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Is The Metric System Actually Better?
• Is The Metric System A...
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Explaining the metric system.
"Can you count to ten?"
"Yes...?"
" There you go!"
Fucking that easy haha.
Underrated comment! 😌✌️😆✨
As a person brought up in the UK, I was taught both the metric and imperial systems of measurement. Our rulers have both inches and centimetres on them because it's so common to switch between the two. So, both systems are equally natural to me.
Even funnier the US has metric money and still can't get it.
Well some people who grew up with the metric system can not count to ten.
I am metric to the bones. ages ago, an old British lady asked me how many stones I weigh. without missing a beat, I replied, "depends on the size of the stones". the look on her face was priceless.
I didn't even know such unit existed until I moved to the UK.
I was prepared for pounds and feet, but I discovered a personal scale shows stones... WTF? :))
Luckily, last time I was in hospital, a couple weeks ago, I noticed their scale was showing kilograms when I was standing on it.
I grew up with both, it is not difficult to make rough and ready conversions suitable for day to day life in your head.
@@Ministry_0f_Truth First, a Stone is 14 pounds.
Second in hospitals they use metric for ease. Works better if they base all measurements on Metric for things like calculating drug doses and that sort of thing. Far more convenient if everything is working to the same system.
Third many of us Brits, especially those of us of a certain age, so old enough to have been schooled in BOTH systems are perfectly comfortable with either. I happen to be in that group, and have no issues with either Imperial or Metric, and can make rough and ready conversions quickly in my head should I require them.
Neither system is really particularly difficult if you are used to them. The main strength of Metric is that it is all unified into base ten, other than that like all measurement systems it is basically arbitrary. While it is true that measurements in metric are all based on some constant, those constants are chosen because they are around the same as the measurement originally was, not because they are inherently 'better' in some way.
It also means that should you have a contact situation, to use an extreme example, it is relatively simple to inform even people with absolutely no knowledge of your measurements system, but with the correct scientific knowledge to be able to easily determine the exact measurement.
@@alganhar1 "Neither system is really particularly difficult if you are used to them."
That goes with pretty much ANYTHING in life and is absolutely no pro argument for any system but the metric. What people like you just ignore, is the fact that if you can count and understand the two key concepts of 1 and 10. You can just use the metric system from the get go without much explanation. You just cannot do that with imperial or whatever stones is associated with. I dont want to sound rude, but today there is just no duscussion to be held against the general use of metric other than absolutely subjective and personal thoughts/preference. But that doesnt fit in a discussion about scientivic measurments in the first place.
The video could have mentioned a bunch of other benefits. For example: whenever I cook and I need to add 300 milliliters of milk, I can use scales to weigh 300 grams, because I know that 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram, and milk is close enough to water when it comes to weight. Also, paper sizes are based on the A0 size, which is exactly a square meter. Divide it into 2, and it is A1. Each halving gives A2, A3, and of course the most common size A4. This means 16 sheets of A4 is 1 square meter. The weight of the paper is often in grams per square meter; for example, 80gr/m2 means each A4 sheet weighs 5 grams. When I send a letter and I need to know how much it weighs to determine what stamp to use, I can simply count the number of sheets. I try to say: everything is connected, and it takes very little math to convert one measurement into another.
And how did US paper size system come to be? Because someone, at some point in time wanted to sell paper and made their own arbitrary standard based on their needs; their machines and their storage baskets.
How did the US electrical plug come to be? Because someone, at some point wanted to sell lamps and made their own standard, in their own head without consulting anyone.
@@squidcaps4308 I didn't know that, thank you :D
You forgot to mention that the ratio on A(n) paper is one to the square root of two. This means that the ratio stays the same when you cut them in half.
"300 milliliters of milk". Lol what? Just use deciliter or centiliter. Its 10 deciliter on one liter.
It might cover a surface of 1m sq, but it's real measurement is 841x1188mm
My favourite quote regarding measurement systems comes from the author Josh Bazell in his book Wild Things (never read it, I just really like the quote): “In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
Yeah, in my freshman physics class they made us do a chapter of US measurements to be sure we'd always passionately hate them and love metric forever.
Sure you can.
@@icy1007 sure, and you can hit yourself on the head with a rubber mallet too. But why would you want to do either?
@@j.f.fisher5318 - because US measurements are just as easy to remember as metric measurements.
@@icy1007 It is not about remembering, it is about logic behind the different measurements. If you understand 1 and 10, you are got to go with the metric system. That will not work with imperial, because you HAVE to remember different relations between different measuremnts, units and numbers.
Just for the sake of it, how many inches is one foot. And how many gallons of water are needed to fill one cubic foot?
I started cooking 40 years ago using imperial - oz & lbs. I resisted moving to metric until 20 years ago but quickly realised it was far better & easier to use g & kg. Resistance to change is human nature.
Oh it's another fucked up thing with imperial system. "kg" means kilo-gram, thousand grams, soooo wtf "lbs" has to do with Pound?!
@@bartoszjasinski Good evening Bartosz. This dates from Roman times. 'lb' (then 'lbs') is derived from the Roman 'libra pondo', which was 'a pound by weight'. The move to metric was resisted so much in the UK due in part to the length of time we had used imperial measurements.
I look at recipes on line and if they have imperial measures I just move on until I find an alternative recipe in metric. I don't want to be standing there converting everything, especially when the recipe has pounds, ounces, cups, and liquid ounces.
@@iallso1 If you leave kind of thumb up under that you can still be consider as a rebel :) good job! :D (some bad guys use 'cups' also in recipes in metric so be careful, there is a third force in this battle) :D
I can recall rage-quitting a recipe back in the day because it called for '15oz of pureed pumpkin' and not a single recipe book in the house could tell me if that was by weight or volume. Now, if it doesn't list everything by grams & millilitres, I just move on; life is too short for dumpster fire measurement systems.
Metric: Consistently consistent
Imperial: Consistently inconsistent
The UK: Consistently inconsistent with some consistence... MPH and PINTS!😃
@@stewedfishproductions7959 The bread is 10 booster unit
@@redstarchrille ??? Am I not 'getting' something because I AM confused ! Please tell me I'm too stupid or being very obtuse, cheers LOL!
Metric: can you figure out multiples of ten? Great!
Imperial: NUMBERS!
@@Lammington2 either that or 'dumm dum dum dum de dummm dum de dummm'... *ponders whether you'll get it*
Yeah, the metric system isn't only a great advantage for scientists and engineers, but also for school children. Attending school in Australia in the 60ies, I was pestered by having to learn all these unlogical imperial weights and measures tables off by heart. They're so silly and backward - back to the middle ages. Later, back in Germany, it was ever so easy to adjust to the metric system. No more learning off by heart.
Also a reason why U.S: Army uses metrics,in the heat of the fight it could be interesting to start fiddling with imperials,less accurate,way more likely to get errors.
Nope. Stick to yards. And suddenly you need to know how many yards in a kiloyard. Metric REMOVES ANY UNIT CHANGE, and Imperial has the OPTION of using dozens for length. But to convert from cubic length to weight you require density, whether you are using metric or imperial.
BECAUSE THAT IS A CONVERSION TO A DIFFERENT UNIT.
@@markhackett2302 so why does the u.s. army use the metric
@@markhackett2302 That must mean imperial is superior... said no engineer or scientist ever. Any minor convenience that imperial has can be achieved differently or with workarounds in metric, and all the major inconveniences of imperial go away.
Water has a density close enough to 1 g/ml for practical purposes. This is a major convenience in general life and for most engineering, probably not for scientific purposes.
@@lukabrumec5291 Two reasons - STANAG and dead soldiers may be heroes, but they are bad soldiers, you can't use them anymore.
Very stupid idea to use a different system than ALL other allies. Especially if among these friends are also those who are rumored to know neither friend nor enemy, but only worthwhile targets. They don't even see their targets, they only calculate trajectories for centuries.
Back to STANAG, even if it will hit the "big" fighters hard now, a war is not won on the battlefield but with logistics. Great fought all consumables used up and the third wave of the enemy comes without that this could be replenished ends in total loss.
It may be helpful not to have to carry so many different, useless things around with you, inch screws don't work so well with the 120 mm gun of an M1 Abrams, because that is a license construction and Rheinmetall has never cared about such nonsense as inch screws.
It doesn't make sense to have to maintain different supply lines just because some of the goods were designed by crackpots in the wrong dimensional system.
Hold an exception there, quarter pint of ice cream from AAFES, there was in my childhood/youth for the same or less money more in it than in the German counterpart, why we always had dollars and cents in the pocket to supply us there at the vending machine of the cinema of the McGraw barracks or in the hospital.
By the way, it was also a good way to learn English, I borrowed a "long hair dictionary" from AAFES, which worked better than any school lesson. Unfortunately, the "owner" took it with him after a year when he moved halfway around the world. He suddenly found leaves better than bars, and he couldn't get them in Munich. We both didn't like it at the time. Later I understood that OF-3 (O-4) is better paid than OF-2 (O-3) and there are fewer idiots who have something to say. From experience, I know that this will be even better with OF-4 (O-5).
The most important thing is not even mentioned. Interchangability of units: 1kg of water being equal to 1 liter being equal to the volume of 1 dm³. 1 calorie is the amount of energy you need to increase the temparature of 1 gram (or ml) of water by 1°C.... Oh and metric paper (A-standard) is also amazing and superior over the US Letter paper because it keeps its aspect ratio (lenght/width) as you fold it in half. And the base unit A0 paper has exactly the size of 1m², fold it in half you have A1. Makes any design or printing work very effective
He could have put that in instead of all the difficult definitions that's likely to have people say "see, the metric is much stranger and you need to memorize all this radioactive stuff".
throwing this into the video would boil most americans brain XD (kidding, but not really)
Calories is not an SI unit though.
