Mr. Beat Probably in the next century, people don't want to change to something they don't know. Most Americans don't know how to use the metric system.
I was seeing a lecture from harvard on fluid dynamics and statics and when talkin about pressure the theacher said to put an example we could identify a pool of idk how many gallons and i thought "dude i cannot imagine that easily" but whatever
Do you use Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons in counting money? There are 29 Knuts in a Sickle, and 17 Sickles in a Galleon; thus, 493 Knuts in a Galleon (the Rowling monetary system).
I use thumb ends (inch) arm length from elbow to hand (foot) one stride (yard) - a bushel of oats, and a smudgion of pickles. A gaggle of geese, and a flock of flies. And a groat.
so does the U.S. Almost all of our measuring tools (tape measure, thermometers, rulers) have both systems on them. It's so that you can use whichever system you like just as easy, just most Americans stick with imperial because why not.
@@mr.klunee4103 You are Exactly Correct... I Use the Metric system for School work and home use.. And when I have to explain something Such as "I'm 4''10 (4 Feet 10 Inches) Tall" I use the Imperial System.
Have a thought for us poor Australians. I was given a set of American screw drivers, and of course I have no use for them because, as you know, screws turn the opposite way in the southern hemisphere.
as a member of the United States Im truly sorry for the inconvenience. I can feel your pain though because Im left handed and everywhere I go they have exactly 0 left handed forks.
Actually, all US sientist and engeneers using metric system. And almost everything calculating in metric system, and after that it converts in to miles etc, just to people can understand it.
Not true. Imperial units are common in civil engineering, and some machine shops are so old that the equipment only works in Imperial. So often engineers have to work in both systems.
In middle and high school science, we always had to use the metric system for calculations. Way easier. Same in college for my engineering studies. If a problem had imperial units, we all swapped over to the metric system, and then back again. God forbid I know what an erg is in fundamental units. I foresee the US swapping probably in the next 50 years, namely because of the wider use in technical fields, and the older generation dying off
Brian Thibaudeau well that's true, I am a chemical engineering student, and yeah if we found a problem in imperial unit we change it metric first to make it easier for us to solve
Canadians still use the imperial system from time to time, mostly because of our proximity to the US. So you end up with people like me who don't know my height in centimetres or my weight in kilograms, but have no idea how long a mile is, or how Fahrenheit works.
Got caught during the conversion while in school. I still prefer my weight in pounds, my height in feet/inches, my TV measured in inches. I prefer just about everything else in metric. Frankly in just about everything else Imperial just doesn't make sense to me.
I’m an American and I make a point to do most of my woodworking in metric. I only use inches to rough-cut things to length. Units are arbitrary, but dividing fractions suck. It’s so much easier to find the next size up or down wrench in metric.
I'm American, and have a mathematical background. Anyone who truly believes the imperial system is easier doesn't possess a working mathematical understanding of the metric system. The units of any system are they themselves arbitrary. It is the ease of navigating the units that determine efficiency. Inches, hands, feet, yards, rods, furlongs, miles ? Every step requires a different calculation. Millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, meter, decameter, hectometer, kilometer. Every unit is 10 of the preceding. Every second unit is 100 of the preceding. Every third is 1000. Moving decimal points is all that's required. Liquid and mass work along the same base 10 logarithmic scaling.
As an american engineer and scientist .... it makes not one iota of difference what 'measurement system' you use, as long as you master it and are repeatably correct in your measurements. The simplicity of evolved historical 'measurement' is signal: most know the length of the average man's foot, the distance from the tip of King John's (Plantagenet) tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched arm and fingers. I could easily prefer cubits, and drams or carats. I could easily call the boiling point of water - 'Spot' or Miriam. Show me in nature a regularly repeating approximate measure of a centimeter, decimeter ???? FWIW - The basic core element of the metric system was the 'guess' of the distance from the equator to the north pole through the longitude of Paris .... and the difference between actual precisely measured distance to the originally 'guessed' distance was very imprecise and WRONG. This is very similar to the factual evidence that most 'political decisions' are ultimately WRONG. So, for all who are touting the ultimate galactic superiority of the metric system, know that the core definitional basis of the metric system - the meter - is WRONG. Base 10? ... therefore the binary Base2 language of the computer must be changed to metric Base 10 !!!!!!!!!!!
One system is in base 10 which helps with math... by moving a decimal point to convert to different tiers, but my question to that always was... why do we need to convert? If I'm supposed to measure out and cut a square from a piece of cardboard, the original cardboard being 5x5 meters but the measurements of what I need to cut out are in centimeters, do I need to convert it to cut it? No? The thing about custom is that it understands there's rarely a reason to actually go from one unit to another, even in the case of cutting a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood down to 48x32 inch square, do I really need to convert the inches into feet to cut it? No... so why bother? I get that in some cases, like altitude, it's nice to have a system that smoothly transitions from centimeters above the ground to kilometers above the ground without the numbers jarring around, but for the most part conversion from one level to another is just needless, it's just the factoring, the same idea as scientific notation, when a measurement that needs to be as precise as a micrometer can be converted into a relative distance to the moon, yeah, sure, metric. But for most human measurements neither the precision or conversions are needed. When somebody wants to know how tall you are they don't _really_ care down to the last centimeter, to the nearest half a decimeter is even more precise than they really care about, they just want to know _about_ how tall you are, and measuring in feet + inches makes more sense than every human mostly being between 1.4 meters and 1.8. Custom was a system made for human scale, metric is better in the lab. I learned metric and custom, in fact metric first because of our school's hardon for it. I used custom for building and constructing sets and furniture, cause it worked better for me, it was easier to use and when it comes down to it, why use a tool that's more difficult if it provides no value, provides no advantage for you? When it comes to building things, or measuring people, or cooking, metric is just not as good as custom.
“why do we need to convert?” You have a 5×5×2m swimming pool, how many liters of water do you need? How much would it weight? Answer: 5*5*2*1000 = 50000 liters that weigh 50000kg. Now you have a 20×20×5ft pool, how many gallons of water do you need and how many pounds will it weigh? Eh... How much weight is a 2l bottle of Coke? As it's mostly water, its 2kg. “The thing about custom is that it understands there's rarely a reason to actually go from one unit to another, even in the case of cutting a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood down to 48x32 inch square, do I really need to convert the inches into feet to cut it? No... so why bother?” Now how many 10×12" pieces can you get from a 4×8ft sheet? Are you going to re-measure it in inches to figure it or would even start cutting them out and then count the pieces?
RichH. Pretty stupid comment. You obviously don't understand the purpose of the metric system. Too bad for an "engineer" or "scientist". Anyway, could you tell me what was the temperature of the Dantzig river during the 1708-1709 winter please ? I need to calibrate my thermometer.
To me, it seems that the US love convoluted measurement units. Why else would they not use Celsius? Another easier system to measure things. Here's an example: at 0°C water freezes, at 100°C it boils and 20°C is considered room temperature.
I'm a retired engineer here in the US and I love the Metric System. I don't know why we won't make a serious effort to change. The US Department of Transportation tried tried a couple decades ago but changed their minds.
We can do it, it'll just have to be a process. Its too ingrained into our economy/society to change all at once. In my opinion, start with distances. Just include on every speed limit/highway sign the speed/distance in kilometers and people will start understanding it. Next pass laws where the weights of things in places like grocery stores are done in both grams or kilograms in addition to lbs and ounces. We can do it within a decade. We just have to start.
@@wokehumanist958 : Actually, federal law already requires consumer goods to be labeled in metric units. However, those units are usually printed in smaller type than the Customary equivalent, so I suppose the law could be changed to require that the metric units appear first, before the Customary units, and be in the same size (or even slightly larger) typeface.
Because it would ruin American football to change the basic field measurements from yards to meters! Baseball would be hit hard as well if the distance between bases had to change from 90 feet to 30 meters; as there would be fewer infield hits, doubles, triples, and stolen bases; and it would be harder for baserunners to advance 2 bases on a single.
It's all mess in India.. We tell our height in feet and inches and weight in kilograms. We tell long distances in km but short distances in feet or inches. We tell room temperature in celcius but if someone gets a fever, we tell it in Fahrenheit :D
In Puerto Rico, a US territory, we measure road distances in kilometers, gas is in liters, medicine is in grams, but speed limits are in mph, food is in ounces, except some drinks, and temperature is in F
@ Anders: I think Adam may have been joking (or half-joking), but what he was getting at was that a liter is so much smaller than a gallon that the oil companies can charge considerably less per liter and still actually be charging *more* for the product. For example, say an appropriate price for gasoline is $3 per U.S. gallon. They could charge a mere 89 cents per liter, which sounds cheap, but that actually works out to $3.37 per gallon. It's like what Cadbury and Mars did with candy. (E.g., Cadbury Crème Eggs and Snickers bars) The bastards shrunk the size of their eggs/candy bars, but the price remained the same.
to make the transition painless 1. start teaching kids in school NOW. by the time they enter the workforce, they'll be used to it and can teach dads and moms. 2. any time a road sign needs replacing, replace it with one that has both measures. by the time transition is official, most signs will already be compliant.
We started teaching kids a long time ago. We teach both, I remember even my grandma teaching me about grams and milligrams when I was little and learning centi/millimeters in daycare. The big problem is not really learning the system, it's the industry. That quarter pound burger and that 36 inch door is suddenly a different size to comply with metric standards. That's damaging huge industries - and for what? Because some European wants us to? THAT'S the painful part - spending tons of resources for virtually no benefit.
Actually, it's not "some European". It's "everybody else". And the argument by damage works the other way too: "you" are causing huge damage (your choice of words) to the rest of the world because they need to keep producing doors that are 91.44 cm wide as well as the "normal" 90 cm, or weighing beef patties that are 113.398 g rather than an easier to remember 115 or even 100 g if they want to sell in your market.
dlevi67 but that's the key phrase - "if they want to keep selling in your market." They are making that choice to trade with us so by your own logic they are doing that damage to themselves. America built its empire on the idea that people/businesses have the power to do whatever they want and forcing such a switch what be against everything in which we believe. America made it to the top through its innovation (among other things), other countries needed to switch to compete in an international market when u.s. was already there. And that's aside from the fact that 1/4 is very easy to remember, saying that 100g is easier is a totally biased answer to an entirely subjective question.
Mr. Klunee I'm not saying that 100 is easier to remember than 1/4; I'm saying that 100 is easier to remember than 113.398... and that's far less subjective. The point I'm making is that either system is to some extent arbitrary, but claiming that a 3 foot door or a 1/4 pound burger is easier to use or specify than a 90 cm door or a 100 g burger is totally disingenuous. FWIW American science and innovation is not based (since a very long time) on ACU, but uses SI units, and US products are sold abroad using SI units. But above all, the fact that both parties decide that the advantage to trade is greater than the disadvantage imposed by multiple standards does not change the fact that the "damage" is imposed on both parties: it cost "me" (whoever I am) more to produce, and it costs "you" (whoever you are) more to purchase.
dlevi67 that's what I'm saying dude, the damage has to outweigh the benefits or nobody would be trading with the US. That is not something you get when u.s. does the full transition, there's no benefit for us. U.S. has been using si units a choice and not because they were forced to for any particular reason.
As an engineering student in the US who is forced to know both, I always scream in terror when I see a complex problem in US units which are horrid whenever you are doing any type of analysis. With that being said I think we should of course adopt the metric system for when it’s actually heavily needed like in industry but when it comes to “everyday units” that people see when they drive, look at the weather, cook, etc. I can see us keeping the traditional units and people would be more receptive to the change.
Have a point as The metric system that we use is the unified global form of it e.g. metres But most countries do have traditional forms blended with it Hate in India atleast in my area we measure tea and coffee in ketali(tea pots) equivalent of aprox 400 ml and it's convenient also the traditional Burmese system is just becoming like it blending with metric system and names like yard,feet,etc already for those names of sub-system within metric system
Allan Sherman's comic parody of an old Irish folk song, published circa 1962, contains: In Dublin's fair city, Where girls are so pretty, My Molly stands out 'Cause she weighs 18 stone ["256 pounds" spoken quickly between the lines]. So wherever she wheels it, The neighborhood feels it, Her girdle keeps scraping The holds on each side. Actually, Molly weighs 18 stone AND 4 POUNDS.
But is it an 10 international mile, metric mile, english mile a US survey mile or even a nautical mile (especially if it is a swimming competition) race?
Australia did it (from imperial to fully metric) in just 2 years, although after one year most of the Australia had already fully transitioned during the transition time. The big deal is just in the mind of people before transition, the big deal is also when you want to compare between 2 systems which have nothing to compare. you should do the transition without "reference" to the imperial... How long is 100km? it's 100km! (you should not say 60 miles!), that's how Australia did the full transition in a so short time... it was forbidden to do a reference with the imperial (on any contract/papers), the best transition all over
Australia has a lot less infrastructure than the US does. We've got literally trillions of dollars in infrastructure that we'd have to abandon or deal with the inconvenience of having metric and SAE measures. We can sort of get away with that with cars where a car will be either SAE or metric depending upon the manufacturer and, with the exception of HD motorcycles feature the v-rod engine design, the vehicle will use the same system for the entire thing. The other thing, is that unlike most other nations that are now metric, the US had an enforced system of measure in place throughout. The Bureau of Weights and Measures would go around and confiscate measuring devices that weren't accurate to the standards. As a result, we would have been throwing out a functioning and enforced system of measure for one that didn't really bring any advantages over the one we were using at the time. And as time goes by, it's getting less and less likely that we'll see the metric system adopted for anything that's not standalone.
Chris L I mean you can also just say fuckum. Don't care what a bunch of prison sociopaths, getting attacked by God's own hellbeasts, on their own time but we ain't doing it in the land of the fuckin free. We make our own laws
A while ago I watched a TEDx video about the benefits of the metric system, and during the video, the presenter told a story about an Australian entrepreneur, who, as an experiment, had two identical houses built, but the blueprints for one house was in millimeters, while the other was in feet and inches. After both houses had been built, the leftover waste from the house with millimeter measures was a bit under a wheelbarrow-full, while the feet/inches house had an amount of waste equivalent to *FIVE* big truckloads. The presenter *also* mentioned that the cost of converting back and forth between units (for scientific or trade purposes) in the U.S. amounted to an average of $16 per citizen, per day.
Why would we use another time system? We're on "Imperial" time. You're on "Imperial" time. Somehow you guys use Imperial time just fine without even thinking about it. I mean, the clock says 7:24pm now, not 0.808 or some other decimal time system. Time system is 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours... factoring system. Same as Imperial system.
@@redfish337 Well, we "technically" do use another time system because we don't use "AM" and "PM", after 12h wee count 13h, 14h, 15h, all the way to 24h (00h).
@@Dac_DT_MKD FYI, my phone is set to 24 hour time. I'm the minority here though. But it doesn't matter. Whatever the hours are labeled, it's still a 24 hour day.
