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Actually, Adam, Metric is the official measurement system in the US and has been since The Metric Conversion Act was passed in 1975 making Metric "the preferred system of measurement". The government never made it mandatory so hardly anyone uses it.
Further to Marvin de Bot’s point, the US Imperial measurements are actually DEFINED in metric. An inch is no longer defined ass the length of three grasshopper legs, or whatever it was, but rather as 25.6mm.
Being the in UK we have a lovely mis-mash of Imperial and metric measurements. My favourite is buying cloth which comes in yard widths but you buy it in meter lengths.
As someone into textiles the whole imperial metric mash when buying fabric is such a pain. I still think grams is a better measurement for wool then yards though. I can weigh grams on a kitchen scale but getting the yardage is a pain in the arse
I was brought up imperial but since getting into 3D printers about 12 years ago I learned Metric and I agree that Metric is so much better and I can now mostly think in metric. My 3D printers, laser cutter and CNC all come as metric so it just makes sense.
You were not brought up with imperial anything. The Imperial system of measurements was abolished in the 1950s. It was effectively phased out far earlier than that. The inch used today is the international standard industrial inch which was developed in 1896 by a Swede. It is not Imperial! The old Imperial inch was 2 millionths smaller than the modern inch is. Granted you cannot see 2 millionths of an inch. But put enough inches together and it starts to make a difference. The old US inch was 3 millionths larger. There was a 5 millionths difference between the two old inches. The USA NEVER used Imperial, ever!
@@1pcfred The US has existed since before 1896. And of course the old inch was smaller, they had to make it bigger for the US. Why do you think our roads and cars are bigger?
@@anon_y_mousse we're bigger because we're better. The modern inch is smaller than the old US inch was. It's still good though. Certainly better than a centimeter is. A centimeter sounds like something I'd squish. Although the last millipede I ran into I just threw out into the woods. Yeash I hate those things!
@@1pcfred Big difference between millipedes and centipedes though. A millipede is usually herbivorous, as the centipede is an active and venomous hunter. Your gonardial gland set is larger than mine if you occasionally toss out centipedes, millipedes though, i'd love to have some.
When I started working with a 3D printer, and thus started thinking in fractions of a millimeter, it really changed my perspective to the point where an *inch* seems freakishly huge now!
Hi Adam - quick correction. Here in Ireland we officially completed our conversion to metric in 2005, the end of a process that started in the 1980s. However, all through my school years (and I'm 57 now) we were taught to use metric for all measurements. The only place you would see Imperial used would be on road signs. Things get weird when we go across the boarder into Northern Ireland however. Now your in the UK and suddenly all the road signage changes from metric to imperial so you have to start converting speed limits in your head. Crazy.
Live in the UK and first time in Ireland, picked up the hire car at Dublin airport. Find out the odometer only has metric speed divisions. Luckily I roughly know the conversion so popping across the border to Belfast and back to UK signage and mile measurements was OK, but crikey, could definitely cause issues for tourists,
One of my cousins was logging with a team of people. Close to quitting time a tree got hung up. He sent the team home and said, "I'm just going to get this down on the ground, and then I'll come home." Two hours later they went out looking for him and found him dead under the tree. Fix problems like that when you're fresh in the morning, and keep the team around when dangerous stuff is happening.
I'm an amateur mechanic and have been working on imported cars for almost 50 years. They are all built in metric and I love it! Tools, dimensions of fasteners and parts, this is sooo simple! I'm so happy that American built cars are nowadays built the right way. Contrast that to when I do wood work. Endless guessing of fraction of an inch, bizarre measures like 12 inches a foot, 3 feet a yard, and so on. Vive le métrique!
As someone who struggles to picture in my head any measurement, metric or imperial, I'm always impressed at how you keep the fractions of an inch straight in your head, even if you measured it just before a piece to camera, I would struggle enough with metric despite it being what I was taught at school.
Australia used to use the Imperial system, so learning from the old boys it is interesting because I was taught to use both Imperial and metric. Similar to language I think in both Imperial and metric, but majority of the time I use the metric system as it is just easier in most applications.
The more I design and create I am realizing I need to start shifting to metric. Being in America I was taught in imperial units so it is a slow process. Now, when I measure things, I try to force myself to use metric.
the USA never used the Imperial system. We always used US Customary. Which you just think was based in Imperial. But US Customary actually predates the creation of the Imperial system. Which you also likely are not aware of. When US Customary was created the Empire used a system called Windsor. Imperial was created in 1824. US Customary was created in 1789. So the US system predates Imperial by 37 years. Then some time after 1896 everyone switched to the modern inch. Which is why we all use the same inch today. But we didn't always.
Well, as an American I started out in inch measurements. However, in High School we learned the SI units. Then as I began studying Mechanical Engineering, I became more familiar with it as every problem, every class, every quarter, was given in a mix of units and you had to constantly convert back and forth. Then I went to work for a German company, and it came in handy as I was tasked to take a German, metric, drawing and redraw it in inch dimensions so US customers could build a machine around our product. It was also necessary to translate the German notations to English. In INK! On Vellum! 😁
@@PhilG999 Been working for a German company here in the States for 25+ years now... All I use is metric, even when doing woodworking projects at home. Went out and bought a few metric tape measures several years ago and have used them ever since. So much easier/quicker than using fractional inch measurements, which I'm completely adept at doing, but prefer metric.
@@WHJeffB I'm equally adept at both, if I may say so myself. I do quite a bit of my own auto work and have an extensive set of both inch and metric tools, as well as a Reed and Prince and Whitworth or two... 😁
@@PhilG999 Same here... My machine tools at home are all imperial, so even though I design all my projects in metric, I have to convert them to inch (not difficult) to be able to machine the parts.
I did a project for my parents' 5th wheel which they live in. They wanted pull-out drawers in their closet next to the kitchen. I (living in the USA) challenged myself to do the whole project metric as this was working in an empty space with only height, width and depth as the know dimensions. I gotta say, it was so easy and had less "oopsies" than other projects using imperial. I'm sold.
Grown up on metric but since I work on vintage cars a lot I do use a lot of imperial. What always surprised me is the amount of kit you need for imperial. Not only the different sizes, but the different thread sizes. There BSF, BSW, UNC and UNF and every single one needs a different tap or a different bolt. It's surprising they ever got anything done back in the day, as you could basically waste half a day looking for the right tool. We only need to worry about 10 mil sockets.
I think it was one of the reasons for the downfall of the US Car Industry. Only specialized shops and garages in the EU are willing to work on a US Car. You can't buy replacement parts lokaly and cheap. The sales dropped, the market broke down and Detroit is looking the way it is today.
@@djsalose Not bad per say, my dream car is dodge 1969 but american cars are gas guzzlers plus most of them are just too big for Europe old cities. Also they are making real ugly cars in recent decades hope they go back to old designes
@@plazmica0323 I have owned a '67 GTO, 68' Challenger and '73 Trans Am. Cool cars, but trust me, the quality is BAD. They just don't drive very well, and even the big engine cars are in reality pretty darn slow.
Hey Adam, thanks for being honest about getshitdoneitis. I agree completely, and it's nice to see someone like you saying it in a relatable way. I'm a tall plumber and I smash my head and crank my neck on things at an unreasonable frequency. The solution is always to slow down and calm down.
When I got a 3D printer in 2017, I found out really quickly that it was much easier to draw parts using the metric system. I’ve used wrenches from both systems since the early 1960’s. The hardest part is converting from one system to the other. I’ll stick with gallons and miles for driving..
@@pantac4493 Metric's ability to scale is probably my favorite part about it. I think in Imperial and am a geography major, meaning when I was getting my education I had to deal with map scale a fair amount. While the number is drilled into my head, the fact that there's 63360 inches to the mile is entirely absurd.
I’ll stick with inches for machining too. I'm not a fan of the metric measuring scale. I like my inches and fractions. I use the decimal inch machining anyways. Converting is easy enough. One inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. That is the definition of the modern international industrial standard inch. The archaic inches were not precisely 2.54 cm. There were two archaic inches too. The Imperial inch and the US inch. The US NEVER used Imperial! There was a 5 millionths difference between the two. The US inch was bigger.
@@1pcfred Interesting info... Something to add. All CNC machine tools that can switch back and forth between metric and inch are inherently metric at their core. Inch is just a mathematical conversion within the machine software/control. I was told by a rep from the CNC control company that supplies all the drives for our machines that it's always been this way from day 1.
@@WHJeffB yeah I don't think so. G Code doesn't agree with any of that either. G20 is inches and G21 is millimeters. Internally the controller simply uses units. At the hardware level it is binary base 2. Your rep is completely full of shit. When CNC was first developed in the 1950s in the USA I'm pressing X to doubt they were using metric then and there too.
I grew up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, and only learned metrric. We were taught that "feet" and "inches" were a thing, but that nobody used them anymore. Now I live in Canada and there's a whole damn flowchart to choose what system of measurement you use for a task. It gives me a migraine.
@@seanflorian4653 Yes. Most construction is imperial while most engineering is in metric. I grew up in the 70s and learned imperial first, then metric later on. Working in a lumber yard, it's all imperial. I've also worked steel a bit, and that was imperial for the most part. Everywhere else, it's usually metric. Moving back and forth is quite easy after 50 years.
I grew up in Australia in the 70s and 80s, so my Dad always referred to imperial measurements, but I had metric in school and at university. Guess I’m lucky growing up with both systems!
Going on the same path of metric taps being so much easier, you can subtract the pitch from the diameter to get your tap size. Ie. An M5 x 0.8 screw takes a 4.20mm tap drill. So much easier in the design side of things too.
I am old enough to have been at primary school (middle school?) during the change over to metric. The result of this is whilst I prefer the metric system for it’s simplicity I still find myself writing down dimensions as 12 inches by 20 millimetres for example. 🇦🇺
as a Brit , yeah we do use both .. i find inches & feet are fine for estimating up to a point but metric is more accurate & easier to divide . i always remember watching an old episode of the New Yankee Workshop & watching Norm with a beam that was ( say ) 4 foot , 7 & 3/8 inches .. and he wanted to divide it into 3 parts
Absolute madness. People defend imperial because it really is quite intuitive and “human” in some contexts, like talking about the length of a kitchen knife or whatever, but that’s just not enough to stick with it for measuring and calculations.
I would love to seeing you build a little vibration rig. I noticed sawdust forming curious little piles on a board when I was using the saw attachment on my oscillating tool. I looked it up, and found a neat video with a guy projecting a subwoofer's vibration onto a sheet of steel and covering it with salt. Love to see you try out something similar and explain the process.
I worked for a couple of years in a violin repair shop in NYC. All the actual work was done in metric, but all the instruments were identified by their size in imperial.
In Ireland it depends on the industry that you work in. Pipes are in imperial, joinery and carpentry is imperial but construction sites are a mix. Older generations were taught imperial, my generation were taught both but the younger generation only know metric
As far as moving around obstacles I revert to my training as a military operator. "Smooth is slow, slow is fast." Meaning move with purpose methodically thru your environment.
Ireland is almost fully metric - we ditched miles in 2005. Only universal exception is measuring draft beer, which is always in Imperial pints (not 0.5L, because that would be slightly less). Some people still use Fahrenheit for body temperature or stone + lbs for body weight, but that's generally personal preference. Almost everything else is metric.
As a Brit of a certain age, I was taught the metric system at school and college (where I learned to machine on machines that were imperial), but my parents used imperial so I switch between the 2 depending on what the best fit measurement is of the item I’m working on. My house was built in 2021 so you would think it’s metric, but it’s planned out in imperial as I found out when renovating the kitchen.
Aussie here, finding it entertaining that you're talking about the benefits of the metric system while drinking an Australian drink. Though I am a little disappointed that you've opted for the Diet Ginger Beer instead of the full sugar one. It's real cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup! Bundaberg is a sugarcane town, that's why there's also the Bundaberg Rum company. Funnily enough driving to and from Bundaberg feels kinda like driving through Iowa or something, with the long stretches of straight roads lined with long thin crops used for sweetening things as far as the eye can see, except ours is sugarcane instead of corn.
Oh hey I'm from Bundy! I drive past the factory all the time. Wild to see these drinks outside of Australia But on topic, I grew up with both systems purely due to my father working on American bikes, I'm glad I learned the two but metric is best hands down.
Even using metric system, there are a lot of parts and tools that are refered in imperial in Brazil. They became names more than measurements, since we have no idea of how long is an inch.
I did my trade as a Fitter/Turner/Machinist in Imperial, thous, 1/10th of thous., not a problem. Then we converted to metric here in Australia, it took me a long time to convert. When I built my house, I did it in metric, my father-in-law worked in Imperial, that caused some funny situations, steps didn't fit etc. Hilarious at times. Oh, BTW, you're choice of beverage. perfect !.. Nothing tops a Bundaberg . I should know, Bundaberg is just up the road from me. I enjoy your TH-cam channel..
@Adam Savage’s Tested, I noticed you drink ginger beer quite often. My partner and I have done extensive testing of the Pacific Northwest Ginger Beers and have found that the store bought Fever Tree Ginger beer to be our favorite, have you tried it? What’s your favorite brand?
(On the second point, because I could never switch to metric) I had to transplant my computer from one small case to a larger one this weekend and I can agree: Every time I lost blood, dropped a screw, or did something the machine wasn't happy with, it was because I was rushing and stopped being careful and methodical about the process, even with something as simple as screwing in a fan.
That's the challenge of converting is not that one unit of measure makes more sense but that people form a frame of reference early on to their native measurement. I've worked between metric and imperial for measurement and can think between the two relatively easily (and for giggles I like to mix and match when working with my engineering friends). However I never formed the same relationship with temperatures and struggle to convert. It is similar to learning a second language fluently enough to be able to think in it.