Edit: i changed the phrasing from metric to SI unit, to clear up my opinion.
So using calories is not very from different using feet or ounces because you are prefer and are more familiar with those units.
See also my reply below, where i mention the benefit of SI units is that the is only one unit for each type of measurement.
I.e. for distance it is only meters, for volume there is no unit, because it is derived from distance cubed etc...
@@tjampman But it is, so is the successor "joule". The CGS (Centimetre-gram-second system) defined the gram calorie in 1896. You might be thinking about the US "Calories", which are kilocalories in the rest of the world, distinguished by the capital letter in the front in the US. Still a metric measure, defined by metric values. The correct non metric unit used in the US is the BTU, "british thermal unit".
@@AdamMPick No I was thinking metric units is really a misnomer, as what is really meant is the SI standard of units.
But, yeah, you are right calories are based on metric units, I just think it is a bad example.
One of the core ideals of SI units is that there is only one unit for a given measurement.
This is precisely to avoid all the confusion of the Imperial System where e.g. lengths are measured as inches, feet and miles.
Metric is science.
Imperial is the dark side of the force.
...and the US customary sytem is dumb.
imperial got us to the moon. metric hasn't.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 imperial sucks. Metric system is pure math.
@@Einauge1987 okay. let me know when a metric nation leaves the planet.
@@theghostofthomasjenkins9643 Well, NASA used the metric system for Apollo moon landings and the calculations. Hope that helps.
One of my favorite simplifications of the metric system is that a liter of water has a mass of 1kg. Need half a liter of water and only have a scale? Weigh out half a kg of water. This is genuinely useful around the kitchen.
This is the part I cheer the metric system on. I need a 2% brine solution; I weigh the water and the salt....
The absolute beauty of water in the metric system is how everything fits so nicely together : 1 liter is 1 kg is 1 dm3. Add the celsius part to that, with water freezing at 0° and boiling at 100° and it's very easy to understand.
You would use a scale instead of a measuring cup? A drug dealer does that, not a cook.
@@karlbmilesPOV: the recipe needs 2.6582 cups of water
Americans are not used to weighing _anything_ in the kitchen, they only use cups & spoons as measures. A scale isn't even kitchen equipment to them.
Australia where I live, converted from Imperial to Metric in 1973 without any issue.
It is very, very accurate and is a piece of cake to use, but throws us when we watch American movies who speak about pounds n miles etc, something we haven't used in 50 years. 😬👍🤪
Meanwhile USA when conversion is suggested "Too hard, whaaa! To expensive, whaa!"
But you still drive on the the left and use a messed up voltage in you power sockets. But hey, we like you anyway. :)
And what TaF is the volume of a _cup_?
@@BillySugger1965 250mL but that is rounded up in Australia. the US cup is about 236.5mL. Again another reason metric is better. no guess measurements.
That's great. When I lived in Australia as a child it was all imperial as well as guineas, pounds, shillings, pence, etc.. A real mess to learn. All you would have to do now would be changing to driving on the right side of the road ;).
The definitions aren't for actual practical use (unless you're a quantum lab or something). Their purpuse is for calibrating laboratory equipment, and to be super super consistent regardless of where you are. You can go to another star system, and if you forgot your meter stick you can make a new one that'll perfectly match one back on Earth. And you can bring a clock that'll keep your measure of time perfectly consistent by bringing some Cesium 137. Which is quite important if you want to send and recieve transmissions at large distances, or correct for relativistic effects on satellites in orbit, among other things.
But for any and all purposes in everyday life, knowing how to multiply by 10 is sufficient.
But I never need to use multiples of 10 in daily life, 2, 3, 4, and 6 are more useful for me, which metric doesn't do
@@BandGGaming Americans don't seem to have a hard time dividing money in their daily life, and the dollar is a decimal currency.
@@yadiracamacho499 Its money... Americans taking in hardcore capitalism with their formula dont have problems with that ;)
@@BandGGaming Metric does'nt "do" halfs?
@@BandGGaming You always use a decimal system. Numbers are a decimal system. That's why a decimal system of measurment is by far more efficient and easier, our math is decimal (almost always).
Most important thing is that me, as a southamerican, know what a kilo is. Also a german, a russian o someone from Nigeria know what a kilo is, no convertions. If I say I weight 100 kilos, a chineese or an Italian know how much that is. People from USA, no clue.
Eso es! A mi, me parece que los sudamericanos sean más avanzados que los estadounidenses que se consideran de ser superior.
NASA uses the metric system.
@@akiram6609 Hail! Wernher the Great!
Americans know what a Kilo is. Just ask anyone who buys drugs in the USA...
I wish I still only weighed 100 kilo...
And don’t even start with Fahrenheit
Yeah! Basic unit with the most complicated conversions😅
One thing to note about the weird numbers to define metre/second/kilogramme.
It's because those definition have been chosen to closely match the previous definitions those units had.
Let's take the metre and the second for exemple.
The second was initially defined upon the length of a day. 1sec = 1/86400 day. (24h*60min*60sec). Several refinements later, we found out there were roughly 9,192,631,770 transitions of Cesium137 in a second, so we made that the new definition. Meaning, the old second is slightly different than the new second (but close enough).
For the metre, it was initially defined as 1/10 000 000th of the distance from the north pole to the equator, passing trough Paris. Several refinements later, we found out the speed of light was roughly 299 792 458 m/s. So, with the added new definition of the second, we made that the new definition for the metre.
So on and so fourth. We little by little refined and changed the definitions of units to have all of them based on a universal constant.
Those numbers are not round, because we used the old definitions to find out their values, and then turn around to base the new definition on said values. The results initially found with the old definitions were not exactly those numbers, but were close enough so we could use this new base of definition without having to change the everyday tools people were using (the difference in precision wouldn't matter in evereday use)
One thing to add : The reason we had to change the definitions is because we were getting to levels of precision where slight changes in the length of a day or the circumference of the Earth actually mattered. Having the definition of a unit slightly change with time because what you based the definition on slightly changes with time is not ideal. We could deal with it back in the day, but the more precise our measuring tools became, the more it became a problem.
For everyday use, those changes in definition don't really matter, but they matter when you do science.
Also anything that works with fractions of a second or wavelengths of light is computerized so the calculations are trivial while stuff humans interact with directly is simple and convenient.
The meter was *supposed* to be 1/10000000th of the distance from the North pole to the equator passing through Paris. It was measured as accurately as possible for the time and then the official meter was built according to the measurements.
The new meter which is defined via speed of light in vacuum is the most accurate approximation of the old official 1 meter object. And that was done a long time ago because it was so much easier to define than 1 kg.
I totally agree that the metric system is superior, however I have always thought that given it is based on old unscientific units we should not feels too superior to those using other systems. i.e. we could/should have thrown out seconds, metres, grams etc. by now and used more scientific units based on whole numbers. Then we could claim it is based on science rather than on science being forced on human convenience.
@@stevej513 What kind of unit do you think would be "more scientific" for length and mass than meter and kilogram?
Both require defining some arbitrary amount as "1" which sets the scale for the that unit.
The SI system tried to set length unit "1" meter equal to 1/10000000th of the distance from equator to North pole and then set mass unit "1" kilogram based on that (a cube with edge length of 1 meter of water has mass of 1000 kg).
Those definitions have since been changed with definitions that which approximate previous values to 1 ppm or better.
The more I watch your videos, the more I get the impression that people in the US live in a bubble, which made them lose contact to the reality of the rest of the world. This makes them appear to be arrogant, sometimes maybe even uneducated or stupid.
Its true. Most Americans DO live in a bubble. It's set up that way.
Not only in a bubble but back in the middle ages when every country had it's own way to measure weight, length, etc. Arrogant, stupid and often uneducated thinking they are superiour to the rest of the world. That goes for the UK as well in certain issues. Very sad!
"Sometimes"😂😂😂
No they're sweet but it's just that "Ignorance is bliss" for them.
That is perfectly accurate. But it's not their fault. From day one Americans are bombarded with nationalistic propaganda. That's why they think they're the best country in the world. Because they don't know a single thing about the rest of the world
Yes it is. Unless you can't count to 10 or divide by 10. Metric is way easier.
hearing about the American education system, this could be a challenge
Divide into thirds using metric
@@mahirooyama9424 Which number? 30meters? 10 meters. Done
You want me to do a conversion while I am at it? 100 decimeters. Done
@@FuFightersStudio th-cam.com/video/iJymKowx8cY/w-d-xo.html
I mean its bad but i dont think its ever going to change
The story about the plane that was loaded with too little fuel is a very interesting one. The most amazing thing is that no one was seriously injured. They had to glide the airplane to an old airfield that was used as a dragrace strip. And there where people there when the plane came down that had no idea what was going on. The captain was just the right man for the job, he had experience with flying gliders and he new about the disused airstrip.
And also the pilot's fault for making an error in checking the fuel loaded. The B767 was the only plane with metric gauges in AC's fleet at the time, and had a problem with its fuel gauges failing...
Now the pilots of the Azores Glider which ran out of fuel cruising over the Atlantic (and landed safely on the Azores) were also at fault for leaving the cross-feed on when they had a leak (due to maintenance faults); however in mitigation there was nothing in the reference manuals they had with them to check for a leak - that has since been added - when worrying about the fuel imbalance.
