Category Archives: Metric System in Popular Culture

Counting Your Metric Good Fortune

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By The Metric Maven

James Panero, a person who likes to think of himself as the “preeminent voice of American cultural conservatism” demonstrated his reactionary bone fides (that’s Latin you know) by attacking the metric system on world metrology day in the Wall Street Journal. The essay is thankfully paywalled. The value should be meted in a negative denomination, like -$1.00, as you will want your money back after you’ve read the essay. Apparently, realizing that some of his readers, might not have the patience to read, he explained his views to Tucker Carlson on Fox News in a video. Panero is, of course, horrified that the metric system came out of the French Revolution (despite the fact Englishman John Wilkins originated the metric system in 1668) , which sanctimonious “science communicators” also need to actually research. In Panero’s view even:

Worse than the abandonment of human measure is the imposition of decimal division. From calendars to clocks, French radicals went all in for 10. That works well for abstract calculations, as with dollars and cents, but not when measuring things in the real world. The Romans counted in 12s, as in the hours on a clock and the inches in a foot. The Babylonians used 60, from which we get minutes, seconds and degrees. A simple system of 8 still exists in our ounces—and in computer bytes. Eight, 12 and 60 divide easily into halves and quarters, even thirds, while a decimal system does not. A third of a meter is roughly 33.33 centimeters, a third of a foot exactly 4 inches.

James Panero, an ersatz version of the ersatz writer John Bemelmans Marciano, demonstrates the rational superiority of pre-metric measures by expounding on their divine complexity. The Romans, of course, did not “count in 12’s,” yes they did have 12’s on the clocks they inherited from earlier civilizations, but they counted in tens. I will refer to Wikipedia, which states:

Roman numerals are essentially a decimal or “base 10” number system. Powers of ten – thousands, hundreds, tens and units – are written separately, from left to right, in that order. Different symbols are used for each power of ten, but a common pattern is used for each of them.

So, no they didn’t use 12 for counting. But he is right, they did have 12 inches in a Roman foot. Which is a point I will get back to, after not ending this sentence in a preposition. So he argues the merits of 60, 12, and 8, and in the only irrelevant cliche metric antagonists can ever seem to offer, he reacts with horror that 1/3 of a meter is 33.33 centimeters. I react with horror that he did not use 333 millimeters, but that is a tell of ignorance so bad he would be quickly vanquished from any poker game.

So he is impressed that 12 and 60 both can be divided by half and thirds? Well they also can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6 (not counting 1 and the number itself). That’s just four factors for 12! Why 60 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30! Wow that’s ten factors. With just the right amount of ignorance about a subject, in this case the metric system, I’m sure our heroic cultural critic thinks I’m making his point for him. He does not realize that when using metric to build a dwelling, the basic module is 400 mm, which can be divided by 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16, 20, 25, 40, 50, 80, 100 and 200. That is 13 factors not counting 1 and 400. In other words, by actually planning and evaluating the arithmetic chosen, metric has easier usage than units that have been selected by the magical method of technical or market Darwinism. Panero’s preference is clear:

Nearly all customary units derive in some way from use. The acre was the amount of land a yoke of oxen could till in a day. The fathom is 6 feet, the span of the arms, useful when pulling up the sounding line of a depth measure. The meter is unfathomable, ……..

As Penero is so conservative that he certainly must use oxen on his farm, perhaps an acre makes sense. I might point out that a fathom is also about 2 meters. People can generally count by groups of 2s. You know, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 meters ……. which is close enough metrology for a “cultural critic” who uses oxen. But the “meter is unfathomable”?—I think I just pointed out it completely is fathomable in 2 meter increments.

The topic of this essay is counting. Put simply, it is the advantage that is obtained when a counting system has the same base as a measuring system. Take the Romans and their 12 inches in a Roman foot, yet, they used a counting system based on ten, and used feet with 12 inches. We currently use a base 10 system which uses 0-9 to represent numbers. If we want to use 12 as a base, we need to add symbols, perhaps a and b, like hexadecimal does. So it would be 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a and b. So we would have a = 10 and b = 11 and 10 as 12. I’m sure it will be perfectly logical to understand that page a is old page 10, in all the newly numbered books in our duodecimal utopia, and page b is now old page 11. The next page is of course 10, which is old twelve. It all makes sense now!—the simplicity is obvious!

People say they want base 12 counting, but don’t really understand what that means. What they actually mean is the use of a grouping of base 10 integer numbers by 12. In other words they want integer groupings that are easy to divide with decimal numerical representation! When discussing small numbers of items we often just use direct base 10 values. For instance, we purchase a six-pack, or eight-pack, or 12-pack or 24-pack. Those are a mouth full, but we live with the long designations.

