Great Western Coffee Shop

No doubt though Electric train, like Mr Farage, you'll continue to enjoy the odd imperial pint.  :P ;) ;D

I quite like litres, BNM.

Farage. Mm. French is it?

Bit too heavy to lift is a 1000ml stein. Although it does allow for fewer visits to the bar, but possibly more visits to the Gents.

Why use km/h? There is nothing wrong with mph and indeed most drivers will be used to knowing these speeds, I see no benefit of changing.

I also find it difficult myself to imagine the km speeds on this forum as I have to switch to mph to compare it to me driving.

The only line where dual speeds are sensible is HS1, so any foreign stock can use it without having to have a mph speedo fitted.

Mph is miles better.

Tell that to anyone under 30 & they'll tell you they did metric at school

41 years old here. And I did metric at skool.

However, ask me my mass in kilograms, or my height in metres, and I've no idea.

10 years older and I started doing imperial and then moved to metric (with decimal currency thrown in) and I don't know my hectare from my kilogram...  ;D

May be we should use Rods, Bushels and Fortnights as the base units  ;D

Personally I am ambidextrous when it comes to imperial or metric, quit happy working in thous (1/1000") and I am in 1/10mm, although my ^Sd is a bit rusty now  :P

NR are changing to metric because all the material is supplied in meters, Tonnes all the designs I deal with are in metric even to the extent that "construction mileage" in meters  ::)  ;D is marked out on site.  The change has been a slow burn but I feel the time is right to make the move on the railways to metric

Quite interesting, I am 60 years old, when I first started school we only learned metric, even our rulers were only marked in centimetres, we were taught not to try converting to imperial all the time as by the time we left school nobody would be using it. It was not until I was about 10 that we started to regularly learn feet and inches in addition. Presumably an educational experiment that quietly went down the pan.

52 years old and I did metric at school. I still think in mph though and I can still convert Pounds and Pence to ^SD at the drop of a hat!

Oh and you'll also find km/h signs on NR in the Sunderland area where Tyne & Wear Metro trains run on their tracks. Here's an example:

(http://citytransport.info/Digi/P1020084.jpg)

I am 57 and learnt both at school. (Though we were allowed to leave out the questions in rods poles and perches)


I too can work in both sets of units.  When I started work the labourers could not (or pretended they could not) work in metric, so I would end up reading the drawing in mm doing the conversion and telling them what to do in ins.

Tonnes are easy as for all practical purposes 1 Ton = 1 Tonne! That conversion is not too challenging.

As for hectares I worked with someone who said he could never get on with them.  We then asked him to estimate an area from the plan. He could not. We then did so in Hectares. He could not understand how we did it until we pointed out that each one of those 100m grid squares on the site plan was 1 hectare. He was converted in an instant as no one could ever do the same for acres!

I am glad I never had to do engineering calculations in imperial units as there are so many factors to include for conversion of units.  Engineering is so much easier in SI units.

Also we thought 17.5% VAT was a pain to work out in metric money, think how difficult it would have been in ^sd!


However permission to be pedantic.  Meters are instruments we use to measure usage of electricity, gas or water and the like.  The SI unit of length is the metre.  The standard English dictionary of international standardisation is The Oxford English Dictionary not Websters!  The Americans might have more claim to set the spelling if they actually used the metre as a unit of measure.  

I will color my language accordingly ................ don't to be sent to gaol  ::) or is it jail by the pedantic police  ;D

I'm 6 years older, and did LSD at school.* I was the first generation of physics students at my grammar school* to have the acceleration due to gravity at 9.81m/^ rather than 32 ft /s^. But I later worked in France briefly*, and think metric more than I do imperial*, except when driving, where I think in pints (one max)*. Occasionally, I get weighed in hospitals, and the nurse always looks at my weight in kilos, and says, "I'll translate that into rocks and quids for you (or whatever)", and I say don't bother, I work to kilos, which leaves them open-mouthed*, as not even teenagers do that. But calculating body mass index by dividing your weight in Kg by the square of your height in metres must be so much easier than the 19th century equivalent.

