@@AngraMainiiu Any unit of length can be defined in terms of the speed of light in a vacuum, this doesn't make the meter special in any way. There's a reason nobody's using plank lengths as their primary unit of measure.
Every time I come the US I have to get used to inches, miles, ounces, liquid ounces, gallons, Fahrenheit... And every time they ask or mention time, I get surprised that they use hours and minutes!
@@SummerThyme-ye5rd Minutes, hours ect aren't metric. Metric time is measured in seconds, kiloseconds, megaseconds ect. starting from some arbitrary t=0.
@@SummerThyme-ye5rd And that's the problem. Imperial units are already defined by the metric units but they're not commonly used anywhere outside of the anglosphere (with the exception of inches in relation to screen diameters because fuck knows why).
Yes. Here in America a football field is common. It's easy to visualize. Trip most people that don't have to deal with it to visualize land area in English or metric and watch the stupid look.
Imperial system: -inch: in -Feet: Ft -Yard: Yd -Mile: mi Metric is great for tiny measurements, because god knows there's a metric tonne of them you can use for that purpose. Imperial is more focused on larger measure, but can be broken down using fractions of a whole inch. Break the cycle. Change the norm. Use the Nautical system.
@@captbiptoe 1. the "centi" in centimetre doesn't come from "century", but from the latin "centesimus", wich means a hundredth, 100 meters is called hectometre 2. technically football fields can have different sizes
As an engineering student, with the metric system I was able to find formulas I'd forgotten out of nowhere with a simple dimensional analysis, no arbitrary coefficients, everything is elegant.
As a cnc programmer and machinist who works in an R&D machine shop, engineers need some manufacturing experience because they usually dont know how things actually work and we constantly have to correct their designs and show them better ways of doing whay yhey are trying to accomplish.
Omfg the roasts. I started using metric in my chem class and I was shocked by how EASY it was to use, so intuative, no random ass numbers to remember. 5280 feet my ass...
It is all based around water which makes certain things easier, 1L=1kg=1dm³ and 1ml=1g=1cm³ and temperatures are the same, 100° boiling point 0° freezing point, not 32°F or whatever it is
Hey, fun fact about the temperature in both systems: In Celsius 0°C is the temperature, at which water freezes at sea level. 100°C is the temperature, at which water evaporates. In Fahrenheit 100°F is the body temperature of a sweating horse of a very specific breed, at a very specific time, at a very specific spot in Germany. 0°F is the coldest temperature detected at the winter of 1708/1709 Just saying
And to avoid any confusion with the pressure-dependency that the freezing and boiling point of water have, you can even further simplify this by saying that the triple point of water is exactly 0.01°C or 273.16 Kelvin.
100 degrees is impressive for me meaning in Texas life is going to suck. 30.255334 is worthless to me. I dont care when water boils. Don't bother me with that. 32 is easy for freezing. 0 means death might be imminent. Same goes for speed 100 kmph not far 100 miles per hour fast and dangerous. The average person isn't a scientist no one cares.
My wife (American) and I (Australian) argue about this all the time. After watching this video I heard something I never though I would hear her say: ‘fine, I admit it, metric is better’. I can now die happy (and just may!)
Hex wrenches in millimiters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.... (some set may include 1.5 and 2.5 mm) Hex wrenches in imperial: 0.05", 1/16", 5/64", 3/32", 7/64", 1/8", 9/64", 5/32".... are you fu**ing kidding me?
@@Locke99GS They are certainly more complex than whole numbers, and a bit too unwieldy for day to day mental maths. Also, like I said, why add the needless complexity? if you already have a nice, standardized system which gives you a result in more understandable whole numbers, why would you want to willingly subject yourself to a system which displays the same result but in a more convoluted way? Is it just a matter of pride then?
@@dragonlord1935 1) "They are certainly more complex than whole numbers" In the same way that decimals are more complex than whole numbers. 2) "and a bit too unwieldy for day to day mental maths" They're not. American children do them. Americans in general do mental maths with fractions several times a day, every day, without issue. Because Europeans are uneducated or mentally unexercised in doing those mental maths does not mean that it is in any way difficult or cumbersome for those that are educated and mentally exercised in doing those mental maths. 3) "Also, like I said, why add the needless complexity?" It's not complex. It is _different_ . 4) "if you already have a nice, standardized system which gives you a result in more understandable whole numbers," The imperial system is standardized. The imperial system uses just as many whole number as metric. Decimal is not a whole number. Decimal is a restricted form of fraction. 5) "why would you want to willingly subject yourself to a system which displays the same result but in a more convoluted way?" It is not more convoluted, it is _different_ . The result is, as you mentioned, the same. Because something seems more convoluted to Europeans does not mean that those familiar with it find it convoluted. The same argument could be made with language, religion, law, political system, etc... 6) "Is it just a matter of pride then?" It is a matter of casual practicality. Since Europeans won't listen to Americans telling them why Americans are choosing to continue to use the US customary system, see youtube video v=N0U-XEmKPKg which is presented by a Brit, living in Britain. He explains why.
When the members of the British Rocket Society, sitting in a pub in London, heard the explosion of the first V2 to reach London they cheered, realising that the sudden explosion, with no pre-ceeding engine noise meant that a supersonic rocket had just landed.
It's even more connected than you say. 1 metre was set at 1/10,000,000 the distance from the equator to the poles. (They have since then measured the distance more accurately and it's slightly out.) Also, a cube 10cm x 10cm x 10cm has a volume of 1 litre. 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram. At sea level water boils at 100°C and freezes at 0°C.
There are a ton of cool definitions of the meter. They also thought about having it defined as the length of a pendulumn that has frequency 1 with a weight of 1 kg attached to it. That's why earths acceleration is roughly π^2
Even energy units are defined by metric and even used in us... for example Calories and Joule are based on the metric system (1 calorie needed to heat 1 gramm / 1 millilitre of water 1 degree)...
@@georgigeorgiev891the mass doesn't change the frequency of a pendulum.... T=2π√(l/g) The meter has an old definition as the lenght of a pendulum with T = 2 seconds.
I'd like to point out that the "eagle scream" used when making fun of 'merica is acutally a red-tailed hawk. It's a common conversion used in video because actual eagles sounds kind of silly.
You obviously haven't been listening to Eagles. I witnessed a young bald eagle on its first successful hunt for sturgeon on the Snake River happen less than 30 feet from me. And as it hoisted is prize into the air it shrieked a piercing cry that echoed throughout the canyon. Then from high above its mother approved.
At least it follows the Imperial logic. 12 inches in a foot but football is 11 inches long. Is mainly played by holding it in your hands and while you can call prolate spheroid a ball, it's still the weirdo in the family of soccer ball, tennis ball, basketball and the likes.
@@lordpengz16not at the time (and in a few ways we still don't), we invented the imperial system and used it for century's and as such it's taken us a while to shift off from it.
@@matthewmac5787you brits generally do some weird things. But what annoys me the most is that i cant find any new shows with the typical british humor i loved so much during my youth. Heck, you can measure lenghts with your spitting distance if thats what floats your boat, as long as you bring out anything comparable to little britain
I am a simple private pilot and one thing that has always intrigued me is that in aviation we use notations that mix the metric and imperial systems. In the same sentence, it is possible to read an indication of visibility in meters, altitude in feet, and speed in knots (nautical miles per hour). No doubt created by some drunk guy.
The mix is to prevent errors and mistakes. If you hear meters you think visibility, hear feet you should think altitude (or height), hear knots it is speed (airspeed if it is a message from atc). No, I don't fly, not after they nicked my medical.
Drives my a bit crazy as well. feet/gallons/pounds/pounds per square inch - pure pain (for me) to calculate and "think" in this crude system. But I'doubt ICAO would ever switched to a system the Americans are not familiar with. I'm fine with nautical miles and knots because they are based on the grid system. Although I plan simple VFRs in metric over here.
Actually, the ICAO wants to implement the metrical system since a couple of years already. It's just really difficult to do and, quite frankly, absolutely unnecessary in the aviation, so that's why they leave it as it is. Speeds and distances are in nautical miles, height/altitude in feet and visibility/runway length in (kilo)meters (at least in Europe - US uses statue miles for that). However, you don't need to convert these units to each other, so it works out pretty well. I can assure you that, because I'm working in aviation.
That confusing convention comes from the historic nautical world, ... then there were flying boats who adopted nautical conventions. (including the uniform!) . Altitude is an anomaly in the nautical world, but they did measure depth in feet on occaision.
Yep. I learned how to do it - commit some things to memory and figure out weird relationships because I had to. I also learned the metric system. I have been waiting for over 50 years for America to just change already... if I learned how many feet are in a mile and how to calculate that back to inches (why???) I think I can adapt to figuring out how many liters I am going to put into my 20 gallon gas tank. :P
@@I-am-EmJay Why would you ever want to learn that? You never run your gas tank dry anyways. So you are always topping it off instead of adding a fixed amount. You just wait till the pump stops 😉
@@Galm_1 Again, what for? Whatever the result of those calculations might be is irrelevant. The tank is full when it's full, not when some pre-calculated number is reached. You usually don't know exactly how much is actually left in the tank and the pump is measuring how much it puts in until it stops. So you only know for sure how much was missing once you actually filled the tank. For a rough estimate on the other hand I need no calculations. I'm not saying you should never do that. All I'm saying is, that this is a task I never need to perform because filling a tank doesn't work that way. I can certainly see some use when working machines you usually don't drive to a fuel pump. But there again I don't need to calculate nothing. A rough estimate rounded to the closest number of fuel cans will be sufficient. Which is why I'm wondering why he would do that. If you really need that, the gallon->liter conversion is pretty straight forward. As long as you are only doing estimates: multiply by four and you're done ...
@@TheGrimPeeper, apparently the English didn't get the message about the metric system being superior - perhaps it was the Alabama accent :-). So the American on his gap year in Germany needed to keep sending them rockets until they understood it. That's why Britain is (mostly) metric now.
I grew up in South Africa and learned in the Imperial system until I was 12. When we changed to metric everyone in my class cheered! No more adding 33'9 and 3/8" to 21'8 and 25/64"!
Totally agree. I started my life with Imperial and with 3/16 and 8/32 and I still don't have a clue of what they are. Please give me a ratchet set and drill bits in metric!!!
The international accepted unit to measure distance and speed of boats in the sea are nautical miles and knots. The international accepted unit to measure elevation of planes are feet.
@@TheSyd19 And that sucks. And also any unit now is based on metric, knots and feet are by definition conversions, I could use the length of my nose for that.
@@elvisdorkenoo Or as we say here, the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at a temperature of absolute zero.
As an older Canadian engineer I had to learn to be fluent in both systems... HOWEVER I STRONGLY prefer working in metric. If you have to work for years, day in and day out with these units it quickly becomes clear metric is superior.... and I grew up as a native imperial user.
well yeah of course and in science and industry it's SI that's used. but to get the general public to switch you'd have to force people, make it illegal to use imperial, and of course that will never happen, nor should it. :)
@@neutrino78x it should happen, maybe not in such a forceful way but we really have to get all the people instead of 99% of them to use metric not shitperial there's just so much confusion when people see shitperial units instead of normal ones, most can't comprehend those at all
I love a tiny error, the voiceover says "a lb is 0.435 kg" (9:12) which is just a perfect little example of how easy it is to make mistakes in such a silly conversion system.
That's because the British measurements changed after American independence, kind of like how the Frenchies metric system changes its definition of a meter every so often, the meter was originally 1/10,000,000th the distance between the equator and the north pole assuming a perfectly round earth, then redefined as the length of a brass stick in Paris, then the stick was replaced with a platinum stick, which was replaced with a platinum-iridium bar suspended on 2 10mm cylinders spaced 57.1cm apart symmetrically in a 0°C room, then that was replaced by 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum, which was replaced with the speed of light emitted from a Helium-Neon laser in a vacuum (however it is only practical to use an inert-gas atmosphere and estimate the refractive index to get an approximation of a meter)
I'm an American electrical engineer. I HATE fractions and imperial. Any time I measure and 3D model anything, it's in cm. This is Sooo Freaking stupid we still use imperial.
As someone who uses the metric system, I'm proud to see that you are staying away from the imperial system. However, you should use either mm or m, not cm.
@@Wuzzup129 Well the metric system is not much better in that regard since km/h and m/s are ducked by the 60 sec 60 min division still. So 1 m/s is 3,6 km/h and yes i looked that one up. LOL
Fight this and only describe screen sizes in cm or mm. Never say the size in inches. If you refuse to, you are just like those who refuse to give up Imperial units.
@@Liggliluff We only use this to describe a size, we have no idea how big it really is (since I am good at math, I could calc it at least, but most people have no idea). I would actually like if companies would change the system to cm, but there is no reason for me to say my monitor is 80cm if no one can compare it to their monitor without going the extra step of using a calculator.
This annoys me so much as well. There's multiple situations like that, not just screen sizes. Fixing my bike I was surprised the tire was only marked with a PSI value instead of bar, despite the bike being made in Germany.
I'm British and the problem with this video is that the US doesn't and has never used the British Imperial system, as that system was established after the founding of the US. USA uses 'United States Customary Units'.
The most ironic part of this is that the US tried switching to metric directly after the metric system was invented and only failed because the guy that was supposed to carry the kilogram to the US got killed by pirates.
@uncletigger When half of your comment is in all caps, the intended effect of each usage diminishes. It's a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation, but with emphasis instead
@uncletigger Dude... I was just giving you a writing tip. You're the one who assumed I was trying to counter your argument. Isn't there some saying about assumptions and making an ass out of yourself? And I know you were joking, but using italics instead of caps wouldn't help. Relying on any stylistic technique as a crutch will reduce its effectiveness over time. If you were forced to eat your favorite food for every meal, after a week you'd be sick of it. The point is this: Even though I actually agreed with the overall message of your writing, I didn't want to because it looked like it was written by a condescending Tourette's patient.
Skerples yeah but doing basic math IS where the mistakes happen. Not everyone is going to be able to simple math 100% of the time correctly. At some point you will make a simple mistake.
@@Z0DI4C basic math errors are waaaaaay more frequent than anything else, a good engineer would tell you to triple check a simple sum even if you do it with a calculator
I am a very old man I was taught imperial and thought nothing of it. In 1971 Britain started to go over to metric, there was panic. However the metric system is a totally integrated system and is simple to use in fact it is beautiful
You say that but its shadows are still around. Milk and beer still gets sold in pints, and speed, height, and weight is still measured in imperial by many. Pretty sure the speed limits are still in miles to? Its a mess.
@@AshleyBlackwater I agree. In this day of age my kids at school only learn metric (kg, km...), but when asking about their weight with the school matron, she would still use stone! And one day my older boy came home asking how heavy is a stone. And I replied, give me a stone I will weight it for you...
@@AshleyBlackwater Milk isn't actually sold as a pint, the bottles are in litres, just with odd numbers. Pints are measured in mls by trading standard, who will allow a 5% error, which is why you pint is often only 540ml
Ashley Blackwater I agree but it is still a beautifully simple, logical and integrated system. And what is left of the imperial system is defined by the metric system
@@HerbertTowers If you clicked on any of those links, you'll see it is measured in ml. Yes, those quantities do equate to a sum of whole pints, but it is measured and labelled in metric.
