why is petrol sold in litres?

[bednobs]

and if it's to do with the EU, why are cars still made quoting MPG? Shouldn't it be MPL?

[nannybooby]

I think that all this back bitting over being too old to understand is daft. As a girl my 1st job was a comptometer operater and I had to know LSD to 6 decimal places plus farthings and halfpennies. same for gallons to litres. I guess that most of this was for decimalisation and tank God we have a decimal currancy or I dont think we would be AB ing from our homes.

[HockleyHeat]

I'm with OG. Fahrenheit is much more accurate than Celsius - try converting 60F to Celsius and you get a decimal point! In my view, there is nothing wrong with Imperial, and never has been. It's just the penalty we have to pay for joining the EU and don't the BBC love their metric rubbish. I recently bought a car, and insisted that the salesman convert everything to feet and inches so that I could determine if it fitted my garage. He was not amused.... I gave him a hint - check out the US website of the manufacturer and the measurements are 'normal' there!

[plautus]

When I was at school it was called the Centigrade scale - the term Celsius, although named after the inventor, came later.

[mightyWBA]

I remember the fuss when petrol went above £1 a gallon...If it was quoted per gallon now there'd be a revolution!

Well unless there was something good on the telly.

I'm a feet,inches,yards,miles,lbs,stones and gallons person due to my age but mixed when it comes to temperature...I like heat in Fahrenheit and cold in Centigrade!

[factor-fiction]

Metric units are here to stay. I think we need to try to break away from using the imperial units, however much we like them. We teach metric units and centigrade scales at school but outside school most people measure their height in feet and inches, weight in stones and pounds, temperature in Fahrenheit; football and cricket still use yards; and road signs use miles. I find that most pupils starting at secondary school have little understanding of metric units.

[vulcan]

I once heard that progress is just changing one nuisance for another, can anybody tell me if there is any great advantage in changing to litres, pounds, shilling and pence etc ?
No doubt I will be told that the old LSD system was complicated but it wasn't when you grew up with it and used it everyday, it was just as easy as what we have now, pounds and p's. where does that come from by the way, does America and the rest of Europe refer to c's ?

[mightyWBA]

or Celsius :-S

[Frank97]

I was in a bar not that long ago that was selling jugs of beer 4 pints for the price of 3 so I asked for a half gallon jug, the barman looked at me blankley, he had no idea what a gallon was, I was quite shocked. Especially as he was working in a pub.

[dave50]

I find it really annoying that the BBC insist on using metric units in everything without even mentioning the imperial equivelant.

[jake-the-peg]

Imperial had a fundamental flaw all the units were mixed up

16 ounces to a pound (unless it was gold of course )14 pounds to a stone.

Goodness know how many yards to a furlong - I have no idea how many square yards to an acre or chains to a mile.

Pounds, Guineas shillings - the whole system was truely messed up and relied entirely on knowledge.

The metric system is just powers of 10

1,000 meters to a Km, even weights and dimensions are linked, a litre of water weighs 1Kg

It's not that hard!

We simply didn't have the guts to grit our teeth and go for it and change the miles to Km on our roads.

Such a shame

[jd_here]

How I agree withg you Jake

[bednobs]

even if we did change to KM on our roads, it would cause me more of a headache - petrol sold in litre and roads measured in KM but consumption still measured in Miles per Gallon! Confusing or what?

[starone]

Can someone please explain in words of one syllable, or maybe two, what is the difference between centigrade and celsius?

[DTCwordfan]

because, shortly, environmental reasons mean that petrol companies will be closing down their pumps and petrol (gasoline) and diesel will be sold in litre tetrapack cartons, a bit like like current milk or juice cartons.

Supermarkets will be able to sell them on their shelves.

[sandyRoe]

When it was sold in gallons it was much cheaper.

[bednobs]

no difference SB1

[DTCwordfan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius

[mark01]

I cant convert centigrade to Fahrenheit, but I know we won the world cup in 1966. So 19c = 66f.

[paddywak]

Though I'm quite good converting Imperial to Metric and back the first thing I do when I get a new car is reset the computer to Imperial units

[ABerrant]

Fuel consumption is only referred to as MPG because we still use miles for road measurement. Offficial figures for fuel efficiency and consumption are usually given in km/L and/or litres per 100km.

A centigrade scale is any scale which may be subdivided (graduated) into hundredths - the metre is a centigrade scale; the litre is a centigrade scale etc. etc. for other metric units.