American reacts to: Is the Meter System actually BETTER?
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- Опубліковано 29 кві 2024
- Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to Who Invented the Metric System
Original video: • Who Invented the Metri...
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For Europeans, the American system makes no sense at all and is just too grotesque unnecessarily complicated.
Do they have a system?
@@arturobianco848 I think they use 'cups' BUT I don't know how big her cups are......
When you need to find "a bit bigger" than a 1"-7/16 wrench in the toolbox.
My personal favourite: a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold, but an ounce of feathers is lighter than an ounce of gold. 😂😉
@@MarabuToo My personal favorite is the Bavarian beer meter that is measured at the Oktoberfest🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺A measure of beer is 1.06 liters with foam🍺🍺🍺🍺
Only a american would say the metric system isnt perfect.
*an
@@SeeDaRipper... Where is the Bus?
@@DieGurke_ Eh?
@@SeeDaRipper...
Is this really necessary? This person doesn’t have English as first language, so maybe you should respect that this person knows English at all!
Or are you perfect when it comes to your second language (if you have one)?
@@lillm6874 Ma deuxième langue est également impeccable, j'ai simplement souligné l'ironie de quelqu'un qui se moque d'un Américain mais ne comprend pas l'anglais de base.
Not a single European would say that anything like the metric system was made by god 😂 This was such a USAmerican sentence!
Metric system is so easy to work with. 1kg of water = 1 litre. 1 cubic metre = 1000 litres. Imagine calculating the amout of rain water you would get off a rooftop given a 1mm of rainfall.
Of course, that one's just as approximate as the original meter, and not used as the actual definition (in fact, IIRC, the kilogram was the last physical-object definition to be replaced by a natural-constant one because, until fairly recently, we had no sufficiently exact measurement we could use for mass (which is why we use the speed of light for the meter, it's one of the precisest speed measurements we have and we already have a precise measurement for the second)).
Essentially, for the new definitions, the whole point is to find _something_ in nature we can measure very precisely, and find a way to derive a unit from that - it should both be an improvement over the precision of pre-existing definitions and independent of actual physical objects. For some units, this was not so hard, but for some, it turned out to be a hard problem to solve.
It's 10×10×10 cm = 1000 cm³
@@neuralwarp A palacon is a 1000 litres, it is a cubic metre and it weighs 1 ton.
@@KaiHenningsen Even then the rule that 1kg of water is 1 litre and 1 cubic metre is 1000 litres of water still holds. The new standard definitions aim to provide *better* precision for very precise scientific measurements, not to redefine how these units relate. If anything these natural constants uphold these conversion rates, while providing more precision so that scientific processes can measure even more precisely.
@@kaelon9170 That only holds at 4°C. For example, 1 litre of water at 20°C weighs approximately 0.998 kg. Pressure also changes the situation.
1 metre = 100cm, 1 yard = 91.44cm, he was definitely holding a metre stick, not a yard stick! 😂
And it is divided in 10 sections, how to do it with yard stick? 9 times 1/3 foot and add 1 for "good measure"??? (and you get 1.016m!)
@@jaketzi8816 I was about o comment exactly that. The guy in the video so confidently how that was not a meter... :]
The US customary system is definded by metric in US law..
All American youtubers on this subject get it wrong. They don't even know what system they use in the US as they call it "imperial system" that current one was established after the US customary system.
@@nedludd7622 good to know
Do they spell it Meteric?
But they don't use it , only in scientific , technical fields do they use it anywhere else they use the modified imperial
system , yards, feet , ounces, fahrenheit .
@@gregorygant4242 nope, they use the International System of Units converted into strange numbers. All those units are defined using the International units. For example, the definition of yard is 1 yard = 0.9114 meters. The definition of meter is " the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 seconds".
The Farenheit scale is defined on the Kelvin scale. The avoirdupois ounce is exactly 28.349523125 g. And I think this is enough to understand which of the two systems is better.
As an Italian I am forced to admit that the French did it better.
Weird video. I don't think anybody argues that the choice of whatever basic unit you use us ultimately arbitrary. The advantage of the metric system is that once you've chosen that unit, the rest builds on that basic unit in a systematic way. Using metrics that don't neatly build on each other makes life unnecessarily difficult and leads to unnecessary imprecision. When doing renovation projects in the US, our contractors have been half-assing measurements because ultimately stuff never stacks up if you have to work with feet, inches and fraction of inches. I've never seen that in Europe.
Yup I agree its an extremly stupid clipp at least with this tittle. Like you said its all bout the system not if the base measure unit really was "divine". And it said meter system in the titel not meter itself. If he had done that the clipp would have been fine now its basicly garbadge.
Especially when, despite one of the main positives is that it's easy due to being consistent, there are ways in which the system isn't perfect with silly inconsistencies. examples:
The kilogram being considered the base unit of mass while having a prefix, instead of the base unit being the gram or the tonne or a different base name that equals the kilogram.
The kilo prefix being lowercase instead of there being a nice rule of capital letters making the unit bigger and miniscule letters making the unit smaller.
The micro prefix using a greek letter.