I think my favorite example about why meter is a better system was a youtube video where a man was building two identical houses. The only difference was that one of the blueprints had measurements in feet and inches and the other was metric.
After the two houses were done he had SO much leftover material that he had to throw away from the one made with imperial units while the other that was made in metric had very little.
The question there is was the material ordered in the proper measurements and delivered in those measurements.
To me, what you describe sounds like a metric person deliberately messing up the imperial measurements - I could do exactly the same and find I have tons of material left over from the metric blue prints but very little from the imperial blue prints.
The only reason there can be excess material with one set of blue prints _for exactly the same building_ is due to someone not supplying the exact same amount of material which would be required, and the question then becomes why was excess ordered for imperial?
@@cigmorfil4101 Sounds to me that the leftover materials was caused by accidental human errors...
No one needs to know how meter und kg are defined for daily life usage. That was the complicted part of that video. In daily use I just need to know that 1 liter water weighs 1 kg and fills a cube auf 10*10*10cm, what equals 1000ml ;) . 1000 Liters of Water are 1m³ that weighs 1 Tone = 1000 kg. It freezes at 0 Celsius and boils at 100 Celsius that's it :)
easiest way to make one lose their minds is have them make the transition from 4 cups of water to x lbs to in³ to ft³ to miles³ with equal side lengthes for the cubes
4 customary cups, legal cups, coffee cups or metric cups?
And wild side: 1 volt* 1 ampere=1 watt = 1 Joule/second = 1 Newton * meter /second = 1 TORQUE (Newtonmeters)*RPM(1/second)
@@Mucknuggle in the metric world, recipes are usually given in ml and g.
However, old recipes often measure liquids in teaspoons, table spoons, and cups (by convention 5, 15, and 250 ml). And you can even buy a measuring set of kitchen spoons.
@@Mucknuggle I love how the british at some point realized that defining a gallon by a cylinder is awkward, because it involves Pi, so subdivisions are...tricky. So they sought the closest rectangular shape to this volume as a new standard, and they found it: 3x7x11 inch. Yes. 3 prime numbers....have fun dividing.....🙈
The metric system is far better. USA only uses imperial because that's what the British used in 1775
They are so free that uses imperial system of the oppressors. ;)
the world... metric came about a decade after that date
They only still use the imperial system because the metric normals that were on a ship towards them from france sunk and it took a long time until they got the next samples.
And they never again bothered to really try to switch for the "common people".
(You can't tell your people 24h hours a day that your country is the best in everything and then switch to the unit system the rest of the world uses... would show that they were lied to ;-) )
And as Neil deGrasse Tyson once said: they are inching towards the metric system slowly but surely without even noticing...
Most americans know 2L bottles of soda, or how big of a diameter 9mm are... Their soldiers learn to use meters and kilometers for distances ect.
@@nirfz Nah 12h×2 obviously, just look at their clocks for proof
@@cieslik7564 "oppressors" ? Strange, I thought the British gave them their country.
Hi Heidi, I live in Scotland and worked for a large American oil and gas company engineering. Our drawings were in imperial, the programing in metric, and our measuring equipment in imperial. You would measure the job in inches, convert it into mm, convert the drawing from inches to mm, program the machine in mm, and the measure the finished part in inches. Take an aspirin and read that again if you like 😆
I remember an ex wanted to build a box that held a gallon so I converted to metric then back to imperial cuz looking up unit conversions was easier than finding how many cubic inches in a gallon.
Yes, this is the procedure that guarantees accurate results without rounding errors.
That isn't hard to do.
Scotland? Take a whisky!
@@TheRick517 😆 since you have said it, it would be rude not too
As a Brit I'm used to working with both systems all at once! We still use miles over kilometers (unless we're using a running app because the kms always look more impressive🤣), our fuel pumps show liters, I know my height in CMs and inches, my weight in "stones" and KGs, weed comes in ounces, sugar in grams...
The fact is though that Metric is just much simpler and makes altogether way more sense.
It's with weed as it is with the running, it sounds more when you buy it in grams.
I remember the metric change over as a teenager in NZ. Bliss! Imperial is so confusing. I worked in health and in science where accuracy is vitally important.
We are so fortunate that the universe continues to function regardless of the labels humanity puts on things.
My wife worked in UK maternity and aftercare. She was forever being asked to convert new born baby weights from metric to imperial...
In Sweden and Norway, we used to have miles for a very long time. When metric was introduced we adjusted our old miles to become exactly 10km, so it fit conveniently into the metric system. It's known as the "Scandinavian Mile" (although I think Denmark doesn't really use it?). It's mainly used for daily speech, such as "I live 5 miles from my parents" or "It's half a mile from here to the nearest lake". This has lead to some funny stories involving American or English tourists expecting a 3 mile walk to be a bit under 5km (~55 minutes) and not 30km (~6 hours)!
a danish mile wasn't the same length as a swedish mile. We never use miles in denmark unless it is nautical miles.
We don't. We go by 1 meter equals 100 cm and further out of the prefix.
btw, didnt sweden ride on the wrong side of the road also at some point in time?
@@Swarmah ;What do you mean wrong side of the road also? Angry about something we have done? We changed in the 60s i think. I sometimes describe 10 km as 1 scandinavian mile, is it because we used to drive on the left side or wtf do you mean by your comment?
We also used to have this thing called "peninkulma" in Finland. Its length has changed throughout the centuries, it used to be about 6 km originally until it was changed to be about 10 km thanks to Swedish influence in 1655. In 1887 we swtched to the metric system. It is not used anymore in any system but I have read it in some books, I think the Finnish translation of LOTR uses it to sound older.
The imperial system makes my head hurt.
Glad I'm not the only one. 😅
i accept only imperial Stout :)
@@SPPhotography89 Yeah, and that's one of the few things I would like a pint of, please!
Best American measurement is 'The Cup,' which equals the velocity of light through sunflower oil at a temperature of three Newton Inches cubed.
We have an old measurement here, its called "acre". You´d think its someting like square meters for measuring an area, but acre is actually the time a farmer needs to go around his property, so every farmer has a different definition of acre. it was used to measure work force and amount of estate.
Another one is "nut", its defined as the volume which fit inside a walnut-shell. Like all walnuts are the same size right? It was used for gemstones, gold, salt and other cooking ingredients.
@@danieljackson4511 We have one of those in denmark which is still used collegially, translated it is basically a "barrel" of land, which meant the amount of land a single barrel of seeds could plant. It is equal to something like 5516m²
@@danieljackson4511 - "acre" is a standardized measure of land size. "a unit of land area equal to 4,840 square yards (0.405 hectare)."
A USN ship visited my local port in Australia. A tour ended up near the anchor with a young sailor giving details of the anchor including its length as 12 shots of chain (180 fathoms or 1,080 feet)
He expressed this as 360 yards. He then said “I have no idea how many metres that is”.
I replied “A bit less than that in metres. (Approx 39” in a metre).
As a kid we memorised the 12” in a foot, 3 ft in a yard, 6’ in a fathom, 5280 ft in a mile or 63,360 in.
We also learned about chains, rods, poles and perches for length, oz, lbs, gallons, pecks, etc.
I was in engineering school when the Mars mission failed, we spent the day after talking about this in every single class. My statistics instructor worked on the Saturn V program.
Well I think the most common metric unit used in the US is the metric ton to define how much your mother-in-law weighs.
the real problem of changing system is not to have an immediate, from the top of your head, way to figure what a kilo or a kilometer would represent. It is actually very easy to figure, at the expense of a little precision: You are familiar what a liter is. Well that liter of coke bottle weighs one kilo (it should be water, coke has gas) . SO, would you want to have a 1 KG stake for dinner? that sounds heavy, a half a kg is already plenty. Same goes for distance: you can exchange one yard for one meter (it is 0.92 meters actually) one Kilometer is 1000 Yards. Welcome to the future: The metric system explained.
@@thecaptain2000 And one thing to note is that the litre of Coke is already in metric. 😅
@@Aquelll I know, that is why you can use it as a starting point
@@thecaptain2000 The metric system is infiltrating the US. And think about how low the price of gasoline suddenly looks if you start paying it by litres! 😅
Yo mother so dense, light bends around her! ;-)
"Is The Metric System Actually Better?"
In short, yes it is.,
the long answer is "YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!"
A thing that bewildered me: Ancient south-american indians were in a metric system. There is a video where they laser-measure some H-shaped stone blocks from the Incas or something. They measured thicknesses of 20cm, 30cm and the hight of the block was a sharp meter, down to the millimeter.
I was schooled in the Imperial system in the earlier 1960s at primary school in Australia, years before the federal government took the visionary and far-sighted decision to lead the country on a path to the metric system. I still remember those important ratios in the Imperial system for everyday weights and measures, and wouldn't have much difficulty adjusting if I moved to the US - except for temperatures, where I now think "natively" in Celsius and Fahrenheit has become essentially meaningless for me. I'm in a kind of half-way world where I think of some things more naturally now in metric, and of some others still more naturally in Imperial. Would I support our conversion to metric again if we had the time over? Absolutely! It's a great commonsense investment in the country's future.
Same in the UK. I was in school while the transition was made, so I learned both. Just like us Brits to be awkward though the transition was not total. We still often use Imperial measurements for many things, especially if you are of a certain age group or older.
Personally I am comfortable with both, with the exception of Fahrenheit.
It takes time to make the switch in your brain. I still remember when we switched currency, to the Euro, now over 2 decades ago. Even to this day, I sometimes still calculate back to the old currency to be sure that the amount is indeed a large sum of money, even though 2+ decades of inflation have to be taken into account.
