Do you guys have to use the imperial measurement system in maths and physics?

26 comments

1. No.

   Elementary school students do learn how to convert from inches to feet to yards, ounces to pounds, etc in math. And for later math classes it doesn’t really matter whether you’re calculating the area of a hypothetical triangle in meters or feet or some completely imaginary unit.

   But science is nearly always done in metric.

2. No, we use US Customary, anyway. But for “maths” and physics, we use metric.

3. First, over here it’s math.

   Second, it’s not imperial, it’s US Customary, which is a bit different.

   Science is done in metric. Math will use with depending on the situation.

4. Yes, although with science we use SI units for most things.

   I don’t really know why people think this is a big deal, converting units in equations is trivial, especially if you have a computer or calculator.

5. Maybe for basic math, but no. The Imperial system is horrible for calculations

6. Most science and medicine is done in metric. You’ll occasionally see stuff in US Customary in fields where there is a heavy overlap with people who don’t have advanced education (all of the construction and survey projects I have been a part of were done in feet). But, the bulk of pure research people stick to metric.

7. Have to? No. We often use metric in school.

   I’m a civil engineer for a state department of transportation and we use imperial measurements. Our state attempted to switch to metric units in the 90s or so, but that didn’t last long. Occasionally (but rarely) a project will be revived and the initial work was done in metric units, and we will stick with metric for that project.

8. We have to use whatever units the problem is using. They teach us both.

9. I was always taught to solve the general problem. Then once its solved you just plug in variables in the end. So it doesnt really matter as long as you label your units properly. And converting units at the end if necessary is easy.

   But we mainly use metric for math and science.

10. Depends on the particular problem. We use both systems.

11. No, in both high school and now college, I took both physics and calc. While we did use US units sometimes in high school math, by the time I got to AP physics and college calc and physics it’s all in metric. Metric is the unit that scientists use and since I am a STEM major it is pretty important we know how to use them. Now that I have been using them exclusively for three years I am completely comfortable with them like I can feel an object and be like “oh that’s 300g.

    However, celsius makes no sense to me and never will. I use it all the time for chemistry and physics and I know how to covert it, but no matter how much I use it if someone said, “it’s 30 degrees celsius,” nothing would happen in my brain. It’s great when I am talking about heating a reaction but I am not a cup for water.

12. Math, you’ll use it all depending on the topic.

    Science is in metric.

13. Lol no.

    My wife’s a physicist. I used to be a molecular biologist. The sciences use essentially nothing but metric.

14. No. Especially since we don’t use the Imperial system at all.

15. Nope, we use US Customary and Metric.

16. For science classes in school and college we used metric pretty much always. However, in my college engineering classes we used both metric and US Customary, as both units are commonly used in industry in the US.

17. So in a school setting typically always metric. For real world applications definitely we can use imperial. We might measure I’m imperial and need to calculate in imperial. This is very common in manufacturing and engineering.

    While your CNC almost certainly does both metric and imperial most CNC machines sold in the US will be set up in imperial by default even for precision equipment. Instead of measuring in the micron they will measure in the thousandths or ten thousandths of an inch.

    An absolutely crazy amount of things from space shuttles to car transmissions are still manufactured on machines measuring in imperial.

18. We don’t use the Imperial system, although a lot of people incorrectly call our system Imperial. The US split from the British Empire before Imperial units were standardized, so the customary units the US uses (now standardized) are somewhat different from the units the Brits use (also now standardized), despite having mostly the same names.

19. No American alive has used British imperial measurements.

20. My college classes did them in both

21. In pretty much all science related measurements, no, we use metric.

    We learn the “imperial” system in elementary school and then use it for the practical every day stuff, like measuring temperature outside or measuring travel distance in miles and height in feet and inches and bodyweight in pounds, etc.

    But all sciences use metric.

22. We don’t use imperial, it’s similar but different.

    Science we use metric, and math it honestly doesn’t matter what you use lol

23. My engineering classes were taught in SI units, with a little blurb on conversion factors for Avoirdupois (US) and Imperial (Commonwealth) for each topic.

24. No. Americans are generally required to know both systems of measurement, and while US customary is the vernacular for describing distance or for cooking, metric is used for mathematics and scientific pursuits.

25. my engineering classes almost all use SI units

26. Nope. I’m working on my doctorate in physics and I have literally never used imperial measurements for doing physics ever.

    Contrary to popular belief, we actually *are* taught the metric system as part of our school science classes, it’s just that the things we *do* use imperial for are more common in daily life, like quantifying the gallons of gasoline (petrol) at the pump, or having your height and weight measured at the doctor’s office.

    Also FYI, we call it “math” over here, not maths, and technically we use US Customary, which is incorrectly labelled imperial, but i’m using imperial here for the sake of clarity to answer your question.