U.S. AMERICAN Reacts - Is the Metric System Better than the Imperial System?
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- Опубліковано 20 бер 2023
- Is the metric system really that much better than the imperial system? The answer is obvious to me, but what are your thoughts?
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Original Video -- bit.ly/3FCSrKa
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Art is the lie that enables us to see the truth. - Pablo Picasso - Розваги
The metric system is just LOGIC!
Thank Good! We have someone: 1, 10, 100, ...
1000, 10.000,..
One thing my fellow Americans have difficulties with ....
Exactly!
Americans be like: Ah yes it's 50 busses long 20 burgers tall and 3 trump fat
1 Liter of water is a cubic-decimeter (10x10x10centimeters), it weighs 1 kilogramm, to heat it up fron 20°Celsius to 21°Celsius it takes 1 kilocalory.
1gallon of water is 231 kubic inches, it weighs 8.35 lb wt. I will not calculate the amount of calories it takes to heat it up from 70 °F to 71°F because my brain has a meltdown by now.
YES!! As a chemistry teacher I'm one of the ones just banging my head on a wall half the time. Metric is just more scalable and easier to work with. Not even mentioning the integration with science. That's just too obvious.
I don't have a clue how your channel popped up on my feed but I'm glad it did. It's refreshing. Not afraid to take on heavy stuff as well as more benign things.
Thank you! Welcome aboard!
Metric is definately better though some of the scales don't match. For example meter or gram isn't that much but farad or tesla is awfully lot.
The only reason we have a base ten system is because we have ten fingers, very childish if you think about it. If you look into the history of numbering systems, one of the earliest was base twelve. Where you would use your thumb to count on the segments of your other four fingers.
Whereas imperial system is based on the doubling of numbers 2, 4, 8, 16; Much closer to binary... the basis of computers and AI.
Anyone who has to convert base ten to octa decimal or binary or hexadecimal knows how much more difficult it is.
Fractions work better than a base ten numbering system, base ten is sloppy. You can't represent a third or two thirds accurately in base ten, you just get a repeating decimal.
What is easier, 1/3 and 2/3, or .333333... and .666666... repeating... forever, just to express a simple fraction.
This video even got the ton wrong. It's not 2200 and so many odd pounds, it's 2000 pounds. The British and the Americans can't even agree on the British units.
Also Jefferson had the right idea in 1800 tell me about 17 years ago when they booted King George III of England, Jefferson and the Congress at the time said and take your shoe size with you as your standard of measurement.
Unfortunately it could only be enforced at the interstate and international level. Because it was powerful states rights interests who wanted to keep their legacy buildings in feet and inches and pounds and stuff.
Guess what else "states rights" was used to justify? (Hint: it's far worse than the bureaucratic nightmare that is keeping the foot. Today it's an issue of legacy civil rights hold over issues. Back then it was an issue of freedom and life [or the lack thereof, if you happen to be the wrong pigment]
I live in the U.S. and have been playing with the metric system for the last six months or so. My Google Maps is set to metric and it just makes sense. Before, it would tell me that I may have a turn in 800 feet, and I'd try to convert that into something more intuitive, like it being two and two-thirds football fields-but a conversion was required. But when it tells me to turn in 800 meters, I know right off the bat that that's about 8 football fields.
When I'm cooking in the kitchen, if the package says a serving size is 56 grams, I use my kitchen scale and weigh out 56 grams. Easy.
I even have the weather app on my phone display temperatures in Celsius. That took a bit more getting used to, but I now think: 0-10 = coat; 10-20 = jacket; 20-30 = T-shirt and shorts; 30-40 is stay in air conditioning; 40+ is too hot for anything.
HILARIOUS - The base measurement in the American system is the football field?
@SusanMadge-vl9gx not American but I have been condition to measure length in Toyota corollas.
-10 to 0 = thick coat
-20 to -10 = Winter suit
-30 to -20 = Arctic gear
-40 to -30 = Minnesotans say "alright, it's getting a little fresh outside..."
Working with metric also saves a lot of ressources. Building materials in the USA come in metric because that's what the supply industry is using. But the costumers mostly work with imperial and then produce a lot of waste because the imperial system is less precise.
There was a test by a construction company where they build 2 identical houses. One with the blueprints in metric and one with the blueprints in imperial. The metric house produced one wheelbarrow full of waste while the imperial house produced 2 trucks full of waste. The construction company is using metric only since then.
There are 25,4 millimeters in 1 inch but the usuall measuring tape has just 1/16 of an inch as the smallest unit. That's how much more precise metric is. And don't ask me why an inch is devided by potencies of 2 instead of 10 or something that makes sense. But as he said in the video, people that married their cousins.
Doesn't the USA measure timber in imperial? I would have thought they would have timber came in increments of 12 inches
@@geoffhughes225 The base product is mostly measured in imperial and the customers have their blueprints in imperial. the end product like timber plates, bars et cetera mostly come in metric. They are in something like 90x120 cm and this has to be converted to imperial because imperial because the customers don't know metric.
There is a easy way to see if something was measured in imperial or metric. It was measured in metric if it isn't in full inches but something like 39 3/8".
That must be the reason why puplic restrooms are different ^^
Yes, it is about marry your first cousin. But there where a ship bringing the metric system, from France, the country that helped USA in its direst, ship shunk. Washington, Jefferson(ambassdor to France), ok stay what we where given by Britts.😄
What was meant by "people who married their cousins", was "royalty"... because of things like, a 'foot', was the length of the kings foot... and an inch, was the length of the last segment of the kings thumb. that lead to measurements changing when kings/queens changed(died)... and... your local shopkeeper, would use his own thumb to measure stuff, so you always hoped your shopkeeper had big hands. lol.
Hi Nate. I’m in U.K. and am now used to the metric system but due to my age I grew up with the imperial system in school but then we converted so I learnt that as well. However if someone now asks me how tall something is my brain still visualises it in imperial.
A funny thing that happened to me only 2 weeks ago. My son is putting some film on my French doors to stop the heat coming into my apartment in the summer so he rang me for me to get the measurements. I measured the glass and told him that it’s was 23.5 wide. He said. “Bloody hell mum that can’t be right.” It was at that point I realised I’d measured it using my sewing tape measure which has inches one side and metric the other side. I’d used the inches side. Of course my son was brought up using only metric. The actual number in metric was 60cm. (A massive difference in numbers).
I did have a laugh about it and put it down to a senior moment.
I think the word he used in our conversation was “dinosaur” 😂😂😂
Note how the actual offender was leaving out the unit on the measurement.
Had it been "23.5 inches wide" there would not have been a miscommunication, maybe just a comment like "do it again in metric, please".
Leaving off the units is is mostly the reason all the conversion errors happened in the first place.
I had math teachers insisting on using the whole thing, because it mattered. Any time someone didn't, they asked "twenty-three what? Apples? Oranges?"
So how many Stones do you weigh? Even US dont have stones😄!
On roads, do you still using miles? 🤔
GB or UK is now Brexit. Why? In USA coins says, in latin: E Pluribus unum. Different but together.!
@@davidalons0 Yes, they do, and when they calculate gas milage miles per gallon, they're not even using Imperial gallons, but US gallons.
