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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 2 |
When the English say something weighs a 'stone', how many pounds is that?
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Posts: 3
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 3 |
 The British 'stone' equals 14 pounds.
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Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
We use the term stone mainly for people's weight.
I always find it difficult watching a film where a person's weight is described in pounds as I have no concept of a person weighing 150 pounds but would find a ten or eleven stone person easy to imagine. It is further complicated by the fact that schools have been teaching metric units for years and we are told our childrens' weights in kilogrammes and are measured in kilogrammes in hospitals. (Not surprising as we buy petrol in litres and drives for miles.)
I have not come across stones being used for objects. For example we would have bought coal by the ton, delivered in hundredweight (8 stones or 112lb) bags. Twenty hundredweight make a ton. I note from my dictionary that in the USA this is known as a long hundrewight and a long ton, a short hundredweight being 100lb and a short ton being 2000lb - are these terms used?
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Posts: 7
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 7 |
To my knowledge, a ton is 2000 lbs. I have never heard the distinction between a long ton and a short ton.
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Posts: 140
member
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member
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 140 |
As far as I know, the US ton is 2,000lb, and the British ton is/was 2,240lb. And of course the metric "tonne" of 1000kg is about 2,200lb! The sooner we all go metric the better, eh?
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
Completely agree that metric is the way to go. Two problems I perceive, however are:
1. Metric terms seem less suited to human scales. 5 foot 7 still sounds easier to cope with than 172 cm. And 12 stone, or 168 pounds, still seems easier to relate to than 76 kilos.
2. The metric system itself is sometimes guilty of inconsistency. For instance, the ubiquitous mpg (miles per gallon), has two possible metric replacements, and I do not see one being favoured over the other: kilometres per litre (direct replacement), and litres per 100 kilometres (which may be more useful, but inverts the idea and tends to confuse the issue).
Having said which, I am still a firm advocate of the metric system. If you have ever tried to deal with areas or volumes in Imperial measures (square inches to the square foot to the acre?), particularly if you try to do the calculations in your head, you know the sort of frustration that can result! Give me multiples of 10 any time. (It doesn't help that American Imperial measures are not identical to British ones.)
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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