25.4 millimeters

One 12th of a foot.

@@markfinlay6923how do you think a foot is defined?

3 barleycorns

​@@snarlbanarl1940poof, right into his head😂, he will probably say something'th of a mile..😂😂

well, as electronics designer I am using metric for definition of board dimensions, all calculations, reflow profiles, etc. But when it comes to routing - I am switching to imperial - despite the fact, I am living in Europe. Why? Because basic THT pin grid was 0.1" and that stayed. Of course, today you will find, that most components have their pitch and dimensions defined purely in metric, but majority of PCB fab houses will show you their copper etching capabilities in imperial. So you basically have 90% of PCB dimensions metric, but track widths are in freaking mils. And yes, in theory you can provide metric Gerber files - but when you go for the minimal values permitted by fab - your project may be rejected.

What's the first thing Americans learn in grade school science classes? Oh right, always use metric for any science. Why are Europeans so mad that Americans prefer to use imperial in their day-to-day life? Because the majority of media content they consume is made by Americans and they're minorly inconvenienced by the use of imperial. Maybe Europeans shouldn't have invented the imperial system

I agree. Imagine using BTUs and foot/pounds again.

Yes. Just like it would be a horror to measure time in days, hours, minutes and seconds, and angles in degrees, minutes and seconds. The conversion to the metric system is not yet finished, even outside the three countries using imperial measurements.

The second is an SI unit though.

My thoughts exactly. What your used to does not equate to what is better.

Thanks. You've just saved me 20 minutes of my life.

This is more Like Apologist video, might as well become johnny Harris Public Apology video, for using a weird measurement system

@@lewis72 You really should watch it, because what the other guy said doesn't really give a good summary to it, the commenter is being really misleading about it. The video also includes the history of how the metric system was created, how one of the scientists who helped create it realized he made a mistake but didn't say anything about it for a good reason, how geopolitics and pirates are involved in why the USA didn't adopt the metric system. The video does explain why after many years of trying to train himself to use the metric system "naturally" in the same way Americans use imperial system "naturally" didn't actually work, and even trying to teach his own kids to use the metric system in a natural way also isn't working because of what they are exposed to throughout their life including school. The commenter you are saying "thanks" to is doing a huge disservice to you through dishonesty, disregarding a lot of historical and cultural information that is shared throughout the video.

@@Wolfeisberg That is as may be but having a units system that isn't based on Base-10 is ridiculous.

Using the metric system - US schools stop using the imperial system after a certain level

@@AaryanSajwaniAnything distance is usually calculated in meters. I don’t recall a single problem that used feet or miles in physics class

Sorry meant to reply to Lucas :p

@@gizmocat11 seems harder to learn two systems.

@@gizmocat11😳

😂😂😂

just joining the ride to top comment

underrated comment

Took me a few moments 🤣

This should have way more likes 😂

Who uses Imperial System besides USA? Liberia and Burma a very exclusive club indeed. :D

@@Nekoyama69 No, when I was in the UK everything was in miles/yards etc. I heard that Canada uses the same measurement so it may apply to Australia and New Zealand and more british colonies

@@elomial724 I can assure you us over here is Australia and New Zealand don't use imperial at all and much prefer metric

@@elomial724 i don't know to which england you went because literally everything was in meters

@@harmlessbird Every country uses imperial system to measure a length of screen actually

I'm trying to force myself to pure metric for woodworking now. I'm just so tired of doing fractional math.

What year was your primary/conversion to metric? I have a mish mash of metric and imperial in my head but i’m a bit younger and from NZ. I’m not sure if we converted later or I picked it up from my parents and learned metric in school.

@@PaloclesI'd guess around 1969-1971, aged 7-9, I don't really remember. I was already conversant with imperial, picked up metric without difficulty.

@@Palocles We changed in 1973 (in primary schools). There were earlier changes in some fields, and our currency changed in 1966 (NZ 1967, UK 1971). The US changed to metric currency in 1792! There were some hold-outs, and feet is still valid for vertical seperation in aviation. I was at primary school for the change, and although I think of paper sizes in millimetres, I think of margins in half-inches. Height is feet and inches, but weight is kg,

Aren't decimeters and similar prefixes used in colloquial speech where you live? It's far easier to say "two dec(imeters)" than "twenty centimeters". Or "two hecto" instead of "two hundres grams".

i mean because of how simple it is any person in the US is abled to use the metric systems whenever they want

same

I feel like I’m in a war zone

@@engineerenginering8633 how? they're saying Metric is better than Imperial

Luv mi imperial 'ate mi metric Simple as

@@_laurenolo_ it's not

I like that the world's superpower is still stubbornly using the quirky imperial system.

Americans will never figure that out.

@@fransthefox9682a lot of Americans. I’m American and I can… READ!!! Can you believe it!!! I’m an AMERICAN that can READ and do MATH(s). I’m like a genius or something, right?

@@TheMapGod275 Ah okay. Then you must know the Metric system even more than the Imperial system.

@@TheMapGod275 i bet u still use imperial... for us who never use imperial using it seems stupid..aka even if u only use it once every while.....stupid.

That's the decimal system... And the US have that as well when it comes to 100 cents in a dollar.

Aren't we used to that, as that one country is pretty unrational about other things to

A debate that wil remain a debate for now, because the time to implement it has passed. Now everything in the U.S is gets divided. I'm not American, but even I know there would be a part of the population that start ranting against the 'woke leftie metric system' and pro- freedom feet. ;)

@Tom Beebe lmao, thinking the imperial system was even somewhat equal in usefulness to the metric system, so you feel the need to know both…

@@aetos198 Imagine thinking it even matters, it's simply a way to convey distance and temperature. Arguing over what's better is like trying to argue what language is better, and then saying "English is the best language because that's what everyone is using at the global level." It's all meaningless. We're fucking monkeys on a space rock flying around a burning ball of gas in space, do you think the universe gives a fuck?

🔥

@Tom Beebe Imagine not using kelvin to cook noodles

I used to think that only developing countries would use a imperial system, until I realized there are only three of them

Here in the UK we have a ridiculous mash up of both systems. And most people still give their height and weight in imperial even now.

