🇺🇸 American Struggles While Living Abroad: The Metric System | 🇺🇸 Le système métrique à l'étranger
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- Опубликовано: 17 дек 2020
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🇺🇸 American Struggles While Living Abroad: The Metric System | 🇺🇸 Le système métrique à l'étranger
Are you American? Do you currently or have you ever lived abroad? Chances are, you have some feelings about the metric system. Today, we're discussing the differences between metric and imperial countries, plus the history of how it all began. What has your experience with the metric system been like?
Let me know what you think in the comments below! 😉
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=== 🇫🇷 FRANÇAIS 🇫🇷 ===
🇺🇸 American Struggles While Living Abroad: The Metric System | 🇺🇸 Le système métrique à l'étranger
Avez-vous déjà vécu aux Etats-Unis ? Si oui, vous connaissez sûrement le système impérial. Aujourd'hui, nous discutons des différences entre celui-ci et le système métrique, en plus de l'histoire à l'origine du système métrique. Vous en pensez quoi ?
Dites-le moi en commentaire ci-dessous ! 😉
* Oui, à 4:01 le sous-titrage affiche "Pays-Bas" alors que c'est clairement censé être "Belgique" ...oups 🤷♀️
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The first time I went in Canada; I was astonished by the fact that they used metric system. When I asked to the Canadiens why they used the metric system, the answer was quick and clear: "Because we are smart."
the fact that in 1959 usa and commonwealth changed the imperial system to base it on the metric system shows that usa should just use metric system lmao
@@aidenfujimoto8062 I forgot to precise that I'm French. I know that Ireland, UK and USA still use miles. It's what for I was convinced by the fact that Canada would use imperial system. I was wrong.
@@lapinblanc1703 en même temps tu t'appelles "lapin blanc" ça semble logique que tu soit français[e]
@@aidenfujimoto8062 Francophone oui.
@@lapinblanc1703 Oui, le Canada utilise officiellement le métrique depuis 1970. Par contre, les gens utilisent plus le systeme impérial lorsqu'ils parlent. Jamais un Canadien te dira je fais 1m80. Il te dira je fais 5 pieds 9. Lorsqu'ils parlent, ils utilisent le métrique que pour la température car la météo utilise le celcius.
I've been living in the US for over 15 years (came from France), and I still have issues with the imperial system, especially dry oz vs fluid oz ... Makes no sense to me ;)
to you? no. it makes no sense, period.
Don't forget that precious metals are measured using a different oz. Just to mess it up a little bit more.
@@vonnikon whaaaaaat?????
A common oz is 28.3 grams.
But a precious metal oz is 31.1 grams.
@@vonnikon it has to have been a joke.
Europe (most of): uses metric system.
Russia and exUSSR: uses metric system.
Japan: used metric system.
China: uses metric system.
USA: oh, there is something wrong with the rest of the world!
Don't forget Latin America: uses metric system
Also, where they don't use it in Europe?
Easier to say the world uses metric system, other than 3 countries, the US, Myanmar, and some tiny African country 🤷
The only two other countries still using Imperial are Myanmar and Liberia, however, both are in the process of switching to Metric.
And then you wonder why the rest of the world call you "imperialists"... 😅😅
Ireland is fully metric though the Gardaí still take and describe height in feet and inches
Reagan: It's too expensive to switch to metric!
Nasa a few years later: We just lost a 125 million dollars Mars satellite because of unit conversion mistake...
Exactly. Reaganomics 🙄
Most US companies would be gone if they hadn't switched to metric ! In fact more industries are metric than people think !
Ireland became fully metric in 2005 but the Gardaí still use height in feet and inches and beer is still sold by the pint system
In fairness, that was Lockheed's fault, not NASA's.
Don't forget the planes, that went down killing all inside, because of the same reason. To few fuel...because of conversion errors or the thinking in imperial.
When we changed to metric in Canada, the hardest part was changing from one mile a minute to 100 kilometers per hour to know how long a highway drive would take. Other than that not much changed. After a while, hearing the temperature Celsius and buying kilo's and liters make sense. Who knows, you might even go so far as to implement a proper health care system.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa, a proper healthcare system?! Don't get ahead of yourself there! 😂😅
Agree with Transatlantic, you're definitely wading into pinko-commie paranoia waters there sly. What's even worse, Australia, a country whose citizens currently enjoy and benefit from a robust public health system, is looking at moving towards a more 'American-like' health system!!!!!!!!!!!! Who the fuck does that? Why would you look at something as dysfunctional, unfair and downright evil as the American health system, quite possibly the worst health system in the entire world and think "hmmmm, we should be more like them". Of course we all know 'who' and 'why' but I refuse to answer my own rhetorical questions..
@@plefevre Every federal election in Canada we talk of allowing private health care, so I am not surprised Australia does as well. There isn't much difference between Canada and the US health care system. Every Canadian pays at the federal level versus the US personal level. We can't opt out where you can. Other than that, it's pretty much the same. I don't think the American health care system is dysfunctional, unfair or evil, but I also don't know any Canadians who have faced huge medical expences because they needed life saving care either. The universal health care system isn't perfect, but it doesn't cause hardship if you need to use it's services.
Sick burn lol.
@ShlomoLaBourlingue Yes living under "commie" rule is absolutely horrifying. I don't know anybody who has to work two jobs, I don't know anybody that can't pay for or receive proper healthcare, I don't know a single person that doesn't have a hobby to fill their free time with. Paid vacations, paid parental leave, functioning infrastructure with less fatalities. It sure sucks here.
I spend 1 month in Texas and Oklahoma for my company, and was a bit lost with gallons, Lb and onces.... anyway I was more disturbed by indicated prices without taxes...... :D
i apologize for my fellow Americans seeming inability to explain our tax system. Any Federal taxes (similar to your country's V.A.T.) ARE included in the item's shelf-price as they were collected from the manufacturer or processor. The tax being charged is on the transaction (an activity) and not on the product (good) itself. Virtually every municipality, county, and state has its own version of this tax. We generally refer to it as a "sales tax" as it is required to be collected by the merchant at the point-of-sale. And, yes, we (the U.S.) are probably the only country which has this form of taxation.
@@wallacem41atgmail Tax system has absolutely nothing to do with inability to write the total expense of a customer on a price tag - it's just bad service
@@alexmashkin863 No, you refuse to understand:
@@alexmashkin863 i agree with that
@@wallacem41atgmail You are wrong. ALL Europe using V.A.T. but... they SHOW that in price. AND yes, tax may vary in countries. So as an accountant i may say, your reasoning is to simplistic and ignorant.
I am from Myanmar and although we haven't officially changed to metric system, it is used here in daily life except for rural areas. All the road signs are in kilometers, weight are expressed in g, kg and fuels are sold in litre.
Nice
Even in the US, as soon as you are in science or engineering, manufacturing, trade etc. and want to cooperate or do business internationally, you'll go metric anyway. Sticking to the imperial system basically just costs additional money.
U.K. road signs are still imperial signs by that I mean ones where you just see numbers like 20 would be 20 MPH & I wish they change it here like they did for almost everything else.
American STEM went metric in the 1970’s
Yep, imagine the huge amount of time wasted for calculating and converting one to another, when you could just move the dot and no conversion/calculation necessary at all.
Carpenters in the U.S. tend to try and then love it, because you can toss the calculator away and it is more precise.
@@oscarosullivan4513 Not really... I am an engineer in Australia and we still have to convert all kinds of parameters from US companies that are specified in archaic units. Oz-in for torque, mills for thickness, circular mills for wire area, AWG for wire gauge, etc... It is a myth that the US engineering and science community only use metric. They still disadvantage themselves by sticking in the mud...
