As predictably as UKIP politicians dressing in tweed, calls to return to Imperial measurements have being doing the rounds in the media within days of Theresa May triggering Article 50. Whilst this may sound trivial, the passion and practicality runs very deep.
The Active Resistance to Metrification has removed or vandalised thousands of metric road signs. The “metric martyrs” championed in sections of the press, sold goods illegally using only Imperial measurements. At the same time we currently use the same metric units as the counties we have over 90% of our overseas trade with, a boon to the ‘frictionless trade’ that our Prime Minister wants. And they won’t be changing units just because of our Brexit!
As well as avoiding all the chaos that would come from de-metrification there is another reason to resist these calls. That reason is the threat to our science, technology and engineering base. We have generations in the UK taught how to interact with the world in metric units and a quick look at some of the fundamentals of science shows why:
- g – how fast an object accelerates under average Earth gravity – 9.81 metres per second squared
- Celsius – the temperature scale between the freezing and boiling of water at 0 and 100°C
- the kilogram – the mass of one thousandth of a cubic metre (a litre) of water
- concentration – how much material is dissolved in a liquid, measured in mols per litre
What’s the common factor? All of them are metric.
When scientists publish their work, they will do so in English, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French, German, etc. depending on their primary language and what scientific journal they want to publish their work in. So what makes the true lingua franca of scientists? A large part is the numerical data from that scientist, including the metric units they are in. That lingua franca, those shared standards, are so strong that any draft scientific paper written in Imperial units would be rejected. The same need for shared units will manifest on any international science, engineering or technology project. The additional complexity of different units on top of different languages, cultures, etc. is a problem no one needs.
If we remove ourselves from the metric system in a fit of anti-EU pique, not only do we remove ourselves from the commonality of virtually all the rest of the world, not only will we need to teach everyone younger than 42 how to use the Imperial system, but we will have to teach future generations the “special metric system” as well. This measurement confusion will be yet another barrier for the promotion of Science, Technology and Engineering in schools. It will also be another Brexit barrier to our international collaborations (if we can negotiate any).
And, if this all sounds a bit too theoretical, spare a thought for the Mars Climate Orbiter. In 1999 it got too close to the upper atmosphere of Mars at too high a speed and got torn apart. Why did that happen? Because one of the computers was working in metric units and another was working in the US units which have been in place since independence. The resulting mismatch caused the spacecraft to be in the wrong place at the wrong speed. Now imagine that miscommunication happening to a UK-built car on the motorway between components built from all over the world!
So, whilst campaigning against all the self-inflicted damage Brexit and Article 50 is causing to the UK and our presence internationally, remember the gram and the metre. We need them, and all the other metric units, to be our primary way of measuring the world, as much as we need everything else.
* Peter Scott Brooks is a Liberal green feminist, geek, and party member since 1997. A PhD chemist now studying accountancy whilst working in local government.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
The Joy of Six 1533
Have resignations led to a rethink?
High Fell leaflet watch (2)
Two new Makerfield by-election polls gives Burnham 5 and 12 point leads
Peter Martin
expats
theakes
Meg Thomas
58 Comments
I have said this before, all over the internet, metrification had nothing to do with the EU. When I started school, way back in 1960, I was taught both imperial & metric. This was because the government had already decided that the country would go metric. We weren’t in the EU (or EEC) at that point.
This is a bit of a res herring. Most people still think in miles, often measure their weight in stones and pounds, their height in feet and inches, when they go to the pub ask for a pint and certainly on Leicester market fruit is sold by the bowl not in metric measurements. Imperial measurements are better for a quick estimate because yards, feet and miles are convenient. Men’s clothing usually gives waist. leg and collar sizes in inches. My Dad used to say that imperial was easier to work with because subdividing in 12s or was easier than in 10s. The advantage being you can have 3rds without recurring numbers. No one offered a convincing explanation to me why any should be prosecuted for using imperial measurements. It’s sort of like that bizarre Peter the Great attempt to impose modernity by forcing men to shave their beards off. Having said that, I grew up with metric and think a bit of common sense is in order. Where it’s convenient just let people use imperial and not make a big song and dance about it, coz actually we live in a country which already uses both especially to describe the weather.
This isnt going to happen and is a distraction.
