On Facebook someone asked the following...

Whats 19.8kcals in normal calories
12.1 km in miles help plz x

A person replied as follows...

12.1 km = 12100 miles
19.8 kcal = 19800 cal

I then posted...

Um, I am not sure that is correct. 12.1 km is about 7 and a half miles and 19.8 kcal is the way that 19.8 calories is written.

The woman giving the other answers is arguing with me over the answers.

"I used converter on my phone and that's what it said"

Eh? Surely when it comes to km and miles, for a person living in the UK, they ought to know that 1 km is under a mile.

I then asked the person asking the original question what it related to and it was the disance she did on an exercise bike and the calories burned!

I'm in Texas and knew that 1km is 0.621 miles. (I usually say 5/8 mi.)

The 19.8 kcal and 19800 calories is correct in a way, but when it comes to burning calories, I find it hard to believe that riding an exercise bike for 7½ miles would only burn 20 calories, as to what is seen on food packaging. When I'm walking at Stonebriar Centre in Frisco, when I walk for three hours, I will go about 9.8 miles and burn far more than 20 calories (about 350 per hour, or 1050 over the total span).

You are indeed correct, Sue.

The reason I made the UK remark is that the UK is sort of split with metric, most things are measured in metres except things like road distances and the instruments in cars are in miles. So I am guessing that in schools they don't do yards normally, Ren ought to be able to tell us. However I find it appalling that someone can possibly think that 12 km could be 12,000 miles.

I shudder to think how fast they'd be driving on 100 km/h highways!

I do too. I know several teachers (all of them graduated with me from high school), and I know none of them would be teaching that!

The only possible reason I can figure out someone would write/say that 12km is 12,000 miles is that (this is going to be convoluted) they knew km was a distance. Then k was for kilo, which is a thousand and m meant mile. Therefore, 12km would mean 12,000 miles.

However, if they used their phone converter for distance, it would have given them the distance of
12km = 7.4568 miles. I guess they would have to know how to use the distance converter and not the calculator to figure out 12 x 1,000 = 12,000.

It seems the problem is the person giving the answer didn't understand what km meant.

If it's on the internet, just post this link!
https://www.google.com/#q=convert+12.1+kilometers+to+miles

I can't imagine how the 19.8 kcal relates to that distance though -- when I use the elliptical it'll give me numbers like 7 miles, 1000 calories or similar, same as dave is getting.

I would be driving about 65 mph.

Using that link, sixth down is this discussion.

Looks like MiraJane has it right- they have invented a new measure called a 'kilo-mile'.

I guess if you rode a bike that far, you would lose an awful lot of calories...

Perhaps the person doesn't know how to use their phone properly (or the guys at NSA were playing a joke oh her - they have an app for that!).

Not too many years ago, when I was doing a lot of cycling, I found the best energy converter. It was an Excel spreadsheet, where you entered the distance you rode and a reasonable approximation of your average speed and it turned this information into Mars Bar equivalents of energy!

Mike, knock off the last three words of that paragraph, and it sounds a lot more fun!

I suspect the km one she got told how many metres are in 12.1 km instead of miles. Stupid woman. She got me doubting myself since I am at addle brain age but a quick trip to the kitchen confirm what I had known, I looked at a multipack of Quavers and there is a nice big label on there in red saying Only 88 calories per packet, then on the nutrition panel it gave it as 88 kcal per packet.

Commonsense is what the woman lacks. The person asking the original question isn't the brightest in the box so she would have believed the incorrect answers.

Shame really though, it would be nice to be able to take a leisurely stroll from London to New York and back in the lunch hour and still have time for lunch and a bit of shopping.

Er, wouldn't you get a bit wet? It rains a lot in mid-Atlantic.

I've got a brolley.

But do you have a pair of waders and long enough legs?

Yes, the most worrying thing is that some people take answers they find on the internet as infallible ...!

I don't like the use of calculators in schools, or at least until one can know if an answer is sensible. Most of us older ones will have an approximate idea of what the answer ought to be so a calculator can be useful to get it exact, if a person doesn't know roughly what it ought to be they will not notice the extra zero or in that woman's case with the km/miles conversion, that the answer was just ridiculous.

I shudder to think what happens if she uses the tip calculator and it tells her to tip twenty dollars for her two dollar drink!

There has been a recent spate on FB of silly teacher things I've noticed. There was some teacher trying to tell the children that a km was less than a mile and the student corrected him. They took the child to the office and wrote him up and though the teacher eventually admitted he was wrong, the child was suspended for correcting the teacher!

When I tutored kids in math, I always had them put their calculators away and do everything by hand. They hated putting away their calculators, but they learned how to do the math.

The teacher admitted he was wrong to say a km was less than a mile? I've spent my whole life believing a km was less than a mile; it's what I was taught in school. Now I'm told a km is apparently more than a mile. So if a speed limit is posted at 50 kmh, we should all be driving faster than 50 mph?

A km is way less than a mile.

That's why a 10k race is 6.2 miles. It's difficult to believe any adult wouldn't have heard that fact numerous times.