American reacts to: Is the Meter System actually BETTER? 

For Europeans, the American system makes no sense at all and is just too grotesque unnecessarily complicated.

Only a american would say the metric system isnt perfect.

Not a single European would say that anything like the metric system was made by god 😂 This was such a USAmerican sentence!

Metric system is so easy to work with. 1kg of water = 1 litre. 1 cubic metre = 1000 litres. Imagine calculating the amout of rain water you would get off a rooftop given a 1mm of rainfall.

1 metre = 100cm, 1 yard = 91.44cm, he was definitely holding a metre stick, not a yard stick! 😂

The US customary system is definded by metric in US law..

Weird video. I don't think anybody argues that the choice of whatever basic unit you use us ultimately arbitrary. The advantage of the metric system is that once you've chosen that unit, the rest builds on that basic unit in a systematic way. Using metrics that don't neatly build on each other makes life unnecessarily difficult and leads to unnecessary imprecision. When doing renovation projects in the US, our contractors have been half-assing measurements because ultimately stuff never stacks up if you have to work with feet, inches and fraction of inches. I've never seen that in Europe.

The old measurement errors propagating in SI units isn't an oversight or an error, it's a feature specifically chosen to exist. All the newer definitions fit inside the error bars of the old ones. That makes them backwards compatible. Technically they aren't actually different, they are simply more precise.

Americans think they understand Imperial measurements, yet have no concept of stones and have their own measurements for pints, ounces etc.

Working when you are so sick is a very stereotypical American thing. Thanks for the content but don't forget to rest 🎆

It doesn't matter how long the is, what magters is that the metrik system is logic: 1meter =100 cm=1000mm. A cube 10x10x10 cm (100x100x100 mm) = 1 liter (water freeze at 0° and boils at 100°) = 1kilogram= 1000 grams. All connected, login and very easy to work with.

The real issue with the imperial system is the insistent use of fractions, when the average american apparently believe the "one-third pound burger" to be smaller than the "quarter pounder".

Doing it at the end of the 18th century by measuring triangles using only a small part of the total stretch and then be off by 0.02% is hella impressive imo.

It's funny how everyone in the world except the United States can do something the same way and yet we're still the ones who have it wrong.

Fun thing is that the foot is defined as equal to exactly 0.3048 meters and a yard as exactly 0.9144 meters. So by using imperial units you are indirectly using si (metric) units

With the USA jumping up and down "WE WILL NOT GO METRIC" stupid when the USA was the FIRST to go METRIC with money.

It doesn't matter what the exact length is as long as everyone uses the same !

Only for us it is metre not meter 😂

I can't believe I missed "Les Measurables" when I watched Joe's video the first time around 🤣

It's weird how, for many years, the British Commonwealth countries (not sure about other countries) had pounds, shillings, and pence when I was in primary (elementary) school. There were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. A guinea was one pound and one shilling. We also used imperial measurements. Then, in 1967, (when I was twelve), we changed to the same denominations as the United States, dollars, and cents. So we went to decimal currency and later moved to metric measurement. The United States has decimal currency all along but has stuck to imperial measurements. Please rest up and get well. I began to feel sick just watching you. 😂😂😂❤❤❤

10 million is just the division, not an indication of the number of significant numbers!

Adopted in Australia in 1972 thats why us oldies know both and convert in our heads eg 1 mile is 1.6 kilometres or 1600 metres 25 mm or 2.5 cm is 1 inch 37.9 c is 100f

The important thing with the metric system is : whatever arbitrary reference was taken to define the basic unit (meter / mètre), ALL the other units would be defined as decimal variations of the base, so it makes calculations extremely easy even between different fields of measure (volumes to distance, or weight), and much less error prone than conversions even within the Imperial system ;)

7:05 No Ryan. That's the effect of the lord Sauron dying in the Lord of the Rings!

What is stupid about the imperial system is not the size of the unit, it is the weakness of the conversion systems. The metric system has been adopted by all but three countries in the world because it is based on decimal and the ratio of 10 between larger or smaller units. It's so much simpler...

4:12 the French word for meter is "mètre". Which is why the Brits still spell the word "metre", not "meter".