The most annoying part of imperial measurements is adding/subtracting sizes.. 1/8" + 3/32" + 1/64".. have to first convert everything to a common denominator etc.. and that's only within one unit. In metric, the worst conversion you have to do is shifting the decimal point forward or backward.
For everyday life, there's enough similarity between some units to memorize.. a meter is roughly 40 inches, a liter is roughly a quarter gallon, a kilogram is roughly two pounds..
Adding those fractions is still not the worst. The worst is when you need to add multiple measurements that were done in different units. 3 yards + 6 feet + 4 inches = ?
That's when the system is a complete mess.
-Define one meter.
-Divide it by 10 to get a decimeter
-Make a cubic container with one decimeter sides. Now you have one litre.
-Fill the container with water. Now you have one kilogram.
-Put the container in the freezer. When the water is mixed with ice the temperature is 0 degrees Celsius.
- Heat the water. When it starts boiling the temperature is 100 degrees Celsius.
Some Americans hate the metric system, for whatever reason, but they'll still buy 1.5 l bottles of soda, order the medicine in cc units, use 35 mm film, use 9 mm ammo, will track how many grams of fat, sugar and protein, they eat every day, and boast about how many liters of displacement their cars have.
Plus that the US Dollar has been among the first currenies to be 10-base money, which is the main property of the metric system. So if those people really hate the metric system so much, they really ought to stop using it. 😅
Not to mention data measurement. Americans don't buy SSDs into their computers using these fictive imperial units.
• 1 binch = 25 bits
• 1 boot (pl. beet) = 305 bits or 12 binches and 5 bits
• 1 byle = 1631 bits, or 5 beet and 3 binchs and 6 bits
They simply adopted the Metric System in IT without question, without begging for binch, boot, and byle, and would swear if manufacturers switched to these. This is the actual moment when Americans have admitted, unspokenly, that the Imperial System is lame, and that they only cling to it because they are used to it.
Something cool about the metric system is that because 10³ = 1000, there are simple relationships between distance and volume units. Also, 1L of water = 1kg for almost all practical purposes. So they all just work together...
10mm³ = 1cm³ = 1mL, or 1g of water
10cm³ = 1L, or 1kg of water
1m³ = 1000L, or 1 ton of water
I worked with Cargo International Transportat for about 10 years.
My country uses Metric System (like almost all countries). When we make the Air Way Bill we use kg and m³ for everything. When we move the cargo from US we must send them both measurements. The kg and m³ to the tecnical crew (to know if it will fit in the airplane and if it's safe to put the cargo in the plane) and in pounds and square feet to the commercial crew to allow them to give us the price of this. It's insane.
I have only known the Metric system, from shoe size, shirt size, to TV screen size, height, weight etc. Having travelled to the USA, some people are aware of the Metric system, and are helpful. Others are just backward. When I told friends in the US, that the Apollo missions, where done in Metric, and converted to Imperial(American measurements) they didn't know. Also the man who designed the rockets, did it in Metric. And he worked for the Nazis, before going to the USA, didn't believe me.
god bless
they need it.
That's something really weird here in germany. TV / screen sizes, rim / tire sizes and speaker sizes are usually in inches and I don't know why. I guess not everything has to make sense ^^
Where are you from? Because in Belgium we measure TV screen size with inches
@@NuriBass69just the american soft power. Backward but efficient
Metric is also very nice if you want to calculate something with water. Let's say you wanna have an aquarium for example... 1kg is exactly 1l of water. And 1l of water is exactly 1dm^3. You can up or downscale this if you need to so because 10cm is 1dm and 10dm is 1m, 1dm^3 is 1.000cm^3 and 1.000dm^3 is 1m^3. So by knowing how many liters your aquarium should have you also immediately know how big its gonna be and what weight it will have with very easy and minor calculation :)
"1kg is exactly 1l of water."
No, it is not. Not for using the word exactly. Not without given temperature because the density depends on the temperature.
I know it is a little bit picky but for being exact there are exact numbers.
1l of 4°C cold water has a mass of 0.999975 kg. The water in the aquarium is maybe about 24.5°C. 100l of that water will have a mass of 99,7175 kg.
So you are off by 0.3% from the real number, which might not be important for most people
But 1l = 1kg is a quite close approximation which is good enough for calculations average people has to deal with.
@@helloweener2007 Oh man. Wanted to say something clever and now I'm the dumbass hahah. However thanks for correcting me, I really didn't know / haven't thought of that! But still a very nice technique for quick and easy calculations
@@christophkragolnik420
No, I don't think oyu are a dumbass.
I think that the 1l=1kg was even set at one point but with better measurement it has to be corrected. For household calculations it is still good.
@@christophkragolnik420 Should have said "almost exactly.."
@@christophkragolnik420 youre not wrong 1cm2 = 1 gram the end
Thanks for the video, I'm from the united states too and always wondered why we mix systems so much over here already.. It might be difficult to switch over at first, but the benefits seem pretty clear.
It shouldn't be that hard once you learn a few simple things. The hardest thing is to stop thinking in imperial.
Buy a measuring tool with meters then learn what is a centimeter (1/100th's of a meter) and a meter. DO NOT look how many inches or feet those are. DO NOT buy a measuring tool that has both, if possible. You do not need to know it. If you measure something in meters, you get a result in meters because a result in meters is what you're looking for.
After a bit of use you will have the spatial awareness of what, roughly, a meter or a centimeter is and you won't see the difference between how you use that instead of imperial.
Since conversions in metric system are something you can be taught in one short chat, once you stop trying to convert the units and start actually measuring things in metric system you've pretty much mastered it.
Think of it like this. If you learn a language and start thinking in that language, you can follow a normal conversation at a normal speed, you can answer instantly etc. But if you learn the meaning of the words and need to translate the words one by one, then try to make a sense of them (if the grammatical structure is different, for example), then you may not even understand the half the first phrase before the person you're talking with is starting his third one. That's the difference between two kinds of learning. Academic learning and assimilation. Language, like measurement system, need to be assimilated, not learned academically. That's why you should not learn them on basis of conversion but stand-alone...which is vastly easier with measurements than with language, by the way...
An often overlooked thing about metric is how easy you get a sensory understanding of what is what. Pour cold water into a box of 10 x 10 x 10 centimeters , lift it and you feel how heavy 1 litre of water is - 1 kg .
This is just a rule of thumb and not sientificly accurate - at least since the unit adjustment mentioned in the video - but it gives an easy and relatable idea how the metric dimensions interact.
Since the base is 10 in many practical applications you are left with just a few "broken" numbers in ratios to figure things out.
Since 1 litre of water at freezing point is 1kg and has a density of 1 , you know that 1000liters (1qm) are 1 ton. Liquid concrete for example has a density of 2.4 - this is the only ratio you need to calculate in any direction - how much volume is 1 ton of it (divide by 2.4) - how heavy is 1qm gonna be ( multiply by 2.4 ) and so on.
Still errors occur frequently through "in head" calculations if you screw up the decimal shift in head ^^ - I often struggle to get my volumes correct on monday mornings when converting my centimetre measures into m² or m³ of material to order 🤔
The world has chosen metric. Deal with it USA. Get on it!
