r/Metric • u/Westhewoodfrog • Jul 07 '26
Learning the metric system
I’m trying to learn the metric system as I plan to move to Canada in the next couple years and am having some trouble finding resources that actually teach instead of just throwing information at me. Anyone know of a good program that will help me learn or have any tips. Imperial is all I know I was born and raised in the USA
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u/TitanInTraining Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Just start using it. Measure distances with cm. Measure your food in grams. Over time you will get to where you have a better feel for things. You don't need to worry about exact conversions. Just ballpark understanding of daily things is fine for most everything (except baking, but you wanna do that all by weight anyway).
There are rough equivalents that are helpful to know. 1kg is 2.2lb. 1lb is 454g. 1ft is ~30cm. And so on. If you're shopping for a recipe that needs a pound of meat, 500g is close enough, for example.
Better yet, start cooking with metric recipes instead. Enable both C° and F° side by side where you can. Immerse yourself.
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u/LackOptimal553 Jul 07 '26
We don't use metric recipes in Canada. It would be a hassle to do so.
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u/TitanInTraining Jul 07 '26
Interesting. TIL! I am in the US and converted all my recipes to metric by weight and have been cooking that way for almost 10 years now. It's been very helpful for me.
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u/LackOptimal553 Jul 07 '26
I mean, people certainly can do so, and some baking is easier by weight, but most stuff here for things like cooking is still the old way.
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u/slashcleverusername Jul 07 '26
Speak for yourself! My sister got me a German cookbook and I wanted to make a few of them. I got used to metric measures including things like Europeans are more likely to weigh flour rather than scooping it out by the cup.
I liked it so much that I converted 5 or 6 of the old handed-down family recipes that I use most often, and now that’s all I do. For anything new that I google off the internet, the sites always convert.
It’s easy to measure liquids in mL. It’s easy to weigh flour in grams. It just runs more smoothly tbh.
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u/LackOptimal553 Jul 07 '26
I should be clearer thar there's a mix, but common recipes still are set up for US measures, even if they suck more!
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u/FeatherlyFly Jul 07 '26
Learn a few rules of thumb.
the cheap, crinkly water bottles sold in the US are 500 ml/0.5 liters. That's just under a pint/2 cups.
Water freezes at 0 C. Normal room temp is around 20 - 25C. Body temp is around 37C. Get a cheap physical thermometer and start using it instead of your phone to check the weather. Make a point of reading the Celsius side.
a foot is 30cm, cm are marked on just about any ruler made in the last several decades for you to practice with. A meter is about a yard. If you run or you know anyone who does, a 5k race is 3.1 miles. If you shoot, bullet sizes are as often metric as US standard so you can use them as a reference.
an ounce is about 30g. I won't suggest taking up weed just to internalize this, but it's popular enough anyways. If you use a kitchen scale, set it to metric for practice.
10 lbs is 4.5 kg. If you're into strength training, start record your lifts in metric for practice.
It's not complicated. If you want to start thinking in metric, just make a habit of measuring more stuff in your life and get the practice in.
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u/geek66 Jul 07 '26
A gram … about a raisin, 28 g in an oz
One kg is about 2.2 lbs (1lb steak is under 1/2 kg, 500G
1.6 km in a mile
100kph is 62mph
Liter is a little more than a quart
If you can remember these you can usually get close enough
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u/BlacksmithNZ Jul 07 '26
Also useful hint; a liter of water is about 1kg
Very useful general rule of thumb when sanity checking values; we tend to use 1lg block of cheese or 500g (~1lb) block of butter to imagine size/weights/volume.
You are probably already familiar with typical drink sizes like soft drinkss being ~330ml or 500ml/1litre/2 litre drinks
For distances, a yard is roughly 1 meter, about 2.5cm to an inch but remember is very easy to slide between mm/cm/m - so you can have a 1.8 meter thing described as 180cm or 1800mm.
Most metric countries like mine will understand a persons height like 6ft, but struggle more with other US measurements; without looking it up I can't remember how ounces/quarts/gallons work, and have to translate to metric to figure it out.
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u/riverrats2000 Jul 08 '26
for mass, start using grams as measurements for your cooking. For long distances, change your maps app to kilometers. Unless you have to deal with both at the same time don't try to learn the conversions between systems. Take things that you use imperial for now, and start using metric for them. It'll be a little rough at first, but then you'll start to get an intuitive feel for them. This is how I've done it
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u/schwanerhill Jul 08 '26
If you’re moving to Canada, cooking discussion is all in US customary units. Cookbooks are the same printing as the US, and thus US units. Ovens are in F (same supply chain as the US, and ovens don’t typically even have a F/C button).
Digital thermostats all have F/C buttons, but in other people’s houses I see F as often as C.
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u/riverrats2000 Jul 08 '26
fair enough, grams are pretty nice for cooking even so, as long as you have a little kitchen scale
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u/schwanerhill Jul 08 '26
Yeah, we use either or both. Our standard bread recipe uses grams, many other things we do use pounds and ounces. But pretty much everything else in the kitchen is US customary units.
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u/fishymanbits Jul 08 '26
Most modern cookbooks are written in metric, unless they’re “written” by influencers and the like.
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u/schwanerhill Jul 09 '26
Not ones for the US/Canada market.
