The Metric System explained for Americans || FOREIGN REACTS
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The Metric System explained for Americans
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This man lives in America and after watching 4 minutes of this video he understands the metric system better then the imperial while he's used the imperial his whole life.
Passive agressive but not false
He did mention he used to know it 2:18
because there is no "system" it is just random values you need to remember.
@@arohk4415Please explain that comment.
but as an American you have NOT been using the imperial system all your life, you have been using the US customary unit system and the international system, this is a fundamental problem in the US, most people don't know they system they use.
In Australia we switched to the metric system in 1974.
I grew up in the eighties and nineties, and while we were officially taught in metric, all the teachers had learnt in imperial, so in effect we learned both. I'm also a woodworker, which means a lot of used measurements, especially in hardware and fixtures, still involves imperial.
Being very familiar with both, I have a deep and burning hatred of imperial. It's clumsy, illogical, confusing, and EVERY measurement using it involves calculations. And dont get me started on fscking fractions!
I guess the measurement system of a country cannot be changed overnight but progressively within a generation (for example 20-30 years) it doesn't seem that hard.
You don't have to change all signs overnight, you change them to signs in both imperial and metric once they aren't usable anymore (the last imperial only survivors would have to be changed at the end of the 30 years), and then to only metric fot those which are changed more than say 15 years after the beginning of the transition. you also have enough time to train a whole new generation of workers who will be able to use both systems, then only metric...
It's totally possible and doesn't have to be brutal, as your example confirms.
@@noefillon1749It wouldn’t even take that long. I grew up with the metric system in the 50s/60s, and had to adapt quickly when I moved to Germany. Sure, as far as road signs are concerned there would have to be a transition period, but I doubt it would have to be 15-30 years. People can generally adapt faster than that.
@@patriciamillin1977 The 15-30 years transition is due to how long do the signs last. There may be a faster campaign to switch all the signs for ones that have both systems when first starting the change over, but since most people would be still fluent in one system it would not need to be done overnight, If a street sign lasts 30 years, once the signs saying "
Here in Victoria it was 1972 we switched over was still at school when the switch happened
It's time to let go...
Can you imagine the USA going back to a monetary system like the UK had before decimalisation at the end of the 60s. 12 pennies made a shilling, 20 shillings made a pound. 21 shillings was a guinea. 240 pennies to the pound. Try adding two costs with the prices given in pounds, shillings and pence. Then calculate the change to be given when a £5 note was used to pay for something priced in pounds, shillings and pence. This is what it is like for most of the world when we look at the USA using yards, feet and inches.
That's not even the full system:
"Two farthings = One Ha'penny. Two ha'pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). Once Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea." -(Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman from Good Omens (1990)
And then always expecting _us_ to convert when they chat with us online, so that we know what they’re talking about. It would never even enter their heads that they could convert, that they are in the minority and they should adapt to the majority.
@@cmlemmus494 Sounds hard for the wallet, but it's excellent for the memory
@@cmlemmus494 You missed the Forpny... 4 pennies...
And it was all based on ease of division...
1 shilling = 2 Sixpence = 3 Forpny = 4 Thripence = 12 pennies = 24 Ha'penny = 48 Farthings.
and:
1 Pound = 2 ten shilling notes = 4 Crowns = 8 Half Crowns = 10 Florin = 20 shillings (& you can keep getting smaller and smaller divisions down to 960 farthings in a pound.)
1 Guinea = 1 pound & 1 shilling or 21 shillings or 252 pennies... [this was originally used as an import tax/levy if a product came into a port that was worth 954 pounds, the tax was 954 shillings, so the price paid became 954 Guineas]
note: a Pound can easily be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 ,10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 40, 48, 60, 80, 120 & 240 without going into Ha'pennies or Farthings...
the smallest number that doesn't easily go into a pound is 7, followed by 9 and guess what:
A Guinea can easily be divided into 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 18, 21, 28, 36, 42, 63, 84, 126 & 252
The system was designed to be easy to break into smaller portions for example:
You and 4 employees have just completed building that fence,
you charge the owner of the property 12 guineas,
the taxman will take 12 shillings,
leaving you with twelve pounds
your 4 workers take an equal share of a quarter and you pocket the rest.
A quarter of 12 pounds is 3 pounds (or 60 shillings) so each worker gets 15 shillings
and you keep 4/10/-, (Your wife claimed the rest. LOL)...
*But If you charged 13 guineas:*
you charge the owner of the property 13 guineas,
the taxman will take 13 shillings,
leaving you with 13 pounds
your 4 workers take an equal share of a quarter and you pocket the rest.
A quarter of 13 pounds is 3/5/- (or 65 shillings) so each worker gets -/16/3
and you keep 4/17/6, (with your wife claiming her half)...
*in $:*
you charge the owner of the property $13.00,
the taxman will take 65 cents,
leaving you with $12.35,
your 4 workers take an equal share of a quarter and you pocket the rest.
A quarter of $12.35 is $3.08 (approximately) so each worker gets 77c *[should be an extra 3/16c each]*
and you keep $4.63, (with your wife claiming $4.64 & then another $2.32 when she divorces you because you ain't making enough money.)
A confusion between gallons and liters made a plane to deplete its fuel midflight.
In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the ground reality turned out to be completely different, all because someone failed to use the right units, i.e., the metric units!
Litres, not liters. Metres not meters.
Killo metres, not kil O metres
depends on which way the confusion goes. If other way around then the fuel tank of the plane is too small for the necessary amount of fuel :)
Liter 1000 cc cubic centimeter kilo 1000 grams 500gram half a kilo ..pound? Gallon ... 4 liters 😂 gas? Stones .. gibblets .. elbows hands.. feet.. cubits. Parsec .. duim.. rectuma. How deep.. 1 rectum
@@mangomonster5296 The confusion came when converting the weight of the fuel to volume of the fuel deposits in the plane. They used a factor of conversion from weight to volume made for imperial instead the factor of conversion of metric. They used a factor of conversion made from pounds to gallons instead of the factor from kilos to litres
True story: when in the USA for my work I was driving down a highway and saw a sign telling me my exit was coming up in 1 1/4 miles. Right after there was a sign "lane ends in 1200 feet". I had no idea if that was before or after my exit, and no easy way of calculating that in the time before I would drive into construction equipment.
After arriving at my hotel I looked up the number of feet in a mile, which is a very logical 5280. Or 4280, I forget which. Random numbers in a measurement system are stupid.
Jesus Christ that's frightening! 😂😂😂
In the UK, which is theoretically metric, most road signs are in miles and yards. Although if you have a SatNav, you normally get an option.
Hard Brexiteers of course, want to end all vestiges of metric measurements, as they see it as an evil EU imposition, and want to take back ‘are sovrunty’!
I can see myself trying to imagine the 1200 feet all in a line...😂😂
it is a "very logical" 5280, the only reason I know this is because of a memory aid/mnemonic I once read that said "5280 sounds like five tomatos" and that they used that to remember the number.
@@mavadelo
Funny.
When whoever came up with the imperial system, came up with it, they were already 12 feet in a yard, I can’t quite remember why they were 1760 yards in a mile.
The mnemonic would not have worked anyway, because it would’ve been spoken as five thousand, two hundred and eighty.
Of course, the mile is based on a metric system, up to a point.
A Roman mille was 1,000 paces, which was standardised to 5,000 feet around 2,000 years ago.
It’s likely that a foot, what is the length of the emperors foot, which is why we call a ruler, a ruler.
A Roman mile, was roughly roughly 0.9 Imperial miles or 4,860 feet.
And that 1,000 directly comes down as the SI prefix M in Megabytes and so on.
Not quite as random as some think. By metric makes far more sense.
Of course it meant we had to change a lot of Shakespeare and other texts.
“There’s something afoot” is now “There’s something 30 centimetres.”
The metric system is an invention that does not date from yesterday.
