This American YouTuber “can’t” use metric. Here’s why I do now

Johnny Harris says Americans can't switch to metric... let's see about that.

0:00 Intro
1:42 Temperature
4:49 Weight
8:35 Volume
11:32 Distance & Speed
14:41 Conclusion
16:19 SPONSOR
17:37 Fun Tidbit
17:53 Ukulele Song

Thank you so much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it!

If you're new to my channel and videos, hi! I'm Evan Edinger, and I make weekly "comedy" videos every Sunday evening. As an American living in London I love noticing the funny differences between the cultures and one of my most popular video series is my British VS American one. I'm also known for making terrible puns so sorry in advance. Hope to see you around, and I'll see you next Sunday! :)

If you want to know HOW I make my videos including gear, lighting, all the tiddly bits that connect it all together, (with cheaper alternatives and kit I used to use), I've listed each item, what it's great at, and why I use it on the gear section of my website here:

Otherwise: here's a quick list of some of my kit without descriptions from the above link:

Camera: Sony A7siii

Main Lens: Sony 24mm f/1.4 G-Master

Secondary Lens: Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 G-Master

Main Light: Aputure 120d mkii

Shotgun Microphone: Sennheiser MKH-416

Really useful SSD: SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB

[savadzh]

Metric is actually very easy to visualize for Americans. 1 M16A4 is exactly 1 meter long, so 10 meters is just 10 M16A4s in a straight line

[DStein]

"10 meters mean nothing to me" but a 5 grams and a 9 millimeter in someone's pocket is universally understood by americans.

[alexstuccer]

Saying is not possible to switch because you keep translating from a system to another, is like saying is not possible to learn a language, because at the beginning you keep translating and you cannot think in the new language.

[Hanshan]

You left out the best Part. Measuring small stuff. I once saw a woodworking video and the guy said something like "this has to be exactly two thirds of an quarter of an inch".
I was flabbergasted... 😬

[puppyenemy]

As a swede living just below the 60th north parallel, I think Celsius is very useful for weather, because it's really important to know if there's gonna be ice on the roads or not. Below zero - drive carefully. I think freezing is one of the most important weather related aspects you need to know, so it makes sense having a system designed around freezing.

[sanny]

As someone who was raised on metric and doesn't understand imperial, I also do the "ah yes, 2 meters is slightly longer than me"

[M_]

I hate the argument "a meter doesn't mean anything, but a feet means a foot" because
1. A feet also doesn't mean anything because everyone has different feets.
2. You can just remember meters differently. One big step. A bit more than your height/2.
3. Are you realy using your feet to measure things? If someone asks you "how tall is your friend" do you tell them to lay down and measure them using your feet?

[UlkNudel]

"I am not water" he said while being 60% water 😂

[johnlastname]

There really is nothing more frustrating than trying to follow a recipe and finding 3 different answers for how much a cup is.

[_Matthias_]

On the whole "Freedom Units" thing. Actually, the US Armed Forces are completly metric. They did the transition decades ago.

[miked.]

I am 81 years old and born and raised in the USA. A few months ago I switched everything in my life over to metric just to see how long it would take to become accustomed to metric units. The only exception is my car speedometer, which I leave toggled on miles per hour so I don’t have to do conversions in my head. Turns out the process was almost a non-event. I switched over to 24-hour time, and that was a bit more difficult but doable.

[philhogan]

"THE METRIC SYSTEM IS THE TOOL OF THE DEVIL! My car gets 40 rods to the hog's head and THAT'S THE WAY I LIKES IT"
-Abe Simpson

[Heresor]

Actually the Celsius scale is pretty good for weather, as others have pointed out as well, because having a scale from "Ice is forming" at 0°C to "You can't survive outside without major precautions" at 50°C is kinda neat.

[m.rei]

Even in the US, scientists and many engineers use the metric system.
One thing that I might never understand, being from Germany, is screws and tools. All these fractions of inches instead of full numbers that come pretty close to metric but are off by like ½ mm. The good thing in metric is that every unit counts up and down in tens, hundreds, or thousands. From millimeters to kilometer or from gramm to tons. Everything can be easily divided or multiplied.
You can easily go down to super small units. Like milli, micro, nano, pico.

[shittel]

I think a good example is the Euro:
When some European countries like Germany, France or Austria abandoned their respective currency and switched to EUR (around 1999),
a lot of people said that they had no "feeling" for the Euro and that they constantly kept converting the 'new' prices of goods to the old currency of their country
(fairly easy for Germans (1 EUR = ~ 2 DEM), a bit harder for Austrians with (1 EUR = ~ 4 ATS), but more inconvenient for the French (1 EUR = ~6.5 FRF)).

By now (and I think it took less than 25 years), no one is doing maths when standing in front of a supermarket shelves.

[Electroshockist]

As a Canadian, I forced myself to use military time (24 hr clock), despite the fact that rest of my country uses the 12 hr clock.

I still use it and it's far more intuitive. I never get times confused anymore and conversion is really easy.

[iloivar]

I used to think the metric system made no sense and that I would never use it. However, I later went on to do a science degree and I spent a lot of time actually measuring things and doing calculations in metric, and occasionally in imperial, and as time passed, switching back to imperial stopped being a relief and became gravely irritating because, once I finally got a bit accustomed to what the measurements meant, doing calculations in metric was SO much easier!

[dealbreakerc]

What Americans who say things like "The ship has sailed on metric in the US" seem to be neglecting is that all the other countries that changed from imperial to metric faced all the same challenges and did so in the end. My parents were of the generation that had metric come in while they were in school (Metrication of Canada occurred from the 70s through to about 1985). In that time curricula had to be changed, road signs had to be changed, and all the other stuff. Was it difficult for some people? Hell yes, my grand parents still tend to talk in feet, miles, oz, etc. rather than meters or grams but it really isn't that difficult to adjust. The 'hardest' part is actually changing all the road signs. And really that can be accomplished over a stretch of a decade as signs need to be or should be) replaced so it isn't even a huge lump sum cost. And overall changing to metric would only hurt the US in the short term and would be more than made up for in the ease of cooperating or trading with other nations (and of course, plenty of treaties that the US has with other nations are already expressed in metric).

[hansmoller]

If I have a water container that's 1m x 1m x 1m it holds a thousand litres and weighs a ton. A container 3ft x 3fr x 3ft holds how many gallons and what will it weigh?

[Thoomas]

I live in the Netherlands and in high school I had a classmate who grew up in Maryland. One time he gave the absolute worst argument in favor of imperial that I've ever heard.
"Imperial is inconsistent. It means you have to remember more formulas, so it means you get smarter."