@@redfish337 actually time units do not have anything with metric or imperial cuz it is a completely different scale. Just like in computer science is a binary scale where you use the power of two, so 1KB is 1024 bytes...
Canada had an election in the middle of metrication, and it got cancelled. Problem was it was mostly done already. As a result, while all canadians understand celsius and kilometers, many only know how tall they are and how fat they are in inches and pounds; even if doctors use metric measurements.
The medicals uses all metric in US, and have for a long time. Your meds are in ml or cm³ and in g. Your measures are also in m and g. Actually, lots of people dies each year i US because of Imperial units.
Jefferson was actually a proponent of the metric system. He even wrote to France requesting that a rare reproduction of the 1 kg weight be shipped to the US for comparison purposes. However pirates captured the vessel and the weight did not arrive. Along with a strong national pride, the loss of the 1 kg weight may have been the deciding factor in the US failure to covert to the metric system. www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system
LOL! Not too French for the U.S. Army, which adopted the French artillery system before and during World War I. However, when we copied the Renault FT tank, to manufacture it in the States all the measurements - except the gun - had to be converted from metric to Imperial. The inherent delay meant that only two of the resulting M1917 Six-Ton Tank reached the front before the armistice.
It was so predictable though. I clicked on the video wondering if I was right (knowing already that this system was expanded by France initially) and here you go. *sigh*
The great irony is: the US was the FIRST nation to adopt a decimal system of coinage, and is the LAST (major) nation to adopt the SI (Systeme International d'Unites, official name for the Metric System).
It's not ironic. Decimal coinage doesn't just make sense, it's a change that can be made without impacting everything else. Simply change the price of beef from the old measure to the new one and round it off to the appropriate amount. Also, we weren't the last country to adopt the SI, we were one of the first. What we didn't do was adopt the kilogram as such, we redefined all of our measures off the SI units. So, a pound is precisely defined in reference to the kilogram, so the conversion will never change. The definition we use for seconds has changed multiple times over the years because we adopted the SI as the units that we define our units based on.
Britain is only hafway through too. In everyday life they use imperial: its miles on the streets, pounds and stones as for weight, and if you say you are 180cm tall or you like a 32cm pizza, they have no idea what you're talking about.
HUNdAntae the truth 👏 except Celsius , I think the imperial is fine. I think it’s stupid to be measured in 180 cm should be 6’0 . The only thing is , why doesn’t the USA use stone
@@HarrisonJamess Using cm on height is stupid? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BULLSHIT. You use it everywhere else, but using it to measure height is stupid. Obviously...
All imperial units have been defined since many years ago in relation to the International Units system (aka: the metric system but expanded and officially defined), so, in a funny turn of events, the US has been using the metric system, but in a more indirect and convoluted way.
I was born in the 80's. When I was in school we did everything in the metric system and barely covered the imperial system because my teachers were convinced everything would be metric by the time we grew up. It totally worked out though because I was a biology major who then went into healthcare, which is of course, all metric.
Same re growing up in the early 80s. I learned US customary at home and metric at school. My tiny little glimpse into what growing up bilingual might have felt like!
@@edk1978884 Same for me, except I grew up in the '70s. Elementary school, around 1974, so it was also around the time of the Big Push to switch the whole country over to metric. Then it fizzled. Oh, well.... 🥴
@@BKPrice Ok, if someone would ask you: "How much is 4.56 foot in inches?" would you be able to even answer without a calculator? Even if you would, it would take a long time.
@@TeodorKubena 54.72, but the real answer is, why do I care? In my every day life I would Express that as 4 1/2 feet. No need for inches. Or at most a mix of the two. If we went metric that would be fine by me but my every day life doesn't really require me to convert to the various different units so I don't care if I have to pull up my calculator app to answer the occasional pointless conversion question.
4 feet 6 inches is your answer, don't need a calculator, and you don't need to constantly convert from one unit to the other. Sure 54 inches isn't even hard to mentally calculate either, but the reality is where do you need precision. Give some context to your question, make it a word problem. Math teachers always bother me when they just give you a math problem and say "solve it" Why? When in life have you ever needed to convert 4.56 feet into inches with such precision that 54.5 inches wasn't precise enough? The answer is probably never, unless you're an engineer, an engineer probably working with calculators, and the metric system to begin with. So what's the point in arguing over one being superior. If I need to draw water from the well I'm going to fill up a bucket, not take a bunch of measurement tools to make sure I get a liter.
I only wish that were the case. If the American system of measurements were irrelevant people would stop nagging us about metric system this and metric system that, but they seem to have their panties in a twist that we use it for our own day-to-day life.
When I was growing up in London (1980's) we were still using the Imperial systems of measurement. Distance signs on roads are still in miles and vehicle's odometres have to have MPH. Horse races are still measured in furlongs (and horses in 'hands'), farms are traditionally measured in acres and the farenhiet system is still in use (when I was a kid high temperatures were measred in F and the lower ones in winter in C. I've no idea why, maybe for dramatic affect! I now live in China where televisions are measured in inches (is this the standard all over the world)?
The U.S. uses the metric system more than most people realize. NASA, NOAA, and most military agencies use it, as do most businesses that communicate with international partners. The U.S. is actually an officially metric country, with the English measuring systems defined in terms of their metric counterparts. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology holds the official meter bar for the U.S., which defines the length of the meter, and the yard is defined as a fraction of this meter bar. There is no "yard bar".
Exactly right.* The U.S. is a lot more metric than most people realize. Metric units are used in many industries, as well as the military, medicine, and of course all of the sciences. And depending on how one defines whether a country is "officially" metric, the U.S. *_is_* officially metric, by virtue of the fact that the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 declared the metric system to be "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce". ______________________ * (Well, mostly right. The meter is no longer defined by the length of a physical object, but is instead defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second. But it's true that all U.S. Customary units are actually defined in terms of metric units.)
Actually, the U.S. DOES use the metric system. All American car companies adopted the metric system in the 1970's. Almost all scientific education and occupations (including medical, chemical, and research) use the metric system. The two major areas where the metric system is not used is architecture and building construction.
Yep and that's because it's a pain to use in those fields, it's way easier to measure 4 ft 8 1/2 in than 142.34 cm especially in low lighting where it's harder to see all those little mm dash marks compared to 1/16 in marks.
Not really true. The economic cost of using the optimized ANSI/SAE system for CRITICAL or LETHAL service components is an example. Ie: the standard thread pitch ratio of common bolting, screws, etc. of 'metric' is either 1.0 or 1.5. The ANSI/SAE (and old British Whitworth) pitch (usually 2 different pitches, or threads per inch, based on application) is standardly variable in accordance of bolting DIAMETER and direction of applied stress = STRONGER. When engineering/designing with 'metric' fasteners one must usually 'upsize' substantially, especially when considering 'factors of SAFETY'. And then there's the extreme example of critical service hydraulic components .... US is still using British Whitworth BSB profiles. No one in their right mind would use a wholly inferior metric (profile) hydraulic fitting and not upsize significantly due to 'safety'; the original British Whitworth is that 'superior' and unsurpassed for strength, reliability .... and SAFETY within 'high pressure and critical pressure hydraulics'.
It's also confusing since the metric system also has some old units in in some regions: in the Netherlands for instance a pond (pound) is defined as 500 grams, and an ons (ounce) is defined as 100 grams, which is vastly different from similarly named imperial units.
similar to germany .. here your "pond" is called "ein pfund" and is 500 grams aswell. we don't have a special word for your "ons" tho. but we have a word for 100 kilgogram and its called "Zentner"
4:55 Note that although the UK (and a lot of other countries, I suspect) did technically go metric, a lot of things that would be expensive to change have still not been switched. Two of the items in the frame at 4:55 are still imperial, for example. You still buy milk in pints, quarts, half gallons and gallons in the UK. On the road, distance is still measured in miles, speed is in MPH, and fuel economy is in MPG. In fact I think using kilometres is actually illegal on road signs in the UK, as they have to be in miles by law, so the US probably has more metric signage on that one highway in Arizona than in the whole of the UK. People will give you their height and weight in imperial units. There are many other examples of holdovers than those. Point being that ‘going metric’ doesn’t have to be this whole big hassle where everything in existence is changed over. I don’t think that’s ever been the case, even though it’s the first point everyone cites against metrication in the US.
Saying that momentum is a hard thing to reverse and being satisfied with that. Is like saying that none of ALL of the est of the countries in the world hasn't done the same trip. And it won't get easier the longer you wait.
Plus, the transition takes decades. This is how the costs are reduced. You don't have to enforce the system, you let it gradually take its way. I guess it can take a few generations before the transition is done.
With modern technology allowing us to translate between units on the fly, then what is the point of making the huge transition anyways? People are used to and fine with the system (for the most part) and you have entire industries basing their product's dimensions and standardized tools off of the system too.
When we count calories we are using the metric system as a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise one cubic centimeter of water which is also one gram of water one degree centigrade. Scientists and laboratories use the metric system.
But the calories listed on nutrition labels are KILOcalories, the amount of heat required to raise one LITER (or kilogram) of water one degree centigrade/Celsius.
This is one of the pitfalls of the US customary AND the imperial system: different size units, and even different dimensions of units, with the same name, and requiring a prefix to distinguish them. A pound can be Troy or avoirdupois, as can an ounce. The Troy ounce (used for precious metals like gold and silver) is larger than the avoirdupois, but there only 12 Troy ounces in a Troy pound, not 16, so the Troy pound is smaller than the avoirdupois (so a "pound" of feathers is heavier than a "pound" of gold!). And the "ounce" can measure either weight or volume: the "fluid ounce" is approximately the amount of water at room temperature that weighs one avoirdupois ounce. And the distinction between gravitational attraction (a force) and mass led to US and British engineers (and scientists, before metric) using the weight of an avoirdupois pound as a unit of force, while making up a mass unit called the "poundal." And there are "tons" of tons too! Two of these units are defined as 20 "hundredweight," but a US or "short" ton (the kind that Tennessee Ernie Ford sang about loading sixteen of) is 20 US or "short" hundredweights, each of 100 pounds (avoirdupois), while the British or "long" ton is 20 British or "long" hundredweights, each of 112 pounds avoirdupois. So a US short ton is 2000 pounds, while a British or long ton is 2240 pounds (why the long hundredweight; could it have to do with their "stone" of 14 pounds?). And since 1000 kg is close to a ton (either kind), that is called a "metric ton" in the US, or a "tonne" in the rest of that world; it contains about 2204 pounds, making it just a bit less than a long ton, but quite a bit more than a short ton. And miles? The old Roman mile was 1000 paces ("milia passuum" in Latin) by marching Roman soldiers, which comes out to about 0.92 US statute miles. The latter is defined as 8 furlongs of 660 feet each (and the length of a foot, a furlong, and thus a mile, varied in the UK during the 16th and 17th centuries), as all horse racing fans know. Today, the US statute mile is 5,280 feet, but there were Irish miles (6,720 feet) and Scottish miles (5,952 feet). Also, there is the nautical mile used in sailing and (thanks to flights over oceans) aviation. In a north-south direction, or an east-west direction AT THE EQUATOR, a nautical mile corresponds to one minute (1/60 of a degree) of latitude or longitude. The common US unit of ship's speed and aircraft speed is the KNOT, which is one nautical mile per hour (NOTE: the "per hour" is implied, so "knots per hour" is incorrect; a knot per hour is a measurement of acceleration, not speed, showing by how much a ship's speed in knots changes per hour). There are also different variations of the gallon and the bushel, depending on the commodity being measured. And a whole series of volume measurements JUST FOR WINE; bottles larger than a gallon range from the Jeroboam to the Nebuchadnezzar, named for Old Testament kings! But I think the primary obstacle to total metric conversion is that American football uses yards on the field, baseball uses feet to measure the infield (distance between bases), and golf measures the length of a hole, from tee to cup, and the distance of a drive, in yards. In the event of metric conversion, each sport would have to continue using its old measuring units, or restate and republish all record books, while changing each field to meters. And of course, sports statistics are WAY more important than engineering and science!
In India 🇮🇳 we measure the weather in Celsius. And we measure fever in farhenite. We measure distance in meters and kilometres but height is mostly mentioned in feet and inches.
Very educational. Thank you for stating that there are many here in the US who use the metric system and advocate for it to be made official. Especially those of us in STEM. I’m so tired of basic-ass comments like, “...they don’t ‘cause they’re backwards.” 😑
I mean would just mention that imperial is just as arbitrary as metric. Who decided that water was the best basis for temperature, for example? It really doesn't matter for international as long as you're both using the same things. And if you're going into science or medicine, you just learn that as part of learning your field in the same way I had to learn different skills for my own degree.
Also, it the US, there's Smoots. One Smoot is defined as 1.70m or 5'7", the height of the engineering student who was used to measure a bridge in Boston...
I'd like to see USA transfer to the metric. I work in building construction and it seems like such an easier system. It's really just a matter of getting new measuring devices (tape measures) and such. Plans and blueprints can easily be drawn up in metric. Once road signage was changed it really wouldn't be difficult for people to adapt to. We learned a little about it in grade school but somehow was never implemented.
I use old Russian measurements because they fit me perfectly 1 arshin (the distance between my middle finger to where my arm meets my shoulder) is 71.12 cm or 2’ 4” 1 paid (the length of my middle finger to my wrist) 17.78 cm or 7” 1 vershok (you take your index finger and fold it into two , there from the tip of your finger until the bend) 4.45 cm or 1 and 3/4 of an inch That way 1 arshin can be divided into 4 piad and each piad is 4 vershok 1 arshin = 4 piad or 16 vershok For additional measures 3 arshin is 1 sazhen (213,36 cm or exactly 7 feet)
Thomas Jefferson may have left us with an inefficient system of measurement but we got swivel chairs and mac and cheese from him so I think it was a fair trade.
Zachary Parker If I had to give up swivel chairs and mac and cheese or the metric system, I would definitely give up the chair and the mac, plus chocolate,.... etc. It is incredibly more easy to use. That a km is 1000m, for example, makes so much more sense than 12 inches to the foot. Maybe it's because I'm a natural sciences person, but I also should thonk that conversions would be much easier for me than for people with different talents.
In construction I find imperial to be much more forgiving and easy to visualize. I've talked to Canadian carpenters who've told me they still use imperial when framing for this reason and also because lumber is often still sold in 8ft, 12ft, 16ft, ect lengths up/over there.
I live in Cyprus. I was too young to remember but we used to have imperial as well. Out of interest I frequently ask others which system they prefer, and the vast majority say the Metric System.
Any former British colony (im from Canada) seems to have a hellish mix of both systems. I use imperial for weight and short distances, but metric for temperature and long distances. It also depends on your field, Canadian contractors use imperial for measuring, where engineers would use metric. Very confusing but hard to change because I don’t have an inherent understanding of how heavy a kilo is, or how far a meter is. I was raised with pounds and feet.