Being Canadian, we have to think in both. It's nuts, and I'd argue stupider than sticking to Imperial. Not that I am an old fart advocating for Imperial. While I was raised with it and am comfortable in it, I have no emotional connection to it. I wouldn't even care if we all resurrected some forgotten system from the past. Just as long as it's universal. Or at least earthiversal. We'll deal with aliens later.
I'd say beeing raised with Metric and learning rough imperial through TT wargaming is Ok though. Also, timber, nail and pipe sizing is still often done in imperial even in Scandinavia. My biggest problem so far when it comes to measurments, it's to convert from degrees and lines(6300 lines to a full circle, old national military system) to degrees and mills
Imagine living in a country where the majority have grown up or migrated on the metric system and your government, well a stupid PM, sells the advantage of leaving the EU as "we can go back to imperial".
I grew up with the metric system and I grew up with dates in the format "dd.mm.yyyy", which is okay, at least it follows some kind of logic, unlike mm/dd/yyyy, but as a programmer, I got used to ISO date (yyyy-mm-dd) and now use it almost exclusively pretty much everywhere. All my devices are configured to print dates in that format, if they are able to. And just as you described, this was not that easy, as my mind was fixed on the date format I grew up with but after forcing myself to only use ISO dates for years, this format now reads natural to me. Reteaching, not to say reprogramming yourself to a new system that is different than the system you've been growing up with is insanely hard.
I had a machine shop years ago that was entirely metric. I made aerospace parts and as an aside I reproduced older German firearms parts and everything was specified in the metric system. Since we are both older, I'm now 66 years old, my quitting time occurs earlier in the day every year.
Greetings from Germany! Normally we use the metric system. But I have to say, that there are many obsolete units of measurement around. For example, some customers ask for one pound (ein Pfund) of something if they want 500 grams. Or 'ein Duzend' stands for 12 units of something. As a hobby pilot I often have to calculate the amount of gasoline in gallones and on the gas station itself I have to pay the amount in Liter. It is the same with heights or speed. Normally it is in Meter and km/h. In the air it is feet and kt. If you talk about engines it is the same. We use PS (Pferdestärken), then there is hp, brake horsepower or simply Newton. You have to take good care to look closely at the units. Otherwise it could end in an accident in no time...
ปีที่แล้ว +1
Our pound is of course only a *name*… and not really a non-metric unit. BTW, the SI has base units, derived units, and accepted units. The german "Pfund" (which is dying out anyway) can be considered a non-officially accepted unit. ;-)
My father said he was told in school that he had to learn metric because America was changing. He was born in 1950. I was told the same thing when I was in school. Still hasn't changed. As a mechanic at an Acura dealer that fixes Japanese cars, this makes me sad. Metric just makes more sense. My SAE wrenches and sockets just sit.
I think the 2:nd question was specificly the shop floor. And I can relate to that. My garagefloor gets slippery af if/when it gets wet. I guess the real answer is grains in the paint but that gets harder to clean.
I think one the best things the metric is that everything is in 10s meaning a kilometer is 1000 meters (or 10*10*10 meters), centimeter is 1/100 meters and millimeter is 1/1000 (there's also names for 1/10 meter, 10 meter and 100 meter units but those are less commonly used). Compare this to imperial where 1 mile is 1760 yard, 1 yard is 3 feet and 1 feet is 12 inches. I can convert pretty much any metric unit to another as it's simply a division by 10 enough times, I can't convert one imperial unit to another without a calculator (I'll admit I was raised in and still live in a country that uses metric) as the conversion rates aren't regular.
I have to work with them in Germany as a machine designer. Almost all connectors for pneumatic connections are in the stupid imperial units. If you work on a layout for a circuit board, you have always take into account if you have imperial grid or metric grid. It can drive you insane.
Aussie here. I frequently use both. People height is still ft and inches for me (most people I know don't have a clue of their height in cm or metres, it's too unwieldy) and inches and feet are useful 'chunks' for wargaming, too. But for precision or significant distances, metric all the way. Fractions of inches is madness.
Also Aussie and of an old enough age to have been exposed to imperial via parents and grandparents and similarly I tend to use imperial for estimating unimportant dimensions ("oh that looks to be about 5 inches") but metric for everything else and especially where it matters.
@@seegee7728 As a German, nobody i know uses purely cm's for their height either. We say 1.88 or "one, eightyeight" which can be both 1m 88 cm or 1.88 m...i don't know, in the end it comes down to what you're used to, i guess. But it's nice to see an online discussion where so many imperials are open to the better system ;)
I agree on both points and "getshitdoneasidis" if that's how to spell it. I schooled in imperial but the country converted to metric after my high school. I still say Fahrenheit and miles but when I measure, it's in mm, cm and metres. it's still difficult to buy metric nuts and bolts but metric tools are readily available. Most appliances, TVs and cars come in metric so when fixing stuff, I have to be equipped with standard and metric tool and hardware. Thanks for this Adam and crew
I've been a bicycle Mechanic for 20 plus years and my brain only seems to work in metric. Getting into using milling machine and lathes has been challenging. Breaks my brain sometimes lol.
A few other Canucks have commented but I'll add my three cents: First, in Canada it's officially legal to use either Imperial or Metric. The powers that be *did* legislate the use of Metric in 1975 (just before I was born) but faced so much pushback from importers who were having to relabel everything that in the late 80s they backed off. By that point, however, *most* good were relabeled and local production converted, so *most* things are now in metric. Although, there is apparently one gas station left somewhere in Saskatchewan that still sells gas by the gallon. Common usage for people's heights and weights is still in Imperial, as is (usually) alcohol. The bottle might say "750 ml" on it but everyone knows it's a two-six, as in 26 ounces; and beer is typically ordered in either "glasses" - 12 ounces - or "pints" - which until perhaps a decade ago was reliably a good, Imperial, 20-ounce pint, (and usually still is in pubs) but lately more and more restaurants are serving US 16-ounce pints instead. Carpentry and plumbing, however, are still heavily impacted by US practices, and thus materials for those industries are usually still in inches. It's worth noting, though that carpentry is in US Standard inches, not Imperial inches, which are some microscopic amount longer. So technically, Canada has three different measurement systems in common use! :D
The thing about pints is that a typical pint glass holds 20 ounces - but all the way up to the brim. In the UK, many pubs still fill up the glasses all the way, so you can’t even lift them without spilling, let alone carry them to the table. Hilarious. 16 ounces in a traditional pint glass is comfortable to handle, especially if you like your beer with some foam on top. Also works for European bottles of beer (500 ml, just a hair under 17 floz). US standard inches are imperial inches. There’s a “US survey inch”, which fits your description, but that doesn’t impact carpentry at all - and even if it did, the difference would not only be negligible, but non-existent, since wood is far too soft to measure it to that detail at those lengths.
@@mm9773 Oh, I learned a thing! About inches, that is. As for pints: In Canada, if the restaurant is serving a proper (20 ounce) pint, they will bring you a 20 ounce glass filled 95% to the brim - just enough space left for the server to carry it mostly safely. If they're serving US (16 ounce) pints, they bring you a 16 ounce glass filled 95% to the brim. I wouldn't object if the 16-ounce pint was 25% cheaper than the 20-ounce pint, but usually it's not. The restaurant goes "well, everyone on this block charges 8$ for a pint of beer, so we will too." In other words, the trend to using US pints is a mix of chain restaurants owned by US companies that are standardising on glassware, and a way for restaurants to make more money on alcohol without raising menu prices. And it *irks* me.
It's just dumb how hard it is to find and buy metric hardware at physical hardware stores in the USA. I can get a bag of us customary fractional bolts for the price of one metric one...
I grew up with a mix of metric and imperial. Living in Canada… I use both in day to day life. Feet and inches for day to day measurements, kilometre for driving, Celsius for outside temps Fahrenheit for cooking. Cups for recipes but litres for liquids.Grams small weighing but lbs for everything else.
I wish metric sizes would start being offered in hardware stores, then I could support them with my wallet. I can't buy a metric tape measure unless I want to spend 3 times as much to get one shipped to me
Harbor Freight has a little yellow "keychain" tape measure with dual units on it, or at least they used to, for just a couple bucks. I'm pretty sure Menards has a dual unit full size tape measure, but I know not all parts of the USA have Menards, and maybe it's weird they have dual unit tapes.
@@rpavlik1 I think many, if not all tape measures and ruler's we have here in new zealand have both Metric and Imperial, the only things that stick to solely Metric are one sided tools like set angled set squares etc.
Canadians do a weird mix of things too. We use metric for weather and speed and distance and stuff. But then for building and lumber and our own weight and other things we will use inches and pounds.
Absolutely. Large measures give me miles to go and feet tall; Small measures I want centimetres and millimetres. Plus I hate the math involved with fractions of imperial
I'm UK (actually England (in East Anglia)) based semi retired Building Contractor taught predominantly on imperial measurements, but mid(ish) 70s told "that's out, we're metric now" who really always works in mm. 1. because it's easier and 2. Because I was never used 16ths, 32nds etc. However, within walking distance from from my home I can find at least 2 road signs that mix imperial with metric. EG 7.5 tonne weight restriction 1.5miles ahead.
I know how you feel. I compare using metric measurements to be similar to ESL (English as a Second Language). When builds my cabinets I prefer to conform to the 32mm sysrem. Typically I take the wall dimensions from the blueprints given, convert height and length to metric one time. Then for all other dimensions I stay in my metric train of thought. This way I am not constantly trying to convert/translate numbers/words and making blunders.
From my experience, the way to start using metric is start your design with it and build with it, make imperial measurements as the secondary reference on drawings if necessary not the forefront
From my experience, the way to start using metric is wear a Mao suit. Because that's what metric will get you in this world. If you want to be free then measure things in football fields and eagle wings!
In the UK most of us use the two fairly interchangably, even those of us who were never taught imperial measurements in school. I think you can broadly divide it between accuracy and guestimates. Metric can be argued to be far better for precision, but for anything that starts with a "well, it's about..." I think the imperial system is often better suited. Even with people in their 20s, I'd say more people know their height and weight in imperial than know them in metric.
You got it spot on. I'm from Ireland, we made the switch here about 25 years ago but I still think about some things in imperial when I don't have to do calculations with them. Mostly things like body measurements (height, shoe size, etc), pints of beer, and miles. But although I think in imperial, I work or do calculations in metric. It's far easier to work with something that's 325.5mm or 32.55cm, rather than 12.81 inches, or 12 and 25.6/32 inches, or 1.07 feet, or whatever.
@@mm9773 Ah yes, you're right, I didn't realise how messed up they were! I always just assumed that shoe sizes matched foot size in inches, since they're fairly close. But apparently this is only true with a size 12 (12 inches) and then they use a different unit on either side of this.. But yes, it's very messed up alright, since you have different sizes for women and children.. The more you think about it, the more messed up it is..
Canadian here: I was completing my 4th year electrician apprenticeship, did lots of fly-form deck work to completion of the building. One summer all the drawings on new projects were in metric. It was only a matter of a few months, very little complaining and the plumbers, electricians, sheet metal, carpenters were very comfortable with it, liked it and said they would never go back to imperial. We are still comfortable in both.
So does that mean in Canada you have 1/2 copper pipe, and some corresponding metric copper pipe? And drywall that's in foot lengths and some in metric lengths? Buildings materials are notoriously difficult to switch to another system of measure. You can specify the drawings in metric if you like, but how much does it matter if all the materials are sized to imperial units?
@@stevesether Plywood in US and Canada is metric. 1/2 inch ply is a little under 1/2 inch, same for all the other thicknesses. You cut materials to fit, who cares what to original sheet dimension of drywall is? You measure in metric and cut to fit in metric. There is no conversions to do. 1/2 =12 mm, 3/4=19 mm. The difference in Imperial to metric is so small at these sizes it is a 'don't care' matter. It is no different then if you measure with a length of string with knots in it. "You can specify the drawings in metric if you like" There is no 'You can specify'. Drawings are in metric period and has been for almost 50 years with no problem. Tape measures with both systems are common off the shelf tools at Home Depot stores etc. CAD programs can do automatic conversions of quantities for material take-off. You don't order 14 sheets of drywall, you order x number of square meters. The supplier will convert to how many sheets. DIY Home Depot etc have both metric and Imperial nuts, bolts, fasteners. When doing conceptual hands flying in the air guesstimating we use either but when is comes down to accurate dimensioning we use metric. It is way easier and computer friendly.
@@MrBonners Plywood doesn't matter so much for the size, but drywall size matters A LOT. Our walls here in the US are built for stud walls that have studs that fit at 4 feet. If they aren't 4 feet, you'll have to cut every single piece. Furthermore, drywall is tapered at the ends where they butt up against one another to make taping and mudding and taping easier. If you cut that off (or worse, it's no long enough), it's going to be much harder. IIRC, I've seen Canadian drywallers on youtube and I've never heard of them using metric units for drywall. It's also 1/2 inch 5/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick, and it better match the same thickness if you're replacing a piece, or doing a re-fit. Drywall comes in 8 foot, 10 foot, and 12 foot sections. You order the appropriate length based on how you want to lay out the drywall. It sounds a little strange to just specify an area, and the supplier just assumes a length. Also, you might need a longer or shorter section somewhere. Maybe that's how you're ordering drywall, but it sounds odd to me. How does water and waste pipe work? Do you have metric and imperial pipe,? Only metric and have a fitting that converts from one to another, or only imperial? I'd suspect the pipe is still imperial, if for no other reason than the ability to import pipe from US manufacturers, who likely don't want to make it in multiple sizes, as well as Canadian supplies exporting to the US.
@@stevesether as is both are marked on tape measures however when laying out cubicle farms and manufactured panels, room dimensions, office cabinetry, electrical (even receptacle/switch heights) plumbing, ducting/sheet metal drawings, all metric since the late 70s. All building codes are in metric since the late 70s. Steel /wood stud spacing can be done by the installer in cubits for all that matters. just marks on a ruler. The entire industry does not depend on the issues of the semi-skilled trade of steel stud wall builders.