Like how many football fields crazy?

right

its not crazy..its stupid

It's not crazy. It's natural. Metric is "of the mind" not "of nature". Anything of the mind is evil, of nature good. Just the fact that you wrote "foreigner" tells the tale. Metric is foreign.

Engineering is where you need the precision. For household situations metric is just a nuisance.

@@physiocrat7143 If you are used to imperial, sure. But you can't have the arrogance to think that it people used to metric don't find imperial units a nuisance in household (it is even more of a nuisance: discomfort of using a foreign unit + discomfort of having to switch unit for science life and for everyday life. You guy are maybe used to switch between 2 systems depending on whether you are doing science or cooking, but we are not)

@@christophelegal9194 I am used to both systems, having done model railways as a ten year old, which use millimetres, and then done physics and chemistry. I am therefore in a position to compare objectively, and of course, what people are used to is important. The origin of the metric system was based on concepts which had nothing to do with daily usage. Ten is not the optimal base, as it can only be divided by 2 and 5, whereas 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4 and 5, and the next best base after that is 60 which is obviously unsuitable. Weights and volumes are binary, eg pints and gallons, ounces and pounds. The system as it evolved is messy but the point that specific trades adopted units that suited their requirements and enabled people to work in small whole numbers. The metric system works well in scientific and engineering situations, apart from the decimal point in a medical context, which has resulted in patients receiving ten times, or a tenth, of the prescribed dose of their medication. As for the science/life switch - grammes and millimetres are too small to be useful around the house and the kilo is a bit on the big size except for things like potatoes. Shops seem to have adopted the hecto for things like cheese, but the system as it was handed down from on high be the French Revolution scientists has had to be fiddled around with quite a lot to make it workable in daily life.

@@physiocrat7143 It's a nuisance if you aren't used to it. If you were using it from the start it wouldn't feel like a nuisance, on the contrary even for simple household stuff the metric can still be equally good, or even superior. Let's say you have a recipe that's made for a 1L portion, but you only want to make 10% of that. 1L neatly converts to 10 dcl, giving you 10 smaller parts without having to use a calculator. And it just works so nicely between units as well, like the fact that 1L of water weighs exactly 1kg and if you want to express a L in cm^3 it's as easy as just calculating 10x10x10cm. The only unit that makes it easier to imagine things for me is PSI vs. bar/Pa. [eidt:] ps. don't get me started on Celcius vs. Fahrenheit. You have to admit that especially for household stuff having a centigrade measurement where 0° is freeze point and 100° is boiling is way better than the totally arbitrary and random values F's have. :)

@@NixHarpinger I have been using the metric system since the age of about 9 as it is used for model railways. If you have a recipe that you want to make a quarter or a third of, more likely than a tenth, then you are left with recurring decimals.Then I did a science degree. I am perfectly used to the system but there are horses for courses. The French academics who cooked up this system lived in an ivory tower in an atmosphere of detached and imagined rationality. They even divided the time and the calendar decimally. There is nothing natural about the use of the number ten - we just happen to have that number of fingers and toes. From a mathematical perspective, 8, 12, 16 and 20 are more useful as as bases. You would not want a clock divided into ten hours - it would be hard to mark out with a compass and rule. The Babylonians had a better grasp of numbers when they divided the circle into 360. which has factors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 24, 30, 40, 60, 90, 120 and 180. The metric system is now established and is obviously here to stay, but it would be a good idea if we stopped kidding ourselves that it is inherently and naturally superior. Rulers and tape measures marked in millimetres are a darned nuisance when you are working to an accuracy of about 3 mm.

Our cars in Canada can flip over to imperial once we cross into the stupider side of North America.

Time is a whole nother can of worm. Ask any software developer. Our current system is an absolute mess, and we've barely started tackling time in space and the relativistic effects. At least most of the world is on the same page and using the same system.

@@dsp4392 Time is fairly easy (leap seconds not withstanding), but dealing with the calendar in software is a right PITA.

@@dsp4392 Not just software. Im in hardware as well, and when I started working with IMU and GNSS data I was shocked to see how hard it would be to get accurate data when sampling at up to 2KHz and moving at 200++km/t.

In the US, studying engineering, unit conversion was basically the only thing we did for a whole semester. Metric, Imperial, and even other weird shit - it didn't matter. It was drilled in us how to do unit conversion. To this day, I can still caclulate how many smoots to the beard-second by hand or whatever units there are. It's a skill engineers should know, even if they stay in SI. That being said, imperial needs to die and metric is the best.

We British do use a hybrid. We are not getting rid of the British pint. That is British culture.

@@sorban5352 no, I did. I was just asking for more normalisation, so there will be a generation where they'd know both systems, then maybe the next generation gets more comfortable with metric and the next generation transitions, leaving behind the garbage that is imperial

@@sorban5352 I am not sure what part of my comment made you think I didn't see the video. Can you enlighten me? I didn't say he didn't praise metric like it seems you believe I said

They've beent talking about the metric system in the U.S longer then what my Mom was in grade school. Little to nothing has changed.

@@brendanmichaelwelsh6260 he talked about them now having metric in nutritional, pharmaceutical and fabrication stuff or whatever. The more steps into normalisation, the easier the transition will become.

This seems rational, I am 21 and grew up in the UK. I remember being taught basics of the imperial system when I was in primary school. I don't struggle switching between the two however I find adding and subtracting inches much harder because of the fractions, millimeters just make so much more sense, as a carpenter I mainly use millimeters but a lot of things we do are based in feet such as door widths and board sizes as you can't just change them as there are hundreds of thousands of houses that still have imperial doors that will need replacing at some point

But like why? Why couldn’t Americans just make it simple?

Well said!! They made up excuses during the industrialisation and they continue to do so in 2023. But any job of real world application or significance(research, medicine, engineering etc) has silently moved on to the metric system for obvious reasons but the general public are stuck with an outdated system thanks to the educational inadequacies and inaction by the government. It probably explains the obesity crisis in America as all nutritional information on packages is in the metric system but no one even understands what it means!

it is funny (lame, actually) how Australians use the metric system for everything except their own height. they are like "this tree in 3 m tall" "and how tall are you?" "six feet"

Me too. What's ironic is that when my parents migrated to Australia from Germany in 1960, my father, who was a carpenter, had to learn the imperial measurement system ... only to have to convert back in the 70's when we went metric!