Having said that, the absurd policies in the 90s that criminalised listing groceries in imperial measurements first was utterly stupid, and unfortunately set the tone for the coming 2 decades of anti-EU rhetoric. Imperial measurements were dying out naturally, and there was no need at all to put criminal law behind the migration. I remember being angry about it at the time – the creation of the “metric martyrs” was one of the biggest and most unnecessary own-goals of the whole European project in the UK. If we were to re-run the last 20 years we would definitely avoid that ridiculous bear-trap this time. Stupid bloody-mindedness from Whitehall and idiot politicians…AGAIN!
Dividing by 12 is essential though. Can I have a 12th of a peck please? OK that’s 1/6 of a gallon or 2/3 of a quart or 1 and 1/3 pints, so 1 pint and 6 and 2/3 fluid ounces, or 1 pint, 6 fluid ounces, 5 and 2/3 fluid drams. Marvellous.
How many pounds in a hundredweight? Easy. It’s 8 times 14 or 112. From that you can work out how many pounds in a ton 112 times 20 or 2240
And remember a troy ounce is heavier than an avoirdupois ounce so don’t let the gold merchant rip you off. But a troy pound is only 12 troy ounces and lighter than an avoirdupois pound. (Why do imperial measurements have a French sounding name like that anyway? Take back control!)
Yes, fun if you like bamboozling people, but little use if you need to do any serious calculation. Most people don’t and can afford to be indifferent.
The perceived ease of use advantage of avoirdupois is I think down to three things:
1. Familiarity. Some of us are cursed with familiarity with an inferior system.
2. Short unsystematic names. Once you know what feet and inches are it is easier to remember which is which than with centimetres and millimetres. I still get nanometres and picometres mixed up sometimes. We should probably adopt short unique names for the more common units. In Italy you can buy pizza on the high street priced in 100g units called ‘etto’ – obviously short for hectogram.
3. Generally the numbers are smaller. 5 foot 10 uses two small numbers and this is more familiar than 178 cm – because of the scary big number. We could say 17 dm and 8 cm and we probably would if dm and cm had short unsystematic familiar names.
Who is it that says click for kilometre? It was in a movie, but it makes sense.
Joe Otten,
My Dad also used point out that we don’t measure time metrically. 12 months per year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds a minute. As I said why get hung up on stuff. He was an engineer, he just said imperial made calculations quicker. But he grew up with them. I think the sticking point is making a big deal of something that really isn’t a big deal.
S.I. units fundamentalists exist just as imperial unit fundamentalists exist. I’ve heard people saying society wont be able to progress unless we use nothing but pure S.I. units…while I was at that time doing a PhD in astrophysics when we worked mostly in the hilariously non-S.I. units of: parsecs (length), cubic-megaparsecs (volume), reciprocal cm^3 (density), and visual magnitude (brightness, but dont even ask how it’s defined, lol). People need to get over themselves.
A “click” as a measurement is 1 kilometre per hour – speed, not distance.
Remember
1 Inch = Span of 6 Barley corns side by side by thickness
Weight of 1 Barley corn = 64.79891 milligram
Weight of 1 Wheat berry = 45.561732 milligram
One Troy Ounce = 31.1034768 gram
64 Wheat berries = 45 Barley corns
Simples.
“We have generations in the UK taught how to interact with the world in metric units and a quick look at some of the fundamentals of science shows why:”
To be fair, the non-metric units of measurement developed because they were a sensible and practical scale for measuring the things around us, and as Joe Otten points out, division into twelve parts (or 24 or 60 or 360) makes it much easier to express halves, quarters, thirds, etc. This is great for measuring time as fractions of the day, angles between 0 and 360 degrees etc.
And not using a metric system in day-to-day life does not seem to have held back science and engineering in the USA (though as a chemical engineer, in calculations it is often frustrating and a potential source of errors having to convert between some odd units).
Linking this to Brexit seems a little desperate. Even as members of the EU we are in the ridiculous position of refueling our cars in litres, measuring distances in miles, and reading quoted fuel economy in miles per gallon or kilometres per litre. But feel free to call for grads instead of degrees (100 in a right angle) and a ten day week if that is what remaining in the EU means to you. 🙂
Surely the “liberal” position would be to allow people to use the units they want while ensuring it is done honestly?
Grads? Spare us. Angles are measured in radians. I have trained my children to ask for pi/4 radians of cake, for example.