Here in South Africa, which was a former British Colony, it does not. It is very much metric. Imperial would only be for 1 or 2 things. Perhaps South Africa was almost the only exception.
@@GoodVideos4 Well, to be fair, South Africa is a remote country, far removed from the rest of the Commonwealth. And it is surrounded by metric countries*, so under those circumstances, it only makes sense to use metric. ________________ * Presumably -- I honestly don't know what system the majority of other African countries use.
Sure you have. Americans buy Coca-Cola in 2 liter bottles. They buy handgun ammunition in 9mm caliber. They buy cocaine by the kilo, or kilogram. These are 3 of the most American things you can do.
Very easy to explain,, if you say pound very quickly after drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels your lips will not move except except for uttering the sound lll bbb. Try saying gallons and pints and you will get "pd" (pissed)
It might be me. But I think you missed a lot. The US is a signatory to the treaty de metre, so yes you're already based on metric, a very large percentage of you military uses metric, and engineering firms do. I find it interesting that you left so much out.
Strangely we still partially use Imperial here in the UK. Our speed limits are still in miles rather than kilometers, and we still measure screen sizes in inches.
Exactly, it is quite mixed up still in the UK. Beer is still sold in pints (568ml) which is slightly different to the US pint which is 473ml I believe, as is the US gallon compared to the imperial gallon, which fuel economy is still measured in on cars here differing to the US measurements, along with mph. Even though we fill up fuel in litres so an extra conversion has to take place to measure the amount of fuel needed for x journey. And as Peter mentioned, we measure distances officially on roads in miles, but use yards as opposed to feet (US) for shorter distances on roads.
@Stanoje Zlatanovic the UK uses the system that sounds the most dramatic. In summer it's 80 Fahrenheit, rather than 28 Celsius. In winter it's -10 C rather than 20 F. A sports car accelerates from 0 to 100km/h in 4 seconds, yet a range rover takes 300ft to stop from 60mph. That sports car is very light at 900kg, the range rover is a 4500lbs behemoth. It makes perfect sense that way.
90m way to stop from 96 km/h is a very normal time. And 2 tons (metric) isn't that heavy, except when you compare it with a sports car. And if you want dramatic temperature, go full Kelvin
+FactoryofRedstone Here's what I don't get, though: If everything is base-10 to you non-Americans, then why is 1000 kilograms a "tonne" instead of a "megagram"? 🤔
Simply because you dont often deal with a class of things of which one weighs 2g - but the other youre comparing it to (cars, bolts etc) weighs for example 1000000 times as much, i.e. 2000kg or 2t. So we use convenient names for base1000 like "kilo/k". But: If needs be, we can quickly calculate between those hugely different sizes, because its still the same base unit, grams. For example, if in medicine, the doctor tells the nurse to give the patient 0.1% per bodyweight of a substance, and you weigh 80kg, its 80kg/1000 = 80g. And if this medicine has the density of water, it conveniently is also 80ml of volume. Simple, isnt it. And if the Aussies managed to convert within less than 2 years, you, the greatest country in the world, could do it in 1. :)
I'm sorry, but... what? Which UK have you been to? 28C is the height of summer heat and it's rare to get down to -10C in the winter (only the older generation uses Fahrenheit). Car accelerations are generally stated as 0 - 60 mph in x.y seconds (as this is what we use) and the weight of a car would be stated as 0.9 tons... and if you wanted to go imperial for the weight of a car you wouldn't use lbs you'd say 2 tonnes
I am from Myanmar (Burma). What you were saying many people in Myanmar (Burma) use metric system is wrong. In my country, only a few people use metric system (just some parts of the capital city) such as supermarkets, import and exports business ( only large companies). Majority of the population still use combination of Imperial System and Traditional System. The government try to use metric system by replacing miles with km in the road signs. But it didn't work and caused many problems due to misinterpretation of the units. When we buy rice, meat, and food from retail shops or local markets, we still use traditional system. For measuring length, height, distance, area, weight, we use Imperial system.
Well the UK still used miles and yards on roads. Also we still measure our weight in stones. And we still measure fuel and usage of fuel in miles per gallon. So the UK can be added to the list.
The UK is kind of like Guatemala or Belize in that regard- the metric system is "official" there according to the government, but several people there still do not use it anyway.
SI system create for international trade, every place have different local units, India, China , Arabs, Africans, Aztecs, etc (China have 10 style system long before Europa). But people still use local unit in many country like Thailand rai (ไร่ = 1600 m²), ngan (งาน = 100 m²), wa (วา = 2 m); Việt Nam lượng/cây (37,5 g), chỉ (3,75 g), tạ (100 kg), or some SI units have local name, one example cây số (km). Every country I visit most people use kg wrong, kg is MASS unit not WEIGHT/FORCE unit. Newton (N) is SI weight/force unit. I surprise near year 2020 US still not modernize.
"Every country I visit most people use kg wrong, kg is MASS unit not WEIGHT/FORCE unit." They implicitly mean the amount of force generated by that mass in the ambient gravity. They're not using it wrong but merely being somewhat inaccurate in their wording (because accurate wording would be needlessly cumbersome).
@@seneca983 SI system add Newton force unit late around year 1948 (pressure unit Pascal too) cause this problem. Old engineering book before this time use kg force (no good). But if people need exact mass (ex: gold) they use balance scale for cancel gravity problem.
@dolofonos yes. that one. the country with only 330 million people. the rest of us 7,2 BILLION people on this earth are waiting for you guys. can you get with the program?
And not everyone does, there are still tons of cars out there with analog speedometers and while Kmp/h is on there they are small and not nearly as useful.
Come on USA can pay a billion dollars for some useless stealth bomber but cant fork couple of million to step out of the middle age this is ridiculous.
'Ridiculous' is when most of your so-called allies do not adhere to their prior treaty obligations and your home country has to make up the difference in monetary and human cost to maintain the agreed status quo. Would it also be ridiculous 'when' the EU in future is invaded, and the only response from the US would be to only send '300 hospital workers' as its total commitment to such an alliance? Such overtly one-sided treaties are probably soon to end; and, the cost of real/imaginary expenditures will have to be borne by 'the local controlling elite'. 'Extreme Ridiculousness' can also be viewed within international trade imbalances wherein so-called VAT is stringently applied to one's imports; but, is NOT applied to products and services that are exported. Within the question of equitable 'fairness', would it be 'reasonable' for the US to apply a 25%+ VAT (or some multiple of 10) on all imports into the US from the EU? Total silence to follow instead of a reasonable reply.
Americans using the imperial system doesn't bother me. Americans on the internet or other international forms of media/communication talking about miles and gallons and pounds DOES bother me. For the same reason English is generally accepted to be the go-to language for international communication that's directed at a general non-specific audience wouldn't it make sense to use the Metric system in the same way?... It annoys me because if I want to read something like that I (and all other readers) have to do conversion in our minds or using a calc./aid, when it would have taken much less effort if the writer/speaker did it themselves (1 person doing conversion is less work than X amount of readers/listeners having to do it).
That is exactly why we don't use the metric system. We have no pictures in our minds to go along with the words meter, millimeter etc. I do the same when I hear metric units used. Convert them to Imperial units.
You don’t have to read the comment. If you want to fully understand what I’m talking about YOU can do the conversions. Just like I would have to if I wanted to understand your comment.
It bothers you? Why? If you don't understand just do a search on your phone/PC. Quite easy. Just like English. I often get emails in Swedish, Finnish and Hindi and my PC actually is quite good at translating. We have pounds in the UK/US. Each to their own.
kastrup2dk, the imperial system is entirely different than metric and the standard system because Kelvin is imperial units; Celsius is metric, and standard units is measured in Fahrenheit whenever it comes to temperature, and even whenever it comes to measurement the imperial system is entirely different than metric and standard units.
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr kelvin is not an imperial unit. it's a standard unit. also, kelvin and degree celcius has the same magnitude. (0 K=-273,15°C, 100 K= -173,15°C)
2:38 But wouldn't they encourage the Metric System because it WAS French!? The French helped out A LOT during the (American) Revolutionary War. But otherwise nice video.
Exactly! That's what I originally thought. This was the biggest surprise for me when I researched this video. Many in the country in the 1790s though was deeply afraid of what was happening in France. It was actually a major issue of the Election of 1800. Sure, France is a major reason why the U.S. is a country, but the French Revolution was so chaotic that Americans quickly wanted to distance themselves.
dskmb3 well for 2 centuries even then they were pivotal in The Independance being a major ally until france literally went broke after spending all its money to help the US rebel so i see no reason that we as Americans dislike the French.
dskmb3 not really. there was a large thirst for liberty and the for so called enlightenment. even in the nobility. maybe you should not project your own weaknesses onto others. not that much. but actually I never heard a French historian pretending that we helped the US for liberty and liberty only in the first place anyway. so who cares. The point is that France helped and it still makes you so buthurt that you have to find an unpleasant and negative motive behind it. Unbelievable.
I think you're being sarcastic, but in case you're not, that can go the other way too. I'm 183 cm, not 6 ft 0.472 in. I'm 76 Kg, not 167.551 lbs. Going metric does not mean being overly precise, that number would just be rounded to 100 grams (0.1 Kilograms). But I think you're being sarcastic, so forgive my ranting.
That's just because you grown up with that. Fahrenheit is the meassurement of one man's feeling while Celcius is a physical degree on earth environment like the Meter and Liter is based on decimal system.
U.S. Customary units were derived from British Imperial Units but they were standardized to the International System of Units a long time ago. Fahrenheit is better for the weather because it offers a 0 to 100 degree scale that most accurately correlates with human survivability. It's not perfect because it wasn't designed for that but if it's 0 degrees or 100 degrees you are in danger. The size of the degree is smaller too which makes it more accurate without the decimal.
@@Ken19700 "Fahrenheit is better for the weather because it offers a 0 to 100 degree scale that most accurately correlates with human survivability. " Sorry but I don't get it... When it's 0 it freezes, what is more accurate than that ? "the size of the degree is smaller too which makes it more accurate without the decimal." Then why make Fharenehit even smaller then ? You point is just based on the fact you grew up with it. here in Europe Celsius makes sense to everyone. When it's between 20 degrees and 30 degrees it's warm. After 35 it gets very hot... Also 100 degrees F is based on the body temperature from a horse...
@@moulinexm7600 "When it's 0 it freezes" I'm just goingbto assume that you are talking about water. The freezing point of water changes with elevation which is why Celsius isn't part of the international system of units. Ultimately as far as measuring it goes, no one cares about the freezing or boiling points of water. They do care about the temperature outside though and like I said, Fahrenheit offers the only 0 to 100 scale that covers the range people can survive in.
I am a huge fan of the Metric System. But, as my 8th grade Science teacher pointed out to me when he sat me and the other Super Nerds down one rather memorable lunch period to explain what it took to make the transition. After half an hour of calculations and statistical factoring, we figured out exactly what you pointed out: The transition would be a super pain in the butt. The combination of a continent-spanning empire, population size and economic and educational inertia make it impractical at best to transition. In addition of educating everyone, resigning millions of miles of roadways and altering maps, think of all the retooling and whatnot that industry would have to go through. The best time to make the transition would be during a major economic collapse on par with The Great Depression. The last major recession of 2007-2011(the period varies depending on who you talk to) would have been a good time, if it had been more catastrophic. Otherwise, we'll have to wait for the current trend where everyone is in a natural state of transition to finish. As you pointed out, depending on many factors, Americans already use Metric daily to some extent, often without thinking about it. Give it anywhere from five to twenty years before we're ready to swap out the MPH for KPH. I mean, just think of all the old cars with Imperial dashboards, and the expense of updating them and dealing with confused drivers. That's just one example. Anyway, just my twopence.
By the way. You know you're a nerd when you consider a lunch recess spent discussing socioeconomic ramifications of transitioning measurement systems with a teacher "memorable". Lol
I was actually thinking about the car problem. What do you do with old cars with mph speedometers? I came to a conclusion: Just put two scales on it. One in mph and one in km/h. Make that the standard for 20 years or so and there will be barely any cars left with only one scale. Then you can swap out the signs and people just need to read the other scale. Even better: You can start changing individual roads and don't need to do everything at once, since drivers have both options available. It will still cause some confusion, but I feel like this would mitigate a lot of that already.
+Yndostrui Yeah, you make it so that for about 20-30 years new things (signs, cars, industry...) comes with both (at first still emphasizing the imperial and later emphasizing the metric), since you are only changing things when they would be changed either way it won't really increase the cost and it would also get people used to the new measurements. Once the transition period is over, very few things would need to be swapped immediately and new things would start coming with metric measurements only. In about 50-60 years imperial would be 100% gone and people wouldn't even notice.
Yndostrui And that is pretty much what is happening. Starting in the mid 90s, it became an industry standard to have dual system dials. It's a good idea anyway, what with Canada and Mexico as our neighbors. However, it's just a standard, and not a requirement; thus, cheap ass cars like the 2004 Kia Rio I'm hauling off to the junkyard next week, don't have the dual system dials.
+Mr. Beat True. I was just pointing out that when necessity dictates it is very easy to move over to metric so most of the arguments against such a move are pretty weak. All US customary units are defined in terms of the metric system anyway and have been since 1893 so there would be no loss of accuracy. Seems to me the US could go totally metric by 2020 if it chose but politicians focused on short term electoral prospects are not going to stick their necks out on metrication despite the obvious long term benefits. If the metric system was exclusively used in schools perhaps folks would not be so scared of it.
I have no clue how the imperial system survived after the first set of imperial tools were invented. I have a metric/imperial socket set in my garage and one day it fell to the floor and all the bits scattered everywhere. Putting the metric ones back in order. simple. 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm. Imperial system, you need to be Stephen Hawking to do the fraction conversion in your head... 5/32, (6/32 = 3/16), 7/32 , (8/32 = 4/16 = 1/4) how the hell did someone think this was a good idea?
Dogphlap No one is scared of metric. Most just aren't interested. They tried it in the 1970s. I was taught the metric system. It was seen as a hassle. Two bloody math classes. I grew to hate it.
Mr. Beat it's happening slowly but surely. We may end up using metric as much as Canada and the UK use it. Imperial will probably be around for a while in the plumbing and housing construction industry.
We use the metric system for precise things like science or things that need to be measured. On a casual basis, we use the imperial system for things like approximating because the terms are relatable(a foot is almost the length of a foot)
Vinay krishna D.K *Ask the US Americans to DUMP Pounds and Stones: LBS (Lots of Bullshit). Only three countries USA and two backward corrupt “Banana Republics: Burma aka Myanmar and Liberia. Think about your children GO METRIC “Inch x Inch” (in brackets, parentheses) if it is so fucking DIFFICULT Bangkok Johnnie CarSanook Media THAILAND*
In fact, there is a great deal of metric usage in the United States. The difference is that we believe in liberty. We do not coerce the use of any particular system of units in contexts where it doesn’t matter. If you sit at a bar and order a glass of beer, it is likely to e in a glass sized by fluid ounces. But if it is a European beer (Belgian beer is popular now) the glass is likely to be specific to the brand of beer and sized in decimal fractions of a liter. Nobody here (in the US) cares.