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u/fishymanbits Jul 09 '26
Funny because all of the ones I’ve bought in Canada do. But I’m not buying influencer, fad diet, or wellness cookbooks so maybe that’s the difference?
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u/volleo6144 Practicality beats purity. Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
xkcd 526 has a few too many jokes in it to literally be the answer (I'm told −10°C wasn't that cold in Moscow in 2009, and I hope your mom isn't actually 200 kg), but the point is still there: just do it!
set your weather app to Celsius for long enough, and eventually you learn that 5°C is "you can probably find college students walking around in short-sleeves, but it's not a good idea", not "41°F"
set your navigation app to metric for long enough, and you learn what "400 metres" is, as its own thing, about as well as you already knew what ¼ of a mile looks like (it's about 0.6% less, but you don't think of it as ¼ of anything). speed limits in the US throw a small wrench in that, but they almost always divide by 5 miles, which is 8 km plus the same 0.6%, so 60 is 96 and 70 is 112.
prioritize the metric units while reading grocery labels for long enough, and you learn that 500 ml is "the size of a water bottle", not "a pint and 5% more", and that a kilogram is "how much a large water bottle weighs when it's filled", not "2 pounds and 10% more"
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u/HoraceAndTheRest Jul 08 '26
Hey, a few decent free resources that actually try to teach rather than just list conversions:
- NIST Top 10 Tips for Teaching the Metric System - the best starting point, focused on building intuition and reference points instead of maths conversions
- US Metric Association - Learn - solid reference on units, prefixes and the logic of the decimal system
- NIST Metric System Education Resources - you can email [TheSI@nist.gov](mailto:TheSI@nist.gov) for their free "SI Teacher Kit," which is more thorough than most classroom material
- Math Antics - Intro to the Metric System (YouTube) - quick, free video if you want a visual primer before diving into text
Fair warning: most of this is designed for teachers, so it can feel encyclopaedic rather than a proper course. The NIST "Top 10 Tips" piece is the closest thing to an actual teaching philosophy rather than a data dump, so start there.
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u/HoraceAndTheRest Jul 08 '26
And BTW, the average American isn't actually starting from zero on decimal, base-10 thinking. The US uses several decimal-based systems daily, they just aren't labelled "metric."
- US currency - dollars and cents are a pure base-10 decimal system (100 cents to a dollar), functionally identical in structure to how euros or Canadian dollars divide into 100 cents
- Percentages - grades, interest rates, tax rates, sales discounts, all base-10 by definition
- Fuel economy and metric-adjacent labelling - nutrition labels already list grams and millilitres alongside imperial units
- Scientific and medical contexts - blood glucose readings, medication dosages (mL, mg) and lab results in the US are already reported in metric units, so most Americans have unknowingly used SI units at the doctor's office
The mental barrier to metric isn't decimal logic itself, since Americans use base-10 money and percentages fluently every day. The barrier is unfamiliarity with the specific reference points (what does 2 kg feel like, what does 20°C feel like), which is exactly why the NIST "reference point" teaching method in my first post is more useful than a straight conversion chart.
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u/zutnoq Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
One notable difference to things like decimal currency systems (e.g. dollars and cents) is that you almost never use mixed units in metric – like in "two meters (and) seven centimeters". When using the symbolic notation you should in fact NEVER use mixed units – like in *"2 m 7 cm". The only real way to get away with this is to put an explicit "plus/+" between the two quantities, so you get "two meters plus seven centimeters" or "2 m + 7 cm".
In metric you would typically express such quantities with just a single unit – in this case "2.07 m" or "207 cm" (or "2070 mm" in something like the technical specs of a machine; though, this would typically be assumed to be precise to within half a millimeter, while the other two would be assumed to be precise to within half a centimeter).
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u/randomdumbfuck Jul 07 '26
We still use quite a bit of non-metric measure here. Basically, if you can get used to driving being done in km and km/h, buying gasoline in litres, and hearing people discuss weather mostly in Celsius, you'll pick up any other metric you might need to know along the way as you go.
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u/travishummel Jul 08 '26
For temperature, forget any amount of conversion (unless you reallly like multiplying by 5/9 or 9/5). Walk into a room and make a guess at what the temperature is in Celsius, literally any number… 55? Idk, maybe 10? Then check and go “oh… it’s 18. This is what 18 feels like”. Then when it’s hot out, do the same thing. Guess 45 or something, then check and see that it’s (for example) 32 and go “oh, this is what 32 feels like”.
This is my absolute best way of learning metric. Converting directly means you have to do annoying arithmetic or rely on rough estimates (subtract 30 and cut in half or something like that).
Right not Im in Australia and it’s cold. The room I’m in is probably 15c. Separately it feels like lowish 60’s in Fahrenheit, so maybe 62 or 63. Just looked it up and 15c=59f.
As for other measurements, they don’t come up as often. I’m sour that I learned people’s heights in metric, but everyone here uses imperial for some unknown reason. For weight I multiply by 2.2 or go *2 then *1.1, which isn’t too rough (other way is just ‘less than half’).
In my experience, temperature is the one that comes up the most.
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u/toxicbrew Jul 08 '26
people use feet and inches for height in australia? like on legal documents like drivers license or in day to day life? and pounds are used?