The biggest advantage of all in SI metric system is that most scientific formulae don't have extraneous constants in them. F = ma just works. F = g m1 m2/r^2 so I don't have to remember a heap of random constants! I tend to do calculations in basic units: m, kg, s etc. that way I don't have factors of 1000 and stuff complicating my calculations. Unfortunately some scientists still hold on to old cgs (not SI) metric units. I wish they would get with the strength and go pure SI but at least they aren't using poundals and slugs... :)
cgs is the worst "system". When I first learned they even used it for electromagnetic units and even have various cgs systems like esu or emu I went crazy. I had to read a old book with some measurements of ferroelectric transition in TGS and saw the units. I wanted to cry knowing I had to convert these to compare them with my own measurements.
cgs proves useful when doing calculations especially in physical chemistry. chemists generally deal in masses of grams and not kg. volumetric measurements are also in mL and so it proves useful to have gm and mL instead of the 10^-3 factors everywhere
That wouldn't be politically correct to the metric purists out there. I wonder what system of measurement the ancient Egyptians used to build the pyramids? Or the Greeks when they built the Parthenon? Baffling.
@@paulbradford6475 true! ...... there since more than 4500 years before ... its time to change science have move a lot since then.(remember? computer, rockets, or satellites)
Thermodynamics was developed in both English and metric units, because the principles are independent of units. Real scientists know that units are arbitrary.
@@GH-oi2jf I know that principles are independent of units, you are talking to an Engineer buddy. But anybody who has taken thermodynamics courses knows how things can get complicated really quickly when you are dealing with multiple properties or processes, now imagine adding the difficulty of English units to this.
Had to learn compressible fluid flow in both unit systems. Most foolproof option for me was to convert to metric at the start of a problem and convert back at the end. Otherwise I would usually have to include units in my equations with unit conversions, whereas in metric you don't have to if all of your units are the standard ones. (This gets crazy in some of the more complicated equations) Also lb-mass, horsepower, and BTUs are garbage units
My biggest frustration with Imperial system is using different units for different applications of the same measurement. Example: mechanical power is in Horsepower, electrical power is in kilowatts, and thermal power is in BTU per hour. In metric all three are kilowatts because the system reflects conservation of energy.
@@ferruccioveglio8090 I think you mean PS which is metric horsepower. BHP is Break Horsepower, not British HP. It means HP measured at the flywheel whereas Americans and Australians usually measure HP at the wheels WHP.
As an American (North Carolina), I actually agree that the Metric System is, indeed, *superior* . It's just too simple to mess up. I can't count how many times I had to pull out a calculator to convert feet to miles. Don't have to do that for meters to kilometers.
Trust me, in a math test, you will still convert your meters to kilometers because you don't trust your brain with such a simple task. I divided 14 by 2 during my math final because I didn't trust myself. Imagine the horrors in the Imperial System if this is the case...
@@sorrowandsufferin924 Probably not that far....only issues come with area and volume(because of cubes and squares). Its just being a lot zeroes and tens, and absolutely nobody is going to remember how much volume in km is 168721934536032123 cm^3. I can only imagine the sheer mind####ery if they had to convert a similar number of inches cubed(or galons or whatever) into cubic miles. I mean, you could code a program to do that when necessary...but it sounds like extra work.
and for some reason... as a Canadian, we still mostly use Imperials in the trucking industry... I don't recall ever using metric at all in terms of measurement and weight (still use liter instead of the imperial gallon). I mean, when you think a standard skid (or pallet) is technically 4 feet by 4 feet, and that a trailer is 9 feet wide by 53 feet long, it get easy to know how much place you have left compared to metric where you'd actually need to calculate to the meter how much there's left, and with pounds instead of kilogram because it is easier to know as well? the way we calculate length would basically be like this: one skid (pallet) being 4x4 feet, takes half the trailers width, so we count it as half the length value. so 1 skid = 2 feet. knowing there's 53 ft in a trailer, let's round it to 52: we can get in 26 skids total at ground level. much easier than, let's say, 121.92x121.92 cm in a 1615.44x274.32 cm trailer. "oh damn... how many skids I got now? hum... 7? ok so how much cm is that? *get calculator out* so a standard skid length is... hmmm... 126cm? times 7, divided by 2... now to divide that by tr..." y'all get the idea. 7 skids? that's 14 ft out of 53, so still have 38 ft (39 if you want to be technical) of space left. (since not all freight can be standard 4x4) now for weight: why pounds? it tends to be more precise in how much clearance we still have. else we'd have to constantly use grams over kilograms. ALSO simplify everything when we pickup freight going toward the US, our main neighbors, since that's what they use. makes needing to convert a moot point when we all use the same thing. max weight a semi tractor-trailer can be is 80'000 lbs. that would be 36'287.3896 kg. what's easier to remember? "yeah I got about 2000 lbs of clearance (907.18474 kg)"
@@xXCursedWorgenXx So your case for imperial units is "we use them because everyone else uses them"? Those limit values seem highly suspect for being rounded down, thus you'd be presented perhaps as 36000kg or 36200kg for the max weight for the trailer, which is just as easy to remember. The only problem here comes from conversion of units, which wouldn't be a problem if everyone used the metric system. But that's the problem though - if most of the manufacturers don't present metric values, the metric system will be cumbersome to use. The only way to get rid of the imperial measurements is to legally require metric usable metric values to everything, at least alongside the imperial. Maybe.
Greetings from Germany, may i ask you if they teach you the metric system in school like high school or college? or can you kinda decide if you want to be thaught in the metric system (because you choose an engineering branch of education or something)?
@@merkurysmerkuries7997 yes they do teach both imperial and metric in grade school (younger than high school, think 8 year olds), and have done so since the 70's.
@@merkurysmerkuries7997 Yes, every single person in the United States learns the metric system in school. Science courses at universities are taught in the metric system (I'm a university science faculty member). I have heard heard from time to time that Imperial units are still used in some engineering disciplines, but those are in addition to metric, not instead of metric. To put it shortly, this metric vs imperial debate is entirely pointless, because science in the United States is done in metric just like everywhere else in the world. And as to which system people use in daily life, who cares? It's not worth arguing about. If you buy a pound of beef or 0.45 kg of beef, who cares? It's the same amount of beef. In daily life, people use whichever measurements they feel most comfortable with, and everyone gets along just fine. Schöne Grüsse nach Deutschland.
@@ChemMJW live in a metric country but I still can't visualize people's heights in anything but feet and inches. 6 foot does seem more impressive than 184 cm.
As a graduate Electric Engineer, ALL my studies were in Metric as all electrical units are metric- UN Standard (MkSA). Using the archaic "Imperial " units is quite simply ridiculous.
@@GH-oi2jf yup. Though I remember taking some Mechanical engineering courses. I had such a fun time getting accustomed to imperial units, the difference between lbm and lbf certainly messed with my mind.
@@GH-oi2jf the thing is: With metric all units are connected to each other. And electrical units like Volt are defined by metric units (1 Volt is 1 (kg*m^2)/(A*s^3). You see the meter and the kilogramm will show up here too. So when analyzing problems you can really play around with the units and use these metric definitions to draw connections from electrical problems to mechanical designs, physical behaviour or chemical requirements using all those metric laws and equations developed by all those clever scientist celebrities in the past. The possibilities are endless.
and fails the common sense test totally, typical for the lunatics of the French Revolution that destroyed each other and gave us the metric system as a result of their failure, a completely impractical system too incompetent to relate to the real world.
Then again, if it's like here in Italy, we use the term without even any clear grasp of what's supposed to be. For how many of us are concerned, a "pint" is just a kind of glass you use for beer rather than an actual unit of measurement.
There are several things used worldwide which are designed using inches. The ones most commonly used are automobile wheels, Schrader valves to inflate tires, threads to mount cameras to tripods, and square drives for socket wrenches. I have learned that there is a Metric alternative to the 19-inch rack. I think it is a little larger, so any equipment designed to fit in a 19-inch rack would fit in the Euro rack with a suitable face plate. Even the ordinary 19-inch rack was partially Metricized. The original design had threaded mounting holes built in. Current ones can be used with either US or Metric hardware.
"There are 2 kinds of countries -- Those that use the Metric system and those that used the metric system to go to the moon and later crashed a probe into mars because they were confused by metric units" -Scott Manley
They didn’t crash a probe into Mars. They covertly carried out an excavation of the Martian surface. They’ll go back later to look for signs of past Martian civilization. Joke’s on them though... they happened to excavate an area the past civilization had set aside as a nature preserve. There will be no signs of civilization there.
The thing is, the US has a very big stick, with which they can force others to tolerate their imperial system and adapt to it - at present, most of the world can't afford to just plainly refuse to do business with them until they switch. And they won't, because internal politics and the voters' support and all that :D To be honest, I can't imagine an intellectual, educated US citizen having any problems leaving imperial system behind. But the dumb ones, too lazy to learn something new, still make up too big a chunk of this nation's population... enough that if one party wishes to abandon it and the other promises not to, we'll know in advance that Republicans are going to win.
@@NaqrSeranvis The problem is that the country’s measurements for roads and other things are measured and have been measured for years. Switching to metric means that they’ll be reverted to decimal values which don’t look nice. Also, it’ll be kinda expensive adjusting all of those signs throughout the entire nation. It’s just cheaper for people to just be aware of both of the systems and not spend potentially hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to transition everything to metric. It’s not a matter of laziness as it is a matter of practicality. Also, I don’t see how the point of bringing politics into this. You know, there is no need to think that half of the country are stupid. It kinda makes you sound like a person that likes to looks down on people.
I'm British and the problem with this video is that the US doesn't and has never used the British Imperial system, as that system was established after the founding of the US. USA uses 'United States Customary Units'.
For me it has allways been helpful to think of one liter of water as one kg, and one cubicmeter as a tonn. For me it brings meter and weight together in a simple way.
Just as 1 pint weighs 20oz. Everyone knows that don't they? Don't assume that just because you don't know something, no-one else does. And I think you'll find that the metric unit is metre. A meter is just something which measures.
@@davenoble1207 You obviously did not get the point that in metric, measures are connected in a decimal system, easy to understand and remember. How many inches in an oz? But, of course, stick to an antiquated system the rest of the world has left behind. It is good for our competitiveness to leave you behind.
@@davenoble1207 I see a difference between 1x = 1y and 1x = 20y. Of course you can know. And 2, 3, 7, 1420 are all conversions in that systems. That's plain broken by design. But I want to add: There are historical values used in modern language still but they are all connected to the metric system today. In Germany a pound is 1/2 kg (or 500g), a dozen is 12, a "zentner" is 50 kg, 1bar is 100 kPa, a "Einfacher", a small pint of liquor is 2cl and so on. Even "Zoll" which equals inch is still used for some specific things but it is on a decline just as PS (horse powers) and kcal (kilo calories). But this is for sales (50 inch TV, 200kcal in 100g cheese, a zentner bag of potatoes ... nobody would use that in production or science apart from bar maybe as it is about air pressure. BTW: If imperial systems are so good do it on money again. GB changed in 1971, before that a pound was 20 shilling and 1 shilling was 12 pence. Now 1 pound is 100 pence. Much better. Have fun.
@@zefallafez always. 1kg is the mass and that is constant. What changes is weight which is equal to a force. We measure force in newton. 1kg on earth gets gravity force of about 9.81 N. But in the moon this is less. But it is still 1 kg.
I've known this since I was a young lad. The Americans brought literally hundreds of former Nazis over to the states to work in the rocket/space race. Some unfortunately were captured by the Soviets and were forced to do the same on rockets in the Soviet Union.
Canada switch to the metric system in the mid 70’s, when I was a teenager in the sciences, so I am quite familiar with both. However, when it comes to people’s height (and to a lesser extent, weight), I still calculate metric to imperial for comparison. Everything else I prefer metric.
Well but I think that will phase out, in Germany we never use imperial units. The only thing I know is my grandma using the German pound (Pfund) from time to time (it's exactly 500g), but if only old people use something it will cease to exist
@@haselnuss43 Wow, that's really interesting. I'd never heard of a Pfund and didn't know that metric pounds were a thing. I've only ever encountered imperial pounds, which are approximately 454g
Architecture and civil engineering is still done in Imperial. At my job, sometimes we will get a job in metric. That sucks, because it's usually in CM which means to do every little simple thing requires a calculator.
Myanmar does not use imperial units, they have their own and have mostly metricated now -- it's essentially metric for at least 5-7 years. Liberia announced metrication in 2018 and fully intends to complete it "soon".
You're aware of this, but not that the U.S. uses U.S. Customary Units? The system is based off of Metric, and the U.S. is mostly metric in STEM fields.
@@joiseystud Both are different measurements. It's about a relation between a volume of water (Liter or cubic decimeter) and an amount of its mass (kg).
@@joiseystud Well, but what about a cubic inch? But maybe it just takes a bit. Decifoot for decifoot, you will fin a way to use another completely weird system.
@R. Schowiada71 And if we wanna piss everybody off we throw in that the density of water alone varies due to its temperature etc. which would mean even bigger differences :P But yeah, you're completly right though.
Actually it's the least flawed of the imperial units. Yeah, Fahrenheit's defining points are really weirdly established, but in the end Celsius is just another arbitrary scale as well (though it is more scientifically defined). Fahrenheit doesn't have any inconsistent relations between several units, unlike all the other Imperial units. Though that probably is just because Imperial system doesn't have multiple units of temperature.
@@wombat4191 Hmm... Celsius is just a practical scale for me. If I hear it's 0 degrees Celsius outside, I know it's freezing, and slippery. If my water boils, I know it's 100 degrees. That are neat rounded values based on practical values. I don't disagree with you about Farenheit being the least flawed of the imperial units, but it feels weird for me that when everything outside is frozen over, the Farenheit scale still gives a positive value.
@@jclosed2516 Yeah I agree with you, Celsius at least feels more convenient as I'm used to it. That being said, people who are used to Fahrenheit will say the exacts same, arguing the normal "0 = really cold weather, 100 = really hot weather, and 100 is also the limit of fever". I don't really blame them, because it is a rare imperial unit that is not objectively inferior to its metric counterpart (except for scientific use). It's just a matter of how you view the temperature scale for everyday use. Celsius users see it as the area around 0, while Fahrenheit users see it as a scale between 0 and 100.
Given that Celsius isn't in the IS (the unity for temperature is Kelvin, where 0K is the minimum possible temperature: -273.15°C and +-1°C = +-1K): Fahreneit who was the best at making thermometers at the time and Celsius (whi didn't invent Centigrade: the actual Celsius scale has 0 and 100 swapped) made a scale to measure in a specific range without needing negative temperatures for the field of application (respectively meteorology and medicine)
Seriously? When you tell a Brit that it's 32 degrees outside, instead of bringing a jacket and earmuffs they get dressed in shorts and flip-flops. Weird people.
Went to engineering school in the US. In the beginning, every student was adamant about using imperial system cause they are proud Americans. Then every student was required to learn the metric system. Then came the fury of every student from hating doing HW problems in imperial and metric, and then despising the imperial system afterward. WTF is a British Thermal Unit…
A BTU is the amount of body heat exerted by one standard British aristocrat unit per minute, measured of course, at a comfortable room temperature for taking high tea, and with zero social pressure from the lower classes, at the altitude of Windsor Castle.
@@Yvaelle the worst bit about it all is that your explanation is probably more sensible than the actual reasoning behind the BTU.... Pretty sure a cup of tea will be involved in it somewhere though! 🤣
@@mor4y It was originally British Tea Unit but the Queen disliked using tea as a symbol for anything nationally identifiable other than the national fruit.
@@Genius_at_WorkThe Brazilian default is the safest. Half of each pin is plastic, only the tip of it is metal (which is more than enough to make contact), In addition to the connector having a format of a type of hexagon, which is mirrored in the socket so that it is impossible to get shocked unless you stick something in there by purpose. This shape also makes it much more difficult to cause accidents with water, no matter if there is ou isn't anything connected.
Myanmar doesnt use the Imperial units, they use their own traditional measurements (which are weirder than imperial units wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement )
@@Ida-xe8pg your own link states that they've been adopting metric since 2013, and gives the same examples I gave. They may still use their own system in some areas, but (as I said) they are in the process of converting to metric.
@@Ida-xe8pg ah, my bad, I didn't properly read your comment sorry. Though that link does give examples of how they were using imperial units like miles and gallons
As an American i strongly cast my vote for a full switch to metric for the simple reason that the bridge problem gave me a headache which was immediately cured when he started talking in metric.
Then please vote for someone who voices their support for metrication, regardless of the party. I know you guys are pretty limited in your votes since you essentially only have 2 parties that ever make it into the parliament but still. The only way for America to metricize is for the congress to force it. No amount of "voluntary conversion on the state level" will ever work.
@@Matihood1 First there are 4 major parties in congress just two always get lumped in with the Democratic Party by the media, and second the US and France developed the metric system a long time ago for legal and scientific purposes and most Americans know metric well enough that the only reason a full conversion hasn’t happened yet is cost to business and even that reason is quickly fading
@@collinfrye9555 yeah, from what I'm aware of in most business and scientific applications metric gets used (to some exception, I believe carpentry and house building still uses feet and inches, even in Canada apparently) with Imperial being most of the "day to day" stuff, but Liter already being a well accepted unit (2L bottles of soda after all)
What bridge PROBLEM ? a mile of 1" spaced bolts needs 63360 bolts. I didn't need a calculator to work that out ! ( Or 63060 bolts if it's an American mile.)
I remember at the beginning of my chemical engineering curriculum, we’d receive some easy mass and energy balancing problems that would have mismatched units. One pressure in psi, another in kPa, and one in mmHg for good measure. The purpose of this was to ensure we understood dimensional analysis and could deal with any units, but of course this was always frustrating for us students because it was usually unrelated to the course content. Eventually once the classes got a lot harder and the equations got longer, we never strayed from the metric system. However, when I entered industry I realized exactly why my earlier professors gave us those annoying problems… many industries cling to the imperial system for dear life. There are definitely some newer start-ups and facilities now that are being smart about their units because its much easier to keep everyone on the same system if you’re starting fresh. However, basically all the old plants religiously use the imperial system; its deeply engrained and difficult to transition because it certainly does cost a lot of time and manpower to replace all of the necessary instrumentation and train the operators and technicians. The benefit to investing in a complete overhaul of the instrumentation, SOPs, manuals, training, etc. to use the metric system is often going to be negligible for day-to-day operations. It can even be detrimental if it isn’t done properly, leading to the same errors discussed in this video that occur when transitioning between two unit systems. So really, you can’t blame American engineers. It’s just not our fault, we’d prefer to use metric because we’re one of the few demographics that appreciate it’s ease of use. However the people that run the businesses and are down on the ground don’t think that way. They’ve gotten along fine with their imperial units and as such require us to produce products and services that utilize them. In academia and highly scientific and technical industries it is different because a great percentage of the working population in those fields do understand the value to the metric system.
@@ArruVisionif im not mistaken, the US automotive industry once lobbied against changing to metric because the lobbying costs were cheaper than retooling costs.
Ah yes, Murrica the land of the money god. If the money god says it's cheap, the Muricans can do it, if the money god says they won't be able to buy 17 yachts that year but only 16, the smart and intelligent Muricans will not do it. Wouldn't want to make the big money priest unhappy, would be
My company switched from imperial to fully metric in the 90s. We’re in a technical industry. It wasn’t until I started working as an engineer that I realized just how comically absurd was the imperial system I grew up with. I’ve gone out of my way to intuit metric units. Slowly, globalization is thankfully killing off Imperial. Almost every American auto is now assembled with metric bolts. I’ve moved all my SAE sockets and wrenches to a separate drawer to get them out of cluttering the metric I actually use. It’s not just that I can now appreciate metric- I’ve come to prefer it enough that I hate imperial. Ironically the products we make in the UK still have imperial mixed with metric while USA made is entirely metric.
At least you aren't in the UK working on old equipment that has Whitworth fasteners, which have radiused root and crest with 55° threads, British Association fasteners. Most mechanics who encounter anything Whitworth use an adjustable spanner (“Crescent” wrench) or “Vise-Grips.” I used to have a large set of taps and dies for odd thread sizes. Older (1969 and earlier) Citroëns had hundreds of 5 mm × 0.75 mm threads. “Standard” metric is 5 mm × 0.8 mm. Then 11 mm × 1 mm seat belt attachment screws. Lots of 7 mm × 1 mm screws where everyone else uses 8 mm × 1 or 1.25 mm threads. The world is going to ISO metric.
@@algrayson8965 Great point. Darn Whitworth. Invented the modern bolt geometry, then had someone improve on his idea and leave him in the dust. The standard 60° ISO thread is so ubiquitous now, it's amazing anything else persists.
@@algrayson8965 Well, strictly speaking, Britain and Canada abandoned the Whit thread from in 1949 - adopting instead the the US Imperial 'Unified' (or now Unified National) 60 degree thread. Not only is the UN thread inferior to Whitworth, the Brits and the Canucks almost immediately binned it in favour of ISO metric threads.
@@alastairbarkley6572 Whitworth thread and screw head system was carefully engineered, paying little attention to nice even ¹/64”, ¹/32”, ¹/16”, ⅛” increments. The 55° thread angle, precisely radiused thread roots (and crests) contributed to thread strength and low seizing potential.
There’s another point: when converting imperial one hardly use all significant digits, so there’s always some error which can accumulate. That doesn’t happen with metric: 1 km is exactly 1000 m, not only the conversation is easier to make, it is always precise.
Wernher von Braun is seriously one of the greatest men of history just in terms of the roasts people make of him. Tom Lehrer's song on him alone is legendary.
When I was learning to fly it seemed crazy that the (American) planes we were flying measured aircraft, passenger, baggage and fuel weights in pounds, but they measured fuel volume in US gallons (which bizarrely are not even the same as an Imperial gallon!), and we purchased our fuel in litres - lots of room for error there, even in light aircraft! Fortunately some light aircraft owners have been sensible enough to have the aircraft weights converted to kg and the fuel dipsticks to litres, removing most of the potential errors.
We think the Imperial gallon is bizarre. In olden times, “gallon” was not a fixed volume. It was a container for liquids and there were different gallons for different liquids. The US gallon was the British wine gallon. When the British formulated the Imperial System, half a century after the United States had left the Empire, they chose to standardize on a different gallon. Why they didn’t check with the USA first I can’t imagine.
@Khaffit Destin supports facts and truth.. So you can guess if he would support a totalitarian regime. He did work in the defense industry as a full time Missile Flight Test Engineer at Redstone Arsenal, so I guess he did support regimes that would be willing to kill millions if needed.
@Khaffit I think that you should probably question the regime that chose to turn a blind eye and not put him on trial. Instead they relocated him and put him in a top post to get to space. Proud moment for them if I recall correctly built on the backs of the same regime that killed millions.
The imperial system isn't one system, it's 3 or 4 separate systems that were forcibly bolted together by creating conversion equations. And that's just the system for measuring length, all the other stuff was also just haphazardly applied with zero consideration. Kinda like the English language, it isn't a language, it's several languages in a trench coat that randomly mugs other languages for random parts.
That's why English spelling is such as mess: English adopts words from other languages without altering the spelling. As an example, the word "colonel" is spelled via one language but spoken via another language.
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.” ― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
Except only one of those is still true, one milliliter is one cubic centimeter. The others are no longer precise enough, which causes people to not look them up when they should.
@@zeroone8800 density of water is off by 2 ten of a gram/ml. Calories are still defined by heating water, but in joules. Unfortunately that's where the system falls apart, as a calorie is 4.184 joules.
And you're working with STaP water... exactly never, so none of that matters! Glad we could clear up why that argument is stupid. The answer is roughly 284 calories, though.
"This is complicated. But feel lucky you learn it here. If you were over the pond you'd have to do things in doubleinch per quarterweek or similar nonsense." - One of my engineering Professors -
Ah yes because a system where you have meters which are too big to be useful for most things, and then the next smallest unit is a fucking 100th of it. Inches can be unreasonably small, meanwhile you're out here using a unit 2 point something times smaller, not to mention how to give any remotely useful differenve in temperature for Celsius, you need decimals and to be even halfway precise you're getting into 2 decimal places, meanwhile with F you almost never need a single decimal, and when you do it's never more than tenths
3 года назад+27
@@kevincronk7981 You idiots think using fractions is a good idea. Hint: MOST people have quite a bit of trouble with doing fraction calculations. Which is really some *very* easy math, but then George Carlin about the average person comes to mind.
@@kevincronk7981 These are absolute non-arguments. The easy convertability eliminates every point in them. How much is 117 inches in yards again? And in miles, feet, legions? So much for being useful... Modern engineering always calls for decimals... both in inches and mm, but usually one less in mm - the standard engineering unit. Whenever you don't need a decimal in °F, you'll also not need one in °C. Name a single area where you don't need a decimal in °F but you absolutely need one in °C.. One!
This is a contrived problem, typical of the sort of thing Metric monotheists use to try to make some obscure point. The first problem with it is that the precision is biased. A mm is only about 1/25 inch. We don’t use 64ths much. The second problem is that we don’t necessarily express fractions as ratios. The third problem is using multiple units to express the length. The number in US units would be better expressed as 91.4 inches, where the precision is .04 inch. One half of that is 45.7 inches, which is as easy to do in your head as half of 2422. Carpenters, who do express fractions of inches as ratios, have other ways of finding the center than arithmetic. The diagonal method is a common way.
@@GH-oi2jf Where do I find a tape measure that's marked for said 91.4 or 45.7 inches? All I could find in any hardware store ore those marked with 1/2, 1/4, 1/8/, 1/16, ....
@@adamgonzalez7450 The beauty of the metric system is that i could use arbitrarily humongous prefixes, like megameters, so it could always win. megameters >> miles
I'm in Australia and I did the same thing. The only thing I retained in imperial was my height so my grandma would understand what I was talking about. She didn't get 1.91m.
@angst film Yes! It's difficult because there is no logical relations between the units. See this video for a glimpse of the hilarity of the system: ruclips.net/video/r7x-RGfd0Yk/видео.html
For me its the ability to do stuff like 'oh i dont have a 1L measure' but i have a scale so i can measure out 1kg of water and thanks to the metric system its 1L of water. I actually had to do that once!!
Keep in mind that it's only true for pure water. If there's impurities like ions or calcium (which is likely, unless you're using distilled water), 1L of water won't weigh exactly 1kg, but rather slightly more. Another thing to keep in mind is that 1L of water only weighs 1kg at ambient pressure at sea level (i.e an elevation of roughly 0m), so there's that too. Still, should be pretty accurate for most purposes
for real. for every líquid similar to water (roughly same density), say milk or apple juice; I just weight a kilogram of it or any fraction for cooking. slight differences on density and pressure wont make It a 1:1 match but a few mililiters of difference don't matter for most things
I love that we can hear in his voice how he's just trying to remain chill and calm but deep inside wants to scream and shout on how stupid the Imperial system is LMAO
@@one9752 For the sake of argument, let's just say, that the USA is the greatest country (whatever you're basing that on). Best doesn't mean perfect, and as you see in the video, the imperial system is very flawed. But really, what are you basing that on? The titles of happiest, safest and most equal countries go around in the nordic countries (no, I am not from there).
@@unkreativity1596 I basing this on very simple things, it’s also telling that most internet users and people who watched this video are American, it’s simply the best run country in the world, no other country has done better for society.
My favorite crazy measurement has to be automobile tires. For example, 235/35ZR19. "235" is the width of the tread, in millimeters. "35" is the height of the tire, as a ratio of the tread width. "Z" is the speed rating where letters of the American alphabet correspond to increasing ranges of speed, except that they aren't in strict alphabetical order. The series ends with "STUHVZWY". "R" means radial, and "19" is the wheel size, in inches.
@@kevinmoynihan5118 Still not worth having units spaced by factors of 12, 3, 5.5 (!), 4, 10, 8 (I let everyone figure out what those units are). I also find it ironic that the country that clings to the mile (literally 1000 double paces) is also the country where the longest distance the average person walks is across the parking lot to the grocery store.
@@kevinmoynihan5118 A mile (or a league, for that matter) is something a person who walks to get from A to B has a grasp of. When driving it‘s just any old length dimension. And against „but I don't WANT to get accustomed to anything new!“ only time will help. Some stubbornness just has to die out.
@William Loudermilk hey since you are defining everything by teaspoons, what if I wanted to use your system but my oh so terrible country uses slightly bigger spoons?
Funny enough I spoke some time ago with a Polish pilot that previously was flying only on Soviet Equipment and now was flying on the F-16 and he considered the imperial values in feet and knots a way better and precise measurment system than metric on MiG-29
That's a good argument. BUT. There are 3 skyscrapers that are about that tall (4.20 football fields). Guess where they are? Russia, Vietnam and China. Two are communist, one is former communist. Opposite of america. Hence, this completely refutes your argument that america is dank because they use the imperial system.
Sadly they use "fußballfelder" in the metric germany as well. You have morons in every country. At least Fußball is a game where you use your foot to kick a ball unlike american football where you use your body to takle opponents while protecting an EGG.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the metric system, like the centigrade temperature scale, was originally created to reflect the physical world (as was understood at the time of the French Revolution when it was made official in France): meters were defined as a ratio of the distance between the Earth's pole and equator; litres defined by the volume of water just above freezing; a gram defined by the weight of a cubic centimetre of water. The modern definitions are just hyper-accurate versions of these original standards.
@@ZackScriven Tell me then on what god known object a foot is defined, whose foot? And for the rest of the video, I will say I am glad I don't know the imperial system, we are already having a hard time remembering the universal constant, I don't need to jump through few more hoops to get my calculations wrong.
