Uk 50 Years Of Decimal Currency

[BroadAmbition]

No one in construction or engineering industries talks about centimetres.

Agreed

Griff

[floydraser]

8 hours ago, PaulN said:

 No one in construction or engineering industries talks about centimetres. 

 

Sorry Paul, am I reading this wrong? With respect, I've worked on the Shard, St Georges Tower and One Blackfriars and all the measurements were in millimetres? Or do mean the guys "on the tools"?

[ranworthbreeze]

About the only measurements I know of in industry I know of where they use centimetres is far parcel delivery sizes by carriers.

 

[grendel]

5 hours ago, floydraser said:

Sorry Paul, am I reading this wrong? With respect, I've worked on the Shard, St Georges Tower and One Blackfriars and all the measurements were in millimetres? Or do mean the guys "on the tools"?

agreed, thats what Paul is saying, the use of centimetres or decimetres (100mm) is just something thats avoided, all measurements are in metres or millimetres, so a typical measurement would be 2.45m or 2450mm, not 245cm, or 24.5dm, why are the schools teaching cm and dm when they are generally avoided.

I know they are theoretically part of the decimal system, but its as bad as someone using the imperial measurements and quoting things in us survey feet, its fine over short distances, but over the longer distances the errors creep up:-

3.28083333333 US survey feet per meter

 3.28083989501 International feet per meter

worse still is measuring by GPS, which gives the correct measure only at sea level.

I once saw the result of a site laying out the bolt pattern for a new pre built units building that arrived on site and were basically plugged together to form the finished building, the finished building was 100m long, yet as the bolts had been carefully laid out by gps, the site were telling the manufacturer that the prefabricated units were incorrect as they ended up 50mm short of the bolts installed at the far end of the structure, in fact due to the height above sea level, the carefully laid out gps coordinates had left the bolts 50mm further apart than a direct measure by tape made it, as you rise above sea level the curve of the earth increases the distance between gps points and a correction factor has to be allowed to enable correct measurements. similarly measurements taken up a steep hill will be longer than the same distance on the flat.

[Cheesey69]

1 hour ago, grendel said:

agreed, thats what Paul is saying, the use of centimetres or decimetres (100mm) is just something thats avoided, all measurements are in metres or millimetres, so a typical measurement would be 2.45m or 2450mm, not 245cm, or 24.5dm, why are the schools teaching cm and dm when they are generally avoided.

I know they are theoretically part of the decimal system, but its as bad as someone using the imperial measurements and quoting things in us survey feet, its fine over short distances, but over the longer distances the errors creep up:-

3.28083333333 US survey feet per meter

 3.28083989501 International feet per meter

worse still is measuring by GPS, which gives the correct measure only at sea level.

I once saw the result of a site laying out the bolt pattern for a new pre built units building that arrived on site and were basically plugged together to form the finished building, the finished building was 100m long, yet as the bolts had been carefully laid out by gps, the site were telling the manufacturer that the prefabricated units were incorrect as they ended up 50mm short of the bolts installed at the far end of the structure, in fact due to the height above sea level, the carefully laid out gps coordinates had left the bolts 50mm further apart than a direct measure by tape made it, as you rise above sea level the curve of the earth increases the distance between gps points and a correction factor has to be allowed to enable correct measurements. similarly measurements taken up a steep hill will be longer than the same distance on the flat.

As a brickie agreed but I think it goes unsaid the ability of sticking a zero or taking one off or indeed moving the decimal point is very easy and automatic and that what makes it superior to imperial.

As to large distance, we use the metric system on the motorway network but ironically for the motorist we use miles and yards. The marker posts you see at the side of the carriageway is in kilometers and meters.  

[PaulN]

floydraser. Yes, you are "reading me wrong". What I said is that school children seem to be talking centimetres, which is not what the UK adopted as a system. Industry uses metres and millimetres, as you say.