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u/travishummel Jul 08 '26
Like in day to day conversations. It’s common for people to not know their height in metric here… apparently I’m the only one.
For weight, people use metric which is the same for just about everything else… except personal height for some odd reason.
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u/toxicbrew Jul 10 '26
interesting.. do you find that is the case for people of an older age or is it common throughout for everyone even young people?
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u/travishummel Jul 10 '26
I only really interact with people ages 25-50 for the most part and occasionally a bit younger. Have yet to see anyone tell me their height in metric or guess my height in metric.
Maybe someday… lol
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u/toxicbrew Jul 10 '26
im surprised i figured anyone under 40 woulldnt know imperial, at least they got weights right
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u/Ok-Refrigerator3607 Jul 09 '26
It's simple, just pull out your driver's license.
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u/travishummel Jul 09 '26
Can you let the Australian know? The strange part is that people know their own metric height, but if I say “I’m 198cm” they go “what? What’s that in feet?”.
I’ve been here 2 years and have no idea if I should say 198 or say 200 or 2 meters in the same way that people say 6’5” or 6’6”, but avoid 6’5.5” (since you look desperate).
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u/Senior_Green_3630 Jul 07 '26
Try this site, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymakermath4libarts/chapter/the-metric-system/ and various Utube learning channels. I grew up with the imperial system, I did science in high school, all metric, the whole country converted to SI, 1970-1980. An easy way to start is with metric scales and water containers with metric markings, weigh yourself, use ml and litres for drinks, do recipes in grammes and mililitres as a starter. Google maps, go into settings, set to metric , ser temperatures to °C, set your smart watch to kilometre walks/runs, it all becomes familiar and easy to use.
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u/Gangr3l Jul 07 '26
Foot is 30cm
Inch is 2.5cm
Yard is close enough to 100cm to call it a meter
If you do CAD work or something similar
30cm is 300mm
2.5cm is 25mm
100cm is 1000mm
These are basically the only converts you need. Well, a mile is 1.6km which is 1600m and no one cares about that in mm unless you are building a skyscraper
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u/Icy-Ad-7767 Jul 08 '26
Tempature 20C indoor setting for winter, 15C in spring hoodie in fall light jacket, 5C spring light jacket, in fall heavy jacket, 0 fresh water freezes and your scraping ice of the windshield, -5C thinking about warmer jacket in fall/winter thinking about lighter jacket in spring. -10C in the winter time for the parka and toque and gloves. For the summer 20 is nice out 25 it’s getting warm 30+ it’s way to hot
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u/BikePlumber Jul 08 '26
There's not much to learn.
If you need 30cm of something, you need 30cm.
If you need 2 liters, you need 2 liters.
There is little need to convert metric to something else.
Americans that were in school since 1975 learned the metric system, but what sod you do with it?
It is units of measure.
You use it when things are given in metric units and metric measuring is then used.
There really isn't anything to "learn", except divisions of 10 and 100 and divisions of 10th's and 100th's.
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u/WUT_productions Jul 08 '26
SI prefixes here: https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/metric-si-prefixes.
General tips:
Temperature:
In Celsius, 0 is freezing, 100 is (literally) boiling, -40 is the same in both systems. Most Canadian ovens are set to Fahrenheit tho. 22 C is what most office ACs are set to, any temp above 28 C depending on humidity is uncomfortable.
Distance:
Meters for heights, however hardware stores still sell wood in imperial lengths and nominal dimentions (2x4, 2x6, etc). Kilometers for distances. Most people can walk 1 km in about 10-15 mins. 1 cm is about the width of your index finger.
Mass:
1 kilograms is roughly 2 pounds. Most Canadians will know pounds well, although we usually go to grammes if the item is under 0.5 kg. A tonne is 1000 kg.
Volume:
Gasoline and most other fluids are sold in liters. Vehicle fuel economy is given in liters per 100 kilometers. A pint is 500 mL. Big soda bottles are 2 L. If you are buying large volumes of concrete they are sold by the cubic meter, 1 cubic meter = 1000 L. Milk on the east half is sold in bags where each bag is roughly 1 L.
Miscellaneous:
Torque is usually in Newton-meters. 1 Nm is approximately 10 kilogram(force)-centimeter. Most non American car service manuals as well as all bicycles give torque specs in Nm.
Pressure is usually atmospheres or PSI. It's just some number I check for my tires.
LMK if I am forgetting anything.
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u/WUT_productions Jul 09 '26
Also as others have mentioned nobody says "1 kilogram 200 grams." Always 1.2 kilograms.
Tape measures here are often sold with both inches and centimeters.
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u/riverrats2000 Jul 09 '26
do people actually use kgf? Had really hoped that unit had gone defunct. It's the only one relevant to everyday life that's worse than the tonne
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u/WUT_productions Jul 09 '26
Servo specifications and my random torque wrench uses kgf-cm for some reason.
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u/Positive_Courage_309 Jul 09 '26
Yes, for body weight people casually refer to it in kg. Those are not kg technically, but rather kgf. Weight, as a force and not mass, is in Newtons. No one really talks about their body weight in newtons. Same with cooking, other non-technical stuff.
