Metric weights and measures

General Chat Chat / Discussions
161

I much prefer the SI system of measurements. I find it far easier to divide and multiply by factors of ten instead of twelve and three and one thousand seven hundred and sixty.

An American pint is 16 fluid ounces, based on our Queen Anne gallon, and a pint of water weighs 16 ounces. That makes sense. The powers that be decided to change our pints to 20 fl oz, so now a pint of water weighs an odd 1lb 4oz.

The metric system is much easier. A litre of water weighs one kilogramme. Dead easy to follow.

When I went to big school in 1965, we started learning the cgs system. A few years later it changed to mks.
When I started college in 1972, we were taught SI, except one lecturer who aways included work in imperial and SI. His argument was that when we went out into the real world, companies would be using both, and he was right.

The I in SI stands for international, because it is made up of units from all over the world, including UK units such as Watts, Newtons, and Kelvin.
All the units are linked.

As for “old money”, the shorthand for pounds schillings and pence was L S D, which stands for Libra, Solidus, and Denarius, from the very non British Roman dynasty.

Mups, it has already been mentioned I think, but I suggest you ask for 50mm Clout Nails, which have a big round head.

As for using cups to measure ingredients, that was designed so that recipes could be followed without the need for scales and weights, which not everyone could afford. It doesn’t matter how big or small your cup, everything is measured out proportionally, and the recipe will still work.
You could use your cups to make a cake, and your neighbour could use different sized cups. It wouldn’t matter. Your cups could be twice as big, so your cake would end up bigger, but both cakes would have exactly the right amount of ingredients.

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162

Fruity, are Clout Nails the same as Wire Nails?
I ask because others have suggested the wire nails, so I’m a bit confused.

163

Clout nails usually have big heads and are galvanised @Mups, but wire nails have smaller heads and are not galvanised. :nerd_face:

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164

Clout nails are used to fix sheet materials such as roofing felt to boards. Round wire nails are general purpose. Oval nails are used to secure architraves etc to door frames as their heads can be sunk below the surface, thus allowing the nail-holes to filled in and painted over.

165

We can buy milk in pints, quarts, 4 pints, 6 pints, ½ lt and 1lt containers. As a matter of interest, for the first time ever, V noticed that on our latest 4pt bottle of milk from M&S there are marks on the the handle side of the bottle giving the approximate remaining volume left in it. Has anyone noticed this before?

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166

No. Can’t say I have ever seen that, Percy.
Bit posh where you are, aint it? :grinning:

167

My 3 litre milk containers used to have something similar

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168

Yes, pints. We have a milkman who delivers to our door. It’s a pint. We also get his orange fresh orange juice. That’s in a 750 litre bottle. That’s UK for you…:slight_smile:

169

And you wonder why I get confused about all this metric stuff! :smiley:

170

I blame the government at the time, and successive governments for making such a dogs dinner of things.

Metric has been taught in UK schools since 1965. Fifty seven years later we are still using a hybrid. Part of the fault lies with the media, for example weather reports still quoting temperatures in Foreignheit and wind velocity in mph.
Celcius makes more sense, but if you want to stick with proper UK units, then we should all be using the very British and SI, Kelvin absolute temperature scale.

Metric units are dead easy to use because they are used mainly in multiples of ten, and conversion factors are mostly multiples of ten. Converting from one to the other is not as every one has a different conversion factor. Converting from one to the other is fraught with error, and can be extremely dangerous and life threatening in some circumstances.

Many SI units are of UK origin, and often made up of UK and foreign units.

For example, a kilogramme metre per second squared (kg m/s²) is a Newton; a Newton metre (Nm) is a Joule; and a Joule per second (J/s) is a Watt.

That’s a fair distribution of units in my opinion.

We are never going back to the imperial system, and as we old farts drop off our perches, those that follow us will gradually use more and more metric units until the old units fade in to history.

Mind you, I do like a pottle of beer every now and then, and no that is not a typo.

171

I hadn’t realised. Consequently, I assume that I was taught solely Imperial units at primary school. Obviously, that and the fact that in those days nobody used any metric units, I find Imperical units the natural ones to use.

As I have mentioned before, the only real exception I find useful is millimeters as I find them far easier to use for very small dimensions.

172

As I said in my first message Australia did the conversion very well (despite my objections)

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173

[quote=“Fruitcake, post:170, topic:91895”]
I blame the government at the time, and successive governments for making such a dogs dinner of things.[/quote]

I’m not sure that is entirely the fault the Government. There are the Real Ale fanatics and I think that kept the pint alive for one thing. And there are awful a lot of people who still prefer to weigh themselves in pounds and stones. That’s not the government’s fault.

174

Why do you say that Mups? We live in an area that used to have coal mines everywhere. Most of the houses round here are 2 up 2 down terraces so, I don’t think we’re even a teensy bit posh round here.

175

Only teasing you, Percy, because I’ve never seen marked milk bottles round here, so thought yours must be ‘posh’ ones. :smiley:

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176

Have a careful look down the edges of a 4 pinter - the markings are very small. I’m not saying all bottlers/shops have the same sort of markings on them, it’s just that V found them on this particular M&S milk bottle. I’m going to check again tomorrow when we do our next M&S shop and also at Sainbury’s 'cos we need cartons of Del Monte orange juice and multi-bags of Tyrrells crisps.

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177

Clear glass milk bottles don’t need a scale on them to see how much is left. :wink:

178

I agree. That’s what we get from our milkman. Same with the orange juice bottles. And the glass ones are recycled/reused. That’s a plus.

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179

The trouble with having milk delivered in clear glass bottles is, some of the vitamins and nutrients are destroyed if left out in the light too long. It should be delivered in beer bottle glass.

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180

So are the plastic ones, it seems:

How are the bottles recycled?

Waste service collections like ours collect recycling from households and businesses. They then transport it to a transfer station which is a central location for all waste collection vehicles to drop off their recycling loads.

Here, these materials are weighed and sent to processing facilities. Plastic milk bottles are sent to a materials recycling facility (MRF) where they will go through mechanical and manual sorting to remove any non-recyclable materials that have accidentally ended up in the load.p>

The plastic milk bottles will then be flattened and baled before transport to a polymer recycling facility. Then, they are industrially cleaned and turned back into the plastic pellets they began as.