Unit confusion

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Ok remember one thing when dealing with measurements…

Taiwan (or Chinese) has their own units of measurement that are totally different than anyone else’s… so if someone tells you something costs so much per something, ask them what it is in metric. At least metric is international so everyone’s are the same… for example, the chinese inch is NOT the same as US inch. Chinese inch is exactly 3cm and US inch is 2.5cm. I found out the hard way because I have a ruler that has all of these measurements and I used the wrong inch to measure things out, thus causing problems… (thank God chinese inch is longer than US inch)

Long story short, some measurements were US inch and some were chinese inch, so things didn’t add up.

2

Heh heh I was building a cabinet thing a while back with two different tape measures, one I bought here at the ol’ corner hardware store and one that I brought from Canada. What a mess. I thought those there inches seemed a bit long.

On the plus side, when I measure my willy for improvements I can rest assured that it actually hasn’t gotten shorter now…

Centimeters are the way to go but it’s hard to break old habits. Especially when you’re erecting things.

3

yeah… but one can wonder… their inches are bigger, but not the rest… hehehe

and you also have that 600g thing…

4

Funny, everyone I meet uses the metric system that everyone else uses.

The only people using some funny, illogical, and archaic measurement system are the ones who mistakenly refer to it as “standard”. You know who they are!

5

The Welsh?

6

The Welsh?[/quote]

You’re getting confused. Resistance to sensible systems continues in a few backward countries around the world, but the Welsh Assembly has now agreed that:

[quote]Pupils should be taught to:

* understand and use the concept of place value in whole numbers and decimals, relating this to computation and the metric system of measurement
* understand and use decimals, ratios, fractions and percentages, and the interrelationships between them; understand and use negative numbers[/quote]

Of course, in the past it wasn’t so clear-cut. The Welsh used a system they called “sheep” for measuring things, which was a bit confusing because all the measurements had to be figured out in context. Were you talking about how much it weighed, how much space it took up, how far you had to chase it to get satisfaction, how long the satisfaction lasted, and as a unit of currency?

So, Almas John weighs about two sheep(weight). While his sister lives about two sheep(distance) from me. Both of them can drink a couple of sheep(volume) of beer, but Almas can drink an entire sheep(volume) in less than a sheep(time). I once bet him a lamb he couldn’t run a sheep in less than a sheep, but he chickened out. As you can see, it’s a pretty unwieldy system, and it’s complicated by the lack of vowels, so it has now been supplanted by the metric system as Wales tries to catch up with the modern world.

Searching for the above quote I found the following gem, which is hopefully a sign of things to come in the land which time has apparently forgotten:

[quote]In 2001 Julian Harman, of Camelford, was ordered to pay costs for selling Brussels sprouts by the pound while John Dove, now of Mevagissey, was ordered to pay court costs for selling mackerel at £1.50 a pound…
Thoburn, from Sunderland, was fined for selling bananas by the pound while Hunt, of east London, was given a 12-month conditional discharge for pricing pumpkins by the pound…
[/quote]

7

[quote=“Loretta”]Searching for the above quote I found the following gem, which is hopefully a sign of things to come in the land which time has apparently forgotten:

[quote]In 2001 Julian Harman, of Camelford, was ordered to pay costs for selling Brussels sprouts by the pound while John Dove, now of Mevagissey, was ordered to pay court costs for selling mackerel at £1.50 a pound…
Thoburn, from Sunderland, was fined for selling bananas by the pound while Hunt, of east London, was given a 12-month conditional discharge for pricing pumpkins by the pound…
[/quote][/quote]Exactly, it’s should be tru’pence a bushel, which everyone can understand.

What’s the point of coming up with this new fangled metric system when everything’s constant ? The old system is much more flexible when an inch or a gallon means exactly what you want it to mean.