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Anon visits Canada
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
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Do Canadians use both units?
Officially, they use the metric system, but because of the close contact with the US, many things are measured in imperial units
One of the most confusing places to be in is a Canadian machine shop. Half the machines will be imperial and the other will be metric. Work order come in both units on the regular.
The same Canadian might not use both, but older people are still more comfortable with the American system for certain things like temperature.
For the GP, Canada converted to metric starting in 1970 and completing the conversion in 1985.
So everyone under 55 grew up in metric, but anyone older than that had to convert.
So, baking and cooking are generally done in imperial to this day, but commerce and public works are all metric.
I generally think personal weight in pounds, height in feet, distance in meters, deli purchases in grams, fluids in litres, gravel in yards, chopped wood in cords, etc.
I went to university in Canada for engineering in the early 1980s. We had to learn both Imperial and metric, because almost all the textbooks and equipment came from the US. We would usually convert into metric to do all calculations and then convert back at the end because to do otherwise is insanity.
I would guess that the same is still true today, because the equipment and textbooks still come from the US.
Not so much today; as I mentioned, the transition period was from 1970 to 1985. While some textbooks and equipment still comes from the US, a lot is also sourced from other parts of the world, and some textbooks are Canadian versions now (in metric).
In fact, the textbook countries spent a good 20 years from the late 80s to the early 00s churning out new editions on an annual basis where a bit more was converted to metric every time. This often forced students to buy up to three editions of a book new if a department was using the same text for a course series.
I could actually see the point in learning both, because there is a very good chance that engineers are going to be facing both systems in their professional lives.
We use all of the units; my prints generally list pipe diameter in inches, but length in millimetres