The problem with decimal time is that the year and the day are both (close enough to) natural constants, and their ratio is not a power of ten. And then SI uses the second. We use metric subdivisions of a second – millisecond, microsecond etc. Perhaps avoirdupois fans would like to invent alternatives: 1 tock for 1/64 of a second, 1 tick for 1/80 of a tock, 1 ting for 1/60 of a tick, 1 toenail for 1/12 of a ting.
But the point of SI is not really that it is decimal – the point is that it is systematic, so it is a lot easier to learn and consistent to use – and that the units relate to each other as Peter describes. It is generally decimal too (apart from the radian and the mole) because decimal is simpler and more consistent.
As usual Mark Wright talks a lot of sense – it’s the sort of issue that just stirred up resentment over years and for no good reason set a lot of the anti-EU sentiment which is now over-flowing, in motion.
Let’s be very careful about laughing at people wanting blue passports, royal yachts and Boris to guard the Rock of Gibraltar 24/7 – had we managed similar concerns earlier and better we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.
Just trying to add some candelas to the discussion.
@tpfkar – thanks! 🙂 And I agree the mandatory non-blue passport from the EU was another pointless own-goal we should never have signed up for. (Even pro-EU me lamented the passing of my old one that I used a great deal.)
PS Surprisingly few people know that the French revolution did institute metric time along with metric weight and length. The reason it failed was because – hilariously obviously – the masses objected when they were told they would only be getting 1 day off per metric 10-day week rather than one day off per 7-day week. They may have been uneducated, but they knew that was less days off! If the revolutionary leaders had been vaguely sensible and given a 2-days off per 10 the public would have loved it and we would all likely been using decimal time now…
We really must protect the metric system from the Brexiters . After all, give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.
I’ve got to say I disagree with this sentiment of “managing stupidity” When it was taboo to talk about immigration we had less UKIP, less anti-EU sentiments and less overt racism. With Cameron he gave the Euro-Sceptics an inch and they took a mile. So with metric martyrs we should call them idiots and prosecute the people who waste huge sums graffitiying public signs.
I think the problem here is not the units of measurements we use, but the fact that someone, somewhere has wanted or will want to ban people using imperial / metric units in the effort to bring uniformity. Personally, I measure in feet and inches, and millimeters, centimeters etc., whichever is most convenient, similarly with weights and volume. There is not a problem. If people want a blue-black passport rather than red, then as long as I have the choice, I don’t care. Incidentally, the large size of the old passport, is completely impractical – not something for an inside pocket. What we start to see here are the Brexit Bores trying to tell everyone the way we have to operate in the future, maybe as we had with metric in the past, – what a waste of time, effort and money!
Martin Land – a real roll on floor moment. The only issue is time and money as they are societal. The weight you buy stuff is between yourself and the seller. I call people who want total metrication as `hyper institutionalist` https://newliberalsite.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/why-leavers-and-remainers-are-living-in-different-worlds/
I can’t believe the insanity of wanting to switch to an old, obsolete system of units of measurement. It’s Brexit in a nutshell, pensioners’ interests s******g on the young from a great height.
At our theatre, one set designer is in the habit of giving designs drawn at a scale of 1cm = 1 foot. (It does allow our bijou stage area to be represented quite neatly on a piece of A4.) Chacun a son gout…
In the event that there are any UKIP supporters reading this website can I suggest that their desire to turn the clock back does not go far enough. The traditional English pound is the Tower Pound (equal to 15 Tower Ounces) not this new-fangled European Avoirdupois Pound we’ve been using for the last few hundred years. The Tower Pound was abolished in 1526 by, ironically, that great Eurosceptic Henry VIII.
Of course these were English units – I’m sure that UKIP would want Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to use their own traditional units, not to mention all the regional variations that used to exist in parts of England.
And while they’re at it why not campaign to bring back the Julian Calendar? Surely no self-respecting Ukipper would want us to use the same calendar as Europe?
As part of de-metrification I propose a continuous measurement in Angstroms of how far Brexit is taking great britain from Europe.
@ David Evershed How many barley corns in a litre of beer, and how many in a dram of whisky?
@ Jenny Barnes: How many clicks in a knot?
I never understood why the state needed to tell people how they should measure things.
@hwyel Consumer protection, basically. (i.e. 1kg of carrots in Aberystwyth is the same mass as 1kg of carrots in Reading) Standardising on one set of units is part of this – the Weights & Measures people obviously can’t be expected to have a sample of every possible unit available to test vendors’ scales.
