Units

Next week we expect once more temperatures in the upper 60s and lower 70s in Newport Beach. That’s quite nice for us and quite annoying for most Europeans; not because at least in Switzerland it’s much colder, but because they don’t even know how warm this is.

Let me quickly explain what I meant by my introducing sentence: since here in the U.S. temperatures are measured in degree Fahrenheit, the temperature ranges are often referred to by lower/mid/upper “ies” (40s, 50s, 60s and so on). This is a good way to tell approximate temperatures, if you know what those temperatures mean. Well, the conversion from degree Fahrenheit into Celsius is definitively complicated:

Deduct 32, then multiply by 5, then divide by 9

When I lived in South Africa, I already learned one of the “units”: the time. Of course one hour is still one hour, but if you have to write the time, it’s not 19:30 but 7:30 PM. Since in spoken German, we anyways use the short form, it’s not that difficult, except for the - not really logical - 12 PM, which is 12:00 (and 12 AM is 24:00 or 0:00). But at the latest when you go to a restaurant for lunch and they welcome you with “Good afternoon,” you know it’s PM (lat. post meridiem).

But compared to South Africa, the U.S. are a conversion hell for us Europeans. For example in the kitchen (ok, I’m not very often there you measure in quarts, cups, fluid ounces, table spoons, ounces, pounds, Fahrenheit and minutes - oh thanks! Even just for fluids we have fluid ounces, cups and quarts in the kitchen, at the gas station gallons and the water bill is in HCF (hundred cubic feet).

I’m really sorry for all those American school kids who have to learn all of this: 32 fl. oz = 1 cup, 4 cups = 1 quart, 4 quarts = 1 gallon, 748 gallons ~= 1 HCF

Don’t forget distances: there are inches, feet, yards and miles. But it gets worse when you need measures which are smaller than 1 inch: then you use binary fractions (1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4, …). And if this wasn’t enough numbers yet: 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 foot = 1 yard, 1760 yards = 1 mile.

You are wondering why I haven’t even gotten to the conversion to metric units? Well it’s simply because I gave up - it’s even more complicated than converting one imperial unit into another.

1 Comment

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  By Sam Weibel, March 1, 2010 @ 7:36 AM

  Sam, I too am a Samuel Weibel, I was raised in the Scranton Pa area and then moved to the St Louis MO area about 30-40 years ago, My grandfather William Weibel said we are decended from Swiss and German herirage,who knows we may be related but I have not checked our ancestry other than my Great Grandfather was a Victor Weibel. you are welcome to contact me if you are inclined to, also check out our website above. I am also on Skype and FacebookSam & Donna Weibel

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