To think it odd that so many British still use Imperial measurements?

[Elouera]

Britain started using metric measurements in 1965, so I can only assume that majority of people under about age 50 learnt metric in school? I spend part of my schooling under a British system, but it was all metric. I'm just intrigued as to why, 50yrs later, some younger people are still referring to pounds and lbs???

I just scrape under your 50yr cut off and I am firmly in the inches, pounds and pints brigade.

I wonder how many people who use imperial are able to do calculations like

10 stone 5 lb divided by 6?

Or 5ft 11 inches divided by 7?

But why would you ever need to @chomalungma ???

I'm Irish and I don't think I ever learnt imperial but there is so much exposure to it that I still know it.

Height is one of the few things that seems more ''readable'' in imperial. Everything else I use metric. I knowthat makes no sense.

Can I ask a question to any mainland europeans on the thread, about the 24 hour clock. I use it but don't verbalise it. So, would you say 'twenty' for 20.00hrs? I would type 20.00 but say ''eight''. Just wondering, would a french /spanish person say a las veinte horas.

I'm in my 20's and I use both metric and imperial. Just the way I was taught and brought up. It's like I can still remember having to learn Roman numerals as a child as my mum had a clock when growing up that only had them on and to figure out time I had to learn them, as well as the position of where all the numbers were so if I was lazy and didn't want to read them one day I knew how to read a clock without numbers and just figure it out by where the hands were.

Imperial numbers you say?

MMXIV divided by IIIX

Maths in those days must have been interesting .

I drive my car in miles but ride my bike in kms

I drink my wine in ml and my beer in pints

I weigh my ingredient in grams and myself in stone

I measure everything in cm apart from myself in inches.

In summary - fuck knows!

Sorry - Roman numbers....

Where I went to school we used furlongs and chains. measured in gills but thankfully the currency was metric so I was spare £SD and calculating in base 12

I'm 32 and think in imperial, because it was what we used at home when I was a child. We used metric measurements in maths at school but it was all very abstract - calculating with them, not applying it to the real world. So I know how many metres in a kilometre but I don't have an instinctive understanding of how far that is the way I do with a mile.

I have some sense of kilograms because of lifting weights at the gym, but I've only been doing that for a year - and I still convert it back to stones sometimes for a more 'real' idea of what the weight is.

I can also calculate with old money, despite it being well before my time, but that's because I was the sort of odd child who would read Enid Blyton and the like and just have to know what these shillings were and how they worked.

I’m 48 and have never been taught or used imperial. Metric all the way. And now I live in Europe where there is no confusion: just nice round numbers that everyone uses. My mum persists with imperial measures like they have been handed down from god. I prefer metric, it’s much tidier.

Just turned 40 and use a mixture of metric and imperial. Try hard to use metric as that is what DD will learn at school, but slip into imperial when baking and working out things like where furniture will fit as that is what my mum used when I was growing up. It is so much easier to double up/half recipes in imperial as the numbers are smaller.

@Nameofchanges
**If you were asked to divide four hours and thirteen seconds by 22, how would you do that?

I have to be honest, I could not necessarily do that in my head. Would need to do a conversion first. Does that mean that with Imperial numbers there is always extra conversions to be made? Must admit, in my everyday life I don't often have to do complex calculations with time while distance, volume and weight are much more common.

Also, how do you relate weight and volume? Metric very easy for this, as in a litre of water being a kg but what is a pint of water in pounds?

I love imperial units. They just make sense. An inch is approx the end of your thumb, a foot is a foot :) A yard is a stride. And 12 inches to a foot, well 12 is a great number. You can divide it into 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 really easily. And as others have said, baking is so much easier with imperial. I am almost 50, and although I was taught metric at school, I never really got a feel for it. Everything outside of textbooks, so all normal life, was in imperial. I now do a mix because I am used to both, but would hate to lose imperial altogether.

50 and learned metric at school. Still think in imperial length and weight equally with metric but Fahrenheit baffles me.

I remember going to Ireland with DH around 1990 and the sign posts were in a mixture of KM, miles and Irish miles which I think were slightly longer. I think they were in the process of switching wholesale to KM. we had no idea how long it would be before we reached our destination and thought we had quite a way to go, just as we drove into the centre of town!

I'm 33 and grew up with mixture of both. My parents learnt in imperial so everything in the house was done that way. The school taught in metric. Plus shops still sell in imperial and we do weight in imperial in slimming clubs.

I think being taught both is why many of us under 50 use both. We were around people who refused or struggled to changed.

Now I'm in Canada on the border to the US and I'm forever switching between the two. It took me a while to drop the stones from weight and just use pounds and I'm around a lot of people who do temperatures on Fahrenheit so have had to quickly figure that out. Driving in kilometers still feels odd after 4 years.

I’m in my 30’s. I was taught metric at school, but my mum used imperial at home. Now I’d say my height in feet and inches, my weight in stone and pounds; I’d cook in what the recipe uses, but prefer pounds and ounces. I drive in mph, but measure temperatures in centigrade. I’d measure in centimetres and feet and metres too, but I know that doesn’t make sense!

Must confess that I hate it when room sizes on rightmove are pure metric.

I changed my satnav to imperial so it gave distance in miles then was completely confused when it told me to “turn left in 1000 feet”. I had no idea what that meant. Turns out it was approx 300m, or where you see the three bars before a motorway slip road.

So I want a satnav that does long distances in Imperisl and short ones in metres!

I was taught by imperial but remember learning metric measurements in junior school so 1967ish.But we were still doing £,s,p sums until decimalisation.
I am mainly imperial but wiil use scales if cooking with a metric cookery book,imperial weight I can judge by eye or tablespoon.
I do use Celsius though and am gratefully metric at work doing drug calculations.
My 16yr old DD is mostly metric except for height,weight and cooking(and will be learning to drive later this year so will learn to judge a mile better).

I can only bake in imperial. I can flick between either for anything else.

So for a roast I’ll time it according to grams

But cakes have to be in lbs and oz. 1 egg = 2 oz

Not uk, I've so often wondered about this . I have to google foot to meter so often.

I'm positively ancient and the metric system was introduced to us at secondary school. I weigh myself in kilos, measure things in metres. Because road signs have never changed I do tend to think of distances in miles but temperature is always in Centigrade.
I remember the relief at dumping the imperial system which made no logical sense and resulted in complex calculations and moving onto the pure simplicity of the metric system. Subjects like physics became much easier.
I wonder how quantum physics would work under the imperial system?
Just occurred to me that all those "stones pounds and ounces" calculations I had to do as a little child was before the availability of calculators!

I cant remember metric being taught in school until the 70s ,and everything was in imperial measurements for years after that

This has always fascinated me. I was born in the U.K. and learnt the metric system early 70’s. Because it was introduced then. Then we emigrated to South Africa. It was all metric. When I returned to the U.K. 20 years later it appeared the metric system never caught on. Personally I struggle with imperial measures as I have never been taught it.