It was created in 1790 in France to facilitate transactions between the different French provinces, each of which used its own unit of measurements adopted in the Middle Ages or even dating from the Roman Empire.
It's beautiful, it works, it's French.😋
Let s cry together in metric time
The "it's French" part is not encouraging.
Everything in the metric system has the mathematical base of 10. Period. No deviation.
Every unit of length, weight, volume, can be attained by either shifting the decimal point left or right. That's why it's also called the decimal system.
In Imperial every unit of even ONE type (such as length, weight, volume, etc) has different mathematical bases. 16, 12, 3, 1760 for length for fractions of an inch, inch, foot, yard, mile. That makes conversions of one unit into a higher or lower unit incredibly cumbersome, but also contains an inbuilt drop of fractions SOMEWHERE along the line. You simply can't get to reasonable lenghts when you have to multiply by 12, then by 3, then by 1760, then by the same cumbersome numbers to get a square mile AND THEN you multiply by the specific numbers for each x or y axis. That is just HORRIBLE to calculate. You get either incredibly awkward numbers and unit listings, or you inherently start to incorporate mathematical rounding errors into it when you drop certain units altogether (like inches).
Don't even get me started on trying to calculate the pounds-force pressure on the walls of a dam that tries to secure such areas such as New Orleans. There are varying force foot-pounds pressure on several miles of dam, varying with height of the water level. Now that water contains an average of so-and-so much floating drift wood and silt, varying the difference of density, thus foot-pounds of pressure by the imperial ton of water behind the dam... you see where this is going? You can't even do an average rule-of-thumb calculation with Imperial. Because NONE of these units are interlinked and connected. This causes US structures to fail (relatively) much more often than other structures around the world with the same margin of error deviations factored in.
I am not making light of this, but the after-effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans could have been lessened a LOT if public engineers in New Orleans had been able to calculate quickly, as a rough shod number, how many pumps with how much lifting power they would have needed, instead of going through days worth of calculations.
The THW in Germany even offered to fly in their mobile pumping stations back then. They were denied because the numbers seemed so low.
Yeah, the THW (Technisches Hilfswerk), the German technical emergency agency, sent them the numbers in cubic meters per SECOND they could pump with all their mobile pumping stations. The officials read this as gallons per second. It took several years for this error to be found out. That was a multiplier of 264 times what the officials THOUGHT it was. Talk about a tragic error that could have saved lives. But we will never know.
Once conversion errors from one system to another endanger or even cost lives, there is an end of the discussion what should be done.
I've been using the metric system for almost a gigasecond now and I mostly like it. However, it's a bit annoying that one day takes 86.4 kiloseconds, rather than 100 kiloseconds.
@@eduardbatmendijn8394 yes time is special
@@eduardbatmendijn8394Yeah but even those numbers are better than in the impirial
1h is 3600 seconds
I think thats ok since that is mostly only used to get to seconds at the begining or to hours at the end
There is a myth that because of this difference in mathematical bases, American children are better understand simple fractions than Russian ones, because it is rather difficult to convert all this into decimal fractions.
At the same time, Russian children are good at comparing negative numbers, since in Russia, as in the rest of the world, the Celsius scale is used to measure temperature, and negative Celsius values in Russia occur every winter, while negative values Fahrenheit (less than 0°F/-17.7°C) occur in the US quite rarely and not everywhere. And Russian children clearly understand why, for example, -20 is less than -10, because -20 degrees is colder than -10 degrees.
@@silmarils94 you have the babylonian to thank for that. They liked there base 12 (and base 60) system. time (months,..) , angle.
I remember talking to a colleague who is from the US. We found out we’ve both got dyscalculia. While we were talking about how hard maths classes were in school for us, she kept talking about how basic geometry, physics, biology and chemistry were hell for her. We both scored identically at the same test to measure our degree of dyscalculia. She was amazed that basic chemistry, biology, physics and geometry weren’t as hard for me. I grew up using the metric system. She grew up using the imperial system. I explained how the metric system is based on the table of 10 and that I treated the names for metric measurements like a simple vocabulary list. Then I proceeded to explain the metric system.
10 millimetres = 1 centimetre
10 centimetres = 1 decimetre
10 decimetres = 1 metre
10 metres = 1 decametre
10 decametres = 1 hectometre
10 hectometre = 1 kilometre
Milli means a thousandth
Centi means a hundredth
Deci means a tenth
Deca means “ten of”
Hecto means “a hundred of”
Kilo means “ a thousand of”
etc.
Once she figured out everything within the metric system, from distances to weights to volumes to temperatures is based on a measure of 10 and given the fact she doesn’t have issues with the table of 10 and its multiples, it blew her mind.
“All you need is a little bit of vocabulary and everything is just 10, 100 or 1000 steps apart.”
Erm… yes. For everyday life it pretty much is. Kind of. For conversions within the metric system, it is.
Time is diffent. Time is hexadecimal scale of course 60' = 1 hour 60'' = 1 minute ect..
@@lucianorosarelli-xr5lr No. Hexadecimal is a base 16 number system, that I knew for sure. Didn't know what the name of a base 60 system was and had to look it up. What you meant is that it's a "sexagesimal" scale.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
bit of a weird experience imo. Grew up in the states myself and my science classes were always in metric. Both in highschool and in college. Math classes sometimes used imperial but not really, as we were never asked to convert or change units. If you're doing a geometry problem, the math is the same for trying to find the area of a square if the sides are 5 feet, 5 inches, or 5 kilometers. It was in my social studies class that were were taught imperial conversions. Did she grow up in the south? I lived in the north.
@@Nictator42 - I have no idea where she grew up. Never asked. She doesn’t have a particular accent that I can discern except for what I’d describe as very much the same “neutral” (ish) pronunciation someone who is an anchor at one of the major US TV networks would have. You can discern she’s from the States, but not much more unless, perhaps, you’re from the States yourself and at home in subtle remnants of accents.
Understanding is the keyword here, you just need to understand it, you don't need to learn it by memory.
The imperial system is chaotic. It feels random. I mean, you also could say that there are 7 raindrops fitting into a fishfinger (fishstick for americans)), while there are fifteen fishfingers in a bottlecap. That's actually the same random nonsense.
Is that metric raindrops or imperial raindrops? I think they're bigger in 'murica 😄
1 Imperial raindrop is equal to 1.2 US Customary raindrops.
@@martinconnelly1473 Well American pints (473ml) and gallons (3.785l) are smaller than British pints (568ml) and gallons (4.546l)
@@hypsyzygy506 The other way around. The Imperial raindrop is only 0.55 Texan raindrop.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 Glad to know it's raining in Tx
As a scientist in applied mathematics and mechanics, all the scientific publications are in metric system.
False. Historical ones didn't vanish.
@@rosomak8244 examples ?
_"As a scientist in applied mathematics and mechanics, all the scientific publications are in metric system."_
No disrespect intended, but everybody already knows that.
@@Milesco nope, many do not know that.
USA could have been among the first or even the first one adopting the metric system if there weren't pirates. In 1793 Thomas Jefferson requested models for kilogram and metre from France and they were sent to USA. Unfortunately the ship, which was carrying artefacts was captured by British privateers who stole the models and French envoy Joseph Dombey en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dombey died imprisoned in the island of Montserrat. France adopted metric system officially only 1801, so USA having the models already 1793 could have done that even before France.
really interresting ! I did not know this 😲
Of course Jefferson was team metric 😅
Dang!
This rather shakes my image of pirates as cheeky, highly romantic adventurers. Just think of all the suffering their meddling inflicted on innocent (well, possibly innocent) US school children!
Metric are the true freedom units!
Imperial measurements are officially defined based on the metric system.
LOL, correct.
There are reasons to stick with the imperial measurements. But no good ones.
US Customary Measures are also defined in metric units.
(US Customary Measures and Imperial Measures are NOT exactly equal to each other (apart from the International Standard Yard, I think)).
