I’m from Sweden and are not used to feet and inches on drawings. How do I read this?
3’ 8"
Is it 3,8 feet? (115,824 cm)
or
3 feet + 8 inches? (111,76 cm) <— My guess is this one
3 feet, 8 inches - the ’ is feet, " is inches
Smile,
Stein
…12"(inches) = 1’ (foot)
2,54 cm = 1"(inch)
39" = 1m
I assume this is correct?
I want to convert 3’ 8" to cm
3 feet = 91,44 cm
8 inch = 20,32 cm
91,44 cm + 20,32 cm = 111,76 cm
3’8" = 36" (3x12", 1 foot = 12 inches) + 8" = 44"
44" = 44 * 2.54 cm = 111,76 cm
Yup - it appears that your calculations are right.
Stein
Careful, Jay, one meter = 39 3/8". when adding up long runs that 3/8" will come back and bite you as it adds up fast! The funny thing is a few years back most flex track was 3ft lengths, except Shinohara’s was 1 meter long, and buying 4 lengths gave you more than an extra foot of track! jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
Electro,
I think Stein’s method is the easiest:
- Convert everything to “inches”
- Total all inches
- Multiply by 2.54 to convert to cm
Tom
I couldn’t’ve said it better myself!
http://www.worldwidemetric.com/metcal.htm
This might save some time.[:)]
Electrolove,
Here’s a CD that you might find helpful if it will play on a Swedish computer.
http://www.stanstrains.com/SoftwareHandyConverter.htm
I know that the TV standard is different between the U.S. and Europe (NTSC vs. PAL video), but are computers the same?
… and one final twist … In some countries (Sweden apparently, and Germany) the symbols , and . are switched with those used in Armerica.
Zum beispeil (for example): 10,000.223 in English would be 10.000,223 in German. Usually easy to figure out but not always if one reads quickly.
Karl
The most common form of thousand separator in the Scandinavian countries is just a plain space, not “.”.
So your example (10,000.233) would in Sweden most likely be written “10 000,233”.
Or just 10000,233 - with no thousand separator at all. Unlike the decimal separator, the thousand separator doesn’t convey any critical information - number doesn’t change meaning if we omit thousand separators.
What is more confusing for a Scandinavian is the way Americans seem to find enjoyment in expressing lengths smaller than an inch as fraction (e.g 5/8" - 5/8ths of an inch) instead of a more logical (to me) 0.625 inch.
That makes it unnecessarily hard to add or subtract lengths - quick - what is 5/8" + 3/4" + 7/16" ? To me it is quite a bit easier to add up 0.625" + 0.750" + 0.4375" = 1.8125".
To me it seems like Americans believe that a number expressed as a fraction (in this case 1 13/16") is always more accurate than the exactly same number 1.8125".
For some fractions that is true - 1/3" is, in theory, more accurate than 0.333". But for practical purposes it makes little or no
It’s just what we grew up with in school. We grew up with feet and inches and fractions, and you grew up with the metric system. The Canadians had both so can probably switch back and forth easier than all of us.
I hope one day the U.S. will adopt the metric system. It sure is a lot easier dealing with a number system where 1’s and 0’s is the norm instead of all that 1 and a 1/4 or 2 and 3/8’s is the norm…the metric system is a whole lot easier!..chuck
Type “3 foot 8 inches to cm” into Google search…
That’s not an “American” thing that’s the way the Engish system of measurements works. If you look at any plans drawn using English measurements (other than precision mechanical drawings) they will use fractional inches. If you look at an English ruler or tape, its not marked in decimal inches, they are marked in fractional inches. So if I am measuring using a tape and its marked in 1/4", 1/8" and 1/16" then expressing a length in mulitples of .0625" won’t do me any good.
Unless you are going to go back and restate 200 years of measurements and plans that are in English measures, you are going to have to deal with English measures if you model N. American railroads.
[quote]
So the NMRA recommended practice for weighing down a H0 scale car (1 oz + 1/2 oz per inch of car body length) becomes a little complicated for us. A 40’ car is 40x12"=480" long in real life. Which is about 5.5" in 1:87.1 scale.
Half an ounce per inch of length - 2.75 oz, plus the initial 1oz = 3.75oz. 1oz is about 28.3 grams, so that is about 106 grams - aw, skip it - we’ll call it 100 grams for a 40’ H0 car, and call it good enough for NASA use - it is on the right planet [:D][
[quote user=“dehusman”]
That’s not an “American” thing that’s the way the Engish system of measurements works. If you look at any plans drawn using English measurements (other than precision mechanical drawings) they will use fractional inches. If you look at an English ruler or tape, its not marked in decimal inches, they are marked in fractional inches. So if I am measuring using a tape and its marked in 1/4", 1/8" and 1/16" then expressing a length in mulitples of .0625" won’t do me any good.
Unless you are going to go back and restate 200 years of measurements and plans that are in English measures, you are going to have to deal with English measures if you model N. American railroads.
[quote]
So the NMRA recommended practice for weighing down a H0 scale car (1 oz + 1/2 oz per inch of car body length) becomes a little complicated for us. A 40’ car is 40x12"=480" long in real life. Which is about 5.5" in 1:87.1 scale.
Half an ounce per inch of length - 2.75 oz, plus the initial 1oz = 3.75oz. 1oz is about 28.3 grams, so that is about 106 grams - aw, skip it - we’ll call it 100 grams for a 40’ H0 car, and call it good enough for NA
I’m relaxed. 
Just remember the system of measures we use wasn’t an American idea, its technically a European idea. We are using the system that was invented before the metric system, before there was an “America”, the “old standard” if you will.
The fact that we haven’t changed, well, that’s our fault. For as production oriented as we are as a culture, why we would stay odd man out in international trade baffles me. But even if we completeley changed to the metric system this very instant, it wouldn’t solve your problem because a I-10sa 2-8-0 would still have 61 1/2 inch drivers. You’d still have to “do the math”.
No insult whatsoever. I have an engineering degree and do most of my modeling using a calculator and a dial caliper so its all in decimal inches.
For weight I used Excel to create a chart that converts car length to grams for weighting cars (I use a gram scale triple beam balance scale for measuring resin, so its handy). Its taped to the inside of the cabinet door above my workbench. The chart says a 34 ft car should weigh XXX grams. So that’s how I weight it. I don
Back in the 1970s, when the US was seriously considering going metric, Linn Westcott suggested, as a first step, adopting decimal inch measurements.
While I was in grade school, we spent a good deal of time studying the metric system. But between resistance from the older generation, and the the fact that just about everything was still being sold in English measure, it got to be an experiment in futility. So it was back to fractional measures.
Ironically, Americans who refused to adopt the metric system, had no problem counting their money, which was measured in decimals!
One mostly trivial tidbit that most people don’t care about: an inch is now defined as being exactly 2.54cm.
In addition, and equally irrelevent, is that a centimeter is defined as 1/29,979,245,800 of the distance that light travels in a second in a vacuum.
In any case, however, when converting imperial units of distance to metric units, I always convert to inches and then to centimeters. This is because all conversions are, by definition exact, and it’s easy enough to remember that 2.54cm=1 inch.
By the way, I spend all day dealing with metric units at work(specifically grams and degrees celsius/kelvin), and have no trouble using imperial units other times. If the USA were to go to metric, it wouldn’t bother me a bit, although I would prefer to stay with imperial units merely for the historical reasons.