@@Hans-gb4mv We in Australia also did a currency conversion from AU pounds / shillings / pence to AU dollars and cents. The official date of the switchover (14/02/1966) will likely be forever burnt into the minds of people who were around at the time to hear the TV commercial, sung to the tune of a well-known (at least at the time) traditional Australian folk song, that included the date of the change. This all happened when I was in early high school - a time when I had very little money of my own - so I don't think of the old currency at all.
The incident at 5:30 with the Air Canada plane was Air Canada Flight 143, the aircraft nicknmamed the Gimli Glider (you can look that up on Google or Wikipedia), due to the fact they had to land at a decommissioned Canadian military airfield at Gimli that had been converted into a civilian dragstrip.
As a Canadian living next to the US we have the pleasure of having to deal with both systems everyday.
The video did not even try to get into the fact that there are some differences between the British Imperial system and US Imperial system. Things like long tons (British) and short tons (US) or the Metric tonne. The US inch (25mm) is also different than the Metric inch (25.4mm) used by the rest of the world. Fun stuff.
US gallon is about 3.7 litre whereas UK gallon is about 4.5 litre :D
Both countries then use "miles per gallon" for measuring their car fuel consumption. A remember a UK journalist was testing a US car in the UK and couldn't figure out what the real fuel consumption actually is :))
There is no metric inch, and the US inch is defined as 25.4mm. All US customary units are defined by the metric system and have a conversion formula. Most of the science world in the US uses metric these days and more and more engineering is done in metric as well.
@Hans But it wasn't always defined as 25.4mm. Until the 1930's the US and the UK had different definitions of an inch as it relates to the metric system. Nobody I know uses the term metric inch when speaking, but when I went to trade school 25 years ago it was a topic that was taught. I also recall studying the difference between a standard inch and US survey inch/foot.
"Metric inch (25.4mm) used by the rest of the world"
Sorry, what? I have been to over 50 countries and have never used that measure.
@@Ministry_0f_Truth A UK journalist, like everybody else here in UK, uses miles per gallon, and ignores the rather odd metric system of measuring how many litres it takes to travel 100 kilometers. Here in UK we travel in MILES per hour, not kilometers per hour. ALL our road signs are in miles, sometimes broken into yards for shot distances. In Wales you'll see MILLTIR and Llath - Welsh from miles and yards. All our vehicles speedo's are in MPH, with kph as an additional scale for when we go to a metric country.
I have already worked with metric and imperial bolted junctions. On one side, you have for exemple the M8, diameter 8 mm. On the other, you have a "7/32 inch"... Please. What the heck is that ?
It is 7/32 of an inch... not that hard to understand.
@@icy1007 I know, you missed the point of my comment. The imperial system for bolted junctions add an useless step of conversion (how an operator is supposed to know that 7/32 = 0,21875 ?) the metric system dont have. Add the UN/UNC/UNF/UNEF/UNS thing, and what a mess compared to a simple "M6x1"
@@KAUFFMANN7 - the operator doesn’t need to convert 7/32 into 0.21875. It stays as 7/32.
@@icy1007 A calliper doesnt give "7/32" but "0,21875", so no quick check possible, except if you know the value of each fraction
@@icy1007 8mm is 3/4 of a centimeter is not very difficult to understand XDXDXD
Who the hell came up with that abomination of 7/32???? no wonder everyone in america hates math xd
The last thing, which changed to the metric system in Germany is the measurement of power in cars. That was "Pferdestärke" (PS / "horsepower"). A big problem is, the german PS is even different to french PS. So it became the metric kilowatts (kW). That change was not very long ago.
Just go into a DIY store like Bauhaus, Toom, Hornbach, etc. and you'll find water pipes and plumbing items specified in Zoll units.
Makes a lot of sense now that even in germany many cars are electric. No need for converting existing kW engine to horsepower and then back to kW again! Hopefully Sweden will follow suit.
Those aren't actual horsepower. they're taxation horsepower, which has little basis in physical reality.
Car power is still universally reported in horsepower.
@@icy1007 here usually is reported in both horsepower and kilowatts. But yes, people speak only in horsepower.
When I lived in China I found they had their own (ancient) units of measurement. To go metric they had just used the old unit, like "Li" for distance & called a kilometre a "Gong Li" or "Universal Li". Weight used to be in "Jin", much like the US pound. It was rounded to 0.5kg and a "Gong Jin" is the word for a kilogram. How about a Freedom Mile, (km) or a Freedom Pound for a kg?
Rest of the world: km/h
USA: glazed donuts/bald eagle
When building a house or something like that, workers have to calculate a lot with units. The amount of mistakes and errors when material is ordered or cut is significantly higher with the imperial units. There is much more garbage created and a lot of time and money wasted.
I guess that explains american cardboard wall houses.
@@olgahein4384 - You don't know what you're talking about.
@@icy1007 You don't. Just take a look at YT fail video's. if someone in the US hit a wall inside there is 99% of the time a hole in the wall... thats cardboard my friend, in Europe we use bricks so the three piggies cannot blow away our houses
@@JustMe-sh8nd - lol, no, it’s not cardboard. 🤣 internal walls are not bricks over there either.
@@icy1007 Where? in Germany internal walls are very often out of brick. I guess it is a little bit overkill but the heat and sound isolation is very good
The weirdest thing tho, here in eu we still play foot-ball not metric ball.. 🙃
Better than hand-egg
10mm is 1 cm 10cm is a decimeter 10 decimeters is a meter 1000meters is a KILOmeter(clue is in the name). You could not get any easier.
fact. incremental of 10 is purfect. why have weird inches 19 inch for 11 foot for... what why
Bigger than meter : greek prefix (deca, hecta, kilo).
Smaller than meter : latin prefix (deci, centi, milli).
@@phonogramme9921 for a bit of fun you can even mix the prefixes for 100th (centi-), 10th (deci-), 10x (deca-) and 100x (hecto-) with all the other engineering prefixes based on steps of 1000 (10^3) that is eg. nano-, micro-, milli-, kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-. So 10km are 1 decakilometer or 1 centimegameter.
There's also the fact that water freezes at 0 Celsius, boils at 100, and one litre of water weighs 1kg, which also happens to be one cubic decimetre.
Imperial is lunacy
I am from the UK and 64 years old. Even though our system is mixed up, I don't think we used inces/feet/yards after age 11 at school. We stopped using pounds/stones about 13, and I can't remember ever using Fahrenheit (at school). We used miles instead of kilometres much longer. Even now, petrol (gas) is sold in litres but fuel economy is measured in miles per gallon - and a UK gallon is bigger than a US gallon just to add confusion.
Well, at least the UK is trying to keep up with the rest of the world in this case.
And I shall still buy you a PINT down the pub if I see you - LOL!😃
Perhaps not at school, but I used inches/feet/yards at home, and still do.
Curiously when I was at school we did everything in cm, but only working upto 30cm. Outside school I used inches/feet/yards. As a result any distance less than 1 ft/30 cm I could only visualise in metric, but for any longer distance I could only visualise in imperial.
Having done less short distance work, I have now transitioned into imperial for all lengths - I can no longer visualise lengths 30 cm or less in metric.
Don't worry about math and units definitions. It was pointless to use it as + for metric units. You can define imperial units that way as well. On the other hand your face expression was priceless when he explained how SI units are defined.
Meter is a stick I think. I think that is how a meter is define.
@@duskonanyavarld1786in the UK a meter is defined as a measuring device...
Spoiler: The US are long metric. All imperial units are defined by conversion of metric units.
Simple metric based on water:
1 Liter of water weighs 1000grams (1 kilogram).
1 cubic meter of water is 1x1x1meter = 1000 liters and weighs 1000 Kilogram
10x10x10 centimeter = 1 liter
Water boils at 100 degrees Celcius and freezes at zero degrees Celcius.
A meter is a measuring instrument. A metre is a metric unit of length.
@@thegreenlid56 Metre is typically used in GB, not in the US.
In Biology and Chemistry there is essentially no mention of imperial units. For a while at college I relied on some conversion factors, and general reference points (about 3 feet in a meter), but eventually even that becomes a waste of time. I deal exclusively in metric for any of my own uses/calculations, and only use imperial anymore when I have to speak to someone who is oblivious to metric. It's just so much simpler.
I almost here that from all americans who are forced to use Metric they all kind stop using imperiaal evn if they don't need to do it anymore. Wich in itself is the best measurement of whats the superior system. Its the one people who know both want to use.
I did the opposite when I moved from Denmark to the US. At some point you just know how long and heavy stuff is.
@@arturobianco848 I'm "forced" to use metric in my job, and I still don't use it. In fact: None of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are "Forced to use metric" actually use it outside of their job, unless in Europe.
@@brandondavis7777 We have a first
@@brandondavis7777 well it isn't none because there are certainly those of us who do. But would you really want to do your job with slugs and whatnot lol.
Ooooh, that adorable face at 12:42, lol. Don't worry about the method, it is complicated, yes. However, it does mean that the measured value on earth is exactly the same as on the other side of the universe if some alien there would measure it. It is literally universal, and that's the beauty of exact science :D
I was about to write the same. Only scientists need to know the definitions. A normal metric system user neither needs to know the definitions, nor the numbers.
@@klaus2t703 Our physics teachers have a different opinion and we learn the definitions and have to know them at least by the next exam.
Heidi looked more and more depressed when the narrator talked about the SI units. Don't worry, Heidi, you'll get your antidepressants. Dosed in milligrams.