As I didnt understand the term "yards", my math teacher suggested reciting a "metre measures 3ft 3, it's longer than a yard you'll see"! 👍

The platinum meter was stored in Paris, in a vacuum at 0 degrees Celsius. PS Be Smart is a great channel. I think you'll love it, Ryan.

Get well soon, Ryan.

An error of 2/10 of a millimetre over 1m is pretty huge if you're navigating a ship, grinding a lens, building a skyscraper, or etching a silicon chip.

You can have a job walking around the countryside measuring triangles. Well, it's not triangles, and you don't always walk, you sometimes crawl through mud and bushes. The job is called a land surveyor or a geodesist. One of my mates is one, he studied in a land planning university, and he likes to play guitar and bitch about things.

Wow, Ryan, I noticed you seem a little off in the first few moments of your post. Hope you are feeling better soon. Love your post! You are very entertaining, even when you are a bit under the weather.😃

The hills and mountains can be calculated out if you also determine the height above sea level for each measuring point. Just a few more triangles in the final calculation 🙂

For Joe / Josephine Average Citizen, the origin of the metre really is of no consequence. It's the use / application that is important. I grew up with the Imperial system but had to learn the metric in my 20s. So simple. Water freezes at 0'C and boils at 100'C. (Not that it matters but where did 32 & 212 come from?) An acre is 43,560 square feet (208.71 ft. x 208.71 ft.), or 1 chain (66 ft.) by 1 furlong (660 ft). which was the amount of land that a medieval farmer could plough in a day using a team of eight oxen. In contrast a hectare is 100 metres by 100 metres.

As you mentioned changes in temperature, the worst thing that can happen to a system of measures based on physical measures is losing the measures in a fire. So, when the Palace of Westminster burned down in 1834, the world lost the imperial yard and the imperial pound. The Weights and Measures Act 1855 is a bit wordy, so to paraphrase: some scientific experts got together that had previously compared their physical versions of the yard and pound to the physical standards, on a regular enough basis, that the differences measured between their copies and the lost standards could be reversed and averaged to recreate very close approximations of the original defining objects, and so they recreated four copies of the Imperial Standard Yard, the Imperial Standard Troy Pound, and the Pound Avoirdupois (not technically a standard measure because the lb itself was defined by the troy pound), and from the date set out in legislation the new standard measures became the original standard measures. Eventually, metric was defined by the imperial measurements in the UK, and when the metric measures were better defined the legal definitions got inverted with imperial measures being defined by metric measures, which were eventually themselves defined by universal constants. There was of course that time in the 1950s when we (UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia) had to get together to agree on how far a mile is and how much a pound weighs. Ah, America, a country where you can get all of your citizens to ditch the US mile in favour of the international mile, but NIST's surveyors and NOAA's meteorologists had to be given a little time (60+ years) to switch to this newfangled foot thing - "in the meantime, let's rename the US foot as the US survey foot to avoid confusing the American public". Edit: metre/meter literally means measure. That's why the time signature in music is also known as the metre signature or the measure signature, why the rhythm in poetry is known as its metre, why the thing that measures your energy usage is a meter, why the thing you watch to make sure your microphone isn't clipping is a meter, etc. In British English, only the distance measure and music/poetry measures are a metre, with most all other measures (and measuring things) being meters, including newer UK (natural) gas meters that measure usage in cubic metres (in comparison to the older meters that used cubic feet).

„A boulder the size of small boulder“ comes to mind

Dang Ryan, you are REALLY funny when you are ill. Great reaction. I still hope you´ll get better soon, take care of yourself. :)

😂…thats why we have Donald Trump 😂

Ryan is exactly the type of guy Continental European men don't like even if their last name is Ronaldo or Nadal. He is polite, charming, and most of all does not get bothered if someone says something to him that is off-handed. Like many Americans, he just ignores all but the most obvious insults and moves on to the next point of conversation. He also smiles way too much for European men to feel comfortable with around their girlfriends or even wives. And, not only that, i am sure Ryan tips all sorts of service people and thanks them for a job well done, something for example someone in France or the Netherlands would be nauseated by. Ryan, you need to head over to Europe, you will be loved there ---

Oh I've seen a yardstick. Felt one, too. Was one of our teachers' weapon of choice. To be fair, it was a broken one so more realistically it would have been a 'two feet stick'.

this is the best "convert" you can get...

