How metric are you?

[samarrange]

DP and I are in our mid-60s. We lived in the EU for many years and ended up thinking about almost everything in metric. The hardest things to switch to were people's heights and (especially) weights. Even after getting a bathroom scale in kilos we would talk about people weighing 10 stone, 12 stone, etc. But otherwise we're metric all the time. I haven't used the "inches" side of a tape measure since the 1980s.

Nowadays it feels strange if we're around Americans and have to translate Celsius temperatures to Fahrenheit for them, or convert 100 metres into 328 feet. (Americans use feet, not yards, for most distances less than a mile. They only seem to use yards for gridiron football.) And don't get me started on "ounces" as a measure of liquids and not weight.

But... I still say "couple of inches" or "about a foot" for short distances, to the dismay of our DC who grew up 100% metric in France, and I can still envisage 4 ounces of flour in a dual metric/imperial recipe or a pound of onions at the shop. I don't think these things ever quite leave you.

I can do both, brought up in UK but lived in EU and USA and have cook books from all countries. I use metric for cooking except when making a roux because I know it off by heart in ounce/pints.

My dh is Dutch and just under 2m tall but I think of my own height in ft/ins.

@samarrange Thank you, thats interesting!
I think i was taught metres, cm, kg etc in school, but it just didnt stick.
Im still baffled if someone gives me their height in m/cm.

I'm not sure I don't know how much a yard is without looking it up.

The same as a metre. More or less.

I use imperial for old family cake recipes. They are in ratios so multiples of 2oz makes more sense than multiples of 56g.

I’m 43 and the only imperial measurement I use is miles on the road. Weight, height, my baby’s weight & height, food/liquids, all other distances and measurements are fully metric.

Miles per gallon is particularly weird, I think, because (a) nobody has bought a gallon of petrol since about 1988, and (b) nobody ever uses gallons in any other context (at least Americans buy half-gallons of ice cream, etc).

Everywhere in Europe uses litres per 100km, which to me makes more sense: It says how much fuel you need to go a certain distance. Lower fuel consumption means a smaller number. (The airline industry measures fuel consumption that way, even in the US.)

Airlines measure fuel by weight or volume consumed per hour. Not distance.

With a few exceptions, they also measure height in feet and distance in nautical miles.

>Airlines measure fuel by weight or volume consumed per hour. Not distance.
For flight operations they would use fuel per hour, but for financial reporting they use per revenue-passenger-kilometre (or maybe revenue-passenger-mile in the US). Either way, though, fuel is the numerator, so lower is better, which was my point (versus mpg). 🙏

>With a few exceptions, they also measure height in feet and distance in nautical miles.
Well, the nautical mile is a metric unit, in that it's an exact number of metres. 😉 But yes, most air traffic control areas use feet, and I read somewhere that China is moving to feet away from metres just to avoid confusion. It shows that a lot of measures are arbitrary — in either case it's just a number on a dial or a screen, it doesn't matter how many limb-lengths it is.

I am completely bilingual, except for temperature where I only know the Fahrenheit for a fever or a hot day.

nobody ever uses gallons in any other context
I've got a watering can that's a gallon.

And buckets.

I’m mid 60s and happily use a mix of units - metric, British imperial, and also US cups.
My mother was a primary teacher, she had to teach in metric and I think was the only person of her generation I knew who wasn’t a scientist who was totally comfortable using centimetres.
I work with a team in the US, fortunately scientists so we don’t use some of the odd units some US engineers still use. The unit of length we most often use is the ångstrom.

I'm early 60s and can cook in kilos or lb
I run kilometers or miles
My weight is in kg or stone,
My height in feet and inches or cm.
my car runs in gallons or litres

I'm no good at hectares though.

The nautical mile not a metric unit. It is now accepted as being 1852 metres in the interests of standardisation, although it could be 1853 metres, or somewhere in between. It depends where on the earth you are.