@@HomerNarr There is no reason at all to keep imperial. Not even a bad one.
in the usa, an inch is first officially defined to be 25.4 mm = 2.54 cm = 0.0254 m (and similarly also weights etc),
which then in turn all are defined by physical constants in the metric SI system
btw: with 4 inch roughly being 10 cm, 1 liter of cola is a cube of (10 cm)^3 = 4^3 cubic inch ... *_end of easy metric SI_*
those 64 cubic inch are 35.4632 US fluid ounces,
while 1 US gallon is 128 US fluid ounces = 231 cubic inch (which would be either a cuboid of 3×7×11, or a cube of 6.13579^3),
and 1 imperial gallon is 160 imperial fluid ounces = 277.42 cubic inch (a cube of 6.51868^3)
@@Anson_AKB - actually it was an engineer in Sweden, called C E Johansson, that defined the inch as 25.4 mm. He founded a Swedish company 1909 that made metal lathes for the industry that e.g. could make screws. Those lathes had complicated gears in order to make the screws. And he wanted to be able to make both mm screws and inch screws in the same lathe. And therefore he decided that in this company an inch was exactly 25.4 mm. That company became large in the USA. And the conversion got officially accepted.
Me, a european guy was crushed when the American girl told me she won't date men with less the 6 feet, having only 2 feet 😉
I had the same with an English person years ago who told me she lost 1.5 stones in weight. My first question was what kind of rocks she was talking about.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 brilliant
The thing is, you have to forget the conversion thing, of course that is a problem if you are used to another system. But that everything is based on 10 is the great advantage.
Just yesterday i saw a video where somebod said something about square meters and .. what is the american equivilent to meters ? At least there i already thought, can somebody without a calculator even say how many square inches a square-foot / leg / body / whatever is. Let alone square-miles ?
And in case of temparature .. 0 degree is where water freezes, 100 where it starts to boil .. having it freeze at 30 and boil at 150 or whatever just seems so weird.
I fully agree with your comment except for the temperature thing.
You can freely choose any two points and all of them are equally good in general. The only point that really stands out is the absolute zero point I guess, but no one is using it in everyday life.
We are used to Celsius sure, but you could also get used to any other system.
The zero thingie is good in celcius... when it starts going near zero things will start freezing and roads getting slippery.. i love the fact that scale is build around basic physical phenomenons.. very informative and useful. I have really doest seem to hold much information in itself..
@@Feeber2 I agree that there is no difference where the 0 is, but the most important thing is the scale. For example, you need 1 calorie to heat 1 gram by 1 degree. There is no equivalent of that in imperial.
@@Tedger Fahrenheit is built around physical phenomena. 0°F was the lowest temperature Fahrenheit could achieve with a chemical reaction and 100°F was the temperature of the human body. In reality his thermometers were not very good so the 100°F is a bit off and so human body temperature is about 96°F (don't quote me on this, I didn't bother to check the actual figure since it also varies between males and females).
@@CarCrashMedia Yes sure, but that's only because calories are defined using the celsius scala. If you would define them with the Fahrenheit scala, then you'd need 1 calorie to heat 1 gram by 1 degree fahrenheit, which is perfectly fine also. It just means you need to eat a lot more calories to stay alive.
The only advantage the metric system has is that everything can be converted easily. And for temperature, there is hardly anything to convert, or did you ever use the unit millidegree?
Everything else is just a matter of definitions.
The main advantage of metric system is that it's totally unified: as lenghts, areas and volumes are all related (and expressed in multiples of 10, like we are used to count in our everydays life), you use the same system in whatever activity you do: to sew, to cook, to build furnitures, houses, roads, to transport beer, water, oil, gaz, or whatever you need. Only one unit and its multiples of 10 (a cent is a centidollar, right?), in only one system (meter, square meter, cubic meter).
The exemple of dollar should say a lot in itself, because it's the one unified system even US citizens use in their everyday life: the currency system. One unit and its mutiples of 10, to express the value of whatever thing you're talking about. Isn't it useful? If you have to change the unit you use depending on if you're talking about eggs, or cars, or bread, or computers, or buildings, it has a historical name: barter system, instead of currency system. I'm not native english speaker, so maybe I use wrong words, but I'm sure that even if you don't want, you understand what I mean, so you can see why a unified system is more practical that a non unified one.
People who are used to use imperial system are right to say it's simpler for them, because "they are used to", but that doesn't mean it's better or simpler in itself: from scratch (meaning your children, and every next generations), it's easier to learn a unified system of units, and more practical afterwards, because it's only one system for everything.
You do know that NASA lost a Mars probe (Mars Climate Orbiter) because someone messed up converting units...
Don't converse into the metric system. Use it in the first place.
You got a sub and a like because of your "ums". This was a good educating vid and your openness towards diff systems is point on.
I was young and worked in huge workshop by the wharfs, my trainer was a middle-aged man and he sent me to the "store" to get some tools. One was a 5/8 inch wrench, they didn't have any, so i got a 16 millimeter wrench instead. He yelled at me: We can't use this, it will wreck the tool. I was humbled. 5/8 inch to mm is 16 mm and 15.85 mm in inch.
Of course WE do that when we work in the shed and whatever, but this man was so proud to keep all tools in mint condition. And we all should do the same...
''your guns are tainted with Europe'' is one of the best quotes XD.
fun fact as I take it you studied to be an architect at one point. my dad was a construction worker and for some reason, we used inc in construction here in Sweden, I don't know then we stopped. I grow up learning wood measurements as 2'''x4'' and a 2'' nail. we still talked about inc in timber framing, I studied house restoration and did timber framing and outer folding rulers had both on them but it's harder and harder to find them as it's not really used anymore in construction.
Congress signed The Metric Conversion Act in 1975, but it was not made mandatory. So the USA uses the Metric System, but nobody told the Americans.
We use both in the UK although our imperial measurements are different to those used in the US, just to make it even worse than the metric system. Fun fact: The US uses metric money not imperial money lol
and engine cylinder volume, drug measurement, even NASA already measures in metric
@@Kyk_czYep, on the way to the moon & back the Apollo spacecraft both used metric in the computer and in all telemetry both up & down.
The trouble arose with your Astronauts. They knew how the metric worked but couldn't lean upon it in an emergency. They had to be able to take decisions based on the data at hand on the fly (if you'll forgive the pun) and if you haven't used it much at all then you can't react instinctively.
Do they had to use loads of their HAND SEWN memory and barely adequate computing time to convert all the figures coming up from the ground & all the data produced by their spacecraft from metric into the old imperial system that they'd used all their lives.
So when yanks say "We got to the moon in imperial so it's good enough for my bookshelves I'm putting up!" they're wrong. 'Twas only the astronauts that used imperial. Everyone & everything else used metric.
I enjoyed this video. Wasn't sure how you were all coping with the right wing attacks on everything you put a value on.
It's been the same here... Something has to change & soon! ☮️
We know that most people in the US don't travel abroad, when you have a population who are taught measurements which they mostly don't understand, distance miles v kilometers, temperature Fahrenheit v Celsius
Time 24hr v 12 hr
Liquids Metric v costomary + even these measurements are different from UK measurements with the same names.
When you are travelling to a different country there will be concerns, worries, but when these things are all measurements, things which we all rely on everyday and often without thought, knowing that all what you know with regard to measurements will be very different, that's not a good place to be mentally, the US government has really worked a dirty trick on its citizens.
The coolest thing is honestly the inter-system conversion. Just knowing how much liquids weigh is really useful for everyday life. Yes, 1 liter of water weighs 1 kg, but this can be used for anything from sodas to beer, which makes planning how much you can/want to carry a lot easier. How heavy is a gallon of water? How easy is it to calculate how much a 6 pack of beers and 2 large bottles of cola will weigh in your backpack? In metric it's just a simple matter of 0.5 liter per can of beer, so 3 liters of beer and 2l per large bottle, its 7 liters total, which is 7 kgs. I could even add 1 kg of meat for grilling and I know the exact weight of all of that in math I can do in 5 seconds.