We also have collective pet names for useful integer groupings. For instance we purchase a dozen eggs, but not 0.99 dozen eggs. We would reject the non-integer number of eggs as one is clearly broken. What happens at a grocery store when you select a dozen eggs, you, or often the cashier, checks to make sure one of them is not broken. A dozen is 12 integer items, period. We have created more pet names using this pet name. For instance a square dozen is a gross or 144 items. A great gross is a cubic dozen or 1728 items. A small gross? That is ten dozen!—or 120 items. This is not a measurement system, as it only contains groupings of integer values. A googol is a pet name for 10100. These are useful values for dividing up integer objects. In the case of metric construction, the millimeter is the integer value, and a grouping of 400 millimeters is a module–with 13 factors.

We have collective nouns for animals without a clear numerical designation, such as a murder of crows, which I guess means more than 1, as a group is two or more according to dictionary definitions.

There is a clear advantage to using base ten for counting, and also for a measurement system, as there is no numerical “pet name” conversion. The grouping is the same for the integer part of a measurement value, and for the decimal part of the measurement value. 123.465 meters has a grouping of 100, with a grouping of 10, and then one for the integer part. The decimal part has groupings of 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000. They are all multiples of base 10. Now if we use a length of 123 yards, 2 feet, 7 inches and 2 barleycorns, we have reverted to other groups or pet names. We have three feet in a yard, and 12 inches in a foot and 3 barleycorns to an inch, the cognitive confusion is almost optimum, and the usefulness minimum when compared to a consistent grouping. I would think this would be obvious to a grade school student, but not perhaps to a Wall Street Journal cultural critic.

He chortles with a furtive shot at the redefinition of the Kilogram, but also uses a very, very high pitched dog whistle:

With the European Union being cut down to size, can we hope for a return to British imperial units, which the U.K. was forced to abandon after it joined? A pint’s a pound, the world around, and it beats walking the Planck.

As I point out in my essay How Did We Get Here?, the origin of A Pint’s a Pound the World Around comes from the lines of a 19th century song with these lyrics:

For the Anglo-Saxon race shall rule
The earth from shore to shore
Then down with every “metric” scheme
Taught by the foreign school

A perfect inch, a perfect pint.
The Anglo’s honest pound
Shall hold their place upon the earth
Till Time’s last trump shall sound!

It’s quite a celebration of colonialism and racism Mr Penero. As a cultural critic, you should be aware of from whence this has come. And by the way, the pint is not a pound the world around.

Pet names for units can be fun though. For instance a mouth is about 3 inches, and a foot is 12 inches, so a foot in the mouth would be 15 inches, or one Penero.

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.

Mythbusters Jr. & Metric Blindness

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By The Metric Maven

Split Bulldog Edition

Adam Savage has returned with a new version of Mythbusters, titled Mythbusters Jr. Adam hosts a number of wunderkind who address a number of myths—-for science! In 2012, when asked about why the Mythbusters did not use the metric system in their show, the answer was:

“We try, we do both sometimes. But we’re both fully inculcated with the English system, sad to say. That’s how we think.”

Adam has now taken on the responsibility to educate a new generation in the adventures of myth-busting. During his sabbatical did he muse on measurements?—-and try to inform himself about them?—well, I’m sure this won’t be much of a spoiler—but no…. not at all it appears. Worse, it’s clear he is passing on American measurement prejudice and hubris that decreases our scientific literacy.

In a segment titled Space Scream, the team examines, if in space: “no one can hear you scream.” To investigate this assertion, they build a vacuum chamber, and then use a pump to pull a vacuum. A gauge is shown which has KPa, and also inches Hg. One of the impressionable students reads out “five inches of mercury.” Adam Savage then states: “Now the numbers you’re hearing are inches of mercury. Ten inches of mercury! They’re a standard unit of measurement for atmospheric pressure—and it goes back to one of the earliest tests on vacuum which is how far up a tube can you draw liquid mercury. Eighteen inches of mercury—and it turns out 29.92 inches is as far as you’ll ever get. That is as close to a perfect vacuum as you can get here on Earth.”

What might have been useful is explaining the other scale, the Kilopascal scale. That a pascal is a newton of force per square meter, or a force that exists over an area, like pounds per square inch, but metric. But this is a quibble compared to their metric blindness in a segment called Spider Silk vs Steel. The segment starts out astonishingly metric, but with introduced confusion about micron versus micrometer. Dr Todd Blackledge, a professor at the University of Akron, when asked how thick the spider silk is, stated it is about 3 microns. Once again, academic metric ossification in the US concerning the metric system is still on display.