@@MrBonners AFAIK, Canada still uses AWG (american wire gauge) for elecrical, not metric. I've seen another Canadian youtuber testing 14/2 wire with high overcurrent to see what happens to the Romex. So I'm guessing y'all are still using the US based standard for electrical wire and haven't switched to metric sizing. You can easily change your drawings if that floats your boat. The unit you measure in is relatively arbitrary, but you still need standard sizes of things that fit together. That means using the same standards, which are nearly impossible to change for anything that's expected to last for 100+ years like a house. Since you dind't mention pipe size, I'm guessing y'all are still using pipe sizes based on inches, though that's often a "trade size", and the real measurements are slightly different, but still based on fractional inches rather than decimal millimeters. You _could_ say the US _is_ using the metric system if all you care about is the labeled units on things. My gallon of milk says 3.78 liters on it.
❤️ I was taught metric at school but both as an apprentice instrument mechanic later in life . Start with temperature, it makes more sense. Do you need any 10mm sockets btw ? We've got loads here in the UK 😁
There is currently a consultation about bringing Imperial mesurments back to the UK. As in being able to buy a pint of milk with no metric version. Apparently this is a benefit of Brexit.
If I were a machinist, I might be more willing to switch over on my own, but as a woodworker, I have to deal in dimensional lumber cut to imperial dimensions and make product to fit openings sized in imperial measurements by other craftsmen. Having the entire American lumber system change at the same time is a task I do not see happening soon.
Yeah, a lot of otherwise metric countries use a rough imperial for pipe and lumber sizing too. It's just that we also often bump tolerances to the nearest metric equivalent 4"->10cm 3"->7.5cm 2"->5cm etc. And anything that would use fractions of an inch, fuck that noice, it's metric now. Only exception is vintage/historical or expensive machinery made in imperial measuring countries where the conservation or function is more important than convenience.
No one's used Imperial length measures in about a century now. Today we use what's called the modern international industrial inch. Which was developed in 1896 by a Swede. Adoption wasn't immediate but before World War 1 was over the Imperial inch was effectively dead then. Brits needed war materials and just where do you think they got them from? So they dropped their old system like a hot potato. Although it wasn't officially abolished until 1957. Because in the US Henry Ford was a huge proponent of the modern inch. So big he bought the Swede that developed it. Moved him and everyone he even remotely knew to the USA too.
Even though dimensional lumber is given in inches, you can still use metric for woodworking. I do it on any project around the house now. Just buy a metric tape measure, ruler and square. It's actually easier in my opinion, but I've been working with metric measurements for over 25yrs, and I prefer metric, though working with "Inch" machine tools, using metric measurements can be tedious, it's not impossible.
The time a 2 by 4 was 2" by 4" is long gone, besides those fake inches a handicap of customary is those weird values like penny nails or wire gauges (a length decided by the ductility of steel) and lead gauges (a length decided by the specific weight of lead)
@@2adamast how is acknowledging material properties a handicap? I would say denying those properties is less useful. Someone does have to make wire somewhere after all. So how it can be drawn does matter.
I was 9 years old when Canada went metric. But those 9 years were enough to train my brain to still understand some imperial measurements better than metric. I'm 6 foot 3 and 200 pounds. I have no idea what that is in cm and kg. But I can't really do Fahrenheit or mph. I have to convert to C and km/h. I think a lot of metric countries are the same. Officially we're metric but in practice we're a mix. Except maybe for temperature where I think it's only Americans who grok Fahrenheit.
Same here. I do find imperial length measurements are more intuitive.. They fit the scale of everyday things. I can do metric, but the chunks are too big or too small for casual reference. No one uses decimetres, but I think that would have been useful. The jump from cm to metre is too big.
Hi Adam, I think Liberia is the one other country that used imperial measures. My Mum was born in 1939. Australia went metric in 1974. Even though we have used metric for more than half her life, she still converts Celsius to Fahrenheit in her head to work out how hot it is going to be.
England: My Wife does a 5 km run I drive 5 miles to work at an average of 12mph I’m 6ft4 inches tall My doctors say that I am 1m95 I weigh 15 stone My son says he’s 75kg Today I bought an 8x4 and was asked 9mm or 12mm thick? Enough already! It’s time we changed properly and for good. 😠
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It takes a generation or three. Germany switched almost 100 years before I was born, and I'm so grateful for that… not even my grandparents used non-metric. I can't even tell what system (if any :D) we used in that part of Germany before… well, before Germany actually existed. Which is, to my shame, just realized: Germany went metric on January 1st, 1872, right after being founded in January of 1871.
Metric is soooooo much better. 1cm is one hundredth of a meter, one cubic centimeter of water is one mililiter, wich weights one gram, a thousand of wich makes a kilogram, wich is one liter of water, so if you are a doctor (just as myself) it is not just the measuring of distances, it is the volume, the percentages, the mass, everything, so you know 1000ml of 0.9 percent saline has 9g of NaCl in it, 10ml of 10 percent KCl has 1 gram of KCl in it, 500ml of 5 percent glucose has 25 grams of glucose in it, man it makes everything so much easier... When I go the the US I just get crazy with miles, galons, inches, pounds... I have to remember that a mile is roughly 1,6km an inch is roughly 2,5cm and a pound is roughly 450g... And in cant for the life of me know what an ounce or a fluid ounce or a cup are. Never mind the gallon.
I grew up in the us but have always kept up both. When I became an engineer microns/mm made more sense to use so that's what I did. Now I'll get stuff in mils and just stare at it blankly uncertain how big it is.
I used to work in the engineering trade in UK and having both, we supplied metric and imperial of all things, a old clever, time served Enginner said to me it’s really useful. If you want to drill a slightly over sized 25 mm hole use an 1” (25.4mm) and there were many more examples. Having easy access to both was a real bonus. I still think in both, whichever is closest on the rule is the one I use but when it comes down to the crunch metric is by far the easiest system, who the hell ever thinks 59/64th of an inch is a sensible “metric” (please excuse the pun)!
I’m Australian, and I weirdly find myself using imperial measurements (mostly inches) to roughly communicate size and distance, ie. it’s only a couple of inches tall. I would never use imperial to actually measure something though 😄
Fellow Australian here: Did you notice he has a Bundaberg drink there? Not sure which one it is though, 'cus it's the wrong colour label to be the ginger beer.
@@dreamingthelife Yeah true, I've personally never bothered with the diet 'cus the regular one just tastes so good. Love seeing it reach outside of the Au/NZ sphere regardless
I've spent a little time trying to get use to Celsius, but I can feel the difference between individual degrees of Fahrenheit. I don't want to switch to a system where I need to think in half degrees
I think it’s based on as 0 c is freezing point of water and boiling water at ground level is 100 c. It’s easier to think about it scientifically that way. Would make it convoluted if they made boiling at 200 c. But I do agree you can feel small increments in temperature
@@pantac4493 Weather measurement is generally about comfort, so the resolution of imperial is about right. And it sticks to two numbers and no decimal across the range of reasonable human temperatures lol. Plus snow/ice formation depend on pressure, height, atmospheric conditions, and ground conditions to the point that remembering 32 is about as arbitrary as 0.
I agree that in terms of scientific study, metric is the way to go, all day every day. However, I’d say that when it comes every day living, having an expanded range of values to express the approximate comfort of the weather’s temperature, Fahrenheit is the way to go. Also, in a bit irony with metric, Fahrenheit works well to convey the relative feel of that weather in 10s of degrees. e.g. “tomorrow’s highs will be in the 70s… nice!” Also for the sake of the daily living example… 0 degrees Fahrenheit = really cold outside 100 degrees Fahrenheit = really hot outside 0 degrees Celsius = a little chilly outside 100 degrees Celsius = human dead 💀 😅
I think this is only true in certain limited examples. Yes I can tell when someone has set the AC to 73F instead of 72F when it normally is always at 72. Or rather I can probably feel that it feels a bit warmer than usual. I don't think I can quantify the exact difference without further input. However, If you were to send me into a room that is either 85F or 86F and I had guess which one it is I have my doubts you would get it right most of the time. I am going to venture a guess that it would be the same for you. For all intents and purposes round Celsius digits are more than precise enough to describe the temperature of say a room or the outside. Nothing changes dramatically within the range of 1K / 1°C except maybe at the freezing or triple points of water.
Being of a certain age in the UK, I learned both Metric and Imperial at home and school from an early age - and our currency only changed from Pounds-Shillings-Pence after I'd started school. And I estimate sizes in whatever units are appropriate to the scale of the item being assessed. I know my hand-span is about 9". I can visualise 1cm on paper. I'm lucky. My friend is not - they have four tape measures, but only like the one that has the full number in centimetres, ie, 280cm reads as 280, not the 80 on others where one has to look for the nearest whole metre mark.
If you are trying to work in Metric, may I suggets that you get a "Talmeter". A very well thought through tape measure with quite a few usefull features. I could not do without it, but it only works in Metric.
Unit of measure gate keeping is one of the most annoying, use what works best for you. The US converted to metric, technically, back in '75 with the Metric Conversion Act, but it allowed the continued use of imperial.
Actually ;-) some commenter said it wonderfully in this comments section: the US uses metric, they just give weird names to weird sizes, for example they call 2.54 cm an "inch".
Injuries, accidents, boo boos, goof-ups... all symptoms. Tired, rushing, inattention, clutter are the causes... Quit, slow down, focus, or cleanup. If I'm tired/injured and can no longer work, often I can still manage to cleanup the shop. I will return rested and the shop is ready for me...
As a german I see the imperial system on the same level of saneness as using bloodletting in medicine. Whats a gallon? 4.5 (imperial) or 3.8 (US) litres? Body parts as length measurements? My feet are 1.05ft long... great. Worst of all however is the pound! The amount of translation errors that occur with the pound is enraging. Basically all dubbed TV shows are doing it wrong as translators often dont care about the pound being both a unit of mass and force. Its eroding the difference between mass and force which leads to non-sense ideas of having less mass on the moon/in space. Inertia disagrees on that. Weight is a measure of force, NOT mass! And for some Americans it seems that not using metric is their patriotic duty. I mean... measuring social distancing in alligators? Sounds like a nutty cult to me!
I mean, "body parts as length measurements" is a bit of a red herring - yes, that's how it originated but a foot is a defined standard now (ironically it's defined in terms of a metre :) just as much as a metre is (which was _originally_ defined as one ten millionth of the great circle distance from equator to north pole - i'm no geographer but even I know that wasn't _exactly_ one metre except perhaps by total coincidence :). Otherwise though, yep, totally agreed. There's no doubt to any even vaguely unbiased observer that the metric/SI system is just more sensible, easier for base 10 counting humans etc. We should all use it, simple as that (I say this as a UK native BTW, where we use a weird hybrid system that's in some respects the worst of both possible worlds). (maybe the most baffling defence of Imperial i've come across was someone claiming that the centigrade temperature scale "doesn't make sense on a human level" - they went quiet when I suggested that numbers like 0 and 100 degrees for, respectively, the freezing and boiling point of water seem to make a lot more sense "on a human level" than 32 and 212 degrees)
i can use either but i find certain things about metric not great . a liter is way to small. it's like measuring in quarts. and room temp being 72 is better than 22 . in metric 0 is cold but not that cold. 22 is room temp but 30 is getting too hot . so the range is too small . for scientific stuff c is better . also for weighing things metric is better as is easy to convert to volume if you know specific gravity of something. and machining i can't get away from thinking in thousandths of a inch or tenths of thousands. and i hate how stuff is quoted in kilonewtons instead of kilograms . i have to divide by 9.81 . then you have pascals? and bar? and Mpa?
The alligator comment was hilarious. I used to think if i fell on the ground that would be the unit of social distancing as i am apprx 2m tall. But yeah we could start a new unit of measurement based on the length of a dog..I measure and work in metric but guesstimate in inches. It always amazes me how people like Adam and Joe pie and many others see in 11/16ths, thousandths etc i try to read the inch metric ruler i have and get lost trying to count the fractions, its so much easier for me in metric. Take it easy.
Getshitdoneitis is a big problem for me too. Being a larger guy with large feet, there are few pieces of furniture in my home or office who’s corners have not aggressively kissed my lower metatarsals.
When I worked in an art school we used to mix metaphors and send students to the shop with one dimension in imperial and the other in metric. The shop tech HATED us when we did that...
USA doesn't use the Imperial system. They have their own system that is based on the Imperial system. (Called "United States Customary System") For the most part it's the same, but when it comes to volume, it uses the same names for completely different measurements. Technically it also conflicts with itself, as it has a special inch that has different lengths depending on what state you are in.
US Customary units are not based on Imperial, which was introduced half a century after we had left the Empire. Your statement about the inch is nonsense. There is only one inch today - the international inch of 2.54 mm.
@@GH-oi2jf It absolutely is nonsense and it is called the survey inch. From what I can gather, this alternate inch is used today. (For another couple of weeks until next year) I copied this from a conversion site in case it makes things clearer. How to Convert Inch (US Survey) to Inch 1 in = 1.000002 in 1 in = 0.999998 in And what do you mean it wasn't based on Imperial? Are we getting into some technicalities here? Or are you claiming that they have nothing to do with each other? (I also don't see why it matters when "you" left the empire.)
Imperial system starts to get pretty stupid when you go to temperature. Water boils at 100 deg c Water freezes at 0 deg c … Nope, not imperial. Let’s make water boil at 212 and water freeze at 32 because that makes soooo much more sense.
Usually missed with this discussion is that the Inch is also decimalized, divided into ten parts too, where more precision is necessary. So instead of fractions you can use tenths, hundredths, thousandths. English linear measurements can be either base-12 or base-10.
Here in the UK our measuring system seems to change based on the size of the the thing being measured: if it's tiny, mm, small, cm, medium-ish (and TVs and many table top games) inches, kitchen units back to mm, people in feet, road signs in yards, small to mid-size fields in metres, large distances in KM or miles... Just to be clearer to ourselves, during a game of Dungeons and Dragons we measured longer distances in double-decker buses because nobody in the group could picture how far something was in feet or metres. Despite our mix & match measurements it always baffled me to see so many tape measures in the US that only measure in inches. Although you can get tape measures here that measure in cm it's more common to see them in both cm and inches.
