Speed limits in Ireland

[Jam35]

and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

With units like that, do you wonder why?

[si404]

and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

With units like that, do you wonder why?

ah good someone else picked up on the crappy unit. however if you wanted to be SI about it, m^-2 (metres per cubic metre) would be wierd too. Also would give unwieldly numbers.

Simon

[wibble]

and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

With units like that, do you wonder why?

I guess it is all to do with making nice sounding measurements, combined with the fact that the concept being measured "how much do I consume for x distance" rather than "how far do I travel for a level of consumption"

e.g. I fill up with 45 litres, and get about 750km (Ford Focus 1.8TDI estate) at a cruising speed of 140 - 150 km/h (German motorways don't ya love 'em )

Therefore I travel 16.6 km / litre (c.v. miles per gallon)
Alternatively I consume 0.06 litres per km.

This is a bit of a silly small value (3 shots of sprits per km , so to make it a bit real world, let's make it relate a bit better to normal trip distances , so times it by 100....
Therefore I consume 6 litres per 100 km


Don't even ask me what the value in m.p.g is......
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Actually I'm interested...

45 litres = 9,91 gallons (divide by 4.54) ~ 9.9 gallons
750 km = 468.75 miles (divide by 1.6) ~ 470 miles

Therefore m.p.g = 470/9.9 = 47 m.p.g

This sounds pretty good? I guess that is the result of never driving in a city, and once I've got up to cruising speed, not stopping for several hours on a typical journey!

edit: to use litres per gallon is 4.54, not 4.2 - what relationship is 4.2 useful for..... something like calories to joules I think....???

[Jam35]

and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

With units like that, do you wonder why?

ah good someone else picked up on the crappy unit. however if you wanted to be SI about it, m^-2 (metres per cubic metre) would be wierd too. Also would give unwieldly numbers.

Well, they could just as easily have km/2.35214584l, and join the civilised world in a scale that sounds right.

[Jam35]

and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

With units like that, do you wonder why?

I guess it is all to do with making nice sounding measurements,

A key weakness in a system where units are usually three degrees of magnitude apart. You really should introduce the pint and the gallon - you'd find them useful.

combined with the fact that the concept being measured "how much do I consume for x distance" rather than "how far do I travel for a level of consumption"

I suppose you could look on it as us Brits really wanting to know how much we get for our £4.30 gallon (or whatever extortionate amount it is now) - getting 35mpg rather than 30mpg makes it sound like you're getting more for your money - rather than indulging in the good feelings of feeling efficient and knowing we're saving the planet for people in 100s of years' time.

Therefore I travel 16.6 km / litre (c.v. miles per gallon)
Alternatively I consume 0.06 litres per km.

This is a bit of a silly small value (3 shots of sprits per km

Oh yes, you Europeans shrunk our whiskies too

Therefore m.p.g = 470/10,7 = 44 m.p.g

This sounds pretty good? I guess that is the result of never driving in a city, and once I've got up to cruising speed, not stopping for several hours on a typical journey!

Sounds excellent. I've known my dad to get over 50 mpg from a car before - but that was several years ago in a FIAT Uno on the M5! I suppose the moral of the story must be drive a sensible car, and that driving in town can seriously damage your wealth.

[Chris Bertram]

Therefore I travel 16.6 km / litre (c.v. miles per gallon)
Alternatively I consume 0.06 litres per km.

This is a bit of a silly small value (3 shots of sprits per km

Oh yes, you Europeans shrunk our whiskies too

(mode=pedant) Actually, when the spirit measures were metricated a few years ago, it was only the Scots that lost out. The new 25ml measure was greater than the 1/6 gill that was standard in England and Wales, and less than the 1/5 (or was it 1/4?) gill north of the border (not sure what was standard in NI). So if you drink whisky in the pub, but not in Scotland, you have something to thank the EU for. Mind you, the price whisky is in the pub, I'd stick to drinking it at home, plus you get bigger measures anyway.(/mode)

[Jam35]

Therefore I travel 16.6 km / litre (c.v. miles per gallon)
Alternatively I consume 0.06 litres per km.

This is a bit of a silly small value (3 shots of sprits per km

Oh yes, you Europeans shrunk our whiskies too

(mode=pedant) Actually, when the spirit measures were metricated a few years ago, it was only the Scots that lost out. The new 25ml measure was greater than the 1/6 gill that was standard in England and Wales, and less than the 1/5 (or was it 1/4?) gill north of the border (not sure what was standard in NI).

Actually, a tot could be any fraction of a gill with 1 on the top from a third to a sixth of a gill. The meanest ones were in London, of course, and the generalisation that the Scots were less mean has an amount of truth to it, but is a generalisation nonetheless. In the same way, there are 25ml (somwhere between 1/5 and 1/6 gill) and 35ml (just under 1/4 gill) measures now. Of course, I keep my eyes peeled for the 35ml tots - they do exist!

Mind you, the price whisky is in the pub,

The annoying thing is how much it varies between pubs. Some of them must be making an absolute killing on it.