This video has NOTHING to do with the title

I love how his reason for it being imperfect is because of such a negligible error hundreds of years ago. I'd love to see him explain why imperial units are defined by the metric system today

we use both in the uk had to learn both for maths and science

Metrum is Latin and means "measure" or "gauge". From there, the French word "metre" derived (same in British English), or the American English "meter".

Yes, you can get such a job - SURVEYOR (only walking with a fancy GPS, drones, Tacheometers, Total stations, etc..) but basics are the same...

Each German household has at least 1 customs rule.

As a Brit can conceptualise: Driving 5 miles. Walking 200meters To buy a pint of milk and a litre of coke That I weigh 13stone and 11lb and can squat 100kg But I can't conceptualise: Driving 2km Walking 50yards To buy a litre of milk and a gallon of petrol (gas) That I weigh 75kg and can lift...220lb 😂

American here and I don't know what schools are teaching now, but when I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s we were taught both the Standard system and the metric system. I think it's weird that no one else in the U.S. seemed to be taught metrics.

It's a job still in Germany. If you want that job, here you can walk around measuring and get paid for it by the community. 😅

A meter is for putting money in when the electric runs out or the taxi has a meter running.

We have meter long yardsticks here, often with the measurement in yard and inches on the other side. It's even called a 'duimstok' which translates as thumb stick and a thumb is an inch. This is NL, which has always had a lot of exchange with Britain for a continental country. Ironically a lot of bicycle measurements are still in inch.

One liter of water has a mass of one kilogram and has a volume of 1 cubic decimeter. 1 milliliter of water has a mass of one gram and has a volume of 1 cubic centimeter. That nuclear explosion was from the introduction of the movie The fellowship of the ring (Lord of the rings) Remember that the earth isn’t a perfect sphere but it bulges around the equator.

When Carl Johansson started to export gauge blocks to the U.S. in 1912, he set the 1 inch blocks to 25.4mm @ 20° C exactly. Instead of using U.S. inch (25.4000508 mm @68 °F) or the U.K. inch (25.399977 mm). U.S. has been secretly metric ever since.

Of the seven primarily cited metric distance measurements only four of them are readily used in practical applications. Nobody refers to decimeters, dekameters or hectometers. They're merely cited as 0.1 or 10x of the adjacent measurement. Meanwhile in an imperial system, an inch, a foot, a yard and a mile ALL get usage. Not every measurement in the world works best on a standard of ten. Ten has limited application as a power of two fraction before you need to get decimals involved. There are times when dividing into thirds, quarters, sixths and eighths makes more sense. I'm rather proud that I got to learn both systems and still use them both. It's like being bilingual, except with numbers.

METRE

In the UK we are very comfortable using yards, feet, inches and metres.

Fun fact: the american system is defined on the metric system.

Thanks for this awesome video. It was super interesting! Also I'm French and had no idea about this, you made my day! Hope you get better soon ❤

why does the country of freedom uses the IMPERIAL system? 😂😂

2 thenth of a milimiter off? screw this im going back to lobsters per square squirel

That pronounciation of métre is absolutely spot on. :D

If it's a metre long, it is actually a metre stick, not a yard stick. :p

Little funfact: Dont you use metric already? I mean how many Cents are in a Dollar? ^^

It's nice only you know a yard stick,

NASA works in metric, and the airlines work in Imperial AND metric. I read somewhere that a spacecraft crashed because there was a mix up in the measurements.

What is the meter system?

No such thing as the meter system. Any case, it's metre.

What he has not stated, and he really should, was that the metre was designed to be repeatable by anyone in the universe… a universal measure one might say… and now it is, as are all of the other metric base units. We never metrified time, so the second is now retrofit into the metric system by other physical laws of the universe. It is one of the all time great achievements of mankind.

That reaction about metric time! I’m sure that if we had converted to metric time, everyone would do the same face hearing about days divided in 24 h, each hour being 60 minutes and each minute divided in 60 seconds while then the second fractions are metric.

According to my knowledge the meter was implemented by French because they discovered it during their Egyptian Expedition as it was a 5000 years old Egyptian unit of measurement (Egyptian cubit was a radian of a cirle diamater of a meter - or sth like that).

Hello fellow metricists.

US army and NASA adopted metric system in 1957. (answer to the traditional US mantra : "there are two kinds of countries, those who have the metric system, and those who walked on the moon").