I think the most hilarious thing about the uK is the mess that is the "UK measurement system". Some is metric, some is imperial, and in between you also have people talking in stone and what not.
Does anyone else think its funny that one inch is officially 25.4mm exactly, no error bars, there is no physical object or any other method of defining an inch other than using the metric system. America just uses metric wrong 😆
As far as I've heard (from Matt Parker), one inch has another definition. It's three barleycorns laid end to end. What is a standard barleycorn? I dunno. Essentially it would be a third of an inch. But that would be very circular.
I don’t. I think it is practical. We have done this since 1893. It means we don’t have to duplicate standards activity, and it means that the conversion factors are unchanged even though a unit may change slightly.
To be fair to Imperial, it's super helpful to break things down cleanly into ½, ⅓, ¼, & ⅙ which Imperial measurements do really smoothly having 12 inches a foot and 3 feet in a yard. That useful subdivision is why we measure circles in 360° and why clocks are laid out in segments of 12 hours as well as 60 minutes. While Metric can scale extremely smoothly by multiples of 10, it's _far_ less helpful to divide things cleanly into only ½ or ⅕, with everything else being really messy. If only we managed to shift over to a Base-12 mathematical system, we'd have the best of both in far more ways.
It's conversion what makes metric easy. You can just add or drop zeroes if you need to switch cm/mm/m etc. If you want to do the same with imperial you have to recalculate fractions.
Here in the Netherlands we mostly use metric, but some things still use imperial. In aviation altitudes are still measured mostly in feet, although we design in metric. Also some random objects like TV screens are always measured in inches for the diagonal. I still do the conversion quite a lot simply because so much in media comes from the US. When you read a story or whatever heights of people or speeds of vehicles or whatever are still often in imperial. What confused me the most is the different units with the same name, like if someone talks about gallons it's often unclear whether it's about US gallons or UK gallons, they're not the same. You also see it with miles, there's a regular mile, a nautical mile, etc. Whilst no matter the context, a kilometre is always the same distance, regardless of whether you're talking aviation, shipping, road use, distances on a map, or astrodynamics, or whatever else.
Here in sweden we also have those odd places where inches show up. Like video monitors and TVs are almost always measured in inches diagonal. It was even more maddening in the CRT days as the diagonal measurement was often of the tube and not the visible image. And with camera sensors you had 1/3 and 2/3 inch sensors. Where the measurement of the sensor is based on what a camera tube had to be... A circular one at that. This still remains with Micro 4/3 sensors which are four thirds (aka 1 and 1/3) of an inch diagonally as an imaginary outdated circle that is then then cropped to the image planes aspect ratio. Or like, how it's assumed that 2 by 4 planks of wood is referring to the measurement BEFORE being planed. So you buy something that's supposed to be 2 inches thick but it never is because it's always been done like that. (I think it's part of my distrust with imperial. There's always those strange assumptions. Numbers never mean what you get). Then there's those strange hybrid cases like car wheels that are measured in inches for the diameter... And millimeters for the width. Again... It's because it's always been done that way. We also call our folding rulers "tumstock" (inch-stick) even though most sold only have metrics on them. The only place I rely on inches is when attaching camera gear. Those almost always use 1/4-20 screws. For international compability the camera and audio screws are still in inches but at least you can be somewhat sure at a glance of what they are actually measuring.
The metric system is great for many things, but imperial length units have a major advantage over metric for some use cases, construction being one. Because it is base 12 (or base 60), many measurements are divisible into way more fractions than metric is. A mile is 5,280 feet. That might seem arbitrary... until you start dividing it. 5,280 has 48 factors. 1,000 only has 16.
This is, in my opinion, why the Imperial system continues to hang on. It becomes an issue of practicality vs simplicity. Yes, running calculations through a base-10 system is inherently easier, but you still end up with messy fractions when trying to divide into 3rds, which isn't a problem in a base-12 system (as you pointed out). There's also the utility aspect. On the scale that most people use measurements, for hand-held objects, measuring in inches or centimeters is just a personal preference based on which is more convenient coupled with which system you grew up with. The difference between a 1lb hammer with a 12 inch handle and a .5kg hammer with a 30cm handle is completely negligible for the average person building a doghouse. At the end of the day, both systems have advantages and being able to utilize both gives people the flexibility to use whichever system is more convenient for a given project.
I can see the beauty of it, and how well it’s suited to construction, which I know nothing about. But would you believe me if I told you that I just pulled up an article about rafter spacing, to see how it works out in practice? I swear I didn’t know this beforehand: the industry standards for rafter spacing are 12", 16", 19 3/16" and 24". What the flip? Nineteen and three sixteenths? I might be wrong, but I don’t think we can blame the metric system for that: it doesn’t resolve to a nice value like 480 mm or 500 mm, it’s somewhere in between. So it seems that the imperial system’s weaknesses creep into beautiful use cases as well. But still, I can definitely see why people like it, and I also think it’s to do with hand-held objects: when describing the dimensions of a thing in conversation, inches are perfect: there’s a meaningful difference between a 3" object (7.6 cm) and a 4" one (10.1 cm), whereas centimeters are unnecessarily fine, and going in groups of 5 is too coarse. And it’s also about language: “twelve inch handle” rolls off the tongue so much better than “thirty centimeter handle”. Germany introduced the metric system in 1872, just one year after it declared itself a nation state for the first time, but we do measure water pipe diameters in inches, and bicyle and car wheels, vinyl records and of course TVs and other screens. Much to do with international trade, but I also wish we had kept around the old Zoll (inch) for hammer handles, kitchen knife blades and penis jokes (so much funnier in inches).
@@mm9773 All good observations, but actually I'd say a measurement like 19 and 3/16 inches shows the divisibility strength in another way. You can create multiple layers of sub-units to meet your needs because of the divisibility, without running into irrational numbers or needing to round. All you can do with metric is halves and fifths before you have to resort to using a decimal point and likely rounding somewhere. With feet/inches you have halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty seconds, etc... So it's easier to set measurements you know will line up. Also, you touched on another aspect of metric that I think makes it ill-suited for everyday usage by the average person: it's too granular. Normally we don't need 30 divisions of something around 1 foot long. For science, machining, manufacturing, etc... (things requiring precision or working with the values mathematically) metric is much better, but for anything where 1/16th of an inch is precise enough, and you're creating something (not measuring nature etc...), I think inches/feet/miles are clearly better. This is similar to why I prefer Fahrenheit over Celsius when describing weather. Celsius is better for science, cooking, etc... but not for describing human comfort.
@@heeerrresjonny I can’t agree with any of that. As long as you’re dealing with rough measurements and/or inches as the smallest unit, imperial is beautiful and meaningful, mainly in conversation. But as soon as it comes to measuring and calculation: metric all the way. Divisibility is not an issue, and this fear of landing on irrational numbers sounds really odd to me, having grown up with the metric system: a decimal point is not something you resort to, it’s just a very clear and concise part of the system. Say you wanted to make a 5 inch (127 mm) chisel handle or whatever, visually divided into thirds: in metric, you’d go 3 x 42 mm = 126 mm, close enough and nice to work with. In imperial, you’d probably go 3 x 1 5/8 = 4 7/8, also close enough, but in what world is that a strength? It’s awkward. Finally, Fahrenheit: 100 subdivisions to describe human comfort? Look at your argument about granularity again. I’m happy to chat more about that, Fahrenheit has its charms, but no, I really don’t need 100 increments to talk about the weather.
Lol. Yes it is. It is identical. You just renamed it. Because you didn't want to use anything British. Which is funny cause you got the system from the British. But kept it only because England was switching to metric
The only, ONLY difference between the two is volumetric measurement. Imperial pints, quarts, etc. are larger than US Customary Units. Both are still derived from earlier English measurement systems which in turn derive from ancient Roman, Carolingian, and Saxon units of measure.
@@ryanmcewen415 The US became independent before the Imperial system was created. US units are based on pre-Imperial English units and only weight was defined identically between the two system at the beginning. The US and Imperial inch were made identical and defined in terms of the metric system. The previous US inch survives in surveying but is being phased out as maps are updated. The Imperial gallon is still slightly more than 20% larger than the US gallon.
I think the only things of imperial were still using in Scotland is - feet (height) stones (weight) MPH (speed) and inches which is interchangeable with cm (use both )(clothes sizes)
One reason why Britains mix metric and imperial is that the metric system was only introduced in 1965, whereas several other countries use it for much longer. Another point is that many countries didn't even have a strongly unified measurement system (like the imperial one) before they introduced the metric system, which meant switching to it was immediately useful.
Both have their places and i feel we realy need to implement a team approach to it all. In my opinion metric is easier on the math end but fails at the real life connection to how big it is! For example if you say something is 609.6 mm you would have to take out a measuring tape to see how long that was. Now if I said 2 feet long you have a good idea of how big that is without measuring. By the way 2 feet is 609.6 mm if your wondering. The mistake the metric system has always had is that reference to real life examples. In my opinion the world is a better place if we use and understand both systems.
That makes no sense?! You'd generally not describe something that is 609.6mm long in mm when talking in metric, you would use cm and probably round it up to 61 cm in most cases. Someone who is used to metric intuitively knows about how much that is, just as someone used to imperial intuitively know about how much 2 feet is. How is that an advantage for imperial? You just arbitrarily chose 2 feet as example length, which of course sounds more complicated when converted to metric, due to the fraction. The other way around one might have arbitrarily chosen half a meter (= 50 cm = 500 mm) as an example, which in turn cannot be converted to a nice and round number in imperial. In the end it's only by using something constantly that you intuitively know it.
That's not an issue with metric per se, but with unit conceptualization. When you have used one system most of your life, it's a lot easier and faster to think within that frame of reference rather than a new one. With practice, I've been able to visualize what a mile is but I'm a lot more comfortable with kilometers for long distances. Conversely, even when I do remember the conversions, feet and inches are almost meaningless to me (I'm yet to meet someone with a 30cm foot, and my own steps are a lot longer than that. Inches are just weird). It doesn't help that I don't even need to use imperial units outside some very limited circumstances. On a side note, people on metric countries usually use centimeters, meters and kilometers in everyday conversations. Height is about the only normal case that I can think of that uses 2 decimals places (given in meters). Millimeters are mostly used if you actually need that precision for some reason, like for a tool.
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RF err room ready right we really really remember it r
Actually, Adam, Metric is the official measurement system in the US and has been since The Metric Conversion Act was passed in 1975 making Metric "the preferred system of measurement". The government never made it mandatory so hardly anyone uses it.
I can highly recommend the Sutton brand drill bits that are made in New Zealand
Further to Marvin de Bot’s point, the US Imperial measurements are actually DEFINED in metric. An inch is no longer defined ass the length of three grasshopper legs, or whatever it was, but rather as 25.6mm.
Being the in UK we have a lovely mis-mash of Imperial and metric measurements. My favourite is buying cloth which comes in yard widths but you buy it in meter lengths.
As someone into textiles the whole imperial metric mash when buying fabric is such a pain.
I still think grams is a better measurement for wool then yards though. I can weigh grams on a kitchen scale but getting the yardage is a pain in the arse
You can also buy tires for your car… imperial inner diameter, width in metric and then height in percent of the width! (With some exceptions)
@@MrAdsghf You took my idea! Exactly right!
@@MrAdsghf instant headache there
@@billdodson207 you get used to it 😅
I was brought up imperial but since getting into 3D printers about 12 years ago I learned Metric and I agree that Metric is so much better and I can now mostly think in metric. My 3D printers, laser cutter and CNC all come as metric so it just makes sense.
You were not brought up with imperial anything. The Imperial system of measurements was abolished in the 1950s. It was effectively phased out far earlier than that. The inch used today is the international standard industrial inch which was developed in 1896 by a Swede. It is not Imperial! The old Imperial inch was 2 millionths smaller than the modern inch is. Granted you cannot see 2 millionths of an inch. But put enough inches together and it starts to make a difference. The old US inch was 3 millionths larger. There was a 5 millionths difference between the two old inches. The USA NEVER used Imperial, ever!
@@1pcfred The US has existed since before 1896. And of course the old inch was smaller, they had to make it bigger for the US. Why do you think our roads and cars are bigger?
@@anon_y_mousse we're bigger because we're better. The modern inch is smaller than the old US inch was. It's still good though. Certainly better than a centimeter is. A centimeter sounds like something I'd squish. Although the last millipede I ran into I just threw out into the woods. Yeash I hate those things!
@@1pcfred Big difference between millipedes and centipedes though.
A millipede is usually herbivorous, as the centipede is an active and venomous hunter.
Your gonardial gland set is larger than mine if you occasionally toss out centipedes, millipedes though, i'd love to have some.
@@Games_and_Music all I know is millipedes are big and centipedes are small
When I started working with a 3D printer, and thus started thinking in fractions of a millimeter, it really changed my perspective to the point where an *inch* seems freakishly huge now!
Hi Adam - quick correction. Here in Ireland we officially completed our conversion to metric in 2005, the end of a process that started in the 1980s. However, all through my school years (and I'm 57 now) we were taught to use metric for all measurements. The only place you would see Imperial used would be on road signs. Things get weird when we go across the boarder into Northern Ireland however. Now your in the UK and suddenly all the road signage changes from metric to imperial so you have to start converting speed limits in your head. Crazy.
Live in the UK and first time in Ireland, picked up the hire car at Dublin airport. Find out the odometer only has metric speed divisions. Luckily I roughly know the conversion so popping across the border to Belfast and back to UK signage and mile measurements was OK, but crikey, could definitely cause issues for tourists,
Recognising when it’s time to go home is an important skill. Beyond a certain point you’re just making more work you have to fix later.
