same, and converting between the two constantly is such a pain

Reply to 'Alphaidiot' Nazi Wernher von Braun made it happen with only usable metric system. Imperial system is used only by you r****d imperialist sons of bitches, and not for long.Checkmate, f**k off and die in your rotten country.

The scientist who defined the scheme set zero at the coldest temperature he could find (a salt-ice mixture) and 100 at human body temperature, so it's not totally stupid.

Of course it's confusing. You're American ... lol

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Imperial system landed on the moon. Checkmate and f**k off.

Thank the Republican President Ronald Regan who dismantled all of the efforts that Jimmy Carter took to start the States on Metric...

Am screwed up with measurements. I learned all the UK ones before being cruelly converted to metric and Decimalization age 7. Hence I dont know either. I dont know what a perch, a rod or a pole is, nor can I envisage a hectare, but I know what an acre looks like. I can envisage 1000 lb - but not a cwt. I know how many furlongs in a mile, but I struggle to convert metres to yards. I swam a mile as a kid, but my badge told me I swum kilometres, I will always measure my weight in stones, and my cooking in lbs, oz and pints, - hard to convert it in your head to litres - easier with a measuring jug, I know a pint ofwater weighs a pound and that a litre weighs a kilogramme. I know an inch is 2.3 cm/ish - and that a kilogramme is 2.2something/ish. Kids who grew up in that era are very confused/we had yardsticks - then they gave us different metre-sticks - cant do it age 7. We did the 100 yds race - then they changed it to 100m. 200yds got changed. We didnt have a clue by age 10.

@diane a: I don't know how old you are now, but I hope that you have finally mastered the decimal system. As the word indicates, everything goes by 10. You can safely forget about the furlong, the fathom and the cwt. Don't lose any more time doing conversions either, you must have better things to do. Even in the US, the scientific and technical industries use the decimal system.

@Cassie, the metric wasn't invented by the Brits, it's French and was used widely across Europe before the Brits adopted it.

A yard was suposedly measured from the distance from Henry V111's nose to his thumb

"At least our system" - they're both Brit systems. Imperial Units came to the US from Britain and then the Brits changed over to metric and the US didn't. We can all blame the Romans to some extent, though, since the the early English systems were largely based on Roman measurements.

Allow me a correction: actually, Louis XVI ordered a scientist to find a basis for the meter, which was a rather complicated and time-consuming issue. Meanwhile, the Revolution intervened, but saw the interest of this work, and the metric system was officially created and adopted by the French in 1795. Napoleon just "exported" it in all the countries where he went to wage wars... Having never been invaded by Napoleon, the British stuck to the Imperial system, which had developed over time since the Dark Ages, and was legally defined in 1824.

US actually uses the English system (Winchester Standard) that was in place at the time the US claimed Independence from England (1776). The UK moved to ever more "reasonable" Imperial System in 1825. I got this from Wikipedia so it must be true.

Just read farther up. At least some of the American here think the metric system was invented by the Brits.

I wrote this only once. How'd it get in two places?

It already has, it is called the metric system ;-)

They use month/day/year, not year/month/day. And its b******t

Uh.... except it's not? Guess what 0˚F is based off of? Care to guess? It's the temperature of brine. BRINE. (Equal parts water, ice and salt) How is that based off the human body? The guy who invented the system, also randomly decided that if brine was 0˚F, then water freezing at 32˚F was perfectly fine! It's also based off of water, it just makes 1000% less sense than Celsius.

You're, like, 60% water. If water is freezing, you risk freezing.

Measuring body temperature is only one application of a temperature scale among many. And the guy didn't even get it right, he had slight fever when he invented his system xD

doesnt brine freeze at a lower temperature than pure water - and boil at a higher temperature? due to the higher spg?

You do realise about 50- 60% of you is water right? And besides you'll know to drive/ walk carefully because there might be ice/ snow on the roads. And water boils at 100 degrees. Well at least no one uses Kelvin where the zero is actually the absolute zero- it was something like -273 in Celsius.

I don't understand the replies here... rola's point is fine, don't understand the downvotes. And no, I'm not American, my country uses centigrade, and yes, I'm a scientist, I work with measurements in a variety of contexts. The comments saying that water makes sense because "our bodies are made of water" are... like... I don't understand how you people function on a day to day basis if you believe that your body freezes solid at 0 degrees Celsius. Your body is closer to brine than to water. Fahrenheit is literally just a different scale, no more or less valid than centigrade is. Rola is right, the weather is the most common day-to-day use of temperature scales. So like, step back, you people are so unbelievably over-the-top. Take some Valium ffs.

How do you know cocaine is weighed in grams? Asking for a friend.....

I'm 66 and watch a lot of UK panel shows and it was just this year that I figured out that when someone says "full stop" they mean what in the US is "period." Used with the same intent, i.e., "that's it, the matter is settled." Except in URLs when we say, as does the rest of the world "dot."

In America there are no full stops. It's called a periodic demi (or period for short) or more properly, a chiggler's tord. It's one seventh of a heptord.

Glad Im not the only one in a Gen X mess!!! I understand a baby can be 6 pounds but if its like 3kg I am lost at how physically big that is??? Stupid! I do height in imperial, speed in Kms...Christ its a s**t show!

Hogshead. The hogshead of beer and ale was equal to a quarter of a tun, half a butt, a barrel and a half or three kilderkins. This unit is close in size to the wine hogshead. From the mid-15th century until 1824, the ale hogshead was defined as 48 ale or beer gallons (221.8 L). It gets worse the more you look into it

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