That's not how it really works... they often forget to mention that 1 liter of water to be equal to 1Kg needs to be normal water (and even that can be off by a couple of grams). A mixture of water and salt, like the ocean, weighs more, . 1 liter of beer will weigh more than 1Kg because the density of that liquid is bigger than 1.000 g/cm3.
Usually Beer is from 1.020g/cm3 to 1160g/cm3 which the latter is equal to 1.160kg. Of course this doesn't matter to our daily lives, but would deviate any scientific calculation.
The correct form to find the liquid's weight is to find that liquid's density.
@@EddyParera123 Yes, I am aware, but it doesn't need to be 100% accurate, the different between 2 liters of cola and 2 liters of water is negligible for common use.
@@EddyParera123 You said that's not how it really works, and then proceeded to explain why that's exactly how it works. Unless you meant putting a cola bottle in a backpack scientifically and not casually.
the metric system was designed with science in mind. The Imperial system was designed with farmers, markets and uneducated people in mine... the IMP system is mostly 12-base because of the simple reason that 12 can be divided by a lot of number (1,2,3,4,6,12) so on a market it's EZ to ask for a quarter or a third of a pound. also for the coins (back then money was also 12base, especially the Pound -> 12 shilling/£ -> 12 cent/sh). the 10-base we use now hasn't got 6 whole-number dividers; it's only got 3 (1,5,10). So if you'd buy a quarter of a pie, you wouldn't be able to pay it without using a decimal sign. it's a lot harder to count per 12 once the numbers go up, and actually to use the IMP system correctly we should use 12 characters instead of the 10 we're using nowadays... just like the hexadecimal system where we count from 0 to F and where the number "10" represents a value of 17. using a 12-base system with only 10 numerals is wrong; that's why the IMP system is so bad. It would be a lot easier if we'd have a character for the numbers 11 and 12; eg A and B (or other characters).
It would be the same if we'd be using a binary system to count in our decimal system; 0010 is 2; but if we'd advertise 00110111011 we'd all be converting and counting the actual amount/price. That's why the imperial system is not a good system to use; in our heads we're constantly converting the 12-base to 10-base and we dont mind to have 20%-30% tolerance, i shouldn't say "WE", as i live in Europe and have always believed the metric system outclasses the IMP system in our modern world. Metric is designed with precision and ease of use in mind, Imperial was designed when we wanted to make it easier to trade locally and wanted the uneducated people to be able to divide without needing a sheet of paper to calculate (cuz they couldn't write). IMP is a farmer system which was nice before the 20th century for most of the people, MET is a science based system which is designed to make it easy for everyone who has the capability to read and write and do basic written calculations. the IMP system has virtually no reference between the domains, Metric has reference between domains which means you can convert, transform, calculate numbers cross-domain with little effort (eg: calculating how much water you'd need to fill up a 1KM long tube which is 1M wide and 0.5M high is VERY EZ, try that with a 1mile tube which is 1yd high and 1.5 foot high; in metric i can do this in my head ez; you'd need 5000 Hectoliter of water; which then would weigh 5 kilotons. Now u do this with the IMP example i've given and tell me how much volume and how much this would weigh. tip: converting to metric, then doing the math, and then convert back is the easy route to take; think that's nuff said)
There is a very simple reason why the metric system is more coordinated and as such "better", it was designed across all the measurements at the same time whilst the imperial system grew over time from various originators who were important to the population for some reason at the time, farmers and food sellers likely influenced weights, brewers volume, military larger distances, clothing producers the smaller distances.
It was only when science started to grow as a discipline that these various measurements started to interact in ways that needs to be easily worked with and so to ease this work the growing scientific community developed the metric system. Big surprise it is easier to work with when it was literally designed that way
As a non-American here are some thoughts:
Why even after the revolution do the Americans stick to the measuring system imposed by the British Empire? This system is named 'Imperial' for a reason.
Your currency is already metric, but it seems nobody realizes that. It's not only Dollar and cent (factor 100). In language I've also heard the term One Grand as referring to 1000 Dollar. So obviously metric is not that hard for American people.
When I was young in the 60s in everyday life we sometimes also used pounds. With the understanding this was meant as 500 grams or 1/2 a Kilogram. Heck, even butter is still packaged as half a pound, i.e. 250 grams.
The same basically is true for the US. All your official units of measurement are legally defined by metric dimensions. This just is not widely known. You could easy switch to metric by slowly shifting, giving both units for some years/decades on products. Your next generation of engineers will be happy.
In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade (or kelvin), which is one percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point.
Try using the imperial system to answer the question "How much energy does it take to boil a room temperature gallon of water?"
In imperial 1 gallon of water occupaies 231 cubic inches, weights around 8.3453 pounds and requires 6,489.722 feet pound-force of heat energy to increace its temperature by 1 degrees Fahrenheit which is 0.56 percent its freezing point and its boiling point.
PS It took me 1/2 h to calculate this.
At 1 atmospheric pressure. Minor but important detail :-)
Whenever I saw videos of Americans on any subject, carpentry, mechanics, etc. When they mentioned the measurements of the work, I paused and had to go do the conversion to understand what it was all about. After some time I stopped doing the conversion so as not to take twice as long as the video. But in some cases I already had an approximate idea of the measure in question.
Force of habit seems to play a major role in this discussion:
When I grew up in Germany, we had the "Deutsche Mark" as currency. This changed three decades ago (yet another point, where the decimal system became international standard, including the US: deca (ten), centi (hundret), resulting in DECAdes and CENTuries). Despite all those years, I still calculate the "real" value of an item in "Deutsche Mark", especially if I want to express, that something is way more expensive than it should be from my point of view.
And this is only about one unit of measure, one that everyone uses on a day to day basis, far from getting rid of any and all metrics I am fimiliar with at the same time.
Stubbornness has a word to say as well. And so does a concept, that I, being a German, only can understand on an abstract, intellectual level: patriotism!
(Off topic: Remember, Germany lost two wars in the last century, both had at least part of their causes in national pride. So the denazification after WW2 was given a rather high amount of attention in my socialization - as well as it did for most children that were born and raised in western Germany. No complains, just a fact. This did not happen in that intensity in eastern Germany, so if you happen to hear that german politics have taken more than one step to right side of the political spectrum, you might want to examine the gap between the states of the former GDR and the "rest" of Germany: in the east, a relatively new far right wing party gets most of the votes, in the west, they struggle to get 10% - and even this number is mostly caused by voters that are fed up with politics in general and the established parties in particular)
Wait what? You still recalculate Euros in DMs? I grew up with Guilders before it became Euros but I stopped recalculating back to Guilders within a few years. We earn money in Euros anyways and I still think that some things are hella expensive in Euros 🤣
Perhaps you are older but the automatic calculation stopped for me after a while , I do it sometimes to see how hard inflation is kicking us and cry.
You calculate in DM? Isn't it just like a 5% difference?
Also though, there is the subliminal disdain among some Americans towards watching any foreign media content because they all use the metric system, which can be confusing to them.
Edit:- For example sports. If you were raised on yards and feet, you tend towards sports that talk in yards and feet.
Right now, with the cumulated inflation since 1999, not sure calculating in DM (or Francs in France) make any sense anymore
It takes only a child to deny a fact. But it takes a whole man to admit when he was wrong.
By the way: Drug dealers in the US understand the metric system really good and calculate in their heads in metric. You don't buy an ounce of fenta, you guy grams.
That's because most drugs come from South America or other countries and those drug dealers don't know imperial, so American dealers had to adapt.
@@RaduRadonys And the conversion to the metric system seems to be quite simple. It is more a matter of will that the US holds on to its outdated and complicated system.
The same is true for the American electoral system.
