[Sca-cooks] measurement

[Terry Decker]

> this has already been sorted out (we should have written 'litres' rather 
> than 'l', it would have been clearer), but it leads me to a related 
> question...why does the US still use the old measures, rather than metric? 
> As far as I can tell, there are two possible reasons
>
> 1) nostalgia/historical interest
> 2) the expense and effort in changing
>
>
> but I don't really know, as I've used metric my whole life, so can't 
> really compare the two systems. I'm interested to know - if there are 
> actually ways in which it is superior?
>
> Recently my eight-year-old asked what a 'mile' was and my husband I 
> explained it to him, which led to an explanation of the imperial system in 
> general. At first he thought we were making it up as we went along to fool 
> him because it sounded so unlikely to him (especially since my husband and 
> I disagreed a bit on specifics, as neither of us really understand it)...
>
> Margaret/Emma
> Krae Glas, Lochac

Consider the use of the Elizabethean measures in the U.S. an artifact of 
"freedom of expression."  Probably with a mix of anarchy, contrariness and 
rebellion thrown in.  It's kinda fun to watch Arlo Guthrie protest the 
metric system in concert with "Inch By Inch, Row By Row."   While the metric 
system has been accepted legal and standard measure in the U.S. for over a 
hundred years, we haven't legislated it to be the only national system of 
measurement.  Russ Rowlett does a much better job than I in explaining the 
vagaries of the U.S. and the metric system, 
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/usmetric.html .

To add to my mental density and confusion, first, the last time I was out of 
the U.S. most (if not all) of the Commonwealth countries still used Imperial 
measure and the U.S. dollar was backed by gold and, second, the computer 
typeface uses the same character for "one" and "l,"which lets me see numeric 
ratios rather than price per liter.

I can imagine the "fun" of explaining the Imperial system of measures to 
someone who is only familiar with the metric system, although the statute 
mile should be about the simplest to explain having been set by Parliment in 
1592 as 5280 feet and, to my knowledge, the Imperial system simply adopted 
the foot, yard and mile that already existed.  Great Britian (1966?) and the 
U.S. (1957) both adopted the international foot of 30.48 centimeters, so a 
modern statute mile is just over 1.6 kilometers.  At least your son doesn't 
have the problem of having to convert speedometer, odometer and roadsign 
mileages back and forth.  The ratio of 5 miles/8 kilometers is burned into 
my brain from running around Europe in and on vehicles with U.S. gauges 
before they started dual marking.

If your son needs to chase down any other measurements, I recommend starting 
with Russ Rowlett's, which is about the single best compendium on units of 
measure on the web.  He doesn't have everything there, but it is a good 
place to start.  http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html

Bear