Sankosh Saha a foot is based on the average persons foot as it is about the size of a human foot, and it makes sense if your used to imperial like a meter is normal for metric.
@@woodduck2178 An anthropometric study of 1197 North American adult Caucasian males (mean age 35.5 years) found that a man's foot length was 26.3 cm with a standard deviation of 1.2 cm. 26.3cm is approximately 0.8 feet, even when adding the standard deviation of 1.2 onto 26.3, we only get 27.5, which is just about 0.9 feet. Now again, who's foot is the measure based on?
I grew up with metric, and as an engineer i grimace at time… 60seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 24hrs per day…. Why??? It’s so painful to have been left out.
I have engineering degrees. Every place in the world uses the same system of timekeeping. If you think it is difficult, imagine the difficulty of having two different systems. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Try switching to Swatch time and find out directly for yourself.
Really? I mean, Europeans usually afraid of buying cars from the US, because as far as we know, we wouldn't able to get a bolt for it back home... When did this change happened...?
Péter Baán I’d sayaround the late 90s the switch started. Some new cars may have a US bolt mixed in there here and there, it depends how old the design of the car/engine is. For example chrysler uses almost all metric fasteners but some bolts on their V8s are American, since the engine is such an old design.
@@peterbaan9671 Depends on the age of the vehicle and where the actual development was done. For some GM and Ford vehicles, you'll find they're entirely metric because a fair bit of R&D was conducted in Europe. GM has switched basically everything because of its large presence in China. So from the 2000s forward, most things save for some oddities, are all metric fasteners. Although I have to say, I recently changed the head gaskets on my daughter's 2000 Ford Ranger pickup and was baffled by the mix of metric and imperial. I felt like I had every tool I owned out on the cart trying to work on this stupid thing. Chrysler is almost entirely metric these days owing to their ownership by Fiat.
You would be amazed of how many machine shops accept metric blueprints and then convert the dimensions to English. Tolerance is a wonderful thing. All quality control checks are done in English and converted. The cost to retool old shops to machines that do metric only would bankrupt those businesses.
Sure, but 'Better' is subjective. Scientifically, and maybe in your field, metric is better, but for every day use the english system is more intuitive and easier.
@@welove2134 I believe volume measurements are all simpler in metric. But things such as length, temperature, speed, fuel economy, tire size, rim size, air speed, and nautical distances and speed are all FAR SUPERIOR not in metric. Then there are things which go either way, such as time in 12vs24 hours, wire gauges, things like bolts size or thread pitch and bolt strength, and things such as lubricity measurements. At the end of the day, we have computers that can do these conversions for us, so the conversation of standardizing measurements on a global scale is moot.
@@rickyhall1772 what can be easier than multiplying/dividing by 10 to achieve any conversion inside the same measure system? you feel imperial is more intuitive because you are used to it, metric is the easiest to learn and to use. Give it a SERIOUS try.
@@rickyhall1772 Uh....nope. The Metric System is superior. Saying that the imperial system is more intuitive and easier is absurd. You could teach someone the Metric System in a few minutes. Try that with the imperial system. When I build things I use the Metric System. It is so much easier than remember inches, feet, yards and also working with fractions. Just because you are more familiar with one system doesn't make it easier to teach for the masses, or more intuitive to use. There is a reason everyone else uses the Metric System. There are about 195 countries. 190+ countries didn't get it wrong, and the US along with a couple of other countries got it right. We use the Metric System at work-in medicine. We don't do conversions because mistakes can kill people. Some of the most dangerous and expensive medications are usually dosed in milligrams per kilogram. I weight about 172 pounds, and I'm about 5 feet 9 inches tall. That's about 78 kilograms and about 175 centimeters. Once I know that everything else becomes notoriously easy to estimate just like you'd estimate in pounds, feet and inches. BTW, get those units wrong either with relaying a measurement to a third party or converting erroneously and you'll gravely under dose or over dose the patient.
You guys are too harsh towards US. They've been using 9mm in schools for a while now.
Tolga Ekiz I just laughed way too much at that
LOL WHAT
at least something
I find this gun joke very funny, while knowing that I shouldn´t do that.
See you in hell, buddy. You'll be there for writing this joke, I'll be there for shittin' myself laughing
Imperial and metric have something in common: They're both incompatible with imperial
Gold
This.
Hilarious 😂
L O L
Absolutely!
America is moving towards the metric system, one inch at a time
or better one milimeter in a century
Please show your working.
The milli-furloung could solve all this.
* 3 centimeters at a time
Classic quote
There are 2 types of countries - those that use metric, and those whose units are federally defined by metric
I actually read this comment while he said it in the video. That was a brainfuck
@@genertec😂
Which is in turn defined by light...
So you mean there are Tier1 countries and Tier2 countries?
@@AngraMainiiu Any unit of length can be defined in terms of the speed of light in a vacuum, this doesn't make the meter special in any way.
There's a reason nobody's using plank lengths as their primary unit of measure.
I came here to see the imperial system get roasted and I was NOT disappointed
Thanks for the spoiler. I'll definitely watch the video then
Same here
Yessssss
Rodrigo Rex lol
Pew Pew! 😂
Every time I come the US I have to get used to inches, miles, ounces, liquid ounces, gallons, Fahrenheit... And every time they ask or mention time, I get surprised that they use hours and minutes!
LMFAO
You do know most of the world uses the same the time system practically no one uses metric time
@@SummerThyme-ye5rd Oof, burns.
@@SummerThyme-ye5rd Minutes, hours ect aren't metric. Metric time is measured in seconds, kiloseconds, megaseconds ect. starting from some arbitrary t=0.
@@SummerThyme-ye5rd And that's the problem. Imperial units are already defined by the metric units but they're not commonly used anywhere outside of the anglosphere (with the exception of inches in relation to screen diameters because fuck knows why).
Metric system
mm- millimetre
cm- centimetre
m- metre
km- kilometre
Imperial system
- Inch
- Feet
- yard
- size of Football field
- size of Texas
Don't worry, "size of ..." is pretty universal. In Germany we like "size of soccer field", "size of Saarland" ...
Since a century is a hundred years a centimeter should be 100 meters? 100x vs. 1/100th ?
Yes. Here in America a football field is common. It's easy to visualize. Trip most people that don't have to deal with it to visualize land area in English or metric and watch the stupid look.
Imperial system:
-inch: in
-Feet: Ft
-Yard: Yd
-Mile: mi
Metric is great for tiny measurements, because god knows there's a metric tonne of them you can use for that purpose. Imperial is more focused on larger measure, but can be broken down using fractions of a whole inch.
Break the cycle.
Change the norm.
Use the Nautical system.
@@captbiptoe 1. the "centi" in centimetre doesn't come from "century", but from the latin "centesimus", wich means a hundredth, 100 meters is called hectometre
2. technically football fields can have different sizes
As an engineering student, with the metric system I was able to find formulas I'd forgotten out of nowhere with a simple dimensional analysis, no arbitrary coefficients, everything is elegant.
Elegant? Its just easy as easy can be.
@@evobsm2328 yes, there is elegance in simplicity but you probably wouldnt know
which is elegant...@@evobsm2328
@@evobsm2328 THAT is what makes it an elegant system.
As a cnc programmer and machinist who works in an R&D machine shop, engineers need some manufacturing experience because they usually dont know how things actually work and we constantly have to correct their designs and show them better ways of doing whay yhey are trying to accomplish.
''I aimed for the stars, but sometimes hit London.''
Wernher Von Braun
Pretty cursed
:D
Oh that's gotta be one of the best comments I've heard, if only my friends had the same sense of humour to share it with. Well done 😎
@Simon Read works better if you write 10
There are two kinds of people. Those who classify everything in 2 categories and those who don't.
Omfg the roasts. I started using metric in my chem class and I was shocked by how EASY it was to use, so intuative, no random ass numbers to remember. 5280 feet my ass...
That's a lot of feet for an ass
Welcome to the wonders of the metric system
YES! like, everything you just have to divide by 10. It's really, really simple.
It is all based around water which makes certain things easier, 1L=1kg=1dm³ and 1ml=1g=1cm³ and temperatures are the same, 100° boiling point 0° freezing point, not 32°F or whatever it is
@@matthewirvine1361 you got an error there. 1L=dm^3
m^3 would be a ton
1 foot is legally defined as the distance a 9mm bullet can travel through a monster truck and 3 cheeseburgers inside a complete Vacuum
You mean submerged in Frying oil
Ovbiusly du'h *
Super👍😁
9mm? You mean 0,354 inch bullets...
How paradoxical - in this case their guns makes the most sense...
over the flat earth
Hey, fun fact about the temperature in both systems:
In Celsius 0°C is the temperature, at which water freezes at sea level. 100°C is the temperature, at which water evaporates.
In Fahrenheit 100°F is the body temperature of a sweating horse of a very specific breed, at a very specific time, at a very specific spot in Germany. 0°F is the coldest temperature detected at the winter of 1708/1709
Just saying
Where in the heck did you dig that up? That's awesome.
And to avoid any confusion with the pressure-dependency that the freezing and boiling point of water have, you can even further simplify this by saying that the triple point of water is exactly 0.01°C or 273.16 Kelvin.
@@Mis7erSeven I think that's how Kelvin and Celsius scales are defined...
100 degrees is impressive for me meaning in Texas life is going to suck. 30.255334 is worthless to me. I dont care when water boils. Don't bother me with that. 32 is easy for freezing. 0 means death might be imminent. Same goes for speed 100 kmph not far 100 miles per hour fast and dangerous. The average person isn't a scientist no one cares.
that's not true
96F was defined as the human body temperature, and 0F as the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture at an arbitrary point in time
My wife (American) and I (Australian) argue about this all the time. After watching this video I heard something I never though I would hear her say: ‘fine, I admit it, metric is better’. I can now die happy (and just may!)
you sound bigger in metric 😏
Big W bro
you may now Rest In Peace or at least get a good night's sleep...
You married a keeper, she told you that you were right. Try to replicate that result in different contexts.
Ok where's your addres and house
Hex wrenches in millimiters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.... (some set may include 1.5 and 2.5 mm)
Hex wrenches in imperial: 0.05", 1/16", 5/64", 3/32", 7/64", 1/8", 9/64", 5/32".... are you fu**ing kidding me?
You never learnt fractions?
@@Locke99GS Why add complexity when it isn't needed?
@@dragonlord1935 Fractions aren't complex though.
Children learn fractions. In elementary school. Because they're easy.
@@Locke99GS They are certainly more complex than whole numbers, and a bit too unwieldy for day to day mental maths. Also, like I said, why add the needless complexity? if you already have a nice, standardized system which gives you a result in more understandable whole numbers, why would you want to willingly subject yourself to a system which displays the same result but in a more convoluted way? Is it just a matter of pride then?
@@dragonlord1935
1) "They are certainly more complex than whole numbers"
In the same way that decimals are more complex than whole numbers.
2) "and a bit too unwieldy for day to day mental maths"
They're not.
American children do them. Americans in general do mental maths with fractions several times a day, every day, without issue. Because Europeans are uneducated or mentally unexercised in doing those mental maths does not mean that it is in any way difficult or cumbersome for those that are educated and mentally exercised in doing those mental maths.
3) "Also, like I said, why add the needless complexity?"
It's not complex. It is _different_ .
4) "if you already have a nice, standardized system which gives you a result in more understandable whole numbers,"
The imperial system is standardized.
The imperial system uses just as many whole number as metric.
Decimal is not a whole number. Decimal is a restricted form of fraction.
5) "why would you want to willingly subject yourself to a system which displays the same result but in a more convoluted way?"
It is not more convoluted, it is _different_ .
The result is, as you mentioned, the same.
Because something seems more convoluted to Europeans does not mean that those familiar with it find it convoluted. The same argument could be made with language, religion, law, political system, etc...
6) "Is it just a matter of pride then?"
It is a matter of casual practicality. Since Europeans won't listen to Americans telling them why Americans are choosing to continue to use the US customary system, see youtube video v=N0U-XEmKPKg which is presented by a Brit, living in Britain. He explains why.
"He designed a rocket to fly to England to show how great the metric system was." Oh god!
When the members of the British Rocket Society, sitting in a pub in London, heard the explosion of the first V2 to reach London they cheered, realising that the sudden explosion, with no pre-ceeding engine noise meant that a supersonic rocket had just landed.
U Estonian? Your pfp has nature in it and is Blue black white basicly, so it seems so Estonian.
Well he was German.
Was this rocket named V2 ?
@@helloWorld-dd2yc jes
It's even more connected than you say.
1 metre was set at 1/10,000,000 the distance from the equator to the poles. (They have since then measured the distance more accurately and it's slightly out.)
Also, a cube 10cm x 10cm x 10cm has a volume of 1 litre.
1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram.
At sea level water boils at 100°C and freezes at 0°C.
There are a ton of cool definitions of the meter. They also thought about having it defined as the length of a pendulumn that has frequency 1 with a weight of 1 kg attached to it. That's why earths acceleration is roughly π^2
Even energy units are defined by metric and even used in us... for example Calories and Joule are based on the metric system (1 calorie needed to heat 1 gramm / 1 millilitre of water 1 degree)...
@@georgigeorgiev891the mass doesn't change the frequency of a pendulum....
T=2π√(l/g)
The meter has an old definition as the lenght of a pendulum with T = 2 seconds.
Also 1 Metre is a 10000 Part of the distance between Paris and Barcelona
It's all the question how to measure all those zeros ....
I'd like to point out that the "eagle scream" used when making fun of 'merica is acutally a red-tailed hawk. It's a common conversion used in video because actual eagles sounds kind of silly.
Why would you do that? In this case, ignorance is bliss. now I will be forever annoyed.
Thank you man of culture, I didn't know that.
The eagle really sounds inofensive btw
yeah, bald eagles are just a over rated seagulls
you can tell Bald eagles are lip syncing lol
You obviously haven't been listening to Eagles. I witnessed a young bald eagle on its first successful hunt for sturgeon on the Snake River happen less than 30 feet from me. And as it hoisted is prize into the air it shrieked a piercing cry that echoed throughout the canyon. Then from high above its mother approved.
holy crap it is
You forgot another important unit in the US measurement system: "the football field" but of course not the football game every other country plays 😁😁
Underrated comment
Size of Texas.
At least it follows the Imperial logic. 12 inches in a foot but football is 11 inches long. Is mainly played by holding it in your hands and while you can call prolate spheroid a ball, it's still the weirdo in the family of soccer ball, tennis ball, basketball and the likes.
Are you talking about handegg ?
The "football" that the Americans play is basically discount Rugby.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Still yes
short answer: yes
long answer: y e s
longer answer y e s
shorter answer ye
@@randomperson1955 shorter answer: si
Usa girl: i only date 6 foot guys!
The exchange student from chernobil:😏
@@denifnaf5874 lmao underrated
@@randomperson1955
Short answer: yes
Long answer: definitely
Longer answer: See the above
Most efficient answer: JA!
"He despised british units so much so he designed a rocket to fly to england to show them how great the metric system was" i'm dying over here 😂
If you're British quite literally...
Not so bad for a gap year project. I'm sure his friends were happy.
I’m confused. Didn’t the British use the metric system?
@@lordpengz16not at the time (and in a few ways we still don't), we invented the imperial system and used it for century's and as such it's taken us a while to shift off from it.
@@matthewmac5787you brits generally do some weird things.
But what annoys me the most is that i cant find any new shows with the typical british humor i loved so much during my youth. Heck, you can measure lenghts with your spitting distance if thats what floats your boat, as long as you bring out anything comparable to little britain
I am a simple private pilot and one thing that has always intrigued me is that in aviation we use notations that mix the metric and imperial systems.
In the same sentence, it is possible to read an indication of visibility in meters, altitude in feet, and speed in knots (nautical miles per hour).
No doubt created by some drunk guy.
The mix is to prevent errors and mistakes. If you hear meters you think visibility, hear feet you should think altitude (or height), hear knots it is speed (airspeed if it is a message from atc).
No, I don't fly, not after they nicked my medical.
Drives my a bit crazy as well. feet/gallons/pounds/pounds per square inch - pure pain (for me) to calculate and "think" in this crude system. But I'doubt ICAO would ever switched to a system the Americans are not familiar with. I'm fine with nautical miles and knots because they are based on the grid system. Although I plan simple VFRs in metric over here.
Actually, the ICAO wants to implement the metrical system since a couple of years already. It's just really difficult to do and, quite frankly, absolutely unnecessary in the aviation, so that's why they leave it as it is. Speeds and distances are in nautical miles, height/altitude in feet and visibility/runway length in (kilo)meters (at least in Europe - US uses statue miles for that). However, you don't need to convert these units to each other, so it works out pretty well. I can assure you that, because I'm working in aviation.
Right, but it's just information using different types of measurements. But don't you dare make calculations by mixing them up.
That confusing convention comes from the historic nautical world, ... then there were flying boats who adopted nautical conventions. (including the uniform!) . Altitude is an anomaly in the nautical world, but they did measure depth in feet on occaision.
The question is : Do you like to convert some units with completely weird definitions or do you prefer to just add or remove some zeros ?
Yep. I learned how to do it - commit some things to memory and figure out weird relationships because I had to. I also learned the metric system. I have been waiting for over 50 years for America to just change already... if I learned how many feet are in a mile and how to calculate that back to inches (why???) I think I can adapt to figuring out how many liters I am going to put into my 20 gallon gas tank. :P
@@I-am-EmJay but that would take time
@@I-am-EmJay Why would you ever want to learn that? You never run your gas tank dry anyways. So you are always topping it off instead of adding a fixed amount. You just wait till the pump stops 😉
@@brag0001 Uhm. Maybe some people like to calculate how much fuel they need to put in?
@@Galm_1 Again, what for? Whatever the result of those calculations might be is irrelevant. The tank is full when it's full, not when some pre-calculated number is reached. You usually don't know exactly how much is actually left in the tank and the pump is measuring how much it puts in until it stops. So you only know for sure how much was missing once you actually filled the tank. For a rough estimate on the other hand I need no calculations.
I'm not saying you should never do that. All I'm saying is, that this is a task I never need to perform because filling a tank doesn't work that way. I can certainly see some use when working machines you usually don't drive to a fuel pump. But there again I don't need to calculate nothing. A rough estimate rounded to the closest number of fuel cans will be sufficient. Which is why I'm wondering why he would do that.
If you really need that, the gallon->liter conversion is pretty straight forward. As long as you are only doing estimates: multiply by four and you're done ...
"He designed a rocket to fly to England to show them how great the metric system was". LOL :-)
Wouldent be the first time a German tried to launch a rocket at England.
@@TheGrimPeeper, apparently the English didn't get the message about the metric system being superior - perhaps it was the Alabama accent :-). So the American on his gap year in Germany needed to keep sending them rockets until they understood it. That's why Britain is (mostly) metric now.
Spoken like a true Irishman...
@@TheGrimPeeper I see the reference went right over your head.
Well it wasn't that great because the bloody things kept crashing.
I grew up in South Africa and learned in the Imperial system until I was 12. When we changed to metric everyone in my class cheered! No more adding 33'9 and 3/8" to 21'8 and 25/64"!
Totally agree. I started my life with Imperial and with 3/16 and 8/32 and I still don't have a clue of what they are. Please give me a ratchet set and drill bits in metric!!!
to me always metric those number seem like a shitpost compilation lmao
That’s exactly why the imperial system is crap. Those ridiculous fractions of an inch.
People that were taught the Imperial system usually are slightly better at multiplying fractions. That's possibly the only positive 😂
@@arnolddavies6734 Some fields use tenths of an inch instead of fractions.
Any video that makes fun of the imperial system is a good video.
The international accepted unit to measure distance and speed of boats in the sea are nautical miles and knots.
The international accepted unit to measure elevation of planes are feet.
@@TheSyd19 more because of tradition than because of ease of use.
@@TheSyd19 And that sucks.
And also any unit now is based on metric, knots and feet are by definition conversions, I could use the length of my nose for that.
@@TheSyd19 and that's awful.
@@TheSyd19 If they change it, nothing really happens. Planes ain't gonna fall from the sky, it's just a conversion...lol.
I'm here to watch "YES" being stretched to 13 minutes.
yes, actually the video could have been one second length...
Same here!
lol
@@elvisdorkenoo Or as we say here, the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom at a temperature of absolute zero.
So a channel to avoid then. As that's a simplistic view. Then again, what do you expect from something with "engineering" in the title.
As an older Canadian engineer I had to learn to be fluent in both systems... HOWEVER I STRONGLY prefer working in metric. If you have to work for years, day in and day out with these units it quickly becomes clear metric is superior.... and I grew up as a native imperial user.
NASA does all its calculations in metric.
wait, how did you grow up as a native imperial user being Canadian?.. Please don't tell me Canada uses those as well :(
well yeah of course and in science and industry it's SI that's used. but to get the general public to switch you'd have to force people, make it illegal to use imperial, and of course that will never happen, nor should it. :)
@@neutrino78x it should happen, maybe not in such a forceful way but we really have to get all the people instead of 99% of them to use metric not shitperial
there's just so much confusion when people see shitperial units instead of normal ones, most can't comprehend those at all
@@kurushimee "shitperial" ha haha haha haaa haaa haaa h h h h h haaa aah aah ha HA HA hA hA hA hAh cough snort choke
I love a tiny error, the voiceover says "a lb is 0.435 kg" (9:12) which is just a perfect little example of how easy it is to make mistakes in such a silly conversion system.
but that's correct, a pound is 0.435kg
@@freshrockpapa-e77990.454kg or so I was taught?
British and American gallons are different sizes. INSANE!
The British measurement is wrong
America is using the original British one lmao
That's because the British measurements changed after American independence, kind of like how the Frenchies metric system changes its definition of a meter every so often, the meter was originally 1/10,000,000th the distance between the equator and the north pole assuming a perfectly round earth, then redefined as the length of a brass stick in Paris, then the stick was replaced with a platinum stick, which was replaced with a platinum-iridium bar suspended on 2 10mm cylinders spaced 57.1cm apart symmetrically in a 0°C room, then that was replaced by 1650763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum, which was replaced with the speed of light emitted from a Helium-Neon laser in a vacuum (however it is only practical to use an inert-gas atmosphere and estimate the refractive index to get an approximation of a meter)
And Canadian gallons
I believe that nautical and aviation miles, etc are also slightly different?
I'm an American electrical engineer. I HATE fractions and imperial. Any time I measure and 3D model anything, it's in cm.
This is Sooo Freaking stupid we still use imperial.
Agreed. Had to pull out a calculator just to convert miles-per-hour into feet-per-second among other Imperial measurements. It sucked.
As someone who uses the metric system, I'm proud to see that you are staying away from the imperial system. However, you should use either mm or m, not cm.
@@Wuzzup129 Well the metric system is not much better in that regard since km/h and m/s are ducked by the 60 sec 60 min division still. So 1 m/s is 3,6 km/h and yes i looked that one up. LOL
And using a old British thing - the ones USA's founding fathers fought to get rid off.
@@AustralianEX Strictly SI!
I'm so happy I live in Norway and where we only use the metric system! It was so fun to watch this video on my 75 inch televi... Oh, wait!
In India, we are also proudly metric, and I'm looking at a 15 inch laptop screen
Fight this and only describe screen sizes in cm or mm. Never say the size in inches. If you refuse to, you are just like those who refuse to give up Imperial units.
You also most likely count calories instead of joules when talking about diet ;)
@@Liggliluff We only use this to describe a size, we have no idea how big it really is (since I am good at math, I could calc it at least, but most people have no idea). I would actually like if companies would change the system to cm, but there is no reason for me to say my monitor is 80cm if no one can compare it to their monitor without going the extra step of using a calculator.
This annoys me so much as well. There's multiple situations like that, not just screen sizes. Fixing my bike I was surprised the tire was only marked with a PSI value instead of bar, despite the bike being made in Germany.
There's just a few things you can watch with great satisfaction:
Waterfalls, fires, and someone shitting on the imperial system
I'm British and the problem with this video is that the US doesn't and has never used the British Imperial system, as that system was established after the founding of the US. USA uses 'United States Customary Units'.
The most ironic part of this is that the US tried switching to metric directly after the metric system was invented and only failed because the guy that was supposed to carry the kilogram to the US got killed by pirates.
...and now we can figure what the One Piece is.
And the pirates used YARRRRds! :D
Well pirate and privateer are used interchangeably because apart from one being legal and one being illegal they do the same job.
@uncletigger When half of your comment is in all caps, the intended effect of each usage diminishes. It's a "Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation, but with emphasis instead
@uncletigger Dude... I was just giving you a writing tip. You're the one who assumed I was trying to counter your argument. Isn't there some saying about assumptions and making an ass out of yourself?
And I know you were joking, but using italics instead of caps wouldn't help. Relying on any stylistic technique as a crutch will reduce its effectiveness over time. If you were forced to eat your favorite food for every meal, after a week you'd be sick of it.
The point is this: Even though I actually agreed with the overall message of your writing, I didn't want to because it looked like it was written by a condescending Tourette's patient.
Alternative title “ Roasting Imperial System for 12 mins straight “
*complaining about occasionally doing basic math for 12 mins straight
Skerples yeah but doing basic math IS where the mistakes happen. Not everyone is going to be able to simple math 100% of the time correctly. At some point you will make a simple mistake.
@@Z0DI4C you're missing the point, it all about efficiency
@@Z0DI4C the simple math is even simpler while dealing with factors of 10
@@Z0DI4C basic math errors are waaaaaay
more frequent than anything else, a good engineer would tell you to triple check a simple sum even if you do it with a calculator
I am a very old man I was taught imperial and thought nothing of it.
In 1971 Britain started to go over to metric, there was panic.
However the metric system is a totally integrated system and is simple to use in fact it is beautiful
You say that but its shadows are still around. Milk and beer still gets sold in pints, and speed, height, and weight is still measured in imperial by many. Pretty sure the speed limits are still in miles to? Its a mess.
@@AshleyBlackwater I agree. In this day of age my kids at school only learn metric (kg, km...), but when asking about their weight with the school matron, she would still use stone! And one day my older boy came home asking how heavy is a stone. And I replied, give me a stone I will weight it for you...
@@AshleyBlackwater Milk isn't actually sold as a pint, the bottles are in litres, just with odd numbers. Pints are measured in mls by trading standard, who will allow a 5% error, which is why you pint is often only 540ml
Ashley Blackwater
I agree but it is still a beautifully simple, logical and integrated system.
And what is left of the imperial system is defined by the metric system
@@HerbertTowers If you clicked on any of those links, you'll see it is measured in ml. Yes, those quantities do equate to a sum of whole pints, but it is measured and labelled in metric.
The biggest advantage of all in SI metric system is that most scientific formulae don't have extraneous constants in them. F = ma just works. F = g m1 m2/r^2 so I don't have to remember a heap of random constants! I tend to do calculations in basic units: m, kg, s etc. that way I don't have factors of 1000 and stuff complicating my calculations. Unfortunately some scientists still hold on to old cgs (not SI) metric units. I wish they would get with the strength and go pure SI but at least they aren't using poundals and slugs... :)
cgs is the worst "system". When I first learned they even used it for electromagnetic units and even have various cgs systems like esu or emu I went crazy. I had to read a old book with some measurements of ferroelectric transition in TGS and saw the units. I wanted to cry knowing I had to convert these to compare them with my own measurements.
cgs proves useful when doing calculations especially in physical chemistry. chemists generally deal in masses of grams and not kg. volumetric measurements are also in mL and so it proves useful to have gm and mL instead of the 10^-3 factors everywhere
Or I could just keep measuring by saying “it’s about this big” while holding my hands apart
That wouldn't be politically correct to the metric purists out there. I wonder what system of measurement the ancient Egyptians used to build the pyramids? Or the Greeks when they built the Parthenon? Baffling.
remember Mr. Bean.... that didn't go well...
@@paulbradford6475 true! ...... there since more than 4500 years before ...
its time to change science have move a lot since then.(remember? computer, rockets, or satellites)
So, imperial
"It's about yay big"
Me from Myanmar finally figuring out why physics was so hard at school.
Ask the government to make some changes .
What's your country's reason for not using metric?
@@KriaeWe use both metric and imperial and we even have our own burmese measurement system...Too much systems and students get confused
@@ankeytimestein6423 Its still not the kind of goverment you like to ask for something.
@@ankeytimestein6423 in Myanmar, I think they'd prefer a new government. A change of system of measurement can come later...
Imagine learning thermodynamics in imperial units, goddamn...
Thermodynamics was developed in both English and metric units, because the principles are independent of units. Real scientists know that units are arbitrary.
@@GH-oi2jf yeah but there is something called 'engifuckineering"
Noooo...don’t gimme nightmares pls
@@GH-oi2jf I know that principles are independent of units, you are talking to an Engineer buddy. But anybody who has taken thermodynamics courses knows how things can get complicated really quickly when you are dealing with multiple properties or processes, now imagine adding the difficulty of English units to this.
Had to learn compressible fluid flow in both unit systems. Most foolproof option for me was to convert to metric at the start of a problem and convert back at the end. Otherwise I would usually have to include units in my equations with unit conversions, whereas in metric you don't have to if all of your units are the standard ones. (This gets crazy in some of the more complicated equations)
Also lb-mass, horsepower, and BTUs are garbage units
I only use two non metric units, the nautical mile and the knot. they work well in navigation because they easily convert to angles on our planet.
Yes. This makes sense.
My biggest frustration with Imperial system is using different units for different applications of the same measurement. Example: mechanical power is in Horsepower, electrical power is in kilowatts, and thermal power is in BTU per hour. In metric all three are kilowatts because the system reflects conservation of energy.
Watts you mean, kilo being the prefix...
You know that British HP is slighty bigger than Continental HP (CV)? England has stronger horses!
@@ferruccioveglio8090 I think you mean PS which is metric horsepower. BHP is Break Horsepower, not British HP. It means HP measured at the flywheel whereas Americans and Australians usually measure HP at the wheels WHP.
