The other day, for no real reason, I was thinking about metric measurements and how often we use them. I'm not thinking of scientific contexts, just everyday uses that most people in the United States accept without thinking much about it. For example:
- Grams: turntable counterweight, illicit drugs
- Kilograms: illicit drugs (kilos)
- Kilometers: army distance (klicks), fun runs (5K, 10K)
- Meters: sports (100 meter dash, etc.)
- Centimeters: motorcycle engines (cc)
- Millimeters: cigarette length, metric tools, photography (lenses, film size), gun calibers
- Liters: soft drinks, automobile engines
- Milligrams: prescription drugs, nutrients
Any others come to mind? Remember, nothing from the scientific community.
Millimeters are also used in describing gun calibers.
Real 'mericans have a .45 and a .30-06.
I think that word is spelled Murcans.
Cubic Centimeters: Music (10cc)
Still touring, believe it or not.
Music: String diameters are measured in mm, although, lord help us, string tension is still measured in pounds!
& Bush still uses stone!
Watts.
You don't use BTU's (British thermal units)?
Just hot air.
Never as a replacement for watts. Watts measure power, BTUs measure energy.
Joules are the metric measurement of energy.
Correct, watt-sec or joules are used to replace BTU's. My background is in physics as much as engineering, so I never actually used BTU's.
In electricity, kilohertz, kilowatts, megahertz.
Lenses in photography.
But I never think about the turntable counterweight.
Are there actually any "imperial" units for electricity?
Joules?
The "imperial" cycles per second is the same as the hertz. The Joule (aka the watt-second) has largely replaced the British Thermal unit, while the watt (=1 joule/sec) has largely replaced the horsepower. A large part of electro-magnetic theory was developed after the invention of the metric system and primarily by the French, so that metric units were used.
Interestingly enough, horsepower is one of the few non-metric units that is still the most commonly used unit in a certain context (vehicle engines), or at least the unit that most people intuitively get an idea of what its magnitude stands for in this context, even in highly metric countries like my own.
For cooling, they still use BTUs or tons, as in that's a 1.5 ton cooling unit.
The system of electrical units (ohms, amps, volts, etc.) was developed in the 1860s by the British Association for the Advancement of Science's Committee on Electrical Standards; James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) took leading roles. Their main aim was to provide useful standards for the telegraph cable industry, as well as for scientific research. Though British, they adopted a metric basis for their new units, figuring that was the only way their units would ever win international acceptance, on which they were quite right.
[Kilo-]calories.
Calories are not metric. Giving them a Greek or Latin multiplier prefix doesn't make them metric.
Barometers? The weather report still seems to use inches of mercury: https://weather.com/weather/today/l/647f0ae4a3b3500e4e0204b5f21a58b5117f635b1bd6b99e00fe80e95325991b Sure the NWS might include it in their forecasts, but as a parenthetical: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Irvine&state=CA&site=SGX&textField1=33.6694&textField2=-117.822&e=0#.Yi5sIy-B1qs
Road bicycles (55 cm, etc) and parts (170 mm cranks, etc).
Also grams for bike component weights.
Yeah, I was wondering about the barometers. But millibars are used and often mentioned when talking about hurricanes. But the actual unit of measure for pressure is the Pascal and one bar (the nominal pressure at the surface of the earth) is 100 kPa. But the actual pressure is about 1013 millibars, so the whole thing is f'ed up.
All measurements (length, width, side cut) of all skis are in metric.
The unit of measure for barometers is inches of mercury. /s
TIre widths in decimeters. Tire diameters are mostly in inches.
Metric prefixes are used for non-metric measures for computer memory (e.g., kilobytes, megabytes).
Unless one is a nouveau purist and uses kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte to appease the SI crowd...
Semi-purist here. Kilo means thousand, not 1024, but if you want a word for a chunk of data that is exactly 1024 bytes, you can call it "kilobyte", as long as we both know what you're talking about.
Of course, when they realized they could make storage devices seem larger there was the switch from CS to SI units for what they also erroneously named "disk" drives 🙂
I never agreed with people who would insist that some 500 GB drive was "really" only a 463 GB drive or whatever.
Adding a metric prefix does not make a non-metric measurement metric. An example is calories. One calorie equals 4.184 joules (joules IS a metric measurement), and one kilocalorie is still not a metric measure.