US army and space agency use the metric system as far as I know. It's also paradoxal US who kick British Empire out still use those funny middle age imperial system.
i also think the 'control' vaules they use to calculate ther imperial weights etc....is done in metric since its more precise and lees vauge XD so its basicly just 'cosmetic' that they use it....that 'fear of anything new' american become more famused for this century then anything else :/
It gets worse. There's the story of a multi-million-dollar Mars probe that was lost because a software contractor used US units (we're not actually Imperial system) and the mission used metric. There's also the Gimli Glider incident in 1980's Canada during their conversion to metric when an airliner was loaded with only half the fuel it needed. Halfway through the flight they ran out of fuel but were able to glide to an emergency landing at an abandoned RCAF base at Gimli Lake. Everybody survived, including the boys riding their bikes on the runway when the airliner came in bearing down on them.
It's like Mr. Miyagi said in "The Karate Kid" (paraphrasing a bit here): "It's either metric yes or metric no. If you try metric maybe then you get squished like a grape in the middle of the road."
Also NASA, and science related. And large corporations use it as its easier and create less errors.
Americans use the metric system for illegal drugs trade, gun calibres, medical doses, nutritional labels, lenses, photographic films, soft drink bottles, auto-mobile engine cylinder size and electric power.
@@MrAlRats IOW, for all the important things.
For myself in the USA, my physics class circa 1980 was all in cgs or MKS. I cannot even begin to attempt to think of how to work in American units (foot-slug-seconds?).
Well, officially the imperial measures are now defined by metric numbers...
I recommend you don't translate the measurements, but learn them again from physical references.
Like, find a 1 liter bottle.
Cut a 1 meter stick. Walk 100 meters.
Hold a 1kg packet of rice in your hand when going to the market.
Roger Cruz That's how I learned the metric system. I lived most of my life in the US and I've been living in Italy for almost 20 years. In spite of the fact of not being able to do arithmetic on a third grade level, I found it very easy to learn metric. A one-liter container of milk--what it equals in the imperial system is irrelevant. I'm surrounded by about 60 million people who don't know what one liter of milk would be in the imperial system and they're doing just fine. Why do I have to know? The only thing that matters is--can I finish up all this milk before it goes bad?
Yes, that's the best tip: stop converting, get used to the new measures and all is simple!!
The imperial system is fine when you just measure. The trouble starts with calculating.
What is the point of "just measure" ? when you measure something, Isn't there always some form of calculation after ? (to compare to, to transform into another unit)
To me, "just measure" is game over before the game even start.
@@corentinricou338 Some times people ask you how tall you are, then there is no further calcultaion necassary, just a measurement. But I agree, I measure 99% of the times too, in order to make a calculation and then the trouble starts in the imperial system.
In baking, the majority of the time you're just measuring with no further calculation, too.
One problem is that USA doesn't use the Imperial System. They use something called United States Customary Units. Many of the measurements are the same as the Imperial ones, until you get to volume. Those values share the same name, but are different sizes.
(And if we get technical, The U.S. Customary Units have two different "Feet" depending on what state you are in.)
Why is this a problem? It's a problem in conversion. Many Americans doesn't even know that they are using something different than the Imperial system. So the initial measurements can have been made in either imperial or U.S.C.U. And now it's one of those you might have to convert to Metric.
In the UK our tape measures have both Imperial and Metric markings. If the measurement is an easy Imperial number 13 1/2" then I'll use Imperial. Everything else I'll use mm, which rounding down is the equivalent of working in 25ths of an inch (eyeballing half mm, we effectively work in 50ths of an inch).
The industry standard in the building trade is all measurements are in mm, so for example a 10ft peice of wood is 3048 mm.
I've spent 7 years in the US and I've learned what a gallon, a mile and a pound is...
I still prefer metric, but I understand how hard it is to change... Some of the old folk in Montpellier still talk about the Ancient Franc... which was turned into the Franc in 1962 by dividing by 100... and turned into the EUR at 6.952 Francs to the EUR in 1996.
My neighbor, 84 years old, is convinced that her house is worth at least 800,000 francs... I've tried to explain... Any buyer would take it at 320k EUR... she says it's not enough, she insists on the amount her father paid at least.
When I was a kid (in the 1950s) my grandmother, born in the 19th century, had money. One hundred "sous" made 5 francs at the time. She was never able to save the new francs.
Once you go metric, you don’t go back.
Also grew up in the US and also was taught inches, etc. I always relied on the conversions table in the back of the math book until 4th or 5th grade when the book didn't have that table. More than half a century later I still have to stop and struggle to remember how many feet are in a mile. Trying to work with inches (eg in carpentry) is horrific because we have to constantly do fraction arithmetic even to just read a measurement. But in jr high school and beyond we were taught the metric system and it was wonderful! First day on the job in W. Germany I picked up a Meterstock and could use it immediately, unlike with inches. Since that was in the 70's when we were going to convert to metric, as soon as I got home I bought a metric steel tape.
The only problem is that we have not learned to visualize metric measurements, so the ability to do quick and dirty and easy conversions in our heads can be a stepping stone to developing that skill. You're already partially there. I started thinking about this to help my friend with European weather reports during our European trips. 20°C is the start of the comfort zone (68°F) and every degree C up or down is about 2 degrees F (more exactly, 5 degrees C is 9 degrees F). So less than 20°C is cool and calls for a sweater or jacket and a couple degrees above that is comfortable but more than that and it's starting to get hot. BTW, there's an American ex-pat in Germany who also does videos and she started her "the metric system confuses me" video being all bundled up for winter weather because she heard it was going to be 40 degrees today -- "Am I dressed properly?"
Similarly, use rough estimates like doubling kilograms to get pounds, or treating meters as yards, or a liter is about a quart. Not exact, but it gives something you can relate to. 30 cm is about a foot, but more useful is that 5 cm is about 2 inches. So you have a measurement in centimeters (eg in the movie "Downsizing" they were shrunk to a height of 10cm, so that's about 4 inches). Divide the centimeters by 5 and then multiply by 2 to get inches. To convert km to miles, round off the lower digit and multiply by 6 (1 km = .6 miles approx), so use Rick Steves' formula of dividing kilometers and add to that 10% of the original km value (it's the same thing). Or just divide km by 2 if you don't need the extra accuracy.
Ultimately, the best way to live and work in metric is to just live and work in metric. These quicky conversion tricks are just to help us get to that point. The more you practice the better you'll get.
"Divide the centimeters by 5 and then multiply by 2 to get inches"
Woah, that's cumbersome as fuck! Divide by 10 and multiply by 4 man ;) Or divide by 2 and take another 10% away from what you originally had.
You righit! I think, is much easier to remember ONE METRIC RULE instead of "300 1/4 gallons" of IMPERIAL RULES.
@@marcelprodan9132 Correct! I had a physics class in which we worked in the MKS (meter-kiligram-second) system or the cgs (centimeter-gram-second) system. Everything make complete sense and was even easily convertible. At one point we were confronted by the foot-pound-second system (I doubt it was part of our physics class). Complete chaos. For one thing, pounds are NOT mass, but rather a FORCE exerted on a mass in a 1-g gravitational field. So we'd have to convert to using SLUGS, which are one thirty-second of a pound. And the rest just fell apart from there.
I grew up in the US system and it and it just simply does not make any sense.
@@davidwise1302 U.S. Customary units are fine for measuring ordinary human-scale things. But they're not for doing complex calculations or anything scientific.
@@davidwise1302 A slug is 32 pounds.
Kudos for the good fight. When I moved to the US 40 years ago I had to learn the US system and I thought it was absurd. To this day I still think it is absurd. Moving back to Europe a few year ago, I got back into using the metric system and it was like the smoke left the room (not quite as amazing as getting a health care system that does not ruin you or bankrupt you...)