(*I'm not proud of everything I've done, although I enjoyed most of it at the time.)

I think we need to go easy here or one of our forum bosses will be splitting this off into a "Forum Members' ages and Units of Measurement" thread  ;)

Interesting, I'm the same age. I started learning imperial at primary school but soon switched to metric. At grammar school I only learned metric too, never touched imperial other than for the odd mph in maths. This was early 1960s! Apologies for thread drift  :)

As you can see I've taken the veiled suggestion on board and split this discussion on units of measurement away from the Extending Crossrail to Reading (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1109.msg154975#msg154975) topic.

bignosemac. Aged 41^. 5'10" and ?st ?lbs.  :P ;) ;D

As an aside to this aside, I'd like to take warmly by the throat the dimwit who decided to use the lower-case 'm' for 'miles' on motorway signs... apart from the confusion it must cause foreign drivers ('Services 15m' - Better hit the brakes then!) it will make things that much harder when, as must surely inevitably happen, the roads go metric.

If I remember correctly my Video 125 programme on the Brussels-St Pancras run, HS1 does not have dual speed indication.  It's all in kph and the Eurostars are likewise speed calibrated.  Can't say anything about the 395s (Southeastern HST's) and Class 92s or how they manage off HS1.  I'm sure someone on here will know.

The other comment is that many trains on NR are of 'foreign stock': Spanish, Italian and Japanese, immediately come to mind.

Early to mid twenties and I couldn't tell you my measurements in metric either.  Always done that in imperial.

I distinctly remember being taught both metric and imperial at school, even learning the 12-times table.

Working in science, I've been conditioned to using standard units (i.e. metric) for everything, but having to switch to the metric-imperial bodge of everyday life.  Metric is considerably more logical and it would be great if everything changed at some point in the future.

I'm 26 and did both, my maths degree specifically requires me to know conversion factors.

I know my university engineering course, starting an 1968, was the first in SI units. I think most universities would have changed over within a few years of then. Of course all the previous exam papers we used for practice were in medieval units - a bit of a shock in mechanics and thermodynamics, that. Fortunately there never had been any imperial electricity.

The history (Wikipedia and other) says metrication didn't really get going until after that, which is not how I remember it. But of course school science was all metric from much earlier, as I am sure it was in universities. That was cgs, so they still had to change over to SI (or MKS as it was called then) - though some physicists still haven't fully done that.

So we had imperial (and LSD) at primary school, for "life skills" (as it wasn't called), almost none at secondary school, and pre-1968 would have to re-learn some of that theory in imperial for an engineering course and career. Given that quite a lot of work contexts, as well as educational ones, have a mix of engineers and scientist by background, you can see why the impetus to change came from there. Doing calculations with a slide rule makes all those funny units a right pain, so the engineering professions were very keen to give that up.

Personally, I'd rather we did change over for units. That does not necessarily mean changing customary sizes, or only very slightly - that's a different matter. I have a feeling the biggest difficulty is the way certain newspapers promote the idea that all change is a form of dangerous alien infection, finding it helps to sell their product.

Crikey! By the time I was at primary school we weren't even getting milk.  :P ;) ;D

My thermo-fluids lecturer at Bristol Poly insisted on using the gravitational FPS system, with the 'slug' as its fundamental unit. This was in 1978...

So here are two good reasons to use SI/metric units:

1. They are not insane. This makes them pretty unique among systems of measurement;
2. They don't carry the parapox virus.

The Class 395 does have dual speed indication. On HS1 it uses the Transmission Voie-Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_voie-machine) (TVM-430) in cab signalling system which gives the driver a target speed to attain/maintain, along with a digital actual speed indication shown in km/h. When the Class 395 switches from HS1 to third rail for running on the 'classic' network the digital actual speed indicator switches to display the speed in mph. Drivers must then abide by lineside signals and speed boards.

