WHY METRIC?
When our country was founded, we had pounds, shillings & pennies.
1 shilling = 12 pennies
1 pound = 20 shillings
It was clumsy and complicated. You divide by 12 and 20, carry, to add numbers.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington came up with the idea of decimal money and convinced the congress to go with decimal money.
1 dollar = 100 cents.
Today, we still use legacy weights and measures:
Inches use fractions, 3/4, 9/16, 17/32,etc.
1 foot =12 inches.
1 yard =3 feet.
1 fathom =2 yards.
1 chain =11 fathoms.
1 furlong=10 chains.
1 mile =8 furlongs, 80 chains, 880 fathoms,
1760 yards, 5280 feet, 63360 inches
This is a KLUDGE!
The French took our idea of decimal money and developed the decimal metric system of weights and measures.
1 meter = 100 centimeters
It is just like: 1 dollar = 100 cents.
LEARN THE SIMPLE METRIC SYSTEM FROM SCRATCH!
For Now, forget inches, feet, miles, quarts, gallons, fluid ounces, etc.
Think of a dime. It is about 1 millimeter thick.
1 centimeter = 10 millimeters
1 meter = 100 centimeters or 1000 millimeters.
Now hold out your hands out about 39 inches. (slightly over 3 ft.) You have 1 meter.
It is about 10 % longer than 1 yard.
Now you know how much 1 meter is.
By the way, floor space is measured in square meters.
Now think of 10 centimeters which is 0.1 meter. (just under 4 inches).
Think of a cube 10 centimeters wide, high and thick. You have a volume of 1 liter.
One liter of plain water weighs 1 kilogram.
If you think of 1 cubic liter stacked 10 cubic liters wide, high and thick, you have a cube 1 meter wide, high and thick. It is 1 cubic meter.
Now, 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000. Therefore:
1 cubic meter = 1000 liters.
1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 metric ton. See: 1 metric ton = 1000 kilograms.
Now, Think of that cubic centimeter. There are 1000 cubic centimeters in 1 liter.
1 cubic centimeter of water is called 1 milliliter and weighs 1 gram.
See: 1000 grams = 1 kilogram
For length, 1000 meters = 1 kilometer. Remember: 1 kilo something is 1000 somethings.
Kilometers are used to measure distance between towns and cities.
Now review the above material to become more familiar with the simplicity of the metric system.
Next: AREA ok below
Think of a football field. There are 100 yards from end to end. Now, think of the length of this same field but include one end zone. This is approximately 100 meters.
Now think of a square area, 100 meters on a side. This is called one hectare. Hectares are used to measure land area.
One square hectare is approximately 1 football field wide (plus one end zone) and 1 football field deep.
One hectare is 100 meters wide and 100 meters long.
One hectare is 100 * 100 = 10000 square meters.
If you stack an area of 10 square hectares wide and 10 square hectares deep, you have a total land area of 100 square hectares which is 1 square kilometer.
Here are some commonly used metric system prefixes:
name Prefix Symbol Multiplier Exponent
1 million mega M 1,000,000 10^6
1 thousand kilo k 1,000 10^3
1 hundred hecto h 100 10^2
1 ten deca da 10 10^1
1 one 1 10^0
1 tenth deci d 0.1 or 1/10 10^-1
1 hundredth centi c 0.01 or 1/100 10^-2
1 thousandth milli m 0.001 or 1/1000 10^-3
1 millionth micro µ 0.000001 or 1/1000000 10^-6
Now go back over the above to become more familiar with the SIMPLE metric system.