Hope you are enjoying living in France. Poor Americans, they are told they cannot divide or multiply by 10. The majority of Americans do not know how to make any complex measurements because of the idiotic measurement system that it the US measurement system. Americans have no idea how to convert volumes into quantities of liquids for instance. How many gallons do you have in a 27 cubic foot volume? How many feet in an acre? How many feet in a mile? How many gallons in an acre foot? What is a fathom? A chain?
The only and only good use is feet and nautical miles which has 6000 feet. It makes conversion of speed to time and time to distance really easy. It was designed for that purpose.
Americans are the only ones who need to buy conversion chart between their various volumes: table spoon, spoon, oz, quart, gallon. In metric we only need liters and we are good to go.
Try doing physics or worse, thermodynamics in that system and you will throw your hands up in the air at the clumsiness of the whole system. Machining in 1/2 1/4 ..... 1/512 is horrible. Try adding 1/8 to 1/128th in your head. That is why machining is done in mils (inch/1000) so you can manipulate decimals as opposed to fractions.
At this point only the coolness of SpaceX would get Americans to start learning the metric system but conservatives will say that it is a lefty system....
And alas, the lefties will critize SpaceX for Elon Musk not paying income taxes on his colossal fortune...
_“The majority of Americans do not know how to make any complex measurements because of the idiotic measurement system that is the US measurement system.”_
It’s not idiotic. Admittedly, it’s not as “nice” and coherent as the metric system, but it’s not as bad as people like you make it out to be. It works fine for the purposes for which it was intended, which is simply to measure stuff. That’s all we use it for. *_Not_* to do complex cautions.
_“How many gallons do you have in a 27 cubic foot volume?”_
Arrrgh...such a typical thing for a foreigner to say. *That's not how U.S. Customary units are used!* Nobody _ever_ uses gallons and cubic feet in the same context!
_“How many [square] feet in an acre?”_
43,560, but only surveyors need to know that. Regular people don’t. All that ordinary Americans need to know is that an acre is about 1.1 times the size of an American football field.
_“How many feet in a mile?”_
5280. And everybody knows that, so it's not a problem. (And indeed, that’s actually a convenient figure, because it allows miles to be divided in many different ways by many different divisors and still yield a nice round whole number. One third (1/3) of a mile is 1760 feet. One sixth (1/6) of a mile is 880 feet. One twelfth of a mile is 440 feet. Meanwhile, a third of a kilometer is 333.333333333 meters, a sixth of a kilometer is 166.666666666 meters, and one twelfth of a km is 83.3333333333 meters. Ugh. 🤢
_“How many gallons in an acre foot?”_
Nobody _ever_ needs to know that. Again, you are improperly comparing units that are *_never_* used in the same context.
_“What is a fathom? A chain?”_
Nobody in the U.S. uses such units. Period.
_“Americans are the only ones who need to buy conversion chart between their various volumes: table spoon, spoon, oz, quart, gallon.”_
Not true. Nobody in the U.S. uses conversion charts for such things. We just follow the damn recipe. (And it’s not exactly hard to remember that a quart is a quarter of a gallon. )
_“Try doing physics or worse, thermodynamics, in that system...”_
I’m gonna stop you right there. Nobody uses the U.S. Customary system to do complex calculations or anything scientific. That’s not what those units are for. They’re simply for measuring stuff. Ordinary everyday human-scale stuff. That’s all. And for that purpose, any units will do, and U.S. Customary units work just fine.
_“Machining in 1/2 1/4 ..... 1/512 is horrible. Try adding 1/8 to 1/128th in your head.”_
I don't know why you bother to bring that up, since you know and admit that no machinist uses fractions of an inch. They use thousandths. And for over a hundred years, they've done just fine.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the metric system, other than that the units are often a bit awkwardly sized for everyday personal use. I’m just saying that the familiar and widely used U.S. Customary system work just fine for millions of Americans for its intended purpose, which is just to measure and describe ordinary everyday stuff for human beings. It really ain’t that bad. If it were, we wouldn't use it!
And watch this: ruclips.net/video/iJymKowx8cY/видео.html
Not all Americans.
Just the US people.
As an architect we use to change the size of the drawing of a part of a building for different purposes.
In metric _scaling_ it is quite easy.
I just cannot imagine how it could be done.
Metric system is always going to be the best, more accurate, easy to calculate, I hate the fact of having to use imperial system while I'm living in the United States, the only imperial measure I use are miles, only because I need to see it on my speedometer, but the other measures I don't really understand them pretty well, not even the subdivisions of one single mile, what the hell is that of saying 1/4 of a mile instead of saying 400 meters, or 300 feet instead of saying 91 meters. Just because of that when someone talks to me measuring with "feet" I make fun of it in purpose asking, what size of feet? Child's feet, teenager's feet or adult's feet? You don't have to be a genius for knowing that we all have different sizes of feet, that even sounds so stupid to say and measure with. United States please join to the rest of the world, adopt the metric system! Scientists, engineers and merchants will be so thankful!!
Actually the other two countries have already declared that they too use the metric system so it’s just the USA
The USA inch is defined as 25.4mm
Le système "métrique" est extrêmement "LOGIQUE".
Quoi que l'on mesure, des distances, des poids ou des capacités, les règles sont les mêmes avec une petite virgule "flottante"...
Il est évident que les "feet", "miles", "gallons" et autres, compliquent beaucoup les choses...
Merci pour cette très intéressante vidéo (déjà "ancienne"), Alyssa.
Ta chaîne est super-intéressante, parce que tu es "curieuse" et "vivante"...
Don't convert one system to the other, take concrete references like what are the minimal and maximal temperatures of the country I live in? At what temperature can I only wear a Tee-shirt? What is my height, what is the weight of that cheese?...
A lot of European countries had to change currency, it takes some time to create new references and understand the value, but it takes longer if you try to convert.
Fun fact: one of the scientists working on the Hubble space telescope was an American who missed doing a metric conversion that led to the telescope being unable to focus which required an extra mission to space to fix.
Good story, but not true. It was a manufacturing fault in a mirror i the telescope that caused the problem, not an error in metric conversion.
www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717301-000-the-testing-error-that-led-to-hubble-mirror-fiasco/
@@mikeyhau Thanks. Good to know, then I won't spread that rumor any more.. I'm pretty sure I saw it on a TV documentary about Hubble, but I don't remember what it was called.
@@jonasfermefors i think it was for when they try to send something on mars and the payload was lost due to that
I am from New Zealand 🇳🇿 and can remember when we changed over from miles to kilometres in the 1970’s. They bought stickers to put on the speedometer in cars to show the correct speed in kilometres.
Being european, l’ve only used the metric system, but dued to my frequentation of YT I was forced to at least have an idea about what the imperial system is. Well, it has not been a problem at all to get that a lb is slightly less than 1/2 kg, an inch is slightly more than 25 mm, a gallon is more than 4 l (but what about the submultiple of it), a mile is about 1600 m and so on. No big deal. The problem comes when l read, say, 17/25 of an inch... how the heck do you “imperialists” figure how long is that fraction out in your mind?? I even tried to convert those fractions into something usable, findig the math involved in the conversion just far too unnecessarily complicated and ssssssllllloooooowwwwww, counterintuitive and prone to miscalculations. And pay attention to one thing; l didn’t say “difficult”, it’s just fractions and simple math, no big deal... it’s just cumbersome!
It is even harder to add 17/25 inch to 13/16 inch to calculate a fit.
@@rolandscherer1574 I believe you! 😉
Good to know :
-myanmar is (was) not using imperial, but their own measures, and are officialy in conversion to Metric since 2013
- Liberia is"officialy" using imperial, but because all its neighbours and all its trade partners are under metric system, the "official" is more " in theory".