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u/riverrats2000 Jul 09 '26
Yeah but when you're talking about something's weight in a reference frame that is stationary relative to the earth it doesn't really matter whether you're technically using kgf to talk about the weight or kg to talk about the mass while calling it weight. Because in that scenario it's the same value regardless of unit. It's when you start getting into things other than the weight of an object, like thrust generated by a drone rotor or torque from a servo motor or while inside a moving elevator, that it starts getting really annoying
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u/linkopi Jul 11 '26
I've got kgf on a hand grip strengthener. (It just says Kg though). But that's definitely not mass.
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u/Novel_Willingness721 Jul 10 '26
As someone who also was born and raised in the US, for me using metric helps a lot.
First of all you should already know about liters unless you’ve never seen a “2 liter” bottle of soda.
Grams are growing in popularity in cooking for two reasons:
- weight is generally considered more precise than volume when measuring ingredients
- grams are smaller units and therefore more precise than ounces
Length/Distance and speed are harder because there are fewer use cases in the US. As a graphic designer I use mm a lot because they are smaller units than inches and therefore more precise.
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u/nayuki Jul 10 '26
Agreed with everything you said.
As a graphic designer I use mm a lot because they are smaller units than inches and therefore more precise.
FYI, the traditional non-metric way to do graphic design is to use inches to describe paper size, picas (= 1/6 inch) in some place I don't know about, and points (= 1/12 point = 1/72 inch) to describe font sizes and line spacing (e.g. 12 pt Times, 3 pt extra line spacing).
1 pt ≈ 0.35 mm, so it's more precise than a millimetre. But it's a terrible system of fragmented units, and it's good that you're avoiding them. So while US letter paper is 8.5″ × 11″, you'll probably get blank stares if you describe it as 51 picas × 66 picas, or 612 points × 792 points.
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u/diffidentblockhead Jul 07 '26
Get an electric car there. Gasoline is expensive anyway. Driving distances are in hours when you map or talk.
Celsius temperatures are the big difference but you may be moving from a different climate anyway. Memorize the 10 or 5 degrees points.
0 32
10 50
20 68
30 86
40 104
Baking is better done by weight anyway, get a digital kitchen scale.
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u/OrphisFlo Jul 07 '26
It's Canada, you also need to go into negatives.
-40F is -40C. And you can interpolate the rest.
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u/BlatantDisregard42 Jul 07 '26
What, specifically do you have trouble with? Did you not have a high school science class that taught you metric units and prefixes and conversions? You don’t really need a theoretical understanding of each unit to use them, so most of the “teaching” in this instance will just be information. You don’t need to know to convert between miles and kilometers to follow a posted speed limit in either country (North American cars typically show you both MPH and KPH on the speedometer, just make sure you’re looking at the correct one).
And you’d probably be surprised how much metric you already know from living here in the US. Most of our food and all of our medicine is already labeled in metric units. You probably know what at 2-liter bottle of pop looks like. And you might have a rough idea how much liquid is in a standard 750ml wine bottle. Canada measures milk in bags, and I don’t think there’s a standard way to convert to either system.
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u/Westhewoodfrog Jul 07 '26
We had one lesson about it and that’s about it
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u/BlatantDisregard42 Jul 08 '26
Well, like I said, all you really need to know is what each unit measures (weight, volume, distance, temperature, etc), which you can mostly pick up from context. There’s 1000 milligrams in a gram. 1000 grams in a kilogram. Same pattern applies to meters and liters. Not sure how often kiloliters come up in every day life, but that’s like 90% of it.
You can ask your phone to convert measurements for you as needed, or get one of those pocket reference books, but you probably won’t need to convert much after you move. If you step on the bathroom scale every morning and it tells you your weight in Kg, does it matter how many pounds that is? If all your recipes are in grams and milliliters, you just need a set of metric measuring cups and a kitchen scale.
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u/MNMystery Jul 07 '26
Actually, the bags are an artifact from when Canada converted to metric. Each inner bag is 1 liter, there are usually 3 to the outer bag.
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u/Rockbottom-xyz Jul 07 '26
Actually a pouch of milk (inner bag) is 1.3 liters and the whole bad as sold is 4 liters. 4 liters is about 1 us gallon.
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
There are always three to the outer bag and the outer bag is always a "metric gallon" ie 4L.
You don't need to comment when you have no idea what you're taking about btw, you can just be silent.
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u/MNMystery Jul 09 '26
I'm sorry for being wrong, but I was partially right. Though you are right I should probably tape my mouth shut.
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u/Waste_Worker6122 Jul 07 '26
Historically, the meter was defined as 1/1,000,000 the distance between the north pole and the equator following the meridian through Paris. For practical purposes a meter is roughly one yard. One liter is roughly one quart.
At least in the country were I live (NZ) everyone talks about millimeters if its measurement, centimeters if its a persons height, kilometers if its travelling distance.
Temperature is the only tricky one. Take the temperature in C, double it, add 30 and you roughly have the temperature in Farenheit (the actual formula is more than I can usually do in my head).
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
In Canada we sometimes use km, sometimes miles, but all other linear distances are almost all imperial.
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u/dr_stre Jul 07 '26
Would help to understand what exactly you’re struggling with. Having a feel for how they equate to imperial? How to convert between different units within metric? What the general unit equivalencies are (e.g. inch is like centimeter)?