I'm from a metric country, but I also use the "standard" system quite often - comes with the job, etc. Here's the thing: the american standard system isn't too bad as long as it's used as a customary unit. The advantage of it, are its many divisors. It's easy to divide something up in halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, etc. Those advantages make a lot of sense when dealing with smaller numbers in trade but also lengths of timber etc - things you work on with your hands. In almost all places around the globe we still use Horsepower for internal combustion engines, and the UK runs on gallons of fuel, not liters. People are measured in stone and pound, and not metres. And as an engineer, it's only natural to switch from one system to the other, as in some cases (like electronics) both are used at the same time (standard PCB raster is in inches, but SMD components often use metric footprints).
@@JakeSnake07 I wouldn't say it's terrible, but there's an argument for keeping it. Below 1 inch it's common to use decimal fractions of inches, too. The problem is, the two systems don't line up. If one metre was *exactly* three feet (1yd = 1m), there would be no problems either way, that's where the actual inconvenience comes from - and the problems.
No, it wouldn't take that much of the federal budget. Many signs are not federal, but state ones. ;-) And that is a one time cost, which will save a lot of money later. Like no need to have different speedometers in US cars compared to all others.
+xamarmm, have you noticed the size of CD and Blue Ray disks? Yes, they are 120 mm or 12 cm. And yes, 127 mm are ok too, as long as it is in mm. No need to have a exact even number in a length. By the way. Inches are already defined in metric. One inch are EXACTLY 25.4 mm. No more, no less.
Mr. Beat That's not the issue, the issue is all the exits need to be renumbered because right now in most states they are all based on miles from the boarder. Either they all need to be converted to KM from the boarder in which case you would have decimal exits (it's already a pain to deal with exit 0 I don't need decimals in exit numbers) or we would need another system.
No, it's mixed. Lowest value money is a Penny (also called a cent), next a Nickel = 5 Pennies, then a Dime = 10 Pennies then a Quarter = 25 Pennies, then the 50 cent piece or half a dollar, then the dollar. These are all coins. Paper money is 1 dollar bill, 2 dollar bill, 5 dollar bill, 10 dollar bill, 20 dollar bill 50 dollar bill 100 dollar bill. The US stopped printing larger bills in 1945 and took out of circulation in 1969.
Yes, that was Lockheed Martin, the main contractor on the ill-fated Mars Climate Orbiter project. They shockingly sent rocket thrust data to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in pounds instead of newtons. Now, I'm one of those "brick heads" who defend the use of the U.S. Customary system in ordinary day-to-day use, but even I know that in science and engineering, the metric system is the only way to go. Back in 1999 when that failure occurred, it amazed me to learn that Lockheed had used pounds instead of newtons. Who the hell uses anything but the metric system when designing spacecraft?
Captain Quirk Metric isn't superior for science. Metric allows for easy conversion. The error was not in either system. Had the information been all one or the other, the problem could have been avoided.
The metric system is simpler. I am fluent in both I even know things like the number of cu inches in a cubic foot. I know both systems cold. Metric is simpler. The only way a person could think it isn't is if they don't know the metric system. Also metric is base ten, arithmetic is base ten, they are compatible. You can argue all you like I'll write 100 reasons why metric is simpler.
Base ten is not all of it. If an object moves one meter in one seconds, it moves at 1 meter per second. If the object changes it speed by one meter per second every second, the acceleration is one meter per second squared. If that objects weights one kilo, the total force applied to it is one newton. If one newton is applied to an object and we move it one meter, we have delivered one joule of work. If we deliver one joule of work over one second you deliver one watt. If an electric field is one volt per meter, it exerts a force on a charge at one newton per coulomb. I know some imperial units also matches up like this, but they are not connected without conversion factors to units like volt, watts and joule. Most of the time metric is beautiful.
You've been brainwashed. I used to live in China where they generally use the metric system and I didn't find a single thing the entire time I was there that was easier with metric units. The conversions that people tout as being easier are just not commonly done. Plus, in order to get the units to line up with that, you get really awkward measures like meters and centimeters that are too long or too short to be of use. Then you get things being sold by the half-kilogram because it turns out that a pound is a much more convenient size for selling things. It's common for Americans to be taught both systems and then to never use the metric measures again. Mostly because it's just not that helpful when in the US. And outside the US it's only helpful because everybody else is using the other system of measure.
Aye because diving ten centimetres by 3 is *soooo* much easier than dividing 12 inches by 3. And ordering *precisely* 568.261 millilitres of beer is *sooo* much easier than ordering an imperial pint of bitter.
You must be stupid. who would order 568.261 millilitres of beer? You would order a beer, nota precise quantity. And even if you ordered the quantity, one would drink half a litre of beer... And why would someone divide 10 centimetres (or a decimetre) by three? That's just so specific and doesn't make any sense. *Using your logic* Yeah, because diving 0.62137119224 miles by ten is much easier than dividing 1km by ten... You just used examples to make imperial look better...
It's called exaggeration dumbass. Even still, you could order "half a litre" but even in the Netherlands they use a pseudo-imperial system for ordering beer - they say "Een pintje" and not "Een halve liter". If you cook with someone in the Netherlands, when they say "a cup" they mean any cup - not a specific size cup. Which is easier? Adding "A tablespoon" of baking soda, or measuring out "20 millitres" of baking soda? And guess who orders "a precise quantity"? Everyone who lives somewhere which still serves the pint! I always end up finding myself in situations where I need to divide things by 3, I have no idea about you. Your "my logic" example isn't brilliant - dividing something by ten shifts the decimal to the left one, making it 0.062137119224.
You are just using very specific situations to favour your side. It's alright to say that you don't wanna change because you are used to the Imperial nonsense but you are just fooling yourself if you cant admit that the metric system is a lot easier for scientific research and as good as Imperial for daily tasks. Also, it is costing milliards of dollars to the US for exporting goods in metric. They need to change the packaging to sell them nationally and internationally. I understand that change is sometimes scary but being the only developed nation having the Imperial system is just holding you back financially and socially
Schmdty Better send the Statue of Liberty home then... You copied the French when they chose to drive on the wrong side of the road in their revolution, but refused to copy their best innovation - the metric system
If you hate the French so much, just pay them back for their decisive help during the independence war. Just give them back the statue of liberty. Just give them back Louisiana since France sold it to the US to a price next to nothing... Also, rename all the cities that were founded by the French: New Orleans, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Mobile, Vincennes, etc.
For those asking, US Interstate 19 In tucson-Nogales is the only metric interstate since it connects the USA and Mexico, so its more efficient fir people traveling up to tucson/phoenix.i drive by it every week.
In U.K. road distances are signed in miles and yards but most U.K. drivers do not realise that the blue backed distance marker plates on motorways (spaced at 500 metre intervals) are in kilometres and half-kilometres
Didn't learn the metric system till i got to college... still no mental picture of what anything is... and my god does the metric system make everything so much easier... i f***ing HATE problems written in imperial. I can write a conversation for anything metric into a problem without thinking but all stop for imperial conversations 😖
The UK changed to metric officially when I was a boy but the only real changes at first were in the money. I learned in metric at school but many shops still used British imperial measurements which are different from US ones. I was an adult by the time metric became compulsory in shops and I remember there was a bit of a stooshie at first but people soon got used to it. Important to note is that imperial measures could still be put on products as long as the metric equivalent was also there and more prominent. Nowadays there are still a few non metric units I use in certain circumstances. Pints for milk or beer. Miles for distances and mph for speed- road signs and car speedometers normally use miles though the speedos will also have km. The only other one I can think of is I think in quarter ounces for weighing loose sweets- the only important weight for me before the metric system arrived! (In my misspent youth I also used ounces for buying hashish but I stopped doing that a long time ago.)
When do you think the United States will finally adopt the metric system?
Mr. Beat Probably in the next century, people don't want to change to something they don't know. Most Americans don't know how to use the metric system.
Mr. Beat Never
How to change painlessly? teach the kids now, by the time they are adults they'll be using it anyway.
Science classrooms across the country already do that as early as elementary school :D
I was seeing a lecture from harvard on fluid dynamics and statics and when talkin about pressure the theacher said to put an example we could identify a pool of idk how many gallons and i thought "dude i cannot imagine that easily" but whatever
I still measure everything in elbows, half-moons, cucumbers and squirrels. Its really efficient.
Cucumbers huh? When did you switch over from the pineapple? I thought that was the standard fruit salad?
Do you use Knuts, Sickles, and Galleons in counting money? There are 29 Knuts in a Sickle, and 17 Sickles in a Galleon; thus, 493 Knuts in a Galleon (the Rowling monetary system).
I use just apples. Universal and easy. Even for calculating pi.
I use thumb ends (inch) arm length from elbow to hand (foot) one stride (yard) - a bushel of oats, and a smudgion of pickles. A gaggle of geese, and a flock of flies. And a groat.
GermanSniper I measure my mileage in leagues per hogshead.
The UK still measures in miles, pints and gallons. But we use metric for a lot of other things.
The moment when you scroll through a totally random comment section and you come a cross Larry Bundy Jr.....
so does the U.S. Almost all of our measuring tools (tape measure, thermometers, rulers) have both systems on them. It's so that you can use whichever system you like just as easy, just most Americans stick with imperial because why not.
You forgot Stones
Not true. In UK people use metric.
@@mr.klunee4103 You are Exactly Correct...
I Use the Metric system for School work and home use..
And when I have to explain something Such as "I'm 4''10 (4 Feet 10 Inches) Tall" I use the Imperial System.
Have a thought for us poor Australians. I was given a set of American screw drivers, and of course I have no use for them because, as you know, screws turn the opposite way in the southern hemisphere.
as a member of the United States Im truly sorry for the inconvenience. I can feel your pain though because Im left handed and everywhere I go they have exactly 0 left handed forks.
Well, it looks like Peter is screwed and Chris is forked.
You were probably given a set of left handed screw drivers by mistake. I'd send them back if I were you.l
Peter--They'll work fine if you simply wear your clothes inside-out.
No they don’t you idiot- righty tighty / lefty loosy no matter where
Actually, all US sientist and engeneers using metric system. And almost everything calculating in metric system, and after that it converts in to miles etc, just to people can understand it.
Not true. Imperial units are common in civil engineering, and some machine shops are so old that the equipment only works in Imperial. So often engineers have to work in both systems.
In middle and high school science, we always had to use the metric system for calculations. Way easier. Same in college for my engineering studies. If a problem had imperial units, we all swapped over to the metric system, and then back again. God forbid I know what an erg is in fundamental units.
I foresee the US swapping probably in the next 50 years, namely because of the wider use in technical fields, and the older generation dying off
That is true but manufacturers use the imperial system. Didn't a space probe blow up because of a coversion error?
Brian Thibaudeau well that's true,
I am a chemical engineering student, and yeah if we found a problem in imperial unit we change it metric first to make it easier for us to solve
@@brianthibaudeau8081 I think your right it will change when the old farts die off.
Canadians still use the imperial system from time to time, mostly because of our proximity to the US. So you end up with people like me who don't know my height in centimetres or my weight in kilograms, but have no idea how long a mile is, or how Fahrenheit works.
+Step Back History What a mess lol
yuup
Once the older generation is gone in Canada the imperial system hopefully will die with them.
pbilk1 ouch
Got caught during the conversion while in school. I still prefer my weight in pounds, my height in feet/inches, my TV measured in inches. I prefer just about everything else in metric. Frankly in just about everything else Imperial just doesn't make sense to me.
I'm American and I measure all my weed in metric
Fair enough xD lol
You don't buy OZs only grams? You get a discount when you buy a pound.
@@craig9365 AN OUNCE EQUALS 28.8 GRAMS.
Don't forget Tony's Law!! politics.theonion.com/tonys-law-would-require-marijuana-users-to-inform-inter-1819567746
BTW I know the Onion very well!
@@craig9365 Imperial ounce? What's that?
9mm
Americans use it all the time.
.50
5.56×45mm NATO
7.62×5mm NATO
20×102mm Vulcan
40 mm grenade
Hmmm.. I am starting to see a trend here.
"da uzee nine-millimedah" -The Terminator 1984
@allgoo19 shots fired lmao
I’m an American and I make a point to do most of my woodworking in metric. I only use inches to rough-cut things to length. Units are arbitrary, but dividing fractions suck. It’s so much easier to find the next size up or down wrench in metric.
I'm American, and have a mathematical background.
Anyone who truly believes the imperial system is easier doesn't possess a working mathematical understanding of the metric system.
The units of any system are they themselves arbitrary.
It is the ease of navigating the units that determine efficiency.
Inches, hands, feet, yards, rods, furlongs, miles ? Every step requires a different calculation.
Millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, meter, decameter, hectometer, kilometer. Every unit is 10 of the preceding. Every second unit is 100 of the preceding. Every third is 1000.
Moving decimal points is all that's required.
Liquid and mass work along the same base 10 logarithmic scaling.
As an american engineer and scientist .... it makes not one iota of difference what 'measurement system' you use, as long as you master it and are repeatably correct in your measurements. The simplicity of evolved historical 'measurement' is signal: most know the length of the average man's foot, the distance from the tip of King John's (Plantagenet) tip of his nose to the end of his outstretched arm and fingers. I could easily prefer cubits, and drams or carats. I could easily call the boiling point of water - 'Spot' or Miriam.
Show me in nature a regularly repeating approximate measure of a centimeter, decimeter ????
FWIW - The basic core element of the metric system was the 'guess' of the distance from the equator to the north pole through the longitude of Paris .... and the difference between actual precisely measured distance to the originally 'guessed' distance was very imprecise and WRONG. This is very similar to the factual evidence that most 'political decisions' are ultimately WRONG.
So, for all who are touting the ultimate galactic superiority of the metric system, know that the core definitional basis of the metric system - the meter - is WRONG.
Base 10? ... therefore the binary Base2 language of the computer must be changed to metric Base 10 !!!!!!!!!!!
One system is in base 10 which helps with math... by moving a decimal point to convert to different tiers, but my question to that always was... why do we need to convert? If I'm supposed to measure out and cut a square from a piece of cardboard, the original cardboard being 5x5 meters but the measurements of what I need to cut out are in centimeters, do I need to convert it to cut it? No?
The thing about custom is that it understands there's rarely a reason to actually go from one unit to another, even in the case of cutting a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood down to 48x32 inch square, do I really need to convert the inches into feet to cut it? No... so why bother?
I get that in some cases, like altitude, it's nice to have a system that smoothly transitions from centimeters above the ground to kilometers above the ground without the numbers jarring around, but for the most part conversion from one level to another is just needless, it's just the factoring, the same idea as scientific notation, when a measurement that needs to be as precise as a micrometer can be converted into a relative distance to the moon, yeah, sure, metric.