I think the calorie qualifies as a metric measure: it is defined by reference to a cubic centimeter and a degree centigrade. It just happens that the properties of water are such that the amount required to raise its temperature doesn't work out evenly in joules.
machine screws.
Anyone who spends any time working with anything mechanical has tools for both systems. It is not unusual to need wrenches from both systems to work on one device, an appliance for example.
I always keep both metric and imperial crescent wrenches handy.
I salute you! Suspenders (braces) AND a belt.
So if you adjust it with the one hand it is metric, and with the other it is imperial?
I think you mean you keep both metric crescent wrenches and adjustable spanners.
Metric hammers are a very important part of my tool set, along with the valuable although rarely used left handed monkey wrenches.
Jewelry making - stone sizes and bead sizes definitely.
I do not think karats, or troy ounces are metric.
Yes, gem sizes including beads and pearls, sometimes wire sizes but mostly it's still gauge, and finished pieces tend to be described in inches though sometimes MM used for smaller items. Raw metal for casting is by the ounce.
Millimeters are excellent for woodworking. Just the right precision, easy to calculate, very intuitive with some practice.
And MUCH easier to divide or multiply than the fractions that our imperial-measure tapes and rulers use.
I prefer inches in my woodworking.
35mm film.
what's film?
Film is what is left behind after a bath...
what's a bath?
😉
What you take when you want to remove a film from the body 🙂
I thought a “take” was when you start filming.
Of course! I don't need this many bathtubs . . .
I do all of my baking in grams. A guaranteed recipe turnout.
While grahams are great for certain pie crusts, I don't think I'd bake a cake with them...
Yeah, mass is better measured in weight rather than volume. Using a scale in grams is a little more consistent than using measuring cups.
The King Arthur Baking website (highly recommend) gives ingredient amounts in grams. Much more accurate than volume measurements, especially those using the English system (how many ounces in a cup? I can never remember).
Soft drinks are in liters now? No wonder Republicans are all pissed off at the culture wars.
It was a boiled frog kind of thing. Started with the 2l bottles - metric, but also oil-based so it was something of a wash...
+1 large Farva
Wine is sold in 750ml bottles. Halves are 375ml and magnums are 1.5 liters. If you have a really old bottle of scotch, it might hold a fifth of a gallon.
On the other hand, Canadian liquor stores still sell 1.14 liter (40 oz.) bottles.
And let's not forget about dollars and cents.
Wine and liquor. 750ml, 1.75L, etc.
Grams in nutrition measures.
Certain batteries (particularly Li-ion) such as 18650 are named for their size in millimeters: 18mm wide by 65.0mm tall in this case.
Nutrients (salt, cholesterol, etc.) are specified in milligrams on nutritional labels, and the mass of a serving size is specified in grams.
My electric kettle is labeled in liters. (or put another way: many things sold by Amazon?)
And of course packaged foods as well as measuring cups and kitchen scales are typically labeled in both metric and imperial. (And many recipes on the web use metric.)
Amazon resellers sell a lot of gray market items. I got a good deal for a Boulva watch a few years ago that wasn't for the US market, the packaging betrayed that. Heh, never wear watches anymore.
Lithium coin cells follow the scheme in four digits, ddt.t : 2032 is 20 mm diameter X 3.2 mm thick.
9 mm
Re-elect Donald Trump
Tell him that in a numerical sense his hand size would INCREASE if we switched to the metric system and voila!
It would happen.......s/
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!!
Relatedly, the one thing metric measurement I don't care for is temperature. Nobody knows what the hell I'm talking about over here when I say "Wow, so comfortable, it's sixty-eight degrees outside." But I don't think my mind will ever quite wrap itself around celsius.
You get used to it after a month or so of living abroad. Below 10C = winter coat, 10-19C = light jacket, 20-29C = no jacket and T shirts ok, over 30C = definitely T shirts and shorts.
I believe Jasper in Boston is actually in China.
You're right old chum, it happened on the sea. See? C! As in Catwoman!
Holy Celsius, you're right, Batman!
Now, extending the metaphor, if it's too warm for Mr. Freeze but not warm enough for swimwear, what to we have? The Riddler's Chili Joint, where all the college kids hang out! Both hot and cool at the same time. Diabolical.
Yep. It really is that simple.
Celsius Rap
30 is hot
20 is nice
10 is cool
0 is ice
The temp here swung from 30 to 30 in one day!