Exactly what i was thinking. It's all fun and games with ft and inches. Until you need to split a fraction of an inch in half. or know what 1" 25/64ths means. The whole excuse of "i can't relate" turns right around when you get into the fractions. bad habits die hard.

There you have it, switched completely. All your surroundings were metric, while in the US they're not and probably won't be for a long long time.

Because it is built as an actual system and it works with decimal numbers. Imperial "system" is just random pile of ad-hoc measurement units added on top of each other over centuries when someone needed to measure something new. It's somewhat useful for day to day life, but it is incompatible with modern math.

As an engineering student in Australia, if I get a problem with imperial units, I convert to metric as the first step, because engineering, and indeed any endeavour that requires any degree of precision, should not be done with imperial under any circumstances.

Yeah because it’s by design by the government to give up the imperial system just to “get in line” with the rest of the world.

Why?

You're on the wrong board for that. That's a matter of another discussion hence the term mechanical engineer. When you step outside to see if you need a jacket or not you don't get surveying equipment. If you get in your car to grab something to eat and need to go by the gas station they don't break your tank down into cc's. That would be for Ju Mcduck. We're not paying in Shekels. For measuring your Johnson I'm sure metric is a little more flattering.

France not Germany

In the science of land surveying/engineering we use tenths where the decimal doesn't move. Metric moves decimals.

@@odnewdylee that is metric…

I mean all maths is made up, it makes Broad sense cause we have 10 digits in total on both hand and makes using a base 10 system more familiar as when we grow up, fingers are good for learning aids

I work in international logistics and constant change of systems really doesn't make job easier with hundreds of currencies and languages and hundreds of thousands of kind of goods. Yes metrics system makes sense, because people are able to do mistakes because of overly complicated systemic issues (I mean not just measurement 😀)

@@bassiebe until using cm, then the decimal is in the wrong place. It becomes it's own entity not like tenths. Tenths are always behind the decimal so when using blueprints you don't have to check any signs after the number.

Superior? How exactly? Objectively and utterly?

Yeah, the imperial system is based on random things, while the metric is very consistent within, works with the most standard physics models, its overall logical

The metrics system is also based on random things. "Earth" and "water" are no more objective than body parts or pieces of corn. And as explained, even measurements based on the human body can be standardized. And they can also be used to calculate physical phenomenon. The imperial system is very good for human style living and human sized things.

@@WhiteShadowZO Actually it is not, the metric system is a universal system of measurement, as it has been proven that a meter is the inverse of the speed of light in a vacuum. Which is given a fixed numerical value of 299,792,458 m/s, so a meter can be defined as the distance covered by light in a vacuum in exactly 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Yea metric really is superior 🦅🇺🇸🥓🍳

hahahaha so many "Yards/Feet/Poles/What-the-f**k-ever" of this. Logic... apparently not for everyone :P

Yeah but powers of 2 are much easier in actual use than powers of ten. Look at a distance--easy to mentally cut it in half, quarters, eights, etc. Units that are 10x from each other just aren't that convenient. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter--as long as it's standardized. Pick a system that works for you and stop being a snob about it.4

they even don't know where america is !

But 10 isn't useful for me. I do woodworking. Halves and doubles in feet and inches is far more useful. I got all excited in college when I found precision decimal inch rulers, because I could finally work in decimal, which sounded amazing, but still work at my familiar scale, and fit standard spaces and objects in the US. I struggled with it for a year or two, before ditching it entirely. It sucked, constantly. I don't convert between things like lengths and liquid volumes, so ×10 and ÷10 is it's only trick, which I never found useful. With a foot I can divide a box into 1 12" space, 2 6" spaces, 3 4" spaces, 4 3" spaces, 6 2" spaces, or 12 1" spaces, all of which are really great, human-scale sizes. A cm is so small, it's never useful on its own, and everywhere I look I find things are some crazy number of mm, like 17.3mm x 29.7mm. All the standards are crazy, too, like plywood is 1200x2400mm (13 syllables), whereas mine is 4x8ft (4 syllables). All our stuff is 1x2, 2x4, 4x4, 2x8, etc - super small and simple. European cabinetry uses a lot of roughly 5x5ft panels, but there it's 1525x1525mm. In the US, ceilings tend to be 8 (I can almost touch), 9 (can almost jump to touch), or 10 ft (can't reach). In the UK they're 2.4m or 2.6m, complicated from the start. All the numbers are a lot more wacky to me. We have 2x4s. They have 100x47mm (I found a number of different things, but most weren't nice, simple, memorable things). I've heard other countries use these wacky mm sizes, but often still call them things like 2x4s, because of how nice that is. We do a ton of timber framing the US, so all of these numbers are small, simple, and work out great. The UK does a ton of brick and block building. The office I'm in right now is 10x12x9, super easy to figure out things like how much paint I need for the walls, or how much wood I need for the flooring. I just looked up standard UK office spaces, and right away found a page that said "In a typical room, where the ceiling is 2.4m high, a floor area of 4.6m2 (for example 2.0 x 2.3m) will be needed to provide a space of 11 cubic metres. Where the ceiling is 3.0m high or higher the minimum floor area will be 3.7m2 (for example 2.0 x 1.85m). It's all a bunch of hard to remember decimals, and that seems standard. I've investigated this many times over the years, and everything ends up a wash of thick decimal numbers. All the rooms in all the houses I've lived in have been simple, whole number feet measurements - 10x10, 15x20, 10x12. I could remember the whole house when I was at the home store, because feet are a much more usable scale than centimeters or meters, and so we build to them most of the time. I also find mm to be just too tiny. It's like having to work in 32nds of an inch all the time. At my age I can't even easily see them anymore. The next thing up, cm, are still so small I need a ton of them to do anything. Up from there, we blow past desktop scale stuff, and we're in m, but even that doesn't match up with anything, like the height of a human, or a room. Everything is off, and non-ergonomic. I could go on and on. Imperial may not be great for science, and conversions between entirely different types of units - totally agree - but it is a really nice system for things like woodworking, and even CNC machining (I have an imperial CNC mill and lathe). Now, of course, everything's trade-offs, so I will say that I looked into it before, and found stud (joist? rafter? I forget now) spacing in metric being done at 60cm, which is very nearly 24"/2', but is wonderfully divisible by almost everything - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60. I have to admit that's pretty cool.