You didn't cover temperature, that just makes sense in Celsius
Hi Nate, I'm a fellow American, and I just found your UA-cam page. I happen to love the metric system and have a simple exercise for you that I've used to help others visualize volume and mass, specifically Liter and Kilogram. Step 1, get a metric ruler and measure 10cm (100mm). Step 2 visualize or make a paper box that is 10cm x10cm x10 cm. That box has the volume of 1 liter. Step 3 Fill that box with cold water. The weight of that water is 1 Kilogram.
Likewise, if you make a tiny box measuring 1cm x 1cm x 1cm, you just made a volume of 1mL and the water of that volume will weigh 1g.🧐
1970's UK and Australia was a slow change. So you grew up with both.
And can visualize either. But I don't get fractions of an inch.
I am an engineer and as you say, pick one!
We had to learn both for measurement.
You get used to it quickly, the conversion factor can make a difference, 1" is 25.4 mm. But take it to more decimal places and it could make a difference.
Most things are metric now, but it wasn't when I started work 40 years ago!
As explained in the video, metric is easier
Thanks for clarifying as an engineer that the metric system is better Richard. But I wonder what are the negative sides of the metric system. As a German I feel automatically comfortable with the metric system but I can imagine that it has flaws as well. I remember an imperial system guy saying that the metric unit supposed to be equal to a certain 10th of millions of the earth span from North Pole to equator even though the earth hasn't a perfect sphere. Which made my head tilt like a German Schäferhund that didn't get it. What negative consequences could that have? Like a returning space shuttle could miss the landing spot?
@@tyronevaldez-kruger5313 North pole and south pole are direct opposites, so no matter the path you go, it's the exact same distance between them. Likewise, the equator is exactly in the middle of them. Between either of the poles and any point on the equator, in the direct, shortest line, the distance is the same.
Earth may not be a perfect sphere, but it is, at large, 'evenly flattened' pretty much.
By the way, the guys that calculated meter originally were off in one of their many calculations...so a meter is 0,001875% shorter than they expected...
@@kikixchannel I have no idea if 0,001875% matters in science and engineering. As a layman from a different professionaI say that number looks insignificant small but you never know. In Germany we say yokometer to the smallest measure unit. Idk the English word.
@@kikixchannel thanks for replying btw 👍🏾
@@tyronevaldez-kruger5313 A quick google search didn't reveal anything about the "yokometer", so i expect it's a bogus measurement used to discribe a very tiny distance.
For that we in Denmark use the word "Krilli milimeter".......
A krilli milimeter is defined as "The pubic hair of a female mouse, split in two and flattened with a hammer"
As you can see, it's a very tiny measurement, allthoug not very scientific. ;)
They didnt even talked about what I.think is the most beautiful thing about metric: conversions between different types of measures. Quoting Josh Bazzel: In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point
Please everyone take a look at Wikipedia under the keyword Metre_Convention. The USA signed in 1875 that they wanted to use the metric system, also 16 other nations. That was 150 years ago now! But what has happened since then? Gas stations in the USA don't sell liters, they sell gallons. The speedometer doesn't say km/h, but mph. Etc. etc.
When I was in the USA for the first time, I just thought... Where did I end up HERE?! I want to go back to the future.
Usually missed with this discussion is that the Inch is also decimalized, divided into ten parts too, where more precision is necessary. So instead of fractions you can use tenths, hundredths, thousandths.
10mm = 1cm
100 cm = 1m
1,000 m = 1km
100 milligrams= 1g
1000 gram = 1kg
1000kg = 1tonne
1000 millilitre = 1lt
1000 lt = 1kilolitre.
1ml = 1g
1lt = 1kg
1 tonne = 1kilolitre.
So simple
And don't get me started on Celsius and Fahrenheit :D.
Inch/foot/yard/acre etc.
It was old germanic messurements. Thumb/foot/how much land could plow in a day with 2 oxes.
Hey Nate! I love your videos! Just wanted to say the difference between your voice's volume and the video is a lot. I think the best result would be if the volume of your voice is the same as the video you're commenting on. I have to turn volume way up and then way down as soon as the video starts (or when I start to watch another YT video).
Okay here is the beauty of the metric system. The fact that its based on multiples of 10 is just the start. The other thing is the prefixes, for example Kio as a prefix means 1 thousand of. So 1 KILOmeter is you guessed it 1000 Meters, KILOgram is 1000 grams, KILOLitre is 1000 Litres, KILOTone, is 1000 Tonnes, etc. Milli means 1000th of so Millimetre is 1000th of a Metre, Milligram, 1000th of a gram, etc... No need for fractions, and very precise.
With Temperature Water freezes at 0 C and Boils at 100 c Simple, no weird numbers....
In the US it’s actually mostly regular people holding on to the imperial system. Business use metric to a real high degree because it’s more precise, the military have been using it for a long time (all the NATO allies use metric), medical industry is metric. So in the long run you’re going to get there. But with this said we in the rest of the world also have some non metric things here and there. Just take the screen you’re looking at we measure that in inches (in Swedish we call inches thumbs 😊), same goes for the rims on your cars wheels also inches. And then we have Maritime and Air travel, did you know the speed, knots used in these don’t use regular miles? A mile is about 1,6 km but a nautical mile is longer at about 1,8. And feet is still to this day used all over the world for measuring the length of a boat. So even we how been using metric from birth, run into these old convoluted measurements every ones in a while.
you can export liter bottle of soda, you cant export (gallons) milk
Nate, the advantage of a metric system is because the correlation of units, also that one is easier to understand once you get the basic ideas, for example, a cubic meter of water weights a metric ton, ie 1000 kilograms, a cubic centimiters of water weights 1 gram, you can easily calculate than a metric ton of water in cubic centimeters without having to transform into a common unit like fluid oz or cubic inches, this and I'm not mention the difference of Avoirdupois oz and Troy oz, Us gallon and Imperial gallon, Long Ton and Short ton etc. Once you are customary to it, any metric system is fine, the problem is for poor kids in School, but they are horrible little beings, so they deserve it.
I live in Italy and here we only use metric, the only thing we use inches for is the screen size, like TV or smartphone screen size will be in inches but everything else is in metric. I don't know anyone that knows imperial units and it's all greek to me too.
Well, in the UK....
America uses the metric system all the time. To Americans:
1. In your lifetime, you have never bought a quart or 1/2 gallon of soda. You bought 1 and 2 liter bottles.
2. No doctor has ever said, "give him 1/2 an ounce..." He would have said, "15 ml..."
3. At the pharmacy, you've never bought 0.01 oz antibiotic tablets. It was 300 mg. Low dose aspirin is 81 mg.
4. In the 1970s you may have worked on a 350 cubic inch engine, with a 5/8"socket. Since the mid 80s, you would have worked on a 5.7 L engine, with a 16mm socket.
5. Check the nutrition labels on any product inside your local grocery store. It may tell you the amount of vitamin A and daily percentage is in the item, per serving. This information is given in grams, not ounces.
I could go on. If you think about it, I'm sure you could come up with more. Interesting to note, dairy products are sold in imperial measures. Consider: No one ships 1/2 a gallon of anything out of the country. But Pepsi is shipped everywhere.
