Stones vs Pounds
Stone and pound are units of measurement of weight in the imperial system. Despite the world switching over to the metric system where kilogram is the accepted unit of weight, US and UK still adhere to the imperial system. Interestingly, whereas stone is used to describe the weight of a person in UK, people in US tell their weight in pounds. Those outside these countries find it hard to comprehend the difference (and relation) between stone and pound as they do not know their values and how to convert them in metric unit which is kilogram.
In the imperial system, stone and pound are well known units of measurement of weight (ounce is another such unit). Let us start with ounce as it is the smallest of the three to understand stone and pound. One ounce is one sixteenth of a pound, which means 16 oz= 1 lb (pound) and 1 oz=28.35g.
One pound (to differentiate it from money, pound (weight is written as lb) is one fourteenth part of a stone, which means that one stone = 14 pounds. Whereas ounce, which is smaller, is used to refer to measurement of spices, pound is used in the measurement of fruits and vegetables. Stone, the largest of the three units, is used for the measurement of agricultural produce as well as weights of individuals. One amazing fact about a stone is that its plural is also stone so that if someone weighs 10 stones, he would write it as 10 stone and not 10 stones.
Converting pound and stone in metric system is a little troublesome.
1 pound= 0.45359237 kg
1 stone= 6.35kg
These are difficult conversions to remember, so for the benefit of readers, here is a rough conversion that is easy to remember.
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In brief: 1 pound= 450g 3 stone= 19 kilos
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