@@RaduRadonys until then, they counted bullets per square child
@@RaduRadonys
Do you think that illegal drugs come to the US pre-portioned? It comes in bulk so American drug dealers can portion them however they want. Grams are just more convenient for expensive, powder drugs at the street level. Larger amounts are often sold in pounds or fractions thereof and/or ounces or fractions thereof. All American drug dealers know there are roughly 28 grams to an ounce and can do conversions in their heads.
@@Reno_SlimIt comes in kg or t
All of Australia changed to the metric system for every measurement back in the 60s. A law was passed in the 70s. If Australians can do it, I can't see why Americans can't do it. The point is Americans want to just keep doing what they've always been doing, only because that's what they've always been doing
That's also why they still have guns. No reasonable nation would allow its citizens to carry guns in this era, except for very, very specific reasons.
Many engineers cannot escape the Metric system at all, as the units of measure we work with are purely metric. Also, the range of values makes the use of prefixes essential.
As and electronics engineer I work with capacitor values from pF (10^-12 or 0.000000000001 Farad) to mF (0.001 Farad), and resistances from mΩ (milli-Ohm, 0.001 ohm) up to GΩ (giga-ohm, 1000000000 ohm). In some cases, even the prefix femto (f) is used for various measurements (example: bias or leakage currents). Imagine trying to invent something like the inch-foot-yard-mile system for electrical units... 😳
If you look closely, once the "mil" had been introduced as a measurement unit to avoid using twip, point and pica as units, that's already aknowledging the superiority of 'metric', as in choosing units where the conversions align with the usual number base.
As a former woodworker, we still had standard sizes measured in the old versions. And Danish sellers of meat mostly uses a Pound, which is equal to half a kilo (It sounds less expensive!)!
I was born in Mexico and over there people use the metric system so I was born with the metric system untill came to the USA and everything got so confusing for me the way people here measure their things, so what I did is that I refuse to use that nonsense of inches feets etc and sticked with the only measure that I born with and grew up with.
The metric system is designed to go with the decimal numeric system.
The most American thing ever is that you embraced the metric system when it comes to bullets. 😂😂😂😂
One thing to remember is that Metric is one single unified system whereas Imperial whether UK or US(the two are very different)is a hodgepodge of multiple systems from confused Roman measures(the Mile comes from a Roman measure of 1000 paces and there was a regulation pace used to make measurements; yes the Romans also used a decimal system)through Brythonic and Germaic tribal weights and measures,trade measures used in the Hanse and other bits and bobs picked up from all over the world wherever the British invaded. If one is using Imperial one does not do everything using one system you have to change and convert units to another system far to often whereas with Metric everything is based on units of ten
I learnt imperial til age 12...thank God we went metric in NZ in 1972...I can still see an inch or a foot but only think in mm. Always chuckle hearing Americans talking in lbs
What many ppl don't realize is that the metric system is just that - A System, that ties together meassurements of length, weight, volume, temerature, and energy.
Australia adopted System International (SI) back around 1970. I remember conversion calculators were everywhere.
The Thermodynamics, temperature, volume that you mentioned initially made Calculations so meaningful to me since because I just finished 51 years in Airconditioning and Engineering.
Basic length measurements are EASY. Americans that talk in 1 foot, 6 inches and 13/64ths of an inch...HOW STUPID.
You're exaggerating. We never use 64ths of an inch. Not saying the U.S. Customary system is better than metric -- only that it's not as bad as its detractors say it is.
I;m Dutch and my husband is Scottish. this measurement difference is a constant battle. i just cant get used to the imperial system and he cant get used to the metric system. Imperial system doesnt make much sense and it is very confusing.
Me to hubby: i went for a bicycle run. i did 10km.
hubby: how much is that?
me: thats one-sixteenth furlong, 3 fathom, 1⁄36 chains, 66⁄100 gallon, 24 scruple, 1⁄4 ounce, 1⁄160 rood and one-third of an inch my dear.
He keeps insisting the imperial system is much easier. .. ugh!
Invest in an Alexa/Google speaker and have it converse for you both lol.
Furlong is an actual unit of measurement? And what exactly is a scruple, besides the lack or existence of morality?
@@LiamDerWandrer both a furlong and a scruple are units of old measurements. 1 scruple = 1⁄3 of a dead badger.
Americans feel fancy about still using Fahrenheit. In my apprenticeship however, I had to learn the Reaumur scale. Nobody uses this anymore, that makes it even more fancy. :D
I'm an engineer based in the UK - and work totally in metric. For starters UK pints and gallons are 20% bigger than US gallons. Pounds and ounces depend on what is being measured (precious metals are measured in troy ounces and pounds, with 13 troy ounces being a troy pound) then there is a random liquid measure that is called a fluid ounce. UK tons are bigger than metric tonnes (Mg) and American Tons (which are less than a Mg). If I were to be cynical, ,the NFPA organisation in the USA has decided that the density of water is 0.998 kg/litre - adjusted by 0.2%to hide that they could have said it was 1kg/litre to try and hide that metric is actually easier! If I get a project in the USA (happened yesterday) I will convert everything into metric before I attempt any calculations.
the US already uses the metric system: 100 cents is 1 dollar. 12 cents is not 1 dollar.
Why should 1 foot be 12 bananas?
When American companies trade internationally, all measurements must be in the metric system or converted to it. Therefore, the US uses two measurement systems and has to be constantly converted.
And Americans claim it's easier to calculate in complicated outdated units of measurement first, and then convert them to metric for the rest of the world.
When Mercedes bought Chrysler, they said the car needed a modern engine. So the American team developed the vehicle and Mercedes supplied the engine. But that caused a lot of headaches, the Americans had planned everything in imperial and the engine was metric. Somehow they managed to install the engine in the car.
But the workshops complained, half with imperial screws, half with metric screws.
Mercedes soon sold Chrysler to Fiat. They made one condition: everything metric !
Currency ain't metric, it's decimal.
Actually, 1 foot is 36 barleycorns. That's still the basis for UK and North American shoe sizes:
Men's size 12 is one foot.
Men's size 11 is one foot less 1 barleycorn.
etc
The USA , Canada and the UK slowly inch their way to the metric system.
Imperial: 22 yards in a chain. 66 feet in a chain. 12 inches in a foot. 80 chains in a mile. 8 furlongs in a mile. 100 links in a chain. 40 rods in a furlong. 1760 yards in a mile. All quite self explanatory right? Now for metric. 10 hectometres in a kilometre. 10 decametres in a hectometre. 10 metres in a decametre. 10 decimetres in a metre. 10 centimetres in a decimetre. 10 millimetres in a centimetre. Phew!
you said the smallest you knew was micro.
The smallest I knew was atto, but, I did, on a daily basis go down as low as Pico, because I worked in Electronics. Pico Farrad Capacitors are very small values, but were often used in things like stabilising crystal oscillators.
divisions by 10 are easier than 12 but 12 is practical for woodworking where the materials are 2"x4" and 4'x8', and the 12 divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 6.
and the divisions on an inch in 1/2 1/4 1/8 3/4 are more practical than the 1mm divisions on a centimeters rule.
In Canada we officially started using the metric system in 1972. In a crazy twist the average Canadian knows & frequently uses both systems. Maybe b/c we live next door to the U.S. & 80% of the shows seen on our TV's are American. In 1975 Canada started using Celsius to measure temperature.
And the Australians left out the intermediate prefixes between the "thousand times larger", when they switched to Metric! Because this is how it's meant to be done! We have the intermediate prefixes just to suit to people of the old pre-metric systems where you have smaller jumps between prefixes like 3x, 10x, 11x, 12x, 16x or x/2, x/3, x/5 &c .
As we all know numbers up to 1000, thanks to elementary school intermediate prefixes are not needed.
Basically Australia switched to metric and improved on it! In Europe we all measure things in centimeters in school. The Australians use millimeters in school as the main geometric unit.
Why did they do it?
Why did they and so many other countries adopt the metric system?
Idiots might say that switching to metric is expensive. As you would have to change all the signs, school material, package labeling, norms, texts, software, tools &c...