One of my cousins was logging with a team of people. Close to quitting time a tree got hung up. He sent the team home and said, "I'm just going to get this down on the ground, and then I'll come home." Two hours later they went out looking for him and found him dead under the tree. Fix problems like that when you're fresh in the morning, and keep the team around when dangerous stuff is happening.
I'm an amateur mechanic and have been working on imported cars for almost 50 years. They are all built in metric and I love it! Tools, dimensions of fasteners and parts, this is sooo simple! I'm so happy that American built cars are nowadays built the right way. Contrast that to when I do wood work. Endless guessing of fraction of an inch, bizarre measures like 12 inches a foot, 3 feet a yard, and so on. Vive le métrique!
Buy yourself a Millimetre measuring tape - and USE it
(Look up " FastCap ProCarpenter True32 Metric Reverse Measuring Tape")
Of course one can *not* use both at the same time, unless one is NASA😁!
As someone who struggles to picture in my head any measurement, metric or imperial, I'm always impressed at how you keep the fractions of an inch straight in your head, even if you measured it just before a piece to camera, I would struggle enough with metric despite it being what I was taught at school.
Australia used to use the Imperial system, so learning from the old boys it is interesting because I was taught to use both Imperial and metric. Similar to language I think in both Imperial and metric, but majority of the time I use the metric system as it is just easier in most applications.
The more I design and create I am realizing I need to start shifting to metric. Being in America I was taught in imperial units so it is a slow process. Now, when I measure things, I try to force myself to use metric.
the USA never used the Imperial system. We always used US Customary. Which you just think was based in Imperial. But US Customary actually predates the creation of the Imperial system. Which you also likely are not aware of. When US Customary was created the Empire used a system called Windsor. Imperial was created in 1824. US Customary was created in 1789. So the US system predates Imperial by 37 years. Then some time after 1896 everyone switched to the modern inch. Which is why we all use the same inch today. But we didn't always.
Well, as an American I started out in inch measurements. However, in High School we learned the SI units. Then as I began studying Mechanical Engineering, I became more familiar with it as every problem, every class, every quarter, was given in a mix of units and you had to constantly convert back and forth. Then I went to work for a German company, and it came in handy as I was tasked to take a German, metric, drawing and redraw it in inch dimensions so US customers could build a machine around our product. It was also necessary to translate the German notations to English. In INK! On Vellum! 😁
@@PhilG999 Been working for a German company here in the States for 25+ years now... All I use is metric, even when doing woodworking projects at home. Went out and bought a few metric tape measures several years ago and have used them ever since. So much easier/quicker than using fractional inch measurements, which I'm completely adept at doing, but prefer metric.
@@WHJeffB I'm equally adept at both, if I may say so myself. I do quite a bit of my own auto work and have an extensive set of both inch and metric tools, as well as a Reed and Prince and Whitworth or two...
😁
@@PhilG999 Same here... My machine tools at home are all imperial, so even though I design all my projects in metric, I have to convert them to inch (not difficult) to be able to machine the parts.
I did a project for my parents' 5th wheel which they live in. They wanted pull-out drawers in their closet next to the kitchen. I (living in the USA) challenged myself to do the whole project metric as this was working in an empty space with only height, width and depth as the know dimensions. I gotta say, it was so easy and had less "oopsies" than other projects using imperial. I'm sold.
Grown up on metric but since I work on vintage cars a lot I do use a lot of imperial. What always surprised me is the amount of kit you need for imperial. Not only the different sizes, but the different thread sizes. There BSF, BSW, UNC and UNF and every single one needs a different tap or a different bolt. It's surprising they ever got anything done back in the day, as you could basically waste half a day looking for the right tool. We only need to worry about 10 mil sockets.
I think it was one of the reasons for the downfall of the US Car Industry. Only specialized shops and garages in the EU are willing to work on a US Car. You can't buy replacement parts lokaly and cheap. The sales dropped, the market broke down and Detroit is looking the way it is today.
@@Craftlngo i dont think so at all, it's that US always built really bad cars..
@@djsalose Not bad per say, my dream car is dodge 1969 but american cars are gas guzzlers plus most of them are just too big for Europe old cities. Also they are making real ugly cars in recent decades hope they go back to old designes
@@plazmica0323 no I mean bad as in. Rusts a lot, no safety, Leafsprings, 7,5l v8 with 200hp..
If you like it that's fine.. But it's a really bad car..
@@plazmica0323 I have owned a '67 GTO, 68' Challenger and '73 Trans Am. Cool cars, but trust me, the quality is BAD. They just don't drive very well, and even the big engine cars are in reality pretty darn slow.
I can't understand why you'd use Imperial. If I had to add 5/52nds and 7/64ths my brain would explode.
What kind of crazy person uses 52nds? I think that was likely 5/32nds. And the answer off the top of my head is 17/64ths.
Grew up on the imperial system, always hated it, and live using Metric even in the States.
Hey Adam, thanks for being honest about getshitdoneitis. I agree completely, and it's nice to see someone like you saying it in a relatable way. I'm a tall plumber and I smash my head and crank my neck on things at an unreasonable frequency. The solution is always to slow down and calm down.
*save those concussions for more productive and adventurous sorts of activities worthy of selfies with explosions in the background...just sayin'*
When I got a 3D printer in 2017, I found out really quickly that it was much easier to draw parts using the metric system. I’ve used wrenches from both systems since the early 1960’s. The hardest part is converting from one system to the other. I’ll stick with gallons and miles for driving..
Drafting by hand is also much easier in metric, especially when trying to scale objects to fit on page
@@pantac4493 Metric's ability to scale is probably my favorite part about it. I think in Imperial and am a geography major, meaning when I was getting my education I had to deal with map scale a fair amount. While the number is drilled into my head, the fact that there's 63360 inches to the mile is entirely absurd.
I’ll stick with inches for machining too. I'm not a fan of the metric measuring scale. I like my inches and fractions. I use the decimal inch machining anyways. Converting is easy enough. One inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. That is the definition of the modern international industrial standard inch. The archaic inches were not precisely 2.54 cm. There were two archaic inches too. The Imperial inch and the US inch. The US NEVER used Imperial! There was a 5 millionths difference between the two. The US inch was bigger.
@@1pcfred Interesting info... Something to add. All CNC machine tools that can switch back and forth between metric and inch are inherently metric at their core. Inch is just a mathematical conversion within the machine software/control. I was told by a rep from the CNC control company that supplies all the drives for our machines that it's always been this way from day 1.
@@WHJeffB yeah I don't think so. G Code doesn't agree with any of that either. G20 is inches and G21 is millimeters. Internally the controller simply uses units. At the hardware level it is binary base 2. Your rep is completely full of shit. When CNC was first developed in the 1950s in the USA I'm pressing X to doubt they were using metric then and there too.
I grew up in Australia in the 80s and 90s, and only learned metrric. We were taught that "feet" and "inches" were a thing, but that nobody used them anymore. Now I live in Canada and there's a whole damn flowchart to choose what system of measurement you use for a task. It gives me a migraine.
Is it true that Canada is still using imperial a lot
@@seanflorian4653 Yes. Most construction is imperial while most engineering is in metric. I grew up in the 70s and learned imperial first, then metric later on. Working in a lumber yard, it's all imperial. I've also worked steel a bit, and that was imperial for the most part. Everywhere else, it's usually metric. Moving back and forth is quite easy after 50 years.
I grew up in Australia in the 70s and 80s, so my Dad always referred to imperial measurements, but I had metric in school and at university. Guess I’m lucky growing up with both systems!
Thanks for making an effort. I certainly appreciate metric units in your videos.
Going on the same path of metric taps being so much easier, you can subtract the pitch from the diameter to get your tap size. Ie. An M5 x 0.8 screw takes a 4.20mm tap drill. So much easier in the design side of things too.
I am old enough to have been at primary school (middle school?) during the change over to metric. The result of this is whilst I prefer the metric system for it’s simplicity I still find myself writing down dimensions as 12 inches by 20 millimetres for example. 🇦🇺
Now *that* is blasphemy! ;-)
as a Brit , yeah we do use both .. i find inches & feet are fine for estimating up to a point but metric is more accurate & easier to divide .
i always remember watching an old episode of the New Yankee Workshop & watching Norm with a beam that was ( say ) 4 foot , 7 & 3/8 inches .. and he wanted to divide it into 3 parts
How do you even calculate that? :D I have no idea, but I'll try. 1 and 1/3 foot, 2 and 11/24 inches?
Absolute madness. People defend imperial because it really is quite intuitive and “human” in some contexts, like talking about the length of a kitchen knife or whatever, but that’s just not enough to stick with it for measuring and calculations.
I would love to seeing you build a little vibration rig. I noticed sawdust forming curious little piles on a board when I was using the saw attachment on my oscillating tool.
I looked it up, and found a neat video with a guy projecting a subwoofer's vibration onto a sheet of steel and covering it with salt.
Love to see you try out something similar and explain the process.
I worked for a couple of years in a violin repair shop in NYC. All the actual work was done in metric, but all the instruments were identified by their size in imperial.
In Ireland it depends on the industry that you work in. Pipes are in imperial, joinery and carpentry is imperial but construction sites are a mix. Older generations were taught imperial, my generation were taught both but the younger generation only know metric
I think piping is imperial even in Germany (zoll).
As far as moving around obstacles I revert to my training as a military operator. "Smooth is slow, slow is fast." Meaning move with purpose methodically thru your environment.
"Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." would be the correct term.
@@koga1330 I was Army, your way of saying it is the SEAL version.
@@grogvaughan5649 well I am neither as I am from Hungary but "slow is fast" does not make much sense to me. :)
@@koga1330 all I can say is this.. It is what it is.
Ireland is almost fully metric - we ditched miles in 2005. Only universal exception is measuring draft beer, which is always in Imperial pints (not 0.5L, because that would be slightly less). Some people still use Fahrenheit for body temperature or stone + lbs for body weight, but that's generally personal preference. Almost everything else is metric.
As a Brit of a certain age, I was taught the metric system at school and college (where I learned to machine on machines that were imperial), but my parents used imperial so I switch between the 2 depending on what the best fit measurement is of the item I’m working on. My house was built in 2021 so you would think it’s metric, but it’s planned out in imperial as I found out when renovating the kitchen.
With everything in multiples of 8x4 lol.
Aussie here, finding it entertaining that you're talking about the benefits of the metric system while drinking an Australian drink. Though I am a little disappointed that you've opted for the Diet Ginger Beer instead of the full sugar one. It's real cane sugar, not high fructose corn syrup! Bundaberg is a sugarcane town, that's why there's also the Bundaberg Rum company.
Funnily enough driving to and from Bundaberg feels kinda like driving through Iowa or something, with the long stretches of straight roads lined with long thin crops used for sweetening things as far as the eye can see, except ours is sugarcane instead of corn.
Unless it smells of pigshit, you’re not getting the full Iowa.
@@2000jago AUS obviously uses metric.
In other videos he has commented that the diet is great because if he spills it, it won't leave a sticky mess behind.
@@dusrus huh, fair enough that does make sense in a workshop environment
Oh hey I'm from Bundy! I drive past the factory all the time. Wild to see these drinks outside of Australia
But on topic, I grew up with both systems purely due to my father working on American bikes, I'm glad I learned the two but metric is best hands down.
As a Canadian, I approve of you trying to use metric. :D
Even using metric system, there are a lot of parts and tools that are refered in imperial in Brazil. They became names more than measurements, since we have no idea of how long is an inch.
I did my trade as a Fitter/Turner/Machinist in Imperial, thous, 1/10th of thous., not a problem. Then we converted to metric here in Australia, it took me a long time to convert.
When I built my house, I did it in metric, my father-in-law worked in Imperial, that caused some funny situations, steps didn't fit etc. Hilarious at times.
Oh, BTW, you're choice of beverage. perfect !.. Nothing tops a Bundaberg . I should know, Bundaberg is just up the road from me.
I enjoy your TH-cam channel..
@Adam Savage’s Tested, I noticed you drink ginger beer quite often. My partner and I have done extensive testing of the Pacific Northwest Ginger Beers and have found that the store bought Fever Tree Ginger beer to be our favorite, have you tried it? What’s your favorite brand?
Don’t mess with the Imperial system. You never know where Palpatine is at
Best argument against metric I've ever heard!
Neither did the writers!
Far Far Away?
Palpatine lives in Imperial system. Switch to Metric to be safe.
Aaaah, so that's why the storm troopers never seem to be able to hit anything. It makes so much sense now! :D
(On the second point, because I could never switch to metric) I had to transplant my computer from one small case to a larger one this weekend and I can agree: Every time I lost blood, dropped a screw, or did something the machine wasn't happy with, it was because I was rushing and stopped being careful and methodical about the process, even with something as simple as screwing in a fan.
That's the challenge of converting is not that one unit of measure makes more sense but that people form a frame of reference early on to their native measurement. I've worked between metric and imperial for measurement and can think between the two relatively easily (and for giggles I like to mix and match when working with my engineering friends). However I never formed the same relationship with temperatures and struggle to convert. It is similar to learning a second language fluently enough to be able to think in it.
Being Canadian, we have to think in both. It's nuts, and I'd argue stupider than sticking to Imperial. Not that I am an old fart advocating for Imperial. While I was raised with it and am comfortable in it, I have no emotional connection to it. I wouldn't even care if we all resurrected some forgotten system from the past. Just as long as it's universal. Or at least earthiversal. We'll deal with aliens later.
Yeah. Here in Canada it's both systems. Like down at the home depot they sell 2x4's. If they said 38x89 I'd say wtf is that. But distances are km.
Home depot hasn't had a 2x4 in years. It's inch and three quarter by three and a half, and straight as a politician.
Distance is meters
Height is feet/inches
Weighing yourself is lbs
Weighing food is grams
Just some examples.
I'd say beeing raised with Metric and learning rough imperial through TT wargaming is Ok though.