@@JNCressey I mean, bien sûr, but as shortcomings go, these require so much work to come up with, they seem a bit self-inflicted. I don't know anybody who uses KM/h (or is second the base unit and it should be KM/H?) or notes any practical impact of what's considered the base unit.
The distinction becomes relevant for mega, mili and micro which all start with an m, but on a practical level, do you want to create rules to distinguish those and in that case do you standardize so all units use 2 or 3 letters? At some point practicality and going with established patterns just outweighs the benefit of standardization.
@@tonchrysoprase8654, I didn't mean the letter of the base unit would change to a capital. Mm, Gm, Tm etc would all still use lowercase m for the metres part, but the case of the k for the kilo part could have been capital so that kilometres would be Km.
And instead of micro with a greek letter, they didn't need to make the word micro. they could made a different word for that scale which didn't start with m.
@@JNCressey Oh, right. I got the modifier vs base unit part wrong. As to the use of micro - I always assumed that those uses were customary before people formalized the notations.
Either way, those aren't issues that tempt me to start using grain/fluid dram any time soon.
Americans think they understand Imperial measurements, yet have no concept of stones and have their own measurements for pints, ounces etc.
hogshead, barleycorn,
Funny how Ryan thinks we Brits don't understand IMPERIAL (the Royal clue is in the name) weights and measures considering the first Americans took them from Britain... Yanks just changed some of the figures used. So yes, we know what a "yardstick' is !? Additionally we still use miles, pints and mix up both Imperial with Metric measurments often. LOL 😂😂😂
@@sebv1086 nope, sorry, but that is wrong. British imperial pounds are identical to American customary units pounds. But once you get above that the diffinitions change quite drastically.
So it's quite obvious that it's not only volume measurements.
Certain lengths exist in one system but not the other. Granted they are the more 'exotic' ones and not used on an everyday basis.
The important thing to note from this thread is that the Imperial system and the US Customary system, while using a lot of the same terminology, are quite different. It's incorrect to call what the average American uses Imperial - they're US Customary units.
BTW, Americans working in the sciences use SI units almost exclusively. (SI - Système international, aka International System of units - is the modern "cleaned-up" version of the metric system.)
@@sebv1086 No , Americans use things like short tons which are 2,000 ponds instead of 2,240 lbs.
It doesn't matter how long the is, what magters is that the metrik system is logic: 1meter =100 cm=1000mm. A cube 10x10x10 cm (100x100x100 mm) = 1 liter (water freeze at 0° and boils at 100°) = 1kilogram= 1000 grams. All connected, login and very easy to work with.
Only at 1013 hPa boils water at 100°C! And I really hate it that it isn't 1000 hPa.
So can it work out how many cords of wood will be needed to boil a moonshine mash consisting of 200 American gallons is water and 2 bushels of wheat, at an elevation of 1 furlong,
@@uwetheiss970but as long as you don't live on a high mountain, the points boiling and melting good for a household thermometer.
Better than some freezing temperature somewhere and the usual body temperature of a person.
@@MrFrozenFrost I have no idea what you are trying to say.
@@uwetheiss970 It´s 1013,15hPa because this is the air pressure at sea level. And 1Pa is defined as 1N/m² or 1kg/(m*s²). So you can´t say it´s 1000 because pressure is defined allready and 1013hPa is only a measurement.
Maybe in old day´s it was difficult to cook water under water ;-)
The old measurement errors propagating in SI units isn't an oversight or an error, it's a feature specifically chosen to exist. All the newer definitions fit inside the error bars of the old ones. That makes them backwards compatible. Technically they aren't actually different, they are simply more precise.
299,792,458 is not a random number, it is the speed of light in a vacuum. So it isn't error
@@igormatkowski5488 Sky is blue.
The real issue with the imperial system is the insistent use of fractions, when the average american apparently believe the "one-third pound burger" to be smaller than the "quarter pounder".
Working when you are so sick is a very stereotypical American thing. Thanks for the content but don't forget to rest 🎆
He's at home - good for resting. He's watchnig over baby/ies: not good for resting. He's young and funny: he can handle it.
commenting youtube videos is not work. Even if he gets some money out of that process^^
With the USA jumping up and down "WE WILL NOT GO METRIC" stupid when the USA was the FIRST to go METRIC with money.
No that's decimal not metric big difference !
@@gregorygant4242 The metric system is a decimal system...
@@VeniVidiVelcro Metric is decimal doesn't imply that decimal is metric; All dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs.
@@frankhooper7871 True, but the choice to switch to a decimal currency system is the same as the choice for a decimal measurement system, i.e. easy conversions and subdivisions. So the refusal to switch to some decimal system is equally irrational and above all stubborn...
@@VeniVidiVelcro Had the metric system been created by Americans, they would have switched the following day!
Doing it at the end of the 18th century by measuring triangles using only a small part of the total stretch and then be off by 0.02% is hella impressive imo.
It's funny how everyone in the world except the United States can do something the same way and yet we're still the ones who have it wrong.
U.S exceptionalism at it's finest.