Yet this argument is full of holes and doesn't hold water, as every day not getting rid of imperial means to accumulate technical debt! At some point in the future this debt has to be paid and debt comes with interests who also are also constantly paid or add to the debt.
Not adopting metric is an expensive missjudgement by the American people!
Well at least they are on the same level as Liberia and Myanmar...
Every person in the right mind would go with the metric system, it is so much easier.
Even the imperial system it selves has different values for a gallon, is it 3,6 liters or 4,5, and a mile, is that 1,6km or 1,8km.
If you have to calculate how many meters there are in a km, just move the "," 3 places (multiply by 1000).
Only if you are used to the imperial system I do understand you don't want to change, but the only reason is that you are used to it. (or maybe sentiment).
We also use sometimes imperial measures, like the size of tires (28") or televisions (40"), but these are more and more replaced by metric now.
Make life easier for yourself, adopt metric! Imperial just makes work for you!
Working within metric is so much easier than in the English system. Even measuring in inches and using those measurements (even just adding or subtracting lengths) requires a lot of mental fraction calculations, whereas in metric you just reading the measuring, no mental math required. In elementary school the math books included a table for converting WITHIN the English system; one year the book didn't have that conversion table and I was completely lost (sixty years later, I still have to look up how many feet are in a mile). And while I learned "1cm=1ml= 1 gram of water" long ago, it was only a year ago at age 70 that I ever heard of 1 fluid ounce of water weighing one ounce of weight (Avoirdupois weight; no idea how an ounce Troy compares) along with the rhyme "A pint's a pound the world around" (1 pint = 16 fl.oz, so a pint of water weighs one pound). It's insane even though I grew up with it.
The big problem with switching to metric is learning to visualize how much or big a metric measurement is, so a few quick approximate conversions come in handy. 5 cm is about 2 inches, so for centimeters to inches divide by 5 and multiply by 2 (eg, 30cm -> 12 inches), the reverse for inches to cm. A meter is close enough to a yard, a liter is close enough to a quart, a kilogram is almost two pounds (2.2 lb, is closer), and a mile is about 1.6 kilometers (multiply by six and divide by 10, or divide by two and add 10% of the original km) but for big distances just multiply km by 2 to get approx miles. And 20°C is the low end of the comfort zone (68°F) and as you go up or down in temperature, every 5 degrees C is 9 degrees F (or 10 degrees C to 18 degrees F) that you add or subtract from that starting point. A credit card is about one millimeter thick, a paper clip weighes about one gram, and a cm is about 3/8-inch (the width of a fingernail). If you need an exact conversion for a metric measurement, use your calculator, but to just get a general feeling for a measurement use a shortcut.
In physics class we worked in metric, but we did do a lecture on physics in the English system. It was a nightmare, in part because pounds do not measure mass as kilograms do, but rather the force of a mass (in "slugs") in a gravitational field ("one g" on the earth's surface) -- change the gravitational acceleration and you change the weight, but the mass remains the same.
It's litre and metre. A meter is a completely different thing.
America is lucky that it managed independence when it did. That allowed for decimal currency. If it was 100 years earlier, America might still be doing accounting in Roman numerals.
When it comes to daily life metric and imperial are more or less the same. If you have your eye set for imperial you will more or less automatically gauge by imperial measures, while I gauge by metric. I glance at something and tell you what are its dimensions in metric, so I know that the table I am sitting at now is about 110 cm wide and long and some 90 cm tall. If I had grown in a country that uses the Imperial system I would probably be able to do the same in imperial measures. You don't convert unless you have to. I am a knitter, and when I use an American pattern I just go by imperial measures (I have a measuring tape that has both).
The metric system is advantageous and more precise when ti comes to scientific or industrial maeasures because it's virtually infinite. Everyting is in a 10 basis. Take a meter: ten meters are one decameter, 100 meters or 10 decamenters are one hectometer, 1000 meters, 100 decameters, or 10 hectometers are one kilometer, and all the way up (you have the megameter which is a million meters, or the hexameter which is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters). It also works down, so you have decimeters, centimeters, millimeters (1/10, 1/100, and 1/1000 of a meter). You are more precise because you always have one unit below, so each unit can be divided in 10 to form the new unit. You never get to fractions: something is too small to be measured in millimeters? Try with microns (1/1000 millimeters, or 1/1,000,000 meters) or angstroms (1/10,000,000 mm, or 1/10,000,000,000 m).
After a while, writing all of those zeros gets cumbersome, so for really big or really small units you use exponentiation. A terameter is 1,000,000,000,000 m or 10^12 m, while a nanometer is 0,000000001 m or 10^−9 m.
I used as an example length measures, but the same rules apply to basically all measures: weight, volume, etc. For instance you are already using the metric system each time you buy a computer, as both RAM and disk are measured in bytes, which are in metric. So if your hard disk is one terabyte you know it's 1000 gigabytes (or 10^3 giga), 1,000,000 megabytes (or 10^6 mega). Same method, different unit.
For a long time, the standard meters, the kilogram were made of metal and stored under strict conditions. Each country had copies of these standards for weight, length, and volume. But all the same, the metal slightly changes its size with a change in temperature, and as a result, we decided to replace the physical standards from the metal with something more stable. Therefore, we decided not to create physical objects (standards), but simply to describe what a second, meter, kilogram is. Now the standard of the second is the atomic clock, which reproduces the oscillations corresponding to the transition between the hyperfine sublevels of the state of the cesium-133 atom. Further, According to the current definition, one meter is the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum in a time interval of 1/299792458 seconds. One liter is the volume of a cube with sides 10 times smaller than a meter. The collogram is more difficult. The physical standard of a kilogram (made of metal) was used until 2020, since it is impossible to simply describe what a kilogram is, and therefore they again tried to make a description of a kilogram with reference to some very stable physical phenomena (physical constants) that do not depend on any influence of external factors. Previously, the kilogram was described as the mass of distilled water enclosed in a cube with sides 10 times smaller than a meter, at a temperature of its maximum density, which is approximately 4 °C. In practice, in everyday life, it was very convenient. But the scientists were not satisfied with this. Salts can be dissolved in water, affecting the density, to what extent the distillate will be pure from salts - all these are not stable factors. A more stable definition of mass was needed. And so the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) recommended that the kilogram be redefined using fundamental physical properties instead of a metallic standard. Scientists took two formulas where among the elements of these formulas there is mass (a kilogram is a measure of mass) and other very constant, unchanging theoretical quantities (Planck's constant, energy, frequency and many other constants) and through these formulas, through complex mathematical manipulations, they tried to express what this is one kilogram. I must say that the mathematical calculations turned out to be rather tricky and long, but the scientists still managed to finally describe what a unit of mass is - a kilogram in relation to constant constant physical quantities. So, get ready for the modern definition of what one kilogram is. The kilogram is defined in terms of three fundamental physical constants:
1) a specific frequency of atomic transitions ΔCs, which determines the duration of a second,
2) the speed of light c, which, in combination with a second, determines the length of a meter,
3) and Planck's constant h, which, in combination with the meter and the second, determines the mass of the kilogram.
The formal definition according to the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) is:
The kilogram, denoted kg, is the SI unit of mass. Determined by taking a fixed numerical value of Planck's constant h, equal to 6.62607015×10-34, expressed in units of J⋅s, which is equal to kg⋅m 2⋅s-1, where the meter and second are defined in terms of c and ΔCs.
Defined in terms of these units, kg is formulated as:
1 kg = (299792458)2 / (6.62607015×10−34)(9192631770) 70×1040)2s / ∆Csh.
You know all that but don't know how to spell metre.
As a 55 year old Citizen of the United States of America I have little use for the metric system. I WELL NOT COMPLY!
A car has started from city A towards city B at 12:00. It has arrived to destination at 15:00. What was its speed if the distance is 300 km?
It took 3 hours so average speed was 100 km/h.
Okay, but I always wondered how you calculate those physical formulas in imperial?
