Media mistakes

You have an interesting point. As an engineer I much prefer the metric system for all those nasty calculations I used to do. But speed in a car, distances between towns etc. - mph and miles. If I still had a car I’d want to fill up with so many gallons not litres. I buy pints of milk. Very occasionally go to the pub for a pint. If I want a litre of beer I’d go to the Munich Oktoberfest! I have got used to metric measurements for most other supermarket items, so I don’t want to go back to imperial weights for the veggies.
 
EEPhil said:
I buy pints of milk.
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I think not - I think you buy 568mls of milk but the bottle happens to be also labelled "1 pint".

What astounds me is that it is actually illegal to display distances in both km and miles. Some walking signs which said something like (for example) "Beach 1 mile / 1.6 km" had to be removed.
 
RobH1 said:
'...a one kilometre stretch of water - that's roughly the same length as a football pitch!'
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Just remembered there was something similar here when the local council were improving some play facilities nearby. One was a caged netball/football area that was stated as having IIRC 10" wide goals. I pointed out the error in a tongue-in-cheek way but they didn't respond.
 
There's a rather nice park in Lydney with a caged tennis court and adjacent outdoor ping pong table etc etc... and a sign which reads "no ball games"!
 
Black Hole said:
I recognise this is just banter, but IMO the issue here is what is commonly understood as a football pitch, and noting that the target audience is children – who might now visualise 1km as the length of a pitch. Pretty bad. I was tainted for years, decades even, by misapprehensions acquired as a child (sometimes by misunderstandings or even misinformation at school).

Because, as a child, great care was taken to measure feet and ensure shoes were foot-shaped, I genuinely thought women with "fashionable" pointy shoes must have pointy feet!
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I well remember early lessons at school measuring anything and everything with a ruler so got well acquainted of how big most common things are. But one thing I can't do is visualise how big an acre (or a hectare) is but apparently a football field is around 1.5 acres.
 
Acre is 4840 sq yards. It is a bit like remembering a mile is 1760 yards, and a ton is 2240 lbs, it either sticks forever (if old enough to have learned it at junior school) or never.
Then a cricket pitch is a chain long, 22 yards, and a furlong is 220 yards or ten chains. These are handy measurements for a medieval farmer who typically had to plough his chain wide acre plot.

But we are all metric now.
Fortunately a metric tonne, 1000 kg, is not so much different from an imperial ton, 2240 lbs; and 1 imperial horsepower is similar to 1 ps (metric horsepower); and the conversion factor kph to mph is simply multiply by 5/8.

Hectare is a tough one to grip though, at 100 metres by 100 metres it's awkwardly 2.47 times bigger than an acre. I can visualise 220 or 110 yards or 100 metres as running tracks, but 100 metres square?
 
EEPhil said:
You have an interesting point. As an engineer I much prefer the metric system for all those nasty calculations I used to do. But speed in a car, distances between towns etc. - mph and miles. If I still had a car I’d want to fill up with so many gallons not litres. I buy pints of milk. Very occasionally go to the pub for a pint. If I want a litre of beer I’d go to the Munich Oktoberfest! I have got used to metric measurements for most other supermarket items, so I don’t want to go back to imperial weights for the veggies.
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Being somewhat OCD I've recorded fuel and mileage etc in a spreadsheet for each car since my CP/M days. It can be a useful pointer to any creeping unreliability, or poorer driving habits....
While I was still commuting I soon became used to rating economy in miles per litre, ten being the target.
 
RichFX said:
Acre is 4840 sq yards.
...
Hectare is a tough one to grip though, at 100 metres by 100 metres it's awkwardly 2.47 times bigger than an acre.
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Brought up on imperial and partially metricated as an engineer I have never, ever been able to visualise an Acre or Hectare.

Not being a farmer it hasn't been much of a handicap :)
 
Black Hole said:
I think not - I think you buy 568mls of milk but the bottle happens to be also labelled "1 pint".
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A bit of a semantic quibble here. If it said 500ml or 1 litre with the pint equivalent I’d agree. But the whole unit is 1 pint (or 6 as EP posted, 4 for my use) with litres as fractions. Makers me believe I’m buying pints. :)
 
EEPhil said:
A bit of a semantic quibble here. If it said 500ml or 1 litre with the pint equivalent I’d agree. But the whole unit is 1 pint (or 6 as EP posted, 4 for my use) with litres as fractions. Makers me believe I’m buying pints. :)
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From the Weights & Measures section of gov.uk:

Units of measurement​

You must use metric measurements (grams, kilograms, millilitres or litres) when selling packaged or loose goods in England, Scotland or Wales.