Fun thing is that the foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters and a yard as exactly 0.9144 meters. So by using imperial units you are indirectly using si (metric) units
and an inch is 2.54cm
@@mats7492...which, to my knowledge, is the actual U.S. length definition; a foot is therefore 12*.0254m, a yard is 3*12*.0254m, and so on.
@@MarabuToo instead of just using metric they defined their system by metric messurements and kept it..
classic america
You can also phrase it like this: the Imperial system today is a funny way to name funny multiples of metric units.
yes, interesting and fun! Also IMHO how "the French" in 1795 apparently thought the metric system would be a good idea and "The British and some of their colonies" then went something like: "Yes, very amusing, thank you very much, but let's not!, let's do Pints, Pounds and Brexit instead! Would you like another cup of tea Uncle Sam?
Only for us it is metre not meter 😂
its meter you britbong bozo
French
Came to say the same 😄 ..only a few like the Yanks & the Phillipines spell it meter..but of course lol
METRE!!
A meter is a measure of rhythm
What is stupid about the imperial system is not the size of the unit, it is the weakness of the conversion systems.
The metric system has been adopted by all but three countries in the world because it is based on decimal and the ratio of 10 between larger or smaller units.
It's so much simpler...
Yeah, and metric units roughly the length of an inch and a foot would be extremely useful.
On the other hand, we've been using metric since the french invaded us but many people still refer to half a kg as a pound.
@@HappyBeezerStudios In France often too for livre. But our livre = 500 grams
It doesn't matter what the exact length is as long as everyone uses the same !
it matters for calibration purposes. how can you be certain your measurement is correct otherwise?
@@Not.Your.Business I think you should try and read what trevorkidd293 wrote, once more.
If the metre/meter was defined to be a different length than it is now - then that would just be the definition and that is what we would use and that is what you would use to calibrate your instruments.
It's weird how, for many years, the British Commonwealth countries (not sure about other countries) had pounds, shillings, and pence when I was in primary (elementary) school. There were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. A guinea was one pound and one shilling. We also used imperial measurements. Then, in 1967, (when I was twelve), we changed to the same denominations as the United States, dollars, and cents. So we went to decimal currency and later moved to metric measurement. The United States has decimal currency all along but has stuck to imperial measurements. Please rest up and get well. I began to feel sick just watching you. 😂😂😂❤❤❤
Fact check- the UK actually went decimal in 1971 (the decision to do so may well have been in 1967). I had to suffer learning to do 'Money sums' which involved £/sh/p until I was 7 - never got the hang of it - then they stopped teaching us that altogether, until they taught us about New Pence when I was 9.
Edit: Rereading your comment I realsie you may have been in a Commonwealth country other than the UK, and so your dates may be correct for that country.
@carolineskipper6976 Fact check: I am from New Zealand. Our government abandoned pounds, shillings, and pence on the 10th July 1967.
@@carolineskipper6976 I was thinking the same until I read they changed to dollars and cents in 1967 - so they're probably from NZ.
Well, 12 is really a beautiful number, divides and multiplies easily... but since our written and spoken number system is base-10 and not base-12, it gets annoying.
But why the British mixed 12 and 20... I don't understand... choose one base and stick to it.
@@raetalaward9128 Hope you saw my edit acknowledging that I had made an assumption!
The important thing with the metric system is : whatever arbitrary reference was taken to define the basic unit (meter / mètre), ALL the other units would be defined as decimal variations of the base, so it makes calculations extremely easy even between different fields of measure (volumes to distance, or weight), and much less error prone than conversions even within the Imperial system ;)
10 million is just the division, not an indication of the number of significant numbers!
This video has NOTHING to do with the title
I can't believe I missed "Les Measurables" when I watched Joe's video the first time around 🤣
7:05 No Ryan. That's the effect of the lord Sauron dying in the Lord of the Rings!
Well he farted big time and ran off in the smoke, too embarrassed to come outdoors again till the 3rd Age.
4:12 the French word for meter is "mètre". Which is why the Brits still spell the word "metre", not "meter".
A metre is a unit of measurement, a meter is a unit for measurement.
It is also why it is called Metric, not Meteric ;p
"still" spell it metre? what do you mean still? That's how it's spelt
@@davidz2690 it's the British spelling. The US spelling is "meter".
@@arthur_p_dent Britain has quite a few languages, you mean it’s the English spelling.
@@davidz2690 we are speaking English in this comments section, yes.
That other languages may have different spellings goes without saying.
Adopted in Australia in 1972 thats why us oldies know both and convert in our heads eg 1 mile is 1.6 kilometres or 1600 metres 25 mm or 2.5 cm is 1 inch 37.9 c is 100f
The money was a struggle to me, to convert!
I always used 1km ≈ 5/8 mile. As a basic rule 25mm ≈ 1 inch, but 25.4mm is more accurate. But for me, I use it to convert back to the imperial system as I was 5 years old when we converted to metric in Australia. I still remember seeing the mph road signs but, of course have lived my whole life with decimal currency.
As I didnt understand the term "yards", my math teacher suggested reciting a "metre measures 3ft 3, it's longer than a yard you'll see"! 👍
'Math' ?