@@gfixler If you grow up in metric system then some or many of your points never happen. You still feel and think in the imperial system, but try to use the metric system. That does not work. Just like me using the imprial system. I find it easy to work with those hard to remember decimals, but i guess its a point you have there with those multiplications. I know how tall i am and how far i can reach. 2.4m is not complicated for me at all. I rougthly know what a cm is. I know where to find proportions on my hands that are 10cm or 20 cm. Very usefull. I know how to make a step that is 1 m long.

Imagine running a train with mW but charging your phone with MW

One metric person to another... just give up, they wont ever get it. And i doubt they want to get it cus the f in feet and farenheight stands for FREEDOM

@@IncDoge 'Murica - the place where they believe they are ultra-free but they are totally not.

@@texanplayer7651 I imagine that you wouldn't be able to call a taxi because the train isn't working because your phone just caught fire.

I never knew these awesome thanks for Donation of some knowledge to me

discovered the same thing !

What I don't understand, is why things were divided like on a binary system in powers of 2?? I mean, imagine if the foot was not divided into 4ths, 8th, 16ths and 32nds, but instead divided into tenths, hundredths, and thousandths just like metric? Issue gone. Poof. And what if we just picked one single unit for each type of measurment, and just multiplied or divided by 10, 100, 1000, etc? Like, ok, you got meters, grams, and liters, we got yards, ounces, and gallons. Now instead of kilometers, centimeters, kilograms, milligrams etc we got kiloyards, centiyards, kiloounces, milliounces, kilogallons, etc... Boom, issue solved again. The thing I like about imperial is that many of the base units of measure are good representations for what they are commonly used for. Feet is good because you can approximate a distance with literal feet, so it fits nicely for the application. Fahrenheit is particularly good for weather because instead of being based on boiling point of water, it's based on the average temperature of the human body, and it allows for nice round numbers for particular air temperatures that feel noticably different. For instance, most people like their room temperature to be 68, 69, 70, 71, or 72 degrees fahrenheit. This corresponds to 20c, 20.555c, 21.111c, 21.666c, and 22.222c. If you wanted to give whole numbers for room temp in celcius, each whole digit would go up by nearly 2 degrees fahrenheit, which is too large of a jump, so you are forced to use decimal places to describe your ideal room temp.

@@rameynoodles152 this is a lame excuse. I have no problem describing 20.5 C, 21C, 21.5C and so on for my room temperature. My A/C control shift temperature in 0.5C steps. In fact, comparing to distance, using 0.5 increments in temperature is easier than describing a size of wrench socket a 7/16" or 1-1/8". Describing like that it is very ackward compared to the closest metric equivalents (M16 or M29).

@@rameynoodles152 I dont know, using Celcious is easy and logical, 0 is freezing water, 100 is boiling and means dont shove your fingers, average human body temp is 36, i use AC set to 25C The differences in your example are not feelable one degree celcious is nothing, plus one minus one you wont really feel it

@@NoBodysGamer Man, i gotta say.. A/C set to 25C is REALLY HOT.

In Canada the extent of our metric use is km for speed limits and Celsius for temperature. Everything else here is still imperial. We aren’t a metric country.

​@@kjay8796 km/h, km is for length ahah

@@kjay8796 I feel like you're forgetting a lot of things. Like yeah we measure people's height in feet and inches, and weight in pounds, but food is all in metric like 2L soda bottles, or at least it's labeled as such even when it's not actually measured in it, like 473ml beer cans (16 fl oz). Also in the weather, snowfall is measured in cm and rain in mm. Also on the road, height limits are in metres and weight limits in metric tonnes.

@@WilliamAndrea Canada, Quebec. For people’s height, it seems to be mixes. Some people use inches and some use cm. When I visit various doctors, they only use cm. For road length and speed, it is pretty rare to hear miles and feet. For weather reports, they only use mm, cm for rain and snow depth. They only use Celsius. They only use km for visibility. They only use Pascal or kPa for pressure. For TV and monitor size, everyone uses inches since that is what the box says in large letter. It is USA related. For supermarkets and such, pounds are prioritized for some reason. They mostly print out $/kg as well. It is mostly in the construction industry where imperial units are always used. If I want to buy drill bits, they give fractional numbers like 3/8 of an inch.... and they lost me. I have no idea what 3/8 or 1/4 and such means. Why don’t they give exact numbers? Hey, what time is it? It is 345/1735 hour and 731/3895 minutes.

Go and try to buy 1/4 of kilo of anything at the market, they will scratch their heads and say: "oh, a half-pound!"

As a pilot I can say that's a crock.

as a pilot im thankful imperial is standard, as a maker i’m not so thankful for imperial

Only for altitude.@@DudeManBoroMan

maker of what? wdym@@DudeManBoroMan

Aviation doesn't use any one system. It's a mixture of imperial (altitude), nautical (distance/speed) and in most cases, metric (visibility, air pressure, temperature, dewpoint). Personally I'm glad they don't use metric for altitude or speed/distance. "When ready, descend to one thousand two hundred metres" or "reduce speed to three three three kilometres per hour" (as opposed to "descend to four thousand feet" and "reduce speed to to one eight zero knots" is much quicker to say on the radio. There's also the fact that ATC 'units' are in blocks of 5 miles lateral and 1000 feet vertical, so to switch to the metric system makes all that a lot harder for those who separate aircraft from each other.

It's not that it's hard. From my experience, it's just useless stubbornness and a weird sense of national pride.

@@ilsgrade8357 exceptionalism :)

We should all remember that Sumerians used a sexagesimal system back in 4000 BC, which is Base-60 and far from 10! They designed the 60-minute hour ffs... We still use the base 60 numbering for designing navigaton systems.

It's not difficult to use base 10 (decimal). It's just stupid to use base 10 (decimal). We should use base 10 instead.