So in the facts, united state is the last country on earth using imperial system.
the imperial gallon (imp gal), defined as 4.54609 litres, which is or was once used in the United Kingdom, Canada, and some Caribbean nations;
the US gallon (US gal) defined as 231 cubic inches (exactly 3.785411784 litres), which is used in the US and some Latin American and Caribbean countries; and
the US dry gallon ("usdrygal"), defined as 1⁄8 US bushel (exactly 4.40488377086 litres).
@@paulbest6679 Why a US gallon is 231 cubic inches? Why?? And why not 250, or 200?
Psssssst.... I'm pretty sure the other two countries are either in the process of converting to the metric system or are planning to.
I don't know what the imperial system is based on but the metric system (the current one ) has it like this: there's a length then when you square it you get an area and when you cube it you get a volume and you get this really cool thing if you have a reference that you call a unit 1=1²=1³ and it's a heck of a thing if you think about it hard enough. I mean metric system is powerful you don't need to do strange conversions just ×10^(something) and you're done.
The funniest part of the imperial system... Its official name is in French: avoirdupois...
_un avoir de poids_ (goods of weight)
Indeed it is such a difficult thing to remember that, ruffly, 1 -foot- inch = 2.5 centimeters, or 25 millimeters, and 1 mile = 1.6 kilometer once you learned that...
1/6 of an inch = 1 pica, 2 picas = 4 poppy seeds = 1 barley corn, 1/12 of a pica = 1 point, 1/20 of a point = 1 twits, 6 points = 1 line = 1 poppy seed, 1/4 of a palm = 1 digit, 3 barley corns = 1 inch, 3 digits = 1 nail, 3 inches = 1 palm, 4 nails = 1 span, 1/3 of a cubit = 1 shatments, 12 inch = 1 foot, 2 spans = 1 cubic, 5 shatments = 1 pace, 2 paces = 1 step, 4 steps = 1 rope, 5 ropes = 1 Roemen's chain, 50 Roemen's chains = 1 Roman mile, 3 feet = 1 yard, 1/3 of a foot = 1 hand, 1/2 of a hand = 1 stick, 1/2 of a stick = 1 inch = 3 barley corns, 1760 yards = 1 mile, 1/8 of a mile = 1 furlong, 1/10 of a furlong = 1 Gunter's chain, 1/11 of a Gunter's chain = 1 fathom, 15 fathoms = 1 shackle, 100 fathoms = 1 cable, 10 cables = 1 nautical mile, 3 nautical miles = 1 league.
Seriously there's one very simple way to figure out what metric means : put aside all about the imperial absurdity and feel 1 centimeter is about 2 pencils side by side, take a A4 sheet of paper and feel its length is ruffly 30 centimeter, that 3 of these very ruffly makes 1 meter, that half of its width is almost 10 cm, witch is what is missing when taking 3 lengths to make a meter, that it ruffly takes 10 minutes of strong walk to make 1 kilometer, half an hour being lazy. Feel this measurements with objects you like, your own walking speed etc, and don't give a crap about what it means in imperial. Then enjoy the ease of use in mm cm m km.
When it comes to liter, just think soda bottles. Pepsi, coke etc don't make bottles in gallons, but liters. You're already used to it. And if you want to know what gallons of gas you're needing, well it's easy too, look your car consumption that is always expressed in liter per 100 kilometers, look at the price of it when filling your tank, and cry, or just look at you're gas gauge, stop and fill your tank when gauge is red, and cry. Little by little you'll get a good notion about how many times a week you're crying in a gas station.
1 foot = 30 cm. I think you mean 1 inch = 2.5 cm. Welcome to the club 😂
@@TransatlanticLiving Oh right !!! Damn imperialism 😂
The aMuricans are already using the metric system on a daily basis.
1 Dollar = 100 Cents.
1 Meter = 100 Cent(imeter)s
That shouldn't be that tough to master, right? Right!
Mission accomplished.
they used it in medicine with CC, even in their jobs, ML behind shampoo too etc
I've read they used almost 70% of their mesurement with metric only left are pound, miles and °F
so i want to know oh dafuq is complicated to change you already used it D:
If American shampoo bottles have mL on them, it's only because they're shipped from a multinational conglomerate like Colgate Palmolive to multiple countries at once (like Canada and Mexico, for example). This is also why you can often find French and Spanish next to the English on the same bottle. But I guarantee you, the average American shampoo consumer is not going to look at or remember the mL behind the bottle. We're going to think about the oz measurement right next to it.
And as an actual American having been born in, raised in, and lived the vast majority of my life in the United States... I'm telling you based on my actual lived American experience, we don't use "almost 70%" of our measurements in metric. But if it's that important to you to argue with strangers on the internet about shampoo bottles and to believe what you've "read" then by all means, be my guest.
Encore un petit film très amusant des différences entre nos 2 pays. J'adore, et puis vous etes si vivantes et petillante quand vous racontez, que même le système métrique devient rigolo. Bravo continuez .
Merci beaucoup 😁
South Africa went full metric in ca. 1971, I was in my early twenties. Funny thing here, the American population should be partially familiar with the metric principle from you monetary system - 100 cents in a dollar, not so. Prior to 1961, we used the imperial monetary system (12 Pennies to a Shilling and 12 Shillings to a Pound, I think - I was only eleven years old at the time). We then change to the metric monetary system, Cents and Rand, 100 of the former to the latter. Initially, in 1971, we also struggled a bit but we found it's best to let go of the imperial idea. Take a ruler look at the scale and memorise the picture of the distances for longer distances, take a tape measure, look at the images of milometers, centimetres. Travel the distance of a kilometre - experience it.
The same with weight (mass to be precise). Take a mass of a certain denomination, grams, kilograms etc. feel it.
It really is just a small mind-shift away.
The main reason the US hopped off the metric train was that early industrialisation of the American west was wholly done in Imperial ... all the machines, instruments, railroad tracks were all made or calibrated in imperial measurements and the company owners didn't feel like sacrificing a small, one time fraction of their profits to switch it all to metric.
This was also true in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Yet, those countries have (mostly) successfully converted to metric.
I am currently learning the Imperial system just for fun and I use sizes of basic everyday things, buildings and mountains as a reference to imagine how big something is in imperial units. You can do the same in metric units. For example :
A person is on average 1.80m tall => ~ 5.9 feet
The currently biggest tower in the world: ~800m / 0.8km => 0.49 miles
Mount Everest: ~8800m / 8.8km => 5.48 miles
From Los Angeles to San Diego: 120 miles => 190000m / 190km, which takes in both units 2 hours of driving
A door is on average roughly 2m big, which is roughly 7 feet.
There are 9 and 10mm bullets. 10mm is equal to 1cm. If you stack 100 1cm bullets on top, you have 1m.
A full split on the floor is roughly ~2m.
You will love this: Your fingers except your thumb is PROBABLY(!!) 1cm in width. From your pointer finger to your pinky: 4cm long.
As other US americans pointed out, the conversion to other imperial units makes it more confusing, because the numbers are inconsistent. This doesn't exist in the metric system, because it's a decimal system. I hope the examples above help you to imagine how big something is in metric.
190 countries in the world have to use Imperial when dealing with the US in business, medicine, economics, military, tourism, etc, etc.
Hello USA!
Canada, Australia, South Africa are using metric so it’s doable.
The UK too while they were in the EU.
I’m American. I’m 40. We were taught both systems, and I went to public school in MISSISSIPPI.
Please, try Britain, where we've not worked out which system to use.
We measure things in metres - except roads which we measure in miles.
We measure fuel efficiency in miles per gallon despite only being able to buy fuel in litres.
We buy milk in pints or multiples of pints. We can buy an 8 pint plastic bottle of milk and it will not mention a gallon on it.
We can buy the same beer in 500ml cans or 568ml cans because we still prefer beer in pints.