Hi Heidi, greetings from Denmark. The scientific calculations to determine a meter etc. doesn’t really apply to everyday use. So don’t bother with those. That being said pretty much everything else is easy I the metric system. Like shifting the decimal points like he said in the video. Or the fact that 1 liter of water weighs 1kg. Water boils at a 100° and freezes at 0°. It is really satisfying with round numbers all around and easy to learn. There are a few leftovers from the imperial system in most countries. Fishing poles and boats are measured in feet in Denmark. TVs, laptops, monitors and car wheels are still measured in inches here in Denmark and most other countries around the world. I think the US will convert at some point, but the prospect seems hard and daunting to many people, so it will take a while.
Yeah, those numbers aren't relevant for everyday use. And the reason they are that "ugly" is that they are chosen to match the human-artefact standards which preceded the universal-constant based ones.
Though, if you want to appreciate the beauty of those definitions of the units: Imagine that we someday get in contact with some alien civilisation, talking via radio signals.
How much more elegant is it to be able to talk about distances by saying "so, take this kind of atom, and measure this form of radiation it can make; our length unit is so-and-so many wavelengths of that" - instead of "yeah, our length unit is the length of the thumb of this long-dead king..."
:-)
*Okay, so that's how I remembered it. A Wikipedia lookup didn't quite support that story; it was apparently based on "an average man's thumb" at that time. And apparently even earlier than that, the length of three corns of barley. The inch has quite a story...
Altho a tire mixes all of them in a soup. It's measured in inch (the hole), mm (the width) and % (sidewall height).
But you know how many centimeters your fishing rod is for sure ;)
@@martinandersen1821 yup. Got a short one 195cm
Did you know that Denmark didn't adopt the last determination of Coordinated Universal Time, i.e., adjusting the Universal Time Constant by a leap second every day, so that now Denmark is 4 seconds behind the rest of the world? 🙂
Quick, and simplified, explanation of the Mass/Force(Weight) thing: Mass is independant from the gravitational conditions. It is the same whether one is on earth, on the moon, in space or on another planet. Weight is the force with which a certain mass is pulled toward a planets core, for example on earth. If the gravitational conditions are different, the mass is pulled by a different amount of force (this force is called weight). In space the gravitational pull is very low, resulting in weightlessness, the force is near zero.
Pound force is the weight a mass of a pound has on earth. If one wants to know the weight of something on another planet one has to calculate it from the mass and the gravitation on that planet, but in imperial that is expressed in multiples of the weight a pound experiences on earth.
I don't remember where I saw it, but someone built two identical houses.
They built one of the houses with Imperial measurements and one with metres/centimetres.
This was to see how accurate they were in measuring wastage.
The houses were exactly the same and afterwards there were 2 containers of waste in the imperial house, and with meters...
a wheelbarrow...
Good example, but I'd like to know one thing: Where did they build those houses?
If the were next to each other, they had to get their materials from some local store, who probably could deliver them in bulk with the right measurements for one and had to be cut down for the other …
@@Cau_No
As I said.
I don't remember where I saw this,so for me then to explain to you where they bought the materials, or what the seller's name was...to think I can, that's pretty optimistic.
And how they bought the materials…
For this experiment to have some factual basis and result, I would like to believe that they received the same materials in the same way.
Do you not agree?
"If they were next to each other, they would have to get their materials from a local store..."
Why did they have to do that?
Is there a rule in the US that you have to buy locally?
This is a premise you set without any basis.
I assume that you did it to argue later, using this as a basis.
"...who could probably supply them in bulk with correct measurements for one and had to be cut down for the other."
Why do they have to do that?
Again, you start from a premise for which there is no basis.
@@self-declarednerdkingofnor4945
I don't put out premises here, as I do not state things, I'm asking for clarification.
This means: Did they build those two houses, one in the US one in the EU (for example), or in the same country, with the same materials from the same stores? Then those stores probably deliver either metric or imperial, but not both. That could influence the outcome, as you said the houses were 'identical'. Those are just the things taking into account when running such an experiment.
Don't assume everything is about starting a discussion.
@@Cau_No
I stand corrected
I've been on the internet too much.
Sorry about that :)
They were built next to each other and I don't think anything was pre-cut simply for the sake of the experiment.
It's been a long time since I saw this and it was part of a TH-cam.
I'll see if I can find it, buuut there are "a couple" of films on You Tube ;)
@@Cau_No I just assume they deliver the exact same things, no metric nor imperial units measured by the store, then the workers do their own measurements and cut their stuff on the place they work on. Hope I was understandable, I'm not english.
In Canada we officially started using the metric system in 1972. In a crazy twist the average Canadian knows & frequently uses both systems. Maybe b/c we live next door to the U.S. & 80% of the shows seen on our TV's are American. In 1975 Canada started using Celsius to measure temperature.
Australia changed to the metric system around the same time and the US was supposed to as well, but it didn't happen. Too expensive, too many Vietnamese to kill along with every war they've been in since. By sticking with imperial while so many changed, they made those countries have to constantly convert. Even now if an American asks my height and I give it in metric, they'll ask me what that is in imperial, because despite being in the minority by hanging on to their antiquated system, they won't learn how to convert. They're American, everyone has to conform to them.
Short answer: YES
Long answer: Y E S
I totally feel you, and many other Americans, when you are fed up with unit conversion math for no good reason. This is no fun, and probably makes any approach to science, math and technology much harder, than it has to be.
I sometimes make the joke, that the metric system is superior, because most people have 10 fingers, not 12 ...
For science itself, using the imperial system is not an option at all, so it is less of a problem. But in engineering, this really is an issue. For example, we need to have two sets of screwdrivers for servicing or mounting devices, two scales for simple length measurement, and to make perfectly clear, how stupid the issue of two different systems is, ask a housewife, who needs to convert all her recipes after moving from the US to Europe and vice versa, for no other reason than Anglo-American countries sticking to a complicated system that all serious international standards don't use.
In fact, this goes even further, because Americans have to learn 2 systems of units, if they want to understand modern science, as it uses the metric system exclusively. And they can not instantly use it in everyday life, to have the same advantage as people in countries with metric systems have. IMHO, this really is part of the problem, that science denial is much more prevalent in the US, than anywhere else in developed countries.
It sometimes already goes on my nerves, that, as a German, you can not even tell Americans spontaneously, how the weather is over here, because you use degrees in Fahrenheit, a German unit that Germans don't use since generations... sigh.
Things could be so much easier.
To be fair, the Commonwealth does not make things easier, at all.
I mean, how many different miles are there? British land mile, American land mile, some other(!) (land) mile in some countries, and if you cross the ocean, nautical miles are of course something different. Holy crap.
Kinda reminds of the situation regarding standardized time and railroads. Prior to railroads in N America, every town pretty much set their own "time" by the Sun, and it didn't really matter how well the standards matched-up because travel and work were measured in hours, if not days. With the railroads, though, came the need for time standards that matched up to at least the minute, as you could hardly have a train leave town A at 0900 for town C at 1000 if it needed to stop in town B at 0930, and town B was 37 minutes ahead of everyone else.
Increased efficiency often requires increased precision of measurement.
@@michaelccozens Yeah. And don't get me even started on calendars. Talking about time measurement and religion .... sigh.
People are confusing science and engineering a lot... The scientific method only cares about "cause and effect" relationships.
But engineering should only stick to metric by convention! Grow up USA...
Fun Fact: In Germany the folding ruler popular with all kinds of trades is still commonly called "Zollstock" which translates to "inch stick" although all measurements on it are done in centimeter. Even though trainers for the respective trades are trying to hammer the correct term "Gliedermaßstab" (segmented measureing stick) into the brains of trainees.
Even more fun fact: There is a district of Cologne, which is literally named "Köln-Zollstock"
… where I live, and yes, I also have some of those old sticks in a drawer at home, though having studied a science. But I prefer using measuring tapes.
Depends on what part of Germany you live in - at my home, it always used to be a "Meterstab". But: my Mum used to be a seamstress, and she had a proper Meterstab, not a folding one. And that had metric on one side, but imperial on the other...
Fun fact, zollstock is also a slang term for the folding ruler here in Slovakia. We had a lot of German settlers at one point in history who brought a lot of the terms with them.
In the middle part of Germany it's the famous Saxon "Schmiege" or "Meterstab".
@@bobbwc7011 I live in Austria and most of the people use the term zollstab, just a funfact
I once read a comment that sums up imperial units quite nicely: "We use imperial units for measurements, not for calculations".
I sometimes have to check engineering calculations. In SI you have N/mm² as a base unit. In imperial you have lb/in², kips, whatever. And there are differences in the units lb, lbm and lbf. And lbs can be the plural for lbm or lbf. Unfortunately some engineers are lazy with the correct units, so instead of checking the calculation for correctness, you have to check what this guy actually means. In SI it's simple, mass is g and force is N and their respective prefixes, so the actual meaning of a unit is clear once you see it
(although I have seen forces being noted in kg... which sends a shiver down my spine)
> although I have seen forces being noted in kg
That would be because the kg *is* the defined SI unit.
EDIT: oh unless you mean someone is meaning to write X kg(m/s²) in place of X N and just left off the acceleration term ..
@@dekeonus I believe that when people note forces in kg, they just assume it is the force of earth gravitational field on that mass at sea level : M * 9.80665m/s²
So, the imperial system is essentially a write-only memory. Congrats, you collected some data. God help you figuring out what the fuck it means.