Also, timber, nail and pipe sizing is still often done in imperial even in Scandinavia.
My biggest problem so far when it comes to measurments, it's to convert from degrees and lines(6300 lines to a full circle, old national military system) to degrees and mills
*Agrees in British*
Imagine living in a country where the majority have grown up or migrated on the metric system and your government, well a stupid PM, sells the advantage of leaving the EU as "we can go back to imperial".
Oh yeah I saw that article too. Crazy politicians be crazy
Good lord! Was that really mentioned in the Brexit arguments?
I think even Victor Meldrew would say to let that go.
I grew up with the metric system and I grew up with dates in the format "dd.mm.yyyy", which is okay, at least it follows some kind of logic, unlike mm/dd/yyyy, but as a programmer, I got used to ISO date (yyyy-mm-dd) and now use it almost exclusively pretty much everywhere. All my devices are configured to print dates in that format, if they are able to. And just as you described, this was not that easy, as my mind was fixed on the date format I grew up with but after forcing myself to only use ISO dates for years, this format now reads natural to me. Reteaching, not to say reprogramming yourself to a new system that is different than the system you've been growing up with is insanely hard.
I had a machine shop years ago that was entirely metric. I made aerospace parts and as an aside I reproduced older German firearms parts and everything was specified in the metric system. Since we are both older, I'm now 66 years old, my quitting time occurs earlier in the day every year.
Greetings from Germany! Normally we use the metric system. But I have to say, that there are many obsolete units of measurement around. For example, some customers ask for one pound (ein Pfund) of something if they want 500 grams. Or 'ein Duzend' stands for 12 units of something. As a hobby pilot I often have to calculate the amount of gasoline in gallones and on the gas station itself I have to pay the amount in Liter. It is the same with heights or speed. Normally it is in Meter and km/h. In the air it is feet and kt. If you talk about engines it is the same. We use PS (Pferdestärken), then there is hp, brake horsepower or simply Newton. You have to take good care to look closely at the units. Otherwise it could end in an accident in no time...
Our pound is of course only a *name*… and not really a non-metric unit. BTW, the SI has base units, derived units, and accepted units. The german "Pfund" (which is dying out anyway) can be considered a non-officially accepted unit. ;-)
Horsepower measures effect, Newton measures torque. Those are not alternatives, they measure completely different things.
My father said he was told in school that he had to learn metric because America was changing. He was born in 1950. I was told the same thing when I was in school. Still hasn't changed. As a mechanic at an Acura dealer that fixes Japanese cars, this makes me sad. Metric just makes more sense. My SAE wrenches and sockets just sit.
I think the 2:nd question was specificly the shop floor. And I can relate to that. My garagefloor gets slippery af if/when it gets wet. I guess the real answer is grains in the paint but that gets harder to clean.
Yeah, we use both in the UK. It's pretty funny selling timber by the meter but the width and depth in inches.
I think one the best things the metric is that everything is in 10s meaning a kilometer is 1000 meters (or 10*10*10 meters), centimeter is 1/100 meters and millimeter is 1/1000 (there's also names for 1/10 meter, 10 meter and 100 meter units but those are less commonly used). Compare this to imperial where 1 mile is 1760 yard, 1 yard is 3 feet and 1 feet is 12 inches. I can convert pretty much any metric unit to another as it's simply a division by 10 enough times, I can't convert one imperial unit to another without a calculator (I'll admit I was raised in and still live in a country that uses metric) as the conversion rates aren't regular.
To me, knowing the coversions for imperial to metric is a necessity, living in Canada at least.
I have to work with them in Germany as a machine designer. Almost all connectors for pneumatic connections are in the stupid imperial units. If you work on a layout for a circuit board, you have always take into account if you have imperial grid or metric grid. It can drive you insane.
Thank you for making these videos
Aussie here. I frequently use both. People height is still ft and inches for me (most people I know don't have a clue of their height in cm or metres, it's too unwieldy) and inches and feet are useful 'chunks' for wargaming, too. But for precision or significant distances, metric all the way. Fractions of inches is madness.
Also Aussie and of an old enough age to have been exposed to imperial via parents and grandparents and similarly I tend to use imperial for estimating unimportant dimensions ("oh that looks to be about 5 inches") but metric for everything else and especially where it matters.
dealing with fractions is the wort part about imperial measurements, imo. decimal is so much easier.
Yep agree with the height thing, i usually say i'm 6 ft 2in 'cause it sounds taller than when i say i'm 188cm
And newborns are measured in pounds and ounces, cos that's what the grandparents understand 🙂
@@seegee7728 As a German, nobody i know uses purely cm's for their height either. We say 1.88 or "one, eightyeight" which can be both 1m 88 cm or 1.88 m...i don't know, in the end it comes down to what you're used to, i guess. But it's nice to see an online discussion where so many imperials are open to the better system ;)
Three cheers for the metric system!
Ten cheers!
That's about 1⅛ cheers for the imperial system
I'll drink a pint for that!
I agree on both points and "getshitdoneasidis" if that's how to spell it. I schooled in imperial but the country converted to metric after my high school. I still say Fahrenheit and miles but when I measure, it's in mm, cm and metres. it's still difficult to buy metric nuts and bolts but metric tools are readily available. Most appliances, TVs and cars come in metric so when fixing stuff, I have to be equipped with standard and metric tool and hardware. Thanks for this Adam and crew
I've been a bicycle Mechanic for 20 plus years and my brain only seems to work in metric. Getting into using milling machine and lathes has been challenging. Breaks my brain sometimes lol.
A few other Canucks have commented but I'll add my three cents:
First, in Canada it's officially legal to use either Imperial or Metric. The powers that be *did* legislate the use of Metric in 1975 (just before I was born) but faced so much pushback from importers who were having to relabel everything that in the late 80s they backed off. By that point, however, *most* good were relabeled and local production converted, so *most* things are now in metric. Although, there is apparently one gas station left somewhere in Saskatchewan that still sells gas by the gallon.
Common usage for people's heights and weights is still in Imperial, as is (usually) alcohol. The bottle might say "750 ml" on it but everyone knows it's a two-six, as in 26 ounces; and beer is typically ordered in either "glasses" - 12 ounces - or "pints" - which until perhaps a decade ago was reliably a good, Imperial, 20-ounce pint, (and usually still is in pubs) but lately more and more restaurants are serving US 16-ounce pints instead.
Carpentry and plumbing, however, are still heavily impacted by US practices, and thus materials for those industries are usually still in inches. It's worth noting, though that carpentry is in US Standard inches, not Imperial inches, which are some microscopic amount longer.
So technically, Canada has three different measurement systems in common use! :D
The thing about pints is that a typical pint glass holds 20 ounces - but all the way up to the brim. In the UK, many pubs still fill up the glasses all the way, so you can’t even lift them without spilling, let alone carry them to the table. Hilarious. 16 ounces in a traditional pint glass is comfortable to handle, especially if you like your beer with some foam on top. Also works for European bottles of beer (500 ml, just a hair under 17 floz).
US standard inches are imperial inches. There’s a “US survey inch”, which fits your description, but that doesn’t impact carpentry at all - and even if it did, the difference would not only be negligible, but non-existent, since wood is far too soft to measure it to that detail at those lengths.
The US did so in 75 as well.
@@mm9773 Oh, I learned a thing! About inches, that is.
As for pints: In Canada, if the restaurant is serving a proper (20 ounce) pint, they will bring you a 20 ounce glass filled 95% to the brim - just enough space left for the server to carry it mostly safely. If they're serving US (16 ounce) pints, they bring you a 16 ounce glass filled 95% to the brim.
I wouldn't object if the 16-ounce pint was 25% cheaper than the 20-ounce pint, but usually it's not. The restaurant goes "well, everyone on this block charges 8$ for a pint of beer, so we will too."
In other words, the trend to using US pints is a mix of chain restaurants owned by US companies that are standardising on glassware, and a way for restaurants to make more money on alcohol without raising menu prices. And it *irks* me.
It's just dumb how hard it is to find and buy metric hardware at physical hardware stores in the USA. I can get a bag of us customary fractional bolts for the price of one metric one...
They need the 'inch-tax"
I grew up with a mix of metric and imperial. Living in Canada… I use both in day to day life. Feet and inches for day to day measurements, kilometre for driving, Celsius for outside temps Fahrenheit for cooking. Cups for recipes but litres for liquids.Grams small weighing but lbs for everything else.
I wish metric sizes would start being offered in hardware stores, then I could support them with my wallet. I can't buy a metric tape measure unless I want to spend 3 times as much to get one shipped to me
Harbor Freight has a little yellow "keychain" tape measure with dual units on it, or at least they used to, for just a couple bucks. I'm pretty sure Menards has a dual unit full size tape measure, but I know not all parts of the USA have Menards, and maybe it's weird they have dual unit tapes.
@@rpavlik1 I think many, if not all tape measures and ruler's we have here in new zealand have both Metric and Imperial, the only things that stick to solely Metric are one sided tools like set angled set squares etc.
Why would you want a metric tape measure? The metric scale is butt ugly.
@@1pcfred 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 based on the number of comments you left here, you really, really hate the metric system don't ya? 😂🤣😂🤣😂
@@ShamWerks it is fair to say that I am genuinely not a fan of using metric. I just don't see the benefit in it for me.
Canadians do a weird mix of things too. We use metric for weather and speed and distance and stuff. But then for building and lumber and our own weight and other things we will use inches and pounds.
Absolutely. Large measures give me miles to go and feet tall; Small measures I want centimetres and millimetres. Plus I hate the math involved with fractions of imperial
I'm UK (actually England (in East Anglia)) based semi retired Building Contractor taught predominantly on imperial measurements, but mid(ish) 70s told "that's out, we're metric now" who really always works in mm. 1. because it's easier and 2. Because I was never used 16ths, 32nds etc. However, within walking distance from from my home I can find at least 2 road signs that mix imperial with metric. EG 7.5 tonne weight restriction 1.5miles ahead.
I know how you feel. I compare using metric measurements to be similar to ESL (English as a Second Language).
When builds my cabinets I prefer to conform to the 32mm sysrem. Typically I take the wall dimensions from the blueprints given, convert height and length to metric one time. Then for all other dimensions I stay in my metric train of thought.
This way I am not constantly trying to convert/translate numbers/words and making blunders.
The only time Americans like the metric system is when they talk guns.
From my experience, the way to start using metric is start your design with it and build with it, make imperial measurements as the secondary reference on drawings if necessary not the forefront
From my experience, the way to start using metric is wear a Mao suit. Because that's what metric will get you in this world. If you want to be free then measure things in football fields and eagle wings!
@@1pcfred I’m good. That’s idiotic. If you want to be free get off earth
@@pantac4493 I'm already free now.
@@1pcfred you’re not, it’s just your nationalism. USA isn’t all that
@@pantac4493 the USA is all of that, and more. The West is the best. Just get here and we'll do the rest.
In the UK most of us use the two fairly interchangably, even those of us who were never taught imperial measurements in school. I think you can broadly divide it between accuracy and guestimates. Metric can be argued to be far better for precision, but for anything that starts with a "well, it's about..." I think the imperial system is often better suited. Even with people in their 20s, I'd say more people know their height and weight in imperial than know them in metric.
You got it spot on. I'm from Ireland, we made the switch here about 25 years ago but I still think about some things in imperial when I don't have to do calculations with them.
Mostly things like body measurements (height, shoe size, etc), pints of beer, and miles. But although I think in imperial, I work or do calculations in metric.
It's far easier to work with something that's 325.5mm or 32.55cm, rather than 12.81 inches, or 12 and 25.6/32 inches, or 1.07 feet, or whatever.
Shoe sizes aren’t imperial - they’re just a total mess everywhere.
@@mm9773 Ah yes, you're right, I didn't realise how messed up they were!
I always just assumed that shoe sizes matched foot size in inches, since they're fairly close. But apparently this is only true with a size 12 (12 inches) and then they use a different unit on either side of this..
But yes, it's very messed up alright, since you have different sizes for women and children.. The more you think about it, the more messed up it is..
Is that Bundaberg?
Yeah
Canadian here: I was completing my 4th year electrician apprenticeship, did lots of fly-form deck work to completion of the building. One summer all the drawings on new projects were in metric. It was only a matter of a few months, very little complaining and the plumbers, electricians, sheet metal, carpenters were very comfortable with it, liked it and said they would never go back to imperial. We are still comfortable in both.
So does that mean in Canada you have 1/2 copper pipe, and some corresponding metric copper pipe? And drywall that's in foot lengths and some in metric lengths?
Buildings materials are notoriously difficult to switch to another system of measure. You can specify the drawings in metric if you like, but how much does it matter if all the materials are sized to imperial units?
@@stevesether Plywood in US and Canada is metric. 1/2 inch ply is a little under 1/2 inch, same for all the other thicknesses. You cut materials to fit, who cares what to original sheet dimension of drywall is? You measure in metric and cut to fit in metric. There is no conversions to do. 1/2 =12 mm, 3/4=19 mm. The difference in Imperial to metric is so small at these sizes it is a 'don't care' matter. It is no different then if you measure with a length of string with knots in it.
"You can specify the drawings in metric if you like" There is no 'You can specify'. Drawings are in metric period and has been for almost 50 years with no problem. Tape measures with both systems are common off the shelf tools at Home Depot stores etc. CAD programs can do automatic conversions of quantities for material take-off. You don't order 14 sheets of drywall, you order x number of square meters. The supplier will convert to how many sheets. DIY Home Depot etc have both metric and Imperial nuts, bolts, fasteners. When doing conceptual hands flying in the air guesstimating we use either but when is comes down to accurate dimensioning we use metric. It is way easier and computer friendly.
@@MrBonners Plywood doesn't matter so much for the size, but drywall size matters A LOT.
