On Sat, 29 May 2010 21:42:13 +0200, Neil Williams
wrote:

On Sat, 29 May 2010 12:34:36 -0700 (PDT), contrex
wrote:

I don’t know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state and
we could go back to Imperial measurements far better than all this
foreign muck that no one wants.

You really are a prick, aren't you?

He certainly has an odd view. There are strong arguments in favour of
leaving the EU (and also strong arguments against doing so - I'm
personally pretty undecided), but I would be amazed if a referendum to
become the 51st state of America returned an even vaguely positive
result.

We should, IMO, either be in the EU or take an approach of
independence from it but co-operation with it like Switzerland.
Joining the US is a ridiculous idea - while we are historical allies

Really ? You have missed the events of 1776, 1779 and 1812 and the
prevarication over which side to join in Big Mistake 2 which the UK
then got billed for.

and should most probably remain so, our cultures are far too different
for political or monetary union to be an even vaguely sensible idea.

Neil

On Sat, 29 May 2010 13:55:14 -0700 (PDT), Stephen Furley
wrote:

On 27 May, 19:55, allantracy wrote:

I don’t know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state and
we could go back toImperialmeasurements far better than all this
foreign muck that no one wants.

SI units are starting to appear on some things in the US, as opposed
to American units also being printed as a conversion to an odd
quantity in SI units. I have seen soft drinks in 2 litre and 3 litre
bottles for example. I suspect that a lot of engineering is actually
done in SI units; there's a lot of multi-national work being done
these days, and the US is about the only place left that still uses
their own units these days.

As for going back to Imperial units, where do you think you're going
to get any support for that? The UK has been metric for well over 30
years.

Not entirely. Much of the infrastructure is imperial as are many of
the materials still used despite description in "French" units.

Young people, and that now probably means anyone under 40 will
have learned in metric at school from day one, so they're unlikely to
want to convert to another system.

Are bases 2, 16 etc. "metric" ?

Older people like myself originally learned in Imperial units, and
later had to convert to metric. Having converted, I think most people
recognised that it was a better system, and would not want to go
back. Even amongst those who still prefer the Imperial units I think
that many would acknowledge that the period of conversion, which we
dragged out for far too long, was the worst thing, and wouldn't want
to see another such conversion back to imperial units. I seriously
doubt that you would be able to find many people to support such a
conversion, and I wouldn't recommend any party which actually wanted
to get elected to put this in its manifesto.

If you'd stood against metrication 40 years ago you might have had a
chance of stopping it, or more likely delaying it, but not now. I
think it will eventually come in the US as well.

As for Imperial units being British, I suspect that most of them are
about as British as St. George; i.e. not very.

On Sun, 30 May 2010 00:51:39 +0200, Andrew Price
wrote:

On Fri, 28 May 2010 21:58:50 -0700, Nobody wrote:

Ah, the US liquid measurement isn't the same as Imperial.

I think it probably was, until the UK standardised the gallon in the
19th century as being that volume of water which weighs ten pounds.
Before that, I suspect that the gallon was identical on both sides of
the pond.

There were different gallons for different substances. The US gallon
appears to be what was the 1707 UK wine gallon :-
http://www.uepengland.com/bbs/index....-and-measures/

In the UK the gallon was fixed for all substances from 1890 when the
dry gallon (0.96944 "wet" gallons) was abolished :-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A477155

On 29 May, 06:58, Nobody wrote:
On Fri, 28 May 2010 13:59:30 -0700 (PDT), D7666
wrote:

Ah, the US liquid measurement isn't the same as Imperial.

I stand corrected, but I believe that's why an American quart of booze
is known in Canada as "a fifth" in slang terms.

One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

Robin

On Sat, 29 May 2010 17:57:08 +0100, "Peter Masson"
wrote:

Or do what was done with the DLR, the ever-expanding railway, and design it
so that it can be expanded. Easier to do with a surface railway than
underground


The DLR has certainly proved to be expandable, but I can confirm that
it was never designed with that specifically in mind.

Of course the simple, cheap construction helped, but that was designed
to make it cheap to build, not to make it expandable. That was just a
side effect of the simplicity.

bob wrote:

On 29 May, 06:58, Nobody wrote:
On Fri, 28 May 2010 13:59:30 -0700 (PDT), D7666
wrote:

Ah, the US liquid measurement isn't the same as Imperial.

I stand corrected, but I believe that's why an American quart of booze
is known in Canada as "a fifth" in slang terms.

One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

You're missing one other significant point, and that is the ounces are also
different. A US fluid ounce is 29.57cc, and a British fluid ounce is
28.41cc

In article
..com, bob writes


One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

And the original reason for *that* is that the British pint was
originally the space occupied by one pound of dried peas (God knows
why) whereas the US pint was defined as the space occupied by one
pound of water, which seemed to be a more accurately reproducible
quantity.
--
Bill Borland

In article ,
Bill Borland wrote:

In article
.com, bob writes


One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

And the original reason for *that* is that the British pint was
originally the space occupied by one pound of dried peas (God knows
why) whereas the US pint was defined as the space occupied by one
pound of water, which seemed to be a more accurately reproducible
quantity.

Even more bizarrely the ratio 3.785:4.546 is not the same as 16:20 (or
4:5 or 0.8) because US and Imperial fluid ounces are different. I
didn't know about the dried peas, but one Imperial gallon of water is 10
pounds and one Imperial fluid ounce of water weighs one ounce.
Wikipedia will tell you more.

Sam

On Mon, 31 May 2010 17:22:55 +0100, Bill Borland put finger to keyboard and
typed:

In article
.com, bob writes


One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

And the original reason for *that* is that the British pint was
originally the space occupied by one pound of dried peas (God knows
why) whereas the US pint was defined as the space occupied by one
pound of water, which seemed to be a more accurately reproducible
quantity.

Not peas, and it's the other way round, actually - the Imperial pint is the
more logical one. A pint has always been 1/8 of a gallon, but there were
traditionally different gallons for different substances. A US pint is
derived from the British wine gallon, which was defined in 1701 as 231 - so
it was current at the time of US independence.

However, in 1824 the British government abolished all the previous
different gallons and replaced them with one defined as the volume of ten
pounds of distilled water at 62 degrees F. So the Imperial pint, despite
not being a pound of water (it's 1.25 pounds of water) is the one based on
a defined, reproducible standard. For fairly obvious reasons, the by then
independent USA didn't follow the British lead, and stuck with a gallon
(and hence a pint) based on a measurement that the British abolished.

A US pint isn't actually a pound of water, anyway - it's just over a pound
(1.04375 pounds, to be precise) and has no relationship to the weight of
water anywhere in its definition. The fact that it happens to be
approximately a pound is pure coincidence.

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk

On Mon, 31 May 2010 19:23:41 +0100, I put finger to keyboard and typed:

Not peas, and it's the other way round, actually - the Imperial pint is the
more logical one. A pint has always been 1/8 of a gallon, but there were
traditionally different gallons for different substances. A US pint is
derived from the British wine gallon, which was defined in 1701 as 231 - so
it was current at the time of US independence.

That's 231 cubic inches, of course. Dunno how that got left out of the
previous post.

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk