Imperial refers to Imperial Rome initially. These measurements were used throughout Europe until the metric system was introduced during the Napoleonic era. Personally I use metric system for scientific work and Imperial for domestic measurement.
@@JoannDavi No, unfortunately, the term British Imperial System is not used. It wasn't even referred to as the "Imperial" system when I was taught in the 1960's and 1970's. You can't know what you aren't taught. And, yes, many of us are increasingly angry about the things we were not taught, or at least not in full context. Then, again, as I understand, your English children aren't taught much about American history either.
@@michaelwilkinson2928 being a Brit in my mid-60s, I was brought up with both imperial and metric, and although like you, I still 'think' in feet and inches, ( I'm 5' 8") I do work mainly metrically. Perhaps Tyler should look into the pre-decimal currency we used up until the early 1970s. That should fry his brain! :) Girl Gone London is one of my fave UA-cam channels.
@@michaelwilkinson2928 As I understand it, the British standardised under the imperial system, although many of the measures themselves have many different origins. I could not find the imperial referring to Rome anywhere, genuinely interested, do you have a source?
"celsius, does it even exist?" "the UK does use celsius?" EVERYONE uses celsius, nobody bothers with fahrenheit for anything serious - its dead. The US just hasn't caught up with reality yet. And 1 gram of water is 1cm3, which is 1mL and it takes 1 calorie to raise its temp by 1C - making it insanely easier to understand anything. If you have a swimming pool 3m x 5m x 2m, that's 30m3, which is 30,000l and would take 300,000kcal to raise in temp by 10C. You can do this stuff in your head. Oh, and most americans know grams through buying drugs or gun calibres.
@@LiqdPT 0 K = -237,15°C 😋 It's time to stop the climate change and reverse it so we get back temperatures of -40°. At this temperature °C or °F does not matter. ☺️
The calorie is actually not a metric unit. It's metric equivalent would be Joule, and 1 calorie = 4.184 Joule. Many people call the kcal a calorie, while in fact, it's a kilocalorie. So yes, 1 cal is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 Kelvin, but in 100 g of suger, there is about 400 kcal (or 400,000 calories) of chemical energy.
That's we're you are very much wrong, I'm in my 40s and still use Celsius, in the 80s and 80s we was still in school being taught both, Celsius for cold and Fahrenheit for hot, I still remember the weather broadcasting doing that as well, also I'm a chef and will still use both in cooking, we have to take fridge temperature everyday and send it of in temperature taken in Celsius,
Yes but we dont use imperial on fluids. We use us customary. Us gallon is 3.785 L not 4.545l. Us gal is 128 us oz. Not 160 like uk. Uk gallon was based of 10 lbs of water. Us gallon wasnt. Pint is 1/8 gallon both places, 16 us oz is a pint not 20 like uk. 473 ml in usa. 568 uk. Us fluid oz is slightly bigger than a uk.
My dear friend Tyler, I am an American. I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I still live in Massachusetts, but I have had the opportunity to travel the world. The metric system makes far more sense than the Imperial system. I run my home on the metric system. I cook using metric for both weights and measurements, and Celsius for cooking and heating. Here in America we do use metric for one common item, carbonated soda beverages. Many Americans think gasoline (petrol) in Europe is less expensive than here because the price is in liters. I tell them to multiply that price by four and they will be close to the gallon price! America needs to join the rest of humanity and adopt metric. It’s a much easier and more sensible system. 😺
I'm Canadian and old enough (at 61) to remember the Imperial system. In the 70's Canada went officially metric, so I had to learn that too. What's funny to me is how in the "imperial" system the US came up with the "US standard" of measure for liquids. The US gallon is smaller than British Imperial gallons, and quarts and pints an liquid cups and liquid oz. So really the US uses a bastardized version of the Imperial system....
Only three countries in the world still use imperial measurements as their official measuring system - USA, Myanmar and Liberia, what a strange combination!
I wondered about that one. From what I could find out, Myanmar doesn't use Imperial; they just don't use Metric. They've got another system of units all together.
Actually, the system used by the United States is not the same as the Imperial System. They have different standards for the ton, the fluid ounce, the pint and the gallon. Their units are correctly known as "United States Customary Units".
The beauty of metric is that, when you're used to it, you don't even think of meters and kilometers as different units. In the metric system, we always use the prefix "kilo-" to mean "one thousand". A kilometer is a thousand meters, a kilogram is a thousand grams, a kiloliter is a thousand liters, and so on. Same for milli-, which means a thousandth of that unit. A millimeter is a thousandth of a meter, a milligram is a thousandth of a gram, a milliliter is a thousandth of a liter, and so on. You can slap these bad boys on top of any unit to mean "a thousand of that unit" or "a thousandth of that unit". And we have a lot of these prefixes. "Deci-" for a tenth, "centi-" for a hundredth, "micro-" for a millionth, "deca-" for ten, "hecto-" for a hundred, "mega-" for a million... Once you know your prefixes, it's super easy. But the best thing about the metric system is how the units, like meters, liters, etc., interact with each other. A liter is defined as a decimeter cubed. The kilogram used to be defined as the weight of one liter of water (though that got changed for the sake of being more precise). And yes, the kilogram is the only multiple that has its own definition, which is then used to define the base unit. A bit odd, but sure. But it doesn't stop there. All kinds of more scientific units are defined like this. The newton (unit of force) is defined as the force needed to accelerate a mass of 1 kg by 1 m/s². The pascal (unit of pressure) is defined as 1 newton of force applied perpendicularly on a surface of 1 meter squared. The joule (unit of energy) is defined as the amount of work created by a force of one newton displacing a mass by one meter. The watt (unit of power) is defined as a joule per second. In fact, there are currently only seven base units, which aren't defined using only other units: The second, the meter, the kilogram, the ampere (unit of electric current), the kelvin (which is like the degree Celsius, but with its zero being defined as absolute zero), the mole (which is basically just a number of particles), and the candela (unit of luminous intensity). Every other unit in the system is defined using these, directly or indirectly, as I've shown above using only the second, the meter, and the kilogram. But the best part of all this: Nowadays, the units used in America are also defined using metric units. The yard is defined as exactly 0.9144 meters. The avoirdupois pound (which is the base unit of weight used in America) is defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kilograms. Even the degree Fahrenheit is based on the kelvin. So you guys are acting all proud, but under the hood, it's all metric.
Yes, prefixes to metric units are decadic multiples or submultiples, i.e. factors or fractions base 10, not different units. ×10^(-2) c centi- from Latin centum, "hundred" (cf. century, cent, percent). ×10^(-1) d deci- from Latin decimus, "tenth". ▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎ ×10¹ da deca- from Late Latin decas ("(set of) ten"), from Ancient Greek δέκας (dékas), from δέκα (déka, "ten") ×10² h hecto- from Greek ἑκατόν hekatón, "hundred" ...etc...
-No- However, defining US Customary units in metric does not mean using the metric sytem. If you calculate in Customary you have to do all the conversions all the time, because it's not really a system, just a collection with various conversion factors. You could do the calculations in metric and convert the result only, though...
@@la-go-xy Yeah I meant it in a way that was more like "Americans act all proud, but even their units aren't independent" or something along those lines. I'll acknowledge this might not have been a good use of the expression; English isn't my native language.
there are 2 different gallons, 3 different ounces, 2 different pints, 2 imperial tons but only one metric tonne... a gram is always a gram and a litre is a litre. Fahrenheit is just a bonkers scale compared to Celsius.
Yeah, Fahrenheit was based off of someones body temperature - and they decided that would be 100. Nice.. Ever noticed how peoples body temperature varies a lot? Great scientific measurement that was...
There's only one Imperial ton, and it's 2240lbs. It's sometimes called the 'long ton' to distinguish it from the US Customary 'short ton' of 2000lbs. (The metric ton (1000kg) is 2204.6244202lbs ( just over 2204lbs 9oz 15drams 23¼*grains)). [*11406/40000ths of a grain]
Did you know that in 1999 NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because the engineers of Lockheed Martin did not use the metric system when the project was commited to use the International System of Units (which uses metric units)? The failure of Lockheed to comply (and the failure of NASA to detect the non compliance) resulted in a loss of 325 million dollars of that day (nearly 575 million of dollars of nowadays) and almost a year of work.
3:52 Nobody's left you behind but yourselves. You made your choice in 1773 when you got uppity about the price of tea in Boston. The Crown hasn't been responsible for your well-being since then.
The system in the US is for the most part not imperial. A US bushel is not an imperial bushel. A US gallon is not an imperial gallon. And, a US quart is not imperial. 0
@@floro7687 The Imperial Gallon obviously came from Great Britain and had been used for centuries before the US existed. The US Gallon wasn't established until 1824.
I was born in 59, but was bought up using imperial. I wasn’t introduced to metric until secondary school (11). Both systems happily coexisted for decades. We still use miles, buy beer and milk in pints and can buy fabric in yards. I automatically change between the two depending on which is appropriate.
Very similar for me too - a couple of years earlier for me, but it was a lot to take in. Plus the fact we were in the time of currency change too - and that was also fun times!
Im from the 00s and even during my life we have just had both systems but in weird ways. Driving- miles Marathons/walking - kilometres Running events - metres Height - literally either Gaps between cars - buses Penis - inches Distances to something on the road ahead (traffic lights, roundabouts etc) - yards Beer - pints Milk - pints (milk) Smaller bottles of drink - millilitres (very rarely centilitlres) Larger bottles of drink - litres Fuel - litres Small weights - grams Bigger weights - kilograms Cars - metric tonnes Bulls*** - a metric tonne Speed - miles per hour
And some times both at once. Some years ago I bought some bespoke laminate sheets. You started with one of the standard ply wood bases and then gave your required measurements and the company cut it up for you and then foil wrapped the pieces. The standard board was 8 x 10 x 11. That meant 8 foot by 10 foot by 11 millimetres thick.
All our petrol pumps dispense in litres but we measure our cars efficiency in miles per gallon - just one crazy example! If your car averages 50mpg how many litres do you need to put in to travel 150 miles.🤔
@@Pidalin It is. He used to speak Hebrew. Then He went to Greek with a little Aramaic and Latin on the side. Now He only uses English and almost the whole world follows His example. The rest are catching up.
Celsius makes sense - 0 is freezing point of water and 100 is the boiling point. I was so happy when Australia changed. The best way of working out kilometers is to use horse racing. 1600metres replaced 1 mile for horse racing (it is actually 1609 metres.
Some comedian once joked Fahrenheit makes more sense because it goes from 0°F f*cking cold to 100°F f*cking hot and now each time this discussion comes up Americans use this as a serious argument how it makes Fahrenheit the superiorly designed system (while it's just a vague rule of thumb that arises from coincidence), and if the weather is 100°C you are dead so it's a bad system. I'm not even joking.
@@hydrocharis1I am a real hater of both America and it's backwards ways, but I have to concede one aspect for Fahrenheit: body temperature. For celcius it's 36.5 to 37.5, where 36 and 38 would be harmful. Does anyone know what it's in F, and how you think about it?
Fahrenheit isn't an imperial system, it is not a measurement for weight and size. It is just popular in the imperial days until Celsius takes over. But the international scale for temperature is Kelvin.
@@RizkhyDestatama yes Fahrenheit is an orphan mainly because when the imperial system was created it was to set a standard for trade - ie things that are sold and temperature didn't get sold at that time.
Thank god for that! Insane to use an inferior system but that’s Americans for you, they just don’t care that more mistakes will be made as inch system is less logical and not so easy t9 measure precise measurements, how often do they miss out a zero when measuring a thousand of an inch when measuring engine tolerances etc?
@@frankhooper7871 No. Metric system and decimals are just two sides of the same coin, as decimals just mean you divide with ten, and further with 100 and a 1000. Most Brits use metric but does not understand the difference between milli, centi and deci.
[*Typical 1960s British Maths test at end of this comment using the Imperial system*] When I was in primary school during the 1960s, between the ages of 8-11, I always failed my mental arithmetic tests (zero out of 10). The maths teacher told my parents I wasn’t applying myself. At that time, everything was in imperial measurements, but here’s the stupid thing: WE WERE NEVER ACTUALLY TAUGHT WHAT IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS WERE - as a child of 8, I was just expected to know what they were. Here is a sample of the questions we were expected to answer: 1. If you subtract 6 chains from a furlong, how many rods have you got left? 2. If you have a bushel, and you divide it equally between 4 people, how many pecks does each person get? 3. If you have 15 people, and they each donate 16 drachms of talcum powder, how many ounces will you have collected? 4. Subtract 2 quarters from 3 hundredweight, and state the answer in stones. I rejoiced when the metric system came in!
Yes! The ... Gimli Glider? I'm not sure if I'm spelling that correctly, but it was a Canadian airline where they were moving from measuring fuel in Lbs to Kg. And funnily enough, they only got half way.
Brit here. I was born in 1974 which makes me on the verge of turning 50. Can’t believe I’m saying that as I still feel 20. Anyway metric was something that we learned like you in science class, but nobody I knew used it in real life. We filled up our cars in gallons and used Fahrenheit when talking about the weather. And we asked for a quarter pound of ham at the deli counter. But at around the age of 10 more and more people started to talk about Centigrade or Celsius for temperature and in my twenties, we started using grammes instead of pounds weight at the supermarket. And even now, we still use miles and yards on the road, and think of fuel consumption in miles per gallon even though we fill up our cars in litres. So the UK has never fully adopted the metric system. Every pub still serves beer in pints. But the U.S. has also standardised on the metric system for decades. Ask anyone in the scientific community or the automotive industry what units and measures they use. 100% of any remotely modern American cars will use metric nuts and bolts and not imperial.
It might be worse than you think, only 3 countries in the world use the imperial system, the USA, Liberia and Myanmar. Everyone else uses the metric system.
The word ‘Imperial’ is an adjective describing something from an Empire. America never had an Empire, but the British Empire had colonies around the world, including North America. Those colonies used the same imperial measurement system as the British homeland until they each adopted a different system. The French metric system.
@@ZeronimeYT Yes. Imperial can be used with any empire since it the adjectival form of the noun, empire. Aztecs and Mayans predated the naming of the Americas. Only one country in the Americas actually has America in its name. Too bad none of the others bothered to do the same. At least as far as the name they are known by internationally. So only the United States of America is referred to as America. And the US of A never had an empire.