There’s a poetry to imperial measurements as well.
You see a little muddy pond
Of water, never dry;
I’ve measured it from side to side:
Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.
“And not using a metric system in day-to-day life does not seem to have held back science and engineering in the USA…”
http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/
Back to cubits I say. Fill up in litres and drive at miles to the gallon. Celsius for cooking but Fahrenheit outside. But stick to milkman’s gills when supping your (half) pint.
The good thing about our generation is that we can covert in our heads without thinking about it.
Back to cubits I say. The great thing about our generation is that we can convert things in our heads without having to think. (But then we also know that eight 9s is 72).
Just leave it all to your robots.
Don’t know why this all came twice. Can’t cope with this new money.
@nick. A knot, as any fule kno, equals 1.85 clix 🙂
I worked in a pub for a while. Optics delivered spirits in sevenths of a gill. When the government legislated it was necessary to change them all to sixths or fifths or quarters of a gill which we were told were used in Scotland. Reps came round from various companies offering us free optics if we bought a dozen bottles of their spirits, through the brewery tie of course. The brewery had their own brand of gin, very similar to Gordons in flavour and identical in alcoholic content.
Soft metrication is an important part of what happened. A bottle of milk from a supermarket contains precisely 1.136 litres, also labelled as 2 pints.
Oh, for God’s sake! I thought Saturday had come and gone.
Basically people and trades should be able to use whatever suits them.
My dad is about to turn 76, can barely work his phone, insists on using a paper time table for bus times, and he thinks imperial is for luddites. It’s time we moved on from the idea of metric being a new fangled thing, and anyone who claims that Fahrenheit is ‘more precise’ than Celsius deserves an eye-roll.
It’s fine to sell eggs in packs of 6 (please note Creme Egg people), and rolls in 12s, or even 13s if you enjoy the gimmick, and I couldn’t care less if you also want a weight in ounces, or volume in one of the various gallons, but please also make sure the metric quantity is in a prominent position, thanks.
I always used to think that a rod a pole and a perch had something to do with fishing….. but, coming from Yorkshire, I never doubted that a cricket pitch was a chain long.
As with Tpfkar, I like what Mark says above , we often agree , here no exception.
The imposition of unnecessary and unfeeling penalties and dictat from the EU which did and does go with the bureaucratic tendency, is nothing to do with Liberalism and certainly not democracy when it is not wanted .
There are two important elements of Liberal philosophy , one individuality, the other internationalism.In the overemphasis of the latter, for too long Liberals throughout the EU and in this party , have underemphasised the former !
In the olden days we had to be able to count in base 12 from an early age, something the average UKIPer is quite incapable of doing. I believe this is the only reason they do not call for a reintroduction of shillings and pence.
@ Lorenzo “There are two important elements of Liberal philosophy , one individuality, the other internationalism.In the overemphasis of the latter, for too long Liberals throughout the EU and in this party , have under emphasised the former !”.
You’ve forgotten the social justice bit, Lorenzo. Individuality cannot flourish without social justice as a precondition. Anything else is mere self indulgence.
In October 2013, the Ministry of Commerce announced that Myanmar was preparing to adopt the International System of Units (SI System) as the country’s official system of measurement.
My problem with metrication is that the changeover, which should have been completed within a decade, has been going on in the UK for all my longish life. Much quicker in many Commonwealth countries!
Electricity has always been measured in metric units and scientists were using metric units universally when I was at school. At primary school the back cover of all standard exercise books carried a complex table of imperial units of weights and measures, including a lot of archaic units no one used even then. It was not until secondary school science, aged about twelve that I had any formal teaching in how to weigh and measure things – in centrimetres and grams, of course.
UK engineering and commerce metricated in the early 1970s. In that decade, my work included photographic processing for which Kodak supplied chemicals, sourced randomly from the UK, USA and mainland Europe. Which revealed that US and UK liquid measurements share names but are different sizes! Doing everything in metric simplifies things!
Quite a lot of my life has been wasted doing conversions between the three main systems, but now I can visualise sizes in metric just as well as I could in imperial.
@Richard Underhill
‘A bottle of milk from a supermarket contains precisely 1.136 litres, also labelled as 2 pints.’
‘precisely’ is too vague a term! Somewhere in the laws and specifications the allowed variation will be stated. If that is plus or minus, say, 1%, the contents should be both within 1% of 1.136 litres (i.e between 1.125 and 1.146) and similarly with the 2 pints (which is harder to work out and understand in Imperial).