I'd stick to drinking it at home, plus you get bigger measures anyway.(/mode)

I'll drink to that.

[PeterA5145]

In the same way, there are 25ml (somwhere between 1/5 and 1/6 gill) and 35ml (just under 1/4 gill) measures now. Of course, I keep my eyes peeled for the 35ml tots - they do exist!

A growing number of pubs do now serve 35ml measures - it's a revenue-generating exercise, really, in the same way as selling larger glasses of wine.

It does have the problem that people may end up drinking more than they think - a 35ml measure at 40% ABV contains 1.4 units of alcohol, not one.

[jamesd]

If you're just comparing vehicles, then the figures are rather arbitary and you could choose any units as the base, and have the order run either way. Preference will purely be based on what's familiar.

l/100km does have a distinct advantage in calculating costs of a trip. Say you have a car that does 7.5l/100km. Travel 50km, easy: 3.25L. Go for 200km again it's easy, 15L. 550km? Slightly harder, but still only simple multiplication, and quite possible to get a quick approximation without a calculator.

Now let's take a car with 35 mpg. 50 miles? Um, 1 and abit, um about 1.4 gallons, I guess. 200 miles? Well, 30x6 is 180, 40x5 is 200, so somewhere between, I suppose 5.6gallons. 550miles? Out comes the calculator. Even then you've got a gallon figure, which isn't the price listed on the pumps these days.

Sure, once you get used to a car you get an idea of how much it'll run on a tank and how much the tank costs, or if you're confident the fuel price is stable, you could calculate it's cost in pence per mile. However if you often find yourself in an unfamiliar vehicle, it's not quite so easy.

Shouldn't this be in unleashed? I don't think it has much to do with speed limits.

BTW, to convert from one to the other, divide it into 282.12. Works both ways.

[401Guy]

Oh yes, us silly, silly English speakers and our wacky, wacky measurement system!
Why not totally adapt all parts of the French numbering system!?
From now on, ninety-nine shall be four twenties nineteen!
Haven't been to Ireland since metrification of the speed limits, I do hope that they haven't taken down the feet and inches height and width signs!
When Canada went metric in 1977, they had to put back up height signs as drivers had no idea what a metre was and there were quite a few problems with trucks crashing into low bridges! You do need to give people time to adjust!
Here is a weird idea. Why not ask people in the country if they want to adjust. Unless the U.K. switches sides of the road to drive on, they will always be profoundly different to the Continent. I would suspect that Continental drivers would be far more off-put by driving on the other side of the road than seeing signs in miles, etc.
As for dual speedometers, auto manufacturers can get them from Canada, we have them for use in the U.S.. Frankly, I feel that the ROI government is letting the manufacturers off too easily, they should be required as the UK still uses MPH, and driving in NI and mainland UK is common for ROI drivers.

[wibble]

I suppose you could look on it as us Brits....

Hey, I'm a Brit too (just living in exile). Must admit, it took me several years to start to think in km as a distance measure, as I had no frame of reference (although the 100km = 60 miles = 1 hour on a motorway kind of helps).

Litres was never a problem - one 500 ml beer is a bit less than 1 pint - it is that little bit that allows you to say - "1 more beer bar man" safe in the knowledge you've still not had x pints really

...Oh yes, you Europeans shrunk our whiskies too

so on which continent is the UK then?

[Jam35]

I suppose you could look on it as us Brits....

Hey, I'm a Brit too (just living in exile). Must admit, it took me several years to start to think in km as a distance measure, as I had no frame of reference (although the 100km = 60 miles = 1 hour on a motorway kind of helps).

Litres was never a problem - one 500 ml beer is a bit less than 1 pint - it is that little bit that allows you to say - "1 more beer bar man" safe in the knowledge you've still not had x pints really

Anyway, I'd be quite happy to be presented with one of your Bavarian 1L mugs of beer.

...Oh yes, you Europeans shrunk our whiskies too

so on which continent is the UK then?

The UK isn't on the Continent. We have the English Channel to prevent that from happening.

[Chris Bertram]

Why not totally adapt all parts of the French numbering system!?
From now on, ninety-nine shall be four twenties nineteen!

Well, it's easy to pick on the really stupid-sounding bit, but as I'm sure you well know, the French-speaking Belgians and Swiss have "septante" instead of "soixante-dix", and I think the Swiss also have "octante" and "nonante" as well. Not sure about the non-European francophonie, but it is telling that when freed from the iron rule of the Académie Française, modernisation of the language is possible.

Now, will someone please tell me what is so magic about 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, 8 stones to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to the ton? Not to mention 4 gills or 20 fluid ounces to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon? Or, for that matter, 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 22 yards to the chain, 10 chains to the furlong, 8 furlongs to the mile? Please, if you were designing any kind of measurement system now, would you *really* choose such a random set of equivalences? I notice that 10 occurs only once in that set.

[Jam35]

Why not totally adapt all parts of the French numbering system!?
From now on, ninety-nine shall be four twenties nineteen!

