Why do Brits still use stone as a measurement?
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Elsie_Brownraisin wrote: »I don't know why I'm being defensive, I'm of the age that I was only taught metric weights at school. I use kilos and grammes and had a rather embarrassing conversation with a butcher some years ago when I asked for 100 gm of mince.
We only decimalised our currency in 1971. You can't expect people to change so quickly - Google the 'metric martyrs' if you don't believe me.
I always found the currency so puzzling in older English novels. It made me happy that Plantagenet Palliser in those Trollope books was always on about reforming the currency system, as it certainly seemed to need it! Anyway, definitely don't be defensive, as we Americans of course do cling to the irrational English measuring system far more than you all do. We just never picked up stone for some reason.
It's so funny how hard it can be to learn a new system when you grow up with one. I think because I never really had an particularly strong intuitive sense of ounces it's been quite easy for me to start thinking of smaller measurements as grams, but for things like kg and km, I always have to be doing the math in my head to convert them to pounds and miles for the numbers to make sense to me (other than basic ones like 5K and 10K, but even then it's because I know the distance in miles).
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Why not use the metric system once and for all?
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters
1 meter = 1,000 millimeters or 100 centimeters
1 kilogram = 1,000 grams
1 gram = 1,000 milligrams
kilo: x1,000
centi: 1/100
milli: 1/1,000
Waaaaay easier to convert
No need to convert miles to yards or feet to inches or stones to pounds to ounces0 -
I weigh my food in gm, myself in lbs and my plates are in kg. English people are just messed up that way...0
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Seriously though, I just think we picked up the measurements that interest us from parents/grandparents.
I learned in metric at school but if I'm DIYing, I'll use inches because that's how my dad does it. I'm not interested in baking so I didn't really pick up on the ounces etc. and tend to use Grammes. And we use miles (I think it'd be too expensive and piss too many people off to change all the road signs to kilometres).
For weighing, if I said to a friend, family member etc. I weighed 146lb they would be clueless, 10 and a half stone - they know what I mean.
I'm sure I read on here that Canada has a similarly effed up system to us when it comes to measuring.0 -
Could be because a stone is actually a unit of weight, while pounds and kilograms are not.0
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I'm British and I do think in stones. I'd probably convert any lb weight to stone in my head to get a better grasp of how heavy it is.
However, when I go to the doctor and they ask me how much I weigh, they seem confused when I offer it in stone and I can't convert to kg in my head.0 -
just because we can!!! seriously it is what we grew up with (despite me being one when we technically switched to decimalisation)and because of that the weights mean something in our heads!! e.g for me I know that 11 stone is far too much, 10 stone a little too much and 9 stone where I would love to be. Babies now come in kg but still if converted I know a 7lb something baby is pretty average (from around 20 years ago) and that a 10lb baby would be pretty big!!.0
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Using stone for weight would be similar to only using yards for distance (no feet or inches), or saying "I'm 1 yard 34 tall" instead of 5'10".JazzFischer1989 wrote:Why do we use inches and feet instead of meters and centimeters like the rest of the world?
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herrspoons wrote: »We use both imperial and metric.
Because we're awesome.
We tried that and crashed a spaceship on mars.0 -
Oh, my gosh, this made me laugh. I knew the system was different than the rest of the world, but never even thought about the different cups, lol. That has to seem particularly nuts to someone who has moved here and has to learn it all. "Wait, a cup isn't a cup? The cup changes based on what you're measuring?!" That must seem wacky, lol.Elsie_Brownraisin wrote: »What about you yanks and your bloody cups, that change according to the substance you are measuring!?!
When I first committed to using the metric system, I tried to do it by converting. Didn't work. I had to just use it. Eventually, I got to the point where, for my purposes, I could guess equally well n either system. I could use both systems. I still had trouble converting, though. I knew 39.2 was a fairly high temp for a person, but I couldn't tell you that it was 102.5. If I was told either number, I'd know what it meant and felt like...I just couldn't convert.
To this day, I'm much better with knowing temps from 20-40 (69-104) than other temps, because I've had more experience with those.
But I picked it up much faster using it than trying to convert, if that makes any sense.
The stones thing...unless you have Brits telling you their weight and forgetting to convert it for you (like they ask for chips when they want fries, so you have to say, "Are those British chips or American chips?")...it's hard to pick up stones. But if you happen to be in the rare position of having British people saying "stone", it's the easiest of all to pick up...it's the same system.
It's really weird how you automatically say things in your own system when you use the same language. If you were speaking another language, you'd never forget to use the other terms, but when you speak (roughly) the same language, you forget and slip up. I bet the linguists have a word for that. 0 -
Because it's cool.
Also, well ... the reason is quite obvious, really. They weigh things in stones because they want to know who's a witch.
You get on the scale, they put a lot of stones on the other side, and then you get tossed into the river to see if you sink like a stone and hence are a decent trustworthy sort (who doesn't put funny things in your cooking pot like eye of newt or, well, anything but salt), or if you float, in which case you're a witch.
Then they pass the information on to either the Spanish Inquisition or Hogwarts. Depending on the weather and the mood of the clerk. And there you have your answer.
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Not sure.
We measure our height in feet and inches too.