Also the problem is how they said " everything will be made in metric" they said that when my dad was a kid

ouch , I feel you

Welcome to the UK. 😂

BRo decimals are simple, come back when you do fractions for 7/16 and 15/32

@@timtomnec I think you are missing the point here. Only working with decimal, of course it's easy but converting the fraction back and forth its is where the pain begin especially in the 32th of an inch and smaller.

@soyel94 welcome the the wood industry in Quebec, I don't know about the other province. I guess we like it rough lol

Surprising lol

Because Metric is the best

What a surprise

Then just teach him the metric system if it's so much easier, no need to make your child go through that much mental torment.

There’s a reason why pretty much the entire world is using it

That has actually happened to me with small measurements. Anything under half an inch makes more sense to me in mm because I have a German car I often work on and all the bolts are in metric, so when I think of a frame of reference from small units of length, i think of those bolt sizes, in Metric. I will use US Customary down the about a half inch then just switch over to mm. Anything over about 18mm becomes meaningless to me and anything under half an inch also becomes somewhat meaningless.

Metric is the easiest language to learn, while teaching you a scientific logic that goes forwards and backwards with absolute accuracy using 1s and 0s. I will teach you a learning. Are you ready? 1+1=2 Congrats!...you now know the Metric System. Well done children. Gold Star for you all. Oh...by the way...as in money we use a "Coma" per Metric Currency...all you have to use is a "Dot" or in Imperial it might be called a "Period". A "Period" is a simular word that Women do not enjoy having as Math nuts hate hearing.

@@waystadtymphyndir7079 any woman that does have 60 periods per second does sound like an electric power station

@@waystadtymphyndir7079 try this 2+4= 3/8

I was a physics major in university so I learned the metric system and worked with it for years. As soon as I left the field tho, I lost the ability to estimate in metric. Later in life, I decided to do my woodworking in metric (I still have a metric tape measure and a meter stick) and run my thermometers in celsius. I made like two wood projects in metric and was SO frustrated that my metric tools are covered with sawdust. As for the temperature, I was constantly and secretly converting EVERY temperature back to Fahrenheit. Both totally failed. About the only thing that I can easily do is go from Kilometers to Miles and back as I have a pretty good feel for that and the conversion is so simple.

Since Planck found another constant then the speed of light in a vacuüm ( the vibration of a cesium atom) we can derive every measurement from those two constants.

No, it's not. A lot of nations has done, both for metrics and for money It's hard to change when you are lazy and entitled USA, USA, USA!! :D

@@TheChzoronzon cope nerd

@@Speedy_pig123 Project more, Kletus :D

@@TheChzoronzon cope nerd

Same here in Germany.

That's what it was like in the U.S. except we only used inches and didn't really know what the centimeters meant!

Same here in Mozambique

I'm from Estonia too, very familiar for me

Same in Australia.

Agreed. As soon as I see some Fred Flintstone units like BTU or ft, I heave a sigh and convert to usable units. Oddly, I am stuck with KSI (thousands of pounds [force] per square inch) for most material strengths. Oh, and that lie that your engineering professors told you about the pound being a US customary unit of force, not a mass is a lie (and nonsense about slugs). Since the early 1970's the U.S. pound has been defined with respect to the international kilogram, which is a mass.

Carter who was an engineer but a bad politicians pushed fir metrication. Idiots who followed stopped to please lazy idiots. Confusion also help stores as customers cant figure out and compare prices per quantity !

So you're not a Ford engineer then?

You're in the US?

@@FinnMcRiangabra You didn't mention poundals!

Exactly. Some asshole was telling me I don't understand metric because I said "it's easier to convert things in metric". I brought this very concept up in response.

Probably the only way to do it is the whole country in one big bang

yeah, the key is schooling.

Yeah, as an American, I don't disagree that it wouldn't be that hard - in the long run. It would just be one hell of a speed bump to get over. I personally think we should convert to metric, but until it becomes officially sanctioned by the government, I agree with Johnny in that it is impossible for me to comprehend and retain it. It's basically like learning a second language. You can learn that language and even be fluent in it, but if you don't use it in everyday life, you will just revert back to what you know and are comfortable with.

You underestimate how stubborn Americans are.

It's really true that you learn this because your environment adjusted to it. In my country there are little green signs next to the road spread 100 m apart. The signs are there to tell you the exact location if you were to be stranded there (amongst other things). But it helped me to understand what a distance of 100 m looks like subconsciously. Just a small example.

I started with temperature, but am still not used to using it consistently...

@@privatemale27 If you live in a moderate climate you just have to know that 0° is freezing so you can see ice or snow, 20 degrees is a comfortable shirt temperature, at 30 its hot and 100 you literally evaporate. After that it's all downhill. Btw even i can't guess better than plus or minus a couple degrees

I'll try it. I forsee a multitude of U-turns in my future

@@t0k4m4k7 wellllll you can actually exist in 100 degrees (celcius, ofc) for some time before you die. You can do that in a sauna.

I did this on a recent road trip to Canada. Google maps automatically switches to km when crossing the border and I changed my car’s measurements to metric too

Why is Fahrenheit better than Celsius? Why would feet be better for elevation or altitude? I see no reason other than you are used to it. Thank you in advance

Fahrenheit is such a dumb system. Freezing temperatures are measured in the positive scale, where's the logic in that.

@@yankis. because 40 degrees is a bitch number compared to 103

@@Speedy_pig123 lol

You can use Fahrenheit for weather, as long as you use celsius for temperature...

ofc

Do you realize their arguments? 22 minutes to justify MURICA

​@@BornToBeUaifuck murica

@@castillo5148 The US is a great country, but they should get rid of these units of measurements

Do we use feet for measuring height???

Namaskar doston

Same in Canada, British relics

Wassup my man 👋

haha true.but these days atleast school going students mostly use centimeters for height as medical check up reports mention it in metric system.also 1liter = 1000ml so its atleast better than that 29.547.... conversion for ounces

Imperial system makes no sense, simply because our math is decimal, we learn math as decimal for one simple reason, OUR FINGERS! We literally learn to count using our fingers, wich means our brains are hardwired to use decimal system, we been doing this since humans exist.

Yeah we humans like self torture.

Five tomatoes - how many feet in a mile

US engineering schools teach in imperial system ? So gross. Just move to another continent, trust me.