Except a metre is 3ft 3 and 3/8”.
An error of 2/10 of a millimetre over 1m is pretty huge if you're navigating a ship, grinding a lens, building a skyscraper, or etching a silicon chip.
mm is only used for measuring distance in navigation so a 0.2mm discrepancy would make no difference, the part where errors cause big discrepancies is when following bearings which are measured in degrees and arc minutes, not mm, but even then 0.2 degrees or 12 arc minutes doesn't make a huge amount of difference unless the distance is absolutely huge like in astronomy and such, on the surface of the earth working to an accuracy of 12 arc minutes is being extremely accurate really as an arc minute is 21,600th of a full circle.
For Joe / Josephine Average Citizen, the origin of the metre really is of no consequence. It's the use / application that is important. I grew up with the Imperial system but had to learn the metric in my 20s. So simple. Water freezes at 0'C and boils at 100'C. (Not that it matters but where did 32 & 212 come from?) An acre is 43,560 square feet (208.71 ft. x 208.71 ft.), or 1 chain (66 ft.) by 1 furlong (660 ft). which was the amount of land that a medieval farmer could plough in a day using a team of eight oxen. In contrast a hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.
If I remember right Farhenheit was defined by the freezing point of a mixture salt, water and ammonium chloride as zero and human body temperature as 100.
Two very variable measurements.
But the craziest measurement is the acre-foot, which is defined as a one foot by one chain (66 feet) by one furlong (660 feet) volume. Or 6 x 66 x 660 feet which comes outto 43 560 cubic feet.
Who needs such an odd unit.
I know americans like to measure things in football field as estimate. Let's imagine they want to set up a new military training area, those can be pretty large. Would they prefer something the size of 59 837 football fields, or something the size of 60 000 football fields...
The platinum meter was stored in Paris, in a vacuum at 0 degrees Celsius.
PS Be Smart is a great channel. I think you'll love it, Ryan.
😂…thats why we have Donald Trump 😂
Wow, Ryan, I noticed you seem a little off in the first few moments of your post. Hope you are feeling better soon. Love your post! You are very entertaining, even when you are a bit under the weather.😃
It did make him sound a bit like a Californian surf bum tho 😂
Dang Ryan, you are REALLY funny when you are ill. Great reaction. I still hope you´ll get better soon, take care of yourself. :)
„A boulder the size of small boulder“ comes to mind
As you mentioned changes in temperature, the worst thing that can happen to a system of measures based on physical measures is losing the measures in a fire.
So, when the Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, the world lost the imperial yard and the imperial pound.
The Weights and Measures Act 1855 is a bit wordy, so to paraphrase: some scientific experts got together that had previously compared their physical versions of the yard and pound to the physical standards, on a regular enough basis, that the differences measured between their copies and the lost standards could be reversed and averaged to recreate very close approximations of the original defining objects, and so they recreated four copies of the Imperial Standard Yard, the Imperial Standard Troy Pound, and the Pound Avoirdupois (not technically a standard measure because the lb itself was defined by the troy pound), and from the date set out in legislation the new standard measures became the original standard measures.
Eventually, metric was defined by the imperial measurements in the UK, and when the metric measures were better defined the legal definitions got inverted with imperial measures being defined by metric measures, which were eventually themselves defined by universal constants.
There was of course that time in the 1950s when we (UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia) had to get together to agree on how far a mile is and how much a pound weighs. Ah, America, a country where you can get all of your citizens to ditch the US mile in favour of the international mile, but NIST's surveyors and NOAA's meteorologists had to be given a little time (60+ years) to switch to this newfangled foot thing - "in the meantime, let's rename the US foot as the US survey foot to avoid confusing the American public".
Edit: metre/meter literally means measure. That's why the time signature in music is also known as the metre signature or the measure signature, why the rhythm in poetry is known as its metre, why the thing that measures your energy usage is a meter, why the thing you watch to make sure your microphone isn't clipping is a meter, etc. In British English, only the distance measure and music/poetry measures are a metre, with most all other measures (and measuring things) being meters, including newer UK (natural) gas meters that measure usage in cubic metres (in comparison to the older meters that used cubic feet).
The hills and mountains can be calculated out if you also determine the height above sea level for each measuring point.
Just a few more triangles in the final calculation 🙂
You can have a job walking around the countryside measuring triangles. Well, it's not triangles, and you don't always walk, you sometimes crawl through mud and bushes. The job is called a land surveyor or a geodesist. One of my mates is one, he studied in a land planning university, and he likes to play guitar and bitch about things.
Americans: Metric system sucks
Rest of the world: you don't say
Get well soon, Ryan.
this is the best "convert" you can get...
As a Brit can conceptualise:
Driving 5 miles.
Walking 200meters
To buy a pint of milk and a litre of coke
That I weigh 13stone and 11lb and can squat 100kg
But I can't conceptualise:
Driving 2km
Walking 50yards
To buy a litre of milk and a gallon of petrol (gas)
That I weigh 75kg and can lift...220lb
😂
That meand you have no instinctual comparison between what youo weigh and how much you can lift, that sounds so strange to me
@@noefillon1749 i can convert. 1kg = 2.2lb
I can squat 1.3x my body weight.
