In the United States, as you probably already know, we use two different measurement systems – the United States Customary Measurement System and the Metric System. These are the systems that are used when you need to measure different amounts. However, the metric system tends to be mostly used (in the United States) in medical, scientific, and technical fields.
Take a look at the different conversion tools we have for you.
One of the things that you may not know about the metric system is that this is the main measurement system used in most other countries. So, when you travel abroad, you will see that products are sold using different measurement units. Even the road signs display different units of measurement.
Units such as milligram, liter, or kilometer are used to measure the weight, the volume, or the length, respectively. And these are all part of the metric system.
One of the main differences between the United States Customary Measurement System and the Metric System is the fact that this last one is based on 10s making it very easy and simple to understand. For example, a centigram is 10 times larger than a milligram and a liter is 10 times larger than a deciliter. On the other hand, if you think of the United States Customary Measurement System, you don’t have this relationship between the different units of measurement. For example, there are 5,280 feet in a mile, 3 feet in a yard, and 12 inches in a foot.
Learn to convert gallon to m^3.
Understanding The Metric System
As we already mentioned above, the metric system uses units such as gram, liter, and meter that measure the mass, liquid volume, and length respectively. If you look at the US Customary System, you have the ounces, quarts, and feet to measure these.
In addition, and as we already told you, the metric system is based on 10s. If you look at the different measures for length, for example, you have the kilometer, meter, decimeter, centimeter, and millimeter. If you look at all these units, you see that they all share the word “meter”.
Looking to convert gallons to cubic meters?
The main idea behind the metric system that is important to keep in mind is that the units within the system get larger or smaller by a power of 10. This means that 1 meter is 100 times larger than a centimeter. If you look at the kilogram, you can say that it is 1,000 times heavier than one gram.
Discover how to convert gallon to m^3.
Length, Mass, And Volume Units
On the table below, you can see the basic units of the metric system:
Notice that the basic unit of length in the metric system is the meter. Just to give you an idea, the meter is slightly larger than a yardstick, or just over three feet. The gram is the basic metric unit of mass and a regular-sized paperclip has a mass of about 1 gram. In what concerns the volume, the basic metric unit is the liter and it is slightly larger than a quart.
Discover more about the metric system.
In case you need to make any conversions between the United States Customary Measurement System and the Metric System, then you can take a look at the following table:
