Review of Metric system

by Josh
(US)

I use math when analyzing political phenomenon mostly and it helps a great deal with predictive studies. When it comes to the metric system of measurements, I believe all science related courses should be using the metric system.

As pointed out in the article, it is very easy to convert from one unit to another once you learn the hierarchy of how the system is set up. The continuity of the metric system from liquid measurement to gram measurement and so on is very useful for students when trying to make quick calculations in the lab setting or even if they are just trying to fly through some science homework in a hurry.

I, myself, have become quite comfortable with the metric system over the years and prefer it in most cases, except for temperature because I have become so accustomed to the Fahrenheit measurement. Students should most definitely familiarize themselves with the metric system because it is quite easy to understand and very useful.

Barry's Response - We refer to the general form of the metric system as the Internal System of Units. It came from the French, Système International d'unités, (SI) and we use the abbreviation more often than the full name. Going with this set of fundamental units (there are only seven) removes all ambiguities generally associated with any non-highly-standardized system of measurements. Which units?

meter - distance
kilogram - mass
second - time
ampere - current
kelvin - temperature
candela - light intensity
mole - Avogadro's number (approx. 6.022 x 10²³) of particles

All other units are derived from these seven. For example you can get speed in m/s, density in kg/m³ or energy in kg m/s².

A note about temperature: Many scientific calculations involving SI and temperature (such as those used in thermodynamics) require absolute temperature as an input. In this case Celsius (aka centigrade) becomes more convenient because it is easily convertible to Kelvin, simply by adding 273.16. Your comments make a lot of sense and thank you, Josh.

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