The myth they examine is whether spider silk is stronger than steel. The spider thread used is estimated at 3 microns in thickness. I cringed, and thought the word micrometer clearly and unambiguously expresses the value of length. Then Mythbuster Jr. Allie makes me proud: “We got our hands on some pretty thin steal thread. It’s about 30 micrometers thick. We looked at our spider silk underneath a microscope, and it was about 3 micrometers thick.” The voice over narrator then quashes my metric hope, by re-introducing microns, and equating them with micrometers. Overall, still not bad for a US television program. They even show the computations! This is not kid stuff! It might have been useful for Mythbusters Jr. to have pointed out that a human hair is about 100 micrometers thick for comparison. The steel thread is about three times smaller than a human hair and the spider silk is about 30 times smaller than a human hair. Measurement expression and clarity, is clearly not Adam’s thing. He’s too inculcated in the “English System” to change.

First, a steel thread is connected between a pair of posts on upright columns. A wire hook is placed at the center. One-by-one, washers and paperclips are added to the bottom hook of the double hook, which slowly stretches the steel thread. The added mass in grams is called out. Adam spoils the metric mood by pointing out the stretch of the filament is about four inches. The total mass added when the steel fiber fails is 39.305 grams. One might question the youthful readout to 5 micrograms. That’s quite a scale. The voice-over narrator continues to use microns.

Next, 500 threads of spider silk is connected between the two connection points, and the process repeated. The amount of paper clips and washers was 83 grams when the spider silk failed. The spider silk clearly was stronger than the steel thread.

Coarsely labeled container used to stress the steel wire and spider silk

To check this result, 25 000 strands of spider silk will be placed across the two posts. Adam tells us it’s 9.5 miles of silk, or 15.2 Kilometers for refined people. The test fixture is modified by connecting a graduated container at the bottom of the test hook. This container will be filled with water until the thread under test fails. They will then have the weight in water which caused thread failure. The container is coarsely graduated in both liters and quarts.

They use a 28 gauge steel wire for the initial test, but never indicate what its diameter is, as if 28 gauge means something. They use 40 pounds of water in the reservoir and allow gravity to slowly convey it to the rectangular container stressing the steel wire. The group then weighs the water to find out what mass of water precipitated the failure. It’s 12.5 pounds. They switched to pounds?—of course they did.

The 25 000 strands of spider silk is then prepared, and water allowed to flow. They helpfully show that the spider silk has passed the steel wire snap value, which occurred when a volume of 5.9 quarts, with a “mass” of 12.5 pounds, was in the container. The camera shows the water approaching the 8 quart mark. We next see it approach 10 liters, which is between 8 and 12 quart marks. Then failure occurs. Adam weights the water and measures 26 pounds.

Well, from a metric standpoint this is a serious cold mess. The first test with 500 spider silk threads was essentially metric, even if the long retired and meaningless micron was used. The second test used water. Adam looked at the value in quarts, and then weighted it, to determine the value in pounds. This is true metric blindness. If one has 500 mL of water it will weigh 500 grams. Each liter of water (i.e. 1000 mL) has a mass of 1 Kilogram (i.e 1000 grams). They could have used a container with mL, and read-off the value also as an estimated mass in grams. This would have been very, very educational for the youth participating in this experiment, but American metric blindness kept them from seeing this simplification. There is no instant equivalence between quarts and pounds of water like there is with liters and Kilograms. There is an expectation of complication and de-correlation of units for the “English System,” with which Adam is inculcated.

We could only see the 10 liter mark during the segment, which indicates 10 Kilograms or about 22 pounds at that point. The final value measured was 26 pounds which works back to 11.81 Kg, or 11.81 liters of water, or 11 810 mL, or 11 810 grams. Had some thought been put into the measurement involved, both experiments could have been expressed with the same metric units. In the first case, they had 39 grams for the steel and 83 grams for the spider silk. In the second experiment we have 5682 grams and 11 810 grams. It could have been all the same units.

An American audience could have learned the simplicity of using water to measure mass, and how its volume could be used as a check when weighed. 1000 mL is 1000 grams. The two values should ideally be equal, but Mythbusters Jr. has metric blindness. I have written this blog for over six years now, and written to the original Mythbusters program. What Mythbusters and Mythbusters Jr. seem to have proven to me is, that in Cyberspace, no one can hear your metric scream.

If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page and contribute. Also purchase his books about the metric system:

The first book is titled: Our Crumbling Invisible Infrastructure. It is a succinct set of essays  that explain why the absence of the metric system in the US is detrimental to our personal heath and our economy. These essays are separately available for free on my website,  but the book has them all in one place in print. The book may be purchased from Amazon here.


The second book is titled The Dimensions of the Cosmos. It takes the metric prefixes from yotta to Yocto and uses each metric prefix to describe a metric world. The book has a considerable number of color images to compliment the prose. It has been receiving good reviews. I think would be a great reference for US science teachers. It has a considerable number of scientific factoids and anecdotes that I believe would be of considerable educational use. It is available from Amazon here.


The third book is called Death By A Thousand Cuts, A Secret History of the Metric System in The United States. This monograph explains how we have been unable to legally deal with weights and measures in the United States from George Washington, to our current day. This book is also available on Amazon here.