The only products you can sell in imperial measures are:
  • draught beer or cider by pint
  • milk in returnable containers by pint
  • precious metals by troy ounce
You can display an imperial measurement alongside the metric measurement but it cannot stand out more than the metric measurement.
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Thus milk in particular has an exemption, according to whether it's a plastic bottle/carton from the supermarket or a glass bottle left on your doorstep (or from the corner shop). If the former (which I take to be the case, and certainly the case in post 443), it is being sold by the litre in containers which happen to be in pint units.

It's an academic nicety whether we're getting 568ml or 568.261ml for our money, but if we consider the amount of milk sold I guess all the 0.261mls add up to a bit more profit for the supermarkets.

But I return to my previous comment: if imperial and metric can be displayed together on product labels, why not signposts?
 
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MikeSh said:
Brought up on imperial and partially metricated as an engineer I have never, ever been able to visualise an Acre or Hectare.

Not being a farmer it hasn't been much of a handicap :)
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That was my actual point. Even harder when out for a walk looking over a large field on rolling countryside. But now I know a football field is about 1.5 acres I can start trying to practise visualising how many football fields will fit in a field.
 
EEPhil said:
I also cannot visualise areas as acres or hectares - metres squared every time.
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I think it's just a question of whether land area is relevant to you. I don't deal with acreage frequently enough to have a mental reference, but a farmer or a land agent would.

If I hear (eg on TV) somebody talking about (say) a 1,000 acre estate, I do a little mental gymnastics and the knowledge (by definition) that 640 acres = 1 sq.mile (see spoiler).

1 acre = the area of a rectangle 1 chain x 1 furlong, supposedly the area a man and horse could plough in a day;
1 chain = 22 yards = 1/80 mile;
1 furlong = 220 yards = 1/8 mile;
1/8 x 1/80 = 1/640.

For smaller areas, eg 3 acres, I'll work with the yards and trade off length with width: 3 x 22 x 220 = 66 x 220 = 132 x 110 yards... or near enough a square 120 yards (roughly 110m) across.

As to hectares: similar, but working from the definition that an area 100m² = 1 hectare, 100 hectares = 1 sq.km.

HTH
 
Black Hole said:
But I return to my previous comment: if imperial and metric can be displayed together on product labels, why not signposts?
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AIUI you live in or near Wales (we used to live near Chester). Having two languages on signs can be a PITA.
More than once I would pass a sign and by the time I'd 'scrolled' through the Welsh to find the English I was passing it and thus didn't get the message at all. :dunno:
 
MikeSh said:
More than once I would pass a sign and by the time I'd 'scrolled' through the Welsh to find the English I was passing it and thus didn't get the message at all.
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Yes, me too. When I first arrived the Welsh (being first) stopped me processing the signage completely, I didn't make it to the English at all. Even now, in the supermarkets the aisles are labelled with English in smaller text so I can't read it from sufficiently far away.

Then there are the public announcements: the shopping centre in town had a tannoy announcement in Welsh which nobody took any notice of, then after that in English that there was a bomb alert!

[soapbox]
All that for the few who actually understand Welsh, or more particularly for the minuscule few who don't (rather than refuse to) understand English. Urgent official documents get delayed by a week to be translated into Welsh (and checked). Every tax, DVLA (etc) form comes with a Welsh version which is immediately sent to recycling. And Welsh is compulsory in schools, where the curriculum time could be better spent on something practical.

It is an unjustifiable cost. Those who feel committed to keeping the language alive should do so of their own volition and in their own time.
[/soapbox]
 
As you pointed out you can’t have road signs that are too complex - the driver just can’t process it. So having speeds in mph and kph would be confusing. Wasn’t there some campaign to reduce signage on the roads for this reason? I’d have to check this to be certain but I think there is a low bridge sign nearby on a high speed road where the height is in imperial and metric. No wonder the bridge keeps being hit.
Milk: OK take the point but both Morrisons and Aldi are taking liberties with 4 pint bottles. They are not returnable and pint is quite prominent.
 
Black Hole said:
or more particularly for the minuscule few who don't (rather than refuse to) understand English.
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That might be true for the Welsh. There are more of them in England and they have been through (truanted from) the English education system - innit, man, yer know. :D
 
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