The UK Metric Association says the UK should adopt metric road signs and furthermore should set a date for it, as soon as possible.I'd agree.
At school (and I think it's from 1974 at the latest - before I was born), children are taught metric measures, kilometres, metres, centimetres et cetera. Isn't it a bit confusing, then, for them to have to grasp how many yards it is until the next junction? I know when I'm on the road, I think a yard is similar to a metre, so when I see a sign for ten yards, I simply think it's ten metres. However, a yard and a metre are not the same. The distance might be comparable when it's five or ten, but five hundred? That's completely different. For example, one metre is 1.094 yards, but five hundred metres is five hundred and forty seven yards - and so on. Confusing for children or those of us who grew up going to school being taught metric measurements. Hardly a case for safety on the roads, is it!? The current dual system does no favours to anyone.
Also, didn't the Magna Carta demand one system of weights and measures for the whole country? Ok, so the Magna Carter was applicable only in England, but were these principles not adopted by the whole of the UK with its inauguration in the Act Of Union in 1800/1801? Answers on a postcard, please...
Imperial measures are obsolete. The only place they are now used is on the roads. Imperial measures are also messy and difficult to understand. Do you know how many ounces (oz) there are in a pound (lb)? Sixteen. Call me old fashioned, but I had to look it up. So you'd think there are sixteen pounds to a stone!? No! There are fourteen pounds to a stone. Eight stone is a hundred weight (cwt) and twenty hundred weight makes a ton. Also, where is the z in ounce? Where is the l and the b in pound? Where is the c in hundred weight? Confused? I certainly am. Metric is easy. Every measure is to the power of ten, ie, 10, 100, 100 and so on. Ten millimetres is one centimetre, one hundred centimetres make a metre, one thousand metres and you have a kilometre. Do you know how many inches make a foot? How many feet make a yard? How many yards there are to a mile? Do you know what a slug is? Or what a poundal is? No-one uses such terms these days, so why are we forced to use out-dated measures like inches, feet, yards and miles?
I got this from the UK Metric Association website:
Calculations take a single step
Suppose we want to find how much paint is needed to cover a wall. The wall's measurements are either 4.37 m long and 2.39 m high, or 14 feet 4 inches by 7 feet 10 inches; what's its area?
Metric case
The decimal basis of metric means we can find the answer straight away (with the aid of a calculator) as 4.37 x 2.39 = 10.4443 or approximately 10.4 m2.
Imperial case
Now we have to multiply 14 feet 4 inches by 7 feet 10 inches to get the result in square feet.
We can't do this directly without either converting to inches or decimalising the measurements in feet. Either way requires extra arithmetic:
14 feet 4 inches = (14 x 12) + 4 = 172 inches
7 feet 10 inches = (7 x 12) + 10 = 94 inches
Then 172 x 94 = 16 168 sq inches = 16 168 ÷ 144 = 112.278 or approximately 112 square feet.
Alternatively:
4 inches = 4 ÷ 12 = 0.333 feet
10 inches = 10 ÷ 12 = 0.833 feet
14.333 x 7.833 = 112.271 or approximately 112 square feet.
You might object that working in feet alone is, roughly, accurate. But why not choose a simpler, more direct method - metric - that allows any degree of precision?
---Very interesting, I'm sure you'll agree.
Metrication began thirty five years ago. Isn't it about time we now completed the process?
3 comments:
Just seems like a lot of pissing around if you ask me :) And the funny thing - I can't remember what we learned at school - a mixture of both I think. I'm the same as you with the Yard/Meter thing.
And the trouble with changing everything, means EVERYTHING gets changed, and let's face it, this country couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery on the best of days. Can you imagine them trying to change every single signpost, road marking and everything else with ANY level of competence?
If the Irish can do it, I'm sure we can! ROFL!
Good blog. I agree that We should go metric.
I learnt it at school, I am nearly 40 and still waiting for the UK to go metric. If we had kilometres on our road signs, instead of those awful European units called miles (invented by some imperialists in Rome before the time of Christ), then we would be much further to being a modern country with a sensible measurement system used by all and by the majority of the world. We expect the majority of the world to use the English language and they comply. So the least we could do is to join the international world and use metric. Using metric is so much easier than the old imperial system, and as minge commented, Ireland recently changed their roads to km and if they can do it, we can too. Or do people think that we are too thick here in the UK to understand kilometres?
Just one more thing, there is no such thing as kmph. The symbol for kilometres per hour is km/h
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