@Game Plays 1230 1 HP is approximately 750 watts. See I did that conversion in my head cuz I'm American
@@The_Invisible_Hand *energy* is in J. *power* is in W (aka J/s).
As an American (North Carolina), I actually agree that the Metric System is, indeed, *superior* . It's just too simple to mess up. I can't count how many times I had to pull out a calculator to convert feet to miles. Don't have to do that for meters to kilometers.
Trust me, in a math test, you will still convert your meters to kilometers because you don't trust your brain with such a simple task. I divided 14 by 2 during my math final because I didn't trust myself. Imagine the horrors in the Imperial System if this is the case...
@@sorrowandsufferin924 Probably not that far....only issues come with area and volume(because of cubes and squares).
Its just being a lot zeroes and tens, and absolutely nobody is going to remember how much volume in km is 168721934536032123 cm^3. I can only imagine the sheer mind####ery if they had to convert a similar number of inches cubed(or galons or whatever) into cubic miles. I mean, you could code a program to do that when necessary...but it sounds like extra work.
@@sorrowandsufferin924
Or the classic:
I put 3 + 4 into my calculator to be sure that it's 7 xD
and for some reason... as a Canadian, we still mostly use Imperials in the trucking industry... I don't recall ever using metric at all in terms of measurement and weight (still use liter instead of the imperial gallon). I mean, when you think a standard skid (or pallet) is technically 4 feet by 4 feet, and that a trailer is 9 feet wide by 53 feet long, it get easy to know how much place you have left compared to metric where you'd actually need to calculate to the meter how much there's left, and with pounds instead of kilogram because it is easier to know as well?
the way we calculate length would basically be like this: one skid (pallet) being 4x4 feet, takes half the trailers width, so we count it as half the length value. so 1 skid = 2 feet. knowing there's 53 ft in a trailer, let's round it to 52: we can get in 26 skids total at ground level. much easier than, let's say, 121.92x121.92 cm in a 1615.44x274.32 cm trailer. "oh damn... how many skids I got now? hum... 7? ok so how much cm is that? *get calculator out* so a standard skid length is... hmmm... 126cm? times 7, divided by 2... now to divide that by tr..." y'all get the idea. 7 skids? that's 14 ft out of 53, so still have 38 ft (39 if you want to be technical) of space left. (since not all freight can be standard 4x4)
now for weight: why pounds? it tends to be more precise in how much clearance we still have. else we'd have to constantly use grams over kilograms. ALSO simplify everything when we pickup freight going toward the US, our main neighbors, since that's what they use. makes needing to convert a moot point when we all use the same thing. max weight a semi tractor-trailer can be is 80'000 lbs. that would be 36'287.3896 kg. what's easier to remember?
"yeah I got about 2000 lbs of clearance (907.18474 kg)"
@@xXCursedWorgenXx So your case for imperial units is "we use them because everyone else uses them"? Those limit values seem highly suspect for being rounded down, thus you'd be presented perhaps as 36000kg or 36200kg for the max weight for the trailer, which is just as easy to remember. The only problem here comes from conversion of units, which wouldn't be a problem if everyone used the metric system. But that's the problem though - if most of the manufacturers don't present metric values, the metric system will be cumbersome to use. The only way to get rid of the imperial measurements is to legally require metric usable metric values to everything, at least alongside the imperial.
Maybe.
As a US engineer, THANK YOU - I cannot stand dealing with Imperial units. After so many years I even think in metric.
Greetings from Germany, may i ask you if they teach you the metric system in school like high school or college? or can you kinda decide if you want to be thaught in the metric system (because you choose an engineering branch of education or something)?
@@merkurysmerkuries7997 yes they do teach both imperial and metric in grade school (younger than high school, think 8 year olds), and have done so since the 70's.
@@merkurysmerkuries7997 Yes, every single person in the United States learns the metric system in school. Science courses at universities are taught in the metric system (I'm a university science faculty member). I have heard heard from time to time that Imperial units are still used in some engineering disciplines, but those are in addition to metric, not instead of metric. To put it shortly, this metric vs imperial debate is entirely pointless, because science in the United States is done in metric just like everywhere else in the world. And as to which system people use in daily life, who cares? It's not worth arguing about. If you buy a pound of beef or 0.45 kg of beef, who cares? It's the same amount of beef. In daily life, people use whichever measurements they feel most comfortable with, and everyone gets along just fine. Schöne Grüsse nach Deutschland.
@@ChemMJW : Well said, Matthew! 👍 This is the point I've been making for years!
@@ChemMJW live in a metric country but I still can't visualize people's heights in anything but feet and inches. 6 foot does seem more impressive than 184 cm.
As a graduate Electric Engineer, ALL my studies were in Metric as all electrical units are metric- UN Standard (MkSA). Using the archaic "Imperial " units is quite simply ridiculous.
Everybody uses the same electrical units, so there is no issue at all, is there?
@@GH-oi2jf yup. Though I remember taking some Mechanical engineering courses. I had such a fun time getting accustomed to imperial units, the difference between lbm and lbf certainly messed with my mind.
@@GH-oi2jf no, the cgs system uses different stuff
@@GH-oi2jf the thing is: With metric all units are connected to each other. And electrical units like Volt are defined by metric units (1 Volt is 1 (kg*m^2)/(A*s^3). You see the meter and the kilogramm will show up here too. So when analyzing problems you can really play around with the units and use these metric definitions to draw connections from electrical problems to mechanical designs, physical behaviour or chemical requirements using all those metric laws and equations developed by all those clever scientist celebrities in the past. The possibilities are endless.
But how long is that in football fields? And how many airliners does that weigh?
Freaking youngsters! In my days we measured weight in elephants!
Toyota Corollas
@@heyhoe168 I mean clouds can be weighed in elephants
@@benkeates5396 Some History Channel Science ish episode did explain things in monster trucks.
@@fongog6573 wrong channel XD
Alternate title: "Real Engineering roasts Imperial for 13 minutes"
Minus 8 seconds...
and fails the common sense test totally, typical for the lunatics of the French Revolution that destroyed each other and gave us the metric system as a result of their failure, a completely impractical system too incompetent to relate to the real world.
@@russedav5 I bet you have never even tried using metric before
I had to use it because of a physics class and I love it
@@russedav5 *laughs in metric using universal constants*
Metric Engineering: *The Real Engineering!*
Imperial Engineering: _If Donald Trump was a unit system._
real engineering ur a legend. "he designed a rocket just to show the British how much he despised it" *V2 launches*
I'm a French engineer. And We tolerate only one none metric measure : the pint of beer !
Rack-mounted instruments around the world use the 19-inch rack.
Huh. I never thought of that. Are there any other niche places where imperial carries on?
Then again, if it's like here in Italy, we use the term without even any clear grasp of what's supposed to be.
For how many of us are concerned, a "pint" is just a kind of glass you use for beer rather than an actual unit of measurement.
There are several things used worldwide which are designed using inches. The ones most commonly used are automobile wheels, Schrader valves to inflate tires, threads to mount cameras to tripods, and square drives for socket wrenches.
I have learned that there is a Metric alternative to the 19-inch rack. I think it is a little larger, so any equipment designed to fit in a 19-inch rack would fit in the Euro rack with a suitable face plate.
Even the ordinary 19-inch rack was partially Metricized. The original design had threaded mounting holes built in. Current ones can be used with either US or Metric hardware.
@@josephwodarczyk977 Diagonal of tv's.
"There are 2 kinds of countries -- Those that use the Metric system and those that used the metric system to go to the moon and later crashed a probe into mars because they were confused by metric units"
-Scott Manley
Scott Manley here!
@@wilhellmllw3608 Fly saf- oh dear
Measure safe! 😁
They didn’t crash a probe into Mars. They covertly carried out an excavation of the Martian surface. They’ll go back later to look for signs of past Martian civilization.
Joke’s on them though... they happened to excavate an area the past civilization had set aside as a nature preserve. There will be no signs of civilization there.
@@CarFreeSegnitz Mission failed succesfully
As far as I know, Liberia and Myanmar have begun final transition to metric. So the U.S. are finally alone.
Myanmar has basically transitioned and liberia has started
Any sources please?
The thing is, the US has a very big stick, with which they can force others to tolerate their imperial system and adapt to it - at present, most of the world can't afford to just plainly refuse to do business with them until they switch. And they won't, because internal politics and the voters' support and all that :D To be honest, I can't imagine an intellectual, educated US citizen having any problems leaving imperial system behind. But the dumb ones, too lazy to learn something new, still make up too big a chunk of this nation's population... enough that if one party wishes to abandon it and the other promises not to, we'll know in advance that Republicans are going to win.
@@NaqrSeranvis The problem is that the country’s measurements for roads and other things are measured and have been measured for years.
Switching to metric means that they’ll be reverted to decimal values which don’t look nice. Also, it’ll be kinda expensive adjusting all of those signs throughout the entire nation. It’s just cheaper for people to just be aware of both of the systems and not spend potentially hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to transition everything to metric.
It’s not a matter of laziness as it is a matter of practicality. Also, I don’t see how the point of bringing politics into this.
You know, there is no need to think that half of the country are stupid. It kinda makes you sound like a person that likes to looks down on people.
@@NaqrSeranvis Donald Trump is no more so maybe US will transfer to it in some years
Sees title: this is gonna be a fun one.
And wasn't disappointed
Exacly hahahaha
Sees title: Oh, I know this one!
I've lived my whole life using the metric system and can't physically comprehend why would someone use Imperial other than for cultural reasons.
Unfortunately those cultural reasons are stronger than sound logic
I'm British and the problem with this video is that the US doesn't and has never used the British Imperial system, as that system was established after the founding of the US. USA uses 'United States Customary Units'.
For me it has allways been helpful to think of one liter of water as one kg, and one cubicmeter as a tonn. For me it brings meter and weight together in a simple way.
Just as 1 pint weighs 20oz. Everyone knows that don't they? Don't assume that just because you don't know something, no-one else does.
And I think you'll find that the metric unit is metre. A meter is just something which measures.
@@davenoble1207 You obviously did not get the point that in metric, measures are connected in a decimal system, easy to understand and remember. How many inches in an oz? But, of course, stick to an antiquated system the rest of the world has left behind. It is good for our competitiveness to leave you behind.
@@davenoble1207 I see a difference between 1x = 1y and 1x = 20y. Of course you can know. And 2, 3, 7, 1420 are all conversions in that systems. That's plain broken by design.
But I want to add: There are historical values used in modern language still but they are all connected to the metric system today. In Germany a pound is 1/2 kg (or 500g), a dozen is 12, a "zentner" is 50 kg, 1bar is 100 kPa, a "Einfacher", a small pint of liquor is 2cl and so on. Even "Zoll" which equals inch is still used for some specific things but it is on a decline just as PS (horse powers) and kcal (kilo calories).
But this is for sales (50 inch TV, 200kcal in 100g cheese, a zentner bag of potatoes ... nobody would use that in production or science apart from bar maybe as it is about air pressure.
BTW: If imperial systems are so good do it on money again. GB changed in 1971, before that a pound was 20 shilling and 1 shilling was 12 pence. Now 1 pound is 100 pence. Much better. Have fun.
As long as you are on earth.
@@zefallafez always. 1kg is the mass and that is constant. What changes is weight which is equal to a force. We measure force in newton. 1kg on earth gets gravity force of about 9.81 N. But in the moon this is less. But it is still 1 kg.
The German friends bit caught me completely off guard. That was amazing.
yeh, NEIN NEIN NEIN
Watch the Hunt on Prime. There's a whole episode or two on in it.
I've known this since I was a young lad. The Americans brought literally hundreds of former Nazis over to the states to work in the rocket/space race. Some unfortunately were captured by the Soviets and were forced to do the same on rockets in the Soviet Union.
NEIN friends he had
@Binary Grid I see you watched the video too
The Alabama Rocket man story killed me as a german 🤣
DIESER TEIL DES CHATS IST EIGENTUM DER BUNDESREPUBLIK DEUTSCHLAND ALS RECHTSNACHFOLGERIN DES DEUTSCHEN REICHES.
Absolut. Das war einfach heftig
Nine, Nein, NEIN! 😂
@@warphole0369 Haben wir ihn schon besetzt?
Exactly what your rockets did to Londoners... ahahaha just joking.
Canada switch to the metric system in the mid 70’s, when I was a teenager in the sciences, so I am quite familiar with both. However, when it comes to people’s height (and to a lesser extent, weight), I still calculate metric to imperial for comparison. Everything else I prefer metric.
The uk also tends to do height using imperial and often weight as well. We also use miles for distance, because why be reasonable
I’m a 90s Canadian kid and I use imperial and metric interchangeably… though I can’t convert anything in imperial.
Well but I think that will phase out, in Germany we never use imperial units. The only thing I know is my grandma using the German pound (Pfund) from time to time (it's exactly 500g), but if only old people use something it will cease to exist
@@haselnuss43 Wow, that's really interesting. I'd never heard of a Pfund and didn't know that metric pounds were a thing. I've only ever encountered imperial pounds, which are approximately 454g
5.2k americans got triggered...
Is this even how they count people? Like, isn't someone 0.85632 feet or something?
the world: this video has 1 million views
american: "the people who watch this video is 4 "footbalfield" dense of people when they watch usain bolt"
as a non american i can definitely confirm that
It's like 0818 Yard Eagles per Cheeseburger with 76 Guns per War crime
.85856 hot dogs per school shooting*
@@subatenome yooooo
As an American engineering student, I’m just here for the roast on imperial units lol
So do you guys have to calculate in imperial or metric? Thought maybe unis still believe in science...
@@ankitkasi5595 I think they do their calculations in metric, and give answer in imperial. I could be wrong tho.
@@silverhusky7993 sounds practical
Ok
Architecture and civil engineering is still done in Imperial. At my job, sometimes we will get a job in metric. That sucks, because it's usually in CM which means to do every little simple thing requires a calculator.
Myanmar does not use imperial units, they have their own and have mostly metricated now -- it's essentially metric for at least 5-7 years.
Liberia announced metrication in 2018 and fully intends to complete it "soon".
You're aware of this, but not that the U.S. uses U.S. Customary Units? The system is based off of Metric, and the U.S. is mostly metric in STEM fields.
Not really true....most books in Myanmar are still in Imperial system. Lots of projects i made there still insists on using imperial
It takes a lot of time before americans adopt in metric system, but I hope one day they will evolve
Jordan Lathrop Doesn’t matter if most Americans still use inch foot pound and fahrenheit in everyday lives
And every once in while they come across a situation where it does matter and they're fucked
the mix of units is the absolute best way to guarantee a spectacular failure
Best thing ever in real life: 1 liter of water = 1 kg.
Oh yeah well 1 fluid ounce of water equals 1 ounce of water.
@@joiseystud Both are different measurements. It's about a relation between a volume of water (Liter or cubic decimeter) and an amount of its mass (kg).
@@joiseystud Well, but what about a cubic inch? But maybe it just takes a bit. Decifoot for decifoot, you will fin a way to use another completely weird system.