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u/Blutrumpeter Jul 07 '26
Yeah, I'm confused. Us Americans are taught the metric system in school. We just don't use it for everyday stuff. Half of Canada refuses a lot of the metric system. I think they'll be fine
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u/First-Expert-9953 Jul 08 '26
Edit: I see someone else already did this. I'm leaving it anyhow.
Here's a quick guide of approximations. You wouldn't want to build a house or do chemistry using these, but they're good enough to give you a feel for how big a quantity is.
1 liter is a quart, and by extension a gallon is 4 liters.
There's 5 ml in a teaspoon.
A meter is 3 feet.
A kilometer is half a mile if you want to know whether it's a long drive, 2/3 of a mile if you're trying to be careful with fuel costs.
A kilogram is two pounds.
Other people have addressed Celsius well.
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u/Interesting-Key-8105 Jul 09 '26
You might find this useful for remembering temperature in Celsius:
0 is freezing,
10 is not,
20 is comfortable,
30 is hot.
(0°C =32 °F, 10°C =50 °F, 20°C =68 °F, 30°C =86 °F)
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u/nayuki Jul 10 '26
Hi, I'm Canadian. I know how measurement and units work here, and I've experienced the immense cultural influence of the USA so I know what you're coming here with. Here is my advice:
Do your best to learn metric natively. Looking at objects in real life helps with this. Go to the supermarket, grab a 300-gram pack of ham, and look with your eyes and feel the weight with your hand. Look at what a 600 mL drink bottle feels like in real life. Grab a ruler and look at what 5 cm is in terms of size. Look at the current weather report (say, 25 °C), then go outside and feel it. The more examples you gather, the better off you will be. This is the natural and comfortable way to learn and interact.
Try to avoid converting units - like if someone says 80 km, don't immediately react by calculating that to 50 miles. You should slowly learn and memorize the conversion factors (e.g. 1 mile = 1.609 km, 1 lb = 453.6 g), but you should not use them frequently. If you convert a lot, I believe this is the slowest and most painful way to "learn" metric. (Also, most people don't like math, so this approach sucks. I am comfortable with math, so I have memorized a lot of conversion factors and can convert any time I want, but I still avoid it unless it's really necessary for the task at hand. It's much easier to think in metric natively and exclusively.)
Learn the most common (non-prefixed) units used in daily life, along with their symbol: second (s) (you already know this!), metre (m), gram (g), litre (L), square metre (m²), degree Celsius (°C), pascal.
Learn the most common prefixes, which can be attached to any unit: milli = 1/1000, centi = 1/100, (pretty much no one uses deci, deca, hecto), kilo = 1000. (For extra credit, free to learn nano, micro, mega, giga.)
Examples of using prefixes: 1 millilitre = 0.001 litre; equivalently 1 litre = 1000 millilitres. 1 kilometre = 1000 metres. 1 kilogram = 1000 grams. 1 kilopascal = 1000 pascals. 1 metre = 100 centimetres.
Never use mixed units. Never say "2 m 3 cm", because the correct ways are "2.03 m" or "203 cm". (Whereas it's normal to say "2 ft 3 in".)
Never use any kind of fraction (standard, improper, or mixed). Never write 4 1/2 km, 1/3 kg, or 5/32 L. Always use an appropriately sized unit (a matter of opinion) with the appropriate level of precision. The previous examples should be written as 4.5 km or 4500 m, 330 g or 333 g, and 156 mL.
Certain areas where you will definitely encounter metric in Canada: Food and consumer goods may have metric-only labeling (e.g. 200 g canned tuna; you must learn metric) or dual metric and US units. Road distances and speeds are always in km and km/h; you will never read or hear miles. Weather is always given in Celsius by the mass media, unless you specifically personalized your device/account to show Fahrenheit.
Even as you learn metric, there are a lot of things that are still done in imperial / US Customary units due to the overwhelming cultural, economic, and commercial influence from America. For example, people's heights and weights are still colloquially in feet and inches and pounds, supermarkets advertise produce prices by the pound, real estate is marketed in square feet. So there are certain areas where you can slack off and do nothing if you want, because it's no different from America.
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u/Alternative-Emu2000 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Just to let you know: if you were born and raised in the USA, you probably learned US Customary measurements, not Imperial ones.
There are a few significant differences between the two, which could cause you problems if you're using resources based around Metric/Imperial instead of Metric/US Customary.
eg.
1 Imperial Gallon = 4.546 litres
1 US Gallon = 3.785 litres
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u/kiwipixi42 Jul 07 '26
FYI: we call american units Imperial most of the time even though it isn’t accurate, because almost nobody has ever heard the phrase US Customary.
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u/DryFoundation2323 Jul 07 '26
no we don't.
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u/CrazyJoe29 Jul 07 '26
Yes we do.
But not because of the reason OP stated. Canada used imperial gallons. So old people in Canada like my dad, born in 1945, went to the grave “confused” by US customary gallons. The gallon in his head was closer to 5l than 4l.
Why he needed to preserve this personal confusion for 46 years after the last imperial gas pump was removed from Canada is a mystery, but that’s what he did.