But for most human measurements neither the precision or conversions are needed. When somebody wants to know how tall you are they don't _really_ care down to the last centimeter, to the nearest half a decimeter is even more precise than they really care about, they just want to know _about_ how tall you are, and measuring in feet + inches makes more sense than every human mostly being between 1.4 meters and 1.8.
Custom was a system made for human scale, metric is better in the lab. I learned metric and custom, in fact metric first because of our school's hardon for it. I used custom for building and constructing sets and furniture, cause it worked better for me, it was easier to use and when it comes down to it, why use a tool that's more difficult if it provides no value, provides no advantage for you? When it comes to building things, or measuring people, or cooking, metric is just not as good as custom.
“why do we need to convert?”
You have a 5×5×2m swimming pool, how many liters of water do you need? How much would it weight? Answer: 5*5*2*1000 = 50000 liters that weigh 50000kg.
Now you have a 20×20×5ft pool, how many gallons of water do you need and how many pounds will it weigh? Eh...
How much weight is a 2l bottle of Coke? As it's mostly water, its 2kg.
“The thing about custom is that it understands there's rarely a reason to actually go from one unit to another, even in the case of cutting a 4x8 foot sheet of plywood down to 48x32 inch square, do I really need to convert the inches into feet to cut it? No... so why bother?”
Now how many 10×12" pieces can you get from a 4×8ft sheet? Are you going to re-measure it in inches to figure it or would even start cutting them out and then count the pieces?
RichH. Pretty stupid comment. You obviously don't understand the purpose of the metric system. Too bad for an "engineer" or "scientist".
Anyway, could you tell me what was the temperature of the Dantzig river during the 1708-1709 winter please ? I need to calibrate my thermometer.
To me, it seems that the US love convoluted measurement units. Why else would they not use Celsius? Another easier system to measure things. Here's an example: at 0°C water freezes, at 100°C it boils and 20°C is considered room temperature.
I'm a retired engineer here in the US and I love the Metric System. I don't know why we won't make a serious effort to change. The US Department of Transportation tried tried a couple decades ago but changed their minds.
Das Piper blame Reagan. He killed it in the name of living in the past. Misplaced arrogance and pride are the reasons why.
We can do it, it'll just have to be a process. Its too ingrained into our economy/society to change all at once. In my opinion, start with distances. Just include on every speed limit/highway sign the speed/distance in kilometers and people will start understanding it. Next pass laws where the weights of things in places like grocery stores are done in both grams or kilograms in addition to lbs and ounces. We can do it within a decade. We just have to start.
@@mikekean8344 calm down it's just a measurement system
@@wokehumanist958 : Actually, federal law already requires consumer goods to be labeled in metric units.
However, those units are usually printed in smaller type than the Customary equivalent, so I suppose the law could be changed to require that the metric units appear first, before the Customary units, and be in the same size (or even slightly larger) typeface.
Because it would ruin American football to change the basic field measurements from yards to meters! Baseball would be hit hard as well if the distance between bases had to change from 90 feet to 30 meters; as there would be fewer infield hits, doubles, triples, and stolen bases; and it would be harder for baserunners to advance 2 bases on a single.
Why I read this as "Why don't US Liberate Myanmar" 😂
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
liberate???
Did You Think That US Want That Many Ruby In There? The Fact That 70 Percent Of World Ruby Come From There.
You mean occupy?
Well this aged well
It's all mess in India.. We tell our height in feet and inches and weight in kilograms. We tell long distances in km but short distances in feet or inches. We tell room temperature in celcius but if someone gets a fever, we tell it in Fahrenheit :D
Must be very confusing
Just like where I live in canada
Well we only measure one thing in Fahrenheit , fever temperature .
Not to mention the area of land in square yards.
@Iain Botham More like adhering to a logical metric system after being a colony of a country imposing the ridiculous imperial on them.
In Puerto Rico, a US territory, we measure road distances in kilometers, gas is in liters, medicine is in grams, but speed limits are in mph, food is in ounces, except some drinks, and temperature is in F
Poor people...
I feel sorry for you measuring gas in liters, those oil companies are ripping you off
+Adam Smith, how are oil companies ripping him of by measuring petrol in liters?
@ Anders: I think Adam may have been joking (or half-joking), but what he was getting at was that a liter is so much smaller than a gallon that the oil companies can charge considerably less per liter and still actually be charging *more* for the product. For example, say an appropriate price for gasoline is $3 per U.S. gallon. They could charge a mere 89 cents per liter, which sounds cheap, but that actually works out to $3.37 per gallon.
It's like what Cadbury and Mars did with candy. (E.g., Cadbury Crème Eggs and Snickers bars) The bastards shrunk the size of their eggs/candy bars, but the price remained the same.
Wait. In Puerto Rico they measure distance in kilometers, but measure speed limits in mph? That seems really confusing.
Americans are awesome at comparing everything to the size of a football field, I'll give them that.
+vidyaWolf, that's 11 centimeters, or 4.3 inches.
to make the transition painless
1. start teaching kids in school NOW. by the time they enter the workforce, they'll be used to it and can teach dads and moms.
2. any time a road sign needs replacing, replace it with one that has both measures. by the time transition is official, most signs will already be compliant.
We started teaching kids a long time ago. We teach both, I remember even my grandma teaching me about grams and milligrams when I was little and learning centi/millimeters in daycare. The big problem is not really learning the system, it's the industry. That quarter pound burger and that 36 inch door is suddenly a different size to comply with metric standards. That's damaging huge industries - and for what? Because some European wants us to? THAT'S the painful part - spending tons of resources for virtually no benefit.
Actually, it's not "some European". It's "everybody else". And the argument by damage works the other way too: "you" are causing huge damage (your choice of words) to the rest of the world because they need to keep producing doors that are 91.44 cm wide as well as the "normal" 90 cm, or weighing beef patties that are 113.398 g rather than an easier to remember 115 or even 100 g if they want to sell in your market.
dlevi67 but that's the key phrase - "if they want to keep selling in your market." They are making that choice to trade with us so by your own logic they are doing that damage to themselves. America built its empire on the idea that people/businesses have the power to do whatever they want and forcing such a switch what be against everything in which we believe. America made it to the top through its innovation (among other things), other countries needed to switch to compete in an international market when u.s. was already there.
And that's aside from the fact that 1/4 is very easy to remember, saying that 100g is easier is a totally biased answer to an entirely subjective question.
Mr. Klunee I'm not saying that 100 is easier to remember than 1/4; I'm saying that 100 is easier to remember than 113.398... and that's far less subjective. The point I'm making is that either system is to some extent arbitrary, but claiming that a 3 foot door or a 1/4 pound burger is easier to use or specify than a 90 cm door or a 100 g burger is totally disingenuous.
FWIW American science and innovation is not based (since a very long time) on ACU, but uses SI units, and US products are sold abroad using SI units.
But above all, the fact that both parties decide that the advantage to trade is greater than the disadvantage imposed by multiple standards does not change the fact that the "damage" is imposed on both parties: it cost "me" (whoever I am) more to produce, and it costs "you" (whoever you are) more to purchase.
dlevi67 that's what I'm saying dude, the damage has to outweigh the benefits or nobody would be trading with the US. That is not something you get when u.s. does the full transition, there's no benefit for us. U.S. has been using si units a choice and not because they were forced to for any particular reason.
As an engineering student in the US who is forced to know both, I always scream in terror when I see a complex problem in US units which are horrid whenever you are doing any type of analysis. With that being said I think we should of course adopt the metric system for when it’s actually heavily needed like in industry but when it comes to “everyday units” that people see when they drive, look at the weather, cook, etc. I can see us keeping the traditional units and people would be more receptive to the change.
Have a point as The metric system that we use is the unified global form of it e.g. metres
But most countries do have traditional forms blended with it
Hate in India atleast in my area we measure tea and coffee in ketali(tea pots) equivalent of aprox 400 ml and it's convenient also the traditional Burmese system is just becoming like it blending with metric system and names like yard,feet,etc already for those names of sub-system within metric system
I am metric to the bone. if you ask me my weight in stones, be prepared for me replying: depends on the size of the stones.
depends on the specific gravity of the atmospheric medium of the stone to be precise.
Remember correct unit for weight is Newton, not kilogram.
Allan Sherman's comic parody of an old Irish folk song, published circa 1962, contains:
In Dublin's fair city,
Where girls are so pretty,
My Molly stands out
'Cause she weighs 18 stone ["256 pounds" spoken quickly between the lines].
So wherever she wheels it,
The neighborhood feels it,
Her girdle keeps scraping
The holds on each side.
Actually, Molly weighs 18 stone AND 4 POUNDS.
The US doesn't use stones either, that's only the British.
The antiquated “stone” as a unit of mass is 14 pounds avoirdupois. I have no idea why!
funny how americans do a 5k race, while in belgium we do a 10 mile run each year
Nathan Haaren never done a 5k, too French 😂
Maybe that's why europeans are slimmer than americans
@@LukoHevia nah. It's because they are less awesome and poorer and don't have Mexicans to do the hard labor
That's due to geography where those races were started.
But is it an 10 international mile, metric mile, english mile a US survey mile or even a nautical mile (especially if it is a swimming competition) race?
Australia did it (from imperial to fully metric) in just 2 years, although after one year most of the Australia had already fully transitioned during the transition time.
The big deal is just in the mind of people before transition, the big deal is also when you want to compare between 2 systems which have nothing to compare. you should do the transition without "reference" to the imperial...
How long is 100km?
it's 100km! (you should not say 60 miles!), that's how Australia did the full transition in a so short time... it was forbidden to do a reference with the imperial (on any contract/papers), the best transition all over
Patrice Laborda man but fuck em. And Fahrenheit is way better
Australia has a lot less infrastructure than the US does. We've got literally trillions of dollars in infrastructure that we'd have to abandon or deal with the inconvenience of having metric and SAE measures.
We can sort of get away with that with cars where a car will be either SAE or metric depending upon the manufacturer and, with the exception of HD motorcycles feature the v-rod engine design, the vehicle will use the same system for the entire thing.
The other thing, is that unlike most other nations that are now metric, the US had an enforced system of measure in place throughout. The Bureau of Weights and Measures would go around and confiscate measuring devices that weren't accurate to the standards.
As a result, we would have been throwing out a functioning and enforced system of measure for one that didn't really bring any advantages over the one we were using at the time. And as time goes by, it's getting less and less likely that we'll see the metric system adopted for anything that's not standalone.
Chris L I mean you can also just say fuckum. Don't care what a bunch of prison sociopaths, getting attacked by God's own hellbeasts, on their own time but we ain't doing it in the land of the fuckin free. We make our own laws
I guess it's a bit like when we went from Frank to Euros...
A while ago I watched a TEDx video about the benefits of the metric system, and during the video, the presenter told a story about an Australian entrepreneur, who, as an experiment, had two identical houses built, but the blueprints for one house was in millimeters, while the other was in feet and inches. After both houses had been built, the leftover waste from the house with millimeter measures was a bit under a wheelbarrow-full, while the feet/inches house had an amount of waste equivalent to *FIVE* big truckloads.
The presenter *also* mentioned that the cost of converting back and forth between units (for scientific or trade purposes) in the U.S. amounted to an average of $16 per citizen, per day.
It could be worse.
imagine, if USA used another "time" system too :D
instead minutes and hours.
Why would we use another time system? We're on "Imperial" time. You're on "Imperial" time. Somehow you guys use Imperial time just fine without even thinking about it. I mean, the clock says 7:24pm now, not 0.808 or some other decimal time system. Time system is 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours... factoring system. Same as Imperial system.
@@redfish337 Well, we "technically" do use another time system because we don't use "AM" and "PM", after 12h wee count 13h, 14h, 15h, all the way to 24h (00h).
@@Dac_DT_MKD FYI, my phone is set to 24 hour time. I'm the minority here though.
But it doesn't matter. Whatever the hours are labeled, it's still a 24 hour day.
@@redfish337 actually time units do not have anything with metric or imperial cuz it is a completely different scale. Just like in computer science is a binary scale where you use the power of two, so 1KB is 1024 bytes...
@@hatorimatori I have no idea what you're talking about.
you know you're doing something wrong when you're in the same grouping with Myanmar and Liberia
Voytek to be fair Liberia is just copying USA, poor Liberia lol
Voytek-- actually Liberia isn't as bad as you think…a lot of times people only get to see the parts that are living in poverty😕
that's because most parts are living in poverty lmao
Voytek--Liberia is still recovering from a long war (and the Ebola virus) of course some parts are living in poverty but not all parts
still isn't a very nice place to go. i dont see this improving significantly in the next few decades.
Actually, Jefferson did want to adopt the metric system but the guy the French sent to bring the metric standards got his ship raided by privateers.
it was a sign from God then. Metric system is satanic
He was attacked for being too French
Privateers employed by which country?
Metric man was attacked by pirates yo (>XD!! that's the answer I got when I said it)
Canada had an election in the middle of metrication, and it got cancelled. Problem was it was mostly done already.
As a result, while all canadians understand celsius and kilometers, many only know how tall they are and how fat they are in inches and pounds; even if doctors use metric measurements.
Do you think this trend will change any time soon? I've noticed that some doctors in the U.S. have began giving out measurements in metric recently.
I'm from another English speaking country (New Zealand) and baby weight is given in both imperial and metric to benefit parents and grandparents :)
The medicals uses all metric in US, and have for a long time. Your meds are in ml or cm³ and in g. Your measures are also in m and g.
Actually, lots of people dies each year i US because of Imperial units.
Yeah, as Anders said, the medical field is all metric, and has been for as long as I can remember.
Anders Jackson that is a lie
The US Military uses the metric system
Sure does
So does the medical community! CAUSE IT'S more accurate.
Gary Dietz II not as much, they still measure your weight in pounds and height in inches
That is due in large part to membership in NATO. Its out of necessity arising from the need to operate jointly with allied forces that all use metric.
@@ADEehrh *cause it's easier, not more accurate.
2:30 "Sorry, it's too French." At this point, I almost fell under the table.
Rivero Montara, too dumb, right?
Jefferson was actually a proponent of the metric system. He even wrote to France requesting that a rare reproduction of the 1 kg weight be shipped to the US for comparison purposes.
However pirates captured the vessel and the weight did not arrive. Along with a strong national pride, the loss of the 1 kg weight may have been the deciding factor in the US failure to covert to the metric system.
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232/how-pirates-of-the-caribbean-hijacked-americas-metric-system
LOL! Not too French for the U.S. Army, which adopted the French artillery system before and during World War I. However, when we copied the Renault FT tank, to manufacture it in the States all the measurements - except the gun - had to be converted from metric to Imperial. The inherent delay meant that only two of the resulting M1917 Six-Ton Tank reached the front before the armistice.