The Bill Simmons Constant.
Isaac Asimov wrote that the old temperature measurements - despite the peculiar origins (freezing temp of brine, boiling point of water) - were sensible in that the range of 0 to 100 - a very familiar scale to the mind - is one that most humans experience (though it makes below-freezing temps negative, which is awkward).
Metric system is handcuffed to the peculiar notion that there must be 100 degrees between freezing and boiling. Who cares? It's arbitrary. They could have set freezing at 50° and boiling at 150° (New Celsius).
With that, here's your range:
Fahrenheit, New Celsius
-58, 0
122, 100
It's extremely rare to go outside of the -58° - 122°,; New Celsius handles that range very nicely - at least until Global Warming forces us to experience temperatures within hailing distance of boiling, but by that time, homo sapiens will be extinct.
What one perceives as "sensible" is mostly a product of experience. For those who have used the metric system their whole lives, they have an entirely different understanding of "sensible" -- but it is as equally valid.
For a nice description of the "sensibleness" of the metric system, see this comment: https://jabberwocking.com/the-metric-system-in-everyday-american-life/#comment-57939
Fahrenheit uses 180° which makes sense if temperature were geometric, but, otherwise, makes no more sense than Centigrade.
Unless you are talking about the far geological future as the sun's intensity gradually increases until it parboils our planet global warming will not put us significantly outside the current temperature regime. temps will increase by a few degrees (Celsius), but that will put us in a climate regime somewhere between that of the Pliocene and the Jurassic, which is quite hospitable to complex multicellular animal life. (see: our hominid ancestors for the Pliocene and dinosaurs and the first birds for the Jurassic)
Really blow their minds & start using Kelvin.
Cross-country ski lengths in cm
The imperial inch is defined as exactly 2.54 cm, so really all imperial measurements of length are actually metric.
Only some very important parts of the British Empire are still using the Imperial system..
….. namely Liberia , Myanmar and of course the United States of America.
Just saying
Myanmar???
Gee, it seems like if they were going to change their name, that would have been a good time to change their measurements. Might as well get all the confusion out of the way at the same time.
Not sure about this, but instead of metric shouldn't we more precisely be talking about the SI system? In lighting two SI units have become pretty common: lumens and kelvin. Of course, I think most electrical terms like volt and ohm have always been the international standard.
Lumens for light bulbs.
Metric System:
Based on powers of 10: VERDICT: excellent
Standard established: VERDICT: stupid. Who cares what one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole is? By doing that, they missed an opportunity to make the centimeter nearly equal to an inch, or 10 cm nearly equal to a foot, or a meter close to a yard. Same with weights. They could have found a standard that (depending on the power of 10) could have been reasonably close to ounces or pounds. NB: "close", not "equal"
Names used: VERDICT: horrible. No one-syllable names !! e.g. inch, foot, yard, mile, ounce, pound, ton, pint, quart, etc. There are a few two-syllable: gallon, acre. But metric has absurd *four syllable* words: millimeter, kilometer, or even better [!] a six-syllable "cubic centimeter".
We have the *overly rational* use of multisyllabic prefixes. We don't call a foot a dodecainch (12), or an inch a hexatriaconyard (1/36th) We know a foot is 12 inches. And that 36 inches is a yard.
But the metric system does that all over the place. A clumsy, too many syllables, naming convention.
I've looked at how the metric system could have been sized so that they'd be close to most Imperial Units. It's doable (or was doable). A "metric inch" would be a little more than an Imperial inch. A "metric foot" would be a little less than an Imperial foot. Same for area and volume.
The creators of the metric system were so obsessed with their *independent* creation of distance, area, volume, and weights, that - I presume - they deliberately ignored fashioning it so that it would be able to replace inch, foot, yard, etc. as measurements, but retain the names.
BTW, I'm an engineer and am very favorably disposed towards the powers-of-ten system, it's the standards and names that I object to.
And why should the creators of the metric system, who was trying to create a system based on science and logic, adapt to the old system that didn’t even have a common definition at the time.
Just asking!
Greetings from your Swedish friend
Don't feed the troll.
Hey, ease up, Sture wrote a perfectly reasonable comment. The Imperial ‘system’ not only didn’t exist at the time, it’s never been a system in any meaningful sense. Measures which should be derived by straightforward, base-ten, preferably power-of-ten, factors instead have unrelated definitions (e.g. length, area, volume), or varied multipliers (12, 16, 5,280).
