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Why in the world do we have to learn the Metric System?

Because only three countries in the world do not use the Metric System. In addition to the U.S., Liberia (in western Africa) and Myanmar (also known as Burma, in Southeast Asia) do not have an official policy.

In the U. S., the system of weights and measured first adopted was
that of the English, though a few differences came in
when decisions were made at the time of standardization in 1836.
For instance, the wine-gallon of 231 cubic inches was used
instead of the English one (as defined in 1824) of about 277 cubic
inches. The U. S. also took as their standard of dry
measure the old Winchester bushel of 2150.42 cubic inches, which
gave a dry gallon of nearly 269 cubic inches.

Even as late as the middle of the 20th century there were some
differences in UK and US measures which were nominally the
same. The UK inch measured 2.53998 cm while the US inch was
2.540005 cm. Both were standardized at 2.54 cm in July
1959, though the U S continued to use 'their' value for several
years in land surveying work - this too is slowly being
metricated.

Use of the metric system in the U.S. is ever growing, especially linked with the wider acceptance of global standards which are mostly in metric measurements. Just as English has become the global language of commerce, the metric system has become the global language of measurement. Thus the phrase heard more and more:

" Speak in English, and Measure in Metric ."


Metric Links
Metric Worksheets