Late 50s can do both imperial and metric but prefer metric. It’s easy really just know things like 2.5cm
= 1 inch.

I'm finding the replies interesting! I'm so old, I had a Saturday job when we went decimal. I was a whizz at instant conversations and that seems to have printed me for dual-system measurements. I use both. I lean more naturally towards metric and, like a PP, can't easily do Fahrenheit.

I've happily forgotten rods, chains, furlongs and all that malarkey, though! Measure in bloody tens, why don't you?!

Not at all. Mid 40s.
My brain just can't do metric. I was taught it at school but it never made any sense.

@GarlicPint , I was a whizz at instant conversations. The ability to make small talk can be useful in a customer-facing role.

Early 50s here, grew up in the UK, educated in metric. I think people my age were at a big disadvantage because we were educated in a system that wasn’t really being used at all in the UK at the time. All of the day to day measurements were in imperial, which isn’t anything like as logical as the metric system, and we weren’t taught how it worked.

We now divide our time between homes in France and the UK so use metric for everything except speed/distance on roads in the UK. I can visualise most day to day things metric and imperial and switch between them if need be.

Mid 30's so technically should be fully metric, but some imperial has snuck in.

Weight is usually metric, unless it's I'm trying to eyeball a baking recipe or it's a baby.

Short distances are metric (eg. Measuring furniture) but longer distances (eg. Directions) are yards and miles.

Adult hight is in feet & inches, but child hight is in cm (due to Measuring for car seats)

I think of milk as 4 pints, even though I know it's 2l. Don't really get fluid ounces though, so anything smaller then a half pint is in ml.

Temperature is °C

I don't think anyone has claimed to use exclusively Fahrenheit yet. A few months ago I was on a bus and saw the home screen of the phone of the elderly man sitting in front of me, and his weather app was showing the temperature in °F, but he must have been well over 80.

Google tells me that the BBC started using Celsius in 1962 and stopped using Fahrenheit in 1985. I remember towards the end, the forecasters would occasionally point to one temperature and say something like "20°C in Bristol, that's 68°F", but they were very much going through the motions. I also have a vague recollection of the magnetic temperature signs on the map having both Celsius and Fahrenheit on them, with a line down the middle, but I could be hallucinating that (or it might have been in a newspaper).

Oh heck, aviation opens a whole can of worms..

Fuel in kilograms, fuel burn in kilos per hour (US in pounds/pounds per hour).
Altitude/heights in feet (except in China and low level in Russia, where it's metres)
Distances for navigation purposes etc in nautical miles,
Distances for met (e.g visibility) metric.
Cloudbase in feet...or metres some places.
Windspeed in knots except some places where it's given in metres per second..
Pressure in hectopascals except places where they use inches of Mercury (US) or millimeters of the same (Russia)...

On some longhaul flights you can be switching between systems in one flight as you cross national boundaries

Not sure whether that makes some here bi-lingual, tri-lingual or what

Feet and inches and stone and pounds for people, but kg for cooking.

Miles for driving but km for running. CM / M for DIY.

Only centigrade for temperature unless general warm weather when it might be in the high 70’s.
😀

Mostly both although if given a choice I will usually measure in metric. It's easier to measure and calculate in metric than think about 1/8ths of an inch etc.

There are things that people tend to use traditionally more imperial for, like height, weight, car speed and distance. Sometimes that is because they have not changed over.

Some industries like the oil industry and aviation still are dominated by imperial (or sometime other weird units) because they are largely founded on American development/tech.

Being able to handle two systems is like being able to handle two languages. It makes your brain more flexible.

I'm 67
Babies - lbs
Cakes -ounces
People - lbs
Long distances - miles
Short distances - metres
Meat, fruit and other groceries- kilos
Temperature - Celsius
Liquids small quantities - litres
Large quantities - gallons
Clothing - cm
Sewing - inches
Has anyone seen the "nobody knows" sketch?