Category: Metric System

While in the United States we continue to use the United States Customary System, you probably already heard of the metric system. This is a measurement system that is used in most other countries in the world and it is far easier to understand and use. Not so long ago, the US government considered the hypothesis of changing to the metric system as well. However, they were afraid to proceed because North Americans are very used to their own measuring system. 

Nevertheless, it pays off to see the advantages of converting into the metric system. 

Advantages Of Converting Into The Metric System

#1: No Conversions:

One of the main advantages of converting into the metric system is the fact that you will stop making conversions. Ultimately, there is only one unit for each type of measurement and students don’t need to memorize any factors. Just take the meter (m), for example. This is the unit of length in the metric system and while numerical prefixes may be attached, but they do not form a separate unit. 

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#2: The Units Are Coherent:

When you’re looking at the metric system, you will easily see that its units derive as the simple algebraic quotients or products of a few independent base units, using the same equation as the quantity being measured. There are no numerical definitions or constants for students to memorize. 

#3: There Are No Fractions:

One of the things that make conversions within the United States Customary System so complicated is the fact that they may use fractions. However, this won’t ever happen when you’re using the metric system. This system only uses decimals. 

This is how you convert kilowatts into horsepower.

#4: Few Units:

Another advantage of converting into the metric system is the fact that the metric system only has around 30 individually-named units. Besides, most of them are limited to more specific areas or fields. So, students won’t have any hard time learning the most common units. 

#5: Easy To Write And Say:

Generally speaking, quantities are much easier to express using the metric system than in other units. For example, 500 watts (500 W) is much simpler than the many confusing, equivalent, non-SI expressions of power such as 1700 British thermal units per hour (1700 Btu/h), 10 300 large Calories per day (10 300 Cal/d), 120 thermochemical calories per second (120 calth/s), 22 000 feet pounds force per minute (22 000 ft·lbf/min), or 0.142 commercial refrigeration tons.

Check out how you can easily convert Joule to BTU.

#6: It Uses Decimal Multiples:

The metric system uses a series of prefixes for all units that represent a change of a factor of 10. For example, “kilo” means 1,000, so one kilogram equals 1,000 grams. The metric system does not require you to memorize different conversion factors, such as 4 quarts to a gallon or 12 inches to a foot.

Learn more about the International System of Units (SI).

Bottom Line

As you can see, converting into the metric system could bring a lot of advantages to the United States. While there was the need of an adaption period, the truth is that the metric system is much simpler to use. 

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”.

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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:

As you probably already know, metric measurements are used in most parts of the world with the exception of the United States which uses a different system. 

Convert any unit online here.

One of the things that you may now know about the metric measurements is the fact that it is very easy to convert the different units into new ones by simply using powers of 10. This means that converting metric measurements can easily be done by simply multiplying or dividing a given measurement by a power of 10. 

How to Convert Within Metric Measurements

The first thing that you need to keep in mind when you are trying to convert metric measurements is that there are many different units of measurement such as grams which measure mass, meters which measure distance, among others. 

Learn how to convert gallons to cubic meters.

One of the things that you need to know is that sometimes, these base units are either too small or too large to make practical measurements. So, you will need to turn to other units that are larger or smaller using the 10 bases. So, you will need to add prefixes to the name of the unit to signify how much bigger or smaller it is than the base unit. These include: 

• Kilo – 1,000 times larger
• Hecto – 100 times larger
• Deca – 10 times larger
• Deci – 10 times smaller
• Centi – 100 times smaller
• Milli – 1,000 times smaller

A helpful tip to ensure that you make your conversions the right way is to list the prefixes on a line from the largest to the smallest one. 

Use our converter to convert kilowatts to horsepower (mechanical).

With this in mind, you should place “Kilo” a the far left end and the “Mili” at the far end right of the line. In the middle of the line or scale, between “Deca” and “Deci,” put the base unit of the dimension you’re measuring. 

Now that you already placed your unit in the right place, you will need to determine if the units you want are either larger or smaller than the units you have. To do this, you will need to take a look at the line of prefixes that you just created above and then find the prefix that matches with the units that you have. Next, you will need to find the units that you want the measurements to be. At this point, you will need to see if these are located at the right meaning that you’ll be converting from a larger unit into a smaller unit or located at the left, meaning that you are going to convert a smaller unit to a larger unit. 

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As soon as you do this, you will need to figure out the numerical relationship between the units you have and the units that you want. 

As we already mentioned above, the metric units of measurement differ by powers of 10. This means that they differ by 10, 100, 1000, and so on. So, when you are converting metric measurements, you will always need to multiply or divide your initial measurement by the appropriate power of ten.