Which one?
Amazingly, most of the countries of the world seemingly manage just fine despite the "problems" you complain about.
I'll put in one very mild defense of the imperial system: its units are a bit more human scale than are those of the metric system (ex: most macro objects a person encounters are somewhere in the range of 1-8 feet in size, which is perhaps a bit easier to think about than them all being between 0-2+ meters), and our human meat-brains are a bit better at visualizing halves and quarters of things than we are at tenths. It's a rare human that can subitize 10 objects, but most folks can readily divide a collection of 12 things into halves, thirds, or quarters. There's a reason that the imperial measurements survived over the centuries despite being a kludgy mess (and why we never moved to a decimal system of measuring time).
I'm not knocking the metric system by any means--it's plainly better for the ease of calculation alone (although it's interesting to think about how much more important that advantage was back when all calculations were done by hand, and how maybe it's less important in a world in which calculations are done automatically by machines). But, big picture, though: relatively few measurements that people encounter in their daily lives have to be particularly precise. Those that do are either decimal/metric already (ex: money or medicine) or hard-coded into the machine systems people use (gallons of gas at the pump, file sizes, product packaging) so it doesn't matter much what measurement system is used in those cases.
Imperial measurements have only survived in the United States and a very few small, poor countries. I wouldn’t make too much of that.
True, but my point certainly wasn't that they have stood the test of time and are thus the way (weigh?) of the future. Just that there is a reason that humanity used such sorts of measures for so very, very long (something like a "foot" has been used for distance measurements for at least 4,500 years, and probably a great deal longer than that)--human scale metrics are pretty handy and intuitive and rather serviceable up until the point where you need to do things with precision.
The metric system has only been around for a little over a couple of centuries, and even though it's not common in the US day-to-day, everything of importance is metric; it'll probably continue percolating down until someday we all use it for everything. Until then, very little hinges on whether or not I buy flour in 5-pound bags or in bags of 2 kilograms, or if speed limits on highways are 65 mph instead of 100 kph.
Your fundimetal mistake is thinkibng the inventors of the metric system were replacing the imperial system. They were inventing a system to replace the many different measurement systems that were inplace around europe at the tiewm so everybody could use and understand each other even if they didn't speak the same language.
The US began making efforts to adopt the metric system in the late 1700s. I learned long ago (though I can't find a reference right now) that when Congress standardized the feet, inches, gallons etc., that they actually attempted to base the unit sizes on metric unit sizes, with a yard being exactly 1 meter, a quart being exactly 1 liter. However, shortly after this was accomplished, the metric unit sizes were changed and that's why a meter is just a bit more than a yard and a liter is just a bit more than a quart.
Also, whiskey and wine are typically packaged in 750ml bottles.
You could have saved yourself a lot of words by simply saying you have a hard time understanding the metric system.
Why would the French in the midst of a revolution care about bring the Brits on board . . . actually after 2 minutes of Wikipedia research I found they did invite the Brits to participate. The question is why would the British want to work with the French in the midst of a revolution?
I'm sorry but we just cannot change now
"Give 'em a centimeter and they'll take a meter"
Just doesn't have the same "ring" to it that
"Give 'em an inch and they'll take a yard" does
Snark aside, I have no idea why we just don't switch. Is it that "we're special because we're the United States" thing again?
Kinda like the discussion of daylight savings time. The MINORITY of countries use it (Countries like China, India and Japan do NOT).
What about AM and PM? Why not just go with "It's 2030 hours kids, it's time for bed"??????
Definitely for baking, Often the recipes are for 2 or 3 loaves. If you only want one, then with imperial measures you have to divide something like 7 1/4 cups or 1 lb 3 oz by 3. Much easier to take a simple metric integer and do the math. Also a gram is much more precise than an ounce.
Also, applies to wood working. Plywood is now 19mm instead of 3/4 inch. Many high end woodworking tools are also calibrated in metric.
Everything connected to 3d printing is in mm. I know they aren't super common for most people, but they are becoming common with people who play a lot of games, and crafters.
At my old job everyone was excited when we got a 3d printer for creating prototype parts. We were very disappointed when the first set of parts all came out 10% of the intended size (reminiscent of the Stoneheng scene from "Spinal Tap"). One still has to be careful about mm vs cm.