Imperial units of measurement and the future?

Doesn't it come in pint bottles on your doorstep, then?

 

Not since 1979 for me - The bottles are collectors items now!

 

In the states, milk is sold in gallons, half gallons and quarts. Cream is sold in pints or perhaps half pints.
But soft drinks are often in litres.
Motor oil is sold most commonly in quarts but also in gallon or five quart containers.
The five gallon pail, gallon and pint are the common sizes for many construction materials.
Fuel is of course in US sized gallons and the road is in miles and miles per hour on the speedometer.
Construction is still in inches and feet but most measure in inches not feet and inches.
In aviation and motorcars, the "metric inch" came in with Henry Ford and fractions were left behind.
Cabinetmaking is described in quarters, as in "three quarter" or "five quarter".
And on and on with all the imperial measurements.
It will all go metric slowly as us doddering old wrecks pass on.

 

You must buy your milk from convenience stores. Tesco, Morrisons M&S etc sell their milk in pints. Checked the fridge to make sure, 2.272 litres / 4 pints. Milk purchased from Onestop convinience store is Muller 2 litre

 

Apparently ... yes! I nearly tripped over the first empty glass milk bottles I've seen left out in yonks, just a couple of days ago. Bob only knows where they came from, as I've not seen a milk float round here in five years or more.

Worse... much worse. It's defined as: "the basic SI unit of length; the length of the path travelled by light in free space during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second". One second is defined as: "the time needed for a cesium-133 atom to perform 9,192,631,770 complete oscillations".

For the record, the imperial 'yard' has been defined in terms of it's relationship to the metre for ages anyway. The bar of metal still taking up shelf space in parliament is allegedly accurate at 62°F, or at least was when it was made. The definitions underpinning the Fahrenheit scale have changed a few times since it was dreamed up!

The will to live seems to have no standard measurement, but luckily enough, the standard unit of measure for tea is the cuppa ....

 

Milkman delivers to our village. I must admit though that I recently and reluctantly gave up with that as the old dairyman retired and the new one is very erratic with his deliveries. Having your pinta delivered at 11.00 on a hot summers day when you have already gone out for the day is not the best service you can get.

 

You outlasted me by 30 years! In Berkshire, Clifford's Dairies used to sell cold boxes to take 2,3 or 4 pint bottles. Would't do much good round my way these days as some thieving SoB would be off with the whole lot long before anything had time to go off anyway. Last I heard, a delivered pint cost about 20p more than at the supermarket. No contest, I'm afraid. Must be why I've seen no deliveries along my road in in the 5 years I've been here.

Where I grew up, Co-oP, Express and United Dairies all delivered to the doorstep and we had bread deliveries until a bakers strike in the 70's drove the final nail into that coffin. On holiday in Minehead, served by Horlicks Dairy (in the 70's), our milk came in platic bags!

[\End of OT nostalgic rambling]

 

We have two competing milkmen in our road, both delivering pints in glass bottles. But then we are in the despised suburbs.

 

Actually at least one of those supermarkets has more than one range of milk, some in litres and some in pints, side-by-side in the same shop. It makes working out which one is cheaper a nightmare. (The cynic in me says maybe that's why they do it.)

 

Another thing - does it strike anyone as odd that we measure fuel consumption in cars in 'miles per gallon' even though you can't actually buy fuel in gallons?

 

Yes, but not for the reason you assert. Going all dimensionless about it, I think that in most situations volume per unit distance gives more useful information than distance per unit volume (*)

(*) Because in day to day use, "how much fuel do I need to travel from A to B?" is generally a more useful question than "I've got this much fuel available - how far can I travel?"

Tom

 

I can cope with litres per 100 km. I know that 8 litres/100km is near enough 35 mpg so I simply do a mental calculation of what it is in miles per gallon based on that and then I can understand it. For example 10 litres/100 km is 35 x 8/10 = 28 mpg. (approx) Simples.

 

That's why I kept units out of it - you can use quarts per league if it makes you feel better

Tom