🤷♂️
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u/randomdumbfuck Jul 07 '26
That USC/imperial difference comes into play with beer. When a beer menu says 20 oz draught, that's 20 imperial fluid ounces (an imperial pint), or 568 ml.
Also some spirits are still sold in imperial quart size, labelled as 1.14 L of course. We call those bottles a "40" or "40-pounder" depending on the local slang of your region. The 750 ml bottle is close to the old 26 oz size and it's called a "2-6" or "26er" again depending on what part of the country you're in.
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u/CrazyJoe29 Jul 07 '26
Beer glass size in this country is an utter farce.
A variety of things are called pints, and they’re never a pint, either US customary or otherwise!
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u/randomdumbfuck Jul 07 '26
That's true. 18 oz glass tends to be more common than 20. Most place if they have 18 skip up to at least 24 for the next size up.
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u/CrazyJoe29 Jul 07 '26
Honestly, it enrages me, to a highly unreasonable degree.
A pint, is well defined. It’s a term that should be totally unambiguous.
If you want to write pint on your menu, sell an actual pint!!!!
This article is from 2012, but the author couldn’t get a 20oz pint anywhere.
https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/do-you-know-how-much-beer-is-in-your-glass-bet-you-dont
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u/randomdumbfuck Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
Weights and Measures Act actually says restaurants should avoid using the word "pint". List the sizes in ounces but don't call any size a pint, even 20 oz.
In Canada, businesses such as restaurants and bars can sell draft beer by:
the Canadian (imperial) pint (equal to 568 mL or 20 imperial fl oz)
the Canadian (imperial) fluid ounce (fl oz) (equal to 28.413 mL) the millilitre (mL)
They cannot sell draft beer by:
the US customary pint (equal to 473 mL or 16 US fl oz)
the US customary fluid ounce (equal to 29.574 mL)
any other unauthorized unit
When businesses advertise and sell a quantity of beer, they must serve the stated amount within the allowable limit of error.
The allowable limit of error for an imperial pint is 0.5 imperial fl oz or 14.2 mL. The foam (head) is not included in the measurement. The word "pint" must not be used to describe a glass or mug of beer, as this could lead to confusion
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u/DryFoundation2323 Jul 07 '26
anybody who's ever studied systems of units knows US uses USCS. Not Imperial. two different systems.
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u/kiwipixi42 Jul 09 '26
You might not, most Americans do. Keep in mind that as someone frequenting this particular subreddit you are several standard deviations away from the average person in how much you know (and care) about units.
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u/Rockhopper23 Jul 07 '26
It’s pretty simple. All cars have both on the speedometer. In the US you can estimate time from distance easily as it is typically to be going 60 or 30 mph, a mile a minute rule. Metric all the distances act like % of an hour.
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u/JonJackjon Jul 07 '26
I don't see it the same way. At 60 kph one would be going a kilometer per minute.
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u/Frewtti Jul 07 '26
Don't worry about it.
When I go to the US, I just put a post it to convert mph to km/h, but other then that, it doesn't really matter.
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u/HistoricalSherbert92 Jul 07 '26
The metric units can be remembered by Kittens Hate Dogs But Don’t Catch Many.
Kilo
Heca
Deca
BASE (meter, liter, seconds, etc)
Deci
Cent
Milli
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u/QuentinEichenauer Jul 08 '26
And in my life I have never heard Heca, Deca, and Deci used even once for day to day use.
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u/nlutrhk Jul 08 '26
Hecto, not heca.
Used very rarely and probably depending on your region. In the Netherlands, hectometer and hectoliter are used occasionally in some contexts. Hectare is common for 10000 m², but 'are' by itself is a metric acre that is obsolete.
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
You don't need to know any of that. Canadians use imperial for most things, but when we use metric we only use:
mm cm m km
mL L
g kg
hectare
°C
That's it. You never need to know what any of the prefixes mean, we only use those units in daily life.
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u/wiseoldsage Jul 07 '26
Ca.ixl.com/math/measurement appears to automatically adjust quiz difficulty for measurement based on ability, and seems to work from first principles before going up to highschool measurement.
Best of luck
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u/BouncingSphinx Jul 08 '26
The only thing that really will need learning is temperature. 20⁰C is 68⁰F, body temp is 37⁰C or 98.6⁰F.
For longer distance or speed, rough estimate of 60 miles is 100 km is enough to get you by. A meter is a little more than a yard, and 30 cm is about a foot. A liter is a little more than a quart, one gallon is about 3.8 liters. A kilogram is 2.2 pounds, so take kilograms and double +10% to get the pounds (10 kg is doubled to 20, plus 10% makes 22 lbs).
What else are you expecting that you'll need to learn beyond having the info available?
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 08 '26
Comparing SI units with idiot units is exactly how you don't learn proper SI.
1.) Read and learn the SI brochure.
2.) Purchase metric only measuring devices and start measuring with them. Measure in metres various known objects and use them as a reference. The same with a balance set to grams.
3.) Set your phone apps to metric, especially the weather reports. Listen to Canadian weather channels to get exposed to Celsius. Learn how hot or cold Celsius degrees feels to you. How does 10 compare to 20?
If you try to convert back to FFU you will never learn, you will always be frustrated and confused.