But yeh we just have certain things weighted in metric and others in imperial.
Someone tells me they're 185cm tall I got no idea what that means instinctually. But 5'11 I instantly have a feeling for their height without any thought.
Yet if it came to an animal like a giraffe I need that shit in meters!
2km is just 10 x 200meters so you can ^^
@@noefillon1749 WTF. You think comparison between bodyweight and physical ability is instinctive ?!
Ryan is exactly the type of guy Continental European men don't like even if their last name is Ronaldo or Nadal. He is polite, charming, and most of all does not get bothered if someone says something to him that is off-handed. Like many Americans, he just ignores all but the most obvious insults and moves on to the next point of conversation. He also smiles way too much for European men to feel comfortable with around their girlfriends or even wives. And, not only that, i am sure Ryan tips all sorts of service people and thanks them for a job well done, something for example someone in France or the Netherlands would be nauseated by. Ryan, you need to head over to Europe, you will be loved there ---
Of the seven primarily cited metric distance measurements only four of them are readily used in practical applications. Nobody refers to decimeters, dekameters or hectometers. They're merely cited as 0.1 or 10x of the adjacent measurement.
Meanwhile in an imperial system, an inch, a foot, a yard and a mile ALL get usage.
Not every measurement in the world works best on a standard of ten. Ten has limited application as a power of two fraction before you need to get decimals involved. There are times when dividing into thirds, quarters, sixths and eighths makes more sense. I'm rather proud that I got to learn both systems and still use them both. It's like being bilingual, except with numbers.
I (We in sweden) use decimeters and centimeters all the time. We don't use dekameters but I think there are people that do somewhere. We also have a "mil" which is 10 kilometers.
Metrum is Latin and means "measure" or "gauge". From there, the French word "metre" derived (same in British English), or the American English "meter".
And in spanish , italian, german......"metro"
In portuguese is also metro.
In german is meter
By the way it is not named from latin but from greek, see the explanation at the beginning of the video
@@antoniocosta1034The Latin metrum in turn derived from the Greek metrón. But the word "métrer' was used in French before métre was used to define the standard of length, simply meaning "to measure". It was and is also used to describe the rhythm of a verse or a piece of music (as in "beats per minute"). In fact, it never fell out of usage in French from the time of Vulgar Latin over Old French and Middle French to Modern French. It is not as if in 1799, people went to Ancient Greek to look for a word they could use to name the new unit of length. They used a word they already used all the time and just added a new definition to it. So yes, the origin of métre is Ancient Greek metrón, but the direct ancestor is Latin metrum.
American here and I don't know what schools are teaching now, but when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s we were taught both the Standard system and the metric system. I think it's weird that no one else in the U.S. seemed to be taught metrics.
That seems smart especially nowadays as the world is pretty small and surely it would be beneficial to know the system of others.
Metric is the standard system. You mean imperial.
@@tubekulose No, they mean 'US Customary Units'. The US never used the Imperial system per say, as that system was not set into agreement by the UK till after the USA was founded.
As a Scottish person born in the mid 70’s, we were taught in both metric and imperial for measuring, though the calculations for converting both miles to kilometres and Fahrenheit to Centigrade were kind of skimmed over (or done in a way that they just haven’t stuck in my head) but kilometres and Fahrenheit mean nothing to me…I just know that the numbers will be higher than those for miles and Centigrade.
Wow, cool, I thought that in the U.S. people studied metric system only in a college or university when going to stem faculties. I wonder when they actually stopped this practice. Doesn’t seem to be a fed initiative from what I can say and yet as it seems it happened all over the U.S. As a European it took me a while to get accustomed to converting inches, feet, yards, pounds, hogsheads, gallons and other freedom units into smth more comprehensible. Inches are somewhat widely used here, especially in construction as the wood is usually measured in inches.
I love how his reason for it being imperfect is because of such a negligible error hundreds of years ago. I'd love to see him explain why imperial units are defined by the metric system today
There's nothing stupid or ridiculous about the imperial system, it's a beautiful system which developed over time from an amalgamation of lots of different styles of thinking from what we learnt from our ancestors over centuries, millennia even, it's just a little outdated and a system like the metric system just makes more sense globally in 2024. For America of course it's used by your scientists, in engineering, aviation etc. and I would say one area where it makes the biggest difference is International Standards as it simply makes life easier, but America still refuses to accept to be part of any system of International Standards so as far as everyday Americans go the imperial system serves them just fine. Even a small change like the US adopting Internationally recognised business management systems would mean having to adopt the metric system so America still ignores all of that is going on, funny thing is as a professional purchaser/product designer, I can get more information about how a factory is run in China than I can in America, in fact if I want to know anything about how a client if the US is running their factory my only option is to have it independently audited at my own expense, and if they refuse to be audited (which happens) I can't use them, whereas if dealing with a factory in China I can just check their Internationally recognised standards and systems which they have in place, which tells me everything I need to know.
