Units are an interesting thing.
Over here, we usually give height in feet and inches. I'd have to google a conversion table if you gave it me in cm. Football pitches are measured in yards, cars in miles per hour, bras by inch, but virtually everything else you can use both inches or cm for. Younger people tend to know cm better, older people tend to know inches. If you tell me something is 10 inches long, I have to mentally change that to cm to estimate the length. On the other hand, I know the rough size measurements of various sizes of fat people in inches, and not in cm.
Weight for recipes is in grams. Weight for humans varies depending on context. In a doctors office, kgs. On scales? Stone. When you're talking online? Pounds. Stone and pounds are obviously interchangable for anybody with basic maths skills, and I can do the conversion pretty well. I guess pounds is what I think in terms of, but that may be because I spend so much time here and talking to americans in general. People usually talk stones over here, and my "jesus, I don't want to get any bigger than this" point is in stones, not in pounds or kg. Animals are weighed in kgs. From horses to mice, kgs/grams.
I don't understand why american's measure ingredients in cups, because cups can be different sizes and you can't be accurate about half or a quarter of a cup. Even a full cup, there is variation in what people think 'full' means. We do use teaspoons and tablespoons as measurements though. Usually with a description: 1 heaped teaspoon, 1 flat tablespoon etc.
Age definitely matters too. I have to do mental maths when talking to my mum about things. She wants people's weight in stone, and she wants all measurements in inches. She also asks me to tell her what the doctor scales (kg) says in "real english" (as in, stone). So that's a fun one to do in your head; (Y x 2.2)/14.
We never ever use fahrenheit for anything, though. Always celcius.
Over here, we usually give height in feet and inches. I'd have to google a conversion table if you gave it me in cm. Football pitches are measured in yards, cars in miles per hour, bras by inch, but virtually everything else you can use both inches or cm for. Younger people tend to know cm better, older people tend to know inches. If you tell me something is 10 inches long, I have to mentally change that to cm to estimate the length. On the other hand, I know the rough size measurements of various sizes of fat people in inches, and not in cm.
Weight for recipes is in grams. Weight for humans varies depending on context. In a doctors office, kgs. On scales? Stone. When you're talking online? Pounds. Stone and pounds are obviously interchangable for anybody with basic maths skills, and I can do the conversion pretty well. I guess pounds is what I think in terms of, but that may be because I spend so much time here and talking to americans in general. People usually talk stones over here, and my "jesus, I don't want to get any bigger than this" point is in stones, not in pounds or kg. Animals are weighed in kgs. From horses to mice, kgs/grams.
I don't understand why american's measure ingredients in cups, because cups can be different sizes and you can't be accurate about half or a quarter of a cup. Even a full cup, there is variation in what people think 'full' means. We do use teaspoons and tablespoons as measurements though. Usually with a description: 1 heaped teaspoon, 1 flat tablespoon etc.
Age definitely matters too. I have to do mental maths when talking to my mum about things. She wants people's weight in stone, and she wants all measurements in inches. She also asks me to tell her what the doctor scales (kg) says in "real english" (as in, stone). So that's a fun one to do in your head; (Y x 2.2)/14.
We never ever use fahrenheit for anything, though. Always celcius.