There are a couple easy tricks to figure out metric
1. A yard is 36" a meter is about 39" So 100 M would be about 110 yards
2. 1" is about 2.5cm (2.54 exactly). So if you are 5'10" (70") that would be just over: 70+70+35=175cm (it's actually 178cm, but 176 is close enough to get a rough idea)
3. In school you learned: Cx9/5+32 ... yeah, screw that. Temp C x 1.8 + 32 is easier. But even easier is remembering just 4 temperatures: 10C=50F, 20C=68F, 30C=86F, 40C=104F... Notice how every 10C raises F by 18? So if someone said, "it's 23C!" You would know it's somewhere around 73-74F
4. That 1.8 extends to liquid measures too. A L is about 1.8 oz more than a quart. So if you bought 2 2L bottles of Cola, you just bought 1 gallon plus 7.2 oz (just under a cup). (4 qts in a gallon, so 1.8x4)
5. A place is 300 KM away? well 100 KM = 62 mi. Just say 60 to make the math easier. that means you are just over 180 miles from your destination. Hmm.. there is that 1.8 again. just cut in 1/2.
6. The only thing that might mess you up is weight. 2.205 lbs = 1 Kg, 1 oz = 28.35g
Build a cube that is 1 meter tall, wide and deep. How many liters of water to fill it up? 1000 liters. What will be its weight once filled? 1000 kilos (1 ton). Its water will boil at 100 C degrees and freeze et 0 C degrees. Pretty rad, eh?
Ah, you missed an important point. Remember that weight is not the same as mass. The weight of 1000L of water is not 1000kg. That is its mass. The weight of 1000L of water is approx. 9810N. Weight is measured in Newtons and factors in the gravitational force at the location the measurement was made. That’s why you way less in space but your mass remains the same.
But even then, saying 1000kg is its mass is not always correct. The density of water varies with temperature. Maximum liquid density of 0.99997 g/ml is at about 4°C. But at 95°C the density lowers to about 0.962 g/ml.
Also, 1 ton = 1,016kg. However, 1 tonne = 1000kg.
And the freezing and boiling point of water is dependent on pressure. The boiling point will decrease by 1°C for every 274m above sea level.
Apropos, about spoons and cups (Kitchen measurements, cooking). You know how many spoons or cups of ingredient are required for four people. But you got a call there will be 5 people, not 4. Now what? Using grams and millilitres, you easily can calculate the exact resulting amounts of ingredients.
And mixing tsp with tbl, you (general 'you' 🙂 ) won't kill your kid as a mother did by accidentally overdosing them (among other cases when doctors intervened in time), see Journal of The American Medical Association 21-05-2014.
For estimating small distances I base it on a 30cm ruler which is just shy of a foot I think
edit: My experience of imperial is mostly just swearing at cars that have random imperial bolts on them and a box of old imperial sockets etc. that I can't stand but for some reason still need haha
1ft is 30,48cm. But trying to convert the two is exactly what makes switching harder.
Conversion should be done only if a person gets a value in the other system and don't want to use it. If they don't...they should start and stop with one and the same system, in this case metric. At that point there's never any need to know how much centimeters one foot is. That's completely unnecessary information. That's because the person knows that 30cm's are 30cm's and that's the final value already.
I mean.. you'll occasionally meet people over here in Ireland who'll still tell you their weight in stone and pound (although nobody in the US uses stone), furlong are used in horse racing, older people will still sometimes say how many miles it is to get to somewhere and pubs still sell pints (although UK and Irish pints are actually bigger than US pints) but for the most part, people in Ireland are using the metric system. And the guy talking is obviously Irish (not just does the accent give it away, he also really, really takes the piss out of the Brits).
Also, lol, 3 meters are close enough to 10 feet. 30.48 cm in a foot, so 3.048 m in 10 feet. I can convert quite easily for distances between metric and imperial and also for weights. However, once we start combining units in physics (like calculating forces, pressures and beyond) or even areas and volumes.. well.. please don't ask me. 144 square inch per square foot. 9 square foot per square yard. 4840 square yard per acre, .13 and a bit cubic feet per US gallon... Good luck with that lads.
When i was young. I used to have a ruler . The length of ruler have 1 feet ( 12 inches) and it equal 30 cm. So 1 meter is about 3 rules or about 33 inches.
LOVE YOU REACTIONS!!!
As explained in the video there are only seven ways of measurement, all other is a combination of those.
The metric system has only ONE unit for each. As displayed in the colorful circle at 9:49.
The relation between the most known units is based on something we all are familiar with: water.
The only unit for length, surface, and volume is meter. No matter what (distance, property size, gas, liquid, solid, plasma, etc). Just one single unit.
In daily life we use all kind of names to indicate any meter size, like liter, ton, hectare etc, but they all are meter based.
A liter is always 1000 ml and 1000 cc, and so 0,001 m3. A ton volume is always 1 m3. And a farmer who has six hectares of land always has 60.000 m2. So if it rains 5 mm in a day, his land will have got 300 volume tons of water, or 300.000 liters or 300 m3.
Than the water relation is handy, because the mass of water is 1 , so the farmland received 300.000 kg of water, or 300 kg tons of rainwater. If it had snowed instead of rain, the farmer would have known the temperature outside is below 0'C, and when the snow melts it is 0'C. And he boiled his breakfast eggs in water of 100'C. Because his eggs went under, he knows they weigh more than water. So one liter of egg has a mass more than 1 kg.
The metric system uses prefixes to indicate the relation to the unit, and they are always the same. Bigger than the unit is in capitals, smaller in lower case. Where m stands for milli or 1/1000, c for centi or 1/100, K for kilo or 1000, H for hecto or 100. So a Kg is 1000 grams, Km is 1000 meters, Hl is 100 liters, Hg is 100 grams, Hm is 100 meters.
Ha is 100 are, 1 are is 10 x 10 meters so 100 m2, which makes 1 Ha 10.000 m2.
One mm is 1/1000 meter, one ml is 1/1000 of a liter, one ms is 1/1000 of a second and 1 mg is 1/1000 of a gram.
To avoid mistakes we avoid more and more the c, d, D, and H prefix. So a drawing of a building will be done in mm, a map in Km or m (meter), because a factor of 1000 is far more obvious. So 1 cg has become 10 mg, 1 cm will be written down as 10 mm, 1 dm as 100 mm, 1 Hm as 100 m or 0,1 Km.
As you can see we use the decimal comma, not the point.
no roule without exeption. The faktor 1000 is kilo with a small k
There are always exceptions and exclusions. A second might be well defined, but how many seconds in a minute? Minutes in an hour? Hours in a day? Time of day and dates are probably one of those things that are best left alone, it's defined by orbits and planetary positions. You could conceivably create "metric time" using base-10, but I doubt people are ready for that. Some things are traditionally an odd-ball number. A dozen eggs, or a Baker's dozen of pastries. Even within those examples the rules are fluid.
@@endotherm Time measurement is far more logical than you think, and much older than any imperial system. It is based on geometry. They needed a system that could be divided into as many possible whole numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, etc. with a whole number as result. So logically they ended up with 360.
So a cirkel was cut up into 360 units, so most shapes could be calculated easily.
Put a coin on the table and exactly six coins can be put around it, without any gaps, they all touch each other. (Same size coins!)
This six based system was not randomly invented but a logical result of science.
If you can measure angles you can measure rotation. We could have had 36 hours in a day (one rotation). But they decided to give the sun 6 hours to go up and six to go down, 6 hours of evening and 6 hours of night. With an hour of 60 minutes and a minute of 60 seconds.
