Talk:Imperial units

Mass vs. Weight

The difference between weight and mass is significant: In SI units, mass is kg, but weight is mass times acceleration (kg*m*s^-2), e.g., (3kg)*(9.81m*s^2) I was trying to figure out which is which for imperial units, but the heading says "Measures of weight and mass", and I am arguing that this should not be stated unless some disambiguation is made on the matter. Most people say "I weigh 180 pounds", but what they mean is "My mass can be approximated as 180 pounds." For example, suppose someone went to the moon: Their mass would not change, but their weight would. A pound is a measure of mass, even though it is commonly called weight. Imperial units of weight are: lb*ft*s^2 I am not sure how to edit the appropriate section, so I will leave it to someone else more wiki-talented. (Source: Sophomore Mechanical Engineer student)

If you can find a way to write "measures that are commonly referred to as weight, but are officially defined as units of mass" in such a way as to fit in the space that a normal amount of title text would occupy, I would be keenly interested. Most sensible solution would just be to remove the word "weight" from the title there. "lb*ft*s^2" isn't really a unit; it's a formula which contains several different units. The imperial system doesn't, strictly speaking, have a unit of weight (unless you count poundals, pounds-force, slugs, or whatever (not sure of the definitions of those), but none of those are, strictly speaking, imperial units). Rhialto (talk) 17:30, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The pound is a force. This is the reason the pressure in your tires is measured in pounds per square inch (think about it). The only reason people are often confused by this is because we intuitively think of mass in terms of the force that is felt as a result of the Earth's gravitational field pulling on the object. Just because something is confusing, or would require some explanation, is not an excuse to present false information as though it were correct.

Redirect

shouldn't the redirect go the other way round, to the singular term, so articles can write "The Inch is an Imperial Unit..." ? -- Tarquin 06:30 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

Yes, it should. Jeronimo 06:39 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

ok, I'll do the move by hand in a while -- give admins time to spot it in case they want to use their magic powers. -- Tarquin 06:57 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

Nautical Mile

Shouldn't the nautical mile be 6,076.1155 feet, or 6080 with rounding. In the article someone wrote 5080 which sounds wrong. Last time I edited an article they reversed the change because someone said I was wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.185.33 (talk) 08:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Rounded or not, it should be 6080 feet. I made a dumb typo earlier, that's all. Rhialto (talk) 11:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The nautical mile is legally defined everywhere as 1852 m. 6080 feet equals 1853.184 m, a difference of 1.184 m, which is a significant amount. If two ships were to start at the same point and travel 1000 nautical miles parallel to each other and one had instruments based on 1852 m and the other based on 1853.184 m, they would end up 1.184 km apart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.196.128.54 (talk) 05:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

During the era of the British Empire, the Nautical Mile was defined as 6080 feet. This was the length used until metrification spread more widely. Then, in 1970, the international definition of the Nautical mile was changed to 1852 metres. Therefore, all ships would now be using the latter measurement for the nautical mile. (DaveNed88 (talk) 03:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC))

Which Empire?

Which empire does the Imperial system refer to? The Roman Empire or the British Empire? -- Ricardo 14:03 19 October 2008 UTC

The British Empire. This is sufficiently common knowledge that no particular disambiguation is required. Rhialto (talk) 13:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The fact that someone has asked means that it is not common knowledge, and as Wikipedia's reason for being is to impart knowledge then a mention would be good. I'm not sure where to put it, though: many articles like this have an "Name" or "Etymology" section, but this one doesn't. Bazza (talk) 13:53, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions says:

"Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

This is justified by the following principle:

The names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors, and for a general audience over specialists.

Wikipedia determines the recognizability of a name by seeing what verifiable reliable sources in English call the subject."

The phrase "imperial units" in 99% of English language reference materials, refers to the set of units described in the article as written, not to Roman, Chinese, Russian, or any other empire's units. The current article name conforms perfectly to WP's manual of style for article names.

I replaced the awkward wording "the [[United Kingdom]] and its colonies, including [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] countries" by "the [[British Empire]]", which hopefully solves this issue. As I'm not a historian, and since I know that the British are peculiar with their historic national terminology, I am aware that this may not be the same thing, but I really hope it's close enough for the context of this article. — Sebastian 20:37, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Burma/Myanmar

burma/myanmar is not part of the Commonwealth its under military control burma was part of the commonwealth but myanmar is the name of burma since the military coupe —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.210.246.36 (talk) 11:39, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

This situation is common to many other countries which formerly used Imperial units. Some people might feel that "British empire" (which I wrote per my previous message), is politically misleading. If that is indeed a concern, then I propose to move that whole sentence "As of 2008, all countries that used the Imperial system ... " to the {{Section link}}: required section parameter(s) missing section, where it is more needed than in the header section. The remark about Burma then could be moved to the "other countries" section. — Sebastian 20:55, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Capitalisation

Should Imperial not be capitalised? It does refer specifically to the British Empire. I've looked through the first few hits from Google for "imperial units" (which ignores case) and while it is far from unanimous the balance seems to be in favour of capitalisation which also strikes me as grammatically correct. CrispMuncher (talk) 22:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

No it should not be capitalised. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=39345&dict=CALD&topic=measurements-in-general JIMp _talk·cont 23:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Pre/post 1959 Imperial and US customary units

I am slightly confused whether current units are Imperial or not/US customary or not, in 1959 it appears Imperial units and US customary units were standardised and assigned a metric equivalent. This means that an Inch, for example, before 1959 (both Imperial and US customary) is different to an 'international' Inch post 1959. The way I understand it is that there is two different lengths of an Imperial inch, one pre 1959 and one post 1959 and the same in US customary units, but no way to identify between pre 1959 and post 1959 inches. A pre 1959 Imperial inch was not of equal length to a pre 1959 US customary inch, yet they are now the same length. I understand we are only talking tiny changes here, but I am more interested in whether there is any linguistic/notational difference between pre/post 1959 units or whether the change was considered so small that it would just be ignored. (BigTurnip (talk) 06:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC))

current use

Strangely this article doesn't list the countries that currently use imperial units by law.
I believe that it is only the U.S.A. and either Lybia or Liberia or both.
I came to this article to find out which.

One would think the section below would include the U.S.A. or it should be renamed to;
"Current mixed use of imperial units" or "Continuing use of Imperial in officially Metric countries"

3 Current use of imperial units 
3.1 United Kingdom 
3.2 Canada 
3.3 Australia 
3.4 Republic of Ireland 
3.5 Other countries 

198.103.184.76 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:59, 3 August 2010 (UTC).

The US system is different, e.g. six US pints are roughly five imperial ones. I'm not sure about Liberia and Burma; I'd like to see some decent refs. JIMp _talk·cont 08:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The US units are actually US customary units, but most are identical (except pints, gallons and tons). The UK still uses Imperial units by law, but only in certain specific measurements (e.g pint of milk or beer; road mile etc.) Dbfirs 19:35, 21 September 2010 (UTC)