Miler per hour is okay. But what about other formulas?
For example:
P=mg, where P is weight of an item (in Newtons), m - is the mass (in grams) and g is gravity (9.81 m/sec^2).
What these formulas look like in imperials?
For example, what is the weight of a 10 gallon canister? How will you know if you car is capable to bear, for instance, 50 canisters of water?
In metric you get immediate answer. Lets say 1 canister is 10 liters. This automatically mean that it will weight 10 kg. So 50 canisters 10 kg each will weight 500 kg straight. Easy.
In imperial you will have to calculate weight via density of water or what? One gallon is the volume, okay. The car capacity will be like SOME pounds or what? How many pounds will weight each canister? Not easy at all!
Here’s a helpful chart
(Kilo=1000x)(Hekto=100x)(Deka=10x)(Deci=0,1x)(Centi=0,01x)(milli=0,001x)
You will be surprised but some things in Europe are still in metric (mostly piping, shoe sizes, land area measurement, some old woodworking...)
Degrees Celsius and Kelvin even have the same increment. Subtract 273.15 from Kelvin to get Celsius.
The temperature difference of 1 Kelvin is equal to 1 Celsius.
Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius and boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level.
Not like Fahrenheit where someone walked out the door and said "I feel it's 100F now". How hot was it then?
- 40°F = -40°C
When the Roman Empire came across the Arabic numeration (1,2,3,4,5 ...) it immediately understood that it was superior and immediately spread to Europe ... perhaps because the ancient Romans were much, much more intelligent than a current inhabitant of Alabama or Missouri
and a roman mile was just 1000 steps : easier to build an empire
My approche is: imagine if the ratio from one unit to the next size unit was always the same, for example if inches are the base, you would have 12 inches in a foot, then 12 foot in a yard, 12 yards in a mile... Wouldn’t that make the imperial system easier, you would only have to remember one ratio.
Then what if instead of 12 we used 10 as the ratio, then conversions can be done simply by shifting the decimal place, much easier than multiplying or dividing by 12.
…that’s the metric system
Metric system is objectively and logically better. period.
Fun fact: US was in tue First line to sign the Metric Act With Benjamin Franklin. But Never had a Plan to Switch over. But the US Dollar is Metric like the Euro. 100 Cent is a Dollar.
Really - I love you, americans. But, I wished, you could see for once how hilarious the debate about imperial system over metric system is to the rest of the world. There is a system on one side that's prone to all sorts of errors all the time, compared to one (!) system that works all the same for any scale and unit. I mean: c'mon, there are things one can argue about, but not about imperial vs metric. It's just not even a match at all.
The USA doesn't use Imperial.
They use US Customary Measures, based on what the British Empire was using in 1776. Imperial (defined in 1824) uses most of the same names, but the sizes are different - sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
@@hypsyzygy506 Thanks for pointing that out.
I think one of the major reasons Americans struggle, is that due to inbreeding, they have 12 digits rather than 10.
Okay, cruel joke, and obviously not true.
One thing the video did not adequately cover, is the SI unit for time.
Yes, it uses the second, but that is pretty universal anyway. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day. And around 365 days in a year.
Were we starting from scratch, it might make sense to divide the day up using a Metric system, but I think it would be a pointless exercise.
And of course, it’s not just time, but also angles and degrees of arc that are not Metric.
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Here are some measures used in Sweden before 1878, when we switched to the meter system.
LENGTH
1 mil = 6000 famnar
1 famn = 3 alnar
1 aln = 2 fot
1 fot = 2 kvarter
1 kvarter = 6 verktum
1 verktum = 6 verklinjer
As you can imagine there were similar set of measures for area and volume and weight.
For volume there also was wet and dry volume.
For weight there were (for some strange reason) different weight measures for different material.
All this is just fine and dandy. The old system of measures do work perfectly fine. And had been used for a long time.
But, everything became much more simple 1878.
Now, the imperial measures are not maybe as bad? Or? Anyhow, why not do a total switch 2028, 150 years after Sweden?
Time to prepare! Only four years left of an old fashioned measuring system! What do you say? Wold it not be a relief?
Fantastic video mate...my personal favourite Americans use is storage in computers. Its aaaaaaaaaaaall metric....kb/mb/gb/tb haha
this is how crazy length is ; 3 barleycorns = 1inch , 12 inches = 1 foot , 3 feet = 1 yard, 5.5yards = 1 perch, 40 perch = 1 furlong, 8 furlongs = 1 mile, 3 miles = 1 league.
Metric ..... 1millimetre * 10 = 1centimetre *100 = 1metre *1000 = 1kilometre : how to derive is in the name ... kilo means 1000, so 1000 metres in a kilometre. Cent means 100 ... like your money... 100 cents in a dollar ... 100 centimetres in a metre and so forth .
(please don't use METER = that is like water meter outside your house)
I don't think Americans necessarily idolize their system, but that's what they use. It's theirs, therefore it has to be good- at least better than other's. We're proud, possessive creatures!
Us people generally struggle with being humble. We get caught up in winning and losing. It'd be great if we could live knowing we don't have to prove ourselves
2:00
The comparison between the U.S. length units and this explanation of the metric system... even the confusion about the different "metric" units demonstrate the main difference between imperial and metric, and why metric is so much more simple to use.
Millimeters, centimeters, decimeters, meters, kilometers... are not different units that are easy to convert into each other. They are the _same_ unit, just at different decimal scales.
There is only ONE SI unit for length: the meter. And then you have fancy names for "a hundredth of a meter" or "thousand meters". That's all. You don't need to "convert" meters to kilometers. You just need to shift the scale.
Imperial units _are_ different units. They come from different origins, were invented and used for different purposes, were measured differently. They were never _meant_ to be used in the same context. And that is why each unit has to be _converted_ into the others; each with their own specific conversion factor.
Metric was created as a single consistent measurement system. Imperial is a mix of different inconsistent measurement system pressed into one.
This alone should suffice as an explanation why one is easier to use than the other.
American PC users are already using the Metric System. Since around 1990?
When you buy an SSD into your home computer, or just handle a file size, you don't use the following fictive imperial units:
• 1 binch = 25 bits
• 1 boot (pl. beet) = 305 bits or 12 binches and 5 bits
• 1 byle = 1631 bits, or 5 beet and 3 binchs and 6 bits
You guys here (even if watching this video on a tablet or phone) use Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes. It's Metric. 😏
If someone told Americans just use those ones instead of KB, MB, GB, TB, because using binch, boot, and byle units are smarter, all Americans would ROFL.
math teacher in us: "how many feet fit in 27 miles?"
kids: checking how many feet a mile has, entering 27 x 5280 into calculator...
math teacher in the rest of the world: "how many meters fit in 27 kilometers?"
kids instantly: 27000😂
But in the the real world, nobody ever needs to convert feet to miles or vice versa. So it's not an issue.
it all comes down to choosing, sure if you are a company you should stick to whatever the rest of the country uses, but if you are not a company you can use whatever the hell you want. So this whole debate on what is better is IMO dumb, just use what you like
One kilogram (KG) of water has an exact volume of one liter (L). Of course there are different liquids on the earth where weight of this liquids compared to it's weight might be different but that's why we're comparing the most common liquid on earth against units (weight vs volume). Same goes to temperatures. Again in Celcius scale we focus on water. 0C (celcius) is when water frozes and 100C is when water boils. Again different liquids may have different characteristic but we focus on "basic" liquid on the earth - meaning water. Does make sense?
Fun fact - water has the most volume not being frozen at 0C but when it's temperature is 4C. And because that fact we are able to exist (among others physical factors). But without water having most volume at exact 4C (in Celcius scale) we wouldn't exist in first place.
Both systems are in reality arbitrary by definition.
Themost important is to agree on a system to use.
Most of the world has agreed to abandon their old systems, and switch to SI, because it makes international trade easier.