@@dutchman7623 I'm not saying it isn't logical or well defined. I am saying that Metric System is elegant. Everything is divided or multiplied in 10's and no fractions. Imperial measurements abound with fractions, and multipliers/divisors/denominators have no consistency from one unit of measurement to the next larger in the same group. It's an arbitrary number to go from one to the next. One inch, next unit is feet (x12) then yards(x3) then a fathom(x2), a rod is (x5.5) yards, a chain is (x22) yards, a furlong is rods (x40), a mile is furlongs (x8), but a nautical mile is something different entirely at miles (x1.151). The metric system is based around the unit that came before (x10)... e.g. milli centi, deci, (unit), deca, centa, kilo, mega, giga... Quite familiar in data storage and hard drive sizes to describe a jump by a factor of 1000.
When expressing time, the traditional second was the adopted unit and continued to be used. "Metric" time would need to express a day differently, and minutes and hours wouldn't have the same meaning, and need to be dropped. A second would need to be re-defined, if it is based on the rule of 10's and associated with an orbital day. A day would need to be say 1000 metric-seconds (a "kilo-second"). A metric-hour would need to be 100 metric-seconds, a metric-minute would need to be 10 metric-seconds... A week would become a mega-second, a month a giga-second and so on. A metric-second based on this proposal would become something like 86.4 old-seconds. It's just a matter of getting used to it and your concept of elapsed time. It makes perfect sense here on earth but as space travel becomes more prevalent, it is meaningless and non-intuitive if your planet takes 12 years to orbit the sun and rotates 4 times an hour. Not such a bizarre undertaking if you can accept and wrap your brain around the Star Trek universe's Star Date.
@@endotherm There is scientific time, the number of SI-seconds, from and before point zero (1 januari 1958, 0:00:00), but I cannot find reliable info about it.
It defines exact time, no matter where you are. I was created at -62.640.000 ☺
@8:25
The famous Gimli Glider...
The déjà-vu Memes are still drifting into my mind whenever i hear about it.
Hey Nate I found your channel this morning and I've been enjoying myself, sending a big hug drawn on a paper plane to throw over that wall from one of your neighbors down in Mexico. With all due respect I'm gonna have to disagree with the last point. The metric system is in fact a much superior system by design, to compare it with the imperial system for me it's like comparing using a modern computer programming language to using manual punchcard systems, I mean you could theortically program anything with both given you had the proper interface but one would take maybe a couple hundred lines of code written in a semi-human readable form to work, while the other would fill up an entire room at least with manually punched papers, each one prone to human error to do the same thing with less efficiency, and in the case of the imperial system less precision. No wonder people hate math so much over there, sounds like a conversion nightmare.
Quicktips for the Metric System:
For visualization people tend to approximate a meter (at least here in Mexico) by grabbing a string with your left hand at the height of your left shoulder and extending the right arm to the side, the measurement from the left hand to the wrist is approximately a meter, it will vary slightly depending on the anatomy but if you measure with a ruler once you have your measurement as long as you have an arm.
1dm³ = 1L = 1Kg of water
1cm³ = 1ml = 1gr of water
1Km = ?miles
Sorry I had trouble with that last one, I tend to forget conversions to obsolete systems.
Also, to put in simple terms his explanation for the meter using the formula: The speed of light in a vaccum is recognized by current concenses as the speed limit of the universe and it's equal to 299,792,458 m / s, we can use a constant of the universe to define accurate measurements so given that light in a vaccum travels all those meters in one second, in order to define our meter all we need to do is divide that one second by the meters travelled so you get one meter in (1/299,792,458)seconds at the speed of light in a vaccum. That way we can say if light in a vaccum travels at 299,792,458 m / s then it travels one meter in 1/299,792,458 of a second, thus ONE METER EQUALS THE DISTANCE TRAVELLED AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT IN 1/299,792,458 OF A SECOND
Enjoy
Great video, Nate! Looked like you had a bit of fun throughout it 😁. Personally I am familiar both systems. Metric as a German and Imperial as a Wrestling and movie fan (to some degree at least). So I know a little about inch, feet, pounds, miles etc. I'm 6'0", so that's round about 1,83 m. In your case 5'10" is round about 1,78 m. To convert lb to kg and vice versa, a little tip. Lb to kg: 145 lb divided by 2 and then - 10 %. That's gets you quite accurate to the right number, in your case round about 66,5 kg. If you convert the other way you just multiply by 2 and add 10 %. When I was younger I visited some Wrestling events in Germany and I was a little shocked, because the wrestlers weren't as tall and didn't weight what they were billed. I was like: "No way, this guy isn't 6'3" and 250 lbs. He's my height and has maybe a little over 220 lbs." Because I was about 200 lbs back then. The emphasis is on was 😂 ...
I was raised with the metric system and learnt the imperial system (including £/s/d - and let's not forget the guineas) rather early on, but never got the feel for the imperial units of weight, measurement, temperature and cooking/baking recipes, for instance. The metric system is certainly easier to use in many ways, but I definitely understand people who don't have a feel for it - as you, in my personal opinion, well pointed out. Thanks/Ta!
17:10 1.778 meters.
Fun fact: Did you know that the USA uses three different types of miles? The Nautical mile (which is defined as 1.852 km), the international mile which is also know as statute mile (1.609344 km) and finally the US survey mile which is for whatever reason defined as 1.609347 km. That doesn't sound like much and it in fact doesn't matter in people's day to day life, but now think about another NASA mission to let's say Pluto and one part of the team calculates the distances in international miles and another part of the team calculates in survey miles.....and boom the next billion dollar project goes up in flames.
Lets start with the fact you knew a few things before reacting. It is refreshing to see that.
I agree with you when it comes to double measurements, simply chose one and stick with it because converting between more systems makes projects slow and open for error. The thing is I will always support the Metric system as superior. Simply because it is easier for any and all calculations. It works with tens, hundreds and thousands. Something that is easier to remember as 12, 16, 3.6 (I think 3.687) etc etc etc Not easy to remember, let alone base calculations upon.
However, I know in the US they use both though in general people favour the Imperial system. I just wonder why ?? Math is so much easier with a simpler standard, and that is metric.
I love the horrified reaction of Americans when I point out that they have metric currency. Always have had, in fact. 😂
Americans also know the volume of the car's cylinders in liters, but at gas stations, tanks are filled with gallons of gas
Soda is sold in liter or two liter bottles, but you can buy something else in gallons, or another metric
I think the medication dosage is always in cubic centimeters, am I right?
Bombs are counted in metric units as TNT equivalent (kT, MT)
Electric energy or power is counted in metric - W, kW, MW, kW/h
When an object's velocity is held constant at one meter per second against constant opposing force of one newton the rate at which work is done is 1 watt. 1W=1J/s=1N⋅m/s=1kg⋅m2/s3
Try this in inches/feet or pounds
And what about temperatures?
Celsius is easy
0 is ice, 10 is cold, 20 is nice, 30 is hot. 100° water is boiling, -100 Russians are angry that their vodka has frozen
Science is NOT based on metric... Metric is based on SCIENCE.
As an expat-brat turned expat, I fully embrace the metric system. I find it much more efficient in my line of work-food production. I think I only use imperial for people heights and surfboard dimensions. Those two uses are probably connected to pop-culture reasons.