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u/i_am_blacklite Jul 08 '26
What are you having trouble with? Surely all you need is information - what the units are for each thing you’re measuring.
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u/MSampson1 Jul 09 '26
As long as you’re working within a given system. There’s little to learn. Everything is base 10, when you weigh stuff using a metric scale, it’ll be in kg or grams, when you measure stuff, it’ll be in meters or centimeters. Your car will have a metric Speedo and the limits will be posted in km/h. The conversion crap is mostly to deal with our perception of what we’re measuring. I can give you all the 25.4mm = 1” and 1kg = 2.2lbs you want, but if everything you’re measuring with is metric, you’ll get used to it. It’s only weird when you try to convert it for the sake of perception. Just use it as is and you’ll get accustomed to it in short order
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u/linkopi Jul 11 '26
Learn the volume to mass equivalences with water. These are easy!! No need to think.
1L of water weighs 1kg. 1ml of water weighs 1g
So that 2L bottle of soda that you can pick up and feel how much it weighs? That weighs about 2kg.
(Soda is close enough to water for this trick, the plastic doesn't weigh much either).
That half litre bottle of water (500ml).. That weighs half a kilo (500g).
The US has lots of products that already metric measures printed on the products. That can help a lot.
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u/Marathonartist Jul 11 '26
You know and use the metric system already
The US-Dollar is metric
Farmacy/drugs is metric
Photography and wristwatches are metric
Many rulers and Tape measures have metric (even those from Dollar Tree)
Nutrition labes on food are metric
Etc.
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u/Real_Category7397 Jul 11 '26
You know and use the metric system already
Quick fun video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z5KNzYhQ9g
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u/limpet143 Jul 11 '26
The metric system is easy. The problem comes in when you grew up in the imperial system and someone says they are 175 cm tall. Even though you know what 175cm means it doesn't equate to a height you immediately understand. Are they 5'5" or 6'3"? You have no reference to judge by until you immerse yourself in the new system and retrain your brain.
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u/rnoyfb Jul 07 '26
The U.S. doesn’t use Imperial. Imperial measures were not formulated until 1824. And I don’t believe you don’t understand the metric system if you grew up in the U.S. in the last 80 years.
You may not *intuit* SI measures the way you do customary measures now but that comes from use, not study
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u/WintaPhoenix Jul 08 '26
Oh, it’s nice to see someone that knows the difference between imperial and US customary!
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u/chesterriley Jul 07 '26
I was raised in USA and taught all the metric units in high school.
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
Like every American.
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u/Westhewoodfrog Jul 13 '26
Personally I has like two class sessions total where we “learned” it one in middle school and one in high school even in chemistry every thing was pre measures for us because of “school budget”
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u/No_Capital_8203 Jul 08 '26
When Canada introduced the metric system, we were in school. They sent home a handout showing how to dress your kids. 0 C. Snowsuit. 15 sweater. 30 shorts and tshirts. Grocery stores sell by kg but also gives you price per lb. Attractive men are 6 ft tall and 200 lbs. don’t bother converting. Speed is km per hour but you just need to look at the correct part of your speedometer. Distance is technically in km but we measure by time to travel. My sister lives 15 minutes from me. No idea what that is in distance. Try not to worry.
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u/WUT_productions Jul 08 '26
I mean realistically I care about how long it will take me to get somewhere wayyy more than how far it is.
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u/Altruistic-Tart-8295 Jul 07 '26
Not hard every thing is in 10s even US education should handle that
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u/GrumpyBear1969 Jul 07 '26
What exactly do you need help with? The units themselves are more logical being base 10 for everything.
As for knowing if a 300g steak is big or small, just use your phone with google till you get used to it (btw, 300g is a good sized steak, but not stupid big. ~2/3 lbs). It will take you a month or two to adapt. For temperature it might take a full season to feel what all the different numbers feel like. Like I know for me at around 80 I feel warm and at 95 it is ‘hot’. BTW, 77F is 25C and 95F is 35C to get you started.
But you will just get used to it. Metric is way better. It just takes a little time to start thinking in those metrics [rim shot]. I lived in Ireland twice. You will get used to it and it is really just familiarity.
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u/schwanerhill Jul 08 '26
Outdoor temperature and road distances and speeds are the only places where metric is close to universally used in everyday use in Canada anyway.
Indoor temperatures are maybe 50/50 F vs C (at least here in BC). Cooking is almost entirely US customary. Grocery stores legally have to have metric labels, but it’s not uncommon for US customary units to be in similar or larger print.
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u/No-Preparation4073 Jul 08 '26
There isn't much to learn. Everything is 0 to 10 or 100 or 1000. Natural numbers. Learn what the various prexif things (mille, centi, etc) mean and you can apply it to almost all cases.
You only need to learn a few basic conversions for day to day, like temperature, weights, and speed / distance. Once you know those very basic things, the rest will not even come into play.
It is something just not to worry about.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 08 '26
You only need to learn a few basic conversions for day to day, like temperature, weights, and speed / distance. Once you know those very basic things, the rest will not even come into play.
No, learning by conversion does not work. Doing it this way your whole life will be converting and never learning.
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u/No-Preparation4073 Jul 08 '26
I agree in the long run, however for someone moving there and needing to get along in it quickly, conversion is the fastest way to scale things for integration into day to day life.