Well, it's easy to pick on the really stupid-sounding bit, but as I'm sure you well know, the French-speaking Belgians and Swiss have "septante" instead of "soixante-dix", and I think the Swiss also have "octante" and "nonante" as well. Not sure about the non-European francophonie, but it is telling that when freed from the iron rule of the Académie Française, modernisation of the language is possible.

"Nonante" is found in Belgium, the Val d'Aoste, and much of eastern France too (for the curious, Départements 01, the north-east corner of 07, 25, 39, the south-east corner of 42, 54, 55, 57, 69, 70, 88, corresponding to the historic regions of Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Ain, the Lyonnais, the Beaujolais, and Pilat). "Huitante" and "Octante" are both found in different parts of Switzerland (the latter in the more southerly parts); Huitante is also used in the Val d'Aoste; neither word is used much in Belgium. Zaïre and Rwanda follow Belgium; Québec (despite what you may read elsewhere) generally follows France.

What's *really* annoying is how the French French read 'phone numbers. With a language like theirs, they really shouldn't pair digits like they do.

Now, will someone please tell me what is so magic about 16 ounces to the pound, 14 pounds to the stone, 8 stones to the hundredweight and 20 hundredweight to the ton? Not to mention 4 gills or 20 fluid ounces to the pint, 2 pints to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon? Or, for that matter, 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet to the yard, 22 yards to the chain, 10 chains to the furlong, 8 furlongs to the mile? Please, if you were designing any kind of measurement system now, would you *really* choose such a random set of equivalences? I notice that 10 occurs only once in that set.

And the 10's really a conincidence - it's more a matter of wanting to divide a mile into eight parts for some purposes and eighty for others. But despite the units being related strangely to eachother, they are remarkably well-proportioned for most purposes. There are useful coincidences too - chains are used a lot on railways, and the standard Southern carriage length is 1 chain (although it's usually quoted as 66ft).

[ndp]

Thread split, anyone?

Where does modern decimal counting orignate? I suspect it isn't native to Britain (if you go back far enough) - surely the native system would be more comparable to that used traditionally in Welsh, which IIRC is based on 15s, and is a complete headmess.....

[Jam35]

Thread split, anyone?

Where does modern decimal counting orignate? I suspect it isn't native to Britain (if you go back far enough) - surely the native system would be more comparable to that used traditionally in Welsh, which IIRC is based on 15s, and is a complete headmess.....

20s in traditional Welsh (although bizarrely they have a decimal way of counting too). The evidence points to counting in twenties being extremely common throughout Europe (which is why French numbers are so strange), and indeed in the Levant ("three score years and ten" and all that). The slightly jocular theory for why people started counting in tens was that they started wearing boots. Unfortunately it doesn't really work, as the ancient Greeks had a number system like this:

Ι - 1
ΙΙ - 2
ΙΙΙ - 3
ΙΙΙΙ - 4
Π - 5
ΠΙ - 6
ΠΙΙ - 7
ΠΙΙΙ - 8
ΠΙΙΙΙ - 9
Δ - 10 (etc)
ΔΠ - 15 (etc)
ΔΔ - 20 (etc)
50 was a capital Pi with a capital Delta instead of the right leg
Η - 100
500 was a capital Pi with a capital Eta instead of the right leg
Χ - 1,000

Clearly this is a base ten number system (actually, the Greeks had two base ten number systems - the other used an archaic 27-letter form of the Greek alphabet with prime marks, the first nine letters representing one to nine, the second nine ten to ninety, and the third nine a hundred to nine hundred; then by repositioning the prime mark, you could get the numbers 1,000-9,000, 10,000-90,000, and 100,000-900,000), and the Romans nicked the idea, substituting I, V, X, L, C, D, and M for the Greek letters. So I suppose, like a lot of things, we can blame the Greeks for base 10.

[mittfh]

We buy petrol in litres, but we drive in miles and measure fuel consumption in mpg rather than l/100km.

Miles per litre, anyone?

Conversions (nabbed from my infamous spreadsheet):

gals/200 miles = 200.39 * (mpg ^ -1)
litres/100 km = 282.61 * (mpg ^ -1)

miles/litre = 0.22 * mpg
km/litre = 0.354 * mpg

Based on:
4.546099295 litres/gallon
1.6093 km/mile

[Ian198]

Conversions (nabbed from my infamous spreadsheet):

gals/200 miles = 200.39 * (mpg ^ -1)

I suspect your conversion may be round the (imperial/metric) houses, as it's:

gals/200 miles = 200 * (mpg ^ -1) = 200 / mpg

[ndp]

(although bizarrely they have a decimal way of counting too)

Its not really that bizarre AIUI - decimal counting in Welsh is a modern invention to make Welsh counting easier to teach...

[401Guy]

Well, I believe that the SI Metric System originates in 1790's France. I believe that it came out of the same movement to abolish Christianity and replace it with a new religion............They also tried to "metrify" the calendar (I don't know about time!). That didn't take.
I think it was Napoleon who said that the metric system was counterintuitive, and wouldn't catch on, not the only thing he was wrong about ("What a beautiful time for a march to Moscow!").