It's how you Brits like it ;) Rough enough to count
Younger people want it if you get middle age people 40-60 to change it then it would be done
Wasn't one of the 'benefits' of Brexit going back to the imperial system? You know, beer glasses with pints measures, and so on!
So glad you did this video. For years I have wondered why this wasn't taught in the US.
As a metric person i have to admit that emperial system has some romantic to it. Since i write songs, phrases like "miles adrift, but inches apart" has some certain charm to it. But besides all the cultural heritage it seems absolutely insane having to calculate all these numbers having no connection in them and all theese divisions like 7/13th of this, containing 61 units of that, etc.
I am from India, and we primarily use the metric system (with some exceptions though). But as I got in the US, I EVEN STARTED HATING THE EXCEPTION WE HAD IN INDIA! For instance, we measure our body temperature in Fahrenheit (I doubt if any Indian understands it though. We only care about 98.6 °F and that's it!) But I realised that the Fahrenheit scale is even harder to understand. And honestly, I did tried to get used to Fahrenheits. So, my progress was: 50°, 60°, 81°… I am going to change my phone's temperature scale to °C, and it is 11° out there!😌
No.We say 37° celcius not Fahrenheit
From Australia, I've lived in the US for about half a year for a student exchange program. The imperial units wasn't a huge issue to me. I didn't need to visualise units that much since I didn't have to drive or cook. I just lived off take-out and took the bus. It was the payment culture which I didn't like. Tax not included in the displayed price of things, and the need to add tip on top. How do you Americans live like that, where you're never sure exactly how much you are supposed to pay for things? In most parts of the world, the tax is included in the displayed price and there is no need to tip since the workers have far better minimum wage.
To answer your question, we live like that the same way that you Australians live the way you do. If you've never known anything else, you don't have any trouble adapting. 🤷🏼♀️ Kind of like driving on the right hand side of the road, which a majority of countries do in the world. If I went to Australia, I'd find it difficult to adapt to driving on the left. But since Australians are born into a left hand driving system, it's normal to them.
Totally agree with you, just makes it easier for you to get ripped off.
I'd say the fact that the social taxes we pay don't include education or healthcare is the real rip-off, more so than the fact that the sticker price on goods sold doesn't include sales tax in it. 😅
On the plus side of 'tax not included', you're always aware of how much the government is squeezing out of you.
Et pour une raison qui m’échappe, en France (et certainement ailleurs), on utilise les pouces pour les tailles d'écrans (diagonale), et la hauteur des pneus. Après il faut bien reconnaître que la télé et les bagnoles font partis des plus gros emblèmes des USA.
Pour les écrans cela tient au fait que la première télévision a été attribuée à un anglais, ou plus précisément un écossais, John Logie Baird (alors que dans les faits c'est principalement le résultat d'un enchainement de découvertes et d'innovation russo allemandes qui l'a créé, Baird a plus précisément réalisé la première démonstration d'une réception de signal retranscrit sur un téléviseur mécanique), que les premières émissions expérimentales ont été réalisées aux USA et en Angleterre, la première industrialisation menée en Angleterre, et que le grand boum a eu lieu ensuite aux USA, marché vers lequel les constructeur ont dû en premier s'adapter. C'est tout un bazar... ^^'
Cependant il est assez faux, du moins en France, de dire qu'on utilise le pouce pour mesurer la diagonale d'un écran. Selon l'article R643-2 pour la garantie d'une information juste du client, l'usage seul de cette valeur est interdite. Du coup toutes les brochures, fiches techniques etc, spécifient la diagonale en mm. Bon, sur la boite en gros y'a la diagonale en pouce et pour trouver en mm il faut creuser dans les petites lignes des spécifications, mais ça existe. :)
Pour les pneus c'est à peu près la même chose, le premier pneu ayant été créé par John Boyd Dunlop, encore un écossais. ^^
Sauf que seule la dimension de la jante est encore en pouce (et en mm dans les documentations) alors que la largeur du pneu est en mm, la hauteur en pourcentage, l'indice de charge en kilos, et l'indice de vitesse en Km/h, et ce joli bazar de mesures est ainsi décrit quel que soit le côté de l'Atlantique où on se trouve.
In fact, the US is alone with the imperial system, because Liberia and Myanmar have already started the process of "meterification" in recent years.
I used to live in England in the late 80's and 90's and although they have adopted the metric system in 1975 at the time they still spoke in yards and inches and miles and I had the opposite problem
Go to the supermarket, pick up a liter of milk, feel it, hold it, and repeat to yourself, one liter, one liter. The thing you should NOT do... translate it to units you're familiar with. learn it new, as a child
The UK, Canada and I believe Australia and New Zealand still informally use the imperial system in haphazard ways. It's metric everything for anything official of course (except the Brits still use miles on their roadways I think). The English speaking world was relatively late to the metric party.
For example, the average Canadian can think of shorter measures of length in either system (it's 3 metres away, it's 10 feet away... potayto, potahto) but we'd struggle to tell you our height and weight in metric and we'd have to do mental math to express a long distance in miles (we definitely think in kilometres). Weight we can compute in either system but once we hit tons, we mean metric ones (none of this short ton/long ton silliness) and anything really light would be in milligrams (say below a quarter ounce). Temperature is Celsius unless it's a fever, an oven or a swimming pool. I'm perpetually lost when my American friends express an outdoor temperature in Fahrenheit (It's 60 degree and it's 80 degrees both sound like scorching infernos to me... I can sort of compute numbers close to -40F, 32F and 97F because I have the benchmarks of -40C, 0C and body temperature). Recipes tend to be expressed in both systems, leaning more towards Imperial in English and towards metric in French (because most imported cookbooks are from the US and France). Large volumes and such are usually in cubic metres and such but smaller ones can be litres, gallons or whatever.
Oh, and we French Canadians are probably the only francophones who are culturally used to using Imperial units (except maybe the Channel Islands?). My parents' generation grew up before we went metric so they still tend to occasionally fall back to Imperial. Younger francophones are probably the most metric-friendly Canadians but they still know what a foot, a pound, a gallon, a cup, a teaspoon, etc are (un pied, une livre, un gallon, une tasse, une cuillère à thé).
Thanks for sharing your input! I find it so interesting that Canada really seems to be a hodgepodge of so many different places and customs, not only when it comes to measurements. But units of measurement are really where you can see the Canadian flexibility and openness (because I definitely think in miles, pounds, and feet/inches... Even if I can imagine the rough translation between F and C after a few years in France now. Some habits die REALLY hard.) 😁
@@TransatlanticLiving It's a big place and like the US, there are cultural differences between regions in addition to similarities. The western parts of the country are very Americanized, as is southern Ontario (it's the progressive northern extension of the Midwest). Further east, the old Celtic and French roots show more but historical ties to New England and New York do too. Mindset-wise, we have a lot in common with Aussies and Kiwis. Of course, with an immigration rate that is per capita triple that of the US, we're getting increasingly multicultural as the years go by.
You should come and visit sometime once life is saner. I'd recommend checking out Montreal at least.. You will probably find our French dialects to be quite a change of pace. Our North American French is just as different from metropolitan French as Scottish English is from American English. We're a pretty laid back bunch, on either side of linguistic divide.
@@TransatlanticLiving A lot of countries (most?) are in that situation, although on a much smaller scale. Here in Sweden the carpentry/building business hasn't completely taken the step over to metric, still often expressing sizes of nails and boards in inches, even though they are officially measured in mm. But it's slowly changing and for every new generation there are less and less inches. When I grew up 30 years ago we bought "inchsticks", that had both inches and metric units on them, when we should measure something, today the inches are gone and we buy metersticks instead.
And since I play curling, I don't think feet are going away in my "daily" life for a long time, although we use some really weird combinations there, like 4 feet and a decimeter. :D
At least we use the same system for measuring time. Imagine a situation like: I’ll meet you tomorrow at 10. PM or AM? 10 camels, bro!