I started to learn English (from Spanish that couldn't be any more different) when I was in my early forties (not 14 but 40) without any previous training. It took me a painfully couple of years to stop trying to translate one language into the other while trying to communicate or understand something.
With these two systems is exactly the same : one stops to convert and everything starts to make real sense.
There's not point on using these two so different systems to describe a length or a mass, let alone liquids and gases that are measured in different amounts, depending on what part of the Imperial System of the world one is working on this.
My English has improved a lot since I started to use one language at the time.
And guess what : my vocabulary grew exponentially and today I even write in this language that use to be a big mystery to me. Spanish is still my first language and I'm proud to say that I'm very good at it.
With the Imperial system one complicates his/her life for not reason at all. The Metric System makes so much sense that doctors and pharmacists are using it even in the ol' USA, let alone drugs cartels.
Reasons because that Metric System hasn't been adopted in USA : 1) It was created by the French and they have been the "enemies" of the Brits for a long time.
2) It hasn't been created by the almighty English speaking people, namely the so called Americans and that is a big deal.
3) As long as a nation (any for he sake of my argument) doesn't criticize itself on a regular basis, it will continue to make the same mistakes, over and over again.
It really hurts to me to say something like this, but the Americans have been committing the same atrocities, all over the world right from the beginning of their independence, and that shows in their attitude to anything they have not complete control over.
The USA can be a wonderful addition to the rest of the world, if only they want to.
Let start with something as logic and as simple as the adoption of the Metric System.
Good presentation amigo, keep them coming.
Greetings from Toronto.
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Must have been extremely difficult to find astronauts. I mean it would take 1 week intens schooling on the nasa ground to learn them metric system xD I'm sure if you switch from a day to another and you are forced to handle with them it would take the most strict imperial unit lover at most a month to love and use it. I cannot imagine how it is crossing the borders to canada or mexico and not take with you xD
I'm American & I've gone fully metric. I even use the 24 hour clock instead of the imperial 12 hour clock.
2:52 guess you never heard flat earth personal dome argument
I am from a country using mostly metric (we also use sqf for properties, and occasionally US fastfood chains here uses fl oz). I did learn a few imperial units while I was an engineering student, and the conversions were indeed a nightmare.
On a separate note, if you are interested in learning about people around the world, I strongly recommend Cogito. I recall he is reaction friendly, but even if not, might still be something you are interested to look at for leisure. Personally, I especially love their videos on Baghdad, Sami, Australian Aboriginal, and San people.
You are like some common guy, like your way to tell things.
I think the Liter of milk is because it's from the local area or a domestic product while the sodas are international products but that's kinda funny how that's legal there. 🤣
Just don´t try to convert, use it! I don't try to convert Imperial to Metric. Is in Imperial then do everything in Imperial and if need be to convert do it at the end. That way you became familiar with both t systems. But do try to understand Metric. When you do get there you don't want to go back to Imperial.
There are two reasons why the metric definitions are that complicated:
1) Those definitions were defined years after the units were created. That's actually the same reason why the definiton of imperial units by metric units has factors like 0,453592.
2) Metric units were created to make the creation of dependent units more streamlined. That's the case if you go from small to big(or reverse) and if you create a m²-unit out of the m-unit and if you combine different units like m and s to m/s and also if you combine all three steps and want a conversion from kg/m³ to g/cm³.
Imperial units on the other hand were defined by things that once were practical: width of a thumb(~inch), length of a foot, 2.000 steps(~mile), ... .
Those are reasonable numbers if you want to guesstimate the world around you without specific measurement tools, but they aren't depended on a common factor. Therefore scientific/mathematical work is a mess and you have to know a complete new set of factors for every unit-combination(distance, surface and volume have differenct factors to move from small to big, ...).
But the beauty of units is:
We don't need to know how they are defined to use them intuitively.
like they said: a pound isnt just a pound, a pound is different in every country
I'm European, I use metric system. I like American clothing, I use inches. I can speak 4 languages fluently, so I can shift one language to another easily. Can't US people learn both measurement system units? I'm not saying I know every unit and conversion by heart, but stuff like temperature degrees, distances, lengths, weights... I know the conversions roughly so I can make wild guesses whenever I don't need "exact" or "accurate" conversions (in the latter cases I obviously use a calculator). With practice you'll get muscle memory, but you need to practice. The issue is there are a lot of lazy people in the USA who don't want to think and just want everything on a silver platter...
Think about, even the Yankees are calculating - partially - in decimals. The reloaders know what I'm referring to..For example.what means "caliber .45"? Based on an inch (i.e. 25.4 milimeters :D ) the diameter of " .45" is 4 tenth plus 5 hundredth of an inch, that means base is an inch (bones, half bones etc.), but further down the Yankees begin calculating in decimals. The same with the powderloads, base is grains, and further down they calculate in decimals. Those examples show the limitation even in daily life of the limitations of imp system ... length of a football field ... hahaha
What I also find really cool is that 1 Liter of water has a weight of 1KG and fits exactly into a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube, I don't even know why I think thats so cool but I mean it's just wundervoll :D
I'm from UK where they still use a mix of units, although it is more metric than USA. You still buy beer in a pub in pints or half pints but if you buy a can of beer it will most likely be 500ml. Something I find odd about USA is the use of quarts, particularly for lubricants. Why quarts and not pints? Another thing I find odd is that American food recipes tend to give quantities in volume rather than weight. This gives less consistent results because the density of ingredients like flour can vary considerably.
Even if imperial has been dead for a long time here in France... we still order pints or halves for beers 😋
I'm from Denmark, and all that we're using is the metric system. I've tried to learn the imperial system for so long, but it's just so difficult in my opinion. I'm still trying to not let it bring me down, but I'll have to admit, that when you've been using the same system for just about 40 years, it's damn near impossible to flip your brain like that.
a general rule of thumb (not very accuratebut helps to visualize) ONE big step is aproximatly 1 meter
The problem is the transition to a metric system in the US.
Change all traffic signals, or the speedometers of all cars and the confusions that can happen with the drivers... I don't know... It's not an easy thing
Note; The UK still uses the imperial system in daily life. Miles, inches, etc. And pound, ounces and Stone(that one baffles me, what is the smaller unit; pebbles, gravel???)
Feet to meter quick and dirty:
divide by ten multiply by three, 5 feet is about 1,5 metre ( in reality 1,524 metre)
, a pen between 14 and 15 centimetres...
17:42 1 feet is 30,48 cm and 1 inch is 2,54 cm = 5 feet 10 inch = 152 cm + 25,4 cm = 177,4 cm = 1,77 meters.
Gogo Nate
I'm not from any of the countries using imperial system, so naturally I think metric system is much more logic. However we stil use some of the imperial meaurements here and there, like bying planks etc... 4" by 6" etc. But for the most part only metric system.
If you make the lagest step you can, this is about a meter...
A ton is about the same,
A liter water or a kilogram of water is the same, but it's a lot more difficult to explain.
But buy a kitchen scale and a messure divice for liter and try make some German cookies or make French toast or anything your to get used to it. It's like learning a language, you learn it by using it and not by reading it...
The ONLY "problem" ... is TIME ... because of the HOUR / MINUTE / SECOND bit ... which is soething that you still need to do conversions for in the metric system. The metric system was invented around the French Revolution AND THEY THOUGHT ABOUT CHANGING TIME AS WELL ... from 24 hours/day to 20 hours/day ... and so on ... but that wasnt adapted.
