Kilogram conflict resolved at last

It's a little alarming that Canadian schools don't teach imperial measure, considering how on-the-fence we are. It's a real head-in-the-sand attitude.

Off topic, I was looking on in dismay at one of my grandkid's printing. He's in middle school, kinda sad. Don't even mention cursive.

Well I lost the ability to write cursive about 40 years back, shouldn't talk I guess. But as a draftsman, it's sad to see lettering going downhill.

 

Interesting. I feel the opposite - there's no point teaching an antiquated, illogical system used by relatively few, when there's a far better alternative. We can't move into the future by holding on to the past. (I'd say the same about cursive, too.)

 

Well the issue: imperial weights are prominently shown in all produce and butcher shops. Same thing for missing person descriptions, mostly imperial, weights and heights. And good luck getting metric plywood sheets or "2x4's". We're a nation in limbo, lol.

 

Scratch Myanmar. Two years ago, it announced its move to metric.

 

If an American '2x4' can legitimately be labeled '2x4', it can also be labeled a metric 5x10. The later actually has less built-in error.

 

I understand 2x4 is nominal size, I've been around the block, lol. But seriously, imperial measure is still SERIOUSLY entrenched in the construction industry up here, especially residential carpentry.

Larger industrial projects are usually metric, but it's an uneasy marriage. Engineers will blithely ask for metric plate thicknesses that are shown in their pie-in-the-sky Canadian steel book. North American plate is imperial, full stop. Recognizing the realities of supply and you're away, but it's amazingly difficult to wake some up. And it's best done early in a project, like day one: find out what (imperial) thickness the fabricator(s) can actually get, and work out exactly how your're going to describe them. I worked for one company that really took the bull by the horns. If you wanted one inch plate for example, it was PL25.4.

Same for steel shapes, they're ALL imperial. Metric designations are just translations. For maybe a decade the Canadian steel book talked about L50x50x6, for example. It never happened. So now they say L51x51x6.4.

Unfortunately, for plate, the Canadian steel book has YET to wake up, hence the rude awakening for engineers just flipping open their books and saying "I think we'll use 30 mm plate here".

 

I think armor plating is measured in metric if a Canadian engineer really wants 30mm plate.

I'm surprised with myself for not mentioning the Smoot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in a discussion on measurements before this. A college fraternity prank used a member, Oliver R. Smoot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, to measure a local bridge. The final kicker to the story at the first link is that Smoot went on to become the Chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 2001 to 2002 and President of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from 2003 to 2004. I guess other applicants couldn't top being an actual, non-standard unit of measure.

 

Here's an example, Canadian supermarket meat department:

 

Clearly, trying to use both systems at the same time isn't helping with the conversion. Especially not when your major trading partner uses one, and you use the other.

 

Just try price comparing something like margarine tubs. They're all round values simple multiples, in ounces. But do they say that, nope: all the labels show weird-and-wonderful hard converted grams.