from yours.

MC

 

[woodenstx]

IT's not. Try buying 2.2 metres or 3.7 metres.

That would NOT have been possible, unfortunately, at the builders merchant where I bought it.

And it's rather too far to drive to Cornwall to buy from yours.

MC

A10 timber will sell you what you want, as in they will cut it down from the 4.8M lengths they usually have, to your requirements.

 

[MCB]

IT's not. Try buying 2.2 metres or 3.7 metres.

That would NOT have been possible, unfortunately, at the builders merchant where I bought it.

And it's rather too far to drive to Cornwall to buy from yours.

MC

A10 timber will sell you what you want, as in they will cut it down from the 4.8M lengths they usually have, to your requirements.

Thank you

I'll try and remember that next time I need timber - but it may be that the extra journey would cost more than I'd save on buying the right length.

With best wishes and thanks again.

MC

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

The Imperial system was designed to be as complex as possible, with differing multiples of inches in feet, feet in yards, yards in rods, chains, furlongs and miles, ounces in pounds, pounds in stone, stone in hundredweight, gross, tons, blah blah blah. It gets even worse when the Americans use the same words as us but for different quantities...

One might suspect that, like formal grammar, the primary intention of the Imperial system was to create a barrier to entry, in this case to the professions and trades.

Metric is simple and consistent and the units interrelate neatly.

 

[Jacob]

The Imperial system was designed to be as complex as possible, with differing multiples of inches in feet, feet in yards, yards in rods, chains, furlongs and miles, ounces in pounds, pounds in stone, stone in hundredweight, gross, tons, blah blah blah. It gets even worse when the Americans use the same words as us but for different quantities...

One might suspect that, like formal grammar, the primary intention of the Imperial system was to create a barrier to entry, in this case to the professions and trades.

Metric is simple and consistent and the units interrelate neatly.

It wasn't "designed" it evolved out of the needs of people working away at real things. Rods/poles/perches etc for ploughman farmers, miles/furlongs for travellers, acres for land surveyors, feet/inches/yards for builders and makers, pounds/ounces for grocers, 360º for navigators or astronomers, and so on and on.....
So if you have the right units for the job in hand they may be really handy, whereas metric is one size fits all but sometimes not conveniently

 

[MCB]

The Imperial system was designed to be as complex as possible, with differing multiples of inches in feet, feet in yards, yards in rods, chains, furlongs and miles, ounces in pounds, pounds in stone, stone in hundredweight, gross, tons, blah blah blah. It gets even worse when the Americans use the same words as us but for different quantities...

One might suspect that, like formal grammar, the primary intention of the Imperial system was to create a barrier to entry, in this case to the professions and trades.

Metric is simple and consistent and the units interrelate neatly.

The units in the Imperial system interrelate too

For example one gallon of pure water at 4 degrees centigrade has a mass of ten pounds

What could be simpler than that?

The Metric system was based on the idea that the metre was one ten millionth of the distance from the north pole to the equator on a meridian through Paris.

Unfortunately, the Frenchman who did the calculation got his sums wrong!

MC

 

[bugbear]

The Imperial system was designed to be as complex as possible, with differing multiples of inches in feet, feet in yards, yards in rods, chains, furlongs and miles, ounces in pounds, pounds in stone, stone in hundredweight, gross, tons, blah blah blah. It gets even worse when the Americans use the same words as us but for different quantities...

One might suspect that, like formal grammar, the primary intention of the Imperial system was to create a barrier to entry, in this case to the professions and trades.

Metric is simple and consistent and the units interrelate neatly.

The units in the Imperial system interrelate too

For example one gallon of pure water at 4 degrees centigrade has a mass of ten pounds

What could be simpler than that?

1000 ml of water having a mass of 1 Kg, perhaps?


Anybody trying to convince themselves of the simplicity of the imperial system might want to look up how to interconvert mass between troy, avoirdupois, and apothecaries' measure, and how many yards are in a fathom, and how many feet in a rod.

BugBear

 

[RogerP]

For years I worked at schools. 9 times out of 10 if you asked a boy how tall he was he'd reply in feet and inches. Yet these kids had only ever been taught metric. :? I suppose "nearly 6 feet" sounds a lot better than 1.80 meters