It was so predictable though. I clicked on the video wondering if I was right (knowing already that this system was expanded by France initially) and here you go. *sigh*
quite ironic since its thanks to the french that the US became independant as early as it did
The great irony is: the US was the FIRST nation to adopt a decimal system of coinage, and is the LAST (major) nation to adopt the SI (Systeme International d'Unites, official name for the Metric System).
It's not ironic. Decimal coinage doesn't just make sense, it's a change that can be made without impacting everything else. Simply change the price of beef from the old measure to the new one and round it off to the appropriate amount.
Also, we weren't the last country to adopt the SI, we were one of the first. What we didn't do was adopt the kilogram as such, we redefined all of our measures off the SI units. So, a pound is precisely defined in reference to the kilogram, so the conversion will never change. The definition we use for seconds has changed multiple times over the years because we adopted the SI as the units that we define our units based on.
We may have "officially" adopted the SI, but not in every--day usage.
I think the biggest handicap is the emphasis on CONVERTING. All this worrying about 2.54 cms or 2.2 lbs. Just change, and live with it.
Britain is only hafway through too. In everyday life they use imperial: its miles on the streets, pounds and stones as for weight, and if you say you are 180cm tall or you like a 32cm pizza, they have no idea what you're talking about.
HUNdAntae the truth 👏 except Celsius , I think the imperial is fine. I think it’s stupid to be measured in 180 cm should be 6’0 . The only thing is , why doesn’t the USA use stone
@@HarrisonJamess Using cm on height is stupid? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BULLSHIT. You use it everywhere else, but using it to measure height is stupid. Obviously...
@@TeodorKubena in my country we also use ft for the measuring humans. And farenhiet for a fever, every thing else is metric
@@ayaanjaved just because you use it, doesn't make it logical.
All imperial units have been defined since many years ago in relation to the International Units system (aka: the metric system but expanded and officially defined), so, in a funny turn of events, the US has been using the metric system, but in a more indirect and convoluted way.
I was born in the 80's. When I was in school we did everything in the metric system and barely covered the imperial system because my teachers were convinced everything would be metric by the time we grew up. It totally worked out though because I was a biology major who then went into healthcare, which is of course, all metric.
Same re growing up in the early 80s. I learned US customary at home and metric at school. My tiny little glimpse into what growing up bilingual might have felt like!
@@edk1978884 Same for me, except I grew up in the '70s. Elementary school, around 1974, so it was also around the time of the Big Push to switch the whole country over to metric.
Then it fizzled. Oh, well.... 🥴
Learn the mtric sytem? Can you count to ten? Yes? Then you already know it!
I can also count to 12 and 16.
@@BKPrice Ok, if someone would ask you: "How much is 4.56 foot in inches?" would you be able to even answer without a calculator? Even if you would, it would take a long time.
@@TeodorKubena 54.72, but the real answer is, why do I care? In my every day life I would Express that as 4 1/2 feet. No need for inches. Or at most a mix of the two. If we went metric that would be fine by me but my every day life doesn't really require me to convert to the various different units so I don't care if I have to pull up my calculator app to answer the occasional pointless conversion question.
4 feet 6 inches is your answer, don't need a calculator, and you don't need to constantly convert from one unit to the other. Sure 54 inches isn't even hard to mentally calculate either, but the reality is where do you need precision. Give some context to your question, make it a word problem. Math teachers always bother me when they just give you a math problem and say "solve it"
Why?
When in life have you ever needed to convert 4.56 feet into inches with such precision that 54.5 inches wasn't precise enough? The answer is probably never, unless you're an engineer, an engineer probably working with calculators, and the metric system to begin with. So what's the point in arguing over one being superior.
If I need to draw water from the well I'm going to fill up a bucket, not take a bunch of measurement tools to make sure I get a liter.
I only wish that were the case. If the American system of measurements were irrelevant people would stop nagging us about metric system this and metric system that, but they seem to have their panties in a twist that we use it for our own day-to-day life.
When I was growing up in London (1980's) we were still using the Imperial systems of measurement. Distance signs on roads are still in miles and vehicle's odometres have to have MPH. Horse races are still measured in furlongs (and horses in 'hands'), farms are traditionally measured in acres and the farenhiet system is still in use (when I was a kid high temperatures were measred in F and the lower ones in winter in C. I've no idea why, maybe for dramatic affect!
I now live in China where televisions are measured in inches (is this the standard all over the world)?
I weigh 100 stones.
If each stone weighs 1 kilogram.
You might need to go on a diet. 1400lbs is a lot, ok that might be an average American but it's still a lot.
Stones???????
Stones are imperial
14 stone 2 lb is 196lbs ... just like 6 foot 6 is 78 inches .. all Imperial nothing to do with metric
Insane 10, pounds are standard units; stones are imperial, and kilograms are metric.
Quiet Corner no that is 220 lbs
The U.S. uses the metric system more than most people realize. NASA, NOAA, and most military agencies use it, as do most businesses that communicate with international partners. The U.S. is actually an officially metric country, with the English measuring systems defined in terms of their metric counterparts. For example, the National Institute of Standards and Technology holds the official meter bar for the U.S., which defines the length of the meter, and the yard is defined as a fraction of this meter bar. There is no "yard bar".
Exactly right.* The U.S. is a lot more metric than most people realize. Metric units are used in many industries, as well as the military, medicine, and of course all of the sciences.
And depending on how one defines whether a country is "officially" metric, the U.S. *_is_* officially metric, by virtue of the fact that the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 declared the metric system to be "the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce".
______________________
* (Well, mostly right. The meter is no longer defined by the length of a physical object, but is instead defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second.
But it's true that all U.S. Customary units are actually defined in terms of metric units.)
Actually, the U.S. DOES use the metric system.
All American car companies adopted the metric system in the 1970's.
Almost all scientific education and occupations (including medical, chemical, and research) use the metric system.
The two major areas where the metric system is not used is architecture and building construction.
Yeah, I pretty much said that in the video.
Yep and that's because it's a pain to use in those fields, it's way easier to measure 4 ft 8 1/2 in than 142.34 cm especially in low lighting where it's harder to see all those little mm dash marks compared to 1/16 in marks.
Not really true. The economic cost of using the optimized ANSI/SAE system for CRITICAL or LETHAL service components is an example. Ie: the standard thread pitch ratio of common bolting, screws, etc. of 'metric' is either 1.0 or 1.5. The ANSI/SAE (and old British Whitworth) pitch (usually 2 different pitches, or threads per inch, based on application) is standardly variable in accordance of bolting DIAMETER and direction of applied stress = STRONGER. When engineering/designing with 'metric' fasteners one must usually 'upsize' substantially, especially when considering 'factors of SAFETY'.
And then there's the extreme example of critical service hydraulic components .... US is still using British Whitworth BSB profiles. No one in their right mind would use a wholly inferior metric (profile) hydraulic fitting and not upsize significantly due to 'safety'; the original British Whitworth is that 'superior' and unsurpassed for strength, reliability .... and SAFETY within 'high pressure and critical pressure hydraulics'.
It's also confusing since the metric system also has some old units in in some regions: in the Netherlands for instance a pond (pound) is defined as 500 grams, and an ons (ounce) is defined as 100 grams, which is vastly different from similarly named imperial units.
similar to germany .. here your "pond" is called "ein pfund" and is 500 grams aswell.
we don't have a special word for your "ons" tho.
but we have a word for 100 kilgogram and its called "Zentner"
@@DonTekNO Ons sind Unzen
@@rallion1545 ah alles klar wieder was gelernt
Since Indonesia used to be colonized by the Dutch, we also still use 'ons' in the ducth term until today 100gram
4:55 Note that although the UK (and a lot of other countries, I suspect) did technically go metric, a lot of things that would be expensive to change have still not been switched. Two of the items in the frame at 4:55 are still imperial, for example. You still buy milk in pints, quarts, half gallons and gallons in the UK. On the road, distance is still measured in miles, speed is in MPH, and fuel economy is in MPG. In fact I think using kilometres is actually illegal on road signs in the UK, as they have to be in miles by law, so the US probably has more metric signage on that one highway in Arizona than in the whole of the UK. People will give you their height and weight in imperial units. There are many other examples of holdovers than those. Point being that ‘going metric’ doesn’t have to be this whole big hassle where everything in existence is changed over. I don’t think that’s ever been the case, even though it’s the first point everyone cites against metrication in the US.
Both systems have their advantages in certain uses, denying one completely is not worth the cost.
As someone living in the uk this is mostly true but most of my friends, myself and my family measure weight in kg all the time
Saying that momentum is a hard thing to reverse and being satisfied with that. Is like saying that none of ALL of the est of the countries in the world hasn't done the same trip. And it won't get easier the longer you wait.
Good point
Plus, the transition takes decades. This is how the costs are reduced. You don't have to enforce the system, you let it gradually take its way. I guess it can take a few generations before the transition is done.
But holding out reinforces their pride! They're not quitters taking the easy route of compliance. :P
What pride? What compliance? What does it have to do with anything?
With modern technology allowing us to translate between units on the fly, then what is the point of making the huge transition anyways? People are used to and fine with the system (for the most part) and you have entire industries basing their product's dimensions and standardized tools off of the system too.
When we count calories we are using the metric system as a calorie is the amount of heat required to raise one cubic centimeter of water which is also one gram of water one degree centigrade. Scientists and laboratories use the metric system.
Calorie is not SI, correct energy unit is Joule.
But the calories listed on nutrition labels are KILOcalories, the amount of heat required to raise one LITER (or kilogram) of water one degree centigrade/Celsius.
No the calories we count are for dieting and are actually kilocalories
The US does NOT use the imperial system. It uses what is called "United States customary units." An imperial pound is less than a US pound for ex.
Pc Retro Oh, there is someone here who knows what they are talking about.
that actually makes it even worse
Yeah, thats so fucking worse, I had no idea
This is one of the pitfalls of the US customary AND the imperial system: different size units, and even different dimensions of units, with the same name, and requiring a prefix to distinguish them. A pound can be Troy or avoirdupois, as can an ounce. The Troy ounce (used for precious metals like gold and silver) is larger than the avoirdupois, but there only 12 Troy ounces in a Troy pound, not 16, so the Troy pound is smaller than the avoirdupois (so a "pound" of feathers is heavier than a "pound" of gold!). And the "ounce" can measure either weight or volume: the "fluid ounce" is approximately the amount of water at room temperature that weighs one avoirdupois ounce. And the distinction between gravitational attraction (a force) and mass led to US and British engineers (and scientists, before metric) using the weight of an avoirdupois pound as a unit of force, while making up a mass unit called the "poundal."
And there are "tons" of tons too! Two of these units are defined as 20 "hundredweight," but a US or "short" ton (the kind that Tennessee Ernie Ford sang about loading sixteen of) is 20 US or "short" hundredweights, each of 100 pounds (avoirdupois), while the British or "long" ton is 20 British or "long" hundredweights, each of 112 pounds avoirdupois. So a US short ton is 2000 pounds, while a British or long ton is 2240 pounds (why the long hundredweight; could it have to do with their "stone" of 14 pounds?). And since 1000 kg is close to a ton (either kind), that is called a "metric ton" in the US, or a "tonne" in the rest of that world; it contains about 2204 pounds, making it just a bit less than a long ton, but quite a bit more than a short ton.
And miles? The old Roman mile was 1000 paces ("milia passuum" in Latin) by marching Roman soldiers, which comes out to about 0.92 US statute miles. The latter is defined as 8 furlongs of 660 feet each (and the length of a foot, a furlong, and thus a mile, varied in the UK during the 16th and 17th centuries), as all horse racing fans know. Today, the US statute mile is 5,280 feet, but there were Irish miles (6,720 feet) and Scottish miles (5,952 feet). Also, there is the nautical mile used in sailing and (thanks to flights over oceans) aviation. In a north-south direction, or an east-west direction AT THE EQUATOR, a nautical mile corresponds to one minute (1/60 of a degree) of latitude or longitude. The common US unit of ship's speed and aircraft speed is the KNOT, which is one nautical mile per hour (NOTE: the "per hour" is implied, so "knots per hour" is incorrect; a knot per hour is a measurement of acceleration, not speed, showing by how much a ship's speed in knots changes per hour).
There are also different variations of the gallon and the bushel, depending on the commodity being measured. And a whole series of volume measurements JUST FOR WINE; bottles larger than a gallon range from the Jeroboam to the Nebuchadnezzar, named for Old Testament kings!
But I think the primary obstacle to total metric conversion is that American football uses yards on the field, baseball uses feet to measure the infield (distance between bases), and golf measures the length of a hole, from tee to cup, and the distance of a drive, in yards. In the event of metric conversion, each sport would have to continue using its old measuring units, or restate and republish all record books, while changing each field to meters. And of course, sports statistics are WAY more important than engineering and science!
Burma doesnt use the imperial system either, they use Burma units.
In India 🇮🇳 we measure the weather in Celsius.
And we measure fever in farhenite.
We measure distance in meters and kilometres but height is mostly mentioned in feet and inches.
Very educational. Thank you for stating that there are many here in the US who use the metric system and advocate for it to be made official. Especially those of us in STEM. I’m so tired of basic-ass comments like, “...they don’t ‘cause they’re backwards.” 😑
Dearyvette TN
yeah almost nobody at my school even uses the imperial units anymore
(I Go to a stem school)
I mean would just mention that imperial is just as arbitrary as metric. Who decided that water was the best basis for temperature, for example? It really doesn't matter for international as long as you're both using the same things. And if you're going into science or medicine, you just learn that as part of learning your field in the same way I had to learn different skills for my own degree.
Also, it the US, there's Smoots. One Smoot is defined as 1.70m or 5'7", the height of the engineering student who was used to measure a bridge in Boston...
I'd like to see USA transfer to the metric. I work in building construction and it seems like such an easier system. It's really just a matter of getting new measuring devices (tape measures) and such. Plans and blueprints can easily be drawn up in metric. Once road signage was changed it really wouldn't be difficult for people to adapt to.
We learned a little about it in grade school but somehow was never implemented.
I use old Russian measurements because they fit me perfectly
1 arshin (the distance between my middle finger to where my arm meets my shoulder) is 71.12 cm or 2’ 4”
1 paid (the length of my middle finger to my wrist) 17.78 cm or 7”
1 vershok (you take your index finger and fold it into two , there from the tip of your finger until the bend) 4.45 cm or 1 and 3/4 of an inch
That way 1 arshin can be divided into 4 piad and each piad is 4 vershok
1 arshin = 4 piad or 16 vershok
For additional measures 3 arshin is 1 sazhen (213,36 cm or exactly 7 feet)
Thomas Jefferson may have left us with an inefficient system of measurement but we got swivel chairs and mac and cheese from him so I think it was a fair trade.
I don't think I would be alive if it weren't for mac and cheese
And you got the decimal currency. Not forgetting that, are we?