Oh I've seen a yardstick. Felt one, too. Was one of our teachers' weapon of choice. To be fair, it was a broken one so more realistically it would have been a 'two feet stick'.
METRE
I'm a physicist and have been working in the USA. The universal rule for solving physics problem there was: convert to metric, work the problem, get a result, convert the metric result back to imperial. Trying to solve any form pf physics problem in imperial is prone to fail.
we use both in the uk had to learn both for maths and science
.. and everyday use ...
2 thenth of a milimiter off? screw this im going back to lobsters per square squirel
bullets per square child?
Red squirrel or grey squirrel?
@@Dreyno obviosly grey so they are set appart from the lobsters
@@JohnDoe-xz1mw So obvious when you think about. Much obliged.
It's a job still in Germany. If you want that job, here you can walk around measuring and get paid for it by the community. 😅
Thanks for this awesome video. It was super interesting! Also I'm French and had no idea about this, you made my day! Hope you get better soon ❤
One liter of water has a mass of one kilogram and has a volume of 1 cubic decimeter.
1 milliliter of water has a mass of one gram and has a volume of 1 cubic centimeter.
That nuclear explosion was from the introduction of the movie The fellowship of the ring (Lord of the rings)
Remember that the earth isn’t a perfect sphere but it bulges around the equator.
Litre, metre. Let’s not use the yanks’ spelling 😂
It's not that simple. First of all water has to be distilled.
@@UltraCasualPenguin yes I know it has to be distilled water and the temperature must be exactly 20°C etc. but this is to keep it easy for non metric people. Just to show that these measurements are interwoven.
We have meter long yardsticks here, often with the measurement in yard and inches on the other side. It's even called a 'duimstok' which translates as thumb stick and a thumb is an inch. This is NL, which has always had a lot of exchange with Britain for a continental country. Ironically a lot of bicycle measurements are still in inch.
Measurements for plumbing as well, pipe diameters. And measurements for screw thickness and other construction stuff.
In the UK, the majority of our tape measures (even electronic devices) have BOTH options available, depending upon the mood of the user... 😂😂😂
The measuring device I remember from school was the wheel that we walked around "click,click " measuring virtually everything 😅
@@stewedfishproductions9554 Electronic devices should do Furlongs, rods, chains and links too.
@@TheSuperappelflapin de metaalgroothandel krijg je een buis van 33,4mm als je om een 1 duims/"/inch buis vraagt. 1.1/4 is een buis van 42mm in doorsnede. 3/4 is dan dus 26,9mm.
Each German household has at least 1 customs rule.
The remarkable thing is that, despite the inaccuracies, just how accurate it actually is, given the technology of the time. And it was never designed in a completely arbitrary way that would change over time. It actually makes sense. In the UK, we still use both systems but feet and inches are generally relegated to measuring someone's height.
In the UK we are very comfortable using yards, feet, inches and metres.
I still like to throw in the occasional fathom, league or rod when I get the chance 👍 😂
Especially when going for a PINT after work - who wants to go for a LITRE??? Just doesn't have the same ring about it. 😅
@@Rachel_M_
Don't forget the odd acre or chain either... 😂
I prefer using the furlong though.
@@AlexGys9... and chains for the balance
why does the country of freedom uses the IMPERIAL system? 😂😂
They don't (at least not quite) - see previous comments.
Yes, you can get such a job - SURVEYOR (only walking with a fancy GPS, drones, Tacheometers, Total stations, etc..) but basics are the same...
When Carl Johansson started to export gauge blocks to the U.S. in 1912, he set the 1 inch blocks to 25.4mm @ 20° C exactly. Instead of using U.S. inch (25.4000508 mm @68 °F) or the U.K. inch (25.399977 mm). U.S. has been secretly metric ever since.
What is the meter system?
He means metre
No, he means 'metric'. FFS 😂
Little funfact: Dont you use metric already? I mean how many Cents are in a Dollar? ^^
That's decimalisation not metrification. 🙄
Actually, that's DECIMAL, not metric/SI
That the decimal system not the metric system.
Also medications, engineering, sports, the army, automotive industry, soda bottles, nutritional values, jewellery, guns etc….
@@shmick6079 with guns it's really a mess. Some calibers are in mm, others are in inches and don't even get me started on shotgun calibers with their weird British "how many balls of lead from one pound of lead can you make that one of them will fit the barrel" 🤣
And by the way if you tell a gun person in Germany that you're using 0.1 grams of powder or that your projectile is 8 grams - they're gonna ask you "sorry, how many grains is that?"
"Bestowed to us by God*!"
*the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, both really godly.
I love his weird takes. Can't always guess how much he's aware of what he's saying.
It's nice only you know a yard stick,
The rest of us just laugh... 😅😅😅
Outside of the USA, METER is spelled METRE. And LITER is spelled LITRE !
A meter is a device that measures something, as in electric meter.
Of course we've seen a YARD STICK !! We used them in the UK before we went metric !
Americans SAY they use the Imperial system but don't know about STONES ! Or that UK pints and gallons are different to American ones !