The imperial system is an even worse struggle for Europeans in the US. I have lived in NYC for several years, but even now, I cannot figure how tall is a 6'3 person, or how fast is 140 mph, or how hot 100° F is. Fl ounces vs simple oz, US & UK gallons, stones and furlongs, long tons, short tons and tonnes are a mystery. I am infuriated by all the documentaries not giving metric equivalents. I am puzzled by why Americans actually prefer their awkward system to a simple, elegant and efficient one.
Thanx, you Made me feel smarter
People from around the world have the same struggles when we visit the USA, when people say I pound I have to remember they mean half a kilo, a feet: 30cm, a pint: half a litre, a mile: 1 km and a half.
Americans use metric maybe more than they think; the use the letter K for kilo ("the car cost me $50k..") , you count calories in Kilos, car and motorcycle engines in cubic centimeters (or liters), medicine in milligrams or milliliters, I assume a lot of - if not all - wine bottles are in ml (750 ml , for instance).
But then we in Europe and the rest of the world also use inch and foot actually frequently for some measurements. For example 20in wheel on our car, 30ft day cruicer (boat), 55in TV, "2 by 4in" construction wood/material...
It is high time Europe got rid of those imperial remnants.
Conversions were so easy they thought it was a trick question and their brains malfunctioned
My favorite part is the wire gauges. If memory serves...
* the higher the gauge number, the smaller the diameter
* the actual diameters are mostly arbitrary standardized values
* there's AWG and SWG (American Wire Gauge and Standard Wire Gauge)
* both are pretty much only used in the US, meaning the names basically mean the same thing
* AWG and SWG are different, but NOT BY MUCH
There are also circular mils!
3 petites remarques:
- On utilise aussi parfois le système impérial dans la cuisine. Par exemple quand on fait un rôti on le cuit 1/4 d'heure par livre.
- A l'époque on utilisait les mêmes unités mais pas le même étalon dans le pays. Par exemple une toise (ancienne unité de mesure) à Paris n'était pas égale à une toise à Toulouse. D'où l'intérêt de passer à un système unique.
- Le gros avantage du système métrique est qu'il est basé sur 7 unités de bases définie à partir des constantes physiques fondamentales dont les définitions sont posées par la Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures.
On n'utilise pas le système impérial : il s'agit d'une livre à la sauce métrique, c'est à dire 500 grammes.
La livre impériale correspond à 453 grammes environ.
The only units used in science and industry is the international system of units en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units. All these units have fixed relation with each-other.
Water freezes at 0° Celsius, boils at 100° Celsius (at sea level of course) never understood the thing of Fahrenheit... makes no sens to me. It's that simple...
Concepts are easy. My ring finger is a cm wide. A litre of water weighs a kilogram. A person who is 6Ft is a little bit smaller than 2 metres. the easy one is tonne and ton which are only 36 pounds different so they are fairly similar.
My recommendation would be NOT to use the Imperial system as reference to figure out the metric, the numbers can be crooked and it's a pain to convert. It's better to use everyday items you find to use as a reference: Milk and juice often comes in litre packs, a packet of flower is a kg, two squares on a squared (European standard) paper is 1 cm, the distance between the tips of my thumb and little finger stretched out is roughly 20 cm (female adult of average height), the reflective pilons on a highway have 50 metres in between, etc.
It's like learning a new language: if you keep making up the sentence in your language in your head and then try to translate it, it's a pain and prone to many mistakes. If you let go of your language as an in-between it's much easier.
UK resident here. The most awkward situation is when you buy petrol in litres and the car has the set up the fuel consumption in mpg ( miles per gallon), when it should be in L/100 miles.
c'est exactement comme apprendre une langue étrangère : au début on traduit vers sa langue natale, jusqu'à avoir en direct l'idée qui correspond au mot dans la nouvelle langue, afterwards, you can switch from one language to another in a natural way.
As for Americans, I have two reasons that they cling to outdated an inaccurate measurement system:
- ego and obstinancy
Some Germans call their folding meter stick still Zollstock, where Zoll is inch and Stock is stick. ;-)
Now you guys have learned a new German compound word.
I call it Maßstab. I dont know anyone who calls it Zollstock.
Hi
You say it's not the Imperial system rather the American system or Freedom units. But fractions, inches, feet, yards, pounds, ounces and gallons just to name a few. Sounds like imperial to me aside from volume measurements they are the same.
I can sympathize with everyone experiencing this for the first time.
As a 58yr old Australian having been taught imperial through primary school then going to high school to discover metric and not having a clue about any of it. Seems the little wooden blocks of different colours that fit neatly together to make a cube were more than just a toy. Unfortunately I for one didn't make the connection.
Cheers from Australia
Switching between systems is not too difficult for most units (gallon, inches, feet, etc.). It's becoming challenging when units are mixed as 6 feets and 2 inches, with simple additions and substractions, 1/4" minus 1/8" and with temperatures (scale and origin are different).
Wrong title, the right one is : The Imperial system : the struggle of developped countries citizen in Murica.
@olivier Bourrée I can only speak on my own experience 😉
The struggle: moving the decimal point by three positions or adding three zeros.😅
Pareil pour la température au États-Unis utilise la température en Fahrenheit au lieu de Celsius, et aussi sur la distance en Miles au lieu de kilomètres
The Brits didn't force the metric system on anyone. We used the imperial system at the time of the empire, hence the name imperial. The UK didn't make the switch until the 1970s and our former colonies all switched to metric of their own accord at various times in the 20th century.
You realize that the name "imperial" has the same root word as "imperialism" right? The whole point of imperialism is forcing things on people. And historically speaking, the Brits are pretty good at that (hence the empire). 🤷🏼♀️
@@TransatlanticLiving You realise that the bit about the Empire and imperial is in my original comment, right?
Yes, the Brits probably did "force*" imperial measurement onto people in their colonies but my point was that that the switch to the metric system came after those countries became self ruling and was in now way ordered by the British. In fact, many of the countries went metric before the UK and did a proper job of it with none of the keeping of miles per hour and other measurements as we have over here.
* The force would have been along the lines of "if you want to sell to customers in Britain you need to make it in British sizes"
@@TransatlanticLiving Tony Sutton picked you up on the point that you were stating that the British took the Metric System to their "Colonies".
Well, there were once 13 Colonies that decided to become the USA and, at that time, they were using the then current British System of Units (The Winchester Standards).
However, the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 "imposed" upon all of the then "British Empire" the "British Imperial" or "Exchequer Standards" in 1826.
The USA did NOT go along with this change, which is why the US Customary Gallon differs from the "Imperial" Gallon and why there are 2000 Pounds to the US "Short" Ton (versus 2240 pounds in the Imperial "Long" Ton), among other differences.
[The Imperial Ton is 1,016 kg - which looks to be a way of "approximating" the Imperial Ton to the Metric Tonne (1000 kg) - but I could be wrong.].
The "transition" to SI during the 1970s took place in those British Commonwealth Countries quite independently of the UK, many of which did much better at it than the UK
(See ukma.org.uk/press/comparison-with-australia/ )
The United Kingdom also "imposed" the English language as the language for Official Business in all of their Colonies (as France did with French in their Colonies.)
The resulting wide use of English in those now ex-colonies may not be such a bad thing - for the Countries concerned, the UK and the USA.
