But hold up, if science is nothing more than explaining and predicting the natural world, why do people have so much trouble understanding science? Probably because you’re assuming “people” to mean “inhabitants of the United States” and everyone here wants to be special and NOT use the metric system. Oh the metric system. Of the roughly 7,700,000,000 people alive in the world, 7,315,000,000 use it. Of the remaining 385,000,000 individuals, 327,000,000 live in the United States. Liberia and Myanmar (or Burma, I’ve never understood why it has two names) are the only other countries in the world that use the same stupid system we do. Think of it like this: if 95% of people did one thing, while the other 5% did something else, which group would you choose to be in? If you’re American, Liberian, or Burmese, you’d pick the 5% group. But let me put this piece of information in your face in case youre still skeptical. According to Planned Parenthood (this is where I formally cite where I get this statistic but you’d never actually check so trust me and if you dont, Google it) even though condoms have a 98% effectiveness at preventing pregnancy, realistically someone can expect an effectiveness of 85%. So its three times more likely for a baby to be conceived if a condom is the only preventative used than it is to pick a random human off the planet and for them to NOT use the metric system. But we still dont use it because whatever. ‘Merica, right?
Lets do a little compare and contrast of the metric system and the imperial system (that’s what we use). We can start of easy, how many inches are in a foot? If you didnt say twelve, put this book down and go back to Green Eggs and Ham you savage. Next up, how many feet are in a mile? Please say 5,280. Ok, fun part: how many inches in a mile? The answer is 64,480 and if you were able to do that in your head, congratulations, you’re a liar. you just believed me before and didn’t fact check me, the real answer is 63,360. I promise I’m not lying this time. But seriously, how stupid of a number is 63,360? What’s even better is that we have sixteen ounces in a pound but eight ounces in a cup and a pound’s ounce and a cup’s ounce aren’t the same ounce. What the actual fuck? Meanwhile, the rest of the world is over there converting stuff easily because all they have to do is move the decimal point. And there aren’t a bunch of stupid words to remember because its just three standard units and then a few prefixes. So instead of remembering inch, foot, yard, mile, teaspoon, tablespoon, ounce, cup, quart, gallon, a different ounce, pound, and ton, you can just remember the three standards and realistically three or four prefixes. The units meter (m), gram (g), and liter (L), when combined with milli-, centi-, and kilo-, could get you by in just about every situation you would ever face as an average human. Its so straightforward, you should feel insulted that there are people out there who think we’re too dumb to be able to use it.
Breaking down those three metric prefixes is a very simple thing. Milli- has the same root as millennium, which is one thousand years (something I hope you already knew…), so whenever you throw milli- onto a standard unit, you have one-one thousandth of that amount. There are 1,000 millimeters (mm) in a meter, 1,000 milliliters (mL) in a liter, and 1 Vanilli is equal to 1,000 Milli Vanillis (I’m way too proud of that joke which only three of you will get). Centi- shares a root as century, or cent, and just like there are 100 years in a century or 100 cents in a dollar, there are 100 centi-whatever in 1 whatever. Connected milli- to centi- is as easy as multiplying by ten or dividing by ten, which is just moving the decimal point once place to the right or left, respectively. Ten millimeters is one centimeter, and 100 centimeters is one meter. Going the other direction, we get kilo-. All you drug users will recognize this prefix because when its combined with gram, its the main way to measure mass. So one kilogram is 1,000 grams, a kiloliter is 1,000 liters, and kilometer is 1,000 meters.
For all of us who are metrically challenged, I’ve got a few methods to quickly approximate metric units into our goofy ass imperial units. A kilogram is roughly 2 pounds. Actually, its closer to 2.2 pounds per kilogram but like I said, they’re approximations. A meter is just a little more than a yard (which is three feet, or thirty-six inches…) so its close enough. If you want to approximate kilometers into miles, just think of a 5k. A 5k race is five kilometers, or 5,000 meters, and is roughly 3.1 miles. Something even cooler happens if you know what the Fibonacci sequence is, but I’m assuming you bastards have no clue what I’m talking about right now. The Fibonacci sequence is a math thing where the next number in the pattern is the sum of the previous two. It looks like this “1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, …” I bring this up because the FIbonacci sequence approximates the conversion from miles to kilometers. If you want to know how many kilometers are in ___ miles, its the next number in the Fibonacci sequence. Like I said earlier, three miles is roughly five kilometers, but if you want to know how many kilometers are in twenty miles, you can look at the Fib sequence (I got tired of writing Fibonacci), see that twenty is basically twenty-one, which tells you there are just under thirty-four kilometers in twenty miles (I just looked it up and twenty miles is equal to thirty two kilometers). Lastly, one liter is roughly the same as one quart, or two bottles of water.
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