No, everywhere meter is spelled meter and metre is spelled metre. Liter is spelled liter and litre is spelled litre.
The world is not just USA and UK.
Now if you want to *translate* the English word 'metre' to other languages, you can try an online translator and see how other languages spell their word.
Here are some examples:
Albanian: metër
Bulgarian: метър
Croatian: metar
Czech: metr (yeah, no e)
Danish: meter
German: meter
Lithuanian: metras
Fun fact: the american system is defined on the metric system.
Well, the Meter is based on our daily scale. Also, it´s based on 10, which allows to just move the comma (point), in order to calculate the upper or lower measurement size, like kg or metric tons -> 1000g =1kg, 1000kg =1 ton). Also, volume and weight are linked to the density/weight of water, which makes one Liter (10x10x10 cm = 1 dm³ of distilled water having a weight of 1kg ON SEALEVEL (pressure matters). In fact, it cancels out any conversion calculations, that´s why it´s used by science in general.
Fun fact: When it comes to weapons, even US citizens use the metric system for some reason and there are more expamples for it, already.
However, sooner or later the US will adapt this system, anyways - it´s just a question of time.
But once your are on it, please make your billion the same as the european one as well, it´s so confusing to me. 🙄
No such thing as the meter system. Any case, it's metre.
not in german speaking countries..
here its Meter!
@@mats7492 small correction: it's Germanic, the language family of which German is just one of the many modern descendants of.
German speaking would mean: only places that speak German.
Germanic includes a lot other languages as well (like Dutch or Frisian)
@@mats7492
In the UK that would be an electricity or gas METER. The mechanical or electronic measuring device, while the measurement is spelt METRE. Left over from when Britain spoke French for just over 300 years (in the ruling circles...). 😂
@@ChristiaanHW Considering English is a Germanic language, I think this generalisation is a bit too broad, perhaps?
@@rasmusn.e.m1064 English is a special case.
old English used to be Germanic but due to the Norman invasion a lot of Latin words entered the English language.
so modern day English in more like 2 (arguable even more) languages wearing a trench-coat pretending to be one language.
but yes, of course not all Germanic languages are the same. so i'm sure in some it might be called something else
Yes and no, there are applications where traditional fractional systems work better but at least the metric system provides a single universal standard of measure rather than everybody having their own quirks to their version of a fractional system..
But you can use metric units with traditional fractions. What's your point?
ive yet to find a single application for non SI messurements
What he has not stated, and he really should, was that the metre was designed to be repeatable by anyone in the universe… a universal measure one might say… and now it is, as are all of the other metric base units. We never metrified time, so the second is now retrofit into the metric system by other physical laws of the universe. It is one of the all time great achievements of mankind.
So to remeasure the meter I first need a second.
I don't have a clock. But when I arrived on this strange planet, I noticed that when I go to sleep at sundown (civil twilight) and get back up, the local sun is about 34° over the horizon.
How many earth seconds is a day here?
@@HappyBeezerStudios the metre is defined as the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458s in a vacuum (ie speed of light). The second is defined by the hyperfine transition frequency of caesium-133 x 9,192,631,770. Just because the minute, hour or day are not actually metric measures doesn’t mean that the second has no definition in the metric system.
10:03 You're right, and even iridiated platinum will expand and contract under changing temperatures. What the video is glancing over is that the platinum bar to which it keeps referring (which, by the way, has an X-shaped cross-section to avoid warping) has two marks etched upon its surface which, when the bar is at 0ºC, are (meant to be) one metre apart.
Hello fellow metricists.
According to my knowledge the meter was implemented by French because they discovered it during their Egyptian Expedition as it was a 5000 years old Egyptian unit of measurement (Egyptian cubit was a radian of a cirle diamater of a meter - or sth like that).
Bwahahahahaha!! 🤣
According to my knowledge, it is hugely exagerated.
No, the Egyptians doesn't use the metric system 5000 years ago. No, there wasn't electricity in the pyramids, and no, the pyramids weren't spaceports for aliens spaceships...
US army and NASA adopted metric system in 1957. (answer to the traditional US mantra : "there are two kinds of countries, those who have the metric system, and those who walked on the moon").
The point isn't that the definition of a meter should be perfect. The point is conversion and calculations are easier, to the point you could do a lot of it without pen and paper.
1000mM = 100cM = 1M = 0.1 dM = 0.01 hM = 0.001kM
Same goes for volume (liters)
But how about length to volume?
1cM³ = 1 mL
Now do that with inches, feet, yard, miles and gallons...I'll wait....
but the circomference of the earth is 40010km.
so they were 0.025% off. I'd say, that's a respectable low error.
On a sea level? but...which sea?
@@Kyk_cz All the seas have the same level so it doesn't matter
Actually they measure from the north pole, through france to the south pole.
The circumference of earth is often averaged, and because of the bulge near the equator that means the circumference is actually very slightly bigger than 4× their measurement.
It's not off because until very recently that measure was still used to validate things because the physical sample shouldn't be taken out of the clean environment very often to prevent damage.
