Or screens. My TV is 55 inches, for instance. I could convert this to a diagonal of 140 centimetres, but why would I? I know my TV, so I have a sort of intuutive understanding of how big a 55 inch screen is, which enables me to get a feeling for how big a screen with any other number of inches would be - even without recalling that the inch is a unit of length which I could (but don’t) use to measure lengths other than screen diagonals.
A couple observations while working on cars:
All modern cars, even ones made in the U.S., use metric bolts throughout. (The only time I use SAE sockets is when I am working on an old car or mower.) There is an exception, though: every spark plug I’ve ever changed required a 5/8 inch socket.
The square drives for ratchets & sockets have sizes 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch, 1/2 inch, etc. I don’t this will ever change, and I believe it is the standard throughout the world.
While in England, we get things like this (from the instruction guide for a polytunnel):
In the world of LORAN or radar, the speed of light isn’t 186,000 miles per second, it’s 6.182 microseconds (usecs) per nautical mile. Besides being a reciprocal of the 1.86 x 10^5 one, you have to convert statue miles to nautical miles. And I do NOT believe the speed of light ends after 2 decimal places. I think some rounding took place.
Back in the ‘90’s, the laser printer in our office was down for days with a mysterious error message that no one understood. On it’s LCD screen it said ‘Load A4’ We were working with contractors in Germany who sent someone a document that he tried to print and forgot about.
Millions of micromorons, and a few kilotraitors. There’s gotta be a good slogan in there, at least…
My understanding as well. In Europe you get a 1/4” drive ratchet for your 12mm socket.
Also, the goal for soccer/football is 7.32 x 2.44 meters, NOT 24 feet x 8 feet.
Standard in Japan as well.
Construction is like Manufacturing and science in that most measurements are in millimeters, switching to meters when it mms become impractical. So they’re fifty by hundreds in NZ. There’s a couple of advantages of millimeters over centimeters - the magnitudes are different enough that it’s hard to mistake a meter measurement for millimeters and they cover the range from 1mm to 10m reasonably succinctly. So if you watch a builder measure the length of a slab or frame, they might call “Fifty-Thirty” i.e. 5030mm or 5.03 meters. If the unit is spoken, it is inevitably shortened to mils.
In the survey biz where we deal with longer measurements we use meters officially but the ease of switching is quite handy in the zone where both are practical. I might call my chainie forward 1 and a half meters and 350 left and they’ll know which one is in meters and which is in millimeters. Then I can go over to the builder and tell him that I offset the peg by 300 because of a pile on the ground.