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[_Islanio]

Same here. No problem with inches, feet, miles, pounds, and I grew up using metric. Ounces, gallons, are way less intuitive for me. Fahrenheit is a different story, since it not only have a different value for each degree, but also a different reference point (the freezing temperature of water, 0°C and 32°F). This brings an extra factor to the calculation, so it's not just to multiply by something. Do you guys get me?

[hedgie]

I can work well enough in either system as long as I don’t have to convert.  I know what hot/cold, near/far, light/heavy are in both, so that’s enough for daily needs.

[cesium133]

Wassat in meters?

Ooh this is bringing back memories of having to figure out what was meant by "miles", out of 12 different possibilities.
Only around 8 kilometers difference (thats...5... miles? ) - hours of ^Fun_fun ^fun_fun^fun_fun!

I read the quoted part of your post out loud for whatever reason and it finally hit me why "Wassat" was bugging me so much. I actually do say 'wassat' when saying 'what's that' out loud, though there is a hint of a th in there.

Whenever I do km/mi conversions I have reference numbers I go by. If it's miles to km, I just take 60% of the miles (it's not the 0.62 needed for an accurate number, but it's close enough). For km to miles, I know that 5km is a tad over 3mi, so I go up from there. So 10km=6mi, 50km=30mi, etc. Even in four digit distances, it's only a 20mi deviation per 1000km, so for ballparking it works out fine.

I do something similar for inches to centimeters; 65in = 165cm.

Oddly enough, speeds, distances, and temps have never been any issue for me, but weights and especially liquid I have never been able to fully internalize. From lbs to kg is OK (mostly because we also have the 500-g pound, close enough to the lbs) but anything on ounces/gallons to mL is a disaster and I've given up on it.

I learned recently that Alton Brown lied when he said the mnemonic “A pint is a pound, the world around.” A pound is 454 grams. A pint (in the United States, anyway) is 16 fluid ounces, which, if a fluid ounce is an ounce, should thus be 454 mL. But a fluid ounce is not an ounce. Which means that a pint is actually 473 mL. It gets even weirder when you consider that the FDA actually uses its own definition of the fluid ounce, which is exactly 30 mL.

[hedgie]

I'm just glad that my local serves 20oz pints.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Jeph and babies. Dora and 'poo-larvae'.

Seeing this for the first time, I'd think Sam was a boy and Emmett was a girl.

( you wanna see that spray or not )

[cesium133]

I'm just glad that my local serves 20oz pints.

Thing is, the US version of the volume measurements almost makes sense. Everything is powers of two. Two tablespoons in a fluid ounce. Eight fluid ounces in a cup. Two cups per pint, two pints per quart, four quarts per gallon.  It’s just that the fluid ounce is defined stupidly. Oh, and the teaspoon. Screw teaspoons.

The UK version, on the other hand, doesn’t even attempt to make sense. Its only advantage is larger pints of beer.

[Roborat]

I'm just glad that my local serves 20oz pints.

The UK version, on the other hand, doesn’t even attempt to make sense. Its only advantage is larger pints of beer.

I would say that is a pretty compelling advantage.

[hedgie]

My thought exactly.

[St.Clair]

If you like beer, I guess.

[Scarlet Manuka]

Where I live 27 °C isn't hot at all.

Same. We just finished a six-day streak of 40+°C temperatures and are now enjoying the pleasant relative coolness of the low 30s. And it's not even the hottest part of summer yet, which is usually February here - though I'm really hoping we don't get a repeat of that next month.

The air conditioner is still running nonstop but at least this week I've been able to do more than just lie in front of it quietly.

[snubnose]

Some imperial person: Please move 3 feet

Me: Whats that in meters ? ... Lightyears !? ... Ĺngström ???

[cesium133]

I don’t know, “feet” seems kind of self explanatory. Most people have two of them.

[Cornelius]

Exactly one short. 

[DaiJB]

I don’t know, “feet” seems kind of self explanatory. Most people have two of them.

That doesn't follow at all - just because the imperial measure's name is "foot" doesn't mean anyone is going to assume that their own foot is meant to represent that length. After all, this is the quirky English language we're talking about here - the old imperial system is full of weird names that bear no apparent resemblance to reality..."chains", "rods", "yards", "pecks", "gills", "grains"...why should anyone assume that the "foot" as a measure of length had anything to do with human feet?

[Also, I measured my foot and it's way short of 30 centimeters (which is roughly an imperial foot) in length. If I used my foot's length to measure my height, I am apparently just shy of seven feet tall] 

[Is it cold in here?]

Wasn't it some random king's foot?

[Farideh]

The 'foot' as a unit of measurement has a rich and varied history. On a first skim, the only reference to it being a specific person's foot was in ancient Rome (Nero Claudius Drusus).

[Cornelius]

I seem to remember an Astérix comic, where they said that the Olympic stadium was paced out by Hercules, deducing from that that he should have had a size 42 boot.

[snubnose]

“feet” seems kind of self explanatory.

Sure.

Just like, for example, "stone". Another imperial unit that "is kind of self explanatory" and yet I have no clue what it means.

[cesium133]

Eh, stones are not self-explanatory. Is it a big stone? A little stone? A small boulder the size of a large boulder? But most people have feet, and they're usually within a certain range of sizes that are within a factor of 2 or so of the unit of measurement.

[snubnose]

Still I have no clue what that size is.

[cesium133]

You don't know what size your feet are?

[oddtail]

Still I have no clue what that size is.

It's about the length of an adult human foot. Yes, those vary in size considerably, but they are within the same order of magnitude, and that's about how long one standard foot is.

[hedgie]

With boots on, three for me is almost precicesly 1m.  At least for me, memorising a few common reference points made things easier.

[BenRG]

FWIW, the Imperial Foot is about 0.31m. Please don't ask me to be more precise than that.

I'm sure that there was a time when it was the length of some royal foot, just as the yard is probably one stride length, toe-to-heel of a particularly notable person.

[snubnose]

You don't know what size your feet are?

I dont know what distance that is.

You tell me 3 feet and unless I would actuall try to measure that with my feet I have no clue what 3 feet actually means.

You tell me a meter and I immediately know what that is because I've measured things in meter all my life.

[hedgie]

And in some countries, the whole thing is a mess:

[cesium133]

I’m tempted to make a version of that for here in Canada… there are some notable differences to that UK version. Canada is mostly metric… unless you’re setting the temperature on your oven (Fahrenheit), or buying meat at the butcher shop (pounds, but grocery stores use kg for meat). A person’s height can be in either cm or in ft/in. Milk is in liters only (typically in the form of a 4L bag that contains 3 smaller 1.33 L bags).  Beer comes in 16 US fluid ounce cans, but it’s labeled in mL (specifically 473 mL). Butter comes in 454 g blocks (1 lb, of course).