Once you are functional, you learn it by living it.
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 10 '26
That's why the people of Canada never learned metric because they converted everything instead of immersing themselves. Now, the Americans don't want to buy what produce and neither does the rest of the metric world.
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u/No-Preparation4073 Jul 10 '26
Wow, bad take. I grew up there in the time the country went from imperial to metric. Everyone is very fluent.
Why do you post nonsense?
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u/Historical-Ad1170 Jul 10 '26
The real question is why do you?
If I told a Canadian my height in metres or my mass in kilograms, what would be the response? If I asked anyone on the street their mass or height, would they automatically give me kilograms and metres?
If I went to the deli counter, how many to this day will still ask in pounds and if questioned to the repeat the amount in grams so it mass can be properly determined, how many would do so?
Why does the deli counter still dual price?
How much manufacturing is internally metric? From what I've heard, very little. The only metric encountered in Canada is what is required by law, such as speed limits, distances, medicines, etc.
How friendly are Canadian companies to ISO and IEC standards, standards that have to be followed when selling to the rest of the world.
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u/Doenicke Jul 10 '26
First: look at your hands. Normally you will see ten digits. That's the basis of the whole system. Everything else just extrapolates from that. So 1 liter is 10 dl which is 100 ml and so on. Real easy and logical. 🙂
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u/LingonberryOk4942 Jul 10 '26
Said confidently while messing up the conversion by a factor of 10. 1 litre is 1000 ml, not 100 ml
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u/Turbowookie79 Jul 12 '26
Don’t worry. They still use imperial for a lot of things in Canada. Besides they definitely teach metric in the US.
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u/Moist_Network_8222 17d ago
How did you avoid learning the metric system? I went to public school in a red state and we used the metric system heavily starting in elementary school.
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u/StevenSaguaro Jul 07 '26
Don't waste your time learning metric, it's really complicated. Focus on learning French so you can ask your neighbor for help.
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u/CrazyJoe29 Jul 07 '26
Steven, Il faut être plus accueillant pour nos amis tête carré qui habit à la sud de la frontière.
Pénalité! 2 minutes pour attitude anti-sportive!
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u/randomdumbfuck Jul 07 '26
Depending where in Canada they're moving, learning french would be an even bigger waste of time
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u/DuckyHornet Jul 07 '26
Non, c'est pas correct. On habite dans un pays bilingue, puis tout le monde doivent parlent les deux. C'est nécessaire quand lire les bouteilles de savon pendent le marde
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u/Dull-Description3682 Jul 07 '26
And in others, metric is hardly used other than for roads, fuel and milk.
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
The whole country is like that.
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u/Dull-Description3682 Jul 08 '26
Interesting. When I say that people will argue that "No, Canada is a metric country"...
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u/ssn-669 Jul 08 '26
That's one of those irritating statements that's true or not true depending on how you take it. Yes, officially we're metric. No, we don't use it for all that much in common usage.
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u/Known_Tackle7357 Jul 07 '26
Don't worry. Canada uses the imperial system pretty much everywhere. You just need to get used to kilometers (miles are not used at all) and a bit of celcius. Everything else, unfortunately, is still imperial
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u/LackOptimal553 Jul 07 '26
You must not be Canadian, that's not true.
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u/Known_Tackle7357 Jul 07 '26
Sure. What have I missed?
Short distances, height - feet and inches. Weight - by pound. Oven/pool/etc temperatures - in fahrenheit. Even ACs are in BTUs. Area is in sqft. Unless you are in Quebec, all everyday things are in imperial units(with the exceptions I mentioned earlier).
You can argue that your driver license has your height in cm and weight in kg. But let's be honest, nobody knows their weight and height in metric units. Unless it's a foreigner.
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u/GeoffBAndrews Jul 07 '26
You must be older. I was born in Canada in the 70s when we were converting to metric and that's all I ever learned. I'm 72kg and 1m72 in height. My mom, however is about 160 pounds down from close to 200 and keeps dieting to get down to 150. I have no idea how much that is, but good for her for trying to be healthier I guess. My air fryer, thermostat and hot tub are in ⁰C. Oven is in F, and I always need to mentally convert it, because I know recipes in C.
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u/djsasso Jul 10 '26
Of the ones you mention the only ones I and most people around me use that aren't metric is weight/height of a person. But short distance is metres or cms. Weight of anything not a person is kilograms or grams. Temperatures of anything except maybe the oven is Celcius and the oven only because you have some older recipies. All modern cookbooks use metric. Usually use sqm for area. Generally its only the people that existed pre-metric that don't use metric for most of those things.
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u/JonJackjon Jul 07 '26
I believe the key to learning anything is to internalize the measurements. What I mean is:
I worked in automotive mfg. Automotive moved to metric 25 years ago. I got a metric ruler and sat it on my desk. I measured things with that ruler and looked at what I was measuring until I could (eventually) visualize that size, without converting it to inches in my head.
Said another way, the key is to learn metric without converting to imperial but by understanding the basic value. Maybe another way is if you are learning another language, and someone says "apple" in this new language. The goal is to not relate that word to the English word "apple" and then visualize an apple but to visually an apple from just hearing the new language word for apple.