Even Aliens have the same meter 😂 I love it!!!

Metric is easier to divide or multiply but people are not totally liking or used to it when growing up with imperial measurements

Outside of the USA, METER is spelled METRE. And LITER is spelled LITRE ! A meter is a device that measures something, as in electric meter. Of course we've seen a YARD STICK !! We used them in the UK before we went metric ! Americans SAY they use the Imperial system but don't know about STONES ! Or that UK pints and gallons are different to American ones !

Defenders of the great British imperial system... I've always wondered what your equivalent of percent is.

Well, the Meter is based on our daily scale. Also, it´s based on 10, which allows to just move the comma (point), in order to calculate the upper or lower measurement size, like kg or metric tons -> 1000g =1kg, 1000kg =1 ton). Also, volume and weight are linked to the density/weight of water, which makes one Liter (10x10x10 cm = 1 dm³ of distilled water having a weight of 1kg ON SEALEVEL (pressure matters). In fact, it cancels out any conversion calculations, that´s why it´s used by science in general. Fun fact: When it comes to weapons, even US citizens use the metric system for some reason and there are more expamples for it, already. However, sooner or later the US will adapt this system, anyways - it´s just a question of time. But once your are on it, please make your billion the same as the european one as well, it´s so confusing to me. 🙄

but the circomference of the earth is 40010km. so they were 0.025% off. I'd say, that's a respectable low error.

Yes and no, there are applications where traditional fractional systems work better but at least the metric system provides a single universal standard of measure rather than everybody having their own quirks to their version of a fractional system..

Ryan that wasn't a nuclear explosion but one of the scenes of "The lord of the rings"

"How old are you?" "I am 24 palm trees old" "How long is the road?" "It's like 5 feet, two teeth and a quarter of liver long" "What's that sport you play in your country with the egg shaped ball that you carry around in your hands" "Ooow you mean football" Leave it to the Americans...

You are a true american that works even when is sick, salute to you ahah congrats for your content from Italy

Honestly, I would love to live in a world where day is 10 hours, 1 hour is 100 minutes etc..., it would be so much simplier than now. 😀

It's not about the perfection or not of the metric system, it's the madness of the imperial units, that btw, are based on the metric system nowadays. The greatness of the metric system comes from 'decimation', using 10 as base for multiples and divisions. It's so simple.

You can’t get a job like that anymore… haha, that made me giggle. Good one!

At 4:03 it says why they've decided to name it "meter". It originates from the greek word metron, which translates to "something used to measure". Pretty straight forward, isn't it?

"Bestowed to us by God*!" *the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, both really godly.

It doesn't MATTER what the definition is, provided it is agreed and consistent for everyone.

honnestly, 2/10th of a milimeter error for something calculated on a measurement made in 1800 based on trigonometry, that´s damnn good

Zetetics and Pyrrhonists will have fun on such a subject. Good luck ! 😂😂😂

299,792,458 is not a random number, it is the speed of light in a vacuum

Yard sticks are only good for the garden to prop up your plants and help them grow straight.

Now the meter comes from how much light travels in like a 0.00000000001 second

fun facts: - the second is currently also based on fundamental physics. As is the meter. - the current imperial system is ....wait for it....metric-based! It's just a conversion - the imperial system actually made sense to farmers, traders and craftsmen in the past. There was no great need for scientific purposes and a lot for crafting and trade. Therefor lots of imperial measurement is divisable by 2,3,4 and 6. That's handy! (There is a more detailed explanation out there but I forgot).

An asteroid that passed close to Earth and had a length of 16 sea lions. That all.

What shoe size is that foot?

@6:19 Before you volunteer, keep in mind when they measured into Spain they actually had to navigate the Napoleonic wars. Yes, they had letters of safe passage of both sides, but still these was a pretty hefty war and battles, and medicine in that time was near non existent.

Meter is spelled metre in most English speaking countries so it doesn’t get mixed up with meters. Metre is pronounced the same as meter, but in France it’s pronounced with a French accent. In the US and still sometimes in the UK and more rarely some of its former colonies 0.9144 metres is pronounced yard. You can absolutely still use yards instead of metres in the USA, but your federal government defines a yard as 0.9144 meters.

Sorry to hear you’re sick, again! 💐