@R. Schowiada71 And if we wanna piss everybody off we throw in that the density of water alone varies due to its temperature etc. which would mean even bigger differences :P
But yeah, you're completly right though.
Well, that's only true if your water's temperature is 39.2 Fahrenheit :), (just kidding, I meant 277.15 Kelvin or if you insist, 4 degrees Celsius).
Don’t even get me started on FAHRENHEIT...
Actually it's the least flawed of the imperial units. Yeah, Fahrenheit's defining points are really weirdly established, but in the end Celsius is just another arbitrary scale as well (though it is more scientifically defined). Fahrenheit doesn't have any inconsistent relations between several units, unlike all the other Imperial units. Though that probably is just because Imperial system doesn't have multiple units of temperature.
@@wombat4191 Hmm... Celsius is just a practical scale for me. If I hear it's 0 degrees Celsius outside, I know it's freezing, and slippery. If my water boils, I know it's 100 degrees. That are neat rounded values based on practical values. I don't disagree with you about Farenheit being the least flawed of the imperial units, but it feels weird for me that when everything outside is frozen over, the Farenheit scale still gives a positive value.
@@jclosed2516 Yeah I agree with you, Celsius at least feels more convenient as I'm used to it. That being said, people who are used to Fahrenheit will say the exacts same, arguing the normal "0 = really cold weather, 100 = really hot weather, and 100 is also the limit of fever". I don't really blame them, because it is a rare imperial unit that is not objectively inferior to its metric counterpart (except for scientific use). It's just a matter of how you view the temperature scale for everyday use. Celsius users see it as the area around 0, while Fahrenheit users see it as a scale between 0 and 100.
Given that Celsius isn't in the IS (the unity for temperature is Kelvin, where 0K is the minimum possible temperature: -273.15°C and +-1°C = +-1K):
Fahreneit who was the best at making thermometers at the time and Celsius (whi didn't invent Centigrade: the actual Celsius scale has 0 and 100 swapped) made a scale to measure in a specific range without needing negative temperatures for the field of application (respectively meteorology and medicine)
Seriously? When you tell a Brit that it's 32 degrees outside, instead of bringing a jacket and earmuffs they get dressed in shorts and flip-flops. Weird people.
Went to engineering school in the US. In the beginning, every student was adamant about using imperial system cause they are proud Americans. Then every student was required to learn the metric system. Then came the fury of every student from hating doing HW problems in imperial and metric, and then despising the imperial system afterward.
WTF is a British Thermal Unit…
Omg I rant about the BTU all the time. When I got to thermo I wanted to burn down the whole school over that one.
A BTU is the amount of body heat exerted by one standard British aristocrat unit per minute, measured of course, at a comfortable room temperature for taking high tea, and with zero social pressure from the lower classes, at the altitude of Windsor Castle.
@@Yvaelle Underrated!
@@Yvaelle the worst bit about it all is that your explanation is probably more sensible than the actual reasoning behind the BTU....
Pretty sure a cup of tea will be involved in it somewhere though! 🤣
@@mor4y It was originally British Tea Unit but the Queen disliked using tea as a symbol for anything nationally identifiable other than the national fruit.
It would be also nice to have similar video about different types of power outlet sockets in different countries.
British are the safest, unless you happen to step onto one at Night. Tom Scott made a good Video explaining why.
@@Genius_at_WorkThe Brazilian default is the safest. Half of each pin is plastic, only the tip of it is metal (which is more than enough to make contact), In addition to the connector having a format of a type of hexagon, which is mirrored in the socket so that it is impossible to get shocked unless you stick something in there by purpose. This shape also makes it much more difficult to cause accidents with water, no matter if there is ou isn't anything connected.
@@gn4sty731I believe the British also follow the semi plastic plug style.
@@gn4sty731 That design only came into Brazil in 1998. The UK design was established in 1947.
The "so, on his gap year, he built a rocket that flew to the UK to show them how great the metric system is" made me lmao
Me too, just remember who won that argument!
@@gregjewell4356 Well, the British DID switch to metric so...
Greg Jewell Russia?
@@darcyryan9693 Everyone knows the USSR steals the technology from the USA just like China...duh!
@@TripleCZ so... their mistake! Alfa Romero, Mini's,
0:44 Myanmar is currently undergoing metrification isn't it? Their speed signs, weather forcasts etc are now metric, and they're slowly moving over.
Myanmar doesnt use the Imperial units, they use their own traditional measurements (which are weirder than imperial units wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_units_of_measurement )
@@Ida-xe8pg your own link states that they've been adopting metric since 2013, and gives the same examples I gave. They may still use their own system in some areas, but (as I said) they are in the process of converting to metric.
@@BritishTeaLover I said that they dont use Imperial units not metric units
@@Ida-xe8pg ah, my bad, I didn't properly read your comment sorry. Though that link does give examples of how they were using imperial units like miles and gallons
@@Ida-xe8pg They use some imperial units in combination with their traditional units.
As an American i strongly cast my vote for a full switch to metric for the simple reason that the bridge problem gave me a headache which was immediately cured when he started talking in metric.
Then please vote for someone who voices their support for metrication, regardless of the party. I know you guys are pretty limited in your votes since you essentially only have 2 parties that ever make it into the parliament but still. The only way for America to metricize is for the congress to force it. No amount of "voluntary conversion on the state level" will ever work.
@@Matihood1 First there are 4 major parties in congress just two always get lumped in with the Democratic Party by the media, and second the US and France developed the metric system a long time ago for legal and scientific purposes and most Americans know metric well enough that the only reason a full conversion hasn’t happened yet is cost to business and even that reason is quickly fading
@@collinfrye9555 yeah, from what I'm aware of in most business and scientific applications metric gets used (to some exception, I believe carpentry and house building still uses feet and inches, even in Canada apparently) with Imperial being most of the "day to day" stuff, but Liter already being a well accepted unit (2L bottles of soda after all)
I second this. Metric for 'Murica!
What bridge PROBLEM ? a mile of 1" spaced bolts needs 63360 bolts. I didn't need a calculator to work that out ! ( Or 63060 bolts if it's an American mile.)
I remember at the beginning of my chemical engineering curriculum, we’d receive some easy mass and energy balancing problems that would have mismatched units. One pressure in psi, another in kPa, and one in mmHg for good measure. The purpose of this was to ensure we understood dimensional analysis and could deal with any units, but of course this was always frustrating for us students because it was usually unrelated to the course content. Eventually once the classes got a lot harder and the equations got longer, we never strayed from the metric system.
However, when I entered industry I realized exactly why my earlier professors gave us those annoying problems… many industries cling to the imperial system for dear life. There are definitely some newer start-ups and facilities now that are being smart about their units because its much easier to keep everyone on the same system if you’re starting fresh. However, basically all the old plants religiously use the imperial system; its deeply engrained and difficult to transition because it certainly does cost a lot of time and manpower to replace all of the necessary instrumentation and train the operators and technicians.
The benefit to investing in a complete overhaul of the instrumentation, SOPs, manuals, training, etc. to use the metric system is often going to be negligible for day-to-day operations. It can even be detrimental if it isn’t done properly, leading to the same errors discussed in this video that occur when transitioning between two unit systems.
So really, you can’t blame American engineers. It’s just not our fault, we’d prefer to use metric because we’re one of the few demographics that appreciate it’s ease of use. However the people that run the businesses and are down on the ground don’t think that way. They’ve gotten along fine with their imperial units and as such require us to produce products and services that utilize them. In academia and highly scientific and technical industries it is different because a great percentage of the working population in those fields do understand the value to the metric system.
Well said. I'm an engineer and metric does provide easier math, but I don't know what the result means until I convert it to imperial 🙂.
I’d have thought industry would jump on it just as quickly as science, but guess not, and you outlined the reason (cost of change) very well.
@@ArruVisionif im not mistaken, the US automotive industry once lobbied against changing to metric because the lobbying costs were cheaper than retooling costs.
Ah yes, Murrica the land of the money god. If the money god says it's cheap, the Muricans can do it, if the money god says they won't be able to buy 17 yachts that year but only 16, the smart and intelligent Muricans will not do it. Wouldn't want to make the big money priest unhappy, would be
@@LudwigVaanArthans 🤨
World: *uses metric system*
America: Cheeseburgers per freedom eagle with gun
Football fields per war crimes
Russia's is bears per corrupted politician
Charlie day put it best, “Rock, Flag, and Eagle”
hot dogs per school shooting
War crimes per corporate bailout
I thought the "football fields" units is the most superior...
...and "Olympic swimming pools" is the preferred unit of volume.
You spelt Popes per square mile wrong
Borna Siroki - And don't forget the popular "Furlongs per fortnight" unit of speed!😃 Extensively used at CERN.
@@julesdomes6064 Washing machines for smaller volumes
Toyota Corolla is the ultimate measurement
My company switched from imperial to fully metric in the 90s. We’re in a technical industry. It wasn’t until I started working as an engineer that I realized just how comically absurd was the imperial system I grew up with. I’ve gone out of my way to intuit metric units. Slowly, globalization is thankfully killing off Imperial. Almost every American auto is now assembled with metric bolts. I’ve moved all my SAE sockets and wrenches to a separate drawer to get them out of cluttering the metric I actually use. It’s not just that I can now appreciate metric- I’ve come to prefer it enough that I hate imperial. Ironically the products we make in the UK still have imperial mixed with metric while USA made is entirely metric.
At least you aren't in the UK working on old equipment that has Whitworth fasteners, which have radiused root and crest with 55° threads, British Association fasteners. Most mechanics who encounter anything Whitworth use an adjustable spanner (“Crescent” wrench) or “Vise-Grips.”
I used to have a large set of taps and dies for odd thread sizes. Older (1969 and earlier) Citroëns had hundreds of 5 mm × 0.75 mm threads. “Standard” metric is 5 mm × 0.8 mm.
Then 11 mm × 1 mm seat belt attachment screws. Lots of 7 mm × 1 mm screws where everyone else uses 8 mm × 1 or 1.25 mm threads.
The world is going to ISO metric.
@@algrayson8965 Great point. Darn Whitworth. Invented the modern bolt geometry, then had someone improve on his idea and leave him in the dust. The standard 60° ISO thread is so ubiquitous now, it's amazing anything else persists.
@@algrayson8965 And that's why the Germans often call the adjustable spanner "Engländer". ;)
@@algrayson8965 Well, strictly speaking, Britain and Canada abandoned the Whit thread from in 1949 - adopting instead the the US Imperial 'Unified' (or now Unified National) 60 degree thread. Not only is the UN thread inferior to Whitworth, the Brits and the Canucks almost immediately binned it in favour of ISO metric threads.
@@alastairbarkley6572 Whitworth thread and screw head system was carefully engineered, paying little attention to nice even ¹/64”, ¹/32”, ¹/16”, ⅛” increments. The 55° thread angle, precisely radiused thread roots (and crests) contributed to thread strength and low seizing potential.
There’s another point: when converting imperial one hardly use all significant digits, so there’s always some error which can accumulate. That doesn’t happen with metric: 1 km is exactly 1000 m, not only the conversation is easier to make, it is always precise.
Give me a third of a meter.
@@wta1518 talking about unit conversions within the same system
@@bearcb Metric doesn't have unit conversions.
@@wta15180,3333 m
@binkobinev2248 Why would you need a centimeter?
“So great, that he designed a rocket to fly to England to show them” shows a picture of a V-2 rocket lmao this had me rolling
Great at taking off, not so good on the landing ;P
@Anant Tiwari e
Wernher von Braun is seriously one of the greatest men of history just in terms of the roasts people make of him. Tom Lehrer's song on him alone is legendary.
Ari Rahikkala Any controversial historical figure will have their fair share of roasts
Jerry Rupprecht calling him controversial would be an understatement lmao
The imperial system is a slighty advanced version of "small" and "big".
1 foot long divided by the distance of the Disney world castle equals one covid mutation
hmm, just thinking about what lord flashheard would use: imperial or WOEF WOEF.😄
@Cybaeus B Could you sum it up? I think nobody is going to watch 2 hour video just to understand one comment.
Best comment :) Merci pour le sourire, morti271 LOL
@@eklhaft4531 - LOLOL ... So glad my coffee mug wasn't to my lips :) Take care Ekl ... :)
The amount of sarcasm when describing Wernher von Braun being an Alabama native and showing off his rockets is the funniest thing ever. Love it!
Or the lamest thing ever. Depending on your sense of humor.
"Gap year" lmao 😂
Five, how he said five when counting his friends is magestic
Remember the Saturn V is "on loan" to the Smithsonian.
svgPhoenix ok karen
When I was learning to fly it seemed crazy that the (American) planes we were flying measured aircraft, passenger, baggage and fuel weights in pounds, but they measured fuel volume in US gallons (which bizarrely are not even the same as an Imperial gallon!), and we purchased our fuel in litres - lots of room for error there, even in light aircraft! Fortunately some light aircraft owners have been sensible enough to have the aircraft weights converted to kg and the fuel dipsticks to litres, removing most of the potential errors.
We think the Imperial gallon is bizarre. In olden times, “gallon” was not a fixed volume. It was a container for liquids and there were different gallons for different liquids. The US gallon was the British wine gallon. When the British formulated the Imperial System, half a century after the United States had left the Empire, they chose to standardize on a different gallon. Why they didn’t check with the USA first I can’t imagine.
"Alabama rocket Man". That's Destin from Smarter Every Day.
Destin is smartish, von Braun is a genius. Big difference.
@@manickn6819 Destin may be smart-ish, but at least... he is smarter every day! quite literally
@Khaffit Destin supports facts and truth.. So you can guess if he would support a totalitarian regime. He did work in the defense industry as a full time Missile Flight Test Engineer at Redstone Arsenal, so I guess he did support regimes that would be willing to kill millions if needed.
@@Kiwjtastic aren't we all getting smarter every day ..... at least till our memory starts to fail.
@Khaffit I think that you should probably question the regime that chose to turn a blind eye and not put him on trial. Instead they relocated him and put him in a top post to get to space. Proud moment for them if I recall correctly built on the backs of the same regime that killed millions.
Everyone knows that metric is pound for pound a better system
bazinga?
kg for kg maybe lol
@@wademccomas4004 r/wooosh
A pound is half a Kilogramm so where's the punchline?
@@svenbonne 45.39% of a kg :)
'Is The Metric System Actually Better?'
Short Answer: Yes
Long Answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees
Yes ^100
How many inches long was that yes?
@@augutusiroh3836 about the length in centimeters*2.54
Maybe divide a meter into 3 parts. So .3333333333333333333333333333333333333 of a meter divide a yard into 3 you get one foot.
Wrong:
Short Answer: milliYes
Normal Answer: Yes
Long Answer: kiloYes
Very Long Answer: megaYes
:)
The imperial system isn't one system, it's 3 or 4 separate systems that were forcibly bolted together by creating conversion equations.
And that's just the system for measuring length, all the other stuff was also just haphazardly applied with zero consideration.
Kinda like the English language, it isn't a language, it's several languages in a trench coat that randomly mugs other languages for random parts.