@@Kriss352 heard the Netherlands is a nice place

That's nice. You know, until you go to the hardware store and all the lumber is cut to inch measurements (that aren't even really the measurements they say they are but fuck don't get me started on that shit) and everything is still sold by the foot. It bugs me that so many people outside the U.S. shit on us for not using metric, but it's not like we can really switch to using it individually when everything around us is still in Imperial units. BTW, I think that, objectively, the way you guys measure fuel efficiency in the metric system is infinitely stupider than we measure it here, even with our dumb units.

@@Kevin-jb2pv pretty sure you didn’t read the comment. The point is everyone had these same issues when they switched. You’re not special. It’s just that everyone else did it and gone on with life while you’re moaning about it all

@@Kevin-jb2pv You realize that most other countries use Foot and inches too. A country can develop a system where both can be used when appropriate.

Funny because I grew up using the metric system and as I watch and read a lot of American and British videos and books, I get to use the imperial system 😂 nothing hard, just like a lot pesaid, just have to get used to it.

You know this is true for most changes in the US, it is way more conservative than people in the US think themselves

100% his excuse as to why he cant use metric boils down to he just didnt use it enough to get use to it.

@@trashmammal454 I feel like he said more that everything that surrounds him and his kids is imperial and that makes it so difficult to get the experience to be metric. For me a meter is about a step. Probably very off since that's my messure of being a kid but it's still in my head

Idk when I visited Vancouver pizza sizes were still 12-14". Whats up with that Canada?

But not in 'MURICA.. the tribal zone currently occupied by about 50% reasonable people..

I had the same experience when we switched currencies in my country.

It is a matter of practice. It may take some effort, as you have to deliberately try to implement metric in daily routine. But at the end, this will make it easier to interact internationally.

Or if you run with a smart watch make it a habit of running 5k or 10k which are pretty standard running distances. Highway exits usually have signs at 1200m and 400m, so every time you see ¾ mi just think 1200m. That being said, metric is "okay" but I DO prefer PARTS of the imperial system for it's mathematical bases. Having things based on 12 and 16 makes things really nice to work with. It's just too bad the French didn't choose to standardize the number system away from decimal and use dozenal (base 12). Would have made things so much better.

Thats funny, I have gotten angry at google when it tells me to turn in 400 feet. How long is that? 1/4 mile I can understand. Metric would make that easier.

@@fulltimemonti EXACTLY this. I mean, in REALITY, it doesn't matter how many METERS an exit is away either, it's just that 1200m is more clear than 1.2km. due to the decimal point, which really should be avoided when designing large signs that have to be read VERY quickly. That's why signs in the USA stick to MILES for everything, and you see ¼ mi and ¾ mile signs. Ironically, many metric architectural blueprints only EVERY use one unit anyhow... mm. a 2.5m wall is written as 2500. This avoids any confusion. Also, both the US and Canada standardized on teaching cm as a kind of base unit, but mm is just almost always superior. You almost NEVER need to get smaller than a mm in day to day life. cm were added to make an approximation to an inch... and it's an imperfect comparison and you end up using fractions a lot anyhow.

@@TheNewGreenIsBlue dozenal is thrash, you can't easily make conversions since the base of usual numbers is 10 by 10. It would give something like hours to minutes and days, and that's a PITA to convert. I enjoy a base 10 way more for easy conversions.

70°F obviously

all except the United States We don't need to memorize anything because our perception is in meters from birth. studying science becomes easy.

I've never heard about the existence of spanish imperial units, and I'm spanish.

A pound - that's a measurement of British money ! You kbnow - so many Shillings and Pence. How can you forget that ?

And to be surrounded by it

Why though?

Exactly! I grew up with the metric system in Denmark and I agree on all your points.

@@AScareDK As a Swede, I only partially agree though. I do similar things, but I mainly rely on remembering images of measurement sticks (they do exist in different lengths after all, even though the vid only mentioned the 30cm one for some reason), as well as that measurement "tape" or w/e it's called in English, which is used very often for crafting things. As for a liter, I rely on pitchers with height measurements showing how much it is depending on how high the liquid goes inside it. (Milk cartons tend to have different shapes after all, so I never really found those to be reliable.) Even though these pitchers can have different shapes and heights as well, they're easier to remember precisely since they've each got those measurements showing on the side for a clear depiction of the amount inside it. So I use the same technique, just relying on different images in my head. As for weights, I just rely on stuff you can find in gyms. Although, in Sweden we still use the word 'Mile' (although we call it 'Mil'), which had various definitions but was then changed to 10,6km (or 10.6 for people using a dot instead of a comma for some reason) around 200 years before the metric system was introduced, which remained in Sweden after the introduction of the metric system because of sheer happenstance since it could be so easily converted, and was also changed to exactly 10km with the introduction of the metric system. So we use 'Mil' to refer to large distances, like for example distances between cities that matches or exceeds it, in colloquial speech. We use km for road signs and so on, because 'Mil' isn't accepted as a metric internationally, and Sweden doesn't want to confuse tourists and people coming here for work. Which is why it's limited to colloquial speech.

​@@Joppi1992I think the point is, that when people used to the Imperial System lack a reference to how much e.g 1 meter, 1 litre etc. is, they need - as you, and I suppose most people do - a common object as a rough reference. Despite the different milk box shapes, I still use it as a refernce for 1 litre. I know basically how much 1 meter is, ever since we had this 1 meter ruler in my classroom in elementry school. Just as other people know how much e.g 1 foot is. It's not any different. It's just the reference that is different. Ofc. If you need to know an exact measurement, you use a ruler, a pitcher or the "tape" you mention (I know what you refer to) etc. All in all, I think we kinda agree :-) Btw. I live in Copenhagen and I visit Sweden frequently. I have actually on a few occations met swedes telling me, that this or that location is XX "mil" away. We also have a danish "mil" which AFAIK is a slightly different lenght, but it's never used in daily language.