Back to my earlier theme of the ongoing pain of unduly prolonged changing of systems, and why we should consign imperial measuraments solely to history (and literature) as quickly as possible, those who have time could read the scary story of the Gimli glider.
Imperial for individuals, metric for machines? We, in the ’50s, were taught both. But then in those days we were taught a lot of things, nouns and verbs, long division, and much else, some of it now regarded as arcane specialism or useless facts fit only for quizzes.
I think this is actually (a not hugely important) part of the current cultural struggle between “nativism” and internationalist progress. People should be free, but I am chosing to be increasingly metricated as a personal reaction (1.85m and 76kg at present). There is a UK Metric Association. This post has caused me to send a membership application!
Of course the headline clearly shows the superiority of imperial measures. Can anyone really imagine a word so perfect for implying slow progress as ‘inching’ does?
Alec.
Interesting, but personally I continue to not be bothered. The big problem with internationalism is that elections are based on the nation state and so is the tax system.
@Nick Collins
•1.3 tonne of barley makes 1 tonne of malt
•1 tonne of malt makes 54 barrels of beer
•1 barrel of beer = 163.65 litres
•54 barrels = 8,837 litres
•8,837 litres = 15,553 pints
Barley amount adjusted to taste of course.
Brexiteers are idiots trying to turn the clock back!
I have a science book written in around 1800, in which the author identifies 62 different units of length in use in different states and even cities across Europe. He had only been able to obtain exact conversion ratios for sixteen of them.
He then goes on to describe “New French Measures” (i.e. what became the metric system), which he predicts would soon be in universal use throughout the civilised world. Does UKIP want to go back to an era before this?
And of course, there are many different Imperial units, whereas in Metric there is only one unit for each parameter (metres, kilos, seconds etc.), plus multipiers for powers of ten (milli, kilo, mega etc.). Perhaps UKIP will suggest next that science should be taught in British schools and universities using the Hundredweight, Firkin, Furlong, Fortnight system of measurement, instead of MKS (metric; metres, kilos, seconds).
Aaarrgghhhhh….
Clearly Imperial units v’s the metric system has nothing to do with brexit or the brexit debate.
Good on those posters who are enjoying remembering various arcane measurement’s.
For those, though who are seriously thinking this is a serious thing and all the fault.of those who voted to leave..It leaves me dumbfounded. Is this just another example of the continuation of project fear? ….’We’re going to scrap metric because we voted to leave’….. Nonsense.
For the record. The metric system is and excellent logical system that make calculations and logistics simple. It is rightly the international standard and the UK should finally fully.convert to use of metric 100%. If some wants to sell in pints and pounds no problems just do the bulk ordering and logistics in metric.
Obviously science requires metric, and I suppose very few of us regret the loss of a few historical words – words rather than units.
@ David Evershed and Jenny Barnes: Thank you for the elucidation.
@ Geoff Reid: I am one year younger than Fiona’s Dad and have spent a life-time resisting the notion that one was only allowed to be foolish for one half day per year, on the fore-noon of the first day of April. But nothing prepared me for the foolishness which has overtaken this country since last June, and the USA since last November.
By the way, I do hope no-one is going to suggest bringing back Roman numerals
UKIP are the political equivalent of the flat earth society, but no one is laughing with them. It’s relentlessly at them.
I once tried to explain the decimal system to a Ukiper, but he didn’t get the point.
David , as Raw !
I do concur, I did not forget and agree entirely on social justice, merely mentioned the two elements most appropriate to this article and the love of internationalism trampling sometimes on the individual needs of peoples and countries, not a frequent offence by the EU , yet one that does take place and causes problems !
OMG ! I’m of an age group that did sums in roods and bushels at school. Just try multiplying 3 roods four perches by seven roods four perches or deducting six bushels and 3 pecks from 9 bushels and 1 peck and you’ll get an idea of the suffering involved. Particularly if you’re, say, seven or eight years of age.
Nowadays I think in kilos and kilometres like every sensible LibDem and intend to keep on doing so.
Give us back our groats!
How many people would be able to find the average of set of weights that are specified in kilograms using a spreadsheet (eg EXCEL)? Anybody who know their way around EXCEL could do that – there is even a function called “AVERAGE” that does the job for you. Now try to do the same exercise using weights specified in stones and pounds….