Zachary Parker If I had to give up swivel chairs and mac and cheese or the metric system, I would definitely give up the chair and the mac, plus chocolate,.... etc. It is incredibly more easy to use.
That a km is 1000m, for example, makes so much more sense than 12 inches to the foot.
Maybe it's because I'm a natural sciences person, but I also should thonk that conversions would be much easier for me than for people with different talents.
Diedert Spijkerboer
Have fun driving your 1000m, I'll just eat myself half a pound of mac and cheese.
We also got the entire center of the country, he was the guy who did the Louisiana Purchase!!!
In construction I find imperial to be much more forgiving and easy to visualize. I've talked to Canadian carpenters who've told me they still use imperial when framing for this reason and also because lumber is often still sold in 8ft, 12ft, 16ft, ect lengths up/over there.
I live in Cyprus. I was too young to remember but we used to have imperial as well. Out of interest I frequently ask others which system they prefer, and the vast majority say the Metric System.
Any former British colony (im from Canada) seems to have a hellish mix of both systems. I use imperial for weight and short distances, but metric for temperature and long distances. It also depends on your field, Canadian contractors use imperial for measuring, where engineers would use metric. Very confusing but hard to change because I don’t have an inherent understanding of how heavy a kilo is, or how far a meter is. I was raised with pounds and feet.
True but younger generations will change. It's the reverse for me, I don't understand what a pound really means
Here in South Africa, which was a former British Colony, it does not. It is very much metric. Imperial would only be for 1 or 2 things. Perhaps South Africa was almost the only exception.
@@GoodVideos4 Well, to be fair, South Africa is a remote country, far removed from the rest of the Commonwealth. And it is surrounded by metric countries*, so under those circumstances, it only makes sense to use metric.
________________
* Presumably -- I honestly don't know what system the majority of other African countries use.
I have yet come across an American using the metric system that is not working in some tech industry which requires metric, MS, Apple, Dell, etc.
pbilk1 you just found one. I use it in physics class
smart people use metric.....the people of usa....well......except the scientists and engineers, they are .....hmmm...lets say less than stellar....
Sure you have. Americans buy Coca-Cola in 2 liter bottles. They buy handgun ammunition in 9mm caliber. They buy cocaine by the kilo, or kilogram. These are 3 of the most American things you can do.
The military uses metric system.
One of my favourite movies is The Green 1.6km.
You could hold a 5K run on Three Mile Island also.
1.6093km
Explain to me how pounds are shortened to lb.
Is pound pronounced lpoundb.
Very easy to explain,, if you say pound very quickly after drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels your lips will not move except except for uttering the sound lll bbb. Try saying gallons and pints and you will get "pd" (pissed)
It might be me. But I think you missed a lot. The US is a signatory to the treaty de metre, so yes you're already based on metric, a very large percentage of you military uses metric, and engineering firms do. I find it interesting that you left so much out.
Actually, in the video I do explain that the United States already uses the metric system for about half of all things it measures. at 4:25
And also, inches are defined in mm, 25.4 mm to be exact.
Strangely we still partially use Imperial here in the UK. Our speed limits are still in miles rather than kilometers, and we still measure screen sizes in inches.
Exactly, it is quite mixed up still in the UK. Beer is still sold in pints (568ml) which is slightly different to the US pint which is 473ml I believe, as is the US gallon compared to the imperial gallon, which fuel economy is still measured in on cars here differing to the US measurements, along with mph. Even though we fill up fuel in litres so an extra conversion has to take place to measure the amount of fuel needed for x journey. And as Peter mentioned, we measure distances officially on roads in miles, but use yards as opposed to feet (US) for shorter distances on roads.
@Stanoje Zlatanovic the UK uses the system that sounds the most dramatic. In summer it's 80 Fahrenheit, rather than 28 Celsius. In winter it's -10 C rather than 20 F. A sports car accelerates from 0 to 100km/h in 4 seconds, yet a range rover takes 300ft to stop from 60mph. That sports car is very light at 900kg, the range rover is a 4500lbs behemoth.
It makes perfect sense that way.
90m way to stop from 96 km/h is a very normal time. And 2 tons (metric) isn't that heavy, except when you compare it with a sports car.
And if you want dramatic temperature, go full Kelvin
+FactoryofRedstone
Here's what I don't get, though: If everything is base-10 to you non-Americans, then why is 1000 kilograms a "tonne" instead of a "megagram"?
🤔
Simply because you dont often deal with a class of things of which one weighs 2g - but the other youre comparing it to (cars, bolts etc) weighs for example 1000000 times as much, i.e. 2000kg or 2t. So we use convenient names for base1000 like "kilo/k". But: If needs be, we can quickly calculate between those hugely different sizes, because its still the same base unit, grams. For example, if in medicine, the doctor tells the nurse to give the patient 0.1% per bodyweight of a substance, and you weigh 80kg, its 80kg/1000 = 80g. And if this medicine has the density of water, it conveniently is also 80ml of volume. Simple, isnt it. And if the Aussies managed to convert within less than 2 years, you, the greatest country in the world, could do it in 1. :)
I'm sorry, but... what? Which UK have you been to? 28C is the height of summer heat and it's rare to get down to -10C in the winter (only the older generation uses Fahrenheit). Car accelerations are generally stated as 0 - 60 mph in x.y seconds (as this is what we use) and the weight of a car would be stated as 0.9 tons... and if you wanted to go imperial for the weight of a car you wouldn't use lbs you'd say 2 tonnes
5:30 Did he just call Myanmar a "tiny" country? It has a population of over 50 million, buddy!
He talked about geographical size
@@Testimony_Of_JTF I mean it is still not that small, 40th largest country. Quite large.
I am from Myanmar (Burma). What you were saying many people in Myanmar (Burma) use metric system is wrong. In my country, only a few people use metric system (just some parts of the capital city) such as supermarkets, import and exports business ( only large companies). Majority of the population still use combination of Imperial System and Traditional System. The government try to use metric system by replacing miles with km in the road signs. But it didn't work and caused many problems due to misinterpretation of the units. When we buy rice, meat, and food from retail shops or local markets, we still use traditional system. For measuring length, height, distance, area, weight, we use Imperial system.
+Aung Phyo Ko Thank you for sharing this!
Tell those guys to stop killing Buddhist and Hindus
Keep on killing each other. Give atheism a chance
You should had mentioned the US spacecraft explosion due to the usage of the two systems
Well the UK still used miles and yards on roads. Also we still measure our weight in stones. And we still measure fuel and usage of fuel in miles per gallon. So the UK can be added to the list.
The UK is kind of like Guatemala or Belize in that regard- the metric system is "official" there according to the government, but several people there still do not use it anyway.
We measure fuel in litres, just usage in MPG.
Outer Spaced yep
It's not just some people, official road signs use MPH, but not KPH.
local signs or federal signs?
SI system create for international trade, every place have different local units, India, China , Arabs, Africans, Aztecs, etc (China have 10 style system long before Europa). But people still use local unit in many country like Thailand rai (ไร่ = 1600 m²), ngan (งาน = 100 m²), wa (วา = 2 m); Việt Nam lượng/cây (37,5 g), chỉ (3,75 g), tạ (100 kg), or some SI units have local name, one example cây số (km). Every country I visit most people use kg wrong, kg is MASS unit not WEIGHT/FORCE unit. Newton (N) is SI weight/force unit. I surprise near year 2020 US still not modernize.
"Every country I visit most people use kg wrong, kg is MASS unit not WEIGHT/FORCE unit."
They implicitly mean the amount of force generated by that mass in the ambient gravity. They're not using it wrong but merely being somewhat inaccurate in their wording (because accurate wording would be needlessly cumbersome).
@@seneca983 wow you really like really big words
@@seneca983 SI system add Newton force unit late around year 1948 (pressure unit Pascal too) cause this problem. Old engineering book before this time use kg force (no good). But if people need exact mass (ex: gold) they use balance scale for cancel gravity problem.
"Standard" when only the us uses it
"Local Standard"?
@dolofonos yes. that one. the country with only 330 million people. the rest of us 7,2 BILLION people on this earth are waiting for you guys. can you get with the program?
@dolofonos Only the US, China will become the biggest economy and they have over 1.4 billion people what will your argument be then?.
@dolofonos a hole
Hey Mr. Beat, don't forget about us in The Bahamas...we're still on the Standard System as well. Gas sold in gallons and speed in m.p.h.
I have a digital speedometer in my car that I can switch from MPH to kmp/h and the touch of a button, so I’m ready.
nice, dude
And not everyone does, there are still tons of cars out there with analog speedometers and while Kmp/h is on there they are small and not nearly as useful.
Come on USA can pay a billion dollars for some useless stealth bomber but cant fork couple of million to step out of the middle age this is ridiculous.
'Ridiculous' is when most of your so-called allies do not adhere to their prior treaty obligations and your home country has to make up the difference in monetary and human cost to maintain the agreed status quo. Would it also be ridiculous 'when' the EU in future is invaded, and the only response from the US would be to only send '300 hospital workers' as its total commitment to such an alliance? Such overtly one-sided treaties are probably soon to end; and, the cost of real/imaginary expenditures will have to be borne by 'the local controlling elite'.
'Extreme Ridiculousness' can also be viewed within international trade imbalances wherein so-called VAT is stringently applied to one's imports; but, is NOT applied to products and services that are exported.
Within the question of equitable 'fairness', would it be 'reasonable' for the US to apply a 25%+ VAT (or some multiple of 10) on all imports into the US from the EU? Total silence to follow instead of a reasonable reply.
The US adopted the metric system in 1845. That's the government mind you. The people said F%#h that and used both.
Look, we're 'Murica! - we OWN the world!
Americans using the imperial system doesn't bother me.
Americans on the internet or other international forms of media/communication talking about miles and gallons and pounds DOES bother me.
For the same reason English is generally accepted to be the go-to language for international communication that's directed at a general non-specific audience wouldn't it make sense to use the Metric system in the same way?... It annoys me because if I want to read something like that I (and all other readers) have to do conversion in our minds or using a calc./aid, when it would have taken much less effort if the writer/speaker did it themselves (1 person doing conversion is less work than X amount of readers/listeners having to do it).
That is exactly why we don't use the metric system. We have no pictures in our minds to go along with the words meter, millimeter etc. I do the same when I hear metric units used. Convert them to Imperial units.
You don’t have to read the comment. If you want to fully understand what I’m talking about YOU can do the conversions. Just like I would have to if I wanted to understand your comment.
It bothers you? Why? If you don't understand just do a search on your phone/PC. Quite easy. Just like English. I often get emails in Swedish, Finnish and Hindi and my PC actually is quite good at translating. We have pounds in the UK/US. Each to their own.
the imperial system is defined by the metric system, all physical calculations are also metric.
kastrup2dk, the imperial system is entirely different than metric and the standard system because Kelvin is imperial units; Celsius is metric, and standard units is measured in Fahrenheit whenever it comes to temperature, and even whenever it comes to measurement the imperial system is entirely different than metric and standard units.
@@RoronoaZoro-ur6hr kelvin is not an imperial unit. it's a standard unit. also, kelvin and degree celcius has the same magnitude. (0 K=-273,15°C, 100 K= -173,15°C)
2:38 But wouldn't they encourage the Metric System because it WAS French!? The French helped out A LOT during the (American) Revolutionary War. But otherwise nice video.
Exactly! That's what I originally thought. This was the biggest surprise for me when I researched this video. Many in the country in the 1790s though was deeply afraid of what was happening in France. It was actually a major issue of the Election of 1800. Sure, France is a major reason why the U.S. is a country, but the French Revolution was so chaotic that Americans quickly wanted to distance themselves.
You got the decimal currency from French metrics. Not the strange UK currencies.
dskmb3 well for 2 centuries even then they were pivotal in The Independance being a major ally until france literally went broke after spending all its money to help the US rebel so i see no reason that we as Americans dislike the French.
dskmb3 yeahp
dskmb3
not really. there was a large thirst for liberty and the for so called enlightenment. even in the nobility.
maybe you should not project your own weaknesses onto others. not that much.
but actually I never heard a French historian pretending that we helped the US for liberty and liberty only in the first place anyway. so who cares.
The point is that France helped and it still makes you so buthurt that you have to find an unpleasant and negative motive behind it. Unbelievable.
“Welcome to McDonald’s may I take your order?”
“Yes I’d like a 0.113398 kilogrammer with cheese.”
I think you're being sarcastic, but in case you're not, that can go the other way too. I'm 183 cm, not 6 ft 0.472 in. I'm 76 Kg, not 167.551 lbs. Going metric does not mean being overly precise, that number would just be rounded to 100 grams (0.1 Kilograms). But I think you're being sarcastic, so forgive my ranting.
I thought this was going to be another pointless rant about the obvious, but got my mind blown learning about Liberia's history.
They're called United States customary units and they're based on the metric system. Also, fahrenheit is better than celsius for everyday use.
That's just because you grown up with that. Fahrenheit is the meassurement of one man's feeling while Celcius is a physical degree on earth environment like the Meter and Liter is based on decimal system.
Why ? I've been using Celsius my whole life and I find it very convenient. Especially the fact that negative temperatures mean freezing !
U.S. Customary units were derived from British Imperial Units but they were standardized to the International System of Units a long time ago. Fahrenheit is better for the weather because it offers a 0 to 100 degree scale that most accurately correlates with human survivability. It's not perfect because it wasn't designed for that but if it's 0 degrees or 100 degrees you are in danger. The size of the degree is smaller too which makes it more accurate without the decimal.
@@Ken19700 "Fahrenheit is better for the weather because it offers a 0 to 100 degree scale that most accurately correlates with human survivability. "
Sorry but I don't get it... When it's 0 it freezes, what is more accurate than that ?
"the size of the degree is smaller too which makes it more accurate without the decimal."
Then why make Fharenehit even smaller then ? You point is just based on the fact you grew up with it. here in Europe Celsius makes sense to everyone. When it's between 20 degrees and 30 degrees it's warm. After 35 it gets very hot...
Also 100 degrees F is based on the body temperature from a horse...
@@moulinexm7600 "When it's 0 it freezes" I'm just goingbto assume that you are talking about water. The freezing point of water changes with elevation which is why Celsius isn't part of the international system of units. Ultimately as far as measuring it goes, no one cares about the freezing or boiling points of water. They do care about the temperature outside though and like I said, Fahrenheit offers the only 0 to 100 scale that covers the range people can survive in.
I am a huge fan of the Metric System. But, as my 8th grade Science teacher pointed out to me when he sat me and the other Super Nerds down one rather memorable lunch period to explain what it took to make the transition. After half an hour of calculations and statistical factoring, we figured out exactly what you pointed out: The transition would be a super pain in the butt. The combination of a continent-spanning empire, population size and economic and educational inertia make it impractical at best to transition.