I recently was looking up some numbers for tensile strength of some types of steel. Having learned the numbers at school in N/mm², I was looking and found... just about nothing online. I only found numbers in Megapascals. I was confused. Why list the tensile strength in a pressure unit? Then I remembered an old joke, where the definition of a pascal played a role: 1 Pa == 1 N/m². So, 1 N/mm² == 1 MPa...
For reference, the joke:
>>>Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Blaise Pascal are playing hide and seek
Einstein is it, so he closes his eyes and starts to count. Pascal runs off to hide, but Newton doesn't budge. Right in front of Einstein he bends down and scratches a box in the dirt, one meter on a side. The he just stands there, right in the middle of the box.
Einstein opens his eyes and says "Newton! I found you! You're it!"
"No," says Newton. "You found a Newton in one square meter. You found Pascal!"
One of the greater hassles of the older measurement systems used to be they were national or even regional. Thus an imperial foot is not actually the same as an English foot or an US foot not to mention other countries foot (in Germany Preussian foot, Saxon foot, Bavarian foot and so forth ad nauseam). France being a particularly messy example with a plethora of regional and not so regional measurements. I sometimes believe France invented the metric system just out of self preservation.
When I was in grade school in the 70's, we learned the metric system because we were told that we would be switching over someday ... still waiting.
I guess some things have moved over ... you can buy a 2L or 1L of soda. We sell metric socket sets to work on cars that use metric measurement for their bolts. When you go to the hospital, injected meds are measured in cc's (cubic centimeters). So, there's been some progress. But I don't know that I'll see a full conversion in my lifetime.
If you're interested in history, you should look into "Operation Paperclip" and Wernher von Braun (chief architect of the Apollo Saturn V rocket). I think he is more known in Germany than in the US.
Von Braun is remembered in the UK as an avowed Nazi who was the chief architect of the V2 which killed so many, both slave labour in Europe and families in British cities. In my area his deadly legacy is still seen where entire streets were destroyed. The Yanks spirited him away for the space programme rather than making him stand trial for war crimes. Operation Paperclip is an innocuous name for something much darker and more shameful.
Why not begining by the metric creation history ?
Both the American and the Soviet space program are German. Americans taken the engineers like Von Braun, Soviets taken the workers and the rockets.
But to be honest it's not so strange, Germany was the center of the scientific world before WW2 (Einstein, Heisenberg, Plack, Riemann, Hilbert, Gauss, Born, Rothgen, Michelson, Braun, Wien, Hertz, Haber, etc...). The Gottinga University won 44 Nobel Prizes before 1933. Even the inventor of the Bombe using to decipher Enigma was born in the German Empire. The director of the theory section of the Manhattan Project (Bethe) was German, but the Manhattan Project was full of German, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Austrian, Polish etc... scientists.
It has always baffled me that a country which prides itself SO MUCH, to the point of obnoxiousness, in having cast off the yoke of the British Empire, would go on to cling so much to an outdated, overly complex mess of a measuring system from that very same Empire.
They didn't exactly though.
See for example 1 US liq. gallon vs. 1 British imp. gallon. Revolutionary !
The worldwide measurement system is so much easier than the US System, that is only used by the normal people. No US-American can tell me what 3,54 feet are in inches, without a calculator. But every other person on this planet can tell you immediately how much centimeters are in 3,54 meters.
That's because you are mixing decimals with fractions. It's a stupid question and really just demonstrates your lack of knowledge.
@@rikmoran3963 Ehm... no it doesn´t. It just shows, how weird the US-American measurement system is and why no one on this planet uses it, including the most us-american people that have to work with measurements.
@@rikmoran3963 okay, in metric centimeter is the fraction of meter, exactly centimeter is 1/100 of meter, more logical than the imperial
What is 1.609334 km divided by 1.8288m so that you can work out how many 12.7mm bolts you need for the bridge example in the video? Easy to do in your head _without_ a calculator?
Let's see, the bridge is 1 mile (1.609334km) long with two 1/2" (12.7mm) bolts every 6 ft (1.8288m) so we'll need:
1 mile/6 ft × 2 = 1 mile / 3 ft = 1760 yards/1yard = 1760 bolts.
So I'll need 1762 bolts (there's also the post at the 0 mark which needs 2 bolts).
But, you complain, I cheated as I knew the funny 1 mile = 1760 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet conversion factors.
I bet you can't remember a time before you knew 1 kilo- = × 1,000, 1 milli- = ÷ 1,000, and 1 kilo- = × 1,000,000 milli-
I can: the very first time I ever came across the kilo- prefix was during a test at a school: I had never been taught or met it before. The actual question was:
How many grammes in one kilogramme?
(Back then people knew how to spell).
I had no idea. If the question had been:
They want to put marker posts every hm (hetometre) along a 20km (kilometre) stretch of road how many posts are required?
I would have had no idea how to calculate it; could you immediately calculate it or would you need to look up that hectometre unit as the hecto- prefix is rarely used[1]).
[1]The only usage I know is a prefix to the _are_ unit of area, to get the main used metric unit of area: the hectare. Oh, and how big is an _are?_ an acre, the imperial measure of area, is the area of a rectangle with side lengths 1 furlong (the furrow length reasonable for an ox to plough in one go) and 1 chain (the length of a chain of 11 men with their arms outstretched and touching at their fingertips - the furrow is 10 times longer than this). An _are_ is the area of a square of side length 1 dam (1 decametre), ie 1 dam^2, so 1 hectare (1 ha) is 100 dam^2 = 1 hm^2 (that last unit change being obvious, right?).
The way I usually explain the connection between metric system units is this. I start from the calories in food, just for something that we all hear about:
One calorie is the quantity of energy needed to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 degree celsius (at standard atmospheric pressure).
That gram of water is 1 millilitre, one-thousanth of a litre
That millilitre of water fits perfectly in a cube that is one centimetre per side in length.
So, you have energy, volume, weight, and length connected seamlessly.
If you want to go up one level, for example understand what a Kilocalorie is, you just multiply by 1000 (K is for Kilo = 1000 in Greek)
So, one Kilocalorie is the amount of energy needed to raise by one degree 1000 grams of water, also known as litre, that fits perfectly in a cube of 10x10x10 cm. One Kilogram = 1000 grams.
No need to go from ounces to pounds, no need to go from inches to feet. One unit (per type) and a moving comma to rule them all.
It also helps that 1milli-litre of water weighs 1 gram, takes up 1 cubic centimeter of space and needs 1 calory of energy to be heated by 1 degree celcius.
Grown Up with the metric system, I always used to struggle with Inch, feet, Miles or Fahrenheit. IT don't seem to be logic.
I think that's the whole thing to understand: there is a logic behind the metric system, there is none behind the imperial.
The metric system is an artificially invented system to get rid of stupid conversion numbers and bases (like 3 barley corns in length=1inch, but what sort of barley...)
While the imperial system, like all it's contemporaries where invented whenever they needed a unit to measure something. (So not as a whole with the idea to make it "userfriendly")
because it isn't
@@nirfz Good summary. Imperial's ad-hoc, metric's systemic.
@@nirfz There is a logic. The problem is, the first iteration of the system had a logic six thousand years ago, and every successive iteration involved a new logic - you end up with a system that is a logical evolution of a logical evolution of a logical evolution of a logical evolution of a logical evolution of an original logic nobody learned unless they studied metrology. No wonder you end up with headaches. In this instance, the inch is divided in grains because the digit that preceded it was divided in grains - except there were sixty grains to a digit.
By the way, the metric system still uses a unit first defined in ancient Mesopotamia: the second.
@@arnaudbouret5562 Which i think prooves my point. There never was one logic behind the whole system as with every "evolution" you mentioned units were added, but it never was a real "system" in itself.
As for the second, well it's the only thing that measures something so abstract that nobody ever came up with a different better solution.
Yes, the metric system is better. I'm from the UK and grew up in a time when we had to learn both Imperial and metric. The maths for both are easy. In the UK, we still use both. We use pints, miles, kilos, mm, stone, metres and litres etc.
The only people who think it is a mess are those not intelligent enough to work in both. If you know what you are working on from the start, then you are OK.
Imperial might not be a mess per se, but you need to remember too much information (how many poounds is stone. How many inches are in foot. How many feet in yard or mile, ...) In metric all you need to know is how to multiply or divide by ten.
But I guess it is easier for British people as you dont even have money in base 10. But all other countries have with base 10 monetary system. That is why the imperial system seems messy.
Yes by a million miles lol😂
This video is so hilarious every time , with his trolling way of tone and delivery, one of Real Engineer's greatest videos lol
"How much Uranium 235 do we need to prevent critical mass?"
"About 63 cups"
"How big is a cup?"
"Do you want legal, customary or coffee?"
"Umm...legal?"
"Oh, that's easy! It's about 32 pints"
"Is that US pints or Imperial pints?"
"US pints. What are you finding hard to understand? Just estimate! It's not like it's anything important!"
"I think I'll stick to kilograms..."
"Nah...too difficult to understand. Do you want me to convert that to football fields, elephants or fridges?"
Explains why they (ab)used screwdriver while "tickle the dragon's tail".
I used to hate maths as well but when applicable in real world results it's ... well it's necessary but you also get the point of doing it.
I'm a biochemist and molecular biologist, for me measurements are vital to my work and make sense but it wasn't until I bought and started to renovate a house that I really got into it. Thing is, I already knew how to do it but I didn't know that I learned that a long time ago.
