Not bashing Americans for not using the metric system but I’m curious as to the overall level of knowledge the average American has about Metric/Imperial conversions. If you saw a news article or post online that mentioned “Toronto hits record tempreture of 40C°” or “Construction begins on new 500km high speed train line in Japan” What would this mean to you.
Are there some metric units you understand better than others ? Are imperial/metric conversions ever taught in schools ?
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Some come more naturally and are used here often.
500km is easily estimatable and how it relates to miles. In my head I know easily that its just over 300 miles.
Celsius as its used for human temperatures is much less natural if you don’t do it often. I know 40c is pretty fricken hot, but not exactly how much so.
I can do kilos to pounds relatively easily.
The metric system is taught in school. Everyone has a basic understanding. However, obviously those you use more regularly are more easily remembered and applied.
That’s about 102 degrees Fahrenheit and about 300 miles
> Not bashing Americans for not using the metric system
Good for starting out your post with that. I’m sure you understand how irritating repetitive metric posts can be.
> If you saw a news article or post online that mentioned “Toronto hits record tempreture of 40C°” or “Construction begins on new 500km high speed train line in Japan” What would this mean to you.
I have no need to know the conversions on temperature, so if I am interested to know what it is in °F, I’ll just look at a conversion chart. For rough estimation of equivalent miles, 0.6 x km is good enough (and for *really rough* estimation, half suffices).
> Are imperial/metric conversions ever taught in schools ?
Yes, even back to the 70s when I was in elementary school. Before anyone says it, we don’t use Imperial, we use United States Customary Units.
> Are there some metric units you understand better than others ?
Perhaps this is a phrasing issue, but there’s nothing to “understand,” IMO. A more appropriate phrasing would be “How many conversions do you know?” I use 25.4 mm/inch almost daily, for example.
It’s committed to memory that 1 meter is 39.3701 inches, that 1 mph is 0.44704 meters per second, etc. Such is life in engineering. In the grand scheme of things it’s trivial.
Are conversions taught in school? Sure; it’s not uncommon to work in different units in high school science classes, do dimensional analysis, etc. Really it’s no different than knowing that there are 5280 feet in a mile.
But like anything, if you don’t use it you’ll lose it. So if someone was once taught something and it has been completely unnecessary in their life, it’ll fade away.
As far as having a general feel for things, I’d say your average American… might have a feel for knowing pounds mass and kilograms are roughly a factor of 2 apart. Though maybe easy to forget which one is heavier. Since car speedometers are shown in both mph and kph it might not be too difficult to acclimate to that.
Temperature is probably one of the least intuitive. Tell someone it’s 40C out and they’re not gonna know whether that’s hot or cold or what.
Most any car enthusiast will be very familiar with millimeters as most automotive fasteners are in metric now a days.
Some are going to know it better than others. I have always been decent with math, numbers, etc., so the conversion wasn’t that hard. I now work in an industry where I come across it more often. I know length and distance a lot better than temp though. Volume and weight I probably fall in between.
I would say not a lot of people know it very well at all though. While it isn’t uncommon in my industry so people should be able to do it (I see it a few times a week) but I still have to do conversions for quite a few people.
Generally Americans can easily estimate distance and mass. A km is about 2/5 a mile, a kg is about 2 pounds, and a liter is about a quart.
Grams is more difficult, because it doesn’t easily convert to anything imperial. Weird British units like stones don’t even bother, we have no idea.
And Celsius. Yous are straight up nuts trying to use that system.
I maintain America would agree to switch to metric if the rest is the world met us halfway and agreed to use fahrenheit.
I know rough F/C temp conversions as I’m active on a twitch channel with mostly European viewers. It’s easy to remember at minimum that 0C/32F = cold, 10C/~50F = cool, 20C/~70F = warm, 30C/~90F = hot.
I know rough customary/metric distance measurements. Ex: 1 inch is close to 2.5 cm, 1 m is about the same as 1 yard, 1 mi is about 1.6 km, 100km is roughly 60 mi etc.
Very well. I grew up in Europe and my smartphone is still set to Celsius.
40 C- hot, even by my standards, but couldn’t tell you numerically what it translates to
500 km- I use a rough estimate of just over half is the approximate miles per hour. Most cars have both for driving speeds.
America does use the metric system, we also use imperial though. The US uses US Customary Units, which uses both forms of measurement. Metric is used but only for specific fields and uses. You’ll see metric used in the medical and scientific fields, for example.
So yes, we know how to use metric, it’s just not as common for every usage.
What’s interesting is that on every single label for consumer goods you can find both units of measurement. It’s there, however most simply overlook it. It’s the same onour vehicles speedometers with mph and kmh.
I would have a guess that most people would know about what a liter and 2 liter looked like. Not exact measurements, but at least have an idea what it looks like.
If you bake or cook you would probably know grams and ML. Lots of recipes have grams
I’m good with kilometers, meters, cm, mm, kg, grams, litres, ml, but F seems more natural for temperature.