To get behind metric in some cases water is the key. 1 Liter of water has the weight of 1 kg. Water freezes at 0°C and cooks at 100°C.
Btw: The only thing we share is the measurment of time. But Napoleon tryed to change that. He wanted to change the day in 2 * 10 hours and give the hour 100 minutes and the minute 100 seconds. It would be surly the better system. But everybody that critizises US Americans for not using the metric system should think one (napoleonic) minute long, if he would be okay with changing the time system, he is used to. (I guess i would, but i can understand everybody that would not like this)
Even in Europe we stick to inches in some areas. Piping is often in inches. Modell plane propellers are in inches. A big German company tried to use cm, but everyone is used to inches. So I know the prop size, but I need to convert it to get the clearance to the ground measured in cm.
I live in Canada, im a contractor, but grew up being taught the metric system in school, however professionally i was taught by the old school people for building. So I use a mixture of both, that said, over the last several years if im doing a project by myself, I've gone back to my metric roots, and miscuts etc have gone way down as i find it much easier to read a tape (example 1/64" is just under 4mm) its just easier for me personally. I don't really understand why it needs to be so complicated. That said, my thermostats are programmed in Fahrenheit, because my parents always had theirs in imperial. Im just used to that. But again i can do the conversion in my head, to get it back to imperial which i do understand better.
Hope everyone is taking care.
100 Cent is 1 Dollar. 100 centimeter is 1 meter.
The company I work for sells worldwide. Of course, we produce in millimeters. The Americans used to use ANSI in inches. Today the ASME norm is used in millimeters. This makes the erroneous conversion unnecessary.
Even at the lathe. 1/1000 inch (0.001 inch) is 0.00254 millimeters.
Millimeter is 2.54x more accurate than inch
1 US pound is 453,6 Gramm. 1 German pound (Pfund) is 500 g. 1 Englisch pound is a monetary currency
When the French came up with the metric system, it was the absolute state of the needs of a new era to come.Measuring everything in decimal places made everything much more efficient. 1 km is 1000 meters, 1 meters are 100 cm, 1 cm are 10 mm, etc. The weights are also arranged in this way. 1 kg is 1000 grams .exceeding on liquids 1kg is 1 liter of water. Calculating things like this is simply faster and more efficient, For the coming industrial revolution. And almost all European countries therefore introduced this relatively quickly. Of course, international trade or cooperation was much better. A company that built a bridge or a dam in Norway could easily order mazerial from all over Europe. 2000 steel beams of a length of 2.5 meters please . Due to the fact that in the metric system all values are strictly given as decimal multiples or decimal fractions, it is also very easy to learn at school. The two work partners who had started in the company from the USA in the 90s learned it within 4 weeks during the working hours in the training rooms. (paid of course) and because they now knew both systems they also had us something ahead.
Metric.. also on temperature, water boils at 100ºC and freezes at 0ºC .. and 1gr of water, has a volume of 1 cubic ml .. 1000gr is 1kg, and 1000 ml is 1000 gr .. 1 cubic meter of water, is 1 metric tonne.. 1000kg = 1000 ml of water ..1 L (litter) is 1000 ml.. 1 Ltr of water = 1 kg of water
Reminds me of the myth about Napoleon Bonaparte being an exceptionally short man... But it was just that french feet and british feet were different units of measurement and now we have this weird myth because they kept numbers in french but slapped their own unit next to it.
True, he was 1,68m or 5feet6, which in that time was actually normal to above average.
Another reason he was seen as small is also due to the fact he had bodyguards and of course he took big guys and they were huge. So he always looked small, as he was walking next to big guys. Imagine walking next to Shaquille O’Neil, most people would look small too, doesn’t mean they are.
@@daviddieudonne7829 yeah and somehow I omitted mentioning that disrespecting Napoleon was in state interest for English so there were propaganda reasons too. Just like overblowing a story about HRE army being so disorganized that it wiped itself out due to misunderstanding when it was just single digits fatalities and aside from lack of common language there was also a smuggled Romanian beverage involved... But it was great propaganda for France
And no one touched on Inches of Mercury. What a nightmare that is!
I only found out how to set my barometre two weeks ago when I stumbled upon it and found out what I had. And for really crazy.....they go up in tenths, so 29.1 29.2 etc
In another life I was a pipewelder, all fittings are imperial as are all of the equations BUT we are a metric country. So many mistakes are made because of this...
the metric system was invented in France by In 1837, wishing to take advantage of the heritage of the French revolution to establish his regime, King Louis Philippe I revoked the use of both traditional measurements and usual measurements and reestablished the metric system to guide the country towards modernization.
I was in grade 2 or 3 when Canada adopted the metric system nationally. I knew the imperial system but i was young and it was easy to learn. I'm 55 and temperature still gets me. I know °F and what to expect but in °C i know 0 is freezing and 100°C is boiling and i can't grasp the rest
it's hard to change your mind measurment. I'm already dealing with calories and joules. About length: i know my hand span (middle tip thumb to middle tip pinky) is 20 centimeters. My shoulder to my begining phalanges (at my streched arm) is one meter. My step size is also one meter. And the length from ground to my dingdong is one meter. So i have the measuremant in my bones. 🙂
Moral of the story is, that the men speaking in "albama" accent was from Nazi Germany who was brought to America for the technology which of course was always metric. And he was the one who invented rockets to bomb UK.
Metric system is so much easier for average person
America acts like a child throwing and tempertantrum when instructed to play by accepted society rules. It leaves everyone embarrassed and shaking their heads. Not to mention the other kids in the room not wanting anything to do with them. 😒
I had to deal at that time in the apprenticeship with inch what is incredibly difficult for me and today I have no idea more about it I also assume that this unit no longer has to teach.
I am also amazed how much you have to convert even within this system because can understand that almost the whole world has changed to the metric system.
I can also understand that people who have taught this from an early age can imagine this in their heads I can also do this with metric for the Imperial System is like from aliens and can not do anything with it.
Just get involved and in a generation or even a few years no one will miss the old system.
1:20 145 pounds divided by 2.2 (it's actually 2.20462 pounds/kg) will give a VERY CLOSE weight in kilograms ... 65.9 (it's actually 65.7)
I'm an American and honestly I'm pro-metric. I'd rather measure small things in millimeters than fractions of an inch. I'd rather measure the weight of small objects in grams than fractions of an ounce. I'd rather have a sane, simple system for measuring volume than the arcane alchemy nonsense that is imperial volume (although maybe we could agree to keep selling milk in gallon jugs, and just call a gallon 4 liters).
Those reasons alone are enough to make me want America to *finally* just adopt the metric system into daily life.
The USA signed in 1875 that they wanted to use the metric system, and initially 16 other nations did too. That was around 150 years ago. Take a look at Wikipedia under the keyword Meter_Convention. Um, how old is the USA? Around 250 years.
US Citizen love decimal money right, immagin the word where a penny is 1/32 of a buck, a dime is 5 pennies, an Hemilton is 7 buck, just the british pund( sterlin coins) pre decimal
I am German and i learnd in a "business-school"(Berufsschule) to do the math wit the imperial-system.