Our walls here in the US are built for stud walls that have studs that fit at 4 feet. If they aren't 4 feet, you'll have to cut every single piece. Furthermore, drywall is tapered at the ends where they butt up against one another to make taping and mudding and taping easier. If you cut that off (or worse, it's no long enough), it's going to be much harder. IIRC, I've seen Canadian drywallers on youtube and I've never heard of them using metric units for drywall. It's also 1/2 inch 5/8 inch and 1/4 inch thick, and it better match the same thickness if you're replacing a piece, or doing a re-fit.
Drywall comes in 8 foot, 10 foot, and 12 foot sections. You order the appropriate length based on how you want to lay out the drywall. It sounds a little strange to just specify an area, and the supplier just assumes a length. Also, you might need a longer or shorter section somewhere. Maybe that's how you're ordering drywall, but it sounds odd to me.
How does water and waste pipe work? Do you have metric and imperial pipe,? Only metric and have a fitting that converts from one to another, or only imperial? I'd suspect the pipe is still imperial, if for no other reason than the ability to import pipe from US manufacturers, who likely don't want to make it in multiple sizes, as well as Canadian supplies exporting to the US.
@@stevesether as is both are marked on tape measures however when laying out cubicle farms and manufactured panels, room dimensions, office cabinetry, electrical (even receptacle/switch heights) plumbing, ducting/sheet metal drawings, all metric since the late 70s. All building codes are in metric since the late 70s. Steel /wood stud spacing can be done by the installer in cubits for all that matters. just marks on a ruler. The entire industry does not depend on the issues of the semi-skilled trade of steel stud wall builders.
@@MrBonners AFAIK, Canada still uses AWG (american wire gauge) for elecrical, not metric. I've seen another Canadian youtuber testing 14/2 wire with high overcurrent to see what happens to the Romex. So I'm guessing y'all are still using the US based standard for electrical wire and haven't switched to metric sizing.
You can easily change your drawings if that floats your boat. The unit you measure in is relatively arbitrary, but you still need standard sizes of things that fit together. That means using the same standards, which are nearly impossible to change for anything that's expected to last for 100+ years like a house. Since you dind't mention pipe size, I'm guessing y'all are still using pipe sizes based on inches, though that's often a "trade size", and the real measurements are slightly different, but still based on fractional inches rather than decimal millimeters.
You _could_ say the US _is_ using the metric system if all you care about is the labeled units on things. My gallon of milk says 3.78 liters on it.
❤️ I was taught metric at school but both as an apprentice instrument mechanic later in life .
Start with temperature, it makes more sense.
Do you need any 10mm sockets btw ? We've got loads here in the UK 😁
There is currently a consultation about bringing Imperial mesurments back to the UK. As in being able to buy a pint of milk with no metric version. Apparently this is a benefit of Brexit.
If I were a machinist, I might be more willing to switch over on my own, but as a woodworker, I have to deal in dimensional lumber cut to imperial dimensions and make product to fit openings sized in imperial measurements by other craftsmen. Having the entire American lumber system change at the same time is a task I do not see happening soon.
Yeah, a lot of otherwise metric countries use a rough imperial for pipe and lumber sizing too.
It's just that we also often bump tolerances to the nearest metric equivalent 4"->10cm 3"->7.5cm 2"->5cm etc.
And anything that would use fractions of an inch, fuck that noice, it's metric now.
Only exception is vintage/historical or expensive machinery made in imperial measuring countries where the conservation or function is more important than convenience.
No one's used Imperial length measures in about a century now. Today we use what's called the modern international industrial inch. Which was developed in 1896 by a Swede. Adoption wasn't immediate but before World War 1 was over the Imperial inch was effectively dead then. Brits needed war materials and just where do you think they got them from? So they dropped their old system like a hot potato. Although it wasn't officially abolished until 1957. Because in the US Henry Ford was a huge proponent of the modern inch. So big he bought the Swede that developed it. Moved him and everyone he even remotely knew to the USA too.
Even though dimensional lumber is given in inches, you can still use metric for woodworking. I do it on any project around the house now. Just buy a metric tape measure, ruler and square. It's actually easier in my opinion, but I've been working with metric measurements for over 25yrs, and I prefer metric, though working with "Inch" machine tools, using metric measurements can be tedious, it's not impossible.
The time a 2 by 4 was 2" by 4" is long gone, besides those fake inches a handicap of customary is those weird values like penny nails or wire gauges (a length decided by the ductility of steel) and lead gauges (a length decided by the specific weight of lead)
@@2adamast how is acknowledging material properties a handicap? I would say denying those properties is less useful. Someone does have to make wire somewhere after all. So how it can be drawn does matter.
I was 9 years old when Canada went metric. But those 9 years were enough to train my brain to still understand some imperial measurements better than metric. I'm 6 foot 3 and 200 pounds. I have no idea what that is in cm and kg.
But I can't really do Fahrenheit or mph. I have to convert to C and km/h.
I think a lot of metric countries are the same. Officially we're metric but in practice we're a mix. Except maybe for temperature where I think it's only Americans who grok Fahrenheit.
Same here. I do find imperial length measurements are more intuitive.. They fit the scale of everyday things. I can do metric, but the chunks are too big or too small for casual reference. No one uses decimetres, but I think that would have been useful. The jump from cm to metre is too big.
If you use both, it’ll make your products look totally unique. I like to explore the relationship between half inch and centimeter.
Hi Adam, I think Liberia is the one other country that used imperial measures. My Mum was born in 1939. Australia went metric in 1974. Even though we have used metric for more than half her life, she still converts Celsius to Fahrenheit in her head to work out how hot it is going to be.
England:
My Wife does a 5 km run
I drive 5 miles to work at an average of 12mph
I’m 6ft4 inches tall
My doctors say that I am 1m95
I weigh 15 stone
My son says he’s 75kg
Today I bought an 8x4 and was asked 9mm or 12mm thick?
Enough already! It’s time we changed properly and for good. 😠
It takes a generation or three. Germany switched almost 100 years before I was born, and I'm so grateful for that… not even my grandparents used non-metric. I can't even tell what system (if any :D) we used in that part of Germany before… well, before Germany actually existed. Which is, to my shame, just realized: Germany went metric on January 1st, 1872, right after being founded in January of 1871.
Metric is soooooo much better. 1cm is one hundredth of a meter, one cubic centimeter of water is one mililiter, wich weights one gram, a thousand of wich makes a kilogram, wich is one liter of water, so if you are a doctor (just as myself) it is not just the measuring of distances, it is the volume, the percentages, the mass, everything, so you know 1000ml of 0.9 percent saline has 9g of NaCl in it, 10ml of 10 percent KCl has 1 gram of KCl in it, 500ml of 5 percent glucose has 25 grams of glucose in it, man it makes everything so much easier...
When I go the the US I just get crazy with miles, galons, inches, pounds... I have to remember that a mile is roughly 1,6km an inch is roughly 2,5cm and a pound is roughly 450g... And in cant for the life of me know what an ounce or a fluid ounce or a cup are. Never mind the gallon.
I grew up in the us but have always kept up both. When I became an engineer microns/mm made more sense to use so that's what I did. Now I'll get stuff in mils and just stare at it blankly uncertain how big it is.
I used to work in the engineering trade in UK and having both, we supplied metric and imperial of all things, a old clever, time served Enginner said to me it’s really useful. If you want to drill a slightly over sized 25 mm hole use an 1” (25.4mm) and there were many more examples. Having easy access to both was a real bonus. I still think in both, whichever is closest on the rule is the one I use but when it comes down to the crunch metric is by far the easiest system, who the hell ever thinks 59/64th of an inch is a sensible “metric” (please excuse the pun)!
I’m Australian, and I weirdly find myself using imperial measurements (mostly inches) to roughly communicate size and distance, ie. it’s only a couple of inches tall. I would never use imperial to actually measure something though 😄
Fellow Australian here: Did you notice he has a Bundaberg drink there? Not sure which one it is though, 'cus it's the wrong colour label to be the ginger beer.
Just googled their drinks and it's the Diet Ginger Beer
@@zigedelic3909 it's a great drop.
@@zigedelic3909 Kiwi here, yeh it's diet, probably the only company I'd trust to make a diet version that doesn't taste like a$$
@@dreamingthelife Yeah true, I've personally never bothered with the diet 'cus the regular one just tastes so good. Love seeing it reach outside of the Au/NZ sphere regardless
I've spent a little time trying to get use to Celsius, but I can feel the difference between individual degrees of Fahrenheit. I don't want to switch to a system where I need to think in half degrees
I think it’s based on as 0 c is freezing point of water and boiling water at ground level is 100 c. It’s easier to think about it scientifically that way. Would make it convoluted if they made boiling at 200 c. But I do agree you can feel small increments in temperature
@@pantac4493 Weather measurement is generally about comfort, so the resolution of imperial is about right. And it sticks to two numbers and no decimal across the range of reasonable human temperatures lol. Plus snow/ice formation depend on pressure, height, atmospheric conditions, and ground conditions to the point that remembering 32 is about as arbitrary as 0.
I agree that in terms of scientific study, metric is the way to go, all day every day. However, I’d say that when it comes every day living, having an expanded range of values to express the approximate comfort of the weather’s temperature, Fahrenheit is the way to go. Also, in a bit irony with metric, Fahrenheit works well to convey the relative feel of that weather in 10s of degrees. e.g. “tomorrow’s highs will be in the 70s… nice!”
Also for the sake of the daily living example…
0 degrees Fahrenheit = really cold outside
100 degrees Fahrenheit = really hot outside
0 degrees Celsius = a little chilly outside
100 degrees Celsius = human dead 💀
😅
I think this is only true in certain limited examples.
Yes I can tell when someone has set the AC to 73F instead of 72F when it normally is always at 72. Or rather I can probably feel that it feels a bit warmer than usual. I don't think I can quantify the exact difference without further input.
However, If you were to send me into a room that is either 85F or 86F and I had guess which one it is I have my doubts you would get it right most of the time.
I am going to venture a guess that it would be the same for you.
For all intents and purposes round Celsius digits are more than precise enough to describe the temperature of say a room or the outside. Nothing changes dramatically within the range of 1K / 1°C except maybe at the freezing or triple points of water.
@@HisCarlnessI yeah for what I need, I haven’t changed to celsius
Being of a certain age in the UK, I learned both Metric and Imperial at home and school from an early age - and our currency only changed from Pounds-Shillings-Pence after I'd started school. And I estimate sizes in whatever units are appropriate to the scale of the item being assessed. I know my hand-span is about 9". I can visualise 1cm on paper. I'm lucky. My friend is not - they have four tape measures, but only like the one that has the full number in centimetres, ie, 280cm reads as 280, not the 80 on others where one has to look for the nearest whole metre mark.
If you are trying to work in Metric, may I suggets that you get a "Talmeter". A very well thought through tape measure with quite a few usefull features. I could not do without it, but it only works in Metric.
Unit of measure gate keeping is one of the most annoying, use what works best for you.
The US converted to metric, technically, back in '75 with the Metric Conversion Act, but it allowed the continued use of imperial.
The problem is having the rest of the world understanding you. If you have an audience, they need to understand what they're hearing.
@@autumn5592 Yep, and most videos address it by listing/mentioning both units, which is good enough for me.
US is closing in to metrics, inch by inch...
Actually ;-) some commenter said it wonderfully in this comments section: the US uses metric, they just give weird names to weird sizes, for example they call 2.54 cm an "inch".
As someone who is a decimal lover and not a fraction love I love the metric system so much
Injuries, accidents, boo boos, goof-ups... all symptoms. Tired, rushing, inattention, clutter are the causes... Quit, slow down, focus, or cleanup.
If I'm tired/injured and can no longer work, often I can still manage to cleanup the shop. I will return rested and the shop is ready for me...
Let's all reflect on the story of the no so mysterious missing $125-million dollars and the Mars Climate Orbiter....Still winds me up! Grrrrrrrr!!!
As a german I see the imperial system on the same level of saneness as using bloodletting in medicine. Whats a gallon? 4.5 (imperial) or 3.8 (US) litres? Body parts as length measurements? My feet are 1.05ft long... great.
Worst of all however is the pound! The amount of translation errors that occur with the pound is enraging. Basically all dubbed TV shows are doing it wrong as translators often dont care about the pound being both a unit of mass and force. Its eroding the difference between mass and force which leads to non-sense ideas of having less mass on the moon/in space. Inertia disagrees on that. Weight is a measure of force, NOT mass!
And for some Americans it seems that not using metric is their patriotic duty. I mean... measuring social distancing in alligators? Sounds like a nutty cult to me!
I mean, "body parts as length measurements" is a bit of a red herring - yes, that's how it originated but a foot is a defined standard now (ironically it's defined in terms of a metre :) just as much as a metre is (which was _originally_ defined as one ten millionth of the great circle distance from equator to north pole - i'm no geographer but even I know that wasn't _exactly_ one metre except perhaps by total coincidence :).
Otherwise though, yep, totally agreed. There's no doubt to any even vaguely unbiased observer that the metric/SI system is just more sensible, easier for base 10 counting humans etc. We should all use it, simple as that (I say this as a UK native BTW, where we use a weird hybrid system that's in some respects the worst of both possible worlds).
(maybe the most baffling defence of Imperial i've come across was someone claiming that the centigrade temperature scale "doesn't make sense on a human level" - they went quiet when I suggested that numbers like 0 and 100 degrees for, respectively, the freezing and boiling point of water seem to make a lot more sense "on a human level" than 32 and 212 degrees)
i can use either but i find certain things about metric not great . a liter is way to small. it's like measuring in quarts. and room temp being 72 is better than 22 . in metric 0 is cold but not that cold. 22 is room temp but 30 is getting too hot . so the range is too small .
for scientific stuff c is better . also for weighing things metric is better as is easy to convert to volume if you know specific gravity of something.
and machining i can't get away from thinking in thousandths of a inch or tenths of thousands.
and i hate how stuff is quoted in kilonewtons instead of kilograms . i have to divide by 9.81 . then you have pascals? and bar? and Mpa?