I don't say 'I'm 180 lbs' nor do I say 'I'm 79 inches tall'. I'm 12st 12lb and 5'9".
Interestingly, under normal circumstances, I could tell you my weight in kilos quicker than I could in lbs as I'm weighed in metric at the gym.0 -
ViolaLeeBlueberry wrote: »Because it's cool.
Also, well ... the reason is quite obvious, really. They weigh things in stones because they want to know who's a witch.
You get on the scale, they put a lot of stones on the other side, and then you get tossed into the river to see if you sink like a stone and hence are a decent trustworthy sort (who doesn't put funny things in your cooking pot like eye of newt or, well, anything but salt), or if you float, in which case you're a witch.
Then they pass the information on to either the Spanish Inquisition or Hogwarts. Depending on the weather and the mood of the clerk. And there you have your answer.
This is my favourite answer so far!
(we also add random extra vowels into words, but that's so we can win at Scrabble - look up the Eddie Izzard sketch)0 -
Does a "fortnight" bother you too? lol0
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I think the point was that "stones" just aren't granular enough to be effective when dealing with typical human weights.
And if you're going to use "pounds" as a remainder (e.g. 3 stone 7 pounds), that's even more silly. Just dispense with stones entirely, in that case. Economy of language.
I'm a big fan of the metric system, and love its uniformity, but, for the life of me, can't understand why a kg is less granular than a pound.0 -
LiminalAscendance wrote: »I think the point was that "stones" just aren't granular enough to be effective when dealing with typical human weights.
And if you're going to use "pounds" as a remainder (e.g. 3 stone 7 pounds), that's even more silly. Just dispense with stones entirely, in that case. Economy of language.
I'm a big fan of the metric system, and love its uniformity, but, for the life of me, can't understand why a kg is less granular than a pound.
No
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Come back when you stop using "cups" as an official unit of measurement 0
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before MFP i had no idea what a stone was, remember a while ago having my self to Google it , + where i'm from we use KM and not miles (that was a bit confusing my first time in the US) and we use inches not CM and Lbs not Kg , it's all about custom i suppose
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Boy, defensive much? My question pertains to the fact that a stone is a HUGE unit of measure for the human body given the 14 lbs is like three months of healthy weight loss. Sure, America's insistence on using old English weights and measures is stupid, but using stones to measure weight loss is as silly as using grams.0
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Espressocycle wrote: »Boy, defensive much? My question pertains to the fact that a stone is a HUGE unit of measure for the human body given the 14 lbs is like three months of healthy weight loss. Sure, America's insistence on using old English weights and measures is stupid, but using stones to measure weight loss is as silly as using grams.
But it is similar to using feet and inches.
For weight loss issues we subdivide it into pounds.
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Why not use the metric system once and for all?
1 kilometer = 1,000 meters
1 meter = 1,000 millimeters or 100 centimeters
1 kilogram = 1,000 grams
1 gram = 1,000 milligrams
kilo: x1,000
centi: 1/100
milli: 1/1,000
Waaaaay easier to convert
No need to convert miles to yards or feet to inches or stones to pounds to ounces
Speedometers and road signs are in miles in UK0 -
I've lost 3 stone
Feels more weighty than I've lost 42lbs
But I have to convert that to 20kg for my Swiss friend0 -
Espressocycle wrote: »Boy, defensive much? My question pertains to the fact that a stone is a HUGE unit of measure for the human body given the 14 lbs is like three months of healthy weight loss. Sure, America's insistence on using old English weights and measures is stupid, but using stones to measure weight loss is as silly as using grams.
I'd agree if it was just stone. However we use stones and pounds. I've never met anyone that uses stones without lbs. It's not 14.928 stones that is commonly used, it's 14 stone 13.
It makes the overall number more meaningful to those brought up using it. 160lb, 170lb 225lb are all fairly meaningless to me. However 11st 6lb, 12st 2lb, and 16st 1lb all make sense to me.
We use them because we've always used them and because of that they are useful subdivisions to us.0 -
Pounds come and go, but once you've lost a stone, you know you've accomplished something.
Passing a stone is even more difficult than losing one, I might add. Sorry, what were we talking about again?0 -
As an American with European(ish) parents and who grew up all over the place, I think we should do away with stones and pounds and miles and ounces and get with the rest of the world, IMO. While we're at it, we should get rid of Fahrenheit and 12 hour clocks. "Just because" is not an answer...we can learn new things!0
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Don't get me started on feet and inches, miles and yards, and ounces and pounds. BLEH. I grew up with decimals and it's a nightmare.0
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I drove an Aston Martin once. It got 7.3 hectares per liter of petrol.0
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Espressocycle wrote: »This is for you Brits. Please explain why you guys are always posting about weight loss in stone. I mean, one stone is 14 lbs! That's a huge unit of measurement to use when talking about weight loss. It would be like measuring cocaine in pounds. I'm not trying to be insulting, just genuinely confused about how it works when one stone could be two clothing sizes.
Dude... you're American... we still use the Imperial System. You can't pick on someone else for still being in diapers when you are running around in diapers too!
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Why do Yanks still use Imperial as measurement when the rest of the world uses Metric?
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