Because it could be, that we do business with U.S.. And its important to know for example how big is a container full of spare parts. It was so difficult. 3 Numbers for the Length, yard, foot, inch instead of one only number like 17,22 meter. And these inches are in Fractions instead of millimeters. So complicate and useless, if u know the metricsystem.
Its not about the measurement of a object, its about doing math wit these measurements
to convert pounds to kilograms you divide it by about 2.2
Imperial is even worse than you think. There are two types of imperial tun/ton - as well as the proper metric tonne. They sound the same, but are spelt different, Ton is mass. Tun is volume. A tun is a very big barrel.
Oh and a barrel of course isn't just a container, it's also a measure of volume as is the hogshead (what kind of hog?). And then there is the pint, quart, gallon the ones Amercians actually know, but then there are the rest of the measures of volume, which most Americans don't know. Come on now class,m say it out loud: how many scruples are there in a dram?
(I'm not making this shit up)
Then there are the 3 or 4 or maybe more kinds of ounces - each type being used in different types of trade, profession or nation/regon. And of course there are grains. How many grains of sand are there on earth? What do you mean "grain"? The number of indiviual grains of sand or the weight of all the sand in grains?
Imperial uses the names of common nouns as units of measure, which can be somewhat confusing at times.
And then there's length. Inches conveniently subtended into halves, quarters, eitghts, 16ths, 32nds etc. Great for those who know binary arithemtic, kinda crap for other people who tend to think in base 10. But if we asked you to change from base 10 numbers to binary numbers for day to day use, you'd scream blue murder (like that archaic exclamation - I threw it in there just to make you comfortable as we discuss your archaic measurement "system").
Still that's just inches the rest of the length units are essentially random 3ft in a yard. 66 foot in a chain. 660 foot in a furlong. Ok it's not totally random, all - well most - of the multipliers/divisoers seem to be based on a factor of 3. Sort of. It's just that sometimes you multiply by 3 so the yard is easy. 3 feet. But the chain, well that 22 yards. But wait how is 22 yards a factor of three? Well it's not, but it is 66 feet. which is of course a factor of 3. 3 x 2 x 22. And then there's the furlong. 660 feet. So feet to furlongs 3 x 2 x22 x10.
So that's an easy converstion.
Much easier than moving the decimal point left or right, right?
Yeah imperial the easy to rememebr units.
Because they are (allegedly) based on the body parts of kings.
You know the inch, based it is said on the thumb. The foot based on the, er, um foot.
Americans are proud of their republic - tell me again how the the US escaped the tyranny of kings, while you collectively literally worship and glory in a king's foot.
The tyranny of kings is with you every time your trade, usingyour decimal currency.
PS why is it you don't use good traditional units for money e.g., pounds, schillings and pence. They were used in the middle ages, it would make sense to continue to use those right?
12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. You guys would love that, lots of different mulkitpliers and divisors for the individual type of measure.
You can even have a pound coin and call it. soverign - to keep your beloved connection with kings...
And any way decimal currency? That's beloved of authoritarian, communist and socialist goverments. 100 kopeck to the roubel, 100 fen to the yuan and of course 100 cents to the euro in "socialist" europe with their socialist welfare.
It's really hard to understand why you guys don't use the much more intuitive imperial system for your currency...
In German, nouns are always capitalized... (like Freunde)
"Why should it be easy for us when it can be difficult"
What is this? Let me explain. I am a civil engineer, European.
I grew up with the metric system and am only used to it. To be honest, the imperial one seems terribly stupid and outdated to me. I worked with two US colleagues in the construction of a plant for automobile engines in Bulgaria (Europe). To everyone's surprise (mine and other colleagues') they used 100% metric system. This saved us a lot of trouble converting units.
Metric is a system, imperial is not a system, it's a mess. It works for everyday life, but not in engineering and science. When dealing with complex and composite characteristics such as heat transfer, torque, flexural strength, geological stresses, magnetic induction, etc. then things get really, really rough in the Imperial.
And what about the temperature measurement. The Celsius scale is extremely easy, convenient and intuitive. 0°C, water freezes (at sea level), 100°C water boils. The human body is 36.7°C. It is hardly possible to come up with something simpler and easier. What is this 32° F and 212° F, what is this 5/9 scale?
We have discussed this question with my American colleagues: Why are you still using this medieval nonsense? They answered me with a laugh: "Why should it be easy for us when it can be difficult."
I went to engineering college in 1969 in the UK. The country was about to change-over from imperial to metric . I was taught both , metric made more sense but the company I worked for was American . I therefore used the imperial system .
Considering that the USA is one of only 3 countries that still use imperial, the other being Myanmar and Libya and even the latter countries are moving towards the metric system, I'd say that the question is unnecessary.
Myanmar don t use the Imperial but their own mesurment system, Libya use the metric, you mean Liberia, noth in Africa on on the Atlanic Ocean the other on the Mediterranean sea
Hi. Thanks for opening your mind to the metric system. For your reference, I'm listing approximate conversion numbers between metric and imperial units to make it easy for you for converting things in your head going ahead. Hope it helps.
1 inch ~= 2.5 centimeters
1 mile ~= 1.6 kilometers || 1 km ~= 0.62 mile
1 meter ~= 3.3 feet
1 yard ~= 1 meter
1 Imperial Ton ~= 1 Metric Ton ( also written as simply Tonne)
1 pound ~= 0.5 kilograms
1 Ounce ~= 28.3 grams
1 US Gallon ~= 3.75 liters || 1 UK Gallon ~= 4.5 liters
1 deg Celsius (also centigrade) ~= 1.8 deg. Fahrenheit (formula for C to F conversion is: (Temp. in Celsius x 1.8) + 32)
Getting into a habit of converting the units is exactly what makes learning the metric system harder.
For a person used to the imperial system, they need to stop comparing it to the imperial system. If you measure the length of a plank and it gets 1,5m, then that's your final result. Not roughly 5 feet. 1,5m. Then if you want to know how many of them you need to enclose a given area you measure that area in meters. Say 3mX4,5m. You don't calculate it in feet (roughly 10ftX15ft) and try to think how many meters that is. That is exactly where the difficulty goes, from trying to measure one part of the process in one unit, another part in another unit, then trying to convert them.
Of course, on the road they'll see miles. But that's fine. If they see a measurement in miles, then they should think in miles and compare them to the mph on their cars clocks. The only reason to convert between miles and kilometers would be if they had ONLY km/h clocks when signs are still only miles.
I think you're absolutely right! It's like learning a new language. The best way is to stop trying to translate everything, and just know that a Tisch is a Tisch and not a Tisch is a table. 😉
i worked a half year on a island with also a mix of imperial and metric cause history of the workers, some of them from the states some frome europe... it was a mess, my head was hurting everyday cause the foundamaint guy was working and thinking in imperial, the plumber in metric and the electrician was a relaxed bob marley fan, and always some smoke around him...
Nate i think for you could be the solution to by a metric yardstick (these from the baumarkt, you can it open a meter or two...just leave it open on a door of your house) when you are familiar with place you can lay it in 1/1 m 90 degree so you get familiar with a square meter. for Liter/gallon just fill a Sand in those gallon milk and cola bottles, and later in even boxes to get an ey to it...
could also work with weight...
17:00 "I am 5 foot 10. I am 71 inches"; What???
It is high time that you change to metric, it will make scaling units much easier, just move the comma.