Imperial is quite simple once you get it, 20 Twips a Point, 12 Points in a Pica, 63 Points a Finger, and 6 Points in a Line. A line is equal to 1 Poppyseed. 12 lines in an Inch, 4 Poppyseeds in a Barleycorn, 3 of which make an Inch, a Finger being 7/8 an Inch. 12 Inches in a foot, 2 Inches in a Stick, 2 of which are a Hand, of which 3 are a Foot. 4 Digits make a palm, 2 Palms a Shaftment, 2 of which are a Foot. 3 Digits are a Nail, 4 Nails in a Span, which is also 3 Palms. 2 Spans in a Cubit, which is also 3 Shaftments. 5 Shaftments is a Pace, 2 of which are a Grade/Step. 2 Cubits is a Yard, which is 3 Feet. 5 Spans is an Ell, 96 Ells in a Skein, 120 Skeins a Spindle. 1760 Yards in a Mile. 11 Cubits make a Rod/Pole/Perch, 4 of which are a Gunter's Chain. 10 of these in a Furlong, 8 of which are a Mile. There are 4 Grade/Steps in a Rope, 5 of which are a Ramsden's Chain, 50 of which make a Roman Mile. 2 Yards make a Fathom, 15 of which are a Shackle. 100 Fathoms in a Cable, 10 of which are a Nautic Mile. Of which 3 make a League. Finally, 25 Links make a Rod/Pole/Perch.
Are you kidding me??!! So glad I'm from mainland Europe, where everything is divisible or multipliable by 10. :-). But amazing to read this, pretty awesome that people could even remember all that. Or is it just you? :-)
Major flaw of the Imperial system is measuring small distances. I work in analytical science where things are measured in nano meters on a daily basis. I dont want to work out how many millionths of an inch that is !
@@la-go-xy International science has to talk in the same 'language'. Twips is not an SI unit. I'm not trying to sound arrogant or clever, its my profession thats all.
@@jamesmcnaught6341 that was just about imperial not having smaller units.... Personally love metric/SI, but then I never spent much time under empiral influence...
For temperature, Celcius makes it very easy. Water freezes at 0, boils at 100 and room temperature is 20. Oddly both scale (C and F||) meet at -40 which any way you measure it is very cold.
Germany here. Let me add some more information on the topic. TV screen diagonals had always been given in centimeters. Computer people, however, were used to screen diagonals given in inches because the first "real" computers were imported from America. Attempts to unify that and use the metric system only miserably failed, and in the age of multi-purpose visual output devices it's up to you which unit you use. The "pound" still is a traditional unit of weight, but it got adapted: While it used to be a units in its own right, nowadays it's defined as 500 grams or half a kilogram. The "liter" might be a bit confusing for people who are used to gallons, but it's just a common word for "one cubic decimeter", a decimeter being a tenth of a meter, and a cubic decimeter is the liquid content of a cubic with a side length of exactly 10 centimeters, a centimeter being a 1/100 of a meter, and one cubic decimeter of water weighs exactly one kilogram or one thousand grams. Confusing? No, it isn't. It's pure math on a base of ten. Get your potency rules straight and make yourself familiar with the prefixes, some of which you are already familiar with, like kilo, mega, giga, micro, nano. Fill up to gaps and learn which prefix correspond to which power of then, and suddenly it will all become clear. Please allow me a lengthy quote from simscale.com because that was the most epic and most expensive fail due to using incompatible units: "The Mars Climate Orbiter, built at a cost of $125 million, was a 638-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes. In addition, its function was to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ’98 program for the Mars Polar Lander. The navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet, and pounds. JPL engineers did not take into consideration that the units had been converted, i.e., the acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds^2 for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds^2. In a sense, the spacecraft was lost in translation."
Come on, don't exaggerate, our American friends will have their brains burned by so much knowledge 😁 it is important for them to be able to sign, count to 100 and work 80 hours a week they have no life, they live to work to death
Yes, interesting about the computer screens. It's the same here in Spain (I'm Dutch, living in Spain), everything is metric of course, but when you go buy a new television the size is given in 'pulgadas' (inches).
@@CharlesStearman That's only true if we're talking about the English-speaking world. The German pound is actually 500 grams. We call it the metric pound, and it's used in some other countries and languages as well.
America didn't want to be governed by imperialist Britain but chose to keep our way of measurement. What are you taught in school you are unaware that is the British imperial system? Like everything else, you assumed it was American. You say you are confused but it's really easy to confuse an American. Give them something that is not normal to them.
@sophiejohere who invented the imperial system in America. I'll help you the system was developed by the British from whom America gained its independence in 1776.
@@michaeldianewynne8414I always thought as a child that was because Americans always had to have bigger things, for example, 10 gallons in the UK is 12 gallons in the States
The hardest thing for me is calculating the difference between British and US imperial measurements. I believe that our feet, yards and miles are the same distance, but I'm pretty sure that a fluid ounce, pint, gallon or ton are completely different. History is a fascinating thing!
the common ones were rationalised in the 1950's are are international units done for the purpose of science, so your basic mass and length units, everything else is Imperial (UK) or US customary, the US dose NOT use imperial, it uses customary and international units, the UK when it not using Metric uses imperial and international units, keep in mind US Customary units are newer than imperial units and are defined directly in relation to the KG and Meter, a process that started in 1866 or there about's
Imperial ton = 2240 pounds, US ton = 2000 pounds, (also called a short ton, where a long ton is the same as the imperial ton) 1 metric tonne = 2204 pounds = 0.9842 long tons = 1.1023 short tons. Imperial pint = 20 fluid ounces = 0.5683 litres = 566.99 grams. US pint = 16 fluid ounces = 0.4732 litres = 453.592 grams. 1 mile = 1.609 kilometres. 1 kilometre = 0.6214 miles. 1 metre = 1.0936 yards = 3.2808 feet = 39.37 inches. 1 centimetre = 0.3937 inches, 1 inch = 2.54 centimetres.
The main reason is that the metric units are built around natural things. The meter is a decimal fraction of a quadrant of the earth, the density of water is one, so fluids are easier to calculate. One cubic meter of water weight a Metric Ton. Celsius is one hundredth of the span of temperature it takes from ice to water and then to vapor at sea level. So most calculations are easier to convert. One kiko is roughly a cube with the size of your palm as a side,..easier to multiplicate by then rather than 12..and etc etc etc
From France to the US, you’re welcome for: - metric system - vaccines - independence - Statue of Liberty - Louisiana - the sense of taste 😂 Soon? - social security - abolish tipping and paying a fair wage
I am an Aussie, old enough to have been taught the Imperial system and use pounds, shillings and pence. Now we use metric and decimal currency. It was not very difficult to transition ...although I do still convert someone's described height from cm to ft and inches mentally to get a better idea of how tall they are for some reason!
Interesting. Here in the UK I think we're the only country in the world that uses both systems about equally. For example, miles and Celsius. Stones and litres. A complete mixture.
Everything is easy when you just keep doing it. I kept converting Euros to Dutch guilders in 2002, but you just stop after a while when you get a true sense of what the value of a Euro is. We also don't know how to ride a bike the first time :-).
Do you think the Australian decimalisation of currency was easier than the UK one? Here a pound remained the same, but instead of twenty shillings to a pound and twelve pennies to the shilling, it just became a hundred new pence to the pound. It meant that 1' and 2' coins became 5p and 10p, from 12d and 24d, and it seemed to cause a lot of confusion. My understanding is that the Australian process had £1 = $2AU, so that an old shilling was then ten cents, so 12d -> 10c ... which is a transition I think would have been less painful.
Tyler, i as european amd Portuguese give you a tip: Came to Europe and learn that THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THIS PLANET USE UNTILL TODAY the Imperial system is the US. Really, in almost 200 countries in this planet ONLY ONE, i repeat, ONLEY ONE, use the imperial system. the others 199 use the METRIC SYSTEM
New Zealand, Australia & Canada converted to metric in the early 70s. I remember the transition at school when I was a very young teen. I remember the HQ Holden in particular which was produced from 71 to 74, the 71 had a MPH speedometer, the 72 had a MPH speedometer with secondary kph added, the 73 had kph speedometer with secondary MPH added, and the 74 had kph only. My dad had a 74. This was for New Zealand models.
What I love about the metric system is that it's standardized around water. 1cm³, a literal tiny cube, fits exactly 1ml of water, which also happens to weigh exactly 1g.
My favourite book, "How to invent everything" by Ryan North, gives me my favourite quote about this: "There remain precisely three holdout countries that insist on not using the otherwise predictable and global standard of weights and measures: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States. The United States has had actual spacecraft (the Mars Climate Orbiter) collide with actual planets (Mars) because they insisted on using their archaic units while the rest of the world has agreed on a more practical standard, then forgot they did that, and then messed up their orbital trajectories because some calculations used metric and others didn't. Even the 327.6 million American dollars wasted on that 1999 CE impact did not give the United States enough motivation to join the rest of the world in standard units of measurement. They wouldn't budge an inch!"
I remember helping a couple of American students with a university physics class. I was having all kinds of trouble with a mechanics problem until I realised that they were using g = 32 f/s^2 instead of 9.8 m/s^2. That's when I found out that atmospheric pressure was about 15 psi as well.
@@simpleminded1uk 😁 It still is 15 psi. Even to this day it is well to remember that our tyre pressures are measured in these units. Future generations are going to have a real laugh at us and our quaint ways. Except the USA of course, the ordinary people will never give up their 'Imperial' inheritance, (unless somebody tells them from whom they inherited it.)
@@wessexdruid7598 Customary Units (but they're still imperial underneath aren't they? Same trick as taking the 'Greenwich' out of Greenwich Mean Time, the renaming of BC and AD for dates. The very renaming of all of these shows a bit of an inferiority complex. My feeling is that there first to discover or invent something is the one who gets to name it. The renamers are just being jealous when they can't bear the fact that little old Britain got there first.
Their (U.S.A) wine measurements are in metric, as are things like medicine, tobacco, etc... basically anything that can kill you (other than temperature, body weight, falling height....) Also, pretty most of the world's aviation industry "talks" in Imperial for things like Altitude (especially).
Not everything, they use metric for drugs' weight ("drugs" as in the ones sold at the pharmacies and the "other" drugs), running distances, bullet's calibres, tools and hardware... They even use the same decimal type of the metric units for voltage (kilovolts, megavolts), resistance (kilo ohms, mega ohms), capacitance (milifarads, microfarads) or frequency (kilohertz, megahertz) and don't even notice it. 🙂
The Revolutionary French who introduced the metric system tried initially to develop a day divided into 10 rather than 24 hours, i.e. 10 decimal hours in a day, 100 decimal minutes per hour and 100 decimal seconds per minute. The switchover proved to be a disaster and was abandoned within 2 years. They still have some of those early decimal clocks in French museums.
the main reason why a decimal clock can not work is because ten is awful for dividing it into small numbers. ten only neatly divides by ten, five, two and one. 24 divides by 24, 12, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1. main reason this is important is that, whatever you use, it needs to divide by two so noon stays at noon and midnight stays midnight and it needs to divide by 3 so you can divide it into three shifts evenly. still don't know why they didn't switch to 30 hours in a day though, you get three ten hour shifts, two fifteen hour halves and it also divides by ten.
@@windhelmguard5295 Probably because it would be a pain to deal with the extra day every four years (a year is 365,25 days long, but those 0.25 days are cut off for three our of four years). Also, on a mechanical clock, 24 looks great with 3, 6, 9 and 12 each being in a cardinal direction. For a 30h clock you would have 7,5; 15; 22,5 and 30 in the cardinal directions, which looks just bad. 24 is also easier to cut in half (24>12>6>3) than 30 (30>15). Likewise the shift (8>4>2>1, versus 10>5). Reality is that while multiples of 10 are great for maths and conversions between units, they are NOT the best for standalone units that don't get converted (or don't get converted much). Ideal units are those that are 2 to a power of X. That means 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 74 etc.. Ironically, 2 to the power of X never will give you a number that's divisible cleanly by 10.
Height is a great example of why imperial feels clunky to me: I'm 1.75 meters tall. If I instead said I'm 175cm no one would bat an eye. If I said I'm .00175km tall, everyone would say I'm weird, but it's not too difficult to figure it out. But If I told you I'm 1.914yards tall, or almost 68.8 inches tall… I wonder if you could tell my height of 5 feet 9inches without recurring to google, a calculator or pen and paper.
Although I can use both systems, Mum is staunchly English and refuses to use the European metric system, so we still measure in feet/inches and ounces/pounds in our house! 😉 I still have to measure petrol in litres though, and favour Celsius for temperatures since that sets the water freeze-boil points at 0-100 and so is easier to work with.
in Canada we are also a hybrid measuring country. A lot of people do their weight and height, and a lot of construction in imperial. how ever most use metric for most things. one other major one is we use metric for temp, except in cooking. a lot of cooking is done in imperial. however I think that is just due to old recopies written in imperial, an no point converting it
@@ImperialAtlantis as oppose to? Hours and minutes are neither part of either the imperial nor metric system, the latter being the more obvious. But I think it was the Sumerians, counting in derivatives of 60's, primarily due to the parts of your fingers being made up of 3 parts, divided by 2 joints, (4 x 3 = 12) and 12 x 5 = 60, but I may have missed the "point" haha
I remember when, in 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act. This followed a whole process during which we American's attempted to change over. As a child, I was taught both, Tyler. However, the law passed by Congress was not mandatory, but voluntary. It is the only way it could get passed through Congress. So, metric is used in conjunction with the Imperial System in business and industry, but without the force of law, the movement languished into no movement at all.
We may officially use the metric, but it caused a "MAJOR PUSH BACK", from the people. I am 77, I was educated in the Imperial. We had no metric input. My current use of metric I have taught myself. It is a intuitive system with it's cross referencing between leanth, volume and weights.
There's a fun story (probably apocryphal) about the creation of the metric system, claiming that it was Napoleon who demanded it because the foot used in France was larger than the British one. British propaganda claimed that he was a short little runt, based on the measurement in French feet, which in English feet was small, but in reality he was of pretty average height for the time. For my own part, I learned metric from childhood (1960s in Sweden) but my father worked in the lumber and paper industry and they'd been using the archaic systems. Systems plural! Like so many other countries, Sweden had its own "inch" called a "tum" (thumb). Ours was slightly shorter than the Evil Empire's one (24.74 mm as opposed to 25.4). So when preparing shipments for the domestic market (Sweden, remember?) he had to use one set of rulers, for Britain another and for Germany or France it had to be metric. He was quite relieved when Sweden standardized on metric.
Most Americans don't know how the metric system works? Really? I was in high-school in California during the late '60 and we were taught the metric units and how they worked. [And even now, despite all my education having been in California, I still have no idea how many feet or yards there are in a mile.]
1760 yards = 1 mile, 5280 feet = 1 mile, 63360 inches = 1 mile. There now you know. (I worked these out when I was about 10 years old - just out of idle curiosity)
Here's a little note on the US and the metric system: The US space program used the metric system for engineering and only converted it to the imperial system for display purposes (using what little processing power they had).
And majorly F'd up some experiment because Nasa used the metric system, but then when they outsourced to other US companies they messed up the conversion, or may have even forgotten to tell them they had use a different system, clearly I don't remember a lot about this, like what even the experiment was, but regardless your comment triggered a memory for me, I have a feeling it had something to do with a rocket engine, or some parts of a rocket, I can't remember but in truth I am too hungover to look it up, sorry
Jesus wept! America never had an empire - so where on earth did Tyler think the 'Imperial' measurement system came from? His astonishment to learn USA measurements derived from that used by the British Empire says a lot about the standard/quality ot the education system in the USA !
Brits use a mixture of imperial and metric depending on what we're measuring. Pints of beer but litres of pepsi, and older blokes like me can occasionally be heard to say things like "It's about two inches more than a metre" cos I'm comfortable with either system 😂
@@hnorrstrom The US military and scientists in the US use the metric system all the time. Even in products, I heard they have 2 litre bottles in the US, just like we do in Europe. So, they are familiar with some of the basics. I think what most Americans don't know is how easy it is to convert units. If they knew that, I think they'd be more open to the metric system. I'm not saying they'd forget the imperial, but they'd be more like Canadians or Brits who are familiar with both systems. 1 km = 1000 m, 1 l = 1000 ml, 1 kl = 1000 l, etc. You put kilo in front of a unit, it will be automatically equal to 1000 units.
It's actually the case that the US is officially metric, but in normal usage you still use the "American Customary" (used to be called "Imperial") units. However, even these are officially defined with reference to the Metric system! To a certain extent, we in the UK also still commonly use SOME Imperial measurements (like pints, miles, quoting our height in feet and inches, etc.) but these ALSO are now officially defined with reference to the metric system.
"In america at least it is all imperial" Here is just a short list of everyday occurances of errors in your statement: - Nutritional labels on food use gramms (as are many other small amount of weight) - short running events (the 5k or 10k) are named so because they stretch over 5 or 10 KILOMETERS respectively - engines are categorized with "liter" Oh and don't forget about the most american thing at all: Guns. Nothing screams good ol' 'murica like a 9 millimeter on my bed side table. Guess again. Millimeter are a metric mesurement. GUNS ARE METRIC! (This one always gets me laughing hard)
Gun are metric but USA is not and you end with .50 caliber (12.7mm) or .308 (7.62mm) that can be field along non american caliber based 9mm, 5.7mm or 7.92mm. The most idiot fing i have heard is : a 9mm glock 17 use a 4.49 inch barrel. think about the man who is suppose to design a barrel to fit a 9mm with a lenght of 4.49 inch... Everything depend where the object is from: a .50caliber(12.7mm) is US but a 12.7mm DSHK (still.50 caliber but wrong length) is from URSS. Gun are in metric because everyone use metric but before when the UK was still in full imperial many weapon where in imperial and only a few in metric. Then the world change and the base mesurement change. For exemple the second WW : US, UK and colonies in imperial VS Germany, France, Japan, URSS, Italy ... in metric Now : US and half the UK system in Imperial VS the other Half of the UK system, Germany, France, Japan, URSS, Italy... in metric.
PS - the USA has _never_ used the Imperial System, which was invented as a reorganisation of weights and measures in 1824 by their former imperial masters (with whom they had just fought two wars). The USA stuck with what they had been using in 1776. That's why their pints are tiny.
As a truck driver, I'm often on the road in the UK. I can tell you that the imperial system still applies on the roads, which always forces me, as a German, to convert. I get on well with miles, but I have problems with feet. I don't know if I can fit under a bridge. I prefer the metric system. Everything is on the base of ten. It makes calculating easy. But I've also spent a lot of time in the United States and I've always wondered how you actually do the conversion. Greetings from Lower Saxony in good old Germany.
@@szabados1980 That's what you're going on about?! You do realize that it's common way to talk world-wide, right?! Just like few are really saying automobile, everyone just says auto (or car) or few say animated movie and just say movie or cartoon (which is a different thing, by the way). In casual speech, obvious things like that are regularly omitted. In USA, in GB, literally anywhere in the world.
@@kikixchannel The United Stakes isn't equal the whole world. In other places people are aware of the difference between kilometres and km/h. I'm really sorry if it's beyond your mental grasp.
@@szabados1980 You're the one that has some problems here. I literally said that this is common way to talk WORLDWIDE. I'm not even from United States, nor do I have any sort of interest, bias or a shred of positive views towards United States, so your pointless jabs are as dull as your reading comprehension.
I read these three simple phrases in the newspaper back when Canada introduced metric and they really helped me: A metre measures 3 foot 3 - it’s longer than a yard, you see. A litre of water’s a pint and three quarters. Two and a quarter pounds of jam weigh about a kilogram. 😉
It reminds me when the Euro was introduced in Europe, for a few months people converted the prices in Euro into price in their old currency, but then they just started to think in Euro. In everyday life, changing measurement systems does not create problems, but rather they do in production processes.
even NASA uses the metric. There is famously a very expensive NASA mission that failed, because the researchers doing calculations in imperial, forgot to convert over to metric. But imo, the US does have something right. in the way that writes dates like YY/MM/DD, instead of DD/MM/YY in my country. When using a spreadsheet. sorting using YY/MM/DD is optimal.
I'm from the U.K, and I could almost cry every time I hear somebody mention anything in the imperial System. The metric system is 10 x better (see what i did there ?) ! Even though the USA OFFICIALLY adopted the metric system in the 70's under Jimmy Carter (I think), it has never been brought into daily use. The REAL reason that the U.S. won't properly adopt it is this: Whichever government (republican or democrat) is in power at the time is scared that u,s, citizens will not be able to understand it and make that government unpopular. This really is a sad indictment of the intelligence of u.s. citizens, to say that they are too dim to understand it. It beggars belief, it really does. As with many things, the u.s. is stuck in the past. Pretty sad really.
Beer and milk (oddly?) can be bought in pints...but I think there are converted notations in shops (stores) from Imperial measures to Metric, probably by law... So, we all know what we're buying...
@@brigidsingleton1596 No conversions from metric, milk and beer are sold by the imperial pint. Not sure why one would need a conversion to metric to know what one is buying? Some shops sell 2 litres of milk for the same price as half a gallon (4 pints), using the misconception that two litres is the same as 4 pints when it is actually less.
@@monty2005 I just meant that on some items both metric weights 'n' measures may be displayed along side Imperial ones...they were last time I shopped but then I haven't for awhile as my daughter/ carer does that for me etc... Sorry if I was mistaken. 😕
@@brigidsingleton1596 sorry, I misread your comment completely, my fault 🫣 Yes, there are metric indicators on pints of milk, I wish that was the case for mass measurements too, with imperial measurements still present (2lb of spuds is way easier to visualise than 1kg). Ultimately the U.K. ended up using a bizarre mix of imperial and metric, with many of us able to fairly accurately do the maths for conversion on the fly, in our heads. I can’t see it changing any time soon.
@@monty2005 I appreciate the mixed displays of measures etc as my brain doesn't work re figures (dyscalculia) and, like Tyler I've no idea what a kilometer is versus a mile etc... I still measure my / other heights in feet 'n' inches and horse's heights in hands (& showjumps etc in feet 'n' inches!!)
For length as a rule of thumb either divide or times by 3 and remove or place the decimal point i.e 18ft= 5.4m or 3.6m = 12ft 18×3=54(5.4m) (place the decimal point) or(remove the decimal point) (3.6)36÷3=12
That looks both complicated and prone to error - how do you know whether to multiply or divide, and what to do with the decimal point, unless you already know what answer you're aiming for? Yes 3 is key (actually three threes): one metre is three feet three and a third inches. This conversion is only out by two or three hundredths of an inch per metre.
Australia changed in 1976, but we did it in one hit, which meant more pain, but a fairly quick transition. We had changed from imperial money (pounds, shillings and pence) to dollars and cents in 1966, which was a great thing for me, because I was working on minor concrete works in a council, and having to calculate the price of concrete works, which were often measured in feet and inches, which was correct for things like reinforcing mesh and so on, but then had to be changed to cubic yards for the volume of premided cement, and then priced at maybe £2/13/6 per cubic yard where £1 = 20 shillings or 240 pence and 1 shilling = 12 pence. Dollars and cents made that much easier. Then, when we went metric, I had gotten qualified and was a town planner, so I was working out site coverages and minimum setbacks and building heights in a single unit system -- again, vastly more simple, and fewer mistakes. Driving in the UK is a bit convusing because it has stayed imperial. I am used to driving at 110 on the expressway in Australia, which is very close to the 70mph on a British M road. But the first time I saw that my turnoff was in "2" I panicked, because I had 6 feet to turn across two lanes of busy traffic. A kilometre is roughly 5/8 mile, so common speeds in Australia are 40 I25 mph) through town centres, 50 (30mph) in suburban streets, 60 (40mph) on major suburban roads, connecting suburbs, 100 (60mph) or 110 (70mph) on motorways. You will occasionally also find roads in rural or semi-rural areas or specific sections of motorways with speed limits of 70 or 80. A short person at 5 ft is 1.5 m or 150 cm and a tall person around 6 feet is 1.8 m or 180 cm. A pretty cold morning in Sydney is around 2 or 3 deg C, which is about 35 or 37 deg F (in round figures.) A pleasant spring day, or the temperature inside a comfortable office building is around 21 or 22 degrees, where you'd be going for around 71. and, in Sydney, we start feeling a bit uncomfortable at about 26 or 27, which is around the 79 to 84 F mark. When it's really hot, it's 40 degrees, which is 104 degrees F
So, let me get this straight-we Americans are still using inches and gallons because pirates decided we weren’t ready for the metric system? Honestly, that’s so on-brand for us. Meanwhile, the UK saw the light and joined the global ‘math makes sense’ club, and here we are, proudly measuring things in units that only make sense after a few pints. I mean, why make things easy with nice round numbers when you can have 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and still not know how far a kilometer is? I guess if it ain't broke... oh wait, it is.
In the 1950's our pre-11 yr old class was practiced in arithmetic using tons, cwt, quarters, stones, lbs and ounces. Also gallons, quarts, pints and quarters. And miles, furlongs, chains, yards feet and inches. I've only ever used metric for all my engineering calculations - with one exception. A US company did some work in Trinidad and I had to convert my answers into imperial.
Standard packaging case box of six bottles of alcohol (wine, whiskey etc) is one UK gallon. This makes calculations easy for trade. UK is big french wine consumer...And there is difference between UK and US gallon.
@@peacefulminimalist2028 That is why US reformed their spelling as far as I know... However, without context ypu'd not inow what they are writing. Any Brits, Canadians: Is there a difference in pronounciation between metre and meter?
The title should be changed from "American Reacts to Why the UK Uses the Metric System" to "American reacts to why the entire world uses the metric system but not us for some apparent reason"
The nice thing about the metric system is that for everyday usage you only really need to know what a meter and a degree celsius is - the rest just falls into place. 1km=1000m, 1000mm=1m 1m^3=1000l, 1000kg=1m^3 of water. If you need a bit more: 1 kg produces about 10N of gravitational force, 1J=1N*1m, 1Pa=1N/m^2
Yes Tyler - we happily use BOTH systems these days and it doesn't seem to be a problem at all! We buy cartons of milk in litres, yet we still buy beer in pints! Most food packaging is labelled in grams (the 2lb bag of sugar was long ago replaced by the kilogram bag of sugar) - yet I was recently still able to buy a quarter of a pound of loose, sliced, cooked meat. When we do DIY stuff, some of us older ones still THINK and measure in feet and inches, though we buy our timber cut to metric sizes - we are used to mentally converting from one to the other. A yard is very similar to a metre. The one sticking-point is road distances! We cannot seem to shake off thinking of distances in MILES still - hence our cars have speedometers calibrated in miles-per-hour (plus the kilometers per hour in smaller figures, but nobody takes any notice of that!) - and our roadside speed limit signs are still in miles per hour. Like you, I have no idea how far a kilometre is!
The road measurements still remaining in miles is I think really because of the enormous cost of converting road signs across the UK to show distances in km. The logistics of doing so are also rather daunting, since we wouldn't be able to instantly change all road signs from miles to km. You'd have to have some form of dual distance indication on road signs, persisting over probably many years. And then there would be the problem of confusion for motorists - which of the two distances on the sign is miles and which km? Would you distinguish them by colour, or some sort of marker? Would there be room on signs to put dual distance information without confusing drivers? At what point in the conversion process would it be ok for car manufactures to drop the mph reading on the car dash in favour of km/hr? I reckon considerations like that must have weighed heavily in favour of an official "do nothing to the road signage" policy! Yes, the did it in the Republic of Ireland, but the road network there is quite a bit smaller and less heavily used, so not quite such a big impact on drivers I guess. It's a much easier problem to solve with say, bags of sugar. You just change the the weight of the package when the packing machinery needs to be updated. Then for a while print both the (new) metric weight and the imperial equivalent on the wrapper.
Actually most Commonwealth countries or former Commonwealth countries uses a combination of metric and imperial, also there are some occupations in the United States do you use the metric system most of days in healthcare and related services uses the metric system, in Commonwealth countries you will find those who use a mix of the two systems would it be born in the 1960s, the metric system is hidden in plain sight in American grocery stores if you look at the nutrition guides that are on food packaging, most are in metric imperial together
no, we don’t measure hot days in Fahrenheit at all - all days are measured in Celsius, I don’t know anyone in the UK who uses Fahrenheit at all, unless we’re converting it for US folk in conversation.
No "we" don't, you do. I will shortly be 40, was taught only metric. Dad was British and born in 1955 and when he started school he was taught metric their too! My grandparents were taught imperial but switched when their kids were in school and used both depending on who they talked to. With their grandchildren they never used imperial so not to confuse us. Yes a lot still use ft and inc to describe their height, my similar age cousins do, I don't because my mother is German so has always used metric, tho is aware of German pre metric units as similar to my dad her parents used the old system. In less than one generation there won't be anyone left who wasn't taught straight metric at school. Britain being Britain will probably still use pints for beer and drive on the wrong side of the road for a long time to come but Fahrenheit is dying out and in all likelihood so will describing height in ft and inc because we don't use Imperial measures for short distance for anything else. Heck that mph is possibly at risk too....
Well.. Not only UK uses mixed systems. It's the case in many countries around the world, including US. Have you ever heard for unit prefixes like milli-, micro-, nano-, pico- (smaller) or kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera- (greater), and many more... they are all prefixes of metric units and all have base multiplier or divider like 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc. Also, most European countries are using inches in plumbing works to measure pipes diameter, so it's common to see marks like 1", 2", 3/4", 3/8", 1/4", 1/2". Bottom of line, metric system is just way more simpler to use and even if you never heard for some unit... you know that kilo-unit is 1000 units, mega-unit is million times greater than that unit, micro-unit is million times smaller than that unit, or pico-unit trillion (or milliard, not sure) times smaller. If someone says 65 kilometers, we immediately know that's 65,000 meters or 65,000,000 millimeters, or any other bigger or smaller unit. If someone says 65 miles, we need to spend extra time to calculate yards, feet or inches. Anyway, much easier than fractions. Also, in science it's very hard to measure things with imperial units, especially when it comes to small particles so having unit-prefixes that easily describe something that is eg. 1,000,000,000,000 times smaller is a must have. Metric units are defined under International System of Measurement (SI) and adopted by almost every country in the world, and that's good reason why this system is called international. In United States, scientist also use metric system in most areas of work, like pharmacy and chemistry, nuclear-science, etc. Eg. you can find milligrams mark on many meds in US, data-capacity in IT is partially measured with metric system kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, but byte itself is not part of SI units.. well, not yet) Imperial units reflected people's needs to measure things back in time... inch (thumb), foot, yard (stick), etc. They needed to express size of something and only way to do that was to compare it to things/objects known to them. In most countries today you can learn about old local units (no longer used) that worked by the same "laws" as Imperial units today. Those units are origins of modern measuring system we have today and SI was a way to standardize units to be used and easily understood in different countries so 1m in Brazil is same as 1m in Italy, Russia, Egypt or Vietnam. Just imagine trading back in time when every country across the world have own way to express their stock of corn, potatoes, coal, iron, etc. Trivia: Do you know that word "soccer" is also British term and they decided to replace it with football like rest of the world. Like imperial units, soccer is also a thing that represents British legacy in US. Back in time Brits had two sports containing word football in their name - Rugby Football and Association Football. Later one is what you call Soccer today. They started calling Rugby Football simply as Rugby and Association Football simply as Assoc, which later got more abbreviated to slang Soc, and finally to Soccer. So yeah, you Americans are bit late to adopt things that the rest of the world has done ages ago :D
The imperial system is an ancient organic method of weights and measures. Each unit is based on the length of a part of the body or a natural item. An inch is the length from the tip of the thump to the knuckle and a yard is the length from nose to finger tip. A pint is the volume of 20ounces of water in the UK but 16ounces in the US hence a bigger gallon in UK than US.
Don't remember where I learned this, but apparently counting in dozens comes from our fingers. Open both hands, palms up. Use your thumb as the counter, as you count, start at the top section of the little finger as number one, count down little finger 123, move to ring finger, 345, etc. When you get to 12, count 1 dozen on the other hand using the same method. Hence the gross. The other beauty is that it allows you not to loose count.
They learn ignorance about the world on the other side of their borders. Looking from the outside at the educational system in the US it sometimes seems to be more of a "brainwashing facility" than actual education. (Yes I'm exaggerating on purpose) They learn a little bit about their own country and they learn even less about what's beyond. They are taught how great America is compared to the rest of the world, because they have to assume by default that the rest of the world doesn't have anything important to learn from. It's just really sad to watch from the outside sometimes. Yes, we all like to laugh about the ignorance we all know from Americans but - at least in my case - I often only laugh because I would start crying knowing that this country and these people could bring so much more to this planet than a comedy about ignorance and naivety.
We still have things in the UK like the classic 2x4 timber that you have over there but we buy it in metric lengths, so it'll be something like 2"x4"x1000mm. photos are 6x4 7x5 10x8 all inches, a standard cake loaf tin is 2lb, people who may be dieting often are trying to lose a stone, miles per gallon is often used for fuel consumption, down the pub a pint is a pint and will always be a pint (and will always be bigger and better than a US pint), burgers are quarter pounders, catering sausage sizes are named eights or sixes which is how many you get to the pound but the price is per kilo, homes and offices for sale or rent will be in square foot a lot of the time, golf courses are in yards, Suit jackets, trouser waist and length, shirt collars that's all inches, the list goes on but you get the idea. We are still proud of our silly system and hang on to it like you do. Tape measures, scales, measuring jugs etc often have both measurements on them.
I recall when the US tried to use the metric system. mid to late 1970-1980s, but after a short period of pumping gas in liters, almost all US revolted, and the metric system was reversed back to Imperial or gallons. But other than the Science aspect. another area we have switched to metric is Track N Field. When I ran track in High School, I recall running the 440yd, or the 400m which is one lap or the 880yd or 800m which is two laps, currently used. So although the UK has not fully switched to metric, the US has done much less.
I.5 cm is near 1/2", an inch is close to 2.5cm. We have school rulers with both though they are less common now, and tape measures for sewing come with both. As an aussie kid I learned imperial, still in school when the system changed by law. So then I learned metric. I still use what I learned to quilt in imperial, it's easier, they sell quilting rulers in inches and cutting mats are in both, but the shops sell fabric in metres. 3' or 1 yd, is a bit less than 1 metre, around 3" or 4", so we get a bit extra, a win there. Mum kept her baby records in inches and pounds, but the grandkids are in metric. So still we are in some sort of transition. Old recipes arein old measures, some have both, modern ones are all metric. Look at your car, a lot of cars come with both on the speedo. A litre is 1 kg in weight. Around 600ml is a pint. On the roads, what was 35 miles in town is now 60km. Out of town 65 miles is now 100km
In Australia when we buy a tape mesure or a ruler or a measuring cup we have Both metric and som form of imperial measurement, for scales it shows both and for most other measuring tools you can either select metric or imperial or both are shown.... is this not the case in the USA?!?!? Australia went metric in the 70s but if you want to use imperial at home, go for it.... The only thing you wont get is imperial weather forecasts on the TV/radio or miles on road signs.... And maybe no mph inside the car thogh with digital speedometers you may be able to... 1st step to going metric, ensure all the tools and measuring devices in the home can do both.... Then teach it in schools.... To everyone.......
In the UK, we use both systems. Our tape measures will have metric and imperial. In pubs, beer is served by the pint, which is bigger than the US pint (20FL OZ rather than the US 16 FL OZ). Our weighing scales can switch between imperial and metric. I can work things out in my head using both systems.
I was at school when it changed over. What was not mentioned was the change in currency when we went from pennies, shillings and pounds (12 pennies in a shilling, also known colloquially as a bob, 20 shillings in a pound) oh and guineas (21 shillings) to pounds and pence.
It is a matter of will. You can find out about the metric system when you buy firearms. All Americans know what a 9mm pistol is and also know the size of ammunition used for it.
The meter is the length of the distance that light travels in a vacuum during the duration of 1/299,792,458 seconds. It follows that the speed of light is c = 299,792,458 m/s, and light (in a vacuum) is always and everywhere exactly that fast. Because the speed of light is a constant, the meter is also a constant And is therefore always error-free and easy to use 1m is equal to 10dm is equal to 100cm is equal to 1000mm
Yes we pretty much still use both in the UK but generally the younger you are, the more metric you are... When I walked across Spain with Americans I was constantly having to help them convert km to miles, because I was the only person who understood both! For the record 16km is 10miles... But to make it easy to calculate (if rough approximation is OK) you can use 1mile=1.5km
I work in the catering and we still use both imperial or metric system depending on who wrote the recipes. Also another point id a few measurements between the UK and USA imperial are also different as the UK gallon is more than the US gallon and same with pints and quarts.
There are some more interesting things you can learn about this. For example there is Interstate 19 that does use metric system on signs. And all imperial units is defined using metric system so you can say that you kind of use it then. 1 yard is 0,91 meters, an inch is 25,4 millimetres, 1 mile is 1609 meters, 1 pund is about 0,45 kilograms and 1 gallon is about 3,79 liters.
I'm British and I'm 31 years old here's a list of the diffrent measurements we use for general measurements in like buildings and sizes we use mm cm m km for distance and speed for driving, we use miles and mph and yards but in some occasions on distance we use km for fluids, we use ml and litre except for milk and pub drinks where we use pints for weight of objects we use grams, kilograms and metric tonne for the mesurment of a persons height and weight we use feet and inches and stone and pounds so basicly we use metric for everything except for driving speed and distance and people hieght and weight it's a mixed system but it's not confusing when you know it's only those 2 things that are diffrent
I'm in my 70's and used Imperial units until I left school, and then met the Metric system as an electronics engineering apprentice, but that was also ungoing a change from the CGS (centimeter, grams, second) to the MKS (Meter, Kilogram, second) system. The MKS system was the beginning of the present day SI units. One area where it is easier to use Imperial in the UK is in construction. Doors for instance are 6ft 6in high and in multiples of 3 inches wide, the most common being 30" (762mm) and 33" (838mm) and boards (plywood, mdf, plaster [drywall] ) are 4 feet wide no matter what it says on the lable. And wood is still commonly refered to in the old sizes, like a 2" by 4". And another quick observation, the U.S. pints and gallons are not the same as the UK Imperial sizes.
Our uk cars are in miles per hour. Our roads signs are all miles per hour. Many builders use both metric and imperial depending on their preference, So, if I go to buy timber I can ask for a 4 by 3, 6 foot post and they would know exactly what I’m asking for - a 4 inch by 3 inch 6 foot tall fence post. What I’d get is a 100mm by 75mm x 1800mm post (not exactly the same, but close enough) Just one example. We are not completely metric in uk, not by a long way.
People in Britain are fairly unique in that we can think in, and use interchangeably, both Metric and Imperial. Some examples are: We use miles and miles per hour, measure the fuel we put in our cars in litres, but then measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon, albeit our gallon is larger than the US gallon (4.55 vs 3.79 litres). We, buy bottled drinks fromt he supermarket in litres and then also drink beer in pints but, again, our pints are larger (568mL vs 473mL). We measure our height in feet and inches but mostly weight ourselves in kilos thses days.
Yes Tyler, the British Empire is responsible for the Imperial system. There's a small clue in the name
He has no clue.
Imperial refers to Imperial Rome initially. These measurements were used throughout Europe until the metric system was introduced during the Napoleonic era. Personally I use metric system for scientific work and Imperial for domestic measurement.
@@JoannDavi No, unfortunately, the term British Imperial System is not used. It wasn't even referred to as the "Imperial" system when I was taught in the 1960's and 1970's. You can't know what you aren't taught. And, yes, many of us are increasingly angry about the things we were not taught, or at least not in full context. Then, again, as I understand, your English children aren't taught much about American history either.
@@michaelwilkinson2928 being a Brit in my mid-60s, I was brought up with both imperial and metric, and although like you, I still 'think' in feet and inches, ( I'm 5' 8") I do work mainly metrically. Perhaps Tyler should look into the pre-decimal currency we used up until the early 1970s. That should fry his brain! :) Girl Gone London is one of my fave UA-cam channels.
@@michaelwilkinson2928 As I understand it, the British standardised under the imperial system, although many of the measures themselves have many different origins. I could not find the imperial referring to Rome anywhere, genuinely interested, do you have a source?
"celsius, does it even exist?"
"the UK does use celsius?"
EVERYONE uses celsius, nobody bothers with fahrenheit for anything serious - its dead. The US just hasn't caught up with reality yet.
And 1 gram of water is 1cm3, which is 1mL and it takes 1 calorie to raise its temp by 1C - making it insanely easier to understand anything. If you have a swimming pool 3m x 5m x 2m, that's 30m3, which is 30,000l and would take 300,000kcal to raise in temp by 10C. You can do this stuff in your head.
Oh, and most americans know grams through buying drugs or gun calibres.
Except in science they usually use Kelvin (which is just Celcius shifted 273 degrees)
@@LiqdPT 0 K = -237,15°C 😋
It's time to stop the climate change and reverse it so we get back temperatures of -40°. At this temperature °C or °F does not matter. ☺️
The calorie is actually not a metric unit. It's metric equivalent would be Joule, and 1 calorie = 4.184 Joule. Many people call the kcal a calorie, while in fact, it's a kilocalorie. So yes, 1 cal is the energy needed to increase the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 Kelvin, but in 100 g of suger, there is about 400 kcal (or 400,000 calories) of chemical energy.
That's we're you are very much wrong, I'm in my 40s and still use Celsius, in the 80s and 80s we was still in school being taught both, Celsius for cold and Fahrenheit for hot, I still remember the weather broadcasting doing that as well, also I'm a chef and will still use both in cooking, we have to take fridge temperature everyday and send it of in temperature taken in Celsius,
I have an old thermometer which shows Celsius and Réaumur.
The imperial measurement system is good because Americans can always be reminded that they were once a colony of Great Britain (contains irony).
Yes but we dont use imperial on fluids. We use us customary. Us gallon is 3.785 L not 4.545l. Us gal is 128 us oz. Not 160 like uk. Uk gallon was based of 10 lbs of water. Us gallon wasnt. Pint is 1/8 gallon both places, 16 us oz is a pint not 20 like uk. 473 ml in usa. 568 uk. Us fluid oz is slightly bigger than a uk.
The reason why the USA chose to be independent from Britain was because Britain imposed unreasonable taxes on them.
What Great? That's bullsh1t.
Good hahahahahah
ua-cam.com/video/11NgKV2NPh0/v-deo.html Her comments on Tyler.
US weights differ too.
14 lbs to the stone.
2240lbs to the ton.
My dear friend Tyler,
I am an American. I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I still live in Massachusetts, but I have had the opportunity to travel the world. The metric system makes far more sense than the Imperial system.
I run my home on the metric system. I cook using metric for both weights and measurements, and Celsius for cooking and heating.
Here in America we do use metric for one common item, carbonated soda beverages.
Many Americans think gasoline (petrol) in Europe is less expensive than here because the price is in liters. I tell them to multiply that price by four and they will be close to the gallon price!
America needs to join the rest of humanity and adopt metric. It’s a much easier and more sensible system. 😺
I am Peruvian, we are not known for our educational system but even we were taught the story of units.
No no no! Keep going! Keep using imperial system 😂
@@XimCinesThat's why education is so important and why a lot of US americans (luckyly not all) are so d*mb
Don't forget projectile lengths are always mm 😆
AMERICAH!
I'm glad I don't live in your house.
I'm Canadian and old enough (at 61) to remember the Imperial system. In the 70's Canada went officially metric, so I had to learn that too. What's funny to me is how in the "imperial" system the US came up with the "US standard" of measure for liquids. The US gallon is smaller than British Imperial gallons, and quarts and pints an liquid cups and liquid oz. So really the US uses a bastardized version of the Imperial system....
Only three countries in the world still use imperial measurements as their official measuring system - USA, Myanmar and Liberia, what a strange combination!
There is a strong connection between the USA and Liberia.
@@camelopardalis84 Yes, one country has cannibal warlords. The other is Liberia.
I wondered about that one. From what I could find out, Myanmar doesn't use Imperial; they just don't use Metric. They've got another system of units all together.
Myanmar started going metric in 2013...
How is it now?
Actually, the system used by the United States is not the same as the Imperial System. They have different standards for the ton, the fluid ounce, the pint and the gallon. Their units are correctly known as "United States Customary Units".
The beauty of metric is that, when you're used to it, you don't even think of meters and kilometers as different units. In the metric system, we always use the prefix "kilo-" to mean "one thousand". A kilometer is a thousand meters, a kilogram is a thousand grams, a kiloliter is a thousand liters, and so on. Same for milli-, which means a thousandth of that unit. A millimeter is a thousandth of a meter, a milligram is a thousandth of a gram, a milliliter is a thousandth of a liter, and so on. You can slap these bad boys on top of any unit to mean "a thousand of that unit" or "a thousandth of that unit". And we have a lot of these prefixes. "Deci-" for a tenth, "centi-" for a hundredth, "micro-" for a millionth, "deca-" for ten, "hecto-" for a hundred, "mega-" for a million... Once you know your prefixes, it's super easy.
But the best thing about the metric system is how the units, like meters, liters, etc., interact with each other. A liter is defined as a decimeter cubed. The kilogram used to be defined as the weight of one liter of water (though that got changed for the sake of being more precise). And yes, the kilogram is the only multiple that has its own definition, which is then used to define the base unit. A bit odd, but sure.
But it doesn't stop there. All kinds of more scientific units are defined like this. The newton (unit of force) is defined as the force needed to accelerate a mass of 1 kg by 1 m/s². The pascal (unit of pressure) is defined as 1 newton of force applied perpendicularly on a surface of 1 meter squared. The joule (unit of energy) is defined as the amount of work created by a force of one newton displacing a mass by one meter. The watt (unit of power) is defined as a joule per second.
In fact, there are currently only seven base units, which aren't defined using only other units: The second, the meter, the kilogram, the ampere (unit of electric current), the kelvin (which is like the degree Celsius, but with its zero being defined as absolute zero), the mole (which is basically just a number of particles), and the candela (unit of luminous intensity). Every other unit in the system is defined using these, directly or indirectly, as I've shown above using only the second, the meter, and the kilogram.
But the best part of all this: Nowadays, the units used in America are also defined using metric units. The yard is defined as exactly 0.9144 meters. The avoirdupois pound (which is the base unit of weight used in America) is defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kilograms. Even the degree Fahrenheit is based on the kelvin. So you guys are acting all proud, but under the hood, it's all metric.
Yes, prefixes to metric units are decadic multiples or submultiples, i.e. factors or fractions base 10, not different units.
×10^(-2) c centi-
from Latin centum, "hundred" (cf. century, cent, percent).
×10^(-1) d deci-
from Latin decimus, "tenth".
▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎▪︎
×10¹ da deca-
from Late Latin decas ("(set of) ten"), from Ancient Greek δέκας (dékas), from δέκα (déka, "ten")
×10² h hecto-
from Greek ἑκατόν hekatón, "hundred"
...etc...
-No- However, defining US Customary units in metric does not mean using the metric sytem. If you calculate in Customary you have to do all the conversions all the time, because it's not really a system, just a collection with various conversion factors.
You could do the calculations in metric and convert the result only, though...
@@la-go-xy Where did I say it's the same as using the metric system? I only said the units used in US Customary are based on metric units.
@@Mercure250maybe misunderstood your intention of "under the hood"
@@la-go-xy Yeah I meant it in a way that was more like "Americans act all proud, but even their units aren't independent" or something along those lines. I'll acknowledge this might not have been a good use of the expression; English isn't my native language.
there are 2 different gallons, 3 different ounces, 2 different pints, 2 imperial tons but only one metric tonne... a gram is always a gram and a litre is a litre. Fahrenheit is just a bonkers scale compared to Celsius.
Yeah, Fahrenheit was based off of someones body temperature - and they decided that would be 100. Nice.. Ever noticed how peoples body temperature varies a lot? Great scientific measurement that was...
There's only one Imperial ton, and it's 2240lbs.
It's sometimes called the 'long ton' to distinguish it from the US Customary 'short ton' of 2000lbs.
(The metric ton (1000kg) is 2204.6244202lbs ( just over 2204lbs 9oz 15drams 23¼*grains)).
[*11406/40000ths of a grain]
Did you know that in 1999 NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because the engineers of Lockheed Martin did not use the metric system when the project was commited to use the International System of Units (which uses metric units)? The failure of Lockheed to comply (and the failure of NASA to detect the non compliance) resulted in a loss of 325 million dollars of that day (nearly 575 million of dollars of nowadays) and almost a year of work.
3:52 Nobody's left you behind but yourselves. You made your choice in 1773 when you got uppity about the price of tea in Boston. The Crown hasn't been responsible for your well-being since then.
In 1773, the Colonists decided on no "taxation without representation."
The shock on Tyler's face when he learns the Brits invented the Imperial system is hilarious 😅
Agree, though somehow sad & depressing...
The system in the US is for the most part not imperial. A US bushel is not an imperial bushel. A US gallon is not an imperial gallon. And, a US quart is not imperial. 0
@@floro7687 The Imperial Gallon obviously came from Great Britain and had been used for centuries before the US existed. The US Gallon wasn't established until 1824.
@@floro7687 the dollar!
Tyler's face is in a permanent state of shock all the time.
I was born in 59, but was bought up using imperial. I wasn’t introduced to metric until secondary school (11). Both systems happily coexisted for decades. We still use miles, buy beer and milk in pints and can buy fabric in yards. I automatically change between the two depending on which is appropriate.
Very similar for me too - a couple of years earlier for me, but it was a lot to take in. Plus the fact we were in the time of currency change too - and that was also fun times!
Im from the 00s and even during my life we have just had both systems but in weird ways.
Driving- miles
Marathons/walking - kilometres
Running events - metres
Height - literally either
Gaps between cars - buses
Penis - inches
Distances to something on the road ahead (traffic lights, roundabouts etc) - yards
Beer - pints
Milk - pints (milk)
Smaller bottles of drink - millilitres (very rarely centilitlres)
Larger bottles of drink - litres
Fuel - litres
Small weights - grams
Bigger weights - kilograms
Cars - metric tonnes
Bulls*** - a metric tonne
Speed - miles per hour
@@YoloMenace001
Hi,
Where can you buy fabric in yards?
@@YoloMenace001 Schizophrenic!
We use both metric and imperial here, it depends what you’re doing
And some times both at once. Some years ago I bought some bespoke laminate sheets. You started with one of the standard ply wood bases and then gave your required measurements and the company cut it up for you and then foil wrapped the pieces. The standard board was 8 x 10 x 11. That meant 8 foot by 10 foot by 11 millimetres thick.
hehe milk, alcohol and wine
All our petrol pumps dispense in litres but we measure our cars efficiency in miles per gallon - just one crazy example! If your car averages 50mpg how many litres do you need to put in to travel 150 miles.🤔
@@FayeSless-di3jg13.6383 Litres.... I got bored so I decide to do math lol
@@FayeSless-di3jgAustralia , NZ , UK citizen there ?
6:45 Bigger shock, mate: The English language was "invented" in Britain, more specifically in England as well.
No way, I thought it was a gift from God!
@@Pidalin It is. He used to speak Hebrew. Then He went to Greek with a little Aramaic and Latin on the side. Now He only uses English and almost the whole world follows His example. The rest are catching up.
@@majorlaff8682 That makes sense, he is also constantly movin, now he lives in USA I guess.
Celsius makes sense - 0 is freezing point of water and 100 is the boiling point. I was so happy when Australia changed.
The best way of working out kilometers is to use horse racing. 1600metres replaced 1 mile for horse racing (it is actually 1609 metres.
A race track for runners is 400m. So a 1 mile race is basically 4 rounds.
Some comedian once joked Fahrenheit makes more sense because it goes from 0°F f*cking cold to 100°F f*cking hot and now each time this discussion comes up Americans use this as a serious argument how it makes Fahrenheit the superiorly designed system (while it's just a vague rule of thumb that arises from coincidence), and if the weather is 100°C you are dead so it's a bad system. I'm not even joking.
@@hydrocharis1I am a real hater of both America and it's backwards ways, but I have to concede one aspect for Fahrenheit: body temperature. For celcius it's 36.5 to 37.5, where 36 and 38 would be harmful. Does anyone know what it's in F, and how you think about it?
Fahrenheit isn't an imperial system, it is not a measurement for weight and size. It is just popular in the imperial days until Celsius takes over. But the international scale for temperature is Kelvin.
@@RizkhyDestatama yes Fahrenheit is an orphan mainly because when the imperial system was created it was to set a standard for trade - ie things that are sold and temperature didn't get sold at that time.
The USA's money system is metric.
No, it's decimal; two different things, albeit related.
Thank god for that! Insane to use an inferior system but that’s Americans for you, they just don’t care that more mistakes will be made as inch system is less logical and not so easy t9 measure precise measurements, how often do they miss out a zero when measuring a thousand of an inch when measuring engine tolerances etc?
Yeah, but capitalism isn't important enough to them. Otherwise they would be ridiculous.....
@frankhooper7871 The metric system is a decimal measuring system, anything operating in multiples of 100 is metric 😂
@@frankhooper7871 No. Metric system and decimals are just two sides of the same coin, as decimals just mean you divide with ten, and further with 100 and a 1000. Most Brits use metric but does not understand the difference between milli, centi and deci.
[*Typical 1960s British Maths test at end of this comment using the Imperial system*]
When I was in primary school during the 1960s, between the ages of 8-11, I always failed my mental arithmetic tests (zero out of 10). The maths teacher told my parents I wasn’t applying myself. At that time, everything was in imperial measurements, but here’s the stupid thing: WE WERE NEVER ACTUALLY TAUGHT WHAT IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS WERE - as a child of 8, I was just expected to know what they were. Here is a sample of the questions we were expected to answer:
1. If you subtract 6 chains from a furlong, how many rods have you got left?
2. If you have a bushel, and you divide it equally between 4 people, how many pecks does each person get?
3. If you have 15 people, and they each donate 16 drachms of talcum powder, how many ounces will you have collected?
4. Subtract 2 quarters from 3 hundredweight, and state the answer in stones.
I rejoiced when the metric system came in!
Most manufacturing in USA uses metric these days. There have been plane crashes due to mistakes in converting fuel quantities between units.
Yes! The ... Gimli Glider? I'm not sure if I'm spelling that correctly, but it was a Canadian airline where they were moving from measuring fuel in Lbs to Kg. And funnily enough, they only got half way.
Everyone in the us is using the metric system, but with an imperial user interface.
Even the NASA had converting failures like the Mars Climate Orbiter
Brit here. I was born in 1974 which makes me on the verge of turning 50. Can’t believe I’m saying that as I still feel 20. Anyway metric was something that we learned like you in science class, but nobody I knew used it in real life. We filled up our cars in gallons and used Fahrenheit when talking about the weather. And we asked for a quarter pound of ham at the deli counter. But at around the age of 10 more and more people started to talk about Centigrade or Celsius for temperature and in my twenties, we started using grammes instead of pounds weight at the supermarket. And even now, we still use miles and yards on the road, and think of fuel consumption in miles per gallon even though we fill up our cars in litres. So the UK has never fully adopted the metric system. Every pub still serves beer in pints. But the U.S. has also standardised on the metric system for decades. Ask anyone in the scientific community or the automotive industry what units and measures they use. 100% of any remotely modern American cars will use metric nuts and bolts and not imperial.
Almost all of the scientific community ...
R.I.P. Mars Climate Orbiter
I made a distinct effort to use metric when shopping.
It might be worse than you think, only 3 countries in the world use the imperial system, the USA, Liberia and Myanmar. Everyone else uses the metric system.
The word ‘Imperial’ is an adjective describing something from an Empire.
America never had an Empire, but the British Empire had colonies around the world, including North America.
Those colonies used the same imperial measurement system as the British homeland until they each adopted a different system. The French metric system.
Aztec Empire? What about Mayan?
@@ZeronimeYT
Yes. Imperial can be used with any empire since it the adjectival form of the noun, empire.
Aztecs and Mayans predated the naming of the Americas.
Only one country in the Americas actually has America in its name.
Too bad none of the others bothered to do the same. At least as far as the name they are known by internationally.
So only the United States of America is referred to as America. And the US of A never had an empire.
😊 so you seriously mean to say US Americans struggle to multiply and divide by 10? How do you manage to work with your metric money?
They have to multiply everything by twelve and then mentally divide by one and a fifth.
they don't. that's why so many have credit card debt
Nah, bullcrap. I am metric 100% for almost 37 years of my life and have same shit😅
Imperial is quite simple once you get it, 20 Twips a Point, 12 Points in a Pica, 63 Points a Finger, and 6 Points in a Line. A line is equal to 1 Poppyseed. 12 lines in an Inch, 4 Poppyseeds in a Barleycorn, 3 of which make an Inch, a Finger being 7/8 an Inch. 12 Inches in a foot, 2 Inches in a Stick, 2 of which are a Hand, of which 3 are a Foot. 4 Digits make a palm, 2 Palms a Shaftment, 2 of which are a Foot. 3 Digits are a Nail, 4 Nails in a Span, which is also 3 Palms. 2 Spans in a Cubit, which is also 3 Shaftments. 5 Shaftments is a Pace, 2 of which are a Grade/Step. 2 Cubits is a Yard, which is 3 Feet. 5 Spans is an Ell, 96 Ells in a Skein, 120 Skeins a Spindle. 1760 Yards in a Mile. 11 Cubits make a Rod/Pole/Perch, 4 of which are a Gunter's Chain. 10 of these in a Furlong, 8 of which are a Mile. There are 4 Grade/Steps in a Rope, 5 of which are a Ramsden's Chain, 50 of which make a Roman Mile. 2 Yards make a Fathom, 15 of which are a Shackle. 100 Fathoms in a Cable, 10 of which are a Nautic Mile. Of which 3 make a League. Finally, 25 Links make a Rod/Pole/Perch.
Are you kidding me??!! So glad I'm from mainland Europe, where everything is divisible or multipliable by 10. :-). But amazing to read this, pretty awesome that people could even remember all that. Or is it just you? :-)
Fascinating! I grew up in England with Imperial but have never heard of most of these - I especially like Twips 😉😂
@@adriankolsters I am 100% sure OP is joking about it being simple.
And don't forget Firkins, Kilderkins and Hogsheads!
Yes - you soon get into it. I do feel like I'm a medieval peasant talking about some of that stuff though.
Major flaw of the Imperial system is measuring small distances. I work in analytical science where things are measured in nano meters on a daily basis. I dont want to work out how many millionths of an inch that is !
You could've used 1/1000 of twips...
But of course you're too clever to do that LOL
@@la-go-xy International science has to talk in the same 'language'. Twips is not an SI unit.
I'm not trying to sound arrogant or clever, its my profession thats all.
@@jamesmcnaught6341 that was just about imperial not having smaller units....
Personally love metric/SI, but then I never spent much time under empiral influence...
For temperature, Celcius makes it very easy. Water freezes at 0, boils at 100 and room temperature is 20. Oddly both scale (C and F||) meet at -40 which any way you measure it is very cold.
Germany here. Let me add some more information on the topic.
TV screen diagonals had always been given in centimeters. Computer people, however, were used to screen diagonals given in inches because the first "real" computers were imported from America. Attempts to unify that and use the metric system only miserably failed, and in the age of multi-purpose visual output devices it's up to you which unit you use.
The "pound" still is a traditional unit of weight, but it got adapted: While it used to be a units in its own right, nowadays it's defined as 500 grams or half a kilogram.
The "liter" might be a bit confusing for people who are used to gallons, but it's just a common word for "one cubic decimeter", a decimeter being a tenth of a meter, and a cubic decimeter is the liquid content of a cubic with a side length of exactly 10 centimeters, a centimeter being a 1/100 of a meter, and one cubic decimeter of water weighs exactly one kilogram or one thousand grams.
Confusing? No, it isn't. It's pure math on a base of ten. Get your potency rules straight and make yourself familiar with the prefixes, some of which you are already familiar with, like kilo, mega, giga, micro, nano. Fill up to gaps and learn which prefix correspond to which power of then, and suddenly it will all become clear.
Please allow me a lengthy quote from simscale.com because that was the most epic and most expensive fail due to using incompatible units:
"The Mars Climate Orbiter, built at a cost of $125 million, was a 638-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes. In addition, its function was to act as the communications relay in the Mars Surveyor ’98 program for the Mars Polar Lander. The navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system of millimeters and meters in its calculations, while Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver, Colorado, which designed and built the spacecraft, provided crucial acceleration data in the English system of inches, feet, and pounds. JPL engineers did not take into consideration that the units had been converted, i.e., the acceleration readings measured in English units of pound-seconds^2 for a metric measure of force called newton-seconds^2. In a sense, the spacecraft was lost in translation."
Yep even NASA works in metric now. I wonder if you guys do so but are you using imperials system for plumbing too ?
Come on, don't exaggerate, our American friends will have their brains burned by so much knowledge 😁
it is important for them to be able to sign, count to 100 and work 80 hours a week
they have no life, they live to work to death
Yes, interesting about the computer screens. It's the same here in Spain (I'm Dutch, living in Spain), everything is metric of course, but when you go buy a new television the size is given in 'pulgadas' (inches).
The pound is actually internationally defined as 0.45359237kgs, not 0.5kgs. In UK product labelling it is usually shown as 454g.
@@CharlesStearman That's only true if we're talking about the English-speaking world. The German pound is actually 500 grams. We call it the metric pound, and it's used in some other countries and languages as well.
America didn't want to be governed by imperialist Britain but chose to keep our way of measurement. What are you taught in school you are unaware that is the British imperial system? Like everything else, you assumed it was American. You say you are confused but it's really easy to confuse an American. Give them something that is not normal to them.
Not true since their imperial system doesn’t even match ours
@sophiejohere who invented the imperial system in America. I'll help you the system was developed by the British from whom America gained its independence in 1776.
@@sophiejohere Some of it does but their gallon is smaller than ours
Britain wasn't an empire of conquest. It was an empire of trading outposts.
@@michaeldianewynne8414I always thought as a child that was because Americans always had to have bigger things, for example, 10 gallons in the UK is 12 gallons in the States
The hardest thing for me is calculating the difference between British and US imperial measurements. I believe that our feet, yards and miles are the same distance, but I'm pretty sure that a fluid ounce, pint, gallon or ton are completely different. History is a fascinating thing!
the common ones were rationalised in the 1950's are are international units done for the purpose of science, so your basic mass and length units, everything else is Imperial (UK) or US customary, the US dose NOT use imperial, it uses customary and international units, the UK when it not using Metric uses imperial and international units, keep in mind US Customary units are newer than imperial units and are defined directly in relation to the KG and Meter, a process that started in 1866 or there about's
Imperial ton = 2240 pounds, US ton = 2000 pounds, (also called a short ton, where a long ton is the same as the imperial ton)
1 metric tonne = 2204 pounds = 0.9842 long tons = 1.1023 short tons.
Imperial pint = 20 fluid ounces = 0.5683 litres = 566.99 grams. US pint = 16 fluid ounces = 0.4732 litres = 453.592 grams.
1 mile = 1.609 kilometres. 1 kilometre = 0.6214 miles.
1 metre = 1.0936 yards = 3.2808 feet = 39.37 inches.
1 centimetre = 0.3937 inches,
1 inch = 2.54 centimetres.
A US pint is 16 fluid ounces, a UK pint is 20 fluid ounces. Therefore, a US gallon is 128 fluid ounces, and the UK is 160.
@@kingspeechless1607I agree, having family in US and we go back and forth. It’s one of the topics that gets brought up when we go out.
@@Lazmanarus Simple enough, really. 🙃
The main reason is that the metric units are built around natural things. The meter is a decimal fraction of a quadrant of the earth, the density of water is one, so fluids are easier to calculate. One cubic meter of water weight a Metric Ton.
Celsius is one hundredth of the span of temperature it takes from ice to water and then to vapor at sea level. So most calculations are easier to convert. One kiko is roughly a cube with the size of your palm as a side,..easier to multiplicate by then rather than 12..and etc etc etc
From France to the US, you’re welcome for:
- metric system
- vaccines
- independence
- Statue of Liberty
- Louisiana
- the sense of taste 😂
Soon?
- social security
- abolish tipping and paying a fair wage
I am an Aussie, old enough to have been taught the Imperial system and use pounds, shillings and pence. Now we use metric and decimal currency. It was not very difficult to transition ...although I do still convert someone's described height from cm to ft and inches mentally to get a better idea of how tall they are for some reason!
Interesting. Here in the UK I think we're the only country in the world that uses both systems about equally. For example, miles and Celsius. Stones and litres. A complete mixture.
Everything is easy when you just keep doing it. I kept converting Euros to Dutch guilders in 2002, but you just stop after a while when you get a true sense of what the value of a Euro is. We also don't know how to ride a bike the first time :-).
Grandmas insist on babies being weighed in lbs.
Do you think the Australian decimalisation of currency was easier than the UK one? Here a pound remained the same, but instead of twenty shillings to a pound and twelve pennies to the shilling, it just became a hundred new pence to the pound. It meant that 1' and 2' coins became 5p and 10p, from 12d and 24d, and it seemed to cause a lot of confusion.
My understanding is that the Australian process had £1 = $2AU, so that an old shilling was then ten cents, so 12d -> 10c ... which is a transition I think would have been less painful.
@@simpleminded1uk I suspect you are spot on.
Tyler, i as european amd Portuguese give you a tip: Came to Europe and learn that THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THIS PLANET USE UNTILL TODAY the Imperial system is the US. Really, in almost 200 countries in this planet ONLY ONE, i repeat, ONLEY ONE, use the imperial system. the others 199 use the METRIC SYSTEM
New Zealand, Australia & Canada converted to metric in the early 70s. I remember the transition at school when I was a very young teen. I remember the HQ Holden in particular which was produced from 71 to 74, the 71 had a MPH speedometer, the 72 had a MPH speedometer with secondary kph added, the 73 had kph speedometer with secondary MPH added, and the 74 had kph only. My dad had a 74. This was for New Zealand models.
Canadian Speedometers show both, too
UK speedo's show mph and kph secondary.
That's what happens when y'all throw your toys overboard at just the wrong moment. Yanks just had really bad timing.
What I love about the metric system is that it's standardized around water.
1cm³, a literal tiny cube, fits exactly 1ml of water, which also happens to weigh exactly 1g.
My favourite book, "How to invent everything" by Ryan North, gives me my favourite quote about this: "There remain precisely three holdout countries that insist on not using the otherwise predictable and global standard of weights and measures: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States. The United States has had actual spacecraft (the Mars Climate Orbiter) collide with actual planets (Mars) because they insisted on using their archaic units while the rest of the world has agreed on a more practical standard, then forgot they did that, and then messed up their orbital trajectories because some calculations used metric and others didn't. Even the 327.6 million American dollars wasted on that 1999 CE impact did not give the United States enough motivation to join the rest of the world in standard units of measurement. They wouldn't budge an inch!"
@@pringle9279 You said NASA wouldn't budge an inch, or perhaps we might better say 'They wouldn't budge 25.4 mm'? 😉
I remember helping a couple of American students with a university physics class. I was having all kinds of trouble with a mechanics problem until I realised that they were using g = 32 f/s^2 instead of 9.8 m/s^2. That's when I found out that atmospheric pressure was about 15 psi as well.
@@simpleminded1uk 😁 It still is 15 psi. Even to this day it is well to remember that our tyre pressures are measured in these units. Future generations are going to have a real laugh at us and our quaint ways. Except the USA of course, the ordinary people will never give up their 'Imperial' inheritance, (unless somebody tells them from whom they inherited it.)
@@davidparkins1808 What's funny though, is that aren't even actually Imperial, although they call them that. They're US 'customary' measures.
@@wessexdruid7598 Customary Units (but they're still imperial underneath aren't they? Same trick as taking the 'Greenwich' out of Greenwich Mean Time, the renaming of BC and AD for dates. The very renaming of all of these shows a bit of an inferiority complex. My feeling is that there first to discover or invent something is the one who gets to name it. The renamers are just being jealous when they can't bear the fact that little old Britain got there first.
Surprise fact, the USA actually uses the metric system, but everything is converted to imperial...
Their (U.S.A) wine measurements are in metric, as are things like medicine, tobacco, etc... basically anything that can kill you (other than temperature, body weight, falling height....)
Also, pretty most of the world's aviation industry "talks" in Imperial for things like Altitude (especially).
Not everything, they use metric for drugs' weight ("drugs" as in the ones sold at the pharmacies and the "other" drugs), running distances, bullet's calibres, tools and hardware... They even use the same decimal type of the metric units for voltage (kilovolts, megavolts), resistance (kilo ohms, mega ohms), capacitance (milifarads, microfarads) or frequency (kilohertz, megahertz) and don't even notice it. 🙂
Even the official US definition of the inch is 25.4 mm.
Your money is metric. You have 100 cents in 1 dollar. And even your notes are as well they are not imperial values.
😅😅😅😅😅 Very funny...
0:53 what's a kilometer?? Dear sweet mercy.... If only there was a clue in the name somehow
0.6215 miles.
In Chile, we calculate in the number of city blocks, 1 Km. is about 8 city blocks.
it's a meme
1000 meters
What is a Kilometer!!! a little pile of meters....
The US customer units are English
The SI metric system is French
« Système International »
not really french. Everyone uses it.
Also US has it's own system. Nothing to do with the English one.
@@svr5423 to be fair, the US Customary Units are defined in Metric (SI) so technically, the US IS metric, kind of..
The Revolutionary French who introduced the metric system tried initially to develop a day divided into 10 rather than 24 hours, i.e. 10 decimal hours in a day, 100 decimal minutes per hour and 100 decimal seconds per minute. The switchover proved to be a disaster and was abandoned within 2 years. They still have some of those early decimal clocks in French museums.
the main reason why a decimal clock can not work is because ten is awful for dividing it into small numbers.
ten only neatly divides by ten, five, two and one.
24 divides by 24, 12, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
main reason this is important is that, whatever you use, it needs to divide by two so noon stays at noon and midnight stays midnight and it needs to divide by 3 so you can divide it into three shifts evenly.
still don't know why they didn't switch to 30 hours in a day though, you get three ten hour shifts, two fifteen hour halves and it also divides by ten.
Don't forget the revolutionary calendar and its tenday week
@@windhelmguard5295 Probably because it would be a pain to deal with the extra day every four years (a year is 365,25 days long, but those 0.25 days are cut off for three our of four years).
Also, on a mechanical clock, 24 looks great with 3, 6, 9 and 12 each being in a cardinal direction. For a 30h clock you would have 7,5; 15; 22,5 and 30 in the cardinal directions, which looks just bad.
24 is also easier to cut in half (24>12>6>3) than 30 (30>15). Likewise the shift (8>4>2>1, versus 10>5).
Reality is that while multiples of 10 are great for maths and conversions between units, they are NOT the best for standalone units that don't get converted (or don't get converted much). Ideal units are those that are 2 to a power of X. That means 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 74 etc.. Ironically, 2 to the power of X never will give you a number that's divisible cleanly by 10.
Height is a great example of why imperial feels clunky to me: I'm 1.75 meters tall. If I instead said I'm 175cm no one would bat an eye. If I said I'm .00175km tall, everyone would say I'm weird, but it's not too difficult to figure it out. But If I told you I'm 1.914yards tall, or almost 68.8 inches tall… I wonder if you could tell my height of 5 feet 9inches without recurring to google, a calculator or pen and paper.
Although I can use both systems, Mum is staunchly English and refuses to use the European metric system, so we still measure in feet/inches and ounces/pounds in our house! 😉
I still have to measure petrol in litres though, and favour Celsius for temperatures since that sets the water freeze-boil points at 0-100 and so is easier to work with.
in Canada we are also a hybrid measuring country. A lot of people do their weight and height, and a lot of construction in imperial. how ever most use metric for most things. one other major one is we use metric for temp, except in cooking. a lot of cooking is done in imperial. however I think that is just due to old recopies written in imperial, an no point converting it
That is because you have a great Monarchy to hold your hands!
And of course distance is measured in hours and minutes
@@ImperialAtlantis as oppose to? Hours and minutes are neither part of either the imperial nor metric system, the latter being the more obvious. But I think it was the Sumerians, counting in derivatives of 60's, primarily due to the parts of your fingers being made up of 3 parts, divided by 2 joints, (4 x 3 = 12) and 12 x 5 = 60, but I may have missed the "point" haha
I remember when, in 1975, Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act. This followed a whole process during which we American's attempted to change over. As a child, I was taught both, Tyler. However, the law passed by Congress was not mandatory, but voluntary. It is the only way it could get passed through Congress. So, metric is used in conjunction with the Imperial System in business and industry, but without the force of law, the movement languished into no movement at all.
We may officially use the metric, but it caused a "MAJOR PUSH BACK", from the people. I am 77, I was educated in the Imperial. We had no metric input. My current use of metric I have taught myself. It is a intuitive system with it's cross referencing between leanth, volume and weights.
There's a fun story (probably apocryphal) about the creation of the metric system, claiming that it was Napoleon who demanded it because the foot used in France was larger than the British one. British propaganda claimed that he was a short little runt, based on the measurement in French feet, which in English feet was small, but in reality he was of pretty average height for the time.
For my own part, I learned metric from childhood (1960s in Sweden) but my father worked in the lumber and paper industry and they'd been using the archaic systems. Systems plural! Like so many other countries, Sweden had its own "inch" called a "tum" (thumb). Ours was slightly shorter than the Evil Empire's one (24.74 mm as opposed to 25.4). So when preparing shipments for the domestic market (Sweden, remember?) he had to use one set of rulers, for Britain another and for Germany or France it had to be metric. He was quite relieved when Sweden standardized on metric.
Most Americans don't know how the metric system works? Really? I was in high-school in California during the late '60 and we were taught the metric units and how they worked. [And even now, despite all my education having been in California, I still have no idea how many feet or yards there are in a mile.]
1760 yards = 1 mile, 5280 feet = 1 mile, 63360 inches = 1 mile.
There now you know.
(I worked these out when I was about 10 years old - just out of idle curiosity)
"George the Third said with a smile, 1760 yards to a mile."
Here's a little note on the US and the metric system: The US space program used the metric system for engineering and only converted it to the imperial system for display purposes (using what little processing power they had).
Their analog meters probably only needed their background paper changed.
And majorly F'd up some experiment because Nasa used the metric system, but then when they outsourced to other US companies they messed up the conversion, or may have even forgotten to tell them they had use a different system, clearly I don't remember a lot about this, like what even the experiment was, but regardless your comment triggered a memory for me, I have a feeling it had something to do with a rocket engine, or some parts of a rocket, I can't remember but in truth I am too hungover to look it up, sorry
A later comment has just reminded me, it was due to fuel measurements
All science will be in metric in the US.
@@WestieWestie Except for the Hubble main mirror
Jesus wept! America never had an empire - so where on earth did Tyler think the 'Imperial' measurement system came from? His astonishment to learn USA measurements derived from that used by the British Empire says a lot about the standard/quality ot the education system in the USA !
Is it just me, or is Tyler flanderising himself to the point where he’s becoming a cartoon character?
In Canada, we are officially metric, but due to proximity to the US, we are still heavily imperial. Many Canadians are very fluent in using both.
Including me, but I’m old.
Brits use a mixture of imperial and metric depending on what we're measuring. Pints of beer but litres of pepsi, and older blokes like me can occasionally be heard to say things like "It's about two inches more than a metre" cos I'm comfortable with either system 😂
In Belgium "pint" basically means 5,2% alcohol. It doesn't refer to an amount, rather to a specific type of beer.
But we all still measure our member in inches lol
Americans have no issue with the metric system when it comes to measuring bullets and guns.....
???? wrong I think ..... why talk about a nine millimeter bullet/gun, sounds metric to me !
@@MisterJ56 exactly my point, Americans complain about the metric system but are more than happy to use it when it comes to guns.
And drugs, dont buy a once they buy per grams
Yes indeed they also use it for small size engines like chainsaws they always talk about cc then
@@hnorrstrom The US military and scientists in the US use the metric system all the time. Even in products, I heard they have 2 litre bottles in the US, just like we do in Europe. So, they are familiar with some of the basics. I think what most Americans don't know is how easy it is to convert units. If they knew that, I think they'd be more open to the metric system. I'm not saying they'd forget the imperial, but they'd be more like Canadians or Brits who are familiar with both systems. 1 km = 1000 m, 1 l = 1000 ml, 1 kl = 1000 l, etc. You put kilo in front of a unit, it will be automatically equal to 1000 units.
It's actually the case that the US is officially metric, but in normal usage you still use the "American Customary" (used to be called "Imperial") units. However, even these are officially defined with reference to the Metric system! To a certain extent, we in the UK also still commonly use SOME Imperial measurements (like pints, miles, quoting our height in feet and inches, etc.) but these ALSO are now officially defined with reference to the metric system.
How many -peebles- pebbles are in a stone? ;-)
And what is a Stone FPS??? Depends on what kind of stone you got??? How many kilo's?
As a nurse have used metric height and weight for 30+ years
"In america at least it is all imperial"
Here is just a short list of everyday occurances of errors in your statement:
- Nutritional labels on food use gramms (as are many other small amount of weight)
- short running events (the 5k or 10k) are named so because they stretch over 5 or 10 KILOMETERS respectively
- engines are categorized with "liter"
Oh and don't forget about the most american thing at all:
Guns. Nothing screams good ol' 'murica like a 9 millimeter on my bed side table.
Guess again. Millimeter are a metric mesurement.
GUNS ARE METRIC! (This one always gets me laughing hard)
Gun are metric but USA is not and you end with .50 caliber (12.7mm) or .308 (7.62mm) that can be field along non american caliber based 9mm, 5.7mm or 7.92mm.
The most idiot fing i have heard is : a 9mm glock 17 use a 4.49 inch barrel. think about the man who is suppose to design a barrel to fit a 9mm with a lenght of 4.49 inch...
Everything depend where the object is from: a .50caliber(12.7mm) is US but a 12.7mm DSHK (still.50 caliber but wrong length) is from URSS.
Gun are in metric because everyone use metric but before when the UK was still in full imperial many weapon where in imperial and only a few in metric.
Then the world change and the base mesurement change.
For exemple the second WW : US, UK and colonies in imperial VS Germany, France, Japan, URSS, Italy ... in metric
Now : US and half the UK system in Imperial VS the other Half of the UK system, Germany, France, Japan, URSS, Italy... in metric.
PS - the USA has _never_ used the Imperial System, which was invented as a reorganisation of weights and measures in 1824 by their former imperial masters (with whom they had just fought two wars). The USA stuck with what they had been using in 1776. That's why their pints are tiny.
As a truck driver, I'm often on the road in the UK. I can tell you that the imperial system still applies on the roads, which always forces me, as a German, to convert. I get on well with miles, but I have problems with feet. I don't know if I can fit under a bridge. I prefer the metric system. Everything is on the base of ten. It makes calculating easy. But I've also spent a lot of time in the United States and I've always wondered how you actually do the conversion. Greetings from Lower Saxony in good old Germany.
13:34 No, she's wrong. British speed limit signs are in "miles per hour".
That's literally what she said...
@@kikixchannel No, she said "in miles". Which might be OK in Murica but here it isn't good enough over here.
@@szabados1980 That's what you're going on about?! You do realize that it's common way to talk world-wide, right?! Just like few are really saying automobile, everyone just says auto (or car) or few say animated movie and just say movie or cartoon (which is a different thing, by the way).
In casual speech, obvious things like that are regularly omitted. In USA, in GB, literally anywhere in the world.
@@kikixchannel The United Stakes isn't equal the whole world. In other places people are aware of the difference between kilometres and km/h. I'm really sorry if it's beyond your mental grasp.
@@szabados1980 You're the one that has some problems here. I literally said that this is common way to talk WORLDWIDE.
I'm not even from United States, nor do I have any sort of interest, bias or a shred of positive views towards United States, so your pointless jabs are as dull as your reading comprehension.
I mean, US is one of the only countries to insist calling armpitball football, and actual football soccer 😂
I read these three simple phrases in the newspaper back when Canada introduced metric and they really helped me:
A metre measures 3 foot 3 - it’s longer than a yard, you see.
A litre of water’s a pint and three quarters.
Two and a quarter pounds of jam weigh about a kilogram.
😉
1 km - 5 furlongs
@@СашаЧерный-э2т Jockeys will find that very helpful 🙂
It reminds me when the Euro was introduced in Europe, for a few months people converted the prices in Euro into price in their old currency, but then they just started to think in Euro.
In everyday life, changing measurement systems does not create problems, but rather they do in production processes.
even NASA uses the metric. There is famously a very expensive NASA mission that failed, because the researchers doing calculations in imperial, forgot to convert over to metric.
But imo, the US does have something right. in the way that writes dates like YY/MM/DD, instead of DD/MM/YY in my country. When using a spreadsheet. sorting using YY/MM/DD is optimal.
It is similar in Canada.
Outdoor temperature: Celsius.
Pool temperature: Fahrenheit.
Body temperature: Celsius.
Oven temperature: Fahrenheit.
I'm from the U.K, and I could almost cry every time I hear somebody mention anything in the imperial System. The metric system is 10 x better (see what i did there ?) ! Even though the USA OFFICIALLY adopted the metric system in the 70's under Jimmy Carter (I think), it has never been brought into daily use. The REAL reason that the U.S. won't properly adopt it is this: Whichever government (republican or democrat) is in power at the time is scared that u,s, citizens will not be able to understand it and make that government unpopular. This really is a sad indictment of the intelligence of u.s. citizens, to say that they are too dim to understand it. It beggars belief, it really does. As with many things, the u.s. is stuck in the past. Pretty sad really.
I'm a little confused about whether the imperial system is 3, 12, 14 or 16 times worse.
I use Kelvin in science, not Celsius.
We use Imperial as well. Speed limits and distances are still In miles for example
Beer and milk (oddly?) can be bought in pints...but I think there are converted notations in shops (stores) from Imperial measures to Metric, probably by law...
So, we all know what we're buying...
@@brigidsingleton1596 No conversions from metric, milk and beer are sold by the imperial pint.
Not sure why one would need a conversion to metric to know what one is buying?
Some shops sell 2 litres of milk for the same price as half a gallon (4 pints), using the misconception that two litres is the same as 4 pints when it is actually less.
@@monty2005
I just meant that on some items both metric weights 'n' measures may be displayed along side Imperial ones...they were last time I shopped but then I haven't for awhile as my daughter/ carer does that for me etc... Sorry if I was mistaken. 😕
@@brigidsingleton1596 sorry, I misread your comment completely, my fault 🫣
Yes, there are metric indicators on pints of milk, I wish that was the case for mass measurements too, with imperial measurements still present (2lb of spuds is way easier to visualise than 1kg).
Ultimately the U.K. ended up using a bizarre mix of imperial and metric, with many of us able to fairly accurately do the maths for conversion on the fly, in our heads. I can’t see it changing any time soon.
@@monty2005
I appreciate the mixed displays of measures etc as my brain doesn't work re figures (dyscalculia) and, like Tyler I've no idea what a kilometer is versus a mile etc... I still measure my / other heights in feet 'n' inches and horse's heights in hands (& showjumps etc in feet 'n' inches!!)
For length as a rule of thumb either divide or times by 3 and remove or place the decimal point i.e 18ft= 5.4m or 3.6m = 12ft
18×3=54(5.4m) (place the decimal point) or(remove the decimal point) (3.6)36÷3=12
That looks both complicated and prone to error - how do you know whether to multiply or divide, and what to do with the decimal point, unless you already know what answer you're aiming for? Yes 3 is key (actually three threes): one metre is three feet three and a third inches. This conversion is only out by two or three hundredths of an inch per metre.
@alanparkinson549 so basically from ft to m it's times and m to ft is divide
Australia changed in 1976, but we did it in one hit, which meant more pain, but a fairly quick transition.
We had changed from imperial money (pounds, shillings and pence) to dollars and cents in 1966, which was a great thing for me, because I was working on minor concrete works in a council, and having to calculate the price of concrete works, which were often measured in feet and inches, which was correct for things like reinforcing mesh and so on, but then had to be changed to cubic yards for the volume of premided cement, and then priced at maybe £2/13/6 per cubic yard where £1 = 20 shillings or 240 pence and 1 shilling = 12 pence.
Dollars and cents made that much easier.
Then, when we went metric, I had gotten qualified and was a town planner, so I was working out site coverages and minimum setbacks and building heights in a single unit system -- again, vastly more simple, and fewer mistakes.
Driving in the UK is a bit convusing because it has stayed imperial. I am used to driving at 110 on the expressway in Australia, which is very close to the 70mph on a British M road. But the first time I saw that my turnoff was in "2" I panicked, because I had 6 feet to turn across two lanes of busy traffic.
A kilometre is roughly 5/8 mile, so common speeds in Australia are 40 I25 mph) through town centres, 50 (30mph) in suburban streets, 60 (40mph) on major suburban roads, connecting suburbs, 100 (60mph) or 110 (70mph) on motorways. You will occasionally also find roads in rural or semi-rural areas or specific sections of motorways with speed limits of 70 or 80.
A short person at 5 ft is 1.5 m or 150 cm and a tall person around 6 feet is 1.8 m or 180 cm.
A pretty cold morning in Sydney is around 2 or 3 deg C, which is about 35 or 37 deg F (in round figures.) A pleasant spring day, or the temperature inside a comfortable office building is around 21 or 22 degrees, where you'd be going for around 71. and, in Sydney, we start feeling a bit uncomfortable at about 26 or 27, which is around the 79 to 84 F mark. When it's really hot, it's 40 degrees, which is 104 degrees F
Imperial…. Empire… the British 😉
Yeah, they thought Stars Wars empire. ....
Shoot you almost make it sound like it should have been obvious....
Roman, Ottoman, to name a few. Imperial is a French word originating from a Latin word...
Imperial is a French word, with its origins in Latin
So, let me get this straight-we Americans are still using inches and gallons because pirates decided we weren’t ready for the metric system? Honestly, that’s so on-brand for us. Meanwhile, the UK saw the light and joined the global ‘math makes sense’ club, and here we are, proudly measuring things in units that only make sense after a few pints. I mean, why make things easy with nice round numbers when you can have 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and still not know how far a kilometer is? I guess if it ain't broke... oh wait, it is.
In the 1950's our pre-11 yr old class was practiced in arithmetic using tons, cwt, quarters, stones, lbs and ounces. Also gallons, quarts, pints and quarters. And miles, furlongs, chains, yards feet and inches.
I've only ever used metric for all my engineering calculations - with one exception. A US company did some work in Trinidad and I had to convert my answers into imperial.
We still use pints in UK too but they're 20 fl oz as opposed to American 16 fl oz pints.
Standard packaging case box of six bottles of alcohol (wine, whiskey etc) is one UK gallon. This makes calculations easy for trade. UK is big french wine consumer...And there is difference between UK and US gallon.
Distances and speed limits are also given in miles per hr. Clearance under bridges and so is given in feet AND meters (mostly).
Maybe one day when US spell Metre, Litre the right way
...and don't confuse the metre¹ with a meter²...
¹ unit of length
² device for measuring
Not from USA or UK, but Meter and Liter actually makes more sense when you think of how they're pronounced.
@@peacefulminimalist2028 That is why US reformed their spelling as far as I know... However, without context ypu'd not inow what they are writing.
Any Brits, Canadians: Is there a difference in pronounciation between metre and meter?
Off topic:
US pronounciation hardly makes a difference between
- insulation
- insolation
Still, it makes sense to know one from the other.
@@la-go-xyno difference!
Does anyone else say his intro along with him? 😋
Not just me then 😃
no because he so bloody annoying
😂😂😂😂
@@billrand4138 - Indeed. He's as dull as dishwater. He's a simpleton, and on behalf of my fellow Americans, I apologize for him.