The UK, of course, is a right mess: the road system uses miles and mph for distances and speeds; most (many? some? I'm 60 and was brought up with the former but youngsters nowadays: I don't know) people think of fuel consumption in miles per gallon (instead of the much more sensible l/100 km on the continent) but fuel is dispensed in litres (I think because the old, mechanical pumps of the 1970s couldn't keep up with the oil crisis price rise - the cylinders with numbers couldn't spin fast enough, therefore switch to litres so it's a quarter of the speed); medicine is (here, as everywhere else including, I believe, the USA) dispensed in metric (ml or mg for fluid volume or dry weight respectively); and I lived through the decimalisation (technically not metricisation, but a similar idea) of the currency in 1971, which confused the socks off old people who could add up with £1 = 20s = 20* 12d, but just adding ordinary numbers where £1 = 100p seemed to be a challenge. Maybe they just didn't understand what 60p meant in terms of their old money (12s, if you must know). I tend to think of my weight in kg and height in cm, but not many people round me do. Maybe youngsters are more metric-savvy.
The really funny thing about all this is that, decades ago, both the USA and the UK *defined* their US customary and UK Imperial units in terms of metric units: the inch is *defined* to be 2.54cm, for example†. All systems of units are equally good at measuring things: some are just a bit easier to do arithmetic with. It doesn't help that US/UK units of length tend to be chopped into fractions, which are not always as easy to do sums with as just using decimals. Maybe that's just my lack of practice talking.
† That has to be better than an inch being "3 barleycorns, firm and round," which was the first definition laid down. By Edward II, IIRC.
In the US, they use metric in medicine, all americans can ear the "CC" in TV Shows , CC = Cubic Centimeter ! =)
From a manufacturing standpoint, it would be preventively expensive for all businesses to switch. Plain and simple.
Well the closest I ever had to deal with was to change currency from Dutch guilder to Euro (1 Euro was/is 2,20.... guilders). I must admit, it took a few years before I stopped calculating the price in guilders for groceries. And it took much more time to stop calculating big amounts (like for a car or a house) into guilders as one does not do that too often. All in all, it took me 10 years to complete the process. And that was only for one conversion. So, I can imagine that going from yard, foot, furlong, foot pound, ounces (several different), cups miles and whatever, is complicated.
Pour ma part, pas expat, mais les mesures impériales sont utilisées dans mon sport (le tir à l'arc). L'allonge, la longueur d'une flèche, c'est en pouces, la puissance d'un arc, c'est en livres, la vitesse de sortie d'une flèche, c'est en pieds par seconde, les clés 6 pans pour les réglages sont américaines.
Le seul truc qui soit en unités SI, ce sont les distances, lors des compétitions, c'est en mètres ^^;
Au passage, au Canada, ils utilisent encore beaucoup le système impérial, ce qui est parfois compliqué pour les recettes de cuisine. J'ai résolu le truc en achetant un nécessaire complet (cuillères et tasses de mesure).
Everyone who can count to 10 can use the Metric system, it's super easy.
Something that I have noticed is that Americans seem to prefer to say foot a really long way up the scale. They would rather say 100 feet then 30 yards. You would never hear a European say 300 decimeters they would rather say 30 meters.
Le problème de la cohabitation de ces deux unités de mesure c'est les risques de confusion. Se rappeler le vol AC143 Montréal/Edmonton tombé en panne de Kérosène à mi-distance qui a pu se poser de justesse en planer sur une piste désaffecté de la base aérienne de Gimli suite à la confusion entourant les mesures des unités avait entraîné un ravitaillement en carburant insuffisant pour le vol prévu. La cause principale était la confusion entre kilogrammes et livres
In Indonesia I remember we learn all based on the metric system, but in junior high there is some conversion to inch feet etc to be learned just to cater those who use imperial system.
Imperial is perverse. In the metric, if a wrench is too small, you take a bigger one. 14mm too small try 15mm. Straight forward. if 1/2inch is too small what is the next one, well 5/8inch. Obvious no? The positive thing about Imperial is that you must be good dealing with fractions. And what about water freezing at 32F and boiling at 212F instead of 0C for freezing and 100C for boiling.
The US did something interesting in 1933. The followed Britain by noting that imperial standards (such as the yardstick) were getting difficult to maintain (one was even burned to a crisp in the houses of Parliament in the 1800's). So they ditched imperial, replacing measures with metric, then converting back to imperial.
Countries like Australia were shaking their head. They were dragging their feet, avoiding metric while the US under the covers was embracing it.
However in 1959 all the major imperial measuring countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) gave in signing the "The international yard and pound" on 1 July 1959.
This basically ignored all imperial measurement standards and like the US and Britain had done, lock them in as metric measures.
The agreement defined the yard as exactly 0.9144 meters and the (avoirdupois) pound as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms.
Since this date, any time an American uses a yard or an inch, or a pound, they're actually using metric converted.
The imperial scales for example, that measure pounds are actually calibrated using kilograms and have been since 1933.
Liberia and Myanmar are both moving to metric, leaving the USA as the only Earthian country still struggling to join the 20th century.
The metric system began to spread in Europe not because of Napoleon's conquest (he, by the way, did not colonize Europe, but conquered), but through the development of science. Universities, schools, colleges, books, and printing began to spread in society at this time. And the metric system with them. It was simple, convenient and easy to remember, so it quickly became the standard. At the same time, in some parts of Europe there are still echoes of the old measures - the Germans, for example, still use a dozen and a gross (a dozen dozen) in everyday life. The auto and bicycle industry uses inch standards, etc. However, using the metric system is really much easier than counting “eagles per hamburgers”, like the americans do.
"Eagles per hamburgers" 😂😂
You're right when you say it's totally useful to try to convert in imperial system when an American is abroad.
I think you should mentally memorize how much is ,for example,a meter/kilometer or a liter , in order to make the metric system yours.
Cheers from Italy ✌🏻😉
How to convert mpg ( miles per gallon ) into liter/km ? ... good luck ^^
@@jean-claudevoillemin4618 divide the miles per gallon value by 2.352 in a calculator and you'll get value in km/l. Another way would be to multiply by 0.425. Either gets you a close enough approximate.
In metric countries it's liters per 100 kilometers (l/100 km).
If I am not mistaken, US Army has adopted metric system.
The UK changed over in the 70's but have feet in both camps as we still use Miles on road signage or MPH for car spedometers .Pints of milk or beer and a lot of other things use dual measurements.
Anoter point is the majority of our tape measures have both metric and imperial
A liter is a quarter gallon :-). And its a box of water 10x10x10 cm
I actually have the opposite problem. I've lived in Australia since the 1970's, and I have a perfect understanding of metric. I just don't understand the irrational imperial system.
Fun fact the US is using the mertric system only they have to complicate it by converting to Imperial system
Standards for the exact length of an inch have varied in the past, but since the adoption of the international yard during the 1950s and 1960s it has been based on the metric system and defined as exactly 25.4 mm
Believe it or not but in Britain we use metric and imperial. In school we are taught entirely in metric. Our cook books are in grams. Our short distance measurements are in mm, cm, m. We use ml, l, kl. but when discussing height of a person, we use feet and inches. For whatever reason this stuck. And I think it’s because whenever kids talk to older people such as grandparents and they ask how tall they are. They don’t know what meters are so you have to speak in a measurement they do understand. Also notice how I said short distance measurements was in metric. That’s because our roads are still using imperial. We still use miles per hour and We still measure in miles. Why? Idk 🤷🏻♂️. Might have something to do with the 70mph speed limit or something.
I love the Imperial system. My favorite unit is the furlong per fortnight.
Ce qui est drôle c'est quand on converti une recette américaine, par exemple pour les cinnamon rolls et qu'on se retrouve avec des mesures étranges, genre 458 grammes de farine 😁
Le plus simple c’est d’acheter les ”cups” et les ”spoon” pour mesurer, ça se trouve facilement sur le net.
Le plus étrange, c'est que les Américains utilisent des mesures de volume (comme les "cups"), alors que nous utilisons des mesures de masses (grammes, kilogrammes).