In addition of educating everyone, resigning millions of miles of roadways and altering maps, think of all the retooling and whatnot that industry would have to go through. The best time to make the transition would be during a major economic collapse on par with The Great Depression. The last major recession of 2007-2011(the period varies depending on who you talk to) would have been a good time, if it had been more catastrophic.
Otherwise, we'll have to wait for the current trend where everyone is in a natural state of transition to finish. As you pointed out, depending on many factors, Americans already use Metric daily to some extent, often without thinking about it. Give it anywhere from five to twenty years before we're ready to swap out the MPH for KPH. I mean, just think of all the old cars with Imperial dashboards, and the expense of updating them and dealing with confused drivers. That's just one example.
Anyway, just my twopence.
By the way. You know you're a nerd when you consider a lunch recess spent discussing socioeconomic ramifications of transitioning measurement systems with a teacher "memorable". Lol
$1.27
I was actually thinking about the car problem. What do you do with old cars with mph speedometers?
I came to a conclusion: Just put two scales on it. One in mph and one in km/h.
Make that the standard for 20 years or so and there will be barely any cars left with only one scale. Then you can swap out the signs and people just need to read the other scale.
Even better: You can start changing individual roads and don't need to do everything at once, since drivers have both options available.
It will still cause some confusion, but I feel like this would mitigate a lot of that already.
+Yndostrui Yeah, you make it so that for about 20-30 years new things (signs, cars, industry...) comes with both (at first still emphasizing the imperial and later emphasizing the metric), since you are only changing things when they would be changed either way it won't really increase the cost and it would also get people used to the new measurements. Once the transition period is over, very few things would need to be swapped immediately and new things would start coming with metric measurements only. In about 50-60 years imperial would be 100% gone and people wouldn't even notice.
Yndostrui And that is pretty much what is happening. Starting in the mid 90s, it became an industry standard to have dual system dials. It's a good idea anyway, what with Canada and Mexico as our neighbors. However, it's just a standard, and not a requirement; thus, cheap ass cars like the 2004 Kia Rio I'm hauling off to the junkyard next week, don't have the dual system dials.
NASA uses metric system for their measurements
Yes. Didn't that confusion go badly...
sometimes not, and it doesn't work out well. lol
Since 1991, Yes.
You are Abhay. NASA wants every measurements to be accurate. Using standard would give headache by changing inches to feet to yard
Shame Lockheed Martin didn't!
I was taught the metric system in middle and high school. So, I know both. It's possible to know two systems...
Possible and meaningless.
Also worth mentioning in the UK they use Imperial for their roads. Miles and MPH
So we don't,t use the metric system simply because we're lazy and we don't,t feel like adapting
The US doesn't use the imperial system, UCS is to the imperial system what American English is to British English.
If you work on a car in the US you are going to need a set of metric spanners. It's not so hard.
+Mr. Beat True. I was just pointing out that when necessity dictates it is very easy to move over to metric so most of the arguments against such a move are pretty weak. All US customary units are defined in terms of the metric system anyway and have been since 1893 so there would be no loss of accuracy. Seems to me the US could go totally metric by 2020 if it chose but politicians focused on short term electoral prospects are not going to stick their necks out on metrication despite the obvious long term benefits. If the metric system was exclusively used in schools perhaps folks would not be so scared of it.
Excellent points. I agree. Ultimately, I think markets will pressure the U.S. to go all metric eventually, not its government.
I have no clue how the imperial system survived after the first set of imperial tools were invented. I have a metric/imperial socket set in my garage and one day it fell to the floor and all the bits scattered everywhere. Putting the metric ones back in order. simple. 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm. Imperial system, you need to be Stephen Hawking to do the fraction conversion in your head...
5/32, (6/32 = 3/16), 7/32 , (8/32 = 4/16 = 1/4) how the hell did someone think this was a good idea?
Dogphlap No one is scared of metric. Most just aren't interested. They tried it in the 1970s. I was taught the metric system. It was seen as a hassle. Two bloody math classes. I grew to hate it.
Mr. Beat it's happening slowly but surely. We may end up using metric as much as Canada and the UK use it. Imperial will probably be around for a while in the plumbing and housing construction industry.
We use the metric system for precise things like science or things that need to be measured. On a casual basis, we use the imperial system for things like approximating because the terms are relatable(a foot is almost the length of a foot)
If and when you do transition, I'm 100% positive you'll quickly find he metric units to be equally convenient for casual use!
its always fight between me and my dad that I measure using SI my dad uses imperial system
Who of you is faster in conversions and in calculations?
Vinay krishna D.K *Ask the US Americans to DUMP Pounds and Stones: LBS (Lots of Bullshit). Only three countries USA and two backward corrupt “Banana Republics: Burma aka Myanmar and Liberia. Think about your children GO METRIC “Inch x Inch” (in brackets, parentheses) if it is so fucking DIFFICULT Bangkok Johnnie CarSanook Media THAILAND*
In fact, there is a great deal of metric usage in the United States. The difference is that we believe in liberty. We do not coerce the use of any particular system of units in contexts where it doesn’t matter. If you sit at a bar and order a glass of beer, it is likely to e in a glass sized by fluid ounces. But if it is a European beer (Belgian beer is popular now) the glass is likely to be specific to the brand of beer and sized in decimal fractions of a liter. Nobody here (in the US) cares.
"The metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!" (Abe Simpson).
xD I love all the other measuring systems, such weird names and literally no one knows them
I'm from a metric country, but I also use the "standard" system quite often - comes with the job, etc. Here's the thing: the american standard system isn't too bad as long as it's used as a customary unit. The advantage of it, are its many divisors. It's easy to divide something up in halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, etc. Those advantages make a lot of sense when dealing with smaller numbers in trade but also lengths of timber etc - things you work on with your hands.
In almost all places around the globe we still use Horsepower for internal combustion engines, and the UK runs on gallons of fuel, not liters. People are measured in stone and pound, and not metres.
And as an engineer, it's only natural to switch from one system to the other, as in some cases (like electronics) both are used at the same time (standard PCB raster is in inches, but SMD components often use metric footprints).
Exactly. While Metric is all fine and good for scientific fields, base-10 is *terrible* for every day use.
@@JakeSnake07 I wouldn't say it's terrible, but there's an argument for keeping it. Below 1 inch it's common to use decimal fractions of inches, too. The problem is, the two systems don't line up. If one metre was *exactly* three feet (1yd = 1m), there would be no problems either way, that's where the actual inconvenience comes from - and the problems.
Most likely reason for the US is because it would take too much of the federal budget to convert all the highways to the metric system
They have to get new signs eventually anyway.
No, it wouldn't take that much of the federal budget. Many signs are not federal, but state ones. ;-)
And that is a one time cost, which will save a lot of money later. Like no need to have different speedometers in US cars compared to all others.
+xamarmm, have you noticed the size of CD and Blue Ray disks? Yes, they are 120 mm or 12 cm. And yes, 127 mm are ok too, as long as it is in mm. No need to have a exact even number in a length.
By the way. Inches are already defined in metric. One inch are EXACTLY 25.4 mm. No more, no less.
You could simply use decals on a lot of the signs.
Mr. Beat That's not the issue, the issue is all the exits need to be renumbered because right now in most states they are all based on miles from the boarder. Either they all need to be converted to KM from the boarder in which case you would have decimal exits (it's already a pain to deal with exit 0 I don't need decimals in exit numbers) or we would need another system.
I use Toyota Corolla’s as my Measurement System
Liberia and Myanmar already switched to Metric System, the US is the only country in the world to use archaic imperial system.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the mighty u$ dollar system metric????????
Cash has no system
I think the US was one of the first countries to adopt a metric currency. Before that, most currencies didn’t have a decimal currency.
No, it's mixed. Lowest value money is a Penny (also called a cent), next a Nickel = 5 Pennies, then a Dime = 10 Pennies then a Quarter = 25 Pennies, then the 50 cent piece or half a dollar, then the dollar. These are all coins. Paper money is 1 dollar bill, 2 dollar bill, 5 dollar bill, 10 dollar bill, 20 dollar bill 50 dollar bill 100 dollar bill. The US stopped printing larger bills in 1945 and took out of circulation in 1969.
You have confused "metric" with the "decimal system".
They don't use the metric system on Mars and they defend the imperial system by making metric spacecraft crash.
Actually, all measures in space are metric. It was one system that sent it's measure in Imperial units that failed.
Yes, that was Lockheed Martin, the main contractor on the ill-fated Mars Climate Orbiter project. They shockingly sent rocket thrust data to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in pounds instead of newtons.
Now, I'm one of those "brick heads" who defend the use of the U.S. Customary system in ordinary day-to-day use, but even I know that in science and engineering, the metric system is the only way to go. Back in 1999 when that failure occurred, it amazed me to learn that Lockheed had used pounds instead of newtons. Who the hell uses anything but the metric system when designing spacecraft?
Captain Quirk Metric isn't superior for science. Metric allows for easy conversion. The error was not in either system. Had the information been all one or the other, the problem could have been avoided.
The metric system is simpler. I am fluent in both I even know things like the number of cu inches in a cubic foot. I know both systems cold. Metric is simpler. The only way a person could think it isn't is if they don't know the metric system.
Also metric is base ten, arithmetic is base ten, they are compatible. You can argue all you like I'll write 100 reasons why metric is simpler.
Base ten is not all of it.
If an object moves one meter in one seconds, it moves at 1 meter per second.
If the object changes it speed by one meter per second every second, the acceleration is one meter per second squared.
If that objects weights one kilo, the total force applied to it is one newton.
If one newton is applied to an object and we move it one meter, we have delivered one joule of work.
If we deliver one joule of work over one second you deliver one watt.
If an electric field is one volt per meter, it exerts a force on a charge at one newton per coulomb.
I know some imperial units also matches up like this, but they are not connected without conversion factors to units like volt, watts and joule.
Most of the time metric is beautiful.
2:21 The UK and England aren't the same thing
The first one is initials for something and the second is a city.
D8W2P4 see what you did there
Will there be a vote for England to leave the UK as well?
Who cares
You expect Americans to understand that?
Half of them thinks Scotland is located in England.
Everyone are gangstas until Burmese Teacher ask u a bunch of questions which are not in your text book😅
lot easier than using imperial !
You've been brainwashed. I used to live in China where they generally use the metric system and I didn't find a single thing the entire time I was there that was easier with metric units. The conversions that people tout as being easier are just not commonly done.
Plus, in order to get the units to line up with that, you get really awkward measures like meters and centimeters that are too long or too short to be of use. Then you get things being sold by the half-kilogram because it turns out that a pound is a much more convenient size for selling things.
It's common for Americans to be taught both systems and then to never use the metric measures again. Mostly because it's just not that helpful when in the US. And outside the US it's only helpful because everybody else is using the other system of measure.
Aye because diving ten centimetres by 3 is *soooo* much easier than dividing 12 inches by 3. And ordering *precisely* 568.261 millilitres of beer is *sooo* much easier than ordering an imperial pint of bitter.
You must be stupid. who would order 568.261 millilitres of beer? You would order a beer, nota precise quantity. And even if you ordered the quantity, one would drink half a litre of beer... And why would someone divide 10 centimetres (or a decimetre) by three? That's just so specific and doesn't make any sense.
*Using your logic*
Yeah, because diving 0.62137119224 miles by ten is much easier than dividing 1km by ten...
You just used examples to make imperial look better...
It's called exaggeration dumbass.
Even still, you could order "half a litre" but even in the Netherlands they use a pseudo-imperial system for ordering beer - they say "Een pintje" and not "Een halve liter". If you cook with someone in the Netherlands, when they say "a cup" they mean any cup - not a specific size cup. Which is easier? Adding "A tablespoon" of baking soda, or measuring out "20 millitres" of baking soda? And guess who orders "a precise quantity"? Everyone who lives somewhere which still serves the pint!
I always end up finding myself in situations where I need to divide things by 3, I have no idea about you.
Your "my logic" example isn't brilliant - dividing something by ten shifts the decimal to the left one, making it 0.062137119224.
You are just using very specific situations to favour your side. It's alright to say that you don't wanna change because you are used to the Imperial nonsense but you are just fooling yourself if you cant admit that the metric system is a lot easier for scientific research and as good as Imperial for daily tasks. Also, it is costing milliards of dollars to the US for exporting goods in metric. They need to change the packaging to sell them nationally and internationally. I understand that change is sometimes scary but being the only developed nation having the Imperial system is just holding you back financially and socially
Sorry rest of the world. We don't use metric because it's too French.
Schmdty
Better send the Statue of Liberty home then...
You copied the French when they chose to drive on the wrong side of the road in their revolution, but refused to copy their best innovation - the metric system
*a-hem* We drive on the right side of the road, just the wrong side of the car!
If you hate the French so much, just pay them back for their decisive help during the independence war. Just give them back the statue of liberty. Just give them back Louisiana since France sold it to the US to a price next to nothing... Also, rename all the cities that were founded by the French: New Orleans, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, Mobile, Vincennes, etc.
It was too baguettified to be used.
You should've dumped the empirical system when you dumped the British and their tea.
For those asking, US Interstate 19 In tucson-Nogales is the only metric interstate since it connects the USA and Mexico, so its more efficient fir people traveling up to tucson/phoenix.i drive by it every week.
Which countries still use 60 seconds, 24 hours, 7 days and 52 weeks? lol
Every single one, which is sadly why we can't switch.
"And they brought american culture and traditions " hahahahahaha, that was a funny joke.
@@bramble6584 to some foreigners and Americans think America has no culture or traditions only native tribes are vaild.
" It's too French" lmfao
In U.K. road distances are signed in miles and yards but most U.K. drivers do not realise that the blue backed distance marker plates on motorways (spaced at 500 metre intervals) are in kilometres and half-kilometres
Bro, I've been to myanmar 3 times since 2017. Everything there is metric. Stop perpetuating old information as current.
6:10 😑
Didn't learn the metric system till i got to college... still no mental picture of what anything is... and my god does the metric system make everything so much easier... i f***ing HATE problems written in imperial.
I can write a conversation for anything metric into a problem without thinking but all stop for imperial conversations 😖
Laughing man788 I learned it in 4th grade
So you are not smart enough to use two systems. One you grew up with and the other you learned in college.
genius! you were able to state how much of a high horse America is sitting on. LOL
The UK changed to metric officially when I was a boy but the only real changes at first were in the money. I learned in metric at school but many shops still used British imperial measurements which are different from US ones. I was an adult by the time metric became compulsory in shops and I remember there was a bit of a stooshie at first but people soon got used to it. Important to note is that imperial measures could still be put on products as long as the metric equivalent was also there and more prominent. Nowadays there are still a few non metric units I use in certain circumstances. Pints for milk or beer. Miles for distances and mph for speed- road signs and car speedometers normally use miles though the speedos will also have km. The only other one I can think of is I think in quarter ounces for weighing loose sweets- the only important weight for me before the metric system arrived!
(In my misspent youth I also used ounces for buying hashish but I stopped doing that a long time ago.)