@@AScareDK To be completely honest, it just bugged me that you'd use a milk carton since it's non-transparent and got those different shapes, so they're rougher to get a good idea from than a pitcher with measurements on the side. Then it turned into a bigger topic, and I just rolled with it. Had to make a lot of edits though, but I think I got everything covered in the end. 😆

@@Joppi1992 Haha 😄 no prob. Oh, we haven't even mentioned those annoying soft plastic milk bags, that was (or still is?) on sale in supermarkets years back. They were a real pain to handle 😀

Vive la République, vive la France!

@@siloetnatchanel Je m'appelle me Poo Poo!!

@@sdamer4609 ok I guess

Apprendre l'urbanisme aux USA ? Pire idée ever ?

@@huquui8789 t'façon à partir du moment ou ça concerne pas des armes ou des burgers c'est pas la peine

Same in India, we use metric, but also use some imperial units.

Same in Taiwan where the inch has never been used

Same in Kenya. In fact when I think of height I think of feet and inches not centimetres. Never have.

Same 🇨🇦

Same in England but they're being fazed out

The UK is the best for this. Everything metric... EXCEPT... HAHAHA Miles, Gallons, Pints. The important daily stuff. :D

rim size is in inch over here in Germany as well :D

Because for many of us, calculations in imperial aren't hard.

@@dalyclose7815 I do not think you find it easy. How many gallons does a 2 feet wooden cube hold? It's easy to answer how many liters a 0.6 meter wooden cube holds. I can assume that sometimes you need to build for volume.

@@rxappdev In situations like that we just use cubic feet

@@rxappdev In what context would I need to know how many gallons a 2 foot wooden cube holds? Sincerely curious.

We fought the English for a reason. Keep your Imperial units.

It's even funnier when you find out how little Americans know about the system they think is "normal." As in the video above, where the woman thought a mile was 3,000 feet. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find anybody who could correctly answer that without looking it up. One of my favorites is the acre. That's a unit of square area, right? It's based on square feet, right? So how long, in feet, is one side of that square? IT'S AN IRRATIONAL NUMBER!

I think an acre is like 200x200ft? But I do know exactly how many feet there are in a mile as I have had it ingrained in my head for years. 5,280 You can not believe that I didn't look this up but I'll have you know that I didn't.

I can certainly believe you didn't look it up, because I also have it ingrained, along with 8 furlongs to the mile, and 1760 yards. An acre is 1/640 of a square mile, or 43,560 square feet (you were only off by 9%) . That means, not only can you not lay out a square mile AS a square with an even number of acres along each side (it's an irrational number), but you also can't lay out an acre as a regular square with an even number of feet along each side. 36 sections (square miles) make up one township. That, at least, is a 6x6 grid. Even more fun, the definition of a foot has changed over time, so when doing cartography, you have to know the year of the survey information. I know the American system quite intimately, which is one reason I loathe it so much. People who think it's "just fine" are those who never need to really use measurements in their daily life.

It's not a lack of understanding, it's a lack of caring and need to. Why does is fking matter?

@@logic3686 I mean, we don't need to, but it would make a lot of things way easier, both in our day-to-day lives, and in professional and scientific fields. It's way more logical and easy than the imperial system.

Pretty much. A few years ago I decided to change all my weather apps to use Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. At first it was odd, but I've gotten to the point where I'm used to it. I live in the US and I know approximately what I should wear when it's 15C outside ... and I'm starting to forget what I should wear when it's 70F out.

@@vegigun honestly the temp measurement is way worse in imperial than the distance for me since how it makes sense in metric, water freeze=cold=0 degrees/ water boiling=hot=100 degrees. wtaf is 100 degrees f fgs, makes zero sense.

Same goes for all of us in the Eurozone who had to switch to Euros on some random Jan. 1st. I grew up with Francs, but now hardly know what it is because we learnt to use euros and cents. The days of converting everything are long gone. Does it take time and efforts? Yes. Is it impossible? No. Look at how Sweden suddenly had to learn to drive on the other side of the road in 1967. It seems impossible to me to drive in left-hand traffic, but it isn't; plenty of Brits seem to be doing just fine when they visit too.

Agreed. Reducing intellectual expectations of a nation to the lowest common denominator never leads to global progress for our civilisation. Another moment I'm proud to be Irish.

Yep, I moved to Australia as an adult. Swapping over was strange at first with lots of mental maths, but now I think in metric and it’s strange to talk to my family overseas when they use imperial hahah. A huge one for me was cooking and buying food, grams for everything works so well.

yeah, but she wasn't American :)

I was gonna say the same thing; I was 20+ when france changed from francs to euros, it took me a while to adapt, it took my parents even more, but after a while it become natural. BUT it have to be a national change because, as you said, as long as your children (or even you) only see imperial measurements in your daily life, you wont be able to change.

So true a couple of years after the change no one could be bother to try to convert to the old coin it worked perfectly

Yeah but theres just no reason to do it. If you work in a field where it matters then you can use metric just fine no ones bothered by it, meanwhile in every day life imperial does not impact the vast majority of us. I'm not losing anything because I think of distance in miles instead of kilometers or because I measure in cups when cooking.

@@daroaminggnomeI was actually surprised to know that American labels are in the metric system because how are you supposed to understand what you are buying if you can't understand what is in it? I know most people don't even look at the labels but the only reason they exist is to inform the customer so this is kind of like writing a label in a different language at least that's how I see it.

A Canadian airliner full of passengers nearly crashed (The famed Gimly Glider) because the guy fueling it had confused metric and Imperial units, and only filled the tanks with half the fuel it needed.

That's probably the best way to do it. Weight isn't too bad for me to convert kg and pounds, but anything else would take some doing.

just remember distances are base 10s. 1Km = 1000m = 100000cm etc it even works going into small values 1cm is 10mm etc

You're not an expat, you're an immigrant.

@@saybrowt Do you even know what an expat is? And why is that the most important thing about his post?

@@MacNerfer Yes, an immigrant. Don't make up fancy words for yourself cause you consider yourself to be better.

Obviously

Metric gang 📏

@UCKW5MtM_bgUIfQLT6eIFq-g You're the one who is wrong.

Chill out nerds

Woooo metric

The only reason I know about the imperial system is because I go to America to visit family.