Au Canada, on est habité de voir les deux systèmes dans les recettes. On s'habitue d'approximer entre les deux mais l'affaire avec les measures d'ingrédients secs (volume en impérial et masse en métrique)... c'est un peu frustrant.
Étant donné que les recettes ne sont pas une science exacte, il est possible de faire des arrondis de manière intelligente pour avoir une version « métrique » des recettes. Comme arrondir 458 à 450 voire 500 (si ça ne change pas trop le résultat, à coordonner avec les autres arrondis).
The weird thing is that all over the World in aviation the Imperial system is used. Also in France flightlevels are in feet, speed in Mph and fuelquantity in gallon, but also in kg. That has gone wrong a couple of times with planes running out of fuel. Funny thing is that in gliders, hanggliders and all engineless airplanes outside the US the UK and the other Imperial countries the metric system is used. Gliding originated in Germany . But if a glider pilot communicates with a controler say in the Netherlands he is supposed to switch over to the Imperial system with a lot of calculating in the cockpit as a result.
4:02 ... Text says Stevin was Belgian, captions says he was Dutch ... plot twist, they're both right.
In the UK we use a mixture. I think metric is kind of the official system but we use miles, stones, pints, feet & inches too.
I like both systems as they both have pros & cons. If I had to choose one, metric is the superior system & I do think imperial will die out eventually.
I am archery shooter. The power of a bow is metered in lbs, the length in inch, the arrowhead weight in grain. I thing archery have a English tradition so it won't exchanged to metric system.
It remind me when as a young french technician, I had to work in imperial units for a project in Indonesia for an american engineering .. a bit disturbing.
Greetings there,
I'm not the American but I'm an engineer for over 20 years, I use both metric and the imperial system depends on a work I need to do. Also, in school, I was learn both but the primary was metric. I totally understand all the people in the US about changing from imperial to metric and yes it is expensive to change, but they didn't think at all how to implement it and teach the people how to use metric system in schools as I have. If you ask me, best thing that US can do is to just implement the metric system in schools as an additional system, you can still learn the imperial but you will have to learn the metric as well.With both you doesn't have to convert the units, just learn the basics and how the metric system works. Even I need to use calculator for some of the conversions, for example, I know how to convert inch, feet, mile, gallon and yard without calculator, but only some basic numbers, but for some complex calculations I prefer using calculator :D
I know that one mile is about 1.609km (I always round it to 1.6, to convert it to meters, just move the dot 3 places to the right, it becomes 1609m, also, 1.609km is equal 160900 cm and 1609000 mm, so, just move the comma (dot). One inch is equal to 0.254 dm(decimeter=1/10 of the meter), 2.54 cm(centimeter=1/100 of the meter) or 25.4 mm(millimeter=1/1000 of the meter)
As i sad, easy to use :D
In my life I've meet lots of US people where I work and they also know metric as well as imperial, and we can communicate for our project, important thing is NOT to mix the systems, for example, if I start project using imperial, I need to tell my coworker that I'm using imperial.
Also, in my country in the technical school, we all use metric and we all reading dimensions in millimeters, for example, if I need steel plate 0.78 meters by 0.9 meters, i will never say 0.78 by 0.9, i will convert it to millimeters and use those 780 by 900 and with those numbers every technician will know exact dimensions.
Great channel, i love to learn how other people think and what problems they have. Keep up the good work :D
As I know so far, US uses the metric as well, maybe they didn't notice but they use it. For example, they use metric in pharmaceuticals, they use cubic centimeter or cc, next one they use is metric money, think how many pennies is in a dime and how many dimes is is a dollar, it is all using the 10th's metric system and US use this system long before England wa using pounds, shillings etc... Next thing the US use as metric is in Photography, all films are measured in millimeters, all the lenses as well, you watch the movies on "milimeter" films in the cinemas :D Next thing US use in metric is nutrition labels, just look how much "grams" of sugar is in some product, or fat or whatever else :D Next thing is the bottles, just ask yourself, did you buy an liter of pepsi or cola, all the bottles are measured in liters :D Also, US use the volume displacement of the pistons in the engines using metric, US us Liters for displaying the volumes, for example 3 liter engine or 5 liter engine etc.... :D
Interesting, you're already using it and you didn't know :D
I agree, I think teaching both systems concurrently would be a great way to go in the US! You're right about many of your examples of the metric system in the US, but I'd add that our money isn't entirely "metric," because we have quarters and nickels as well (4x25 and 20x5 🤔🤦🏼♀️)... And you can buy a 2-liter of Pepsi (I've never seen one liter alone in the US)... But a gallon of milk! 😂
@@TransatlanticLiving Yeah i know about quarters and nickels as well :D I was trying to sya that 1 dollar have 100 cents, so basically it's using metric as well as imperial :D Didn't know about 1 liter bottle, so you only have 2 liters and higher? I mean, same here but they start to pack the sodas in 1 liters as well not so long ago :D
Merci très insfructif
Learning a new language (a completely different than the one you speak) works ,basically the same way.
When you stop translating everything , the new language starts to make sense.
The measurement systems work exactly the same, when you stop trying to convert one into he other, stuff starts to make real sense.
Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc young people, are learning the metric system, meaning that only the old ones are yet stack with a system that is even different among those three countries.
Simplicity and logic is the key word when it comes to communication among us ; complicating one's life by putting complex things in front of us only makes people to stay separated; besides : some old people can not learn new tricks, and the refusal to integrate Americans into the new world comes , basically, from them.
Take it from me, I was trained on the metric system all my life( I'm old enough to easily be your grandfather) and I was forced to learn a new language and managed to use the Imperial system to be able to work in Canada.
Greetings from Toronto.
Add to this shoe sizes. I am a size 7-1/2 in the English system which is 8 in the US one and is 40 in the metric shoe size.
The USA has never used the *'Imperial System'*. They chose a subset of the old avoirdupois measurements in use since 1588. e.g. The wine gallon weighing 8 lbs and a 4% larger oz. In 1824 UK law ratified the 'Imperial System' with a gallon of water weighing 10 lbs.
We avoided the expense of changing road signs and speed limits by sticking to miles and mph and I dare anyone to deny us our pint of beer!
I'm from the UK. & we were brought-up using imp & metric. I only grasped how long 100m was when I ran it, then I was like "Ah..!". 💡
Same. I can easily tell you how long 5 km is (3.1 miles) from my life experience in track. Which adds to my point that, without life experience or points of reference, it's hard to visualize! But once you do, you're good to go. 🙂
100 m is only about 10% longer than 100 yards.
However, US Citizens tend NOT to use Yards - except on Football Fields.
Le système français est métrique sauf que comme nous aimons bien compliqué les choses, il y a des exceptions. Les raccords de plomberie sont officiellement en pouces comme le veux la norme iso. Nos ancien parle de 20*27 mais aujourd'hui il faut dire 3/4 de pouces. Mais bon passe encore car les deux ont toujours exister en france, le métrique pour l'eau et souvent l'impérial pour l'hydraulique huile. Aujourd'hui selon la formation et la génération on utilise les deux et les tableaux de conversion sont monnaie courante. Par contre le truc vraiment bizarre c'est les pneus, prenons ma voiture : la taille des pneus est 195/65R15. Cela signifie que mon pneu fait 195mm de large (système métrique) que mon flanc fait 65% de 195 mm soit environ 127 mm (système métrique) le R signifie carcasse radial et le 15 signifie que ma jante fait 15 pouces (système impérial). Chercher l'erreur? Y'a vraiment des trucs bizarre dans notre pays.
Can't stop myself from reading the subtitles, and i can barely read French!
The Imperial system is backward. The USA is mad to be still using it.
And don't say that "you are different". Literally every other country (but 2) was not using the metric system a couple of hundred years ago. So we went through the pain of conversion, because we understood that the Metric system is superior.
Every day you delay, makes it a little bit harder.