Something Kazuhiko is going to have to acquire shortly *shudder*
Eh? America is stuck on the same imperial nonsense much of this country is. If you can cope here (either way) then you ought to be able to cope there. --Vitenka
True, except here you can get away with talking metric, thanks to the EU?, but Americans won't have a clue how long a kilogram is... sic -M-A
Unfortunately, we'll be waiting light-years for people to stop using units which measure something completely different... --AC
Don't some of the imperial measures there correspond to slightly different actual physical quantities to those used here? I seem to recall something along these lines.. - MoonShadow
I believe so. The cup and ton / tonne spring to mind although I never could get the ton / tonne thing straight in my head. From what I have experienced that seem to use Imperial measurements far more than we do - Farenheit being the main one I'm not looking forward to. --Kazuhiko
If it's <32, it's below freezing. Spring is 50-70, summer 70+. 80 is pleasantly warm, 90 is hot and 100 is unbeliveably hot. HTH --M-A
PeterTaylor believes that measures of volume are responsible for most of the differences. Farenheit-wise: 100 is slightly above body temperature (unless you're ill) ergo ~38C.
Yes, there are a number of such fun differences as the American 16 fl oz pint, compared to the British 20 fl oz. And I believe that this difficulty then runs all the way up the volume measures... Imperial tons are the same here and in the States but very slightly different to a metric tonne. (Swap over ton and tonne if I've got them wrong, I can never remember...). Regarding Fahrenheit, you can pretty much think of °F = 2x°C in the range you would need to know for oven temperatures - much quicker than working out the precise answer and accurate enough for cooking.
MindTheGap But, the fl oz in the US is 4% larger than the fl oz in the UK, meaning that the UK pint is 20% larger than the US pint, rather than the 25% you'd naïvely expect. -- SenjiMindTheGap
(PeterTaylor) As observed in TomClancy?'s "Red Rabbit", where Cathy translates a pint of beer (in an English pub) into 16 ounces. (Who thinks of beer in ounces? Come on!)
It also contains American beer. Which may be more of an issue, AIUI. --Vitenka
Example: British pint 568 millilitres (I think). US pint closer to 454. Damn confusing, and when it comes to beer, fraudulent too. I paid for those 114 millilitres, dammit; psychologically, anyway. Also, not all American beer is awful. Don't buy anything that comes in cans. Buy microbrewery stuff, some of it is quite good. Some of it is also fairly widespread, including SamAdams?. And bizarrely you can get NewcastleBrownAle? in a lot of places (imported, even). --Jumlian
Eww. But I was under the impression that this country used faren anyway. Ton and Tonne don't matter. They both mean "big and heavy" --Vitenka (Who cooks using 'handful' and 'about this much' so wouldn't worry too much about cups.)
The farenheit->centigrade changeover mostly happened during the 1980s, so which one you prefer will probably depend on exactly how old you are and when your school changed over. You don't see many weather reports saying "it'll be a nice day today, in the high 70s" these days. For many reasons... --M-A
Oh, I prefer °C, but everyone else still seems to use faren. --Vitenka
Thought of one problem. An American billion is a thousand times smaller than it should be. So don't be cooking any billion cup cakes and you'll be fine. --Vitenka (CategoryAwfulPun)
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