I know this from 'driving' the Class 395 on the St Pancras - Faversham add-on for 'Train Simulator 2014'.  ;)

Here's a video of the TVM-430 system in use on TS2014:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMRYb5ds1Cs

The switchover from km/h to mph is around the 17 minute mark at Ebbsfleet International.

I knew I wouldn't be let down!  And, like mine, such excellent academic sources. ;D Thanks BNM.

The problems with the "old" units were that they did not well distinguish between mass and weight, (which is a force), producing oddities like the slug that you mentioned and its relatives the pound force and the poundal; also that they did not incorporate the first law of Tdics, so as to use the same unit for heat, work and energy, avoiding the BThU and the horsepower-hour.


That the metric system is as "Imperial" as it is  French is evidenced by the names of the units: Newton, Watt, Joule, Kelvin, Rankine etc.

It is still  a pity that so many commentators can't write units correctly (capitals for proper names, l.c. for multiples) and that power stations are rated in 1000's of homes powered. What is the conversion?

OTC

Ah the conversion to Watts is (number of 60W lamps in a house * the number of bedrooms / the number of WC's) * the number of houses on an estate squared

If that doesn't come up with a sensible number or don't fit what you are trying to prove dream one up  ;D

My father was a carpenter and I recall how he said that when he had a new apprentice straight from school he had to teach them and get them used to using imperial measurements now that they were in the real world. That was however many years ago but he also commented that sheets of plaster board were measured imperial one way (16 inches to fit into the standard gap between ceiling beams), and metric the other way. Subsequently they converted the 16" precise measure to a metric one going into (how many?) decimal places. Perhaps they have metricated the gap to a precise metric number now but what about the millions of homes built in the pre-metric age?

Not quite. Wickes catalogue lists standard baseboard as 1220x900 mm. Now 48" is 1219.2 mm, and plasterboard is soft enough for that to be an exact fit. In any case no house was ever built that precisely.  A few other board materials, such as loft flooring, come in that 1220 mm size.

There are clear benefits of using metric for construction purposes.
(despite the fact that everyone uses ft for height, oz for babies and lbs for weight...)

In schools, clearly both should be taught, with an emphasis on converting without a calculator.

But I don't see any benefit of adding confusion by switching speeds to km!
It was just like when they switched to litres for petrol. Now I have mpg and litres mixed. Why not just sell petrol in gallons?

The gov has ruled out any switch on the road (thank goodness, how much money would it cost to yank out every 100 yds to go sign and move it 10 yds!)

All those of you that went to secondary schools in the 50s and 60s in the Bristol aerial ( ahem!) must remember the back covers of your exercise books! They had all the arithmetical tables of number,  imperial measurements of distance, including rods, poles and perches, together with avoirdupois (weight). Not forgetting the sketch map of Fifty miles around Bristol, which certainly burned into my brain !
Even if we were just colouring the map in, during a wet playtime, we were learning where places were in relation to each other. As a junior school teacher of 30 years standing ( retired 10 years ago) I can see the value of reintroducing it,the updated metric tables and the map even now.

I was in Waterford, Republic of Ireland, some years ago. Around the area, there had been an attempt to convert to metric. Some direction signs were in miles, some in kilometres. Some looked fairly new, but bore only a number,  giving ni indication which stable they belonged to. When I asked what the plan was, I was told that no-one really knew, but it didn't matter, as none of them were remotely accurate in either denomination. Set off, and you'll get there, was the sage advice. I enjoyed my stay greatly.

Who recalls the Metrication Board's helpful rhymes from the early 1970s?
"Two and a quarter pounds of jam
Weighs about a kilogram"

"A litre of water's
A pint and three quarters"

And my favourite bit of official doggerel:

"A metre measures three-foot three
It's longer than a yard, you see".

Meantime, it's about time we joined our European neighbours in having all cars driven on the wrong side of the road. If it's a success after a month, the lorries and buses could move over as well

And a month after by motor bike and push bikes  ;D

As I was once told, in no uncertain terms, a woman will never quote her measurements in anything other than inches.  ;D (especially if the centimetre equivalent is over 100)

Hmm ... I wonder if anyone would dare to ask member broadgage for his views on that, erm, rule?  :P ;) ;D

You generalise, btline.