I'm of the age where we transitioned to the metric system while I was in school in the 70's and when it comes to metric vs imperial, my brain is scrambled, I visualize some things in imperial and some things in metric, it's actually a pain and have to constantly pull out a ruler or tape measure or google the conversion of things. For example, if you tell me something is 270mm, I can't visualize it but if you say something is about 10.5", I can visualize it. Very frustrating.

Canada still uses specific imperial units for a lot of day-to-day things, at least in my neck of the woods. Distances are measured in centimetres, metres, kilometres, etc., but human height is in feet and inches (when people from other metric-using countries say things like "I'm 170 cm tall" I don't have any real intuitive mental understanding of how tall that is, aside "180 cm is roughly six feet" and then having to do mental math from there. Admittedly, a lot of that might be from not meeting a lot of them in person - most of the people I know in the real world are Canadians or Americans, and not being able to look at how tall they are to map that "I'm 170 cm tall" statement to a real-world height you can see probably hurts on that front). Human weight also tends to be in pounds. Most other weights are in grams and kilograms, except for meat and produce at the grocery store, which is in pounds (although boxed goods like cereals and the like are in grams again)... temperature measurements seem to be based on how recently you bought your appliances like thermostats and ovens (which can lead to weird things like thinking about the outdoor temperature and weather in terms of degrees celsius, but indoor temperatures and cooking temperatures in degrees fahrenheit). A lot of recipes still use measurements like teaspoons and tablespoons and cups (when I get measurements that *do* use grams I feel like I'm back in a chemistry lab). Formal settings all use metric, but there are still some informal day-to-day uses where imperial seems to be more common. Oddly I can't think of any places where imperial volume measurements are used in Canada these days: even canned soft drinks say things like "355 mL" instead of "12 fluid ounces" even though the imperial measurement is the more precise one for that container (the can is exactly 12 ounces, so it's technically 354.882 mL, and they just round to the nearest whole number since mL are tiny anyway).

@@dosdont eh 270mm is just 27cm

@@cewla3348 I understand that, but I think you missed my point

I believe you mean "re-defined."

@@PvblivsAelivs yes, because their old definitions were unreliable, and physicists don't care about them enough to give them their own definitions

Oh yes. Similarly, the pound is now defined as 0.45359237 kg

@@PvblivsAelivs isnt "re-defined" literally the same as "now defined"

well kind of, now they are both redefined using universal constants.

I don't find it complicated. I'm used to it, so it's more or less second nature. All the meter-meter-meter is confusing

Which Imperial system? US or British?

@@Aeronaut1975 The only one that matters anymore. US.

Fun fact: the definition of metric units, as defined by of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, is directly dependent on immutable physical constants. The metric system is just an overcomplicated variant of real physical constants.

@@TheMoparmanTell me you're American, but without telling me you're an American. World Trade is done in Metric tonnes (1,000Kg)and not the US short ton. As far as I'm aware the USA is the only country that uses short tons, the same goes for a few other Imperial (US, not British) measurements.

Except the freezing point and boiling point can shift around based on pressure and salt content. Water boils at temperatures lower than 100C at altitude.

Except how often are you actually using that fact?

This is the perfect illustration of the mindset of metric people. They think they're being more precise, yet they fail to understand that the Imperial system is based upon established standards. It's every bit as precise to measure something in thousanths of an inch, they just refuse to believe it.

Calories are based on water too but they always label water as zero calories no matter what temperature it is. Tell me how that makes sense.

@@thereaction18 That is why we see a transition over to the physical unit Joule instead of Calories which is not based on water. Every label on every product within the EU shows calories as well as joule. Which one you want to use is up to you. The unit celsius is a bit wobbly since it relies on certain conditions like pressure and salt. I think that is the reason why temperature was not a topic in this video.

Exactly! 😁

stoped?

@@fredferd2649 yeah, they start with the meter, with the speed of light, time with the atoms, etc...

But what is cool is they choose to keep using the universe as the ruler. The constant are not arbitrary, they are constants that universe provides.

they recently got it for the kilogram using the Planck Constant!!

I grew up using the metric system. It's funny seeing how you don't automatically convert between units, probably beacause it's hard in imperial units. Here people would say 1cm instead of 10 mm.

@@KJPCox But have you ever encountered people casually using dm? Where I'm from, people use cm because that's a convenient human scale unit (bearing a relationship to inches similar to the relationship between Fahrenheit and Celsius) and mm for precision or scientific work. Without more context, I would understand "1cm" as meaning "probably between 0.3 and 2cm" while "10mm" would say to me "between 9.5 and 10.5mm"

@@KJPCox In my experience most sicence/engineering fields completly ignore the cm and just stick with the base 1000 units (mm, m, km, ect) but i agree, if someone were to tell me something is 300mm long i would convert it into 30cm in my head first.

@@rmsgrey That's true, dm is rarely used, same as hm (100 m). I don't really understand what you are saying about the rounding. If precision is important you can say 1.0 cm so you have two significant digits, but this applies to all numbers and units.

@@johnneedham7569 I'm no engineer, but as a physician I use cm a lot (size of lesions etc).

Iam sad that he said "using the cubit to build the pyramids in 'cairo'" like why I know it is giza not cairo

imperial measurements are still widely used in aerospace engineering so.

@@Biriadan not outside the US

@@Biriadan, only in the US and probably very few companies altogether, ALL scientific ventures are now Metric across the world, so Metric is required in EVERY country, (US included) to be able to pursue a Scientific career, it is only a matter of time before the US ends up going Metric in everyday life. Suck it up and move on.

@@Biriadan Also, NASA lost a spacecraft by not implementing the right metric/imperial system. If the whole world uses metric this wouldn't have happened. It doesn't matter what the US thinks/feels, the rest of the world uses metric and the US should too.

There are horses for courses. For household and artisan applications the metric system is a nuisance eg rulers marked in millimetres too small to see.

@@physiocrat7143 Lol. Get one with 2 millimeters graduations then.

@@christophelegal9194 Who sells them? Never seen any. They wouldn't work properly anyway as you still need to divide centimetres into halves and the 5 mm markings have to be fitted in.

Yea but it's better than looking what fraction of an inch something is.​@@physiocrat7143

​@@christophelegal9194don't tell him that a 1/16th inch graduation on his trusty old Stanley tape is ~1.5mm.