@@Kyk_cz that's a funny thing.
switzerland and germany built a bridge over a river, that was the border between them. in the middle, they found out that they were over half a meter off.
reason: switzerland operates with the austrian sealevel, that was once in triest. german works with hamburg (I think). difference around 30cm.
and they calculated in the wrong direction, not removing the offset, but doubling it.
Metric is easier to divide or multiply but people are not totally liking or used to it when growing up with imperial measurements
not people, only us citizens
An asteroid that passed close to Earth and had a length of 16 sea lions. That all.
Some media measure things in football or soccer fields 🙂
fun facts:
- the second is currently also based on fundamental physics. As is the meter.
- the current imperial system is ....wait for it....metric-based! It's just a conversion
- the imperial system actually made sense to farmers, traders and craftsmen in the past. There was no great need for scientific purposes and a lot for crafting and trade. Therefor lots of imperial measurement is divisable by 2,3,4 and 6. That's handy! (There is a more detailed explanation out there but I forgot).
If it's a metre long, it is actually a metre stick, not a yard stick. :p
In Germany, folding yard sticks are still called "Zollstock" which literally translates to "inch-stick", not "meter-stick", although they are marked in meters and centimeters.
A meter is for putting money in when the electric runs out or the taxi has a meter running.
... lovely Rita, metermaid, nothing can come between us ... 😍
People in the US: Imperial is best!
- Why?
Because USA! USA! USA!
The metric system is much simpler.With the ten times table you just move decimal commas when using numbers.When measuring heat zero is freezing and hundred is boiling point.Simple.
Growing up, this debate wasn't a debate, we had one, I was ignorant of the other. Until.... I joined the army and it became all important to know the difference. The standard scale of the metric system works so much better on maps and with binoculars to gauge direction and distance when accuracy counts. Mils over Degrees, Meters over yards. It was essential to do quick math in increments of 10 or 100 than ever even try to convert feet, miles, degrees (Direction, not temp :P) After that, thinking of ML in science class was incredibly accurate. Now, I'm a sucker for TSP and TBSP and using Cups, etc for cooking, but I'd adjust if I had to.
Defenders of the great British imperial system... I've always wondered what your equivalent of percent is.
Per cent is literally per hundred in Latin!
Your Mile is an old Roman invention, that used to be pretty accurate to measure distances for drilled legion soldiers counting 1000 double-paces (the distance of 5000 feet). Mile = Mille (thousand)
The metric system makes scaling and converting incredibly easy.
But the imperial and USCS have units very practical for everyday life.
A modern day (because there was much differences from region to region and even between neighboring towns) foot is 30.48 cm (or 304.8 mm), typical shelves are 30 cm deep, tables are 60, kitchen appliances are 60 cm wide.
A yard is 91.44 cm long (so 0.9144 m) and much closer to the average step length than a meter, so guesstimating travel distances in yard is easier than in meters.
If only there was a way to have the benefits of both systems, but that is something that should've been done when the metric system was designed. If they had made the meter 10% shorter, it would be super useful.
NASA works in metric, and the airlines work in Imperial AND metric. I read somewhere that a spacecraft crashed because there was a mix up in the measurements.
And for a long time the eastern block measured flight levels in meters, while everyone else uses feet.
Yes, even in the metric world, we measure how high our planes are in feet, how fast they go in nautical miles per hour, and how much fuel they use in kg.
It doesn't MATTER what the definition is, provided it is agreed and consistent for everyone.
'metre' is also the spelling in British English. We use 'meter' for machines which record measures - like an electricity meter, or gas meter.
No system is without flaws- but surely one in which all type of measure (apart from time) are based on the same system, and works in Base 10, which is what we are all most familiar with has to be better than the hotchpotch that is the Imperial System?
Even the US uses metric for its currency.
What shoe size is that foot?
Quick reminder that it’s not just Europe that uses the Metric system and countries like Australia, NZ, some African countries and many others also use it
'murica actually *has* adopted the metric system!
The imperial system is nowadays calculated based upon metric values.
The standard samples for a meter and so on where kept in a controlled environment to make sure that e.g. the 1m platinum bar did not expand or shrink
It's not about the perfection or not of the metric system, it's the madness of the imperial units, that btw, are based on the metric system nowadays. The greatness of the metric system comes from 'decimation', using 10 as base for multiples and divisions. It's so simple.
Incredible that the US fought a War of Independence and retained the Imperial Measures system. Although, typically you use a smaller pint and gallon........
As Chris Rock says, the metric system failed in America except for the near universal adoption of the 9mm pistol.....
"How old are you?"
"I am 24 palm trees old"
"How long is the road?"
"It's like 5 feet, two teeth and a quarter of liver long"
"What's that sport you play in your country with the egg shaped ball that you carry around in your hands"
"Ooow you mean football"
Leave it to the Americans...
And the Harvard Bridge is 364.4 smoots ±1 car.
@@HappyBeezerStudios +1 ear 👂!
Someone asked me my age like 500 kiloseconds ago, and I said "In metric, 1.5 gigaseconds". That's how it's done in the SI, right? Use only the base unit and prefixes.