" a system invented by peoples who married their cousins" - made my day :D
While that also got a chuckle out of me, it is factually incorrect. (At least as far as insinuating that the British had anything to do with coming up with the measurements; other earlier societies that were responsible could have very well been marrying their cousins as well though, lol.) Most, if not all, of the measurements in use in the Imperial system were just a codifying of long used common measurements that the UK had inherited from the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and even Babylonians.
While the metric was invented by mass murderers. ; )
@@StylesEste The guillotine was a invention easy to understand and work with..- but no excuse
In my job as an engineer in a metric country I sometimes have to use a calculation method that was developed in the US before computers were in widespread use. The developers of the method have selected their (imperial) units in such a way that the numbers are 'nice' for hand calculations. This means that the mass of a plate, for which the metric unit would be kg/m^2 is now defined using the unit psi*ms^2/in (pounds per square inch times millisecond squared per inch), which is just horrible!
Wtf, I don't even know what you just said.
Wait a moment, mass is always in kilogram or pound (mass). Mass per area would be in kg/m^2 or perhaps lbs per square foot. That is pound-mass divided by area. Bringing pound-force (psi) into this equation is the first mistake and it only snowballs from that (what is the time doing, and how does it apply to your problem?).
But what I really find preferable in the metric system is that it works so well with decimal numbers. If our number system was, for instance, base 12, then imperial units would be a lot more attractive to use.
Time is included because the problem involves the change in response of the plate over very small time intervals. The units are technically correct but horrible to look at
The metric system is incredibly easy to learn. A liter of water weighs 1 kilograms, so 1 gram per milliliter. A kilometer consists of 1000 meters, and a meter consists of 1000 millimeters. You can do calculations very easy and don't even need a calculator. You can skip learning fractions in school, no need to calculate 5/127th of an inch when you need 1 millimeter. Officially the US has already adopted the metric system (a few years ago) but the general public is mostly not aware of it. Look at the small print on a can in the supermarket, measurements are in grams or milligrams, liters of milliliters. But to keep everybody happy the imperial measurements are usually also still there so you can still buy 2 yard of string beans and 4 liquid ounces of Brussels sprouts in a jar. 😉 Nice video, thanks!
USA calls the system they use Standard. The árrogance!
The metric system is a thing of beauty. It is without a doubt the most perfect measuring arrangement conceived by man. It all works together in such perfect symmetry, it is complexed and yet devastatingly simplistic. It’s virtually binary, with its wonderous design of zeros and ones. One millilitre of water occupies one cubic centimetre, weighs one gram, requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade (celsius) which is one percent of the difference between its freezing point of zero and its boiling point of one hundred. It has rightfully taken over the world with the exception of Myanmar, Liberia, and The United States of America but beyond that, it is the official system of measurement for practically all areas of the Sciences, Medicine/Dentistry/Pharmacology, The United States Military to the “all mighty dollar and cents”, from Alcohol to jewelry to Electricity and energy, metric is the way.
Distilled water. At sea level. At 20C. At however many kiloPascals is standard pressure. The devil is in the details :)
I knew what foot, pound and mile were before watching this, I knew approximately how much that is in centimeter, kilogram and kilometer. But I had NO IDEA, how incredibly hard it is to covert length and weight in that system, that's insanity!
I've never actually had a problem converting in Imperial. While I do know Metric (I despise metric, by the way.) Yeah, it is a highly precise system of measurement. But I don't need a complex, highly precise system of measurement for daily life. Imperial is designed for daily life.
And no one is actually converting from ounces to pounds. You do the highest weight first, then go into the lower weight. Pounds then ounces. Feet then inches. If you're feeling fancy you'll even use yards. Example, 1 meter = 3.28084 feet. 1 yard = 3 feet. 100 yards (an American football field) is 300 feet. That's 3600 inches. (Which we'd only use with a measure chain to see how many inches were gained on a 1 yard drive.) And, and that's 91440 milimeters for 300 feet.
It's not difficult in the least to convert length and weight in Imperial, even converting it to Metric, while it is a bore, it's not difficult. Europeans and not-French make it sound more difficult than it really is.
And.. A single kilometer does not have the same sound as "one mile". 1 mile is 1.6 km. A typical drive to work in America is usually a 10 mile drive (almost 11 minutes.) Some drive longer, some drive up to an hour (55 miles per hour being the normal highway speed limit. 75 on interstates and freeways.) Americans are generally hesitant to use a system that makes that distance seem longer. ("Road Rage"), more so with using a system that was invented by French Socialists. ⌐⌐
@@StylesEste while I understand you find it easy, relative to metric even you must see that it's harder. Not impossible, but harder non the less.
Seems to me like your opinion is very biased. How is the metric system difficult? (You called it something else).
I really can't see how it matters who came up with the system. As it doesn't matter who came up with the imperial!
You then call imperial every day use. And show me some meassurements that fit perfectly with that system.
Tell me, do you think that those of us using metric, use odd numbers in our daily life?
We don't meassure 1.6 kilometer, we meassure 1 km. A football field is 300 yards, is probably right I wouldn't know, but what I do know, is that obviously that field was created from foot not meters. Had metric been your countries meassurement, the length would have been an other.
As that is standardized I'm guessing, no matter what, that will always been the length.
An other thing is, the meter is a determined meassurement, it's a constant. While the definition how the lenght have been altered over the years a meter have always been a meter, it has only become more and more precisely defined.
As for feet, as I sit here I know of 5 different feet meassurements, already there it's getting way more complicated than it needs to be.
@@mBlackThunder Imperial is designed for daily home life, is why it's easier. What has been incorporated from millennia (literally 3,000 BC.) to be accustomed to the average, uneducated, human.
I don't call either system superior, as it falls solely to the person that is trying to use either system. And as I had not called metric difficult. Just bulky. For precision mathematics you have to start with the smallest number in mathematics for measurement. What's the smallest metric? (and why is decimeter missing?)
milimeter, centimeter, decimeter, decameter, hectometer, kilometer. (missing meters, obviously.) To me that is absolutely foreign to my understanding. I don't need to know such conversion rates, even if they're incredibly precise. I would have to get our a numerical pad to start the math behind it.
Imperial is simply feet to inches to yards. Until it is feet to miles. (rather than yards to miles, as some think.) Yes, I'm going to miss the precise unit of measurement to the smallest milimeter, but I do not need to know that in daily life.
Besides, you can't measure a field in 100 meters for American Football. (328.084 feet for that.) As then you would have to add the extra 20 meters for the end ones. 120 is the full length. 100 for the match, 10 for the end zones.
Whereas another Imperial conversion for daily life (and a critical one) in terms of self-defense. 21 feet (640.08 cm). It's a statement said around every self-defense course in the world today. If an attacker comes within 21 feet of you, that attack will bridge that gap (with 3-4 feet being from you) before you're able to unholster and aim your weapon at him.
Now one could say that it'd be better to live in a world without violence, sure. But we don't and never will. -- But the reason 21 feet (twenty-one feet. 4 syllables) is much faster to say and process than 640.08 cm. "Six-hundred and Fourty point Eight hundreth of a centimeter." Or point zero eight / O eight.
It's wordy. Too long to say, doesn't match up with visual perception.
Or when using 'hands' as a unit of measurement (down with horse measurement.) 1 hand = 4 inches. It's silly, but yeah, people would just set their hand-over-hand to figure out height.
That's the basics of Imperial (at least to me.) It's adapted to human use by the average, uneducated, human. You can use it easily and without any education, and you'll get along just fine. Neither superior nor inferior to the person using it.
And Americans do use Metric, a lot. We'll always use the Imperial for daily life (it's a big ass continent. Americans prefer simplicity of speech, and Metric is anything but that. It's too mouthy.) Gotta remember that a substantial amount of Americans population is not literate either. That would be the public education system (which teaches via the European model.) The one's that are literate know the Metric system, they just don't use it.
Our *everything* has both Imperial and Metric system on it. Minus our "how many miles to this town". Like I said.. big ass continent.
@@StylesEste you gotta understand, I know what you're saying.
I do not agree with your reasoning to metric though, you make it sound way more complicated than it actually is.
You mention what, 10 metric meassurements for lenght, and 3 for imperial.
That we have 10 doesn't really matter. In our daily life we use: centimeter, meter and kilometer. Just like you use inch, foot and mile.
For those 3, me calculating anything seems easier, than having to do it with imperial. Now you were brought up with imperial I'm guessing, so for you that's really easy, I get that. But there is no need to overcomplicate metric, it's really not that complicated.
We stick with 3 meassurements just like you.
For me getting to meter from centimeter, it time it by 100. Meter to kilometer I time it by 1000. Really easy.
For your self defense example, yes 640,whatever would we way to complicated, but then again we would never use that.
I've only ever heard that same example is in 7 meters. Do remember that you 21 feet was calculated using imperial, had it been with metric they either come to 7 meters or 6.5 meters (six and a half), neither of which I would find hard nor complicated to say 😀
@@mBlackThunder 6.4008 meters. To be precise. Which is still "six meters point four tenths." Or six point four meters. Same syllables, sure. But to get to that simplicity you're going to have to butcher the measurement for the sake of simplicity of speech. But you see, that's the problem. You have to go into a decimal system to get your measurement. Imperial is simply 21 Feet. You're talking about 8 steps here. ; ) Metric is 6.7 to 9.1 steps (no precision with steps for .4 just 6 and 7 meters.) Using a website for that one. So what the hell is a point of a step? (Seriously, I've always had this problem.)
Like when reading population size. "The average household is 2 + 2.5 children."
In 1970, Canada began to gradually switch from the imperial system to the metric system.
But the proximity of Canada and the United States, as well as the large volume of their commercial trade, contribute to complicate this transition.