That's why English spelling is such as mess: English adopts words from other languages without altering the spelling. As an example, the word "colonel" is spelled via one language but spoken via another language.
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade-which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go fuck yourself,’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”
― Josh Bazell, Wild Thing
Except only one of those is still true, one milliliter is one cubic centimeter. The others are no longer precise enough, which causes people to not look them up when they should.
@@zeroone8800 density of water is off by 2 ten of a gram/ml. Calories are still defined by heating water, but in joules.
Unfortunately that's where the system falls apart, as a calorie is 4.184 joules.
@@zeroone8800 Do you think that european scientists just use approximation instead of precise calculation?
@@wyattroncin941 Calories are no longer defined by the heating of water. The Calorie is 4184 J by definition.
And you're working with STaP water... exactly never, so none of that matters! Glad we could clear up why that argument is stupid.
The answer is roughly 284 calories, though.
"This is complicated. But feel lucky you learn it here. If you were over the pond you'd have to do things in doubleinch per quarterweek or similar nonsense."
- One of my engineering Professors -
@Bat-Vader Except on shrove Tuesday.
Ah yes because a system where you have meters which are too big to be useful for most things, and then the next smallest unit is a fucking 100th of it. Inches can be unreasonably small, meanwhile you're out here using a unit 2 point something times smaller, not to mention how to give any remotely useful differenve in temperature for Celsius, you need decimals and to be even halfway precise you're getting into 2 decimal places, meanwhile with F you almost never need a single decimal, and when you do it's never more than tenths
@@kevincronk7981 You idiots think using fractions is a good idea. Hint: MOST people have quite a bit of trouble with doing fraction calculations. Which is really some *very* easy math, but then George Carlin about the average person comes to mind.
@@kevincronk7981 These are absolute non-arguments. The easy convertability eliminates every point in them.
How much is 117 inches in yards again? And in miles, feet, legions? So much for being useful...
Modern engineering always calls for decimals... both in inches and mm, but usually one less in mm - the standard engineering unit.
Whenever you don't need a decimal in °F, you'll also not need one in °C. Name a single area where you don't need a decimal in °F but you absolutely need one in °C.. One!
@@kevincronk7981 Sherlock, take the meter and divide it in units of 10 or 100 or 1000...how many inches in 54 yards?
By the sound of his voice, i can tell he is pissed when people say imperial is better
And with a reason
who isnt?
That is very funny
@@arne4926-x8o Many Americans aren't, sadly.
Zing/on
What's half of 2322mm?
What's half of 7' 7 27/64"?
Teacher's waiting...
This is a contrived problem, typical of the sort of thing Metric monotheists use to try to make some obscure point. The first problem with it is that the precision is biased. A mm is only about 1/25 inch. We don’t use 64ths much. The second problem is that we don’t necessarily express fractions as ratios. The third problem is using multiple units to express the length. The number in US units would be better expressed as 91.4 inches, where the precision is .04 inch. One half of that is 45.7 inches, which is as easy to do in your head as half of 2422.
Carpenters, who do express fractions of inches as ratios, have other ways of finding the center than arithmetic. The diagonal method is a common way.
@@GH-oi2jf just stop it. this system is indefensible
@@GH-oi2jf Where do I find a tape measure that's marked for said 91.4 or 45.7 inches? All I could find in any hardware store ore those marked with 1/2, 1/4, 1/8/, 1/16, ....
The metric system is kilometers ahead.
You can say streets too, it's neither metric nor imperial ;)
streets ahead
Imperial is miles ahead.
Miles > Kilometers
A Yottameter ahead
@@adamgonzalez7450
The beauty of the metric system is that i could use arbitrarily humongous prefixes, like megameters, so it could always win.
megameters >> miles
When in Canada we switch to the metric system, i was like "Wow! How simple and logical" and I threw the imperial system out of my mind.
I'm in Australia and I did the same thing. The only thing I retained in imperial was my height so my grandma would understand what I was talking about. She didn't get 1.91m.
angst film The British use it a lot less than America does.
@angst film
Yes! It's difficult because there is no logical relations between the units.
See this video for a glimpse of the hilarity of the system:
ruclips.net/video/r7x-RGfd0Yk/видео.html
How powerful is the engine in your car?
Congratulations! You now are officially in a Metric Club
For me its the ability to do stuff like 'oh i dont have a 1L measure' but i have a scale so i can measure out 1kg of water and thanks to the metric system its 1L of water. I actually had to do that once!!
Keep in mind that it's only true for pure water. If there's impurities like ions or calcium (which is likely, unless you're using distilled water), 1L of water won't weigh exactly 1kg, but rather slightly more. Another thing to keep in mind is that 1L of water only weighs 1kg at ambient pressure at sea level (i.e an elevation of roughly 0m), so there's that too. Still, should be pretty accurate for most purposes
@@nocturn9x approx.. it works ( way better than trying to fill it up from just the looks of it)
@@AAA-b3y Yes, which is why I said it works in most cases. Definitely better than eyeballing it
@@nocturn9x wai../ wah how did i not read that even tho i read the whole cmnt .sry.
for real. for every líquid similar to water (roughly same density), say milk or apple juice; I just weight a kilogram of it or any fraction for cooking. slight differences on density and pressure wont make It a 1:1 match but a few mililiters of difference don't matter for most things
I love that we can hear in his voice how he's just trying to remain chill and calm but deep inside wants to scream and shout on how stupid the Imperial system is LMAO
If the imperial system is so bad how come the greatest country in the world doesn’t use the metric system?
@@one9752 For the sake of argument, let's just say, that the USA is the greatest country (whatever you're basing that on). Best doesn't mean perfect, and as you see in the video, the imperial system is very flawed.
But really, what are you basing that on? The titles of happiest, safest and most equal countries go around in the nordic countries (no, I am not from there).
@@unkreativity1596 I basing this on very simple things, it’s also telling that most internet users and people who watched this video are American, it’s simply the best run country in the world, no other country has done better for society.
@@one9752 so baseless 🤦♂️
@@one9752 "best country in the world" America is falling apart bruh
I think Brian have finally had enough. I don't blame him.
I think we all have had enough, judging by the comments.
Lmao
He screwd up something because of a conversion error, didn't he?
@@sekritdokumint9326 probably when rounding decimals, tends to happen.
makes things go boom usually.
While working for the U.S. federal government, I found a regulation that stated the U.S. would convert completely to the Metric system by 1987.
yes and they were canceled because of those American housewives who refused to buy because they were confused
They stopped because the Democrats refused lol
@@ctbully Nope, republicans
@@toddthreess9624 Which was probably a good decision. Using imperial is much better than crippling your own economy.
@@toddthreess9624 Lol, switching to metric doesn't mean putting all your tools in the bin.
My favorite crazy measurement has to be automobile tires. For example, 235/35ZR19. "235" is the width of the tread, in millimeters. "35" is the height of the tire, as a ratio of the tread width. "Z" is the speed rating where letters of the American alphabet correspond to increasing ranges of speed, except that they aren't in strict alphabetical order. The series ends with "STUHVZWY". "R" means radial, and "19" is the wheel size, in inches.
There's also difference between British and American Imperial Units.
I remember Adam Savage saying _"a pint's a pound, the world around."_
Me, a (British) European, thinking _"568ml of water does _*_not_*_ = 454g"_
Yes. Their oz are slightly different sizes, and the number of oz in a pint differ. A British gallon is nearly a quart larger than a US gallon.
@@adamlugowski3423 and the the Long ton is heaver.
America doesn’t even use imperial. They use US Customary Units.
@@YEETMAN-dt9mb a.k.a. FREEDOM UNIT
Using units based on the human body stopped being sensible when we stopped using body parts to measure things.
More on that, we just don't have a padronized size of body, everyone's different. No way we can be so precise that manner
No it didn’t it’s intuitive to understand because everyone knows roughly how big the average human is.
@@kevinmoynihan5118 Still not worth having units spaced by factors of 12, 3, 5.5 (!), 4, 10, 8 (I let everyone figure out what those units are).
I also find it ironic that the country that clings to the mile (literally 1000 double paces) is also the country where the longest distance the average person walks is across the parking lot to the grocery store.
@@HotelPapa100 It is worth it because we understand it. Also I don’t get the point of the grocery store comment either.
@@kevinmoynihan5118 A mile (or a league, for that matter) is something a person who walks to get from A to B has a grasp of. When driving it‘s just any old length dimension. And against „but I don't WANT to get accustomed to anything new!“ only time will help. Some stubbornness just has to die out.
"Is the metric system actually better?"
Short answer: yes
Long answer: absolutely yes
@William Loudermilk ah yes, measuring everything by bodyparts, nice
@William Loudermilk hey since you are defining everything by teaspoons, what if I wanted to use your system but my oh so terrible country uses slightly bigger spoons?
*thanks! xD*
@@QuantumFluxable My household uses Chinese spoons to stir tea, so we're double screwed!
Funny enough I spoke some time ago with a Polish pilot that previously was flying only on Soviet Equipment and now was flying on the F-16 and he considered the imperial values in feet and knots a way better and precise measurment system than metric on MiG-29
Is the metric system actually better?
Us: that building 4.20 football fields tall
That's a good argument. BUT. There are 3 skyscrapers that are about that tall (4.20 football fields). Guess where they are? Russia, Vietnam and China. Two are communist, one is former communist. Opposite of america. Hence, this completely refutes your argument that america is dank because they use the imperial system.
@@nottsoserious I cannot argue with that. Indeed, America is dank.
Sadly they use "fußballfelder" in the metric germany as well. You have morons in every country. At least Fußball is a game where you use your foot to kick a ball unlike american football where you use your body to takle opponents while protecting an EGG.
@@markusosterle3958 oh yeah ? In France, we use the area of paris, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Oh and also we measure liquids in Olympic pools.
@@nottsoserious I'm from Vietnam and I can tell that we don't use Football fields as a measurement like at all.
I'm surprised you didn't mention that the metric system, like the centigrade temperature scale, was originally created to reflect the physical world (as was understood at the time of the French Revolution when it was made official in France): meters were defined as a ratio of the distance between the Earth's pole and equator; litres defined by the volume of water just above freezing; a gram defined by the weight of a cubic centimetre of water. The modern definitions are just hyper-accurate versions of these original standards.
He seemed to be more interested in bashing Americans personally than talking about metric.
@@ZackScriven Tell me then on what god known object a foot is defined, whose foot? And for the rest of the video, I will say I am glad I don't know the imperial system, we are already having a hard time remembering the universal constant, I don't need to jump through few more hoops to get my calculations wrong.
Sankosh Saha a foot is based on the average persons foot as it is about the size of a human foot, and it makes sense if your used to imperial like a meter is normal for metric.
@@woodduck2178 An anthropometric study of 1197 North American adult Caucasian males (mean age 35.5 years) found that a man's foot length was 26.3 cm with a standard deviation of 1.2 cm.
26.3cm is approximately 0.8 feet, even when adding the standard deviation of 1.2 onto 26.3, we only get 27.5, which is just about 0.9 feet.
Now again, who's foot is the measure based on?
@@woodduck2178 Really, 12 inches is the average human foot is it? I think you need to get your ruler out. Try a metric one, it might work better.
Short answer : yes
Long answer: definitely
5.56 mm is used in Public places in the United States by people who like to play Call of Duty Multiplayer without Internet on Non-Virtual REALITY.
What's that in inches?
@@havenbastion .223 inch
Longer answer: indubitably
I grew up with metric, and as an engineer i grimace at time… 60seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 24hrs per day…. Why??? It’s so painful to have been left out.
I have engineering degrees. Every place in the world uses the same system of timekeeping. If you think it is difficult, imagine the difficulty of having two different systems. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. Try switching to Swatch time and find out directly for yourself.
Almost all engineering in the US is done in metric. All American cars have all metric bolts even.
Really? I mean, Europeans usually afraid of buying cars from the US, because as far as we know, we wouldn't able to get a bolt for it back home... When did this change happened...?
Péter Baán I’d sayaround the late 90s the switch started. Some new cars may have a US bolt mixed in there here and there, it depends how old the design of the car/engine is. For example chrysler uses almost all metric fasteners but some bolts on their V8s are American, since the engine is such an old design.
@@peterbaan9671 Depends on the age of the vehicle and where the actual development was done. For some GM and Ford vehicles, you'll find they're entirely metric because a fair bit of R&D was conducted in Europe. GM has switched basically everything because of its large presence in China. So from the 2000s forward, most things save for some oddities, are all metric fasteners. Although I have to say, I recently changed the head gaskets on my daughter's 2000 Ford Ranger pickup and was baffled by the mix of metric and imperial. I felt like I had every tool I owned out on the cart trying to work on this stupid thing.
Chrysler is almost entirely metric these days owing to their ownership by Fiat.
You would be amazed of how many machine shops accept metric blueprints and then convert the dimensions to English. Tolerance is a wonderful thing. All quality control checks are done in English and converted. The cost to retool old shops to machines that do metric only would bankrupt those businesses.
even the americans measure their engine displacement in metric.
would be funny to see a car, 2.5 Gallon V8.
Is metric better?
Me, who is an american electrical engineer: YES.
Sure, but 'Better' is subjective. Scientifically, and maybe in your field, metric is better, but for every day use the english system is more intuitive and easier.
@@rickyhall1772 in the US only, I moved to us 5 years ago and I still don’t understand why there are 12 ounces in a cup and not 10.
@@welove2134 I believe volume measurements are all simpler in metric. But things such as length, temperature, speed, fuel economy, tire size, rim size, air speed, and nautical distances and speed are all FAR SUPERIOR not in metric. Then there are things which go either way, such as time in 12vs24 hours, wire gauges, things like bolts size or thread pitch and bolt strength, and things such as lubricity measurements. At the end of the day, we have computers that can do these conversions for us, so the conversation of standardizing measurements on a global scale is moot.
@@rickyhall1772 what can be easier than multiplying/dividing by 10 to achieve any conversion inside the same measure system? you feel imperial is more intuitive because you are used to it, metric is the easiest to learn and to use. Give it a SERIOUS try.
@@rickyhall1772 Uh....nope. The Metric System is superior. Saying that the imperial system is more intuitive and easier is absurd. You could teach someone the Metric System in a few minutes. Try that with the imperial system. When I build things I use the Metric System. It is so much easier than remember inches, feet, yards and also working with fractions.
Just because you are more familiar with one system doesn't make it easier to teach for the masses, or more intuitive to use. There is a reason everyone else uses the Metric System. There are about 195 countries. 190+ countries didn't get it wrong, and the US along with a couple of other countries got it right.
We use the Metric System at work-in medicine. We don't do conversions because mistakes can kill people. Some of the most dangerous and expensive medications are usually dosed in milligrams per kilogram. I weight about 172 pounds, and I'm about 5 feet 9 inches tall. That's about 78 kilograms and about 175 centimeters. Once I know that everything else becomes notoriously easy to estimate just like you'd estimate in pounds, feet and inches. BTW, get those units wrong either with relaying a measurement to a third party or converting erroneously and you'll gravely under dose or over dose the patient.