FT,N! (1.88m)

All of my domestic DIY construction and repair activity is calculated in feet and inches - that drives my teenage son mad, as he doesn't understand a word of it.

Chris, age 55, 6 ft, 34 in waist (on a good day).  ;) :D ;D

Congratulations on your recent 200th Centaday!

Edit to correct units

Off course, Weight Watchers encourage the use of metric, as you lose weight faster...

I've just weighed myself on the bathroom scales, and I'm now 11st 9lbs (or whatever that is in kilometres).  ;D

It's all part of the dumbing-down process. The TV-watching public are supposed to be unable to cope with facts, especially ones with numbers in, so these have to be taken out wherever possible. It even happens on BBC2/4 or C4 documentaries, where you suspect the viewers are likely to be at least as numerate as the programme makers.

The recent "Cloud Lab" proigrammes were particularly bad; you could see how the meteorologists had been leaned on to dumb down their scripts. So they tried to explain how much latent heat the moisture in a cloud could deliver by converting to electricity in "houses for a year". Pointless, as it is so hard to comprehend how big a cloud is.

I think they missed a trick here. I've been puzzled for a while why latent heat is so rarely converted into a temperature rise. I think the result is really rather startling - does anyone agree?

What you do is divide the latent heat of evaporation by the specific heat. The interpretation of the result is this: if the heat it takes to convert water to steam (or that is released in condensing it) is used to heat that water (or steam), how many degrees does it heat it by? The answer is: 540^C* (or 1120^C for steam). In a cloud, the water drops out as rain and leaves its heat behind, heating mainly air. The same equivalent temperature rise then is even bigger: 2277^C. So if you condense 0.5% water vapour by weight from air, it heats the air by 11 degrees! (e.g. start at a dew point of 12^C, and cool to 0^C). I think that explains a lot about the driving force behind tornadoes, hurricanes, and lesser storms, but I've never seen it done.

* Strictly speaking the unit of temperature difference is K (Kelvin), and ^C are only used for the scale with a defined zero. There was a long and rather Lilliputian dispute about this, and the acceptability of C^ and ^K.

73,935,000 milligrams

 :o

Another problem is that the latent heat or enthalpy of condensation is pressure dependent, becoming zero above the critical pressure, where the density of water and steam are equal.

Yet again, latent heat was the Achilles heel of Swindon's steam engines as it all had to be wasted up the chimney, eqalling perhaps 80% of the fireperson's efforts. A final example is in the late and lamented destruction of Didcot A's cooling towers or latent heat rejection plant. We may come to regret this.

OTC

Whereas all mine are done to metric units, because there's more of them, and they follow a logical sequence. This infuriates my wife, who thinks it far more rational to base the size the piece of wood she wants on the distance between nose and arrow for a randomly selected mediaeval longbowman, divided by three, then by twelve, then by up to 64.


I am soon to enter the world of Superkilodayuation.

FT,N! (1.88m, 85Kg and rising).

I sense a kindred spirit there.  ;) :D ;D

During my trip along the m4 this morning I noticed another anomaly - while on the direction signs we have distances in miles, the distance markers at the side of the carriageway appear to be in kilometres at 500m spacing...

Yes because the distance markers are for the maintenance crews (who work in metric) not the public. 

The signs I was referring to are the more obvious blue signs which actually called 'driver location markers' and are intended to accurately locate anyone stranded on the hard shoulder

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_location_sign (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_location_sign)

The small white, blue and red posts also display kilometres but are intended for other purposes, although I don't recall seeing any recently. Either way, it is a curious mix of units!

Yes, marriage is a compromise. Give them 2.54cm, and they'll take 1.6Km.  ;D

Time for a dram...

As a kid, I was always amused by the Weetabix boxes stating the nutritional information in milligrammes per ounce.