Wouldn't it be nice if, in this global economy and world cooperation, we could all agree on a system of measuring units? Well, we have! The metric system is used worldwide by scientists and manufacturers. It has taken some time for country governments to "officially" change to metric, and there are still three countries left that have not officially switched: Burma, Liberia and the United States.
Here is a map of all the countries in the world and the year they
officially adopted the metric system:
Why should Burma, Liberia and the U.S. "officially" switch to metric? Here are the four most important reasons:
1. It is easy to convert between different metric units for the same kind of quantity. Everything is related by various factors of ten: just move the decimal place!
2. Celsius is a more convenient way to measure temperature on Earth than Fahrenheit. 0 is freezing, 100 is boiling - it's that simple. Every Fahrenheit user could switch to Celsius in about a week and live a better life from then on.
3. For most of the last half-century, all scientists in the world have used the metric system exclusively for their research. The metre and its various other units related by factors of ten (femtometre, nanometre, centimetre, kilometre) have been used to describe phenomena over a huge range of scales. The kilogram and its related units of mass is used to measure everything from electrons to galaxy clusters and everything in between. It makes sense to use the work of these many scientists to apply it to our lives.
4. Cooperation sometimes requires conformity on the little issues. If every brick company built their own unique shape of brick, it would be pretty hard to build. The point is not just that metric is better, but that it already is in use worldwide and it is the easiest system for any remaining hold-outs to switch to.