In Canada, distances are measured in kilometers, speed in kilometers per hour, temperature in degrees Celsius, gasoline is sold in liters, weight in grams or kilograms, etc.
But building materials are still based on the imperial system, such as 2X4 inch planks, 3 1/2 inch nails, 4X8 foot plywood, etc.
We are discussing outdoor temperature in degrees Celsius, but we are discussing pool temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.
Funnily enough, the US doesn't actually use the Imperial system anymore. What we use is called American customary units. And although originally entirely ripped off from the Imperial system, it's since been updated to have many of its units defined in relation to metric (for example, an inch being defined as a certain percentage of a meter).
I worked in international cargo and lived/worked in New York for 3 years. It became second nature to mentally convert everything from/to metric. If a package left London at 6kilos it arrived as 13 lbs !! Dimensions also switched from cms to ins. US has a strange mix as you have 100c to a $ split into dimes. Having being brought up on UK currency too (240 pennies to a pound) it was easy to make the adjustment.
wait a pound is not 100 pennies?
@@richardm7713 it is nowadays but upto the70s it was 240 ! 12 to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound. 🤷🏻♂️
@@martynadams2011 The conversion was called "decimalization", IIRC, which is kinda a great verb for "making something metric".
@@michaelccozens And decimalization is also done in the US. Fractions of inches, e.g. 9/16"? Too complicated it seems, many people/companies use 1/10, 1/100 and 1/1000 of an inch as measurements, 1/1000 of an inch also being known as "1 mil"
I hate to tell you this, but 6kg is 13.228 US pounds...
Hello Heidi, your eyes told you off 🤣. I think it was cute to see. I´m a Swedish Construction engineer and I too find the Imperial system obsolete and hard to understand. Thank you for sharing.
metric systme is a french innovation. That probably why british autorities preferred stay at the middle age.
the best part is the face she makes when trying to grasp all of that... a mix of befuddlement and sadness... 🤣
Changing to metric saves money. Construction in Australia got something like 15% cheaper due to the switch because the error rate went down so much. One construction company demonstrated the benefit by building two identical houses next door to each other. One was built working in Imperial, the other in metric, with all waste kept on site. At the end, the Imperial house needed several trucks to take away the waste, while the metric one only had a wheelbarrow full.
As usual when this subject comes up I recommend the video "A Guide to Imperial Measurements with Matt Parker | Earth Lab" here on TH-cam. :)
I'm from Denmark and have used the metric system all of my life. Reading books or watching movies with Imperial/Standard measurements have always confused me, but I've been having fun doing traditional hand tool woodworking for a few years (pandemic -> hobbies), which inevitably led down the road of older measurements. Mostly it doesn't matter, but I'm part of a large international community of hand tool woodworkers-and most are Americans. So I'm slowly getting used to Imperial/Standard, which is actually pretty nice! I like to more intuitively understand those measurements. I'm a long way from using them, though! Except basic inches and their subdivisions in fractions. Old tools, auger bits (always in sixteenths), plane irons, chisels, etc. are in inches. Those available here are mostly from Sweden (E. Anton Berg-not the chocolate!). So understanding both systems are very valuable, both for communication but also for the historical perspective.
Add to that the older traditional Danish, Norwegian and Swedish measurement systems - I'll let YOU look them up. It's an eye-opener.
@@tacfoley4443 Oh yes, there were some wild ones!
Remember also that Denmark, Norway and Sweden ALL have their own historical measurements. Look 'em up.
@@tacfoley4443 Yes, I know :^) The world generally had a countless measurements, and they are quite entertaining some of them :^)
@@thomashverring9484 In some older stores here they still use the 'ell' for cloth measurement......
I remember when I had to sit in class for painters for a week because my class was away on a excursion and I still had to attend school.
Those guys were taught by one of my teachers where I learned electric and electronic basics. He wasn't even able to teach those guys that when one bucket of paint lasts for 5m², they had to get six for 30m² walls. And I already felt bad for him teaching us electronics...
I don't even want to know how on earth painters are supposed to get the amount of paint right in the US. Or maybe they are much mor qualified than the ones we have.
Easily, in the US they have a can which contains enough paint to cover 55 sq ft and they have walls of 330 sq ft to cover. You find that maths hard?
It's very frustrating here in Canada. We officially converted to metric in the 1970's but due to our neighbour to the south, many Canadians only used the metric system for weather temperature (ovens are still in Fahrenheit) and road speed. Sometimes I wonder if metric is taught in school.
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go f* yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
In Canada, we kind of use both measuring systems. We use metric for measuring distances, but generally use imperial for height. We use both for weight, depending on what we're talking about. Although we mostly use metric for temperature, a lot of people prefer feahrenheit for water temperature. Because of that, a lot of us who are even moderately skilled with math have a general idea of how to convert from one to the other in our heads.
Agreed. It's also pretty convenient that most of the major items aren't that different. A metre is about a yard. A Litre is about a quart,\ a ton is about a Tonne. I honestly have no idea how many mL are in a teaspoon :) It's a pity though, that 3/4" plywood is more often than not 18 mm. That makes many of my router bits obsolete :(
Why, of all things, would you choose to measure water temperature, the thing Celsius is based on, in Fahrenheit? It seems so counterintuitive!
@@laufert7100 I don't personally, but I know a lot of people who do, and most public pools display both temperature formats.
The Gimli Glider incident is a great story and the pilot was fantastic. But imagine being in a passenger plane when it just runs out of fuel in the air?
then i would question the pilots ability to check is fucking fuelgauge
@@zoolkhan if I remember correctly they checked it frequently because they thought it was faulty, because it seemed to go down way too fast no way of knowing in flight at the time what the actual amount of fuel onboard was, only %.
What about when your plane runs out of fuel over the Atlantic - check out the Azores Glider that ran out of fuel at cruising altitude over the Atlantic and glided nearly 75 miles/121 km to a safe landing at the Azores.
@@zoolkhanthe problem was there was a known problem with the fuel gauges on the B767 which meant they weren't working so the pilots were dipping the tank to find the volume in the tanks and then converting that to weight.
The B767 was the first metric fuel gauged plane that Air Canada had in its fleet and most refuelling they did was in imperial. When converting volume to weight the pilots used the conversion figure on the fuel sheet given by the refuellers, which converted to pounds not kilos. The result was they only had about 45% of the fuel they thought they had, not enough for the flight.
"I'm so happy we have google now"
That is why people are becoming dumber, they never have to think, they "just google it".
I grew up with the metric system living in Australia and it's so simple, just remember to shift the decimal point for conversion
The army is also using metric system. They call 1 km a klick.Though kilometers are not commonly used to measure distance in the USA, klick is commonly used by the US & UK military, which use the metric system almost exclusively in order to facilitate communication with allied forces.
UK is entirely mapped in metric. Ordnance Survey maps are 1:50000 or 1:25000 scale with 1 km grid squares and height contours in metres.
The big numbers toward the end were just about how we define our units of measurement. For example, a pound for a long time was defined as a standard lump of metal. But take 5 hunks of metal, send them to different countries so everyone can be on the same standard. But what they found was when those hunks of metal were brought back together for calibration, they all weighed different amounts. They either gained or lost mass. Maybe they were reacting in chemical reactions, just being exposed to oxygen can be enough for oxidation to change the surface of an iron piece of metal.
But in math there are mathematical constants. So famous one, Pi. Pi is a number that never changes. So the idea is you base a unit upon one of these unchangeable numbers. And you don't have to maintain a physical reference model, you can do the math based on a constant and get the right measurement. It make calibration so much easier.
So the meter is defined as the distance light travels in in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds. So a very very small number, because light travels so fast it travels the distance of 1 meter. And the number is big, but we don't have to memorize it (I mean, unless you want to). But if that is what it's defined as we can always know exactly what it is. And anyone in the world can reproduce it.
Short answer: YES
Long answer: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES
The U.S. Congress authorized the use of the metric system in 1866. There were improvements and revisions to the system up through 1960. And probably more after.
The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 is an Act of Congress. But is completely voluntary.
Executive Order 12770 July 25, 1991 made the metric system the preferred system of weights and measures for United States.
The resistance to flipping completely is strange. Many industries in the US use metric but make conversions to non-metric for consumers.
Depending on context, I use both.
It's mostly due to the cost of conversion and who would have to bear it, and also some nationalism. At this point, the US not using the Metric system is almost a point of pride to a lot of Americans.
The really confusing thing is that the US doesn't use the Imperial system, it uses the US customary system. This is different to the Imperial system in a few ways, the most important being volume. 1 Imperial floz is 0.9608 US floz, not that significant but still there. The big problem is for pints and greater, because the US have 16 floz to the pint whereas the Imperial system has 20 floz to the pint. This means that 1 imperial pint is 1.2009 US pints, 1 Imp quart to 1.2 US quarts, 1 Imp gallon to 1.2 US gallons, 1 Imp barrel to 1.3725 US barrels. This is really important when cooking, especially baking, as you need to know where your recipe writer is from.
I'm an owner of an old American car. And to service it I needed to buy imperial wrenches and find a lot of cans for imperial screws. And this cans not always helpful, because the metric and imperial screws look the same, but not easily replaceable. Sometimes I need to make this type of screws by myself, because I can't buy them for a reasonable price
A kilometer is a thousand meters, is ten thousand decimetres, is a hundred thousand centimetres, etc. A country mile is 1760 yd is 5280 feet? What?
Most of the major industry in America uses metric in production and then converts to imperial for public sale.