At one point in my life I was a runner. Most running races are in kilometers so most runners are familiar and can convert. Yes, metric conversions are taught in schools – doesn’t mean the average person remembers though when most people never use it in their day to day lives. Temperature makes more sense to me in Fahrenheit- 0 ≈ damn cold and 100 ≈ hot af but if I’m really interested in a conversion of any kind I use the conversion calculator on my phone. Scientists and engineers regularly use metric weights and lengths.
I’m a nurse so I’m comfortable with temperature and medicine dosing conversions. Distance? Does not compute in my brain for some reason. I could learn it but have no use for it here.
You’re more likely to run across Americans who simply don’t care what the temperature in Toronto is or how long the train in Japan is, because it doesn’t really have any kind of impact on us.
We actually do use the metric system pretty widely, but there are not all that many applications where metric is the preferred standard.
>Not bashing Americans for not using the metric system
But you are, by implying that no American ever uses metric for anything at all. This is factually incorrect.
I work in pharmacy and I use metric every day, and when I drive on the highway I remember that 62 MPH is approximately 100 KPH, because of *Star Trek*.
Pretty well, but I work in science which is nearly all metric now.
I use temperature conversions regularly in my line of work, so I’ve got the formulas for converting both directions memorized. If I don’t need to be precise, I know that 0°C is equal to 32°F, 40°C is a little over 100°F, and I can approximate anything in between.
I know that 10km is equal to about 6.2 miles. It’s pretty simple math to get a rough approximation. I rarely need to be exactly accurate to the tenth of a mile.
A centimeter is a little smaller than half an inch. A meter is slightly larger than a yard. They’re close enough I don’t really need to know exactly how much smaller or larger they are.
A kilogram is a little over two pounds.
A liter is roughly equal to a quart.
Most Americans are familiar enough with metric to get by well enough. We just use imperial measurements because it’s already baked into our lives.
It would mean I’d have to look it up, if I cared.
We use metric in school, in science, and in the military.
Most of life is a mix.
We use centimeters *and* inches for small measurements. We drive in miles, but run 5Ks. We buy gas in gallons, but buy milk in liters. We weigh people in pounds, but drugs in kilos.
And we measure [distances in minutes](https://www.tiktok.com/@ismocomedy/video/7230865691128204590) – because of car culture. 60mph is average highway speed, so 1 mile per minute. City is 30mph, so half a mile per minute. Something is 10 miles away outside of a city, will take about 10 minutes to drive. Something is 10 miles away in a city, will take about 20 minutes to drive.
> Toronto hits record tempreture of 40C°
0 is freezing
10 is not
20 is perfect
30 is hot.
I think most Americans can determine that 40′ is insane if you tell them the rhyme.
In Fahrenheit, we think of temperature like a percentage.
0 is about as cold as most habitable places in the US ever get. 100 is as hot as most habitable places in the US ever get. Anything above or below is very dangerous. Houston is at 95’F right now and has an extreme heat advisory. WHO says 64′-75′ is ideal weather.
40’C is 104’F. Yeah, stay the fuck indoors.
> Construction begins on new 500km high speed train line in Japan” What would this mean to you.
For Americans that have *ever* traveled abroad, even to Canada – you get used to KM very quickly.
Americans use an odd mixture of metric and customary, similar to Canada, except Canada is more metric heavy.
Milk and gasoline are sold in gallons here, but soft drinks are sold in liters. However, cooking is always done in cups.
Small amounts of solids are generally sold in grams, but small amounts of liquids are sold in fluid ounces.
Larger weights are always measured in pounds and tons unless it’s drugs, which may use kilos.
Small lengths are most often given in inches, but centimeters or millimeters may be used if the length is shorter than 1 inch.
Mid lengths are measured in feet, but sometimes yards or meters both, though meters are becoming more common than yards.
Long distances are measured in miles, unless it’s a road race. We compete in 5K, 10K, 15K races as well as metered dashes. However, we always pronounce it “K” like the letter and never say the word “kilometers.”
Speeds are always miles per hour, but you may hear meters per second in technical contexts.
Celsius is used in scientific contexts, but everyday contexts (cooking and weather) are done in Fahrenheit.
So, based on all that, we may have more or less intuitive understanding of certain metric measurements.
> Are imperial/metric conversions ever taught in schools?
No, because we don’t use Imperial units. We use U.S. customary units (and lots of metric/SI as well).
I generally say that “Americans are bilingual in measurement systems”. Nearly everybody uses both, and to some degree can convert at least some of them (roughly) in their heads.
So in my head, I converted 500 km to 300 miles. It’s actually about 310 miles.
40 degrees C is, off the top of my head, about 100 degrees F. It’s actually 104.
Close enough to work with in both cases.
Conversions are generally taught in school, but which ones your remember depend on which ones you use on a regular basis.
Despite what Europeans and others think Americans are fully integrated into the metric system, all of us know what a meter, kilogram and Liter are, and habitually use both systems.
And yes, metric and US Customs(The United States has never used the Imperial system, that system was codified in the 1830s) conversions are taught in schools.