@@StevenShaw I even try to copy his adorable face-scrunching! 🤓
The title should be changed from "American Reacts to Why the UK Uses the Metric System" to "American reacts to why the entire world uses the metric system but not us for some apparent reason"
The nice thing about the metric system is that for everyday usage you only really need to know what a meter and a degree celsius is - the rest just falls into place. 1km=1000m, 1000mm=1m 1m^3=1000l, 1000kg=1m^3 of water. If you need a bit more: 1 kg produces about 10N of gravitational force, 1J=1N*1m,
1Pa=1N/m^2
Yes Tyler - we happily use BOTH systems these days and it doesn't seem to be a problem at all! We buy cartons of milk in litres, yet we still buy beer in pints! Most food packaging is labelled in grams (the 2lb bag of sugar was long ago replaced by the kilogram bag of sugar) - yet I was recently still able to buy a quarter of a pound of loose, sliced, cooked meat.
When we do DIY stuff, some of us older ones still THINK and measure in feet and inches, though we buy our timber cut to metric sizes - we are used to mentally converting from one to the other. A yard is very similar to a metre.
The one sticking-point is road distances! We cannot seem to shake off thinking of distances in MILES still - hence our cars have speedometers calibrated in miles-per-hour (plus the kilometers per hour in smaller figures, but nobody takes any notice of that!) - and our roadside speed limit signs are still in miles per hour. Like you, I have no idea how far a kilometre is!
The road measurements still remaining in miles is I think really because of the enormous cost of converting road signs across the UK to show distances in km. The logistics of doing so are also rather daunting, since we wouldn't be able to instantly change all road signs from miles to km. You'd have to have some form of dual distance indication on road signs, persisting over probably many years. And then there would be the problem of confusion for motorists - which of the two distances on the sign is miles and which km? Would you distinguish them by colour, or some sort of marker? Would there be room on signs to put dual distance information without confusing drivers? At what point in the conversion process would it be ok for car manufactures to drop the mph reading on the car dash in favour of km/hr?
I reckon considerations like that must have weighed heavily in favour of an official "do nothing to the road signage" policy!
Yes, the did it in the Republic of Ireland, but the road network there is quite a bit smaller and less heavily used, so not quite such a big impact on drivers I guess.
It's a much easier problem to solve with say, bags of sugar. You just change the the weight of the package when the packing machinery needs to be updated. Then for a while print both the (new) metric weight and the imperial equivalent on the wrapper.
Actually most Commonwealth countries or former Commonwealth countries uses a combination of metric and imperial, also there are some occupations in the United States do you use the metric system most of days in healthcare and related services uses the metric system, in Commonwealth countries you will find those who use a mix of the two systems would it be born in the 1960s, the metric system is hidden in plain sight in American grocery stores if you look at the nutrition guides that are on food packaging, most are in metric imperial together
Some of us oldies still use imperial I use a mixture of both
In the UK we measure cold weather temperatures in Celsius and hot days in Fahrenheit. So it will be minus 2 and snowy and 80 and sweltering!
Don't know about younger people over here? However as someone in his sixties, I still use both as you showed.
no, we don’t measure hot days in Fahrenheit at all - all days are measured in Celsius, I don’t know anyone in the UK who uses Fahrenheit at all, unless we’re converting it for US folk in conversation.
No "we" don't, you do. I will shortly be 40, was taught only metric. Dad was British and born in 1955 and when he started school he was taught metric their too! My grandparents were taught imperial but switched when their kids were in school and used both depending on who they talked to. With their grandchildren they never used imperial so not to confuse us. Yes a lot still use ft and inc to describe their height, my similar age cousins do, I don't because my mother is German so has always used metric, tho is aware of German pre metric units as similar to my dad her parents used the old system. In less than one generation there won't be anyone left who wasn't taught straight metric at school. Britain being Britain will probably still use pints for beer and drive on the wrong side of the road for a long time to come but Fahrenheit is dying out and in all likelihood so will describing height in ft and inc because we don't use Imperial measures for short distance for anything else. Heck that mph is possibly at risk too....
Each country had its own system of measurements, it was not just the English
Well..
Not only UK uses mixed systems. It's the case in many countries around the world, including US. Have you ever heard for unit prefixes like milli-, micro-, nano-, pico- (smaller) or kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera- (greater), and many more... they are all prefixes of metric units and all have base multiplier or divider like 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc. Also, most European countries are using inches in plumbing works to measure pipes diameter, so it's common to see marks like 1", 2", 3/4", 3/8", 1/4", 1/2". Bottom of line, metric system is just way more simpler to use and even if you never heard for some unit... you know that kilo-unit is 1000 units, mega-unit is million times greater than that unit, micro-unit is million times smaller than that unit, or pico-unit trillion (or milliard, not sure) times smaller. If someone says 65 kilometers, we immediately know that's 65,000 meters or 65,000,000 millimeters, or any other bigger or smaller unit. If someone says 65 miles, we need to spend extra time to calculate yards, feet or inches. Anyway, much easier than fractions. Also, in science it's very hard to measure things with imperial units, especially when it comes to small particles so having unit-prefixes that easily describe something that is eg. 1,000,000,000,000 times smaller is a must have. Metric units are defined under International System of Measurement (SI) and adopted by almost every country in the world, and that's good reason why this system is called international. In United States, scientist also use metric system in most areas of work, like pharmacy and chemistry, nuclear-science, etc. Eg. you can find milligrams mark on many meds in US, data-capacity in IT is partially measured with metric system kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, but byte itself is not part of SI units.. well, not yet)
Imperial units reflected people's needs to measure things back in time... inch (thumb), foot, yard (stick), etc. They needed to express size of something and only way to do that was to compare it to things/objects known to them. In most countries today you can learn about old local units (no longer used) that worked by the same "laws" as Imperial units today. Those units are origins of modern measuring system we have today and SI was a way to standardize units to be used and easily understood in different countries so 1m in Brazil is same as 1m in Italy, Russia, Egypt or Vietnam. Just imagine trading back in time when every country across the world have own way to express their stock of corn, potatoes, coal, iron, etc.
Trivia: Do you know that word "soccer" is also British term and they decided to replace it with football like rest of the world. Like imperial units, soccer is also a thing that represents British legacy in US. Back in time Brits had two sports containing word football in their name - Rugby Football and Association Football. Later one is what you call Soccer today. They started calling Rugby Football simply as Rugby and Association Football simply as Assoc, which later got more abbreviated to slang Soc, and finally to Soccer. So yeah, you Americans are bit late to adopt things that the rest of the world has done ages ago :D
Bro didn't realise that Imperial was British Imperial lol
The imperial system is an ancient organic method of weights and measures. Each unit is based on the length of a part of the body or a natural item. An inch is the length from the tip of the thump to the knuckle and a yard is the length from nose to finger tip. A pint is the volume of 20ounces of water in the UK but 16ounces in the US hence a bigger gallon in UK than US.
As even Tyler might say - _we_ give "more bang for your buck"!!
A pint of British beer is worth drinking!!
Don't remember where I learned this, but apparently counting in dozens comes from our fingers.
Open both hands, palms up.
Use your thumb as the counter, as you count, start at the top section of the little finger as number one, count down little finger 123, move to ring finger, 345, etc.
When you get to 12, count 1 dozen on the other hand using the same method.
Hence the gross.
The other beauty is that it allows you not to loose count.
@@Crispi-ws6ju
I think that was the Sumerian counting system...(?)
@@brigidsingleton1596 thanks, everyday a school day!
My god, do they actually teach Americans anything in school?
No.😂😂
Seeing trump still makes a chance, no... they learn nothing....
They learn ignorance about the world on the other side of their borders. Looking from the outside at the educational system in the US it sometimes seems to be more of a "brainwashing facility" than actual education. (Yes I'm exaggerating on purpose) They learn a little bit about their own country and they learn even less about what's beyond. They are taught how great America is compared to the rest of the world, because they have to assume by default that the rest of the world doesn't have anything important to learn from.
It's just really sad to watch from the outside sometimes. Yes, we all like to laugh about the ignorance we all know from Americans but - at least in my case - I often only laugh because I would start crying knowing that this country and these people could bring so much more to this planet than a comedy about ignorance and naivety.
We still have things in the UK like the classic 2x4 timber that you have over there but we buy it in metric lengths, so it'll be something like 2"x4"x1000mm. photos are 6x4 7x5 10x8 all inches, a standard cake loaf tin is 2lb, people who may be dieting often are trying to lose a stone, miles per gallon is often used for fuel consumption, down the pub a pint is a pint and will always be a pint (and will always be bigger and better than a US pint), burgers are quarter pounders, catering sausage sizes are named eights or sixes which is how many you get to the pound but the price is per kilo, homes and offices for sale or rent will be in square foot a lot of the time, golf courses are in yards, Suit jackets, trouser waist and length, shirt collars that's all inches, the list goes on but you get the idea. We are still proud of our silly system and hang on to it like you do. Tape measures, scales, measuring jugs etc often have both measurements on them.
I recall when the US tried to use the metric system. mid to late 1970-1980s, but after a short period of pumping gas in liters, almost all US revolted, and the metric system was reversed back to Imperial or gallons.
But other than the Science aspect. another area we have switched to metric is Track N Field. When I ran track in High School, I recall running the 440yd, or the 400m which is one lap or the 880yd or 800m which is two laps, currently used. So although the UK has not fully switched to metric, the US has done much less.
I.5 cm is near 1/2", an inch is close to 2.5cm. We have school rulers with both though they are less common now, and tape measures for sewing come with both. As an aussie kid I learned imperial, still in school when the system changed by law. So then I learned metric. I still use what I learned to quilt in imperial, it's easier, they sell quilting rulers in inches and cutting mats are in both, but the shops sell fabric in metres. 3' or 1 yd, is a bit less than 1 metre, around 3" or 4", so we get a bit extra, a win there. Mum kept her baby records in inches and pounds, but the grandkids are in metric. So still we are in some sort of transition. Old recipes arein old measures, some have both, modern ones are all metric.
Look at your car, a lot of cars come with both on the speedo. A litre is 1 kg in weight. Around 600ml is a pint. On the roads, what was 35 miles in town is now 60km. Out of town 65 miles is now 100km
In Australia when we buy a tape mesure or a ruler or a measuring cup we have Both metric and som form of imperial measurement, for scales it shows both and for most other measuring tools you can either select metric or imperial or both are shown.... is this not the case in the USA?!?!?
Australia went metric in the 70s but if you want to use imperial at home, go for it.... The only thing you wont get is imperial weather forecasts on the TV/radio or miles on road signs.... And maybe no mph inside the car thogh with digital speedometers you may be able to...
1st step to going metric, ensure all the tools and measuring devices in the home can do both....
Then teach it in schools.... To everyone.......
In the UK, we use both systems. Our tape measures will have metric and imperial. In pubs, beer is served by the pint, which is bigger than the US pint (20FL OZ rather than the US 16 FL OZ). Our weighing scales can switch between imperial and metric. I can work things out in my head using both systems.
I was at school when it changed over. What was not mentioned was the change in currency when we went from pennies, shillings and pounds (12 pennies in a shilling, also known colloquially as a bob, 20 shillings in a pound) oh and guineas (21 shillings) to pounds and pence.
It is a matter of will. You can find out about the metric system when you buy firearms. All Americans know what a 9mm pistol is and also know the size of ammunition used for it.
that's what i thought, also PC temperature also use C
The meter is the length of the distance that light travels in a vacuum during the duration of 1/299,792,458 seconds. It follows that the speed of light is c = 299,792,458 m/s, and light (in a vacuum) is always and everywhere exactly that fast.
Because the speed of light is a constant, the meter is also a constant
And is therefore always error-free and easy to use
1m is equal to 10dm is equal to 100cm is equal to 1000mm
Yes we pretty much still use both in the UK but generally the younger you are, the more metric you are...
When I walked across Spain with Americans I was constantly having to help them convert km to miles, because I was the only person who understood both! For the record 16km is 10miles... But to make it easy to calculate (if rough approximation is OK) you can use 1mile=1.5km
I work in the catering and we still use both imperial or metric system depending on who wrote the recipes. Also another point id a few measurements between the UK and USA imperial are also different as the UK gallon is more than the US gallon and same with pints and quarts.
There are some more interesting things you can learn about this. For example there is Interstate 19 that does use metric system on signs. And all imperial units is defined using metric system so you can say that you kind of use it then. 1 yard is 0,91 meters, an inch is 25,4 millimetres, 1 mile is 1609 meters, 1 pund is about 0,45 kilograms and 1 gallon is about 3,79 liters.
When I went to Technical College in the 1960s we were taught in Imperial when I Finish in the 1970s it was in Metric ISO unit's.
I'm British and I'm 31 years old here's a list of the diffrent measurements we use
for general measurements in like buildings and sizes we use mm cm m km
for distance and speed for driving, we use miles and mph and yards but in some occasions on distance we use km
for fluids, we use ml and litre except for milk and pub drinks where we use pints
for weight of objects we use grams, kilograms and metric tonne
for the mesurment of a persons height and weight we use feet and inches and stone and pounds
so basicly we use metric for everything except for driving speed and distance and people hieght and weight
it's a mixed system but it's not confusing when you know it's only those 2 things that are diffrent
I'm in my 70's and used Imperial units until I left school, and then met the Metric system as an electronics engineering apprentice, but that was also ungoing a change from the CGS (centimeter, grams, second) to the MKS (Meter, Kilogram, second) system. The MKS system was the beginning of the present day SI units.
One area where it is easier to use Imperial in the UK is in construction. Doors for instance are 6ft 6in high and in multiples of 3 inches wide, the most common being 30" (762mm) and 33" (838mm) and boards (plywood, mdf, plaster [drywall] ) are 4 feet wide no matter what it says on the lable. And wood is still commonly refered to in the old sizes, like a 2" by 4".
And another quick observation, the U.S. pints and gallons are not the same as the UK Imperial sizes.
Fun fact another strange thing that occured to me when you said fizzy drinks or 'soda' are sold in 2L is that our milk is in Pints in the UK
Yeah, a 4 Pinter
Differentiating between ounces and fluid ounces gets me. Especially if cups, quarts and gallons exist which are much nicer to use I think.
Our uk cars are in miles per hour. Our roads signs are all miles per hour. Many builders use both metric and imperial depending on their preference, So, if I go to buy timber I can ask for a 4 by 3, 6 foot post and they would know exactly what I’m asking for - a 4 inch by 3 inch 6 foot tall fence post. What I’d get is a 100mm by 75mm x 1800mm post (not exactly the same, but close enough) Just one example. We are not completely metric in uk, not by a long way.
People in Britain are fairly unique in that we can think in, and use interchangeably, both Metric and Imperial.
Some examples are:
We use miles and miles per hour, measure the fuel we put in our cars in litres, but then measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon, albeit our gallon is larger than the US gallon (4.55 vs 3.79 litres).
We, buy bottled drinks fromt he supermarket in litres and then also drink beer in pints but, again, our pints are larger (568mL vs 473mL).
We measure our height in feet and inches but mostly weight ourselves in kilos thses days.