In the 18-hundreds there were atempts to fix a conversion between the imperial units and SI, but the final agreement for the international yard and pound was in 1959,
After 1959 the international imperial units have been tied to SI by definition, and no longer defined by their own atifacts.
Later, most of the countries participating in the yard and pound agreement, has (more or less) fully converted to using SI units.
Of course the switch will cost to switch, but you'll save over time.
The most cost effective switch would be:
- plan every detail in advance.
- prepare every computer systems to run SI in the background.
- when every system is ready: go cold turkey an switch.
The truly crazy thing is that the US Imperial system is different from the British Imperial system. ie 1 US Quart is approximately 948 mL and 1 British Quart is 1125 mL. A US Gallon is roughly 3.5 litres while a British Gallon is roughly 4.5 litres. And there is a lot more.
Isn't the US imperial system an outdated version of the UK imperial system, UK having reformed its system after their independance?
I can understand that when you grew up in the states, you got used to working with a system. That goes for us Europeans as well. To have a system that is organized and for the whole world to understand and work with, the metric system is probably the easiest. It combines it all and is very easy to calculate. Even without a smartphone or calculator. You just move the point to a side. So maybe we can do this together? Making us even more ‘one’ as a species? I always thought that Americans are practical, reasonable people. Still do. That’s why I did my very best to learn English, so we could unite in language. Can we unite in measurement please? Greetings from the Netherlands
metric system is obviously superior due to it's ease of conversion between big, small and miniscule units. however, celsius degrees is an exception, it isn't better than farenheit in any way because useful real life measures like normal room temperature, body temperature, fever temperature, hot water temperature, sauna temperature, cooking temperature(s), cold outside temperature are still arbitrary numbers, there's no inherent easy of use or conversion in celsius scale.
Metric is simple. But for Americans who are used to US customary units, it will need a lot of adjustments until it became 2nd nature to them.
6:55 - I don't know why he stops here. It's just confusing. Because no one uses most of those prefixes. In everyday life we need just some of them. And in science we add x10^n.
I think one of the reasons we hate the metric system is because we only know it in terms of converting from imperial, which to be fair is a pain in the 🍑
We have imperial measurements so intuitively engrained in our brains that the only way we can comprehend metric units is in terms of imperial units.
The U.S. dollar was created in 1792 on a base-10 monetary system.
Then metric base-10 systems were no longer pursued... because reasons... :)
Just in case you think that it doesn't get worse than the imperial system:
Try former Holy Roman Empire, in the 1800s. Dozens of little counties, kingdoms, fiefdoms, duchies, city states... and most of them with their own currency, and their own idea of how long exactly a foot, an ell (or cubit) or a mile is.
It might have influenced the rise of one of the largest pre-20th century European trade network, the Hanse, which was created to make trade somewhat less of a nightmare.
Small wonder that it didn't take much to get European countries to hop onto the metric system wagon.
I vaguely remember that in the 70's I saw some Peanuts strips with Peppermint Patty trying to learn metric system in school. I think there was a mild attempt by the US government to introduce metric, but somehow it failed. Am I wrong?
quite simple - metric is much easier to calculate with but if you are used to imperial you really struggle to imagine distances in metric. So i can understand its hard to imagine of is 10 meters large for a room or small if you usually mearuse in foot.
It's just a question of "to be used to". It makes sense, of course, but it's only that and no more. It's the same for people (like me) whose country changed its currency, in exemple in EU with the euro: they had to rebuild the entirety of the scale of value (of everything, from bread to houses in exemple) in money (I mean prices, incomes, taxes, everything) they were used to.
Rule of thumb that always worked well enough for me when trying to convert meters to feet: 30 centimeters aka 0,3 meters are roughly one foot. Thus there are roughly three feet in a meter. A 10 meter long room would be around 30 feet long. A foot is sligthly longer than 0,3 meters but to get a rough picture it is good enough. Just multiply or divide by 3. The error margin grows as the numbers scale up but for everyday calculations below 100 meters it is adeqate.
**Everyone in the USA actually already happily uses metric without any issues:** :D
Guns: ever heard of a 9 millimeter?
Time: in racing, lets say the pole setter was 0.08 seconds faster, that is 80 milliseconds, 1000ms = 1 second
Soda: 2 liter bottle of CocaCola anyone?
Electricity: 2000 Watts = 2kW, 2000mAH = 2AH, 1000Volts = 1kV, 7000 kilo-watt-hours = 7MWh
Drugs: in the news you hear how many grams or kilograms of cocaine were found
Nutrition: you find milligrams and micrograms of minerals, vitimins, etc. on that label
Medicin: 2cc syringe - that is 2 cubic centimeters
Camera Lenses: 35 millimeters
Engines: Ford truck with a 7,3 liter engine
Military: the US military actually uses metric extensively (sidenote: 1 click = 1 kilometer ;-) )
I find it humongously ironic, that USA stick to the legacy of the measuring system introduced by their fromer rouler, sometimes known as US Customary units (USC).
If you were to start from scratch, choosing between SI and USC:
SI is the better choice, because it's designed with the decimal system in mind, making it easier to count.
If you consider communication with the rest of the world as well:
Only the SI system makes any sense.
Reasons why US don't switch:
- its convenient to continue what you are used to.
- it doesn't really matter in every day life
- too many don't appreciate the greater benefits of switching.
- it's difficult to get the public opinion to agree on a switch
The imperial system is reasonable and understandable for americans. They built their manufacturing base JUST before the SI systems were implemented in the rest of the world and currently : there are billions of dollars worth of tools / machines / manufacturing facilities based on imperial to just flip the system.Will they get there : i'd bet on that... But quickly ? I have my doubts. What helps ? They do not build manufacturing infrastructure by themselves anymore (what happens if you outsource everything).... So in the long run : it will be cheaper to use metric system. And to teach children to use those machines : the education system has to convert to metric.
It’s quite funny that the US just celebrated its independence from Britain, yet they are one of only three or four countries in the world still using the British Imperial system.
Sooooo, the Us first don't use the imperial system, but the US customary system, which is the imperial system adapted by the metric system, The Us of A have signed the meter treaty, which made the metric system the official measurement system of the US, then official did change the imperial system to the Us customary by modifying to match exact measure in metric.
the science and military are using metric on daily basis, the gun diameter are in metric (abrams has a 120mm canon or 12 cm, AR15 is 5.56 mm, M60 is 7.62 mm, 9mm, 25mm rapid fire for the bradly, 30 mm gatling for the A10 etc :p) The medical us personal us also the metric CC (Cubic Centimeter) and Mg (Milligramme) etc ....
Agricultural machinery are more and more in metric (to export to the rest of the world), so farmer have to have US customary and Metric tools and bolt sockets
I guess they just like to do things different to stand out.... it's like starting earlier (spring) and ending later (autumn) with daylight savings time than the rest of the world. So annoying when planning meetings, calls and flights.
METRIC SYSTEM IS DIFFICULT. ONLY A SPECIES WITH 10 FINGERS WOULD UNDERSTAND IT!
You had no problem adopting the cumputer mathematics, kB, MB and TB etc.
As a French person, I use the metric system, and I think American ppl are genius using the Imperial System on a daily basis (seriously)
🤣
For sure it requires extraordinary mind to deal with such archaic system 😂
the problem comes when you NEED to convert from metric system to Empirial, in larger projects that can be involving several countries or such, it only takes 1 person ASUMING (making an ass of you and me) to make it catastrofik, since someone asuming that you using empirial or metric when others do not, makes hughe problem
With imperial units you are always converting between quarters, eighths, sixteenths and so on.
yes the whole system is utterly silly.
metric system is better. its just 10x10x10x10 etc
If my roof is 100 square metres and I get 25 millimetres of rain in my rain gauge, how many litres of water has been collected in my rainwater tank? The answer can be done in your head with metric, but try it using inches, square yards and gallons…🤔
Milimetre, micrometre, nanometre, picometre...
Tell me how you measure microscopic units using INCHES?