The absurdity of the use of kph

Image
  First and foremost I apologise (yet again) for such a long gap in between blog posts. The return of freedom over the past year has kept me away from screens. They say it takes 66 days to develop a new habit. Running is a habit I developed over lockdown, but the return to the office (and I intend to never work from home again) and frequenting the pub has reduced frequency of this.  It is, however, not completely bleak for my physical well-being. Cramming a number of social events in after work has led to me doing a lot more walking around central London. I don’t have an Apple Watch, (other brands of smart watch exist), but my iPhone records my steps and a lot of really interesting data on my walking and running. As would be no surprise, I’ve configured everything in metric units. Thankfully, gone are the days where Apple would dictate to you , based on your location, the units of measurement you use. You have a chose whether to specify distances in miles or kilometres. You al

The importance of specifying units (and getting them right)


I came across theet of sign, which, although completely metric, bothered me ever so slightly. 


Firstly, the use of 'T' rather than 't' for tonnes. Something that needs to be corrected on UK weight limit signs in general. 

The lower sign, however, gives a figure of 4425, which we can only reasonable assume to be millimetres. (You can't be sure because the units aren't specified. Maybe it's just a random number?)

Such signs give an impression that metric units are complicated when, in fact,  they are much simpler than the alternative. 

But the use of the appropriate scale is paramount. 4.4 m would be a much more appropriate for this sign.

Comments

John said…
Metric signage should be simple. There is only one metric unit used, which is the metre. The others are actually multiples of other metric units.
The kilometre, which is a multiple of the metre.
The tonne, which is actually the megagram, a multiple of the kilogram.
The hour an unofficial multiple of the second.

My understanding, is that the axle weight sign is now defunct, withdrawn in 1981.
It should be 10.2 t. One decimal place.

The height restriction should be 4.4 m. Also one decimal place.

Popular posts from this blog

the stupidity of the AA

The absurdity of the use of kph

Why cooking in metric is actually better