The alligator comment was hilarious. I used to think if i fell on the ground that would be the unit of social distancing as i am apprx 2m tall. But yeah we could start a new unit of measurement based on the length of a dog..I measure and work in metric but guesstimate in inches. It always amazes me how people like Adam and Joe pie and many others see in 11/16ths, thousandths etc i try to read the inch metric ruler i have and get lost trying to count the fractions, its so much easier for me in metric. Take it easy.
@@ronblack7870 If you divide newtons by 9.81 you end up with the deprecated kilopond not kilogram. Thank you for confirming the mass/weight confusion.
Getshitdoneitis is a big problem for me too. Being a larger guy with large feet, there are few pieces of furniture in my home or office who’s corners have not aggressively kissed my lower metatarsals.
When I worked in an art school we used to mix metaphors and send students to the shop with one dimension in imperial and the other in metric. The shop tech HATED us when we did that...
USA doesn't use the Imperial system. They have their own system that is based on the Imperial system. (Called "United States Customary System")
For the most part it's the same, but when it comes to volume, it uses the same names for completely different measurements.
Technically it also conflicts with itself, as it has a special inch that has different lengths depending on what state you are in.
US Customary units are not based on Imperial, which was introduced half a century after we had left the Empire.
Your statement about the inch is nonsense. There is only one inch today - the international inch of 2.54 mm.
@@GH-oi2jf It absolutely is nonsense and it is called the survey inch. From what I can gather, this alternate inch is used today. (For another couple of weeks until next year)
I copied this from a conversion site in case it makes things clearer.
How to Convert Inch (US Survey) to Inch
1 in = 1.000002 in
1 in = 0.999998 in
And what do you mean it wasn't based on Imperial? Are we getting into some technicalities here? Or are you claiming that they have nothing to do with each other? (I also don't see why it matters when "you" left the empire.)
Imperial system starts to get pretty stupid when you go to temperature.
Water boils at 100 deg c
Water freezes at 0 deg c …
Nope, not imperial.
Let’s make water boil at 212 and water freeze at 32 because that makes soooo much more sense.
No cookbook says “bring water to 212° (or 100°).” They just say “bring water to a boil.” The units used for boiling water are unimportant.
Usually missed with this discussion is that the Inch is also decimalized, divided into ten parts too, where more precision is necessary. So instead of fractions you can use tenths, hundredths, thousandths. English linear measurements can be either base-12 or base-10.
Here in the UK our measuring system seems to change based on the size of the the thing being measured: if it's tiny, mm, small, cm, medium-ish (and TVs and many table top games) inches, kitchen units back to mm, people in feet, road signs in yards, small to mid-size fields in metres, large distances in KM or miles...
Just to be clearer to ourselves, during a game of Dungeons and Dragons we measured longer distances in double-decker buses because nobody in the group could picture how far something was in feet or metres.
Despite our mix & match measurements it always baffled me to see so many tape measures in the US that only measure in inches. Although you can get tape measures here that measure in cm it's more common to see them in both cm and inches.
I think the most hilarious thing about the uK is the mess that is the "UK measurement system". Some is metric, some is imperial, and in between you also have people talking in stone and what not.
Does anyone else think its funny that one inch is officially 25.4mm exactly, no error bars, there is no physical object or any other method of defining an inch other than using the metric system.
America just uses metric wrong 😆
As far as I've heard (from Matt Parker), one inch has another definition. It's three barleycorns laid end to end. What is a standard barleycorn? I dunno. Essentially it would be a third of an inch. But that would be very circular.
I don’t. I think it is practical. We have done this since 1893. It means we don’t have to duplicate standards activity, and it means that the conversion factors are unchanged even though a unit may change slightly.
To be fair to Imperial, it's super helpful to break things down cleanly into ½, ⅓, ¼, & ⅙ which Imperial measurements do really smoothly having 12 inches a foot and 3 feet in a yard. That useful subdivision is why we measure circles in 360° and why clocks are laid out in segments of 12 hours as well as 60 minutes.
While Metric can scale extremely smoothly by multiples of 10, it's _far_ less helpful to divide things cleanly into only ½ or ⅕, with everything else being really messy. If only we managed to shift over to a Base-12 mathematical system, we'd have the best of both in far more ways.
How is it less helpful when dividing? 1/2 of 100m is 50m, 1/5 is 20m its really simple. No way I would've figured it out in imperial.
I’ve used both in the real world imperial sucks
It's conversion what makes metric easy. You can just add or drop zeroes if you need to switch cm/mm/m etc. If you want to do the same with imperial you have to recalculate fractions.
My first Tested video, nice, I may watch more.
Here in the Netherlands we mostly use metric, but some things still use imperial. In aviation altitudes are still measured mostly in feet, although we design in metric. Also some random objects like TV screens are always measured in inches for the diagonal. I still do the conversion quite a lot simply because so much in media comes from the US. When you read a story or whatever heights of people or speeds of vehicles or whatever are still often in imperial. What confused me the most is the different units with the same name, like if someone talks about gallons it's often unclear whether it's about US gallons or UK gallons, they're not the same. You also see it with miles, there's a regular mile, a nautical mile, etc. Whilst no matter the context, a kilometre is always the same distance, regardless of whether you're talking aviation, shipping, road use, distances on a map, or astrodynamics, or whatever else.
At least nautical miles and knots have a fairly practical origin. Still annoying though :)
Here in sweden we also have those odd places where inches show up. Like video monitors and TVs are almost always measured in inches diagonal. It was even more maddening in the CRT days as the diagonal measurement was often of the tube and not the visible image. And with camera sensors you had 1/3 and 2/3 inch sensors. Where the measurement of the sensor is based on what a camera tube had to be... A circular one at that. This still remains with Micro 4/3 sensors which are four thirds (aka 1 and 1/3) of an inch diagonally as an imaginary outdated circle that is then then cropped to the image planes aspect ratio. Or like, how it's assumed that 2 by 4 planks of wood is referring to the measurement BEFORE being planed. So you buy something that's supposed to be 2 inches thick but it never is because it's always been done like that. (I think it's part of my distrust with imperial. There's always those strange assumptions. Numbers never mean what you get).
Then there's those strange hybrid cases like car wheels that are measured in inches for the diameter... And millimeters for the width. Again... It's because it's always been done that way.
We also call our folding rulers "tumstock" (inch-stick) even though most sold only have metrics on them.
The only place I rely on inches is when attaching camera gear. Those almost always use 1/4-20 screws. For international compability the camera and audio screws are still in inches but at least you can be somewhat sure at a glance of what they are actually measuring.
@@jmalmsten I really wish monitor sizes were in cm, would give a really nice everyday reinforcement for how long something is.
The metric system is great for many things, but imperial length units have a major advantage over metric for some use cases, construction being one. Because it is base 12 (or base 60), many measurements are divisible into way more fractions than metric is. A mile is 5,280 feet. That might seem arbitrary... until you start dividing it. 5,280 has 48 factors. 1,000 only has 16.
This is, in my opinion, why the Imperial system continues to hang on. It becomes an issue of practicality vs simplicity. Yes, running calculations through a base-10 system is inherently easier, but you still end up with messy fractions when trying to divide into 3rds, which isn't a problem in a base-12 system (as you pointed out).
There's also the utility aspect. On the scale that most people use measurements, for hand-held objects, measuring in inches or centimeters is just a personal preference based on which is more convenient coupled with which system you grew up with. The difference between a 1lb hammer with a 12 inch handle and a .5kg hammer with a 30cm handle is completely negligible for the average person building a doghouse.
At the end of the day, both systems have advantages and being able to utilize both gives people the flexibility to use whichever system is more convenient for a given project.
I can see the beauty of it, and how well it’s suited to construction, which I know nothing about. But would you believe me if I told you that I just pulled up an article about rafter spacing, to see how it works out in practice? I swear I didn’t know this beforehand: the industry standards for rafter spacing are 12", 16", 19 3/16" and 24". What the flip? Nineteen and three sixteenths? I might be wrong, but I don’t think we can blame the metric system for that: it doesn’t resolve to a nice value like 480 mm or 500 mm, it’s somewhere in between. So it seems that the imperial system’s weaknesses creep into beautiful use cases as well.
But still, I can definitely see why people like it, and I also think it’s to do with hand-held objects: when describing the dimensions of a thing in conversation, inches are perfect: there’s a meaningful difference between a 3" object (7.6 cm) and a 4" one (10.1 cm), whereas centimeters are unnecessarily fine, and going in groups of 5 is too coarse. And it’s also about language: “twelve inch handle” rolls off the tongue so much better than “thirty centimeter handle”.
Germany introduced the metric system in 1872, just one year after it declared itself a nation state for the first time, but we do measure water pipe diameters in inches, and bicyle and car wheels, vinyl records and of course TVs and other screens. Much to do with international trade, but I also wish we had kept around the old Zoll (inch) for hammer handles, kitchen knife blades and penis jokes (so much funnier in inches).
@@mm9773 All good observations, but actually I'd say a measurement like 19 and 3/16 inches shows the divisibility strength in another way. You can create multiple layers of sub-units to meet your needs because of the divisibility, without running into irrational numbers or needing to round. All you can do with metric is halves and fifths before you have to resort to using a decimal point and likely rounding somewhere. With feet/inches you have halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, thirty seconds, etc... So it's easier to set measurements you know will line up. Also, you touched on another aspect of metric that I think makes it ill-suited for everyday usage by the average person: it's too granular. Normally we don't need 30 divisions of something around 1 foot long. For science, machining, manufacturing, etc... (things requiring precision or working with the values mathematically) metric is much better, but for anything where 1/16th of an inch is precise enough, and you're creating something (not measuring nature etc...), I think inches/feet/miles are clearly better. This is similar to why I prefer Fahrenheit over Celsius when describing weather. Celsius is better for science, cooking, etc... but not for describing human comfort.
@@heeerrresjonny I can’t agree with any of that. As long as you’re dealing with rough measurements and/or inches as the smallest unit, imperial is beautiful and meaningful, mainly in conversation. But as soon as it comes to measuring and calculation: metric all the way.
Divisibility is not an issue, and this fear of landing on irrational numbers sounds really odd to me, having grown up with the metric system: a decimal point is not something you resort to, it’s just a very clear and concise part of the system. Say you wanted to make a 5 inch (127 mm) chisel handle or whatever, visually divided into thirds: in metric, you’d go 3 x 42 mm = 126 mm, close enough and nice to work with. In imperial, you’d probably go 3 x 1 5/8 = 4 7/8, also close enough, but in what world is that a strength? It’s awkward.
Finally, Fahrenheit: 100 subdivisions to describe human comfort? Look at your argument about granularity again. I’m happy to chat more about that, Fahrenheit has its charms, but no, I really don’t need 100 increments to talk about the weather.
Imperial sucks. The end
The US does not use and has never used the Imperial system. We us US Customary Units, which are not the same as Imperial.
Lol. Yes it is. It is identical. You just renamed it. Because you didn't want to use anything British. Which is funny cause you got the system from the British. But kept it only because England was switching to metric
The only, ONLY difference between the two is volumetric measurement. Imperial pints, quarts, etc. are larger than US Customary Units. Both are still derived from earlier English measurement systems which in turn derive from ancient Roman, Carolingian, and Saxon units of measure.
@@ryanmcewen415 False, the US Customary Units for volume (i.e. cups, pints, gallons, etc.) are different sizes from their Imperial counterparts.
@@ryanmcewen415 The US became independent before the Imperial system was created. US units are based on pre-Imperial English units and only weight was defined identically between the two system at the beginning. The US and Imperial inch were made identical and defined in terms of the metric system. The previous US inch survives in surveying but is being phased out as maps are updated. The Imperial gallon is still slightly more than 20% larger than the US gallon.
I think the only things of imperial were still using in Scotland is - feet (height) stones (weight) MPH (speed) and inches which is interchangeable with cm (use both )(clothes sizes)
One reason why Britains mix metric and imperial is that the metric system was only introduced in 1965, whereas several other countries use it for much longer. Another point is that many countries didn't even have a strongly unified measurement system (like the imperial one) before they introduced the metric system, which meant switching to it was immediately useful.
Both have their places and i feel we realy need to implement a team approach to it all. In my opinion metric is easier on the math end but fails at the real life connection to how big it is! For example if you say something is 609.6 mm you would have to take out a measuring tape to see how long that was. Now if I said 2 feet long you have a good idea of how big that is without measuring. By the way 2 feet is 609.6 mm if your wondering. The mistake the metric system has always had is that reference to real life examples. In my opinion the world is a better place if we use and understand both systems.
That makes no sense?!
You'd generally not describe something that is 609.6mm long in mm when talking in metric, you would use cm and probably round it up to 61 cm in most cases. Someone who is used to metric intuitively knows about how much that is, just as someone used to imperial intuitively know about how much 2 feet is. How is that an advantage for imperial?
You just arbitrarily chose 2 feet as example length, which of course sounds more complicated when converted to metric, due to the fraction.
The other way around one might have arbitrarily chosen half a meter (= 50 cm = 500 mm) as an example, which in turn cannot be converted to a nice and round number in imperial.
In the end it's only by using something constantly that you intuitively know it.
That's not an issue with metric per se, but with unit conceptualization. When you have used one system most of your life, it's a lot easier and faster to think within that frame of reference rather than a new one. With practice, I've been able to visualize what a mile is but I'm a lot more comfortable with kilometers for long distances. Conversely, even when I do remember the conversions, feet and inches are almost meaningless to me (I'm yet to meet someone with a 30cm foot, and my own steps are a lot longer than that. Inches are just weird). It doesn't help that I don't even need to use imperial units outside some very limited circumstances.
On a side note, people on metric countries usually use centimeters, meters and kilometers in everyday conversations. Height is about the only normal case that I can think of that uses 2 decimals places (given in meters). Millimeters are mostly used if you actually need that precision for some reason, like for a tool.