American reacts to 'Why the metric system matters'

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to Why the metric system matters

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[davidjacobs]

I think American use quite a lot of metric measurements already. Very popular ones include 9mm, 5.56mm x 45mm, 7.62mm x 39mm...

[sebswede]

American Guy: "This thing is 1 foot long".
My metric brain: "But all feet comes in difference sizes".

[judaswasametalhead]

Fun fact : the greek mesured the size of the Earth with a camel and the shadows of two sticks.

[AysKuz]

It is kinda ironic that the US fought a war to be independent from the influence and the shackles of a king and yet cling to the imperial measuring system like to an old love you can´t get over.

[SoulessStranger]

Between Imperial Units, Fahrenheit degrees for temperature, 12 hour time system, writing dates in an order of MM/DD/YY and starting their week on Sunday in calendars, I am by now convinced we are living in different realities 🤣

[SiqueScarface]

The main problem with Imperial units is, that you have different units for the same task: measuring length for instance. You have inches, feet, yards and miles, each of them arbitrarily defined, and thus you have 12 inches in a foot, but 3 feet in a yard and 1760 yards in a mile. In SI units, there is exactly one unit of length, the meter. Kilometer or Millimeter are no new units, just meters times a power of 10. In imperial units, you have units of area and units of volume, which are not compatible with the units of length. A gallon is not a cubic foot or something easy, but 128 fluid ounces, and 231 cubic inches. While 128 might be somehow understandable (2 to the power of 7), but why 231 cubic inches? 3 times 77 cubic inches? Where does the 77 come from?
In SI units, the unit of volume is the cubic meter: 1 meter of length times 1 meter of height times 1 meter of depth. Quick and easy to remember.
Imperial units were designed before Isaac Newton discovered the fundamental Laws of Mechanics and the Law of Gravity. Before Isaac Newton, scientists didn't notice that mass is a property of a body, but weight is the force on a body in a gravitational field. Thus, pound was used for both the mass and the weight. Now, we have pound-force, but again, arbitrarily defined as the force a body of a mass of 1 pound experiences in the average gravitational field of the Earth at the Earth's surface. In SI units, the unit of Mass is kilogram, and according to Newtons first law, Force is the acceleration of a mass, thus Force is measured in kilogram times meters per square second, as meters per square second is the unit of acceleration.

[Pyriold]

Btw.: Even the imperial system is now based on metric. An inch is 2.54 centimeters. Not just about that, but exactly, that's how the inch is defined now. So every change to metric (for example more exact measurements leading to a change in the 10th digit) carry over to imperial automatically. Imperial just rides on top of metric now, for those people who like it a bit more complicated.

[bluebear]

Smart people don´t run for office, Ryan. People who run for office are usually not the brightest canlde on the cake, but the fattest, power-greedy ones.

[RobM.-dxtl]

I'm from Belgium and as an engineer I'm very familiar with the metric system of course and a bit with the medievel (sorry for the word) system. I cannot understand why it is still used. But in fact, compare it with the European currency: before 2002 every country in Europe had its own currency. Every time you travelled you needed to switch currency and you didn't know exactly how much money you spent. In 2002 we started to use the Euro. In the beginning we had to adapt to this new currency, but after a few years everybody got used to it and now we all know exactly the value of the Euro. If we Europeans can change our money, I'm sure the Americans can also change from imperial to metric. What are you guys waiting for !

[headhunter]

"They have to be in cahoots with the politicians to pass this kind of stuff?" Actually, in the case of the French Revolution, they mostly killed all the old guard (conservative) politicians, which is how they actually managed to do some progressive and useful things for society despite their initial cost.

[rasputinorco]

mistake! The video said there are only three countries that don't use the metric system, it didn't say that all three use the imperial system.
Myanmar uses neither metric nor imperial, it has a traditional system of its own. Liberia would officially continue to use the imperial system since it is a US colony, but the people practically use the metric system.
The United States is the only country in the world that still uses Babylonian units of measurement

[arthur_p_dent]

4:30 actually there was originally an effort to make time metric, too. A day would have been divided into 10 hours, each hour into 100 minutes and each minute into 100 seconds.

The reason this change was rolled back after a very short time was that it would have required to replace all public clocks, which would have been prohibitively expensive. So at the end of the day, the second is a metric units, and the derived units (minute, hour, day, year) continue to be officially authorized derived units, despite not being based on the unit 10.

[mahuk.]

"it's intuitive because that's what we grew up using" as obvious as it sounds... those are wise words indeed.

[Macamincha]

Favorite metric system quote is by Josh Bazell. “In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. ... Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-temperature gallon of water?’ is ‘Go f**k yourself, ’ because you can’t directly relate any of those quantities.”

[yuriiknapik]

As a Ucrainian that lives in Italy, you're not a stupid american. Stop refering to yourself as one. The williness to learn is what matters and is admirable and you are capable of that.

[petebeatminister]

You asked about time.... actually the french (under Nepoleon Bonaparte) wanted to change the clock system to metric as well. Meaning, a day has 10 hours, a hour has 100 minutes and a minutes has 100 seconds. But that was too much of a leap for the population, same as the 10 day week. And it also would have meant, that ALL existing clocks would be useless and need to be replaced by new ones. And clocks were expensive back then, so people didn't like the idea at all. And thats why we still have 24 hours, 60 minutes and seconds today.

[bochica]

When ever I watch US-american movies or shows, I do crappy math in my head to understand what you guys are talking about. Love you anyways, best wishes from Germany 🌻

[fabricerubio]

Details and fun facts:

- When the month was divided into three ten-day weeks, only the last day was for rest. This meant only three days off a month (instead of four) after a 9-day working week....
Of course everyone rebelled against this new usage and it was VERY quickly abandoned!!!!
- the other idea that didn't work was 10-hour days (still based on 10 mathematics, with 100 minutes)...
But that would have meant changing all the clock systems in the whole country... difficult...
Especially as a home clock was a luxury in those days, and in France it was church bells that told the time... an idea quickly abandoned too!
Nowadays, you can sometimes come across so-called "revolutionary" clocks in antique shops, with two dials (10-hour and 24-hour). These are rare and expensive collectors' items, as few of them were ever produced!
From 🇫🇷

[sodinc]

I like the fact that you are always so supportive for up and coming channels, man.

[ravenouself]

Before I see someone comment "But did it win the Space Race?". The answer is Yes, NASA used and still uses the Metric System. The measurements had to be converted to Imperial units for the manufacturing process.
Edit: 04:25 - M-K-S... Meter, Kilogram, Second.