IanWho Doesn't Use The Metric System?
March 3rd 2010 01:34
The metric system is an international decimalised system of measurement, first adopted by France in 1791, that is the common system of measuring units used by most of the world.
A primary goal of the metric system is to have a single unit for any physical quantity; another important one is not needing conversion factors when making calculations with physical quantities. All lengths and distances, for example, are measured in metres, or thousandths of a metre (millimetres), or thousands of metres (kilometre), and so on. There is no profusion of different units with different conversion factors, such as inches, feet, yards, fathoms, rods, chains, furlongs, miles, nautical miles, leagues, etc. Multiples and submultiples are related to the fundamental unit by factors of powers of ten, so that one can convert by simply moving the decimal place.
Only three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States.
*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article for the Metric System.
A primary goal of the metric system is to have a single unit for any physical quantity; another important one is not needing conversion factors when making calculations with physical quantities. All lengths and distances, for example, are measured in metres, or thousandths of a metre (millimetres), or thousands of metres (kilometre), and so on. There is no profusion of different units with different conversion factors, such as inches, feet, yards, fathoms, rods, chains, furlongs, miles, nautical miles, leagues, etc. Multiples and submultiples are related to the fundamental unit by factors of powers of ten, so that one can convert by simply moving the decimal place.
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Only three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States.
*This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article for the Metric System.
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Comment by CCCC
in my other classes we hardly even use other systems (F, feet, etc.) except for algebra word probelsm, and actually I see plenty of M and MM in alg and geometry. and even sports...track